Engaging with Community

Teaching and learning sit at the heart of every university's mission. An institution's core values show up in how it hires and promotes faculty and in the coursework it offers students.

A university's commitment to meaningful engagement takes shape from the inside, through its curriculum. That curriculum reflects a dedication to civic values and social responsibility, and it prepares students to become valued members, and indeed the backbone, of a civil society. It also keeps faculty and students actively involved in solving the core problems their communities face.

If today's graduates are to be constructive actors in their own communities and in the wider world, they need to be more than educated. They need to see themselves as members of a community with an obligation to take part in civic life. Most important of all, they should be able to understand and work effectively for the common good.

Research and discovery are the lifeblood of academic institutions. Pure research in the hard sciences and the social sciences advances the knowledge that drives human civilization forward. This kind of research has long shaped universities, guiding decisions about who is hired, promoted and granted tenure.

Yet pure research often drifts away from the human needs that ought to drive it and becomes an end in itself. At Arizona State University, the research agenda stays connected to community needs, often inspired by the community itself. Research and discovery serve as connecting threads that run across the colleges and departments of the university and out into the community.

Economic Development and Investment includes examples where ASU functions as an economic engine through business support, workforce development, entrepreneurship, innovation districts and place-based investments that connect university and community economic needs.

Social Development includes examples focused on well-being, inclusion, civic health, democracy, equity, access to social supports and improved outcomes for Arizona's people and communities. These examples may involve learning or research, but their primary public-facing value is social well-being.