Chief information officer of Arizona State University Lev Gonick outlines the part technology has played in the 20-year of transformation of his university.
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Tag: Arizona
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University of Arizona has balanced budget in sight after massive deficits
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- University of Arizona released a fiscal 2026 plan that would balance its budget by reducing it 3.2% from current levels, though officials noted federal policy changes, state budgeting and enrollment could force adjustments.
- The preliminary budget plan would make the deepest cuts to university support and administration, reducing those areas by 7.5% overall. Student support would be cut by 2.8%, and the aggregate budget for the university’s colleges would be reduced by 2.2%. It would also decrease facility and utility spending by 1.1% while increasing community outreach by 0.7%.
- At the same time, the framework funds employee raises, faculty promotions, investments in the university’s colleges and other spending areas, officials said Thursday in a community message.
Dive Insight:
The University of Arizona has been scrambling for more than a year to put its fiscal house in order.
In early 2024, the university faced a budget shortfall reaching $177 million. The situation became so severe as to draw an open rebuke from the state’s governor, Katie Hobbs, who in a statement last February derided a “university leadership that was clueless as to their own finances.”
Since that time, then-President Robert Robbins stepped down and the university has made major cutbacks to its budget.
Helping lead that work is John Arnold, who has taken on the chief operating and financial officer roles at University of Arizona after previously serving as executive director of the state board of regents.
For fiscal 2025, the university reduced its budget by over $110 million, centralizing its fiscal planning, “rebalancing” undergraduate aid for nonresident students, delaying raises, and reorganizing administrative units including information technology, human resources and marketing.
Arnold informed the state regents in November that the university was on track to wipe the remaining $65 million deficit from its budget and end fiscal 2025 with 76 days cash on hand — well above the nine days’ worth of cash that was projected last June. The regents require state universities to have 140 days of cash on hand, a target the University of Arizona hasn’t hit since 2022.
By the fall, cuts took the university’s employee headcounts and payroll expenses back to early fiscal 2023 levels.
While making numerous reductions across the university’s operations, officials also announced salary increases and a raised minimum wage earlier this year.
Arnold and Ronald Marx, the university’s interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said in their message Thursday that the new budget framework “prioritizes academic excellence, faculty and staff support, and student success across colleges.”
They added the caveat that possible changes in federal policy, state budgeting, changing demographics and enrollment could all sway the final fiscal 2026 budget.
“We are actively monitoring these developments and evaluating the financial implications of the changing external environment,” Arnold and Marx said.
Arizona lawmakers last year threw a wrench into budget plans with multimillion dollar funding reductions, which came as University of Arizona sought to reduce its deficit by tens of millions of dollars.
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Arizona Autism Charter School Founder Tapped as DOE Special Education Chief – The 74
The founder and executive director of a network of Arizona charter schools serving autistic children has been named the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Education Secretary Linda McMahon made the announcement while touring the Arizona Autism Charter Schools’ Phoenix location.
Diana Diaz-Harrison, whose son is autistic, said that in her new job she hopes to continue her efforts to help others launch autism charter schools throughout the country. Her schools, she said in remarks captured on video by AZ Central, are a testament to what happens “when parents like me are empowered to create solutions.”
“My vision is to expand school choice for special needs families — whether through charter schools, private options, voucher programs, or other parent-empowered models,” she said in a statement to The 74. .
The five-school network uses a controversial intervention that attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, applied behavior analysis, or ABA, is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms.
Diaz-Harrison opened the network’s first school in 2014 as a free, public alternative to private schools for autistic children, which are popular in Arizona but typically charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Her Arizona charter schools are a 501(c)3 nonprofit financed by state and federal per-pupil funds. ABA is specifically endorsed by Arizona education officials as a strategy to use with autistic students.
In the time since those charters opened, ABA has grown to be a national, multi-billion-dollar industry, with for-profit companies tapping public and private insurance to pay for as much as 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy. The intervention uses repeated, rapid-fire commands that bring rewards and punishments to change a child’s behavior and communication style.
A 74 investigation last year showed that most data supporting ABA’s effectiveness is drawn from research conducted by industry practitioners. Independent analyses, including a years-long U.S. Department of Defense review, found little evidence the intervention works. Former patients who underwent the therapy as children reported severe, lasting mental health effects, including PTSD.
Diaz-Harrison told The 74 the therapy is both valuable and sought-after. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she says. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”
During her visit, McMahon told students and staff she was eager to tell President Donald Trump about the schools. “He doesn’t believe any child, whether they have neuro-difficulties or any other problems, should be trapped in a school and not have the facilities that they need,” she said.
