Phoenix Blog

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Arizona State University is "leading the pack in improvements and innovative changes," according to the latest issue of U.S. News and World Report magazine.

Though ASU was only as the 121st best national university -- same ranking as last year -- the Valley institution ranked fifth out of 77 of the most "up-and-coming" colleges.

Hasn't the magazine heard -- the state's broke. Dozens of ASU's programs have been cut and many others consolidated. Hundreds of job positions have been cut, long furloughs ordered and it may take special legislation just to keep popular satellite campuses open.

Those money woes, you'd think, will tend to eclipse the "improvements and innovative changes" going on, unless the innovation is in the form of learning to live on a shoestring budget.

www.collegeacquisitions.com

The Vue on Apache is a far cry from your typical dorm room. You don't even have to wear sandals in the shower!

​The days where bunk-beds and communal bathrooms were the norm for incoming college freshman are over for hundreds of ASU students who decided to skip the dorms and move into luxury apartments.

Why not, right?

The Vue on Apache, which sits directly across from ASU's Tempe campus, is set to open on Friday morning, and will be filled with up-and-coming Sun Devils.

The new posh pads are open to anyone, but are geared toward college kids and their parents' credit cards.

The apartment building offers students 11 floors of luxury suites with amenities like floor-to-ceiling windows, large balconies, and all the bells and whistles of a condo designed for young professionals.

If the idea of college students living higher on the hog than you is enraging, wait; it gets, um,  better.

The building is equipped with a fully loaded gym with cable television built-in, a rooftop pool (with a waterfall, of course) and each of the 132 rooms comes fully furnished, including flat-screen televisions mounted to walls. There are saunas, and a tanning beds.

We can't have students going home for Thanksgiving break all pasty, now can we?!

 

​South Phoenix's Roosevelt School District, historically one of the Valley's worst-performing districts, made an impressive gain in test scores in 2009.

The district announced today that students performed 9 percent better in math and 10 percent better in reading on the AIMS test. That puts the district in better standing, comparatively, with 20 of its 21 schools earning a "performing" tag and 13 of 21 (60 percent) earning the even better "performing plus" rating by the state.

Tom Horne, state schools superintendent (and "exploratory candidate" for state Attorney General), made a speech in 2005 in which he predicted a turnabout by now:

 

cs.hartford.edu

​Why's it taken the Arizona Legislature several months to come up with a budget, with still nothing much on the horizon? Well, there are several reasons, and most contain expletives. But one reason is that dozens of people are trying to do thousands of different things with money that doesn't actually exist.

An Arizona State University researcher may have found a solution: ants.

Stephen Pratt, an assistant professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences, published a study last week that shows how ants are more rational decision-makers than humans, and this ultimately leads to better choices.

Pratt says ants rely on "wisdom of crowds," where individual options are minimized and the best possible decision comes collectively. And quickly.

"This paradoxical outcome is based on apparent constraint," he says. "Most individual ants know of only a single option, and the colony's collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants."

Poorly informed ants? Pratt must have spent some time at the Arizona State Capitol.

 

The class of 2009 had Obama, but Arizona State University's class of 2010 is recruiting the leader of a different sort of nation to deliver their commencement address:

The Colbert Nation.

More than 3,000 ASU students have joined a group on Facebook with the goal of landing Stephen Colbert and his mammoth satirical ego as the commencement speaker for the 2010 graduation ceremony

Lauren Gilger

Director Judy Reno in the new College Depot center at the Burton Barr Central Library.

July may not seem like the time to start the ever-daunting college application process. But College Depot is waiting for you anyway.

Calling all students, their families, the out-of-work and the starting-over: The Depot serves as a college counselor, computer network, bilingual information hub/hangout and support system for anyone looking to go to college. For free. And it is just about empty -- for the moment, at least.

College Depot has only had an actual home (in the Burton Barr Central Library, at 1221 N. Central Ave.) for about three weeks, but it has been searching for funding for about three years. And, come fall, high schoolers may be filling its angular chairs, office hours and workshops in the after-school rush that fills the library's teen center with around 400 students a day.

Lauren Gilger

The entrance to College Depot in the Burton Barr Central Library.

It is a project that people believe in. Its director, Judy Reno quit her job as director of the Phoenix office of admissions for the University of Arizona for what she called her "dream job" in October, and Deborah Dillon, the mind behind the project, almost single-handedly raised the money to back it.

Reno says that Dillon, the education programs director for the city of Phoenix, raised $1 million in three years, with donations coming from charitable organizations and government agencies alike -- including a $550,000 chunk from the city's CDBG Program (that is, Community Development Block Grant), which serves (in bureaucrat terms) low-income areas.

 

The State Senate is scheduled to vote today on a bill that would prohibit Arizona schools from offering classes that encourage "ethnic solidarity."

The bill also bans classes "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group." Pushed by state schools chief Tom Horne, its main target is a $2-million "Raza Studies" program in the Tuscon Unified High School District.

Critics say the bill is overkill, even though some things taught by the raza studies program are clearly on the wacky side.

On the other hand, the program has reportedly boosted AIMS scores of its participants.

 

Image: Peter Storch/New Times

 

The 1930s-era post office on Central Avenue and Van Buren Street is preparing to undergo at least $2 million in renovation by its owner, Arizona State University, in collaboration with the city of Phoenix.

As New Times writer Robrt L. Pela explained a few months ago, the stylish building was purchased a few years back by ASU as part of its downtown campus development. Although the post office will still operate out of the facility, plans call for adding retail, classroom and activity space.

From an article from ASU's Devil's Apprentice: