Multidisciplinary student researcher aspires to solve health challenges

March 8, 2019

Ava Karanjia was 8 years old when she was diagnosed with an unknown illness and spent countless hours in doctors’ offices being handed from one specialist to another.

Though the disease directly affected her, Karanjia also saw the indirect effect it had on her family. As she grew older, she came to understand how illness can affect entire communities. Ava Karanjia works in Heather Bean's lab. Junior Ava Karanjia conducts research to help detect changes in lung bacteria to further the development of better treatments. Karanjia, who is double majoring in chemical engineering in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and molecular biosciences and biotechnology in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, takes advantage of a multidisciplinary approach to her research and has been recognized with two first-place student poster competition awards. Photo by Marco-Alexis Chaira/ASU Download Full Image

Karanjia’s experience inspired her to pursue a career where she could help communities overcome health challenges by tackling them at the molecular level.

“In the future, I want to help others overcome their own struggles,” said Karanjia, now a junior double-majoring in chemical engineering in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and molecular biosciences and biotechnology in ASU’s School of Life Sciences.

Starting a journey to a career in health

A high school biotechnology course piqued Karanjia’s interest in precision medicine — using a patient’s genetic background to diagnose or treat an illness. This interest led her to seek out schools that would let her hit the ground running on conducting health-related research.

ASU checked the box as the best place to start.

“Other schools said research was for upper-division students, and I wanted to get involved as soon as I started college,” Karanjia said.

After she was accepted at ASU, Karanjia was invited to join ASU’s Grand Challenge Scholars Program — a National Academy of Engineering-accredited program that helps prepare students to be collaborative, cross-disciplinary problem solvers. Grand Challenge Scholars Program students pursue entrepreneurial, global and service learning opportunities to find solutions to 14 grand challenges society faces in the 21st century, including engineering better medicines.

Amy Trowbridge, a senior lecturer and director of the Grand Challenge Scholars Program at ASU, believes having a double major is a unique way Karanjia has embraced the program’s principles.

“Ava embodies the characteristics of a Grand Challenge Scholar in that she is gaining and applying knowledge from two different disciplines to solve multidisciplinary challenges related to health,” Trowbridge said.

Karanjia believes double-majoring has helped her see how her chemical engineering courses apply to biology, particularly disease-causing microbes.

“Engineering provides you with problem-solving abilities and the engineering mindset that helps you go through things very methodically,” Karanjia explained. “Life sciences provide me with the intensive background in molecular biology and microbiology that I wouldn’t get from chemical engineering.”

By taking this multidisciplinary approach, Karanjia realized she can have a big impact in a career in drug development from discovery to synthesis.

Finding a multidisciplinary research niche

Karanjia quickly learned the fundamentals of working in a lab during her first semester with chemical engineering Assistant Professor Heather Emady’s research team, pursuing advances in drug manufacturing.

But soon she found her true research passion under the wing of Heather Bean, a professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences.

“In Dr. Bean’s group, I’m acquiring all these new skills and really pushing myself toward something new,” Karanjia said.

Bean supports Karanjia’s multidisciplinary interest in biological sciences and engineering, which has led to a rich mentor-student relationship through which Karanjia is thriving.

Karanjia quickly got to work in Bean’s research group that explores the development of breath-based diagnostics to monitor and track chronic bacterial lung infections.

Helping communities overcome their health challenges

The results of Karanjia’s research with Bean can help patients with cystic fibrosis and even astronauts who are at risk for lung infections. Consequently, the ASU NASA Space Grant Program has supported their research.

Through their research efforts, Karanjia and the Bean group are well on their way to their goal of helping the cystic fibrosis community to overcome health challenges.

Ava Karanjia poses with her first-place award for the undergraduate collegiate technical poster competition at the Society of Women Engineers Conference.

Photo courtesy of Ava Karanjia

At the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Student Conference, Ava Karanjia holds her first-place award for the student poster competition.

Photo courtesy of Ava Karanjia

Ava Karanjia (bottom row, fourth from left) poses with other student counselors at the E2 welcome event for incoming first-year Fulton Schools students.

Photographer: Marco-Alexis Chaira/ASU

Ava Karanjia (third from left) poses with other Tooker House residential hall peer mentors. In this role she helps first-year students be successful and discover opportunities to explore their interests.

Photographer: Marco-Alexis Chaira/ASU

“Knowing in the end that what you’re doing can affect someone’s life, their family’s lives and all layers of the communities around them makes everything worth it.”

Using bacterial communication as a tool for treatment

A burst of activity in a person’s lungs signals a battle is coming. A legion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria has taken hold and amassed enough forces to attack. They’ve adapted to the mucous-filled environment and developed the right tactics to communicate with each other; they’re ready to charge.

Karanjia, Bean and the rest of the research team in Bean’s lab are preparing a strategy to sense the oncoming attack. Karanjia studies the bacteria’s phenotypes — observable characteristics resulting from the interaction of an organism’s genetics with its environment. The specific phenotypes she observes are controlled by quorum sensing, or the chemical signals the bacteria use to communicate. P. aeruginosa and its quorum-controlled phenotypes undergo changes as it adapts to its environment in a lung infection.

Investigating how these phenotypes change over the course of a chronic infection, and developing ways to detect the changes, can lead to better treatments.

Karanjia’s primary goal was to measure the amounts of secreted virulence factors, the bacteria’s attack arsenal, in early and late stages of infection, and to identify the underlying genetic changes. She plans to continue this research to better understand how these chronic infection adaptation affect the populations of P. aeruginosa that reside in cystic fibrosis lungs. The work will help researchers better understand how infections progress and, in turn, will better inform treatment options.

Earning recognition for her multidisciplinary research

In two consecutive weekends of her junior year, Karanjia presented her multidisciplinary research in the poster presentation competitions at the Society of Women Engineers WE 2018 Conference and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Student Conference.

Karanjia won first-place prizes in both competitions, outperforming 20 research finalists at the Society of Women Engineers conference and more than 300 undergraduate chemical engineering students at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers conference.

“With the caliber of students there and the amazing research presented from so many different excelling universities, I think I did pretty OK!” Karanjia said.

Knowing her focus on life sciences would be a little different from the engineering research her peers were presenting, Karanjia used a storytelling approach to explain the microbiological concepts behind it.

“Telling your research as a clear story is the key to a good research presentation,” Karanjia said. “I learned that from Dr. Bean. You need to provide context because others don’t have a background in what you do.”

By telling the story of why her engineering and life sciences multidisciplinary research matters, Karanjia impressed the judges.

Earning both the Society of Women Engineers and American Institute of Chemical Engineers first-place awards is a special accomplishment.

“The fact that she has won two awards for her research posters at two different conferences in the same year is a tremendous accomplishment that definitely makes Ava unique, and we are proud that she is part of GCSPGrand Challenge Scholars Program,” Trowbridge said.

A leader in research and mentoring

Along with being an accomplished researcher, Karanjia takes many opportunities to help her peers be successful — just as her mentors have done for her.

“I personally had really great mentors who helped me narrow down on my passion and research topics, so I wanted to be that resource for other people,” Karanjia said.

In her three years as a Fulton Schools student, Karanjia has participated in multiple mentoring programs of students at different levels of education.

She particularly enjoys helping girls discover they, too, can be scientists and engineers.

Karanjia has led K–12 outreach efforts with Fulton Ambassadors, a group that shows prospective students around the Fulton Schools and gives classroom presentations.

“When I was little, I didn’t have any role models who looked like me,” Karanjia said. “Role models who look like us are super important in getting minorities in STEM.”

She also helps her peers learn about and take advantage of the opportunities that helped her become the accomplished student she is today. Karanjia often shares her experiences — both successful and unsuccessful — to encourage students to pursue opportunities outside their comfort zones.

“Your undergrad education is meant for you to collect experiences, different perspectives and viewpoints of the world around you,” Karanjia said.

Karanjia welcomes first-year Fulton Schools students each summer at the E2 welcome event as a camp counselor.

