Our California Portfolio

ASU’s robust California portfolio reflects the university’s efforts to shape stronger communities through higher education and partnerships that inspire creativity, problem solving and business ventures.

ASU’s operations at the ASU California Center in Santa Monica, and the university’s expansion into the historic Herald Examiner building in downtown Los Angeles, are creating more opportunities for individuals to forge innovative career paths and build stronger connections with top industry leaders. ASU’s inclusive model not only prepares students in California for academic success and innovative career paths, it serves as a catalyst for economic development.

  • Los Angeles
  • NorCal
  • SoCal

ASU Alumni Association Leadership Councils

The largest population of ASU alumni outside of Arizona live in California. Alumni chapters located throughout the most populated metropolitan areas in the state keep Sun Devils connected to their alma mater through many networking opportunities and events. ASU began establishing Leadership Councils in California (Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego), comprised of C-suite level alums, who help advance the ASU charter as well as offer opportunities for alumni engagement and employment, and student recruitment.

  • Los Angeles
  • NorCal
  • SoCal

ASU Alumni Association Local Chapters

With more than 170 alumni chapters worldwide, you can stay connected to ASU, no matter where you are! Each regional chapter is run by alumni volunteers with the assistance of the ASU Alumni Association. ASU Alumni Chapters host game watching parties, networking mixers, community volunteer projects and scholarship fundraising to show their Maroon & Gold spirit. If you are looking to take advantage of opportunities to get together, meet alumni, network, rekindle old friendships and, most importantly, promote our alma mater and have fun, reach out to your local ASU Alumni Chapter to learn more. There are four chapters in California – Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Northern California Chapter.

Los Angeles chapter 

Northern California chapter

Orange County chapter

San Diego chapter

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  • Los Angeles
  • NorCal
  • SoCal

ASU Alumni Association Sun Devil Send-Offs

ASU Alumni Chapters throughout California host “Sun Devil Send-Offs” each summer to meet and welcome incoming families and students to ASU. Somewhere between a pep rally and a maroon-and-gold lovefest, send-offs help ease the transition to college, whether you’re an incoming freshman, international student or transfer.

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  • SoCal

ASU Global Silicon Valley Summit

The 12th Annual ASU and Global Silicon Valley (GSV) Summit will take place in person in San Diego, California on August 9 - 11, 2021, where 5,000 educators, investors, industry leaders and entrepreneurs are expected to convene online to create future opportunities in the education and workforce sector. Through its partnership with ASU, GSV has been able to invest in numerous projects throughout the last decade, providing startup companies an opportunity to invest in the future.

 

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  • NorCal

ASU Innovative Network Council

ASU launched an Innovative Network Council with the help of one of Silicon Valley’s most connected people: Ellen Levy. Levy, a consultant and innovator, specializes in building bridges between Silicon Valley and other parts of the world. She used her expertise to design and launch the new council, and serves as co-chair alongside ASU President Michael Crow. The ASU Innovative Network Council enhances the university’s links to high-tech companies and thought leaders in Silicon Valley and around the country, giving students new opportunities to pursue their educational goals and advance their careers.

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  • Los Angeles

ASU Prep Digital supporting CA Teachers and K-12 Learners

ASU Prep Digital is ASU’s kindergarten through twelfth grade platform of assets that serves both individual learners, as well as schools with high-quality, engaging, rigorous learning journeys and technical infrastructure to support schools in the transition to blended, hybrid and online learning. In California, ASU Prep Digital has responded to the health crisis with large scale support for LA County school districts that are seeking to collaboratively create resilient learning continuity plans. ASU Prep Digital is now serving 23,000 California students taking over 310,000 course enrollments. The LA County districts leveraging the innovation of ASU are: Pasadena Unified, Bellflower, El Segundo, Wiseburn, Inner City Ed Foundation, Inglewood. ASU Prep Digital also trained 300 teachers through a train the trainer model at the Arch Diocese of LA to upskill classroom teachers to be digital teachers.

