An Arizona State University program that has helped nearly 8,700 parents across the Valley improve the education of their struggling children earned one of the nation’s most prestigious community engagement awards.

The American Dream Academy received the 2009 C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award from A۰P۰L۰U, the oldest higher education association in America.

The American Dream Academy has had a profound impact on Phoenix’s K-12 educational community. Parents of struggling K-12 students enter the nine-week program to gain knowledge and skills necessary to improve the educational development of their children, including methods to improve parent/child relationships, reduce dropout rates and ensure high school graduation…(read more)

Congratulations to Drs. James Christie, Jay Blanchard and their team on their successful Early Reading First grant proposal. Their project, “Pump Up the Volume in Preschool,” will be awarded $5,600,000 by the U.S. Department of Education over three years. This project is a collaboration among Arizona State University, Southwest Institute for Children and Families with Disabilities, and the Gallup McKinley County School District (New Mexico).

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced the award of more than $108.8 million in Early Reading First grants to 28 local education agencies and other public or private organizations in 18 states and Washington, D.C., to improve the school readiness of young children, especially those from low-income families.

Click here for more information.

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Executive Director of ASU Gammage and MLK Committee Chair invites you to nominate a candidate for the 2010 ASU MLK Student Servant-Leadership Award. This year’s theme is PICTURE YOUR POTENTIAL.

The ASU MLK Committee will be presenting a Servant-Leadership Award to an ASU student at the MLK Breakfast Celebration in January 2010.

Servant-leadership is a practical philosophy, which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions. Servant leaders may or may not hold formal leadership positions. Servant-leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening and the ethical use of power and empowerment.

We are requesting your help in identifying a student servant-leadership awardee. The student must be currently enrolled full-time, exemplify the ideals of servant-leadership and have a track record of commitment through volunteer service. Self-nominations are encouraged.

The nominator must contact one member of the MLK Committee prior to submitting their nomination so that the committee member can review the form, make sure it is completed and speak on behalf of their nomination.  A resume of the candidate is also requested. Attached is a committee roster.

Please submit this recommendation by close of business on October 7, 2009 through campus mail to Michelle Johnson at MC 0205, fax 480/965-7663 or e-mail mmjcap@asu.edu.

www.asu.edu/mlk

Download the nomination form

View the committee members roster

During the past two years, Prosumer Mujeres, a research group in the Center for Healthy Outcomes in Aging, has worked with local Latina women from Mountain Park Health Center to discuss the benefits and barriers to physical activity, as well as possible intervention programs. Through ASU’s partnership with this exceptional group of women, Prosumer Mujeres has created many effective recruitment and retention strategies for physical fitness programs throughout the Valley.

Prosumer Mujeres has now expanded to include local and national community leaders with diverse professional backgrounds. These leaders raise the visibility of the board’s mission and goals in promoting Latina health. The first inaugural dinner, held April 29th, was an exciting introduction to the board’s efforts, its accomplishments and our commitment to Latina health. Also discussed were the four areas of the Advisory Board’s focus:

1) monitoring research relevance for Latinas
2) resource development for Latina health
3) community integration for research and service-learning opportunities
4) participatory roles in forming research directions for Latina health

Adriana Perez, fellow with ASU’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation recently spoke about Prosumer Mujeres’s ongoing efforts to promote Latina health at the 2nd Annual Invitational Geriatric Conference and  the result of the group’s work has been showcased on NBC Nightly News, the local Channel 8 Horizonte, and through Radio Campesina, serving Hispanic communities of Yuma, AZ; Phoenix, AZ; Bakersfield, CA; Salinas, CA; Visalia, CA; and Tri Cites, WA.

Prosumer Mujeres looks forward to continuing its partnership with ASU and the Center for Health Outcomes in Aging in the interest of promoting and advancing best practices in Latina health.

For more information, please our website.

And/or contact:
Latezia Fletcher,
Marketing Communications Specialist,
ASU College of Nursing & Health Innovation,
(602) 496-0915

Students from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the School of Sustainability will work with Dr. Claudia Mesch, art history, and Julie Anand, photography, from the School of Art, to explore art and sustainability issues raised by artworks in the ASU Art Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition will include both past and present examples of artists exploring human interaction with the land, urbanization, natural and manmade materials, pollution, cultural sustainability and sustainable processes, and will explore how artists have brought issues of sustainability to a broader community, encouraged participation and dialog, and proposed creative solutions.

The exhibition, curated by Mesch and Heather Lineberry, Senior Curator and Interim Director of the ASU Art Museum, will include historic precedents, like the 19th century Hudson River school painters who painted classic American landscapes with encroaching signs of industrialization, as well as selections of work by contemporary artists like Matthew Moore, who has created compelling land art works on his family’s farm in the middle of the suburbs in West Phoenix, and Eddie Dominguez, who uses ceramics to explore human history and impact on the earth.

The students in the seminar will bring their different disciplines to their discussions and research. As the conversation deepens, the projects that emerge from the class will be accessible to the public in the gallery on a class bulletin board and on the website including a class blog. Class sessions with guest speakers from the fields of art, science and the humanities will be open to the public. The students in the seminar will also interact with the artists in residence during the larger fall season.

Visit the About section of our Web site or our blog for project details.

