Looking ahead to a bold future

The beginning of a new academic year is always electrifying. Every campus has a tangible energy each fall that’s contagious to everyone who comes in contact with it. Faculty arrive ready to welcome future leaders, change-makers and innovators, and students are brimming with excitement and anticipation, filled with fresh new ideas for a fresh start.

With this annual event comes a mandate at Arizona State University to continue our leadership role as the most innovative university in the nation, to develop, embrace and deploy comprehensive measures to ensure we’re providing the best possible array of educational offerings for our students. It’s our responsibility, as educators, to anticipate what’s ahead in terms of the ever-changing workforce landscapes of the future. This is something universities worldwide face — and something I believe ASU does an exceptional job addressing and supporting.

Structures of universities continually evolve to meet the needs of past, present and future students. Transdisciplinary work is a critical element of developing the skills and knowledge necessary to compete in the future of work landscape. We’re making incredible strides that will continue to keep ASU and ASU students in the vanguard.

A few examples of this commitment:

• assistant research professor Jennifer Barrila winning the President’s Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her research about infectious diseases in spaceflights

• DARPA’s $38.8 million grant to ASU to create an epigenetic tool to fight against weapons of mass destruction

• $1 million in funding from NASA’s Earth Science Division to support an interdisciplinary team of researchers at ASU, providing long-range scenarios for water management for the Colorado River Basin

In the midst of this thinking, the concept of lifelong learning is paramount. While we celebrate students launching their academic careers and hitting milestones such as graduation, the simple truth is that their first steps on a college campus are merely the first steps toward a lifetime of learning, and are essential ingredients to remaining engaged and thriving throughout the course of a career and lifetime.

So how is this accomplished? ASU has developed learning environments where students work and deliver on real-world projects. ASU’s Practice Labs concept is one such example — a comprehensive approach where students work in concert with corporate partners to identify, solve complex problems and deliver solutions in real time. We also strive to create the type of learning paradigms that lifelong learners need, with the understanding that those needs will be in a continual state of evolution. At ASU, this includes developing custom educational opportunities in collaboration with employers, such as a certificate program in global supply chain management that we developed for Chemonics International, an international development company working in 75 countries across the globe. These opportunities ensure that educational concepts are real and relevant in changing workplaces.

New beginnings are exhilarating. Ongoing journeys are even more exciting. I wish you all much success as a new academic year begins.