Since Trump’s second inauguration, he has issued numerous orders that have alarmed disability advocates and the autistic community. Though both edicts contradict longstanding federal laws, in March he ordered the closure of the Education Department and said responsibility for special education will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
About half of the Education Department’s staff has been fired, including most of the people responsible for investigating what had been a backlog of some 6,000 disability discrimination complaints. Though it’s unclear whether Trump and McMahon may legally disregard special education funding laws and allow states to spend federal dollars as they see fit, both have said they favor giving local officials as much decision-making power as possible.
Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked fear in the autistic community by announcing a new effort to tie autism to vaccines or other “environmental toxins” — a hypothesis discredited by dozens of studies. The man he appointed to head the study has been cited for practicing medicine without a license and prescribing dangerous drugs to autistic children.
Last week, the new head of the National Institutes of Health announced that an unprecedented compilation of medical, pharmaceutical and insurance records would be used to create an autism “disease registry” — a kind of list historically used to sterilize, institutionalize and even “euthanize” autistic people. HHS later walked back the statement, saying the database under construction would have privacy guardrails.
Among other responsibilities, the offices Diaz-Harrison will head identify strategies for improving instruction for children with disabilities and ensure that as they grow up, they are able to be as independent as possible. The disability community has raised concerns that the administration is retreating from these goals.
Advocates have said they fear the changes pave the way for a return to the practice of separating students with disabilities in dedicated special ed classrooms rather than having them attend class with typically developing peers. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees special education students the right to instruction in the “least restrictive environment” possible.
Families’ preferences vary widely, with some parents of autistic children refusing any form of behavior therapy, while others want their kids in settings with children who share their needs. Many insist on grade-level instruction in general education classrooms
Diaz-Harrison has a master’s degree in education and worked as a bilingual teacher in California early in her career. From the late 1990s until she began supporting her son full time, she worked as a public relations strategist and a reporter and anchor for the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision.
In 2014, frustrated with her son’s school options, she organized a group of parents and ABA providers who applied for permission to open what was then a single K-5 school serving 90 children. The network now has about 1,000 students in all grades and features an online program.
At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, 9% of the network’s students scored proficient or highly proficient on Arizona’s annual reading exam, while 4% passed the math assessments.
In December 2022, the network won a $1 million Yass Prize, an award created by Jeff and Janine Yass. The billionaire investors have a long track record of donating to Republican political candidates and organizations that support school choice.
One of the award’s creators, Jeanne Allen, is CEO of the Center for Education Reform. The center nominated Diaz-Harrison for the federal role.
Yass award winners were featured at the 2023 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative forum where state lawmakers are given model bills on education and other policies to introduce in their respective statehouses.
Diaz-Harrison has partnered with a Florida autism school to create a national charter school accelerator program to help people start schools like hers throughout the country. She told The 74 the effort has so far supported teams of hopeful school founders from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Nevada.
Parents of young autistic children and autistic adults often disagree about ABA. Told by their pediatrician or the person who diagnosed their child as autistic that they have a narrow window in which to intervene, families fight to get the therapy. Adults who have experienced it, however, report lasting trauma and have lobbied for research — much of it now at risk of being defunded by Kennedy — into more effective and humane alternatives.
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List of Schools Where Student Visas Have Been Revoked Increases to 46. Arizona State Tops List.
According to WeAreHigherEd.org, there are now 46 schools where student visas have been revoked. Arizona State tops the list at 50, followed by the University of Wisconsin-Madision (13), UC Davis (12), Rutgers (12), and Johns Hopkins (12) . The website includes profiles of a number of those students who have been detained. If you know of someone who has been abducted, you can report it here.
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HEDx Podcast: ‘Never waste a crisis’: CIO of Arizona State University – Episode 159
Arizona State University (ASU) chief information officer Lev Gonick and Dave Rosowsky, senior advisor to the president of ASU, both believe universities can thrive in the age of AI by actively shaping how the technology is integrated into higher education.
In this podcast, they share how ASU fosters innovation through bold leadership, a culture of rapid experimentation, and partnerships with over 300 tech companies.
Get a sneak peek into the lessons they’ll be sharing at HEDx’s April conference in Melbourne, which will offer insights into how universities can “do the work to change the model” and embrace the transformative potential of AI.
Read more:
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Arizona Republicans Want Chaplains to be in Public Schools – The 74
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Republican politicians who accuse public school teachers of indoctrinating students with a “woke agenda” are pushing to bring religious chaplains into the same schools to provide counseling to students.
“I think Jesus is a lot better than a psychologist,” Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, said during a March 11 meeting of the Arizona House of Representatives’ Education Committee.
Marshall said that he’s been a chaplain who provides counseling for 26 years.
Senate Bill 1269, sponsored by Flagstaff Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, was modeled after similar legislation passed in recent years in Texas and Florida.
The proposal would give school districts the option of allowing volunteer religious chaplains to provide counseling and programs to public school students. Districts that decide to allow chaplains would be required to provide to parents a list of the volunteer chaplains at each school and their religious affiliation, and parents would be required to give permission for their child to receive support from a chaplain.
