Teaching and Learning: Quality, Resources, and Support: Core Component 3.E

3.E - Core Component 3.E

The institution fulfills the claims it makes for an enriched educational environment.

Co-curricular programs are suited to the institution’s mission and contribute to the educational experience of its students.
The institution demonstrates any claims it makes about contributions to its students’ educational experience by virtue of aspects of its mission, such as research, community engagement, service learning, religious or spiritual purpose, and economic development.

Argument

3.E.1 Consistent with its mission and design aspirations, ASU offers a wide range of co-curricular offerings and opportunities to help students be leaders and engaged citizens.

Living on campus introduces students to a dynamic environment where study lounges and onsite classes, wireless connectivity and computer stations, academic support services (advising, tutoring, and workshops), mentoring, dining options, and co-curricular programming are commonplace. Residence Hall Involvement provides opportunities to engage in hall activities and develop leadership and service skills that help students achieve academically. "Sun Devil Way," further encourages students to take advantage of numerous activities that help prepare them for academic, personal, and career success. Sun Devil Way is a portal to the varied learning resources, study skills, and tutoring services, academic success coaching and development workshops.

Students are encouraged to become an active member of the ASU community to develop leadership skills and contribute to community life through involvement in study groups or clubs connected to their academic major, student or community service organizations, and on-campus employment opportunities. With over 1,000 student organizations, located amongst the five campuses, ASU provides an opportunity for each and every student to become involved.

A wide range of offerings and activities are available at ASU.

Career and Professional Development Services offers a range of events, webinars and workshops to help students explore their career path.
ASU Entrepreneurship Network provides services and support to entrepreneurs, small businesses and startup companies throughout the Greater Phoenix region for a thriving regional entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Community Solutions Co-op in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions exemplifies a shared commitment among faculty, staff, students and community partners to find collaborative solutions to challenges in the local community. All new undergraduate students have a solutions-based learning class requirement that immerses them in the community and challenges them to think critically about public service within the context of their chosen field.
Community@ASU provides a portal to promote community embeddedness, one of ASU's design aspirations. It is a digital hub to help ASU community members get "plugged into" the ASU ecosystem of resources and programs.
University Service Learning links academic curriculum with service at Community Partner sites and provides service-learning resources to ASU faculty, K-12 teachers, and the community.
The Council of Religious Advisors (CORA) is comprised of campus ministries and faith-based organizations that represent a diverse variety of faiths, traditions, and beliefs. Despite the differences in faiths that exist between them, the group works peacefully and diligently on behalf of the university community to provide religious services, spiritual counseling, education, support, and opportunities for involvement.

Courses and programs such as ASU 101 and Preparing Future Faculty offer students supplemental opportunities to enrich their educational and future career experiences:

ASU 101-type courses teach first-year students about ASU's mission as the New American University, the importance and benefits of an entrepreneurial approach to problem solving, potential solutions to sustainability challenges, and the importance of social embeddedness. Students examine the concept of academic integrity, the value of engaging in research activities, and learning to think with an interdisciplinary perspective.
Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) is a nationally recognized professional development program for doctoral and MFA students, as well as postdocs who are interested in pursuing a facullty position. Students learn about the roles of faculty (including research/scholarship, teaching, and service) and how faculty roles differ by institution. They also learn an insider's perspective through insights from current ASU faculty members and from other institutions.

Taking an entirely different approach, ASU has introduced Digication, an ePortfolio tool, to students, faculty, and staff, so they can demonstrate: their academic achievements of all sorts, research and projects; their community engagement; their service learning; and anything else that prepares them for a chosen career. With no official requirement for its use, many students and almost 700 faculty members have adopted its use in the last two years creating more than 63,000 portfolios as of June 2017. The ability to create presentations of their accomplishments incentivizes students to undertake the showcased activities while thinking carefully about how their activities and accomplishments complete the educational process in preparation for their career.

Services aimed at helping students and alumni find careers using the skills and knowledge gained at ASU are available to all ASU students and alumni on each campus. The Office of Career and Professional Development Services equips students with the necessary tools to explore, plan, and achieve their career aspirations. Sun Devil CareerLink a national, web-based job and internship tool that allows students to post resumes and schedule interviews in one online location. Students register for access to the system; jobs posted in the system are targeted to candidates pursuing or who have completed at least a four-year degree.

Career Services promotes an online or in-person Career Advising Center on each of the ASU campuses to help students explore and evaluate potential careers, learn about internships, and understand the processes involved with finding and accepting employment: interview skills, appropriate interview attire, writing a resume, interview etiquette, negotiating employment options, etc. Other helpful career resources are provided here. Guidance for exploring career interests is available as an online resource here.

Additionally, there are career centers located in several of ASU's larger colleges. The Engineering Career Center sponsors career fairs, connects employers with students pursuing jobs and internships, and offers online tools for resume development and preparation for job fairs and interviews. Center staff members lead workshops and provide comprehensive career coaching for students and alumni. Other Career Centers are located in the W.P. Carey School of Business, the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

As the nation’s largest and most innovative public research institution, entrepreneurship is a core value of ASU. ASU provides faculty, staff, students and the community with opportunities and resources to advance new ideas, establish new ventures, and create new products. Changemaker Central is ASU’s hub for social entrepreneurship designed to inspire, catalyze and sustain student-driven social change. For entrepreneurs interested in developing new technologies, TechShop provides free access to $1M worth of advanced machines, tools, and sophisticated 2D and 3D design software. 1951@SkySong, a brand new co-working space at SkySong, was opened in October 2016 to foster collaboration between ventures in accelerator programs and in the community. Over 96 companies have been launched because of ASU innovations and over $600 million in funding has been raised to support new ventures. The Engineering School launches workshops to instill entrepreneurial thinking in high school students through the Innovation through Design Thinking (iDT) program. This program connects middle school students with workshops that introduce them to the steps that inventors and engineering designers use to imagine, create and quickly prototype innovative solutions to everyday problems. The workshops' hands-on approach emphasizes approaches to problem identification and problem solving, along with use of tools.