 

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  • Los Angeles
  • NorCal
  • SoCal

Athletic Competitions throughout California

Competition extends beyond Sun Devil Stadium for Sun Devil Athletics through sporting events throughout California. ASU teams compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as part of the Pac-12 Conference, along with UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Sun Devil Athletics is comprised of two dozen men and women’s sports and more than 650 student-athletes who compete with their California counterparts in Arizona and California.

NOTE: In response to COVID-19 concerns to protect the health of our athletes and communities, athletic competitions are currently running on modified schedules as listed below. Please check back for further updates.

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  • Los Angeles
  • NorCal
  • SoCal

California Community Colleges Partnerships

ASU Academic Alliances works with California community colleges to facilitate solutions for student success and achieve partnership outcomes. The Universal Articulation partnership model continually strives to create strategies and make technological advancements to support students on their college journey towards completing their bachelor's degree.

Our work with California community colleges gives students access to ASU's transfer tools to help create a seamless transition to ASU. Academic alignment, partner support, and a streamlined transfer experience are services delivered to assist California students and the staff and faculty that support them.

ASU has partnered with all 116 California community colleges to deliver over 400 articulated guided pathways into ASU on campus and online degrees. The California community colleges MyPath2ASU™ transfer experience helps students be successful in their education journey. Learn more about our pathway solutions for California community colleges.

ASU has become a California community college students' top out-of-state choice because of its reputation as a convenient, high-quality option for higher education. Learn more about ASU Academic Alliances partnerships.

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  • Los Angeles

CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California

The ASU California Center in Santa Monica serves as the home for CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California. CCNMA is a non-profit, professional organization that aims to promote diversity in the news media by providing encouragement, scholarships and educational programs for Latinos pursuing careers in journalism. The organization’s mission is to foster an accurate and fair portrayal of Latinos in the news, and to promote the social, economic and professional advancement of Latino journalists.

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  • Los Angeles

Civic Engagement

As part of our Charter, ASU assumes responsibility for the economic well-being of the communities we serve. To that extent, we’ve joined local business councils in an effort to advance workforce development and education policy. Through those agencies we partner with local business leaders who share in our values and believe in our mission to advance research and discovery of public value.

Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation

Los Angeles County Business Federation

Central City Association of Los Angeles

Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce

Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce

  • Los Angeles

Dreamscape Learn

Dreamscape Learn is a partnership between Dreamscape Immersive, the world’s leading virtual reality company, and ASU which merges the emotional power of the best Hollywood storytelling with the nation’s leader in online and digitally enhanced education to deliver fully immersive VR learning systems. The initial Dreamscape Learn experience built will add avatar-driven VR experiences to campus-based and online introductory biology courses. This will be based on Dreamscape’s first original VR adventure, Alien Zoo, which transports learners to an orbiting wildlife sanctuary for endangered life-forms from the far corners of the universe. The concept was developed by Dreamscape Immersive co-founder Walter Parkes, along with Academy Award-winning director and producer Steven Spielberg.

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  • Los Angeles

Heart of Los Angeles SummerUp Scholarships

ASU’s Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions has partnered with Heart of Los Angeles, a non-profit organization empowering underserved youth to strengthen their communities through free programs in academics, arts and athletics. With a shared vision for public service and community solutions, Watts College strives to build a pathway to college for HOLA students. 

SummerUP program scholarships
Commencing in 2020, Watts College will sponsor four HOLA students per year (sophomores, juniors or seniors) with scholarships to attend “SummerUP,” a camp where students are mentored on college-readiness and participate in classroom learning. Students stay in the dorms at ASU’s idyllic West campus. During the day, they participate in a Watts College curriculum, and in the evening, they learn about becoming more competitive college applicants, writing personal statements, using metacognition to succeed in high school and beyond, and learning to thrive at ASU and Barrett, the Honors College.

