ASU President Michael Crow told an audience of about 120 students how he planned to craft the New American University Tuesday in the Business Administration building.
Crow outlined the three objectives in building the New American University as part of the Barrett Honors College Lecture Series.
The goals of the New American University are academic excellence, impact and accessibility, he said.
"The challenge is to design a university for political, social and economic structure for the future," Crow said.
Part of the challenge is to make ASU accessible to everyone, yet keep the University academically rigorous, he said.
Crow said unlike other selective universities that turn away thousands of students, ASU is looking to admit students with all levels of intelligence.
The SAT can only tell one or two types of intelligence, he said. While selective universities rely heavily on the test, it isn't a good indicator of how a student might do in college.
"We're expanding our opportunities," he said.
But this does not mean ASU would become too large, he added.
"So there's no advantage to being big," he said. "We're driven by 'access to opportunity.'"
The West, Polytechnic and Downtown campuses would add 35,000 new seats for students, he said.
The Tempe campus population would be capped at 50,000 students, he added.
Speech and hearing science freshman Lara Cardy said she was happy Crow did not want to make the Tempe campus any larger.
"It was nice to know he didn't want upended growth."
Crow said another challenge is a "genetic code" or "hierarchies in majors and departments" by faculty.
Faculty members tend to think certain majors are better than others, he said.
"Most of you [students] are brainwashed the same way," he said. "Students and faculty ask, 'Is physics harder than political science? Is calculus harder than arithmetic?'"
But people should not focus on this, Crow said. Rather, they should focus on academics.
Crow also toucher on ASU's reputation as a party school.
Playboy named ASU the No. 3 party school in its May issue.
Crow said the reputation was a "double-edged sword."
Because of the climate and the palm trees "students in Ithaca, N.Y., think they're having fun down [here]," he said.
"Our student body is actually much more conservative than most student bodies."
ASU does not necessarily deserve the party school image, but "reputations take a long time to develop," he said.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Hannah Mensing said listening to Crow changed her opinion of him.
"I had pretty low expectations," she said. "He's not such a bad guy after all."
Mensing said Crow was very positive on his goals for the future.
Crow also had dinner with 10 honors students at Caffe Boa after the speech.
Reach the reporter at kristi.eaton@asu.edu.
