ASU’s College of Public Programs has changed its name to the College of Public Service and Community Solutions, a name that college officials said more clearly defines what the college does.
Dean Jonathan Koppell said the main catalyst for the name change was the ambiguity of the former name and a need to better capture the work of the college’s students and faculty.
“The reason we changed the name is because we wanted something that better captured the spirit and values of the college,” Koppell said. “College of Public Programs was a name that left people somewhat baffled. It has the world ‘public’ in it, but nobody really knew what that meant. The new name is something that really conveys what we’re about — encouraging people to service their communities, and not in some abstract sense, but to derive real solutions for our most challenging, shared problems.”
Michelle Carney, the director of the college’s School of Social Work, said the students have been serving the public and working on solving community issues for years, and the new name only clarifies that.
“We all do public service, we’re all making great efforts to solve social problems,” Carney said. “This is just a more formal way to say, okay, ‘what community problem do you want to solve?’ And then articulate that better.”
The College of Public Service and Community Solutions is home to four programs: social work, community resources and development, criminology and criminal justice, and public affairs. Housed at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus, Carney said students do more than simply go to class; they get involved in the community.
“We have agreements with 700 organizations where we put our students,” Carney said. “They’re doing lots and lots of hours out there … all of our students come in for a reason, either they’re interested in human trafficking, or domestic violence, or you know, something. They’re curious and they want to solve it.”
Sophomore Aracely Delgado, who is double-majoring in communications and nonprofit leadership and management, said she is supportive of the new name.
“It’s a really good reflection of our college,” Delgado said. “I just feel like it highlights a lot more of what we do … to enhance human potential and human lives through intervention, through support, through care.”
The college is also making strides to raise discussion about the issues the college’s programs address. Students and faculty of the College of Public Service and Community Solutions can now present their work to the community with the college’s new speaker series. The weekly TED Talk-style presentations kicked off Tuesday night, with members of the community gathering in the Cronkite Theater to hear from members of college’s faculty about human trafficking, domestic violence and the importance of grief.
While there are no new programs currently in the works, Koppell said the college may eventually implement additions or changes to better reflect the new name. He said the main initiative of the college since the name change is to engage students and better capture the essence of public service and community solutions.
“We’re committed to getting to a situation where every one of our students, as part of their educational experience, is engaged in hands-on learning, addressing some problem in one way, shape, or form,” Koppell said. “So we think of the students in the college as being members of a community solutions core. And that’s what it means to be in our college, that you’re a member of that core, and that you will learn by doing, by solving problems.”
Contact the reporter at lallnatt@asu.edu