At the Tooker House residence hall, Karanjia serves as a peer mentor helping connect students with faculty members who share their interests so they can also take advantage of research opportunities.

“Helping others to realize their passions and successes is something that has made my undergrad experience more valuable,” Karanjia said.

Monique Clement

Communications specialist, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

480-727-1958 monique.clement@asu.edu

Locke to deliver annual ASU A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations

Mamie Locke, the first African-American woman to be elected mayor of Hampton, Virginia, will speak on 'The Continuing Saga of Race and Racism in American Society'

March 7, 2019

Mamie Locke was the first African-American woman to be elected mayor of Hampton, Virginia. Since 2004, Locke has served as a member of the Senate of Virginia for the 2nd District.

On March 18, Locke will be featured in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ 24th annual A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations at Arizona State University. Dr. Mamie Locke Mamie Locke Download Full Image

Locke, who earned a PhD in political science from Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University) and is a professor of political science and history at Hampton University, will discuss "The Continuing Saga of Race and Racism in American Society."

“We are grateful for the opportunity to invite Dr. Locke to ASU to discuss issues of race and gender in our communities at this year’s A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture,” said Patrick Kenney, dean of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Who: Mamie Locke
What: 24th annual A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations
When: 7 p.m. Monday, March 18
Where: Old Main, Carson Ballroom, ASU Tempe campus

The event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

About Mamie Locke

As an elected official, Mamie E. Locke was the first African-American woman to be elected mayor of the city of Hampton. After eight years of service, she became the third African-American woman to win a seat in the Senate of Virginia. Representing the 2nd District, she serves on the following committees: Education and Health, General Laws and Technology, Rehabilitation and Social Services, and Rules. She is the chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus. She also served as chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus.

Throughout her political career, she has been a strong advocate for education, women's rights, affordable housing, Medicaid expansion, increased minimum wage, gun control and equity in the criminal justice system.

About the lecture series

The A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations was created in 1995 to perpetuate the work of a man who had devoted his life to the idea of racial parity. As professor and chair of sociology at Arizona State University, A. Wade Smith worked tirelessly to improve race relations on the ASU campus and within the greater community.

When he died of cancer at the age of 43, his wife, family members and friends made memorial gifts to establish and fund this lecture series.

Kirsten Kraklio

Content Strategist and Writer, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

480-965-8986 kirsten.kraklio@asu.edu

New undergraduate research program promotes diversity in neuroscience

February 26, 2019

The World Health Organization is targeting neurological diseases as one of the greatest threats to public health. In industrialized countries, deaths from neurological disease has increased from 30 to 40 percent during the last decade.

And now, health organizations such as National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke are concerned there may not be enough scientists doing neurological research in the future to find answers to emerging health problems. ASU graduate student Samantha Scott and professor Janet Neisewander look at images of brain scans. Neisewander created the Workforce Inclusion in Neuroscience through Undergraduate Research Experience program to promote diversity in neurological fields. Photo by Samantha Lloyd/ASU VisLab Download Full Image

One problem is that the most rapidly growing demographics in the United States are not equally represented in STEMScience, technology, engineering and math graduate programs. In fact, only 8 percent of STEM doctorates were earned by underrepresented and minority students in 2014.

Some health organizations have expressed growing concern that neuroscience research will be hit particularly hard by this lack of representation.

Janet Neisewander, an Arizona State University School of Life Sciences professor, has the same concern. Thus, when the National Institute of Health began funding programs focused on increasing diversity in STEM fields, she proposed such a program in the neurosciences at ASU called Workforce Inclusion in Neuroscience through Undergraduate Research Experience (WINURE).

Her idea was to create a place at the school where undergraduate students could find mentors and get into a research lab. That way, they might be inspired to go to graduate school.

“The interest may be there, but they may not see themselves as scientists,” Neisewander said. “They may start out seeing themselves as pre-med students, but if they start working in labs, they will sometimes find they really enjoy that experience.”

Support to do neuroscience research

WINURE defines “underrepresented” as ethnic minorities and first-generation college students. To increase participation in these groups, students are paid for doing research, up to 20 hours per week during the school year and 40 hours in the summer. They’re also given research and travel funds to attend national conferences.

The program offers a weekly seminar where students learn about topics to help them get into a graduate program, such as how to write an abstract, how to present their research and how to apply to graduate school. And, guest speakers talk about their career paths because, as program director Greg Powell pointed out, students may need to “see it to be it.”

“Perhaps they haven’t had exposure to a scientist they can relate to culturally. One of the nice things about the program is that we can find speakers who are good examples,” said Powell, a postdoctoral researcher with the school. “That may stimulate them to pursue neuroscience.”

Neisewander hopes students discover that a career in research can be as rewarding as a career in medicine.

“A lot of students, if they are interested in the sciences, are interested in medicine because they see that connection to helping others more easily,” Neisewander said. “We’re trying to get across to our students that research really does move the field along and feeds back into biomedical solutions to health problems, so they can see the connection there. You can make a big difference and give back to your community through research.”

Workforce Inclusion in Neuroscience through Undergraduate Research Experience

ASU School of Life Sciences undergraduate Margaret Zheng samples tissues in Janet Neisewander's lab. WINURE provides funding for students to work 20 hours per week in a mentor's lab, learning skills that they will need to advance to graduate school. Photo by: Samantha Lloyd/ASU VisLab

Paired with neuroscience mentors

When students begin the WINURE program, Neisewander and Powell provide them with a list of ASU mentors that includes faculty studying neuroscience in the life sciences, psychology and speech and hearing. Mentors are also available at other institutions, such as Barrow Neurological Institute and University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

With that mentor, students can assist with lab research and even start an individual project.

“Once they start the program, the intention is to fund them through graduation,” Neisewander said. “Mainly, we want to keep them interested in neuroscience. Then we work with them.”

Students who don’t find a good fit on the first try can even switch mentors if they like, as senior Alyssa Macomber, a double major in neuroscience and psychology, did when she joined the program. She was looking for a mentor who would provide her with experience in bench work techniques that she would need in graduate school and found that in School of Life Sciences professor Salvatore Oddo.

Macomber benefitted so much from learning lab techniques in Oddo’s lab and from advice received in the seminar that she participated in a national diversity conference and applied to several graduate schools, including ASU.

In fact, she wishes she had access to the program sooner.

“Especially if you are planning to go to graduate school, this is the program that will help,” Macomber said. “When I was a freshman, I didn’t know I wanted to graduate school, but going through the program, it’s less scary. They teach you a lot of stuff that is unknown and that you really can’t learn until you go to college.”

WINURE has five open slots for the fall 2019 semester, and all underrepresented groups interested in pursuing neuroscience research in graduate school are encouraged to apply. Applications are due on April 24 and Sept. 20.

Melinda Weaver

Communications specialist, School of Life Sciences

480-727-3616 mjweaver@asu.edu

ASU student building a community of black artists and leaders

February 26, 2019

The revolution will not be televised, but it might very well be sold.

Arizona State University digital culture major Sekou Jackson points out the broken TV he painted on a bulletproof vest, a piece of art and activism that also features a globe on fire, a grave with a pile of money on it and the text “You cannot capitalize my skin, oppression or even this vest.” ASU student Sekou Jackson ASU sophomore Sekou Jackson. Photo by Macy Kimpland. Download Full Image

The vest is just one statement among many in Jackon’s holistic skillset as an artist. He addresses everything from co-opting revolutionary action for profit (such as selling a T-shirt featuring revolutionary language) to police brutality to consumerism and so much more, using media as diverse as stop-motion animation, drawing and spoken word.

Whether he’s giving an impromptu speaking performance in front of the MU or making a visual piece like the vest, he wants to debunk racial myths, raise awareness and lift people up.

“Anything I do … I just want to put it out (into) the world where people can benefit from it,” said Jackson, a sophomore in ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Jackson is dedicated to creating community and opportunities for black artists at ASU to showcase their revolutionary spirit and connect with each other to share resources, develop leadership skills and amplify their impact as community members.

