I recently attended a conference in Phoenix, Arizona, jointly sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University’s Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, MA. The topic was Universities as Civic Partners and there were about 150 there, mostly from various universities.

Sound a little stuffy? Actually some pretty exciting efforts to fundamentally change universities and the cities they are part of are underway in the United States. Sitting in downtown Phoenix in the midst of tens of millions of dollars in new or renovated university facilities, and hearing ASU President Michael Crow’s challenge to create a New American University, I’d have to say ASU wants to set the pace for university and city change.

I was there representing the University of Memphis (UM) which has been engaging substantively in the life of the community around it for some time without a lot of publicity or fanfare. In fact, practicing engaged scholarship, as this is called (at Arizona State they call it “social embeddedness”) is one of the key strategic directions of UM. And the dedication UM has to being relevant to its city is known by others around the country.

Here are some points President Crow makes about the New American University (NAU). He states that universities have a thousand years of DNA code that has to be untwisted and put back together differently to create institutions to serve the 21st century and the global economy. At about 60,000 students, the four-campus metropolitan university is the largest in the U.S. anticipating growth to over 100,000 by 2020 in the fastest growing city in the nation.

1. Excellence. The NAU must strive to achieve excellence by being creative, nimble and interdisciplinary. In six years, ASU has created 14 new interdisciplinary programs, including sustainability and human evolutions and social change.
2. Access. The NAU must find a place for everyone to learn. The graduation rate at public universities is approximately 40%. Increasing the percentages of graduates and eliminating financial barriers to college must be priorities. More than half of ASU students pay no tuition.
3. Impact. The NAU must take on the issues of our day. How, for example, do you build a sustainable city? Universities must constantly ask about how to advance their return to the community. We must think about the ideas we espouse and what their values are and link to the broader community.

Our system of higher education is one of the most important knowledge based products the U.S. has to offer the rest of the world. But it won’t come near meeting its potential if it doesn’t rethink and retool how it operates in our cities today. Much more should be demanded of our colleges and universities and this demand must be matched by our own commitment and support for them.