PHOENIX – The tourism industry is the world’s largest employer, and a new collaboration between Arizona State University and Clark University in Massachusetts is devoted to making it more responsible to communities.

ASU’s Megapolitan Tourism Research Center and Clark University’s George Perkins Marsh Institute are developing several international and national projects focusing on the role of travel and tourism in the social, economic and environmental prosperity of small and large communities.

With support from Southwest Airlines and other industry partners, the first project to be launched is a Social Responsibility Program for the hospitality industries of Phoenix and Scottsdale, Ariz. Set to begin this fall, the program will highlight ways in which participating organizations can better serve their communities.

The program will culminate with a workshop in which organizations can earn a Social Responsibility Seal, designating them as valued community partners who work toward improving the quality of life for local residents. The workshop will feature customized social responsibility reports for each participating business, pinpointing areas of highest return on investments among environmental protection, job creation and charitable giving.

“The tourism industry can do a much better job of using its huge economic engine to improve the quality of communities and the lives of their residents,” says Dr. Timothy Tyrrell, professor and director of the Megapolitan Tourism Research Center. “The university collaboration will help the industry better align its activities with the needs and values of the public.”

Tourism contributes to communities in many ways, such as generating tax revenues and jobs, and supporting cultural, environmental and entertainment opportunities for residents in communities that could not otherwise justify them.

But there are many other advantages which aren’t being fully explored, Tyrrell says. The ASU-Clark collaboration involves creating programs that could be used on a large-scale level to make additional improvements like reducing poverty, preserving historical and ecological sites, reducing traveling risks, and increasing the benefits from leisure activities.

Future projects will include further development of the social responsibility measurement toolkit, and applications to new and renewed tourism development projects in Europe and Asia.

“This initiative complements prior work on the environmental sustainability of tourism with a more holistic perspective on the many ways that tourism can benefit the public,” says Dr. Robert Johnston, professor of economics and director of the George Perkins Marsh Institute.

The Megapolitan Tourism Research Center is devoted to studying the role of tourism in community development in order to strengthen its contribution to viable economic, social and environmental systems, especially in megapolitan regions around the world. The center is part of the School of Community Resources & Development, located in the College of Public Programs at the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus. For information, visit: http://mtrc.asu.edu/portal.

The George Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University provides national and international leadership in studying the relationship between society, human behavior, and the environment. This includes interdisciplinary and collaborative research, education and public information on the human dimensions of global change. For information, visit: http://www.clarku.edu/departments/marsh/

###

SOURCES:
Tim Tyrrell
Professor, School of Community Resources & Development
Director, Megapolitan Tourism Research Center
Arizona State University
602-496-0156
timt@asu.edu

Robert J. Johnston
Director, George Perkins Marsh Institute
Professor, Department of Economics
Clark University
508-751-4619
rjohnston@clarku.edu

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Corey Schubert
Manager of Media Communications, ASU College of Public Programs
602-496-0406 office
602-370-6128 cell
Corey.Schubert@asu.edu

Jane Salerno
Senior Associate Director, Clark University media relations
508-793-7554 office
774-437-8453 cell
jsalerno@clarku.edu

Corey Schubert
Manager of Media Communications
ASU College of Public Programs
Mail code 3520 | 411 N Central Ave, Ste 650
Phoenix AZ  85004 -0685

602.496.0406 office
602.370.6128 cell
http://copp.asu.edu

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Two-thirds of Arizonans who participated in the latest Arizona Indicators Panel are dissatisfied with how the Arizona Legislature is dealing with the state budget and tax issues. And of those respondents who keep close tabs on current news about the Arizona state budget, 80% disapproved of the legislature’s handling of the situation.

These new data are among the findings from a statewide panel of a representative sample of Arizonans. These and other results have just been released in a new AZ Views briefing “Arizonans on Edge…So Why Not Involved?” The panel survey tracks how Arizonans are thinking and feeling over time. AZ Views reports the data and analysis from the survey. The panel is part of Arizona Indicators, which is a project of Morrison Institute. These latest findings look at how attitudes have changed about a range of issues in the past year.

Compared with June 2008 when AZ Views reported that “Arizonans have a strong sense of job security, despite the national economic slump and the state’s budget crisis,” opinions have changed. Data from June 2009 shows that not only are Arizonans feeling insecure about their jobs, but in the past 12 months, those who said they feel “very secure” about keeping their jobs or keeping their businesses open declined by almost a third.

In addition, most panelists continue to rate the quality of life where they live as “good” or “excellent,” but they report a marked decline “in the last few years.” In 2008, more panelists reported an improved quality of life than those who said it had declined. In 2009, panelists who said “declining” outnumbered “improving” by 30%. Among those reporting the highest decline in quality of life are those who represent minority groups, are ages 45-59, or make $30,000 or less.

Yet despite concerns about declining quality of life and economic security, fewer than half of the respondents are keeping tabs on current public policy processes, including the state budget process.

Read the full version of “Arizonans On Edge” at http://MorrisonInstitute.asu.edu

For more on the facts and figures behind the issues covered in AZ Views, visit Arizona Indicators at www.arizonaindicators.org

Morrison Institute is an independent and non-partisan public policy research organization at Arizona State University.

This post was submitted by Joe Garcia.