“You can’t change the world as one person,” said Jackson. “You need a collective.”

Jackson points to artists such as Aaron McGruder, the cartoonist behind "The Boondocks," as an inspiration. "The Boondocks" tackled racial and political issues in newspaper comics from 1999 to 2006 that still resonate today, said Jackson.

Like the protagonist in "The Boondocks," Jackson moved away from a familiar community. Raised on Long Island and in Washington, D.C., Jackson decided to come to ASU to thrust himself into a new environment and make his mark.

“A lot of my friends went to schools on the East Coast. A lot of my family members went to schools in the South, HBCUs … so I knew what type of experience I would get with that,” said Jackson. “I wanted to make my own change and my own legacy.”

Jackson is doing just that with a new student organization he is starting in the fall: Black Leaders, Artists and Creatives Society. The group will foster networking, support and community around creatives who want to be artistic leaders.

By connecting artwork to the activism of racial and economic equality, Jackson hopes to effect change that will improve his community.

“The world itself can change from just people helping each other or sharing ideas,” he said.

This story is part of an ASU Student Life series about ASU students who are making a difference in their own communities leading up to the Change the World showcase and competition at 5 p.m. on March 27, 2019, at Sun Devil Stadium. Students can register through Feb. 28 to be part of the showcase as a live performer, artist or competitor in the pitch competition. All students, faculty and staff are welcome to attend the event, which is free and open to the public.

Hannah Moulton Belec

Marketing content specialist, Educational Outreach and Student Services

480-965-4255 hmoulton@asu.edu

Discoveries

Native American view of the Grand Canyon's centennial celebration

Tempe campus

February 25, 2019

Indigenous peoples historically have been disrupted by the American government and left to fend for themselves where the Grand Canyon is concerned

Editor's note: This story is part of an ASU Now series celebrating the centennial of the Grand Canyon National Park.

Most people view the Grand Canyon as a place of recreation; they go there to sightsee, hike, raft and camp.

But the people who have lived there for millennia see it differently.

Native Americans view the Grand Canyon through myriad lenses: As a land tied to their place of origin. As a place to be both feared and revered. As a place of opportunity. As an inspiration for cultural expression. As a locale that is their history. As a holy site.

And they view it territorially among themselves.

All these elements run as deep and as wide as the canyon.

Feb. 26, 2019, marks the centennial celebration of the Grand Canyon as a national park, but the anniversary does not mark the same experience for all peoples affected.

“It’s the 100th anniversary of the U.S. claiming the Grand Canyon, which for indigenous communities is a moment of displacement, denial of heritage rights and political oppression,” said Theresa Avila, assistant professor of art and curator at California State University Channel Islands and the former manager of ASU’s Simon Burrow Transborder Map Collection. “We’re victims of a limited understanding of our own history as the United States, which has traditionally denied and omitted indigenous communities’ significance in the story of our country and in the process denied their presence, contributions and rights.”

Avila will be a presenter at the Mapping the Grand Canyon Conference on Feb. 28-29 at ASU’s Tempe campus. In her presentation, “Tracing the History of Native American Communities in Relation to the Grand Canyon”, she will address how historical representation of indigenous communities in relation to the Grand Canyon are typically grounded in the colonization of the Americas.

“Historically the narrative of the Grand Canyon has been presented to us through the lens of European explorers and U.S. westward expansion as Manifest Destiny," Avila said. "However, the story of the Grand Canyon is not just about the celebration of nation building; it is also about colonial practices that have historically eradicated indigenous ways of being while also creating mechanisms for the denial of their civic rights and social justice.”

The Orphan Lode Mine is located on the edge of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, about two miles west of Grand Canyon Village. A former "rich grade" uranium ore mine, productive from 1956 to 1969, and a present-day highly contaminated radioactive waste site, the mine was opened in 1893 by Daniel L. Hogan as a copper claim and converted to the mining of U308

Chaos in the canyon's backyard

Archaeologists generally agree that ancient humans have been living in and around the Grand Canyon for approximately 10,000 years. Native American inhabitance of the Grand Canyon dates roughly to 200 B.C., when the Ancestral Puebloan people (commonly known as the Anasazi) lived within the boundaries of the Four Corners region and migrated toward the Grand Canyon. It was around this time that the Anasazi also migrated from the east and existed within the canyon. The Anasazi Granary, carved in the Redwall Limestone near the foot of the Nankoweap Trail, is an example of ancient seed- and food-storage facilities that can still be seen today.

Though still murky to historians, it’s believed the Anasazi collapsed as a civilization around A.D. 1110.

When the Anasazi vanished, other Native American tribes moved into the canyon and began to live there year-round, migrating between the inner canyon and upper plateau. Hardships began to emerge in the mid-1800s. The new frontier brought with it brutal wars, conflicts, murders and forced relocation as settlers moved to the West, put down stakes and mined the land for gold, silver, copper, zinc, asbestos and uranium.

Treaties and relocation efforts by the U.S. government were not advantageous to American Indians, forcing them to other regions where they had to start over again. Those decisions have caused economic hardships for tribes for centuries.

“Of the 374 total U.S.-Indian treaties, 229 of these agreements involved the Indian nations surrendering tribal lands and 99 treaties promised reservations in exchange,” said Donald L. Fixico, Regents’ and Distinguished Foundation Professor of history. “Today there are 327 reservations and nearly 600 federally recognized tribes, and 22 of them live in Arizona.”

The two most prevalent tribes that reside on reservations at the Grand Canyon today are the Havasupai and the Hualapai. The canyon is also described as the place of emergence for the Navajo, Hopi, Paiute and Zuni. Today, Grand Canyon National Park recognizes 11 affiliated American Indian tribes from Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and UtahThe 11 federally recognized tribes are the Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Paiute Indian Tribes of Utah, Shivwits Band of Paiute, Moapa Paiute, Las Vegas Paiute, San Juan Southern Paiute and Yavapai-Apache..

While the Navajo, Havasupai and Hualapai reservations border the Grand Canyon National Park, these ancestral boundaries were overlooked by federal managers who often shortchangedIn the case of the Hopi tribe, they were shortchanged approximately 3.5 million acres of land. these tribes when taking their land.

After nearly a century of government policies aimed at assimilation and diminution of tribal government, the 1970s brought major change. The federal government began to support tribal self-determination, and in 1975 the Grand Canyon Enlargement Act transferred hundreds of thousands of acres back to the tribes.

In the 1990s the government started including tribes in park management decisions. This helped pave the way for the hypertourism — though some would call it hyperexploitation — that we see today at the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon Skywalk is a transparent, horseshoe-shaped cantilever bridge and tourist attraction in Arizona near the Colorado River on the edge of a side canyon in the west of the main canyon. Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Two sides of tourism

The Grand Canyon we know today might appear to exist just as it did thousands of years ago, but around its periphery a new landscape has emerged: hotels, tourist shops, sightseeing companies and eateries. Helicopters constantly hover overhead, and sightseeing boats cram the water at the western end. River trips are capped at 25,000 individuals a year, and a surge is expected in 2019, with a waiting list of close to 1,000 people

For decades, tourism at the Grand Canyon was relatively stable, with approximately 5 million visitors annually. But with more people travelling from around the world these days, those numbers have increased substantially. In 2017, the National Park Service announced the Grand Canyon drew more than 6.2 million visitors.

Brian Skeet, a student worker in ASU’s Center for Indian Education who grew up in the Grand Canyon National Park, visited home last summer and noted a big uptick in tourism.

“During the summer it’s nonstop, and tour buses are stacked one right behind the other,” said Skeet, who is Navajo. “They say they want to reduce pollution in the area, but I don’t see how it can be done when those buses are continually running. If you lose respect for nature, you will ultimately pay for it.”

But for now, tribes in the area are looking at various ways to capture some of those tourism dollars.

Some are better poised than others.

The Hualapai reservation encompasses about 1 million acres along 108 miles of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River. Occupying part of three northern Arizona counties — Coconino, Yavapai and Mohave — the reservation’s topography varies from rolling grassland to thick forests to rugged canyons.

Known as the “People of the Tall Pines,” the Hualapai run two main tourist attractions: Grand Canyon West resortGrand Canyon West resort offers tour and meal packages that includes rafting, boating, horseback riding, helicopter tours and zip-lining. and the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a glass-bottomed walkway that extends 70 feet out past the rim of the canyon. These two attractions draw close to a million visitors a year.

In the 1990s, the Hualapai spent $1 million on a casino. However, the site was too remote, and a majority of tourists came to see and experience the Grand Canyon, not gamble. Less than a year after opening the casino, the Hualapai shut it down.

The Havasupai, also known as the “People of the Blue-Green Water,” live on 3 million acres near the South Rim. The arrival of the Havasupai is set at around A.D. 1300, and they are known to be the only permanent, continuous inhabitants of the Grand Canyon. It's called “Wikatata” in their native tongue.

Cowboys and miners disrupted their way of life in the late 1800s, and in 1866 a three-year war commenced between the Havasupai people and the U.S. Army.

President Rutherford B. Hayes deeded 38,000 acres to the Havasupai along Havasu Creek in 1880, but two years later reduced their ownership to just 500 acres. When Grand Canyon National Park was established in 1919, they were relegated to a reservation at the southwest corner of the park. In 1975, litigation resulted in 185,000 acres being returned to the Havasupai.

The village of Supai, at the western edge of the Grand Canyon, is at the bottom of 3,000-foot deep Havasu Canyon and accessible only by foot, mule or helicopter. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Today the tribe has about 700 members whose livelihood largely comes from tourism as well as income from selling their gaming rights to other tribes. More than 20,000 people annually visit the village of Supai, either hiking there, riding mules or traveling by helicopter down into the canyon.

The Hopi Tribe, made up of 12 villages on three mesas spread out over 1.5 million acres, currently has a population of 12,000 people. The Hopi reservation is remote and rural and completely contained by the Navajo reservation, which limits its economic development options. It is one of the most underdeveloped and most vulnerable populations in the United States; the tribe's position became even more precarious with the shutdown of the Mohave Generating Station in 2005.

According to a 2016 economic report, the plant accounted for 88 percent of the Hopi Tribe’s General Fund. The tribe’s only constant revenue source today is coal sales to Peabody Energy, but they continue to lag behind other surrounding communities and rely heavily on federal funds for support. To recoup some of the lost income, they are currently looking at harnessing other alternative-energy sources, such as solar and wind development, plus eco- and cultural tourism, gaming, light industrial and manufacturing and traditional Hopi farming.

Conflicting opinions within tribes

The Navajo Nation, covering 16 million acres spread throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, is land rich and cash poor. Many Navajo suffer from severe poverty, addiction, suicide and crime, and a third of the households have incomes of less than $15,000 a year, according to the Arizona Rural Policy Institute. So when outside developers approached the tribe in 2009 with a proposal for a mega-resort, tramway and RV park located on 420 acres of tribal land on the east rim of the Grand Canyon, some members of the Navajo Nation Council eagerly embraced the idea. But not Russell Begaye, the former Navajo Nation president.

“When my grandchildren come, I want them to see this place the way my ancestors saw it,” he told a journalist. “We don’t want this area developed — we do not want to see Disneyland on the edge of the canyon.”

The Grand Canyon Escalade would have carried 10,000 people a day to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, a site sacred to the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and other Native people of the Grand Canyon region who came there to pray.

“For the Hopi, the Grand Canyon is where our people emerged,” said Trevor Reed, a Hopi and associate professor of law with ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “It also holds the ruins, the shrines, the petroglyphs and the markings of our tribes and others. It’s a remarkable place, and the Escalade project was so off-putting for many reasons.”

The project, which was scheduled to break ground in 2015, promised to create 2,000 on-site jobs and 1,500 more indirectly. The tribe was asked to initially invest $65 million for infrastructure for roads and electrification, and were promised between $40 million and $70 million annually. Deswood Tome — special adviser to then-Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, who backed the project at the time — told National Geographic, “If the National Park Service and the Hualapai Tribe and other entities are making a profit off the Grand Canyon, who are they to say the Navajo Nation cannot do that?”

It was a legitimate question, but the answer was far more complex than he could have anticipated.

It didn’t take long for detractors and those opposed to the Escalade project to coalesce. Resolutions objecting to it were passed by the Hopi, Zuni and All Pueblo Council of Governors, and a coalition of local Navajo families who had maintained homes for generations near the confluence collected dozens of resolutions from chapters, tribes and other groups, along with thousands of petition signatures, against the development.

There was infighting among tribe members, and some heated meetings about the project were held. It caused strife and animosity among family and friends, and the Navajo Nation police abruptly ended a September 2012 meeting as tensions spiked among attendees.

“Nobody was hurt and nobody was arrested, or anything like that. It was just out of precaution,” Erny Zah, then spokesman for the president and vice president of the Navajo Nation said to media at the time.

Farina King, an assistant history professor at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma who received her doctorate at ASU, said Native American tribes have been historically disrupted by the American government and left to fend for themselves where the Grand Canyon is concerned. That has often resulted in infighting among the tribes.

“There isn’t always consensus, and some of these issues have been ongoing for years,” said King, who is from the Navajo Nation. “There’s also internal dynamics that make this a sensitive issue, and people don’t always like to have their dirty laundry out there, too. It’s all a matter of diplomacy and trying to understand all of the different perspectives of history.”

Supporters of Escalade and developers scrambled to find a tribal council person to sponsor their bill, and when they did the Navajo Nation Council voted 16-2 against the project. At least that was the official version.

According to Trevor Reed, the unofficial version is that the Hopi, who view the confluence as a “final spiritual resting place” and have several archaeological sites in and around the Grand Canyon, made a special plea to the Navajo Nation before the vote.

“Hopi Chairman Herman Honanie actually went and spoke to members of the Navajo Nation tribal council in Window Rock about a compact the two tribes have to preserve each other’s sacred sites,” Reed said. “It was an interesting moment because the Hopis and Navajos haven’t always gotten along. In fact, most of our time together in this area has been pretty contentious. But these two tribes came together to preserve our history.”

A picture taken through the window of the iconic Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim. Photo courtesy of Getty Images/iStockphoto

Keeping the canyon grand

The Grand Canyon’s natural structures, ecology, species and waters continue to face new threats.

In 2016, conservationists and environmental groups pushed back against an Italian developer — the Stilo Group — that wanted to build a resort, commercial space and thousands of new homes in Tusayan, a small town two miles from the park’s main entrance at the South Rim. To get the water the project would require, the Stilo Group wanted to punch through to one of the area’s aquifers. Opposition groups also charged the proposal would disrupt wildlife, snarl traffic and damage sites Native Americans hold sacred.

The plan was eventually rejected by the U.S. Forest Service for its “untold impacts to the surrounding tribal and National Park lands,” said Heather Provencio, supervisor of the Kaibab National Forest, in a press release at the time.

Several uranium mines currently operate within the watershed that drains into the Grand Canyon National Park. In October 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a review of a case centered on mining around the Grand Canyon despite a 20-year ban put in place in 2012 by the Obama administration.

“There are people who want to open up uranium mining, and that seems increasingly possible under this present administration,” Reed said.

Such mining operations, he adds, are a potential threat not just to the Havasupai, whose sole source of drinking water is at risk, but everyone who lives in the Western states and relies on the Colorado River. Uranium mining may disperse chemicals that pose a risk to plants and animals as well, Reed said.

“The Grand Canyon is still a very fragile place,” he said.

Accordingly, in observing and celebrating the centennial of Grand Canyon National Park perhaps it’s best to end with the stirring words of two people regarding that natural and sacred wonder of the world — one white, the other Native American.

“Leave it as is,” urged President Teddy Roosevelt in 1903. “You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Addressing the National Park Service in 1975, Havasupai Tribal Chairman Lee Marshall was equally direct and eloquent. “I heard all you people talking about the Grand Canyon,” he said. “Well, you’re looking at it. I am the Grand Canyon.”