3.E.2 ASU provides students with an array of opportunities to explore, discover, engage, and experience research by utilizing the extensive resources available at a large public research university. Students interact with faculty researchers with whom they may have limited or no contact during their coursework, and the search tool uResearch can identify research projects or topics of interest already under research at ASU. Through this program students transform their theoretical knowledge into experiential practice working with ASU's top research faculty. Independent study, paid and volunteer research positions, and other mentoring opportunities are all available through uResearch.

ASU Community Connect is a portal to community engagement through the Office of University Initiatives. Changemaker Central, the College of Health Solutions, United Way and many other ASU colleges and partners host days of service at all campus locations as a way to make a meaningful differences in the community while having fun with fellow Sun Devils.

Community-Focused Research. The Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development advances research, innovation, strategic partnerships, entrepreneurship, economic development, and international development to make ASU a comprehensive knowledge enterprise and produce meaningful societal impact. The ASU Lodestar Center enhances the effectiveness of nonprofits through interdisciplinary strategies reflecting the intersection of nonprofit leadership and management, philanthropy and social entrepreneurship/enterprise. The center serves as a resource to those who lead, manage, and support nonprofits through several interdisciplinary areas of focus, including professional development, academic degrees, conferences and convenings, and more. The Morrison Institute for Public Policy is a statewide leader in examining critical issues for Arizona and the region, and is a catalyst for public dialogue. An Arizona State University resource, Morrison Institute uses nonpartisan research, analysis and public outreach to help improve the state's quality of life.

Greek Life at ASU. At the beginning of the 2013-2014 academic year, the fraternity and sorority community embarked upon a new initiative to reframe the mission, vision, and core values of the fraternity and sorority experience at ASU. As ASU established itself as the New American University to transform higher education, the Greek community embarked upon developing a new model for Greek-letter organizations deemed the “New American Fraternity & Sorority Community,” to create a premier fraternity and sorority experience through emphasis on values-based, impact-driven individuals and organizations. As the New American University has a core of eight design aspirations, the New American Fraternity & Sorority Community is centered on four aspirations to drive the community forward: Learn & Grow, Build Relationships, Give Back, and Do the Right Thing.

Student organizations are responsible for the vast majority of the programming that occurs at ASU each year including Homecoming, concerts, special events, cultural and social events, community service & civic engagement opportunities, lectures and conferences.

Study abroad, The benefits of studying abroad enrich the Sun Devil experience. Participants stand out once they graduate by adding study abroad to their resume and demonstrating that they can thrive in a global environment. Student participate in one of 250 programs in over 65 different countries that are as short as a week and as long as a year (and anything in between). There is a program that will fit with every degree plan and goals that will keep students on track for graduation. Study abroad is not just for foreign language or global studies majors -- it's for everyone from any background and on any academic or career path. Students gain skills like language, building relationships, international networking, leadership, self-confidence, and global awareness.

Students can study during the summer term, fall and spring semesters, or for a full academic year. Participating students can expand upon a current course of study, focus on learning a foreign language, fulfill major course requirements, or experiment with various elective requirements. Three distinct types of study abroad programs are available to ASU students: 1) Exchange Programs (participants pay ASU tuition while taking courses at a foreign institution alongside host country students), 2) Faculty Directed Programs (students pay a program fee, including tuition to take ASU faculty-led courses with other ASU students, primarily offered during the summer term), and 3) Partnership Programs (students pay a special program fee, including tuition to attend special programs at partner institutions with students from host countries and fellow American students). The faculty-directed summer study abroad programs are the most popular, comprising approximately 55 percent of the total student participants in study abroad programs. In 2015, the Institute of International Education ranked ASU in the top 20 schools in the nation for the total numbers of students studying abroad each year. During the 2014-2015 academic year, 2,102 ASU students studied abroad.

Internships. In today’s diverse and highly competitive work environment, employers are looking for candidates who have acquired experience and achieved success in the workplace. ASU students develop this experience through one or more internships. Through their internships they earn real life experience, develop new skills, and gain competitive advantage over non-internship peers. Organizations offer a mix of paid and unpaid internships and must meet the requirements established by the U.S. Department of Labor to offer these internships.

University Service Learning. Service-learning enables students to apply classroom skills and knowledge to meaningful service in the community, presenting an enriching learning and personal growth experience for students while addressing the unmet needs of communities. Most service-learning experiences at ASU are incorporated as discrete components or assignments associated with academic courses, but service-learning courses are unique in that they are stand-alone, credit-bearing, graded courses in which students provide 70-100 hours of sustained service throughout the semester at an approved Community Partner site. The goal of service-learning is to enhance student understanding of the academic curriculum while becoming socially embedded citizens, using critical reflection as a key learning tool.

Teaching and Learning: Quality, Resources, and Support: Core Component 3.E

2017 Assurance Argument

3.E - Core Component 3.E

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