Despite ample concerns that the proposal violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and that it would open up schools to legal liability for any bad mental health advice a chaplain might provide, the bill has already passed through the Senate on a party-line vote. The House Education Committee also approved it along party lines.
Rogers told the Education Committee that the existence of any requirement for the separation of church and state in U.S. law “was a myth,” adding that she sees no harm in bringing religion into public schools.
Rogers, a far-right extremist, has embraced white nationalism, and in 2022 spoke at a white nationalist conference, calling the attendees “patriots” and advocating for the murder of her political enemies.
She has also said she is “honored” to be endorsed by a prominent antisemitic Christian nationalist and regularly trafficks in antisemitic tropes. And Rogers has advocated racist theories, appeared on antisemitic news programs and aligned herself with violent anti-government extremists.
Democrats on the committee raised the alarm that Rogers’ bill would violate the Establishment Clause by allowing chaplains with religious affiliations to counsel students, while not providing the same kinds of services to students who don’t follow a religion or who follow a less-common religion with no chaplains available to the school.
An amendment to the bill, proposed by committee Chairman Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican, requires that the chaplains be authorized to conduct religious activities by a religious group that believes in a supernatural being. The amendment would also allow a volunteer chaplain to be denied from the list if the school’s principal believes their counsel would be contrary to the school’s teachings.
Both of these changes would allow districts to exclude chaplains from The Satanic Temple of Arizona, a group that doesn’t believe in a higher power but promotes empathy and has chapters across the country that challenge the intertwining of Christianity and government.
Oliver Spires, a minister with The Satanic Temple of Arizona, voiced his opposition to Rogers’ bill during a Feb. 5 Senate Education Committee meeting.
The legislation, Spires said, would disproportionately impact students from minority religions who see Christian chaplains providing support to their peers while no chaplains representing their religion are available.
“If a district listed a Satanist on their chaplain list, would they have your support?” he asked the committee members.
Gress’s amendment would preclude that.
Gaelle Esposito, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told committee members on Tuesday that school counselors are required to undergo specialized training to prepare them to help students — requirements that religious chaplains wouldn’t have to meet, even though they’d be providing similar services.
“They will simply not be equipped to support students dealing with serious matters like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm or suicidal ideation,” Esposito said. “Religious training is not a substitute for academic and professional training in counseling, health care or mental health… Even with the best intentions, chaplains may provide inappropriate responses or interventions that could harm students.”
But as Democrats on the House Education Committee argued that Arizona should provide more funding for trained counselors and social workers to help students with mental health issues, the Republicans on the panel said that students are actually struggling with mental health issues because they don’t have enough religion in their lives.
“I’ve heard that there is a mental health crisis afflicting kids,” Gress, a former school board member, said. “Now, I don’t necessarily think in many of these cases that something is medically wrong with these kids. I think, perhaps, there is a spiritual deficit that needs to be addressed.”
Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, said he’s been frustrated by the federal courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment to require the separation of church and state, claiming it has made the government hostile to religion instead of protecting it.
“I heard comments here today that this is going to harm kids — harm kids by being exposed to religion? That is absolutely the opposite of what is happening here today in our society,” Olson said. “We have become a secular society, and that is damaging our society. We need to have opportunities for people to look to a higher power, and what better way than what is described here in this bill?”
Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, of Tucson, called SB1269 “outrageous” and “incredibly inappropriate.”
And Rep. Stephanie Simacek, of Phoenix, pointed out that the courts have repeatedly ruled against allowing religious leaders to be invited to share their faith with public school students. She described Rogers’ bill as indoctrination that gives preferential treatment to students who have religious beliefs over those who don’t
“No one is saying that you may not go and celebrate your God, however you see fit,” Simacek, a former teacher and school board member, said. “But this is not the place, in public education, where our students go to learn math, reading and writing and history.”
Florida’s school chaplain law, which went into effect last July and is similar to Rogers’ proposal, has received ample pushback from First Amendment advocacy groups, as well as some church groups who said that allowing untrained chaplains to provide mental health support to students would have unintended negative consequences.
The option to bring chaplains into schools in Florida has not been particularly popular, with several large school districts deciding not to implement a program allowing them.
Proposed legislation similar to SB 1269 has been introduced in red states across the country this year, including in Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Montana and North Dakota.
The bill will next be considered by the full House of Representatives. If it passes the chamber, it will return to the Senate for a final vote before heading to Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
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Arizona bill to cut off state funding over college DEI courses gains traction
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- An Arizona bill that would cut all state funding for public colleges offering classroom instruction related to diversity, equity and inclusion cleared a key legislative hurdle Thursday. State Senate lawmakers advanced the bill in a preliminary vote, and a final Senate vote on the measure could come as soon as Monday.