Top photo: The amazing view of Havasu Falls from above the falls after a long hike through the desert. Photo courtesy of Getty Images/iStockphoto

Marshall Terrill

Reporter , ASU Now

480-727-5176 marshall.terrill@asu.edu

Arizona Impact

The future of visiting the Grand Canyon

February 25, 2019

Several issues will affect tourism at the famed national park in the coming years, say two ASU experts

Editor's note: This story is part of an ASU Now series celebrating the centennial of the Grand Canyon National Park.

Grand Canyon National Park draws visitors from all over the world to bask in its beauty, making it not only a precious ecological resource to cherish but also a major economic driver for the state of Arizona.

Balancing the twin missions of access and preservation is key to its future, according to experts at Arizona State University.

“When you think about the Grand Canyon itself, there’s so much to it,” said Megha Budruk, an associate professor in the School of Community Resources and Development in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions.

“There’s something for geologists, there’s something for artists, something for historians, the tourists,” said Budruk, who teaches a course called Wilderness and Parks in America.

“The park is physical, but the meanings we ascribe to it allow people to connect to it in different ways,” she said.

And many more people are connecting to the Grand Canyon. The park had 6.2 million visitors in 2017, up 42 percent from a decade earlier. The month of November 2018 had 10 times more visitorsAbout 410,000 in November compared with about 38,000 in 1919. than the entire year of 1919, when Grand Canyon National Park was formed.

All those tourists generated $648 million — along with 9,800 jobs. The total economic benefit to Arizona, according to the National Park Service, was more than $900 million.

In fact, the park is so important that Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order in early 2018 calling for the Grand Canyon to remain open in the event of a federal government shutdown. When the government did shut down in late 2018, the state’s tourism and parks offices paid to keep day-to-day operations running.

Along with the revenue, tourism brings crowds requiring roads and parking lots and toilets and maintained trails. The National Park Service, in a 2017 report, estimates that the backlog of maintenance and repairs totals nearly $12 billion nationwide. About $330 million of that is needed at the Grand Canyon. Photo by Michael Quinn/National Park Service

More popular than ever

Christine Vogt, a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Tourism, and Budruk have done research on the Grand Canyon’s economic impact in the region.

“It’s very clear there’s a prominent route starting in Las Vegas and doing the North Rim and coming around, including the Grand Canyon and Navajo parks and back up to Utah,” Vogt said.

“The whole region, with Las Vegas and its marketing machine, is getting a lot of international visitors,” she said. “The Grand Canyon, Zion, Monument Valley, Moab — all are getting increased tourism.”

Budruk said the spillover effect is felt throughout northern Arizona, which includes Canyon de Chelly, Montezuma Castle, Navajo, Parashant, Pipe Spring, Sunset Crater Volcano, Tuzigoot, Walnut Canyon and Wupatki national monuments, Glen Canyon and Lake Mead national recreation areas, Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site and Petrified Forest National Park. The Navajo Nation is home to four tribal parks, including Monument Valley, and there are several state parks in the Flagstaff area.

“What we found is that most visitors did not have the national monuments as their primary destination but were stopping over as part of their Grand Canyon visit,” Budruk said.

But along with the revenue, all that tourism brings crowds who require roads and parking lots and toilets and maintained trails. In fact, all of the national parks are badly in need of infrastructure work. The National Park Service, in a 2017 report, estimates that the backlog of maintenance and repairs totals nearly $12 billion nationwide. About $330 million of that is needed at the Grand Canyon, mostly for water systems and trails.

“The recent shutdown shed light on what it takes to keep a park open and friendly and clean and safe,” Vogt said. “But over the course of my professional time, the backlog of infrastructure and money needed to run these parks has not changed.

“There needs to be a more significant mechanism for paying for the management and enhancing the overall park infrastructure, which then improves the park experience.”

Adding infrastructure with conservation in mind

Vogt said that one change that likely will continue is the increased role of advocacy groups like the Grand Canyon Conservancy.

“They play a very important partner role with the National Park Service in fundraising and in helping to pay for infrastructure and improvements,” she said.

“They’ve supplemented and in some places have taken over the guide and interpretation programs.”

Among the Flagstaff-based nonprofit’s projects: replacing light fixtures in the park to preserve dark skies, restoring and maintaining trails and completing renovation of the Desert View Watchtower and murals. The Grand Canyon Conservancy also runs a Field Institute that offers guided day hikes, backpacking trips, cultural classes and certification courses.

Vogt and Budruk said that the Grand Canyon has done a good job of trying to balance welcoming big crowds while mitigating their effect on the environment. One solution was the redevelopment of the South Rim a few years ago to add shuttle buses and limit driving and parking.

In 2010, the park approved a climate change action plan, warning that a hotter climate could lead to changes in weather and animal habitats, more insects, an increase in frequency and intensity of wildfires and floods and changes to water flows in the Colorado River. The sale of water bottles was eliminated, solar panels were added to the visitors center and the park increased recycling and added a system to reuse wastewater for toilets and irrigation.

Another way to control crowds is to keep the North Rim open only part of the year, which allows it to rest. The lack of infrastructure, including roads and personnel, keeps the crowds down and allows visitors a more solitary experience.

Technology, including social media and wildlife cams, have been cited as a driver of tourism at the national parks, but Vogt said that the Grand Canyon has to consider limiting technology to protect the environment.

“I think a big issue is dark skies and noise pollution. Regulating drones and helicopters is important,” she said.

“I don’t think people go to the parks to have technology in their faces. One reason you go to a park is to step away from that,” she said.

Managing the park on the macro

Michelle Sullivan Govani is a PhD student in School of Life Sciences who is studying preservation across the national park system. Her research project is examining the National Park Service mandate to preserve natural resources for future generations. She has interviewed top agency officials, administrators and park rangers from around the country to see what preservation means to them and how it has changed since the agency was formed in 1916.

“In the beginning, it was about these spectacular scenes and feeling emotionally and mentally invigorated,” she said. Over time, the mission has evolved.

“It’s not that scenery isn’t still important, but it’s not what defines preservation or the park service’s mandate any more, as they would tell it,” she said.

“They’re more concerned with ecosystems and with ecological processes.”

So now, just like each park is embedded in an economic network, each park also must be managed as part of a regional ecosystem.

“Ecosystems aren’t defined by the political lines that parks are defined by, so how do we work outside those boundaries to make sure we’re preserving ecosystems as they function in reality and not just for the scenes they provide to us?” Sullivan Govani said.

“You see that in the way they’re managing parks across boundaries. They’re working with the Bureau of Land Management, with the U.S. Forestry Service and with private landowners.”

Using science to inform the management of the park system has always been part of balancing competing interests, she found.

“The thing about National Park Service history that’s fascinating is that you see all these starts and stops with regard to how they incorporate science-based management. It’s not that whoever is in charge doesn’t support research, but priorities differ and there’s a limited budget,” she said, noting that customer service is always a concern.

Going forward, it also will be important for the Grand Canyon, as part of the National Park Service, to be more representative of the American public. The agency released a report in 2018 that revealed that its workforce is 81 percent white, 62 percent male and 42 percent over the age of 50.

“It helps to have an agency that reflects the American population so they see somebody like themselves and feel that, ‘This is a place for me too, where I am welcomed,’” Budruk said.

Top photo: Crowd of tourists gather at an overlook at the Grand Canyon. Photo courtesy of Getty Images/iStockphoto

Audio interview by Karie Dozer.

Mary Beth Faller

Reporter , ASU Now

480-727-4503 marybeth.faller@asu.edu

Arizona Impact

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack receives Pioneer Award

West campus

February 24, 2019

Executive director of ASU Gammage has made an impact on African-American culture in Phoenix for decades

The syncopated rat-a-tats and rhythmic dance moves of a traditional African drummer heralded the final weekend of Black History Month at the La Sala Ballroom on Arizona State University’s West campus Saturday night during the 18th annual Pioneer Award Dinner.