Campus visits
Watts College will host HOLA’s Southwest Airlines pre-alumni cohort at the ASU downtown Phoenix campus annually in the spring for an overnight campus visit to get a taste of college life and learn about applying to college. Additional visits could be arranged for HOLA students interested in visual or performance art at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

  • Los Angeles

Infiniscope STEM collaboration with LAUSD and NASA

The NASA Infiniscope project was developed by the Center for Education Through eXploration in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration as a virtual platform to connect teachers and students with the cutting edge of space exploration. The education portal promotes learning by connecting classrooms to digital simulations, virtual field trips and feedback from experts at NASA.

In an effort to educate more STEM learners across the country, in summer 2019, ASU partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Local District East to offer educators free access to Infiniscope’s online materials and lesson plans for its more than 100,000 students, who mostly come from urban Hispanic and African-American communities.

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  • Los Angeles

InStride

ASU and The Rise Fund, a global impact investing fund managed by TPG, collaborated to launch InStride, a public benefit company designed to achieve significant social impact through partnerships with employers to provide education opportunities for employees. ASU’s successful relationships with innovative companies such as Starbucks and Uber, served as the catalyst for the new enterprise. Based in Los Angeles, InStride works with partners to design and deliver strategic enterprise education programs for their employers to earn career-boosting degrees, credentials and skills in collaboration with ASU and other leading universities.

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  • NorCal

Naval Postgraduate School collaboration

The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California is working with ASU’s affiliated applied research lab, ASURE, to advance unmanned and robotic technologies and weapons systems. The school awarded $12 million to ASURE in 2020 to solve the initial task with the opportunity for an additional $30.4 million for subsequent tasks. According to the Naval Postgraduate School, this is the school’s largest task order contract ever awarded for unmanned systems and robotics. ASU faculty will participate in research, analysis and prototype development of hardware and software for use by U.S. military, civilians and U.S. partner nations. Faculty will focus on artificial intelligence, cyber solutions, weapons payloads, navigation and intelligence sensors and other areas related to robotics and unmanned technologies.

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  • Los Angeles

Off-Earth space missions

ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) regularly teams up with the leading experts at NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, collaborating on cutting edge projects for the next era of space exploration. Through SESE’s interdisciplinary work, ASU, NASA and JPL and have launched a variety of joint missions, including: 

Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) is located on NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter and is responsible for capturing the first global image map of the Martian planet and was used in deciding where to send Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. 

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) launched in August 2005 to study the planet’s history of water and is equipped with three ASU instruments: Mars Color Imager (MARCI), Context Camera (CTX) and Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Rover Curiosity is equipped with ASU’s Mast Camera instrument which has helped NASA document the Red Planet through color imaging since August 2012, when the rover landed in the Gale Crater.

ASU’s Mastcam-Z is mounted on NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Perseverance, which is traveling through space and scheduled to arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021. The camera will be used to snap 3D pictures and video, while the rover collects samples at Jezero Crater, a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life.

Upcoming Launches:

August 2022
ASU’s multispectral imager will be used in a first-of-its-kind NASA mission to the metal asteroid Psyche, which is orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. During the Psyche Mission, which will be managed and operated by JPL, the cameras will snap high-resolution images of the asteroid’s geological, compositional and topographical properties. The spacecraft is set to arrive at the asteroid in January 2026. 

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  • Los Angeles
  • NorCal
  • SoCal

Partners

ASU’s unique partnerships in California create opportunities for the university, organizations and institutions to enrich communities and solve society’s biggest challenges, together. ASU collaborates with various industries to advance shared goals in higher education, research and career development. Between its commitments to lifelong learning and entrepreneurship, ASU’s partnerships contribute to innovative work in diverse communities, while producing top talent for the future workforce.

Alliance for SoCal Innovation

In 2018, ASU became the only non-local university member of the Alliance for SoCal Innovation. The alliance links innovators to capital and experienced operators through a unique partnership with Southern California’s research institutions and business leaders, with the goal of nurturing and accelerating the growth of a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southern California. Partners include: Caltech, UCLA, UCSD, USC, UCSB, UCI, UCR, Sanford Consortium, University of San Diego and ASU.

