“Greatness, typically at universities, has been the greater you are the more people you leave out; the greater you are the more people you shove away,” he said. “That’s not how we work. That’s now how we think.”
Speaking to hundreds of people in the new the building’s auditorium, Crow said ASU and the College of Nursing and Health Innovation serve the people of Arizona
“We are supported by the people,” he said. “What the people want is anything other than the status quo … the people want healthier and more fulfilling lives.”
There are ways to create academic institutions built on innovation and connection to the public, and that’s what ASU asks of all its colleges, including the College of Nursing and Health Innovation, Crow said.
“What that means is that whatever traditions in the past that have held nursing as a discipline down, kept it from rising to the level of intellectual, creative and innovative prominence that it has always had but has been suppressed—there’s no suppression here,” he said. “There’s no holding down here.”
Through the addition of new programs this year, ASU is bringing more disciplines to the College of Nursing and Health Innovation, Crow said.
“We don’t know where this is all going,” he said. “We’re just excited the faculty are able to be so creative, and the energy level is able to be so high, and that we can work to serve the people that own this institution that we can work to serve the people.”
Crow said through ASU’s partnership with the city of Phoenix, the University could serve the public.
“The city of Phoenix through its leaders, the city of Phoenix through its vision, the city of Phoenix through its view of itself has provided for us the platform in which we can enable a people’s university like no other before it,” he said.
While the opening of the college’s new building is important the partnership between Phoenix and the University is about more than that, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said.
“To me, it’s about the people inside and then the people that leave these buildings and go outside and make a difference,” he said. “It’s about how to take care of patients in a manner that makes them feel comfortable.”
Gordon said the city of Phoenix has transformed many things in five years through the creation of the Downtown campus with ASU.
“We’ve transformed what education is about,” he said. “We’ve transformed what the downtown is about, we’ve transformed what a great city is about, and we are being noticed.”
But despite the successful completion and opening of the college’s second building, Gordon said Arizona’s leaders are prioritizing helping businesses over funding education.
“I plead with our elected leaders to please reverse course and invest more in higher education, more in this university, and we’ll guarantee the returns,” he said.
Bernadette Melnyk, dean of the College of Nursing and Health Innovation, said the college had approximately 1,400 students in 2004.
“We now … have over 3,000 students who are out there promoting the health for the citizens of the city as well as the state,” she said. “Other colleges throughout the country are looking at us to say, ‘What are they doing and how can we do that here?’”
Melynyk also said the philosophy of the college is to instill in staff, faculty and students the ability to dream big and take risks.
“Although buildings aren’t what drives innovation alone, buildings certainly do help to create a beautiful environment that can spark innovation and new ideas to come to fruition,” she said.
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