The ceremony recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the life and culture of African-Americans in the Phoenix metropolitan area. This year, Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, the university’s vice president for cultural affairs and executive director of ASU Gammage, was honored with an award, along with Student Pioneer Ayanna Shambe.

Jennings-Roggensack accepted the award on behalf of her parents, who she credits for her success and that of her siblings.

“They knew the world was a bigger place and that it belonged to us,” she said.

Following the processional, New College Dean and West campus Vice Provost Todd Sandrin welcomed the more than 200 dinner guests, who included such prominent African-American community leaders as Vice President of Sun Devil Athletics Ray Anderson, director of ASU’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy Lois Brown and Miss Black Arizona USA 2019 Marian Omidiji.

Sandrin remarked that it was an exciting time for ASU, having been named the most innovative university in the country for the fourth year in a row in 2018, and that the evening served as a reflection on the university’s mission to “assume fundamental responsibility for the … communities it serves.”

Charles St. Clair, an academic professional and fine arts specialist at New College, and Duku Anokye, an associate professor of Africana language, literature and culture in the School of Humanity Arts and Cultural Studies, served as emcees. Anokye kicked things off with an African libation ritual in which ancestors and deities are invoked as a tribute to their guidance of the living.

“We cannot work apart and think we can be successful,” Anokye said, calling on the crowd to unite through the call and response portion of the ritual.

Dinner was followed by a handful of select songs, including “What About Love” from "The Color Purple" and “Wheels of a Dream” from "Ragtime," a nod to Jennings-Roggensack’s instrumental role in bringing a great many Broadway musicals to ASU Gammage over her 26 years with the university.

“I’m not sure people even recognize how important you are to this Valley and this state,” said Jeffery Kennedy, assistant professor in the School of Humanities, Art and Cultural Studies who was on hand to serve as musical accompaniment to the evening’s singers.

“It’s not just the arts,” Jennings-Roggensack brings to the community, Kennedy continued, “it’s culture, too. And we are having experiences that change us because of that.”

Ayanna Shambe, a double major in women and gender studies, and biology, accepted the Student Pioneer Award. Photo by Emma Greguska/ASU Now

Shambe, a double major in women and gender studies, and biology, accepted the Student Pioneer Award by thanking friends and family for their support and encouragement. A student in Barrett, The Honors College, Shambe has served as president of the ASU Programming and Activities Board and spearheaded the revival of the Black Student Union.

Before Jennings-Roggensack took to the stage to accept her award, the audience was treated to a short documentary about her life and service.

Born an Air Force brat in a small town in Texas, she lived in 13 states and two foreign countries before she went off to college. At the age of 5, she saw her first opera, "Madame Butterfly," and in later years, remembers “second-acting“Second-acting” refers to sneaking into a theater at intermission before the second act.” Broadway shows with her aunts in New York City.

As a child, Jennings-Roggensack said, her parents gave her and her siblings “three sacred texts” to live by: 1) Broaden your horizons. 2) Give back. 3) Get a job.

Though her first and lasting passion will always be dance, she eventually found her way into academia, taking on cultural programming for Colorado State University in 1977. After stints with Western States Arts Federation and Dartmouth College, she came to ASU in 1992 at the request of then-president Lattie Coor, who tasked her with reinvigorating the university’s lagging public-events program.

ASU Gammage has since flourished under Jennings-Roggensack, who has brought the likes of Maya Angelou, Boots Riley and the Dance Theatre of Harlem to perform there. She has also helmed several successful ventures, including K-12 art programs, community engagement initiatives and cultural revitalization projects.

At ASU, she serves as the chair of the MLK Committee and oversees Sun Devil Stadium 365, a universitywide initiative to reimagine and redesign the use of Sun Devil Stadium as a community union used 365 days a year by faculty, staff, students and the entire Arizona community for events and activities beyond athletics.

Jennings-Roggensack chairs the Broadway League's Diversity and Inclusion Committee and has also served on the National Council on the Arts and been involved with such groups as Arizonans for Cultural Development and the Tempe Convention and Visitors Bureau.

In November 2018 she was honored by Valley Leadership, a regional program designed to challenge local business and nonprofit leaders to make a difference in the community, with their Woman of the Year award for her impact on the lives of others.

At Saturday night’s ceremony, Jennings-Roggensack shared a story from her childhood about how her mother often read from “The Journal of Negro History” to her and her siblings at bedtime. Before turning out the light, she recalled, her mother would turn to her children, but she wouldn’t say “good night” or “I love you.”

“She would say, ‘Know your negro history,’” Jennings-Roggensack said, because she wanted them to know that they were “somebody” and that they came “from a long line of somebodies.”

“We didn’t forget our negro history,” she told the crowd. “And I am because you exist.”

Top photo: Colleen Jennings-Roggensack accepts the Pioneer Award at the West campus on Saturday, Feb. 23, as emcees Charles St. Clair and Duku Anokye look on. Photo by Emma Greguska/ASU Now

Emma Greguska

Reporter , ASU Now

(480) 965-9657 emma.greguska@asu.edu

Solutions

NSF grant aims to expand diversity, inclusion for ASU STEM faculty

Washington, D.C.

February 21, 2019

An ASU team is looking at ways to boost diversity in faculty leadership

Growing up in East Los Angeles, Erika Camacho, an associate professor in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University, saw education as a portal to a better life.

“My mom and my dad were janitors who didn’t really have many opportunities, the pinnacle of what I thought I could be was a cashier,” she said. “I didn’t realize there was so much more until mentors in high school told me I should consider going to college.”

Camacho earned a doctorate in applied mathematics from Cornell before heading into teaching and professorships in institutions across the country. But the more she advanced, the slimmer the support became.

“I’ve had people tell me that once you get tenure, you’re golden because you have so much freedom,” she said. “But the reality is that if you’re a minority woman, academia still feels like you’re a guest in someone else’s house.”

Diversity in higher education faculty and leadership is a conversation that’s been mounting for the last two decades, especially in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. But disparities remain.

A 2017 National Science Foundation report showed a lag in female professionals in those fields, while black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native individuals continue to be underrepresented in both the workforce and university faculty.

Now, backed by a $2.9 million NSF grant, Camacho will join a project led by Elizabeth Wentz, dean of social sciences at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, that aims to balance the equation.

Last September, ASU received the esteemed ADVANCE Institutional Transformation award. The five-year grant supports the development of pathways to leadership for STEM academics, particularly women and under-represented minorities.

“Our goal is to see changes in the leadership makeup,” said Wentz, principal investigator for ASU ADVANCE. “We want to see fewer years for women at the associate professor rank, more women taking on leadership roles, and more recognition for the workload of our women leaders.”

Wentz and four co-principal investigators, including Camacho, will develop online professional development services, expand digital platforms and conduct promotion, recruiting and evaluation reviews for a multi-pronged update of STEM faculty opportunities at ASU.

At the helm of the project’s institutional transformation core, Wentz will also work with ASU’s highest administrative figures. Biannual meetings will include ASU President Michael Crow, Executive Vice President and University Provost Mark Searle and Sethuraman Panchanathan, executive vice president and chief research and innovation officer at ASU.

“Increasing the representation and advancement of women and faculty of color in academia enriches ideas and impactful research as well as promotes a culture of best practices, resulting in superior advancement and strong leadership,” Panchanathan said. “This grant provides an opportunity to continue to advance ASU’s fundamental commitment to inclusion, which is essential for innovation in higher education.”

ASU is committed to finding sustainable solutions to increasing diversity university-wide. Robust support networks have transformed the undergraduate experience and generated higher graduation rates across the board. ASU ADVANCE envisions a similar reboot for faculty.

“Our success rests on the belief that inclusivity and excellence are not mutually-exclusive ideals, but vital, complementary pieces to a vibrant future for academia,” Crow said. “We have already proved the immense potential of that combination at the student level, ADVANCE is an opportunity for that same equilibrium to reach university leadership.”

An age-old institution

Sculpting a new roadmap requires an examination of frameworks that already exist. Monica Gaughan, who leads the grant’s social science research component, says modern higher education derives from a model designed to keep people out, not accept them in.

