NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 446|26 April 2007 Arizona State University’s president Michael Crow wants to shake up the hierarchy of American universities. THE ARIZONA EXPERIMENT A shift in population, money and political influence to America’s ‘sunbelt states’ is helping to reshape its research universities. The first of two features looks at the far-reaching ambitions of Arizona State University. The second asks whether a rush to create extra medical schools could spread the region’s resources too thinly. t is a hot February morning in the Arizona ties, and instead build up excellence at problem- its content to please Ira Fuller, a Mormon con- desert, and Walter Cronkite, the legendary focused, interdisciplinary research centres. US struction magnate who has donated more than American newscaster, is straining every research universities, Crow argues, “are at a fork US$160 million to various university projects. Imuscle in his 90-year-old body to break in the road: do you replicate what exists, or do Before arriving at ASU, Crow had a reputation C. CARLSON/AP the hard ground with a golden shovel. you design what you actually need?” By his reck- as a talented but headstrong university leader. Cronkite is in Phoenix to start construction oning, centres that teach students to communi- A political scientist who specialized in science on a new home for America’s biggest journal- cate with the public and to tackle real problems, and technology policy at Iowa State University, ism school, in America’s largest university, in such as water supply, are more relevant to today’s he entered full-time university administration as what will soon be its third-largest city. He has needs than, say, a chemistry department. a vice-provost at Columbia University, one of the some generous words for his host, the president Crow’s ideas for ASU have some powerful top private research universities in the United of Arizona State University (ASU). Michael supporters. “It has become a very different and States. There he helped to establish the Earth Crow, Cronkite tells the crowd gathered for very exciting institution,” says Frank Rhodes, Institute — now led by economist Jeffrey Sachs the ground-breaking, is “a true visionary of our former president of Cornell University in New — to tackle interdisciplinary environmental time. He entered the city and took the reins of York and the one-time chair of the US National problems. He also pursued a vainglorious effort the university, and gave it direction and energy Science Board. “It is going to be a prototype for to save Biosphere 2, the Earth-sciences experi- beyond what anyone could have imagined.” the rest of the country.” ment-cum-greenhouse built in the Arizona Strong words coming from the ‘most trusted Not everyone is convinced. Some think that desert and funded by Texan billionaire Ed Bass. man in America’. But the energy is palpable Crow has over-reached, attempting to turn It was his sojourns to Biosphere 2 that first drew across ASU, including its campus here in down- a public university with a mixed reputation him to the youngest and, arguably, brashest of town Phoenix where construction cranes speak into a research hub of international repute. For the contiguous United States. “I liked the atti- to Crow’s ambition. In the past four years, since instance, critics have attacked plans for a medi- tude here,” Crow recalls. he left Columbia University in New York to take cal school in Phoenix — supported by Crow, but Talk to any academic who has accepted or the reins in Arizona, Crow has had one goal in being built by Arizona State’s erstwhile rival, the rejected a position at ASU recently — and there mind. Put simply, he wants to leave behind the Tucson-based University of Arizona — as being are plenty of them — and this attitude invari- Harvard template, and build a new American extravagant and politically inspired (see page ably comes to the fore. For your typical American university for the twenty-first century. 971). In addition, Crow has been involved in university professor from either coast, the idea of The key to Crow’s vision is to break away from noisy public disputes with ASU’s student news- moving to Phoenix is about as appealing as a stint the department-based model of most universi- paper over allegations that he tried to censor in the nineteenth-century wild-west community 968 NATURE|Vol 446|26 April 2007 NEWS FEATURE portrayed on HBO’s series Deadwood. Yet the Arizona State size and the sheer energy of the city and the University’s Biodesign project can overcome initial misgivings. A sur- Institute is set up to prising number of top-flight individuals — from foster collaborations Nobel-prize-winning economist Edward Pres- between researchers. cott to the biologist and former research chief of SmithKline Beecham George Poste — have