ASU takes responsibility for Arizona. Helping to create the kind of communities we all want to live in—safer, healthier and more connected—is central to who we are.
Our students and faculty get involved at the ground level to increase health literacy, support veterans in transition, promote K-12 education, reduce poverty and homelessness and much more.
ASU is a living part of communities across Arizona. We train social workers in southern Arizona, serve K–12 students in Casa Grande and bring four-year degrees to the Gila Valley.
For 50 years, ASU has been embedded in Tucson, where we train social workers who work in neighborhoods to help people access affordable housing, reduce domestic violence and take on challenges in mental health and substance abuse.
Learn more about ASU’s social work training in Tucson
In Miami, a copper town in the hills above the desert, ASU is working with residents to turn a century of mining heritage into a plan for the future — helping the community use its historic downtown to attract visitors and new life.
Learn how we’re helping revitalize Miami
We all depend on people who keep our cities running. They manage things like water, roads, trash removal and public safety. ASU is where local public servants hone their skills by solving real-world problems in our communities.
Learn how ASU trains public servants
Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribal nations, and ASU is committed to serving them. We are home to the largest population of Indigenous learners in the country, and we are working with tribes across the state to help strengthen their communities.
ASU business alumna Jessica Stago used her entrepreneurial talent to launch Change Labs — a business incubator that’s empowering Indigenous entrepreneurs in Navajo country.
Learn more
In Indigenous communities across Arizona, health care has too often ignored culture, voice and trust — and ASU is working to change that by supporting Native leaders to expand culturally relevant health training and access in tribal communities.
Learn about how ASU supports Indigenous health
The problems we see every day in Arizona can be solved, but it takes hard work. ASU is taking responsibility and working within communities on the front lines.
After experiencing homelessness herself as a teenager, Naketa Ross now uses her ASU social work training to help connect people to shelter, services and long-term support.
Read the story
People like ASU’s Christina Ngo, along with hundreds of other students, faculty and staff, devote themselves to serving the most vulnerable in our communities–like people living with food insecurity, teenagers transitioning out of foster care and youths in juvenile detention.
Learn about how ASU supports communities
Four ASU public health graduate students created a 26-second video that shows how fentanyl can be hidden in everyday pills and affect anyone — and that video won a statewide competition and is now being used to warn families across Arizona.
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ASU and metro Phoenix grow together. ASU’s four local campuses are embedded in Valley cities and woven into daily life, not set apart from it. They have helped spark new businesses, reshape neighborhoods and bring more arts and culture into the places people already call home.
In parts of Greater Phoenix, up to 70% of households lack reliable broadband. Across Maricopa County, one in five homes still can’t get online the way they need to. ASU is leading the nation’s largest university-driven broadband project — laying 80 miles of fiber and providing computing access to 84,000 people through community centers.
Read the story
In Maryvale, one of Phoenix’s largest — and hottest — neighborhoods, ASU students have worked in the community to plant more than 1,000 trees.
Learn about our students’ work in Maryvale
Where ASU's innovation becomes real
ASU is known as the most innovative university in the country. In nine Innovation Zones across the Valley, ASU connects ideas to industry, talent to opportunity and research to impact. For our partners — industry, government and community organizations — success is measured by sustained research commercialization, talent retention, venture capital growth and cross-sector collaboration.