“The question now is, 'how do we think about changing an institution that was built for an extremely privileged set of people making a set of rules for themselves?' ” said Gaughan, associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Gaughan’s team collected data about faculty makeup and trajectories across ASU campuses during the grant’s application process last year. She said strict promotion timelines and early-career mentorship programs have helped level the playing field among pre-tenure faculty members, but more needs to be done.

“We found that being promoted to associate professor in most units is kind of like falling off a cliff,” she said. “The support just stops.”

Aligned with national accreditation policies, ASU’s tenure-track faculty must have promotion reviews within six years of employment. After that, Gaughan said further advancements can be hindered as deciding committees have more discretion. On average across STEM fields at ASU, her team’s research showed men being promoted from associate to full professorships a year and a half earlier than women.

Gaughan said the disparity reflects how issues of unconscious bias can come into play as careers move forward. ASU has been a leader in improving other facets of the tenure track over the last decade, including implementing pauses in its six-year timeline to account for maternity or paternity leave. Similarly, Gaughan’s team will use what they’ve learned about promotion discrepancies to make improvements that further close the gap.

The data set the stage for a social science research plan rolling out in phases for the duration of the grant. By examining programs at other institutions and conducting interviews with staff and faculty, they’ll propose ways to foster more diversity in leadership.

Ensuring the success of future policies also rests on insights from female leaders already on campus. As the director of ASU’s Fulton School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Lenore Dai is ready to help.

“I’m working with the other teams to understand their needs to structure top-down accountability,” said Dai, a co-principal investigator for the ADVANCE grant. “This is the seed needed to implement equity policies on a university-wide level.”

Dai leads the grant’s administrative accountability wing, which includes leaders from the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Fulton Schools of Engineering. She’ll work closely with Wentz and other ASU leaders to help change promotion and recruiting policies and put them into action as they develop.

Identifying barriers

Navigating advancement within academia is a challenge Camacho knows well. She struggled to find support as a student and professor. Now heading the grant’s professional development team, she wants to help faculty find a better way.

“I think my drive was born out of frustration,” she said. “It’s been very painful having to find ways to advance, you find you’re always having to overcompensate to get the same outcome as everyone else.”

Her plan aims to battle that norm by tackling some of the logistical hindrances female STEM faculty face throughout their academic lives. For example, professional workshops often take place in Tempe, Camacho said, making it difficult for instructors caring for children or based at other campuses to take part. Working with ASU’s digital learning platform EdPlus and ASU Online, Camacho’s team will create digitized versions of in-person development resources for faculty to access on-demand.

Digital platforms for faculty success

Digital coordination and vigorous online systems have been essential to bringing more than 100,000 students across five campuses and a host online programs under one umbrella. ASU ADVANCE will tap into that same network to create a digital landing pad for new faculty resources.

“EdPlus has immense experience working with underrepresented minority students,” said Phil Regier, university dean for educational initiatives at EdPlus. “We can build on some of those parallels to create a platform for faculty.”

As the ADVANCE teams come together, EdPlus Social Impact Officer Erin Carr-Jordan, also part of the grant as director of online operations, said creating such an expansive ecosystem has the potential to reach faculty beyond STEM.

“We all understand that one of the keys to success is to approach this not from a siloed fashion, but from a collaborative point of view,” she said. “These programs could be for every faculty person interested in advancing in their fields, and I think the likelihood of this reaching across disciplines university-wide is high.”

The last decade has seen interdisciplinary collaboration and community inclusion become centerpoints of ASU’s charter. Provost Mark Searle sees ADVANCE as an opportunity to create new tools for faculty growth.

“ASU is always striving to improve processes and harness the potential created by a truly inclusive institution — this is another opportunity to do just that,” he said.

Top photo: (top row, left to right) EdPlus Social Impact Officer Erin Carr-Jordan; Phil Regier, university dean for educational initiatives at EdPlus; Monica Gaughan, associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change; ASU President Michael Crow; Lenore Dai, director of the Fulton School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy; (bottom row, left to right) ASU ADVANCE Program Manager Lillian Ruelas, Elizabeth Wentz, dean of social sciences at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; ASU Provost Mark Searle; Erika Camacho, associate professor in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

Alisa Reznick

Writer , The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

480-965-5870 alisa.reznick@asu.edu

Geoscience Alliance national conference inspires Native American students to pursue careers in the geosciences

February 18, 2019

Earlier this month, Arizona State University hosted the Geoscience Alliance, the nation's leading organization devoted to promoting geoscience studies and careers for Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and other indigenous students.

“The Geoscience Alliance has been important for many years for its unique and far-ranging mission of mentoring and supporting Native American and other indigenous students and professionals in the geosciences,” said ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration Professor and geologist Steven Semken, who served as host for the conference. Geology Professor Steven Semken of the School of Earth and Space Exploration leads a geology field trip to the Superstition Mountains with Geoscience Alliance conference participants. Download Full Image

“More recently, it has further grown in importance by catalyzing research and education involving indigenous geoscientific knowledge and its applications — work that is primarily led by indigenous geoscientists themselves.”

The alliance has long had an active presence at annual meetings of much larger professional organizations like the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America, but its own national conference, held every few years, has the greatest impact on the stakeholder community overall. This year’s conference included 160 attendees for the three-day conference, which included workshops, breakout sessions, invited speakers and a poster session.

Ángel Garcia, who earned his PhD in geosciences from ASU earlier this year and is currently a visiting assistant professor at James Madison University in Virginia, was one of the conference’s returning attendees and is also on the conference planning committee.

Garcia first attended the Geoscience Alliance in 2015 when he was a graduate student at ASU. He learned about the conference from SemkenSemken is also a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Education through Exploration and the Global Drylands Center at ASU., who suggested that it would be a good way to develop networks in the geosciences with people who were interested in multicultural topics and indigenous cultures.

“People from tribal lands have a strong connection to places,” said Garcia, who is Puerto Rican and Dominican. “We might first describe what tribe we are from, but then refer to a specific place within our tribal lands where we grew up and have family. Connections to those places go back generations for us.”

For Garcia and other participants, one of the best parts of the conference is making connections, networking with other scientists and meeting other students in the geosciences.

“These conferences give us an opportunity to learn from people with a similar culture and background,” said Garcia.

“At the Geoscience Alliance, I felt included right from the start. Now every time I see this group of people at other conferences we identify ourselves as members of the alliance, both as students and professionals.”

Members of the Geoscience Alliance Conference Planning Committee on the ASU Tempe Campus.

Photo courtesy of Geoscience Alliance

At the Geoscience Alliance poster session where Margaret Rudolf shares her research on educational outreach with conference attendees.

Photo courtesy of Geoscience Alliance

ASU Geoscience Alliance conference organizers Ángel Garcia and Steven Semken on a conference field trip in the Superstition Mountains.

Photo courtesy of Ángel Garcia

Since the first conference, the alliance has adopted the practice of “talking circles” from Native American ceremonies.

“We develop questions, break up into small groups and make sure each person gets a chance to talk,” explained Diana Dalbotten, who is on the alliance conference planning committee and is a diversity director at the University of Minnesota. “We have developed this to make our conference more participatory and to respect the idea that everyone is there to teach and everyone is there to learn.”

Conference attendees were also invited on several diverse field-trip opportunities related to different aspects of the geosciences, including a trip to the Superstition Mountains, the Heard Museum and Biosphere 2.

On the last night of the conference, attendees were asked to participate in a “science pop-up night” where everyone could spend three minutes talking about their projects and research. This event was so popular that even though it was the last day of the conference, it went well into the night.

“It’s important for ASU to host events that focus on local communities in Arizona and especially indigenous communities in the Southwest,” said Garcia. “Giving teachers, researchers, professors and students the opportunity to share knowledge and connection to the land shows that ASU embraces diversity.”

