President Michael Crow addressed all four ASU campuses Thursday in a video broadcast, and in turn, each campus was able to broadcast back to him their questions and comments.
Topics at the open forum ranged from budget cuts to gun control to comedian Stephen Colbert to be commencement speaker.
Students at the Downtown campus communicated with Crow from a room in the University Center. Members of the ASASUD and those in attendance were able to discuss specific issues about the Downtown campus and its future.
Crow said ASU has already completed the first phase of the Downtown campus by relocating the nursing and journalism schools.
“Within five years we’ll be done with our second phase of the Downtown Phoenix campus,” he said. “We’ll have about 15,000 students downtown.”
Crow said ASU plans to increase classroom facilities and the residents’ life experience in these years.
He also said they expect to have about 2,000 students living in the Downtown campus by that time.
ASU is also considering relocating other colleges to the Downtown campus, Crow said, but at this time they have not made a decision.
There has already been a lot of work with the city of Phoenix at the Downtown campus, and Crow said the University is looking to do even more.
“We’re going to be remodeling the post office in downtown Phoenix so that it blends in to the Civic Space down there,” he said. “We’ll have a student center coming out of that.”
In the meantime they plan on improving the schools already located at the Downtown campus, Crow said.
“We’ll be expanding our presence with the nursing college by building our partnership facilities with the University of Arizona,” Crow said.
There are currently 3,000 students in the College of Nursing and Health Innovation, he said. Around 2,000 of the students are nursing majors, Crow said, and the other 1,000 are in other programs.
Crow said he knows ASU needs to expand the College of Nursing and Health Innovation.
“We are moving the nutrition program from the Polytechnic campus downtown and the exercise and wellness program to the Downtown campus,” Crow said.
With this combination, the nursing college at the Downtown campus will be producing registered nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors of nursing science.
Students will also be able to get their degree in health innovation, become registered dietitians and receive their health and wellness certification.
Crow plans on holding these cross-campus conversations on a quarterly basis.
Ashley Lujan, a sophomore nurse, said she may attend another meeting and was glad she was able to ask how the University planned to expand the College of Nursing and Health Innovation directly to Crow.
“It was a question I’ve always had and other nursing students wanted to know too,” said Lujan.
Contact the reporter at omakinso@asu.edu