California Community Colleges Partnerships

ASU Academic Alliances works with California community colleges to facilitate solutions for student success and achieve partnership outcomes. The Universal Articulation partnership model continually strives to create strategies and make technological advancements to support students on their college journey towards completing their bachelor's degree.

Our work with California community colleges gives students access to ASU's transfer tools to help create a seamless transition to ASU. Academic alignment, partner support, and a streamlined transfer experience are services delivered to assist California students and the staff and faculty that support them.

ASU has become a California community college students' top out-of-state choice because of its reputation as a convenient, high-quality option for higher education. Learn more about ASU Academic Alliances partnerships.

Learn more about how some California Community Colleges partners are working with ASU to help students succeed, including the Los Angeles Community College District, Palomar College, Los Rios College, Santa Monica College and the Los Angeles Trade College.

Dreamscape Immersive

ASU and Dreamscape Immersive, the world's leading virtual reality company, have partnered together to launch Dreamscape Learn.The initial Dreamscape Learn experience built will add avatar-driven VR experiences to campus-based and online introductory biology courses. This will be based on Dreamscape’s first original VR adventure, Alien Zoo, which transports learners to an orbiting wildlife sanctuary for endangered life-forms from the far corners of the universe.

Heart of Los Angeles

ASU is creating a vital educational resource for youth in the Los Angeles area through a partnership between Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) — a non-profit organization serving more than 2,200 underserved youth. The growing partnership prepares high school students for college life through various programs, including an overnight campus visit to ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus where students get to tour the campus and participate in college courses. Watts College also sponsors four HOLA students annually with scholarships to attend SummerUp, an ASU camp where students are mentored on college readiness.

Intel Corporation

ASU is Intel’s largest supplier of global talent. This partnership includes research in packaging, machine vision, autonomous mobility, and gamification of education. Intel and ASU work together in Vietnam, raising the quality of university engineering courses with Vietnamese university partners. Together, ASU and Intel collaborate on course development on electrical engineering and computer science. Intel employees teach at ASU as adjunct professors, serve on different industry advisory boards, and co-develop ideas with other industry partners in research consortia.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Through a partnership with ASU, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, a national research facility that carries out robotic space and Earth science missions, helped create the Mars Space Flight Facility on the university’s campus and the Mars Education program. The program provides workshops, field trips and other STEM opportunities for K-12 teachers and students to explore the Red Planet. JPL and ASU are working together for the launch of the Psyche Mission in August 2022 — an ASU-led mission to a unique metal asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. JPL will be responsible for mission management, operations and navigation.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

In 2018, ASU launched a partnership between the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to advance a new generation of art museum leaders who are committed to diversifying the field. The partnership combines academic training and work experience at LACMA — or the ASU Art Museum in Tempe —through a three-year master’s fellowship program.

Los Angeles Times

ASU has partnered with the Los Angeles Times, one of California’s legacy newspapers, to deliver educational content through 20 self-paced college courses online. If you’re an L.A. Times subscriber, you get 25% off courses ranging from health and wellness to business management. Enrollees also get free access to ASU’s key resources and other online educational tools like virtual field trips and a look inside ASU Library’s resources.

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Los Angeles Venture Association

ASU’s SkySong Innovations collaborates with the Los Angeles Venture Association (LAVA) to host investor events and other opportunities for entrepreneurs to make important local connections in the critically important Southern California innovation ecosystem through programs including First Look LA. ASU and LAVA collaborated to create the SoCal Startup Mill, which matches participating startups with top-tier mentoring and entrepreneurial support from LAVA and partner resources.

