Centers & Partners

Arizona State University is dedicated to recruiting and educating strong, ethical leaders who will take on the social and civil service responsibilities necessary to lead society into the future. The Spirit of Service Scholars program addresses the present and future workforce needs in the public and nonprofit sectors by awarding prestigious scholarships to outstanding students and providing them with an extraordinary academic and real-world education, a life-long interdisciplinary network, and committed, effective mentors.

The Center for Social Cohesion, a joint project of Arizona State University and Zócalo Public Square in partnership with the New America Foundation, is dedicated to studying the forces that shape our sense of social unity.Wholly non-partisan, pluralistic and multidisciplinary in outlook, the Center for Social Cohesion seeks to promote understanding of how diverse societies cohere.

The Alliance for Innovation, as a partnership of The Innovation Groups, ICMA, and Arizona State University, has created the widest and deepest innovation based network serving local government. The Alliance brings professionals, local governments, academics, and private sector partners together to discover and apply the best ideas, practices and solutions to the challenges confronting local government and communities.

The Bob Ramsey Executive Education Program provides innovative professional development programs that build the capacity of people and organizations that serve the public. We deliver quality programs for public managers, executives and elected officials and offer an extensive listing of management training and workshops on current public administration issues and challenges.

The Center for Policy Informatics leverages the use of tools, models, and simulations to help individuals, groups, and communities make and evaluate policy choices. The center promotes the development of externally funded and community focused projects, provides for the exchange of ideas, facilitates training, and offers technical and computational resources for modeling and simulations.

The Center for Urban Innovation was established as the focal point for research on urban affairs in the School of Public Affairs and the College of Public Programs with a mission to improve the quality of urban life in neighborhoods, cities, and urban regions by promoting innovation in governance, policy, and management. The Center supports innovative education, critical research, and community involvement - its research and outreach are both local and global.

Morrison Institute for Public Policy bridges the gap between academic scholarship and public policy development through its services to public and private sector clients and its independent research agenda. Morrison Institute provides services in the areas of public policy research, program evaluation, and public outreach to many types of public and private organizations in Arizona and throughout the United States.

Arizona State University and Sichuan University in China have created a joint University Design Consortium to develop innovative strategies for universities to address the complex issues of the 21st century. Working together and with partner institutions, the Institute seeks to understand and guide the ongoing evolution of creative organizational and educational models for public universities worldwide.

The mandate of the Participatory Governance Initiative is to promote excellence, collaboration, and innovation in participatory governance research and practice. The Participatory Governance Initiative is a university-wide interdisciplinary space that aims at bringing together academics, students, elected and non-elected government officials, community members and practitioners interested in the theory and practice of participatory governance. Special attention is paid to the examination of emerging trends and innovative democratic experiments around the world that are relevant to the realities of governance and public engagement in the 21^st century.