taken the plunge. ASU was already growing its research from a modest base, with an interdisciplinary bent, before Crow turned up. In 2002, the university was involved in setting up the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), a gene- tics research centre run by Jeffrey Trent, former scientific director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute. Today TGen has about 300 researchers, an annual research income of $60 million, and eight spin-off com- panies under its belt. Crow’s role has been to publicly raise the flag of bold reform, get politicians and philanthro- pists on board, sign up some star academics and build interdisciplinary centres to house them. Those established under his tenure include the physically spectacular, $150-million Biodesign but, like many of Crow’s recruits, he speaks of the relationships between the Earth and Institute led by Poste; a School of Earth and with an almost-childlike enthusiasm for the society.” For example, the centre plans to study Space Exploration (SESE), headed by geologist project. ASU is “singularly the most radi- how society coevolves with changes in water Kip Hodges; and the Consortium for Science, cal experiment going on in American higher resources. “It is obviously important for Phoe- Policy and Outcomes run by Dan Sarewitz, a education”, he says. “This is the fastest-growing nix, but it is important for the rest of the world, former Democrat staff member of the House metropolitan area in the United States, and its too,” Hodges says. Addressing such problems UNIV. STATE ARIZONA of Representatives. largest constellation of undergraduates. This requires a huge collection of skills, including isn’t just about the research; it is about the archaeology, the physics and chemistry of Stylish approach future of these young people.” water, evolution, anthropology, human ecol- The Biodesign Institute, whose building won Michael Tracy, deputy director of the insti- ogy, climate and palaeoclimatology. The centre R&D magazine’s award last year for the finest tute, admits that he hesitated before coming to aims, for instance, to build a comprehensive new laboratory in the United States, houses Arizona from his previous position at Stanford model of the entire Colorado river basin. 700 staff, including 100 faculty members who Research International, a contract research are collaborating, drug-industry style, on new group in California. But he says that he has Heat islands approaches to molecular biology and genetics. been impressed by the extent to which Arizo- Water issues are also to the fore at the Global Biology, computing and engineering in par- na’s residents have bought into the university’s Institute for Sustainability, an interdisciplinary ticular, but also law, social sciences and other plans. “Local people realize that the area needs centre led by Chuck Redman, an anthropolo- specialties, are brought into the mix. Last year, a high-value proposition,” he says. “They have gist and long-time ASU faculty member. The the institute attracted about $60 million in really embraced the idea.” institute brings together about 50 faculty, all of public research funding. If all goes to plan, two Kip Hodges, who came from Massachusetts whom also have departmental appointments, additional laboratory buildings will be built by Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to study the relationship between people and 2009, at a further total cost of $300 million. last July to lead ASU’s new School of Earth and the environment, especially in urban areas. Poste has the air of someone more accus- Space Exploration, shares this enthusiasm. “It A focus of interest, Redman says, is to develop tomed to giving orders than following them, is a wonderful thing to be part of a place that is building materials and coatings that are suited becoming, rather than a place that has been,” to ‘heat island’ cities such as Phoenix, where he says of Phoenix. temperatures can exceed the surrounding area “ASU is the SESE, which has 36 faculty from many dis- by as much as 8 °C. ciplines, hopes to be in a new, purpose-built Unlike these other centres, the Consortium most radical building by 2009. It aims to pull together exper- for Science, Policy and Outcomes is a unit experiment tise in engineering, computation and Earth that Crow founded in Washington DC and going on in and space science (ASU is a leader in Mars brought with him to ASU. On Tuesday morn- exploration) to obtain a better understanding ings, he even teaches class there, engaging in American higher of problems on this planet and farther afield. a double act with centre director Sarewitz in a UNIV. STATE TRUMBLE/ARIZONA T. education.” At first, Hodges suspected that ASU’s empha- three-hour seminar with about 30 undergrad- sis on serving Phoenix was parochial — “after uate and graduate students.