- If enacted, the legislation would prohibit faculty at the state’s public universities and community colleges from relating “contemporary American society” to a wide range of social and economic topics, including whiteness, antiracism, unconscious bias and gender-based equity.
- It would also ban colleges from teaching that racially neutral or color-blind policies or institutions “perpetuate oppression, injustice, race-based privilege, including white supremacy and white privilege, or inequity.”
Dive Insight:
State Sen. David Farnsworth introduced the bill earlier this month, saying in a recent press release that he was motivated to do so after taking a class at a nearby community college.
“The course provided by the local community college represents the very ideology that is dividing America, teaching students to view white American men through a lens of privilege and oppression,” he said.
Farnsworth further described education about gender fluidity as “indoctrination” and said his proposal puts “students’ academic futures over political agendas.”
If the bill is enacted, faculty would not be allowed to “relate contemporary American society to”:
- Critical theory.
- Whiteness.
- Systemic racism.
- Institutional racism.
- Antiracism.
- Microaggressions.
- Systemic bias.
- Implicit bias.
- Unconscious bias.
- Intersectionality.
- Gender identity.
- Social justice.
- Cultural competence.
- Allyship.
- Race-based reparations.
- Race-based privilege.
- Race-based diversity.
- Gender-based diversity.
- Race-based equity.
- Gender-based equity.
- Race-based inclusion.
- Gender-based inclusion.
The bill would allow colleges to teach about subjects related to racial hatred or race-based discrimination, like slavery and Japanese-American internment in World War II — but only if instructors do not include any of the above subjects.
The proposal faces an uncertain fate, as control of Arizona’s executive and legislative branches is split between parties, with a Democratic governor but Republican control of the House and Senate.
Despite growing more conservative through the 2024 election, the Republican party doesn’t have a veto-proof supermajority. And Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has voiced support for and spearheaded DEI initiatives, is unlikely to sign the bill.
Even so, the bill threatens large pools of funding for Arizona’s higher education institutions, especially its three public universities.
Arizona’s public four-year institutions receive 74% of their funding from state support, according to a 2024 report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
For example, the University of Arizona’s main campus got almost $303 million in state general funds in fiscal 2024.
Farnsworth’s bill comes as Arizona colleges are already facing two powerful headwinds — a $96.9 million reduction in overall state funding for fiscal year 2025 and a wave of federal DEI restrictions.
Since taking office Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has signed executive orders attempting to eliminate DEI in higher education and elsewhere, though a court order recently blocked major portions of two of those orders. And the U.S. Department of Education recently issued guidance giving colleges until the end of February to cut all DEI or risk losing federal funding.
The University of Arizona recently took down the webpage for its Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The flagship also removed references to “diversity” and “inclusion” from its land acknowledgement — a statement recognizing the Indigenous tribal land the campus sits on — though the original version remains available on at least one department webpage.
Protesters on the University of Arizona’s main campus called on the institution’s leaders Thursday to continue its DEI initiatives.
As of Thursday evening, almost 2,500 University of Arizona students, employees, affiliates and others signed a letter calling for the institution to reverse the changes it made to its web presence.
“We view your actions as preemptive and harmful over-compliance,” the letter reads, referencing the university’s response to the Education Department’s guidance and Trump’s executive orders. “Faculty, staff, and students should not have to fear political retaliation for upholding academic freedom, engaging in free speech, or advocating for their rights.”
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Univ. of Arizona Global Campus faculty respond to professor
In a recent article, “Dear Prospective UAGC Students: Stay Away,” a professor from the University of Arizona discourages students from attending the University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC). Unfortunately, this article was based on the author’s perspective rather than on facts and thus lacked the academic rigor of factual data from credible sources. This opinion piece was a collection of baseless assumptions, completely overlooking the true mission of UAGC, its faculty, and the diverse students we proudly serve. Frankly, the article has no merit.
There is power in knowledge and truth. As such, the article could have accurately depicted the realities of UAGC instead of relying on inaccurate critiques about educational quality, enrollment numbers, adjunct faculty, and alleged student dissatisfaction. To set the record straight, UAGC is committed to providing online higher education for non-traditional students, including working adults, military personnel, parents, and underserved communities. Our students juggle countless responsibilities, and UAGC offers the flexibility and support they need. UAGC is vital in making higher education accessible to those who need it most, breaking barriers that traditional institutions often ignore.
Furthermore, UAGC is unwavering in its commitment to supporting students, staff, and faculty, ensuring consistent educational quality and professional growth. As we continue to evolve, we focus on transparent evolution and collaboration, learning from past oversights to create an environment where our students can improve employment opportunities. Our pursuit of high-quality education is not a destination but an ongoing journey to which UAGC is deeply committed. Like any reputable university, we conduct regular course and program reviews, embrace continuous improvement, and acknowledge areas for development as a perpetual process. This commitment to