FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.- The Arizona Board of Regents approved $319,000 in start-up funds for new ASU research centers at their meeting Thursday.
The funds would go into establishing the Phoenix Urban Redesign Laboratory on ASU's downtown campus and the Center for Film and Media Research on the Tempe campus.
According to the proposal, the new film center will use part of current space in the Social Sciences Building, which will require $8,000 in renovations. The operations budget for the film center is $11,000.
The laboratory, a section of the College of Design, will require $300,000 in start-up funding and $500,000 in annual operating.
It will be located in the Security Building at the downtown Phoenix campus, 234 N. Central Ave.
ABOR passed the proposals for the design laboratory and the film center after several regents speculated that they are not integral to the advancement of the University.
But ASU Provost Milton Glick disagreed with the regents' assessment.
"Departments exist to organize undergraduate curriculum," Glick said. "It's an easy way to manage getting appropriate courses."
The film center will host the Tempe campus's new film major, which ABOR approved at their last meeting in August, Glick said.
The film center would bring together instructors from many disciplines -- English, literature, journalism, liberal arts and sciences and more -- for a new type of research, he added.
"The center is the coordinator for a new kind of approach to education," Glick said.
ASU President Michael Crow said ASU won five or six center-focused grants in the past couple of years, including one for the social implications of nano-technology. Without these centers, these different aspects of research might never be explored.
"We are in a period of rapid transition," he said. "The departments should fit accordingly."
UA President Peter Likins said without centers to combine different areas of research, there might not be departments to adapt to constantly changing knowledge, citing the creation of biochemistry as an example.
"Rather than proliferate old departments, we're creating temporary structures that bring people together from different departments," he said.
Glick said all centers on Arizona university campuses must be reviewed every five years and be recertified to ensure the research done is still necessary.
Reach the reporter at tara.brite@asu.edu.
