Core Areas

Associated Areas

Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering

School of Planning

Department of History

School of Public Affairs

Core Areas

The focal disciplines of our program are represented by five academic areas in the earth, life, and social sciences. IGERT Fellows gain formal training and problem-solving experience in one of five schools and a minor in a second discipline of the student's choice from one of the other sciences (earth, life, social). Several integrative activities, required of all Fellows, provide breadth. Arizona State University's IGERT in Urban Ecology trains scientists strongly grounded in their disciplines who can also move among other disciplines from a solid educational and experiential foundation.

Associated Areas

There is pressing demand in the broader society for scientists who understand policy and decisionmaking. engineers conversant in biology, and social scientists who can work closely with life scientists. In the next five years, Arizona State University is changing dramatically, with four restructured campuses and a reorganized Tempe campus that replaces traditional departments with new schools.

To help institutionalize our IGERT, an expanded list of Co-Principal Investigators includes associate dean of the Barrett Honors College (M. Nelson) and director of the Global Institute of Sustainability (Redman). Because institutionalization includes the entire campus and enriches our perspective on urban ecology, we have added faculty participants in humanities (Pyne, Hirt) and fine arts (Klett). Although our efforts remain firmly embedded in the sciences, we believe boundaries at the edges of science are as difficult and necessary to cross as those within.

Five academic units form the core of the IGERT program; Fellows would normally receive a doctoral degree frome one of these. These units are School of Earth and Space Exploration, School of Geographical Sciences, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, School of Life Sciences, and School of Sustainability. These academic units were chosen because of their excellence in training graduate students and their relevance to the urban-ecology theme. However, many other disciplinary units in colleges other than Liberal Arts and Sciences are involved both in urban studies and in the planning of this education and training program. These include the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, School of Planning, College of Public Programs, and the Herberger College of Arts. In our efforts to establish a broad base of graduate-student participation, we encourage participation in the IGERT program for students in both core and associated areas. Normally Fellows are from the core academic units and Associates from both core and related areas, although exceptions to this in the award of fellowships have been made.