San Manuel Band of Mission Indians

Based in southern California near the cities of San Bernardino and Highland, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians administers a robust program of philanthropy, which prioritizes the program areas of education, health care, community development and programs that promote the arts, museums and initiatives that protect the environment.  The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians made a $5 million gift to ASU to provide for the renovation of the historic Herald Examiner Building in Los Angeles and to establish an endowment to support the Indian Legal Program’s Indian Gaming and Tribal Self-Governance programs at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU.  The San Manuel gift will support increasing educational opportunities in the field of Indian law, the expansion of work experience for students interested in Indian law and will contribute to the development of Indian law trainings for Indian tribes and organizations.  

  • Los Angeles

San Andreas Fault research

ASU’s School of Earth & Space Exploration supports the Southern California Earthquake Center by advancing understanding of earthquake processes and related hazards through field research along the San Andreas Fault. The center collaborates with numerous universities, the U.S. Geological Survey and the California Geological Survey in the hopes of understanding and predicting earthquakes to better prepare communities from their potentially hazardous effects.

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  • Los Angeles

Skysong Innovations

SkySong Innovations works with ASU researchers and student entrepreneurs to protect and commercialize the intellectual property they create. The ASU California Center in Santa Monica is the SoCal hub for Skysong Innovation’s entrepreneurial activities, providing access to ASU intellectual property and start ups and facilitating important connections with the investment community.

The Milken Institute ranks ASU #6 in tech transfer among universities without a medical school. ASU is also in the top 10 list of U.S. Patents Issued by the National Academy of Inventors and IP Owners Association.

Southern California’s innovation ecosystem has welcomed SkySong Innovations. In 2018, ASU became the only non-local university member of the Allicance for SoCal Innovations. Other partners include the Los Angeles Venture Association, LA Biocom,  StartEngine, Amplify LA, Tech Coast Angels and the Founder Institute.

SkySong Innovations has helped launch more than 160 new spinout companies from ASU, which together have attracted almost a billion dollars in investments.

SkySong Innovation Startups in California include:

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  • Los Angeles

SoCal Startup Mill

The SoCal Startup Mill is a joint program managed by Skysong Innovations and the Los Angeles Venture Association (LAVA) with the goal of matching participating startups with seasoned executives and entrepreneurs who can provide mentorship or interim/permanent C-level executive leadership for their startups. Under this program, young companies avoid common pitfalls and receive experienced business leadership to fund, grow and scale the venture.

The SoCal Startup Mill invites the highest-potential student/faculty led startups and entrepreneurs from 10 local universities, as well as select non-university ventures, to compete to receive top-tier mentoring and entrepreneurial support from LAVA and partner resources. Each year the program hosts pitch competitions at the ASU California Center in Santa Monica, bringing together emerging companies and technologies with executives and potential investors.

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  • Los Angeles

Thunderbird & LA Sustainable Development Goals

ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management is helping the City of Los Angeles develop its plans to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — a commitment made by 193 countries in September 2015 to achieve a more environmentally prosperous planet by 2030. Thunderbird students and faculty are working with city leaders to determine how global goals can be implemented at the city level. Projects include assessing the role of private stakeholders in implementing the goals, which included mapping, aligning and identifying gaps and opportunities in the private sector to advance the goals.

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  • Los Angeles

Transformations

Transformations, a publishing channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, is an online magazine published by ASU’s Narrative Storytelling Initiative which features narrative essays and content primarily written by college and university professors and other academics. Authors valiantly depict life-changing experiences, often for the first time, providing insight into transformative situations that helped them forge a definitive path personally and professionally. Through these writings, readers have an opportunity to learn from the authors’ choices, and how transformative experiences can lay the framework for confronting and overcoming societal challenges.

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  • Los Angeles

Zócalo Public Square

Founded in Los Angeles in 2003, Zócalo Public Square is an ASU Knowledge Enterprise. Zócalo Public Square connects people to ideas and to each other by examining essential questions in an accessible, broad-minded, and democratic spirit. At a time when our country’s public sphere and our global digital conversation have become ever more polarized and segregated, Zócalo seeks to create a welcoming intellectual space and engage a new and diverse generation in the public square. We pursue our mission by convening events and by publishing ideas journalism. 

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