The conference organizers, including Semken and Garcia, hope that participants will seek more collaboration with each other in the future as a result of this conference. Garcia, for example, is working with two other researchers he met through the alliance on a National Science Foundation proposal to study the geology of caves in the Caribbean.

They also hope to continue to offer travel awards to the conference.

“Some of us come from places that are not financially stable, making conferences like this out of reach,” said Garcia. “But thanks to sponsors like the National Science Foundation, the alliance is able to provide the opportunity to those who otherwise would not be able to go.”

Previous conferences were held in the northern Midwest, the northern Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest.

“It was an honor for ASU to host this most recent conference in Phoenix and Tempe,” said Semken. “I think that the alliance members enjoyed their visit to our campus and their time in the warm desert sun.”

Semken is grateful for the support given to this endeavor by many colleagues in the School of Earth and Space Exploration; the ASU President's Special Advisor for American Indian Initiatives Bryan Brayboy; ASU Vice President for Tribal Relations Jacob Moore and his staff; and to ASU alumna (and a former graduate student of Semken’s) Nievita Bueno Watts, who is the co-director of the Geoscience Alliance.

The Geoscience Alliance is a national alliance of individuals committed to broadening participation of Native Americans in the geosciences. Its members are tribal colleges, universities, research centers, Native elders and community members, students and educators.

The alliance’s goals include creating new collaborations in support of geoscience education for Native American students, establishing a new research agenda aimed at closing gaps in our knowledge on barriers and best practices related to Native American participation in the geosciences, increasing participation by Native Americans in setting the national research agenda on issues in the geosciences, providing a forum to communicate educational opportunities for Native American students in geoscience programs, and understanding and respecting indigenous traditional knowledge.

The Geoscience Alliance conferences are made possible through the generous and ongoing support of the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Karin Valentine

Media Relations & Marketing manager, School of Earth and Space Exploration

480-965-9345 Karin.Valentine@asu.edu

Creativity

ASU student uses theater to give voice to people on the margins of society

Tempe campus

February 18, 2019

Dontá McGilvery finds passion in teaching African-American theater, community work

Dontá McGilvery has devoted his life to finding people who live at the margins of society and giving them a voice through theater.

“Performance has the power to transform,” he tells his class.

And he’s harnessing that power in many ways to tell stories.

McGilvery is pursuing a PhD in theater for youth at Arizona State University and was recently honored with ASU’s 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Student Servant-Leadership Award. Several years ago, he started a nonprofit in his hometown of Dallas to help people who are homeless — an issue he learned about firsthand after living in their community for a year. After coming to ASU in 2017, he co-founded a community theater group, and this semester, he launched a course on African-American theater for undergraduates.

“I noticed that in my own classes, we didn’t talk much about African-Americans’ contributions to the field of theater so I began studying it on my own, and then I would include it in class,” he said. “Often, there were things that the students and even the professors didn’t know.”

So he reached out to the School of Film, Dance and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts to ask about teaching African-American theater, and he received enthusiastic approval.

“What my students like is learning about something they never heard of, in all of their education,” he said. “To me, that’s encouraging.”

So far this semester, the class has covered the genre of plays about lynchings, including “A Sunday Morning in the South,” written by Georgia Douglas Johnson in 1925.

“If we understand that in the 1920s, there were black playwrights who wrote anti-lynching plays to combat what was happening at that time, the class can connect that with what’s happening today with black and brown bodies having their lives taken by police,” he said.

The students have learned about the connection among African-American artists, including the play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, whose title comes from the poetry of Langston Hughes.

“It’s a diverse group of students, and we’re talking about things that the African-American students can identify with and then lead the discussion,” he said.

The class studied the 1916 play “Rachel,” by Angelina Grimke, about a young black woman who, overcome by the horrors of racism, vows never to have a child. That was especially poignant to Leslie Campbell, a senior who’s in the class.

“It deals with the fragility of the black woman and the black woman’s negotiation of herself in white society in the early 1900s and particularly the black mother’s desire to protect the black child’s innocence, which I think is a struggle that rings true even today,” said Campbell, who is from the Bahamas and is majoring in theater and global health.

“In this class, I’ve appreciated being able to share the knowledge that I learned growing up in the islands and our history with slavery, and then being able to relate this information to my African-American and non-black counterparts and having them say, ‘I didn’t even think about that,’” she said.

“Dontá takes the time to break down the dynamics of how these systems work and to see how it’s being played out even today.”

Donta McGilvery teaches African-American theater at ASU.

Dontá McGilvery works with a group of students in the undergraduate class he teaches on African-American theater in the Nelson Fine Arts Center on the Tempe campus. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

McGilvery said that he’s always pursuing one goal: “I’m trained to see that when you read a text or enter a space, the first thing you want to spot is whose voice is absent from the narrative and then investigate why.”

That helped lead to the Sleeveless Acts Drama Company, which he started in 2017 with fellow student Claire Redfield, who is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in theater for youth. Their idea won an entrepreneurship grant from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

“We had this idea of starting a theater company that amplifies voices in marginalized communities, telling their stories using drama,” he said.

“We tear away the sleeves that keeps people’s history hidden.”

Last year, the company created a production about African-American history featuring a cast that ranged in age from 13 to 70, he said. Currently, they’re working on staging a performance later this spring to celebrate Eastlake Park in Phoenix, a historic center of the city’s African-American community.

“Everything we do, we like it to be performative and for healing,” he said.

The company also performs in churches in central and south Phoenix, a mission that is central to McGilvery, who also is a minister.

It was his personal faith journey that led him to make a startling decision eight years ago, when he was in graduate school at Southern Methodist University: He gave away all his possessions and lived for a year with people who were homeless.

“It was important that I took on that project because of my spiritual calling as a minister,” he said. “I understood Jesus was homeless, and I wanted to understand why he decided to live a homeless life and, by being homeless, how could it give me a different perspective on the world.”

He found that the homeless were friendly, supportive of each other and, usually, regular people who came upon hardship.

“The first day I was homeless, I didn’t know how to start, so I just went downtown and laid down on the sidewalk to go to sleep,” he said. “And another homeless guy named Robert tapped me on the shoulder and walked me to the shelter. He told me how he fell on hard times.”

McGilvery spent his nights in a shelter, but because his grad school classes were in the evenings, all the beds were filled by the time he arrived, so he slept in a chair in the overflow room.

In conjunction with living on the streets, McGilvery started a nonprofit called the Dallas Improvement Association, which recruited volunteers to experience homelessness for short periods, as well as helped homeless people with donations and meals.

“We didn’t go to the shelter — we went to those people who were strung out and wouldn’t go to a shelter,” he said. “We were always searching for the most voiceless within the group that has no voice.”

When the year was up, it was hard to leave his friends and transition back to a more typical life.

“My heart is now more compassionate to the people who suffer the most. When I drive in my car and see someone on the corner, I wonder, ‘What is their story?’

“And I look at the other cars and wonder about the assumptions those people put on them.”

McGilvery’s work drew attention. He spoke at a conference held by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which later partnered with the Dallas Improvement Association and donated more than 1,000 computers to low-income schools. He also spoke at a U.S. Army War College security seminar about his experiences.

“I talked about how homeless people are marginalized and how cities are intentionally pushing them to the side,” he said.

Eventually, McGilvery would like to be a professor of theater, but he has a few years left in his doctoral program.

As he continues his outreach, one memory stays with him: When he was an undergrad, he was riding a bus and sat near a man who was a drug user. The man started asking McGilvery questions about being a student. He said, “Do you want to get a PhD?”

“I was like, ‘Sure, if it comes around.’ He said, ‘If you become a doctor, just make sure you actually heal someone.’

“And I thought that was profound. It’s about, ‘What am I doing to bring about healing in society and in individuals?’ ”

He has never forgotten that interaction.

“That kick-started my passion for justice and speaking for the voiceless.”

Top image: Dontá McGilvery, a doctoral student in the theater for youth program at ASU, has launched a course on African-American theater this semester and also co-founded a community theater company. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Mary Beth Faller

Reporter , ASU Now

480-727-4503 marybeth.faller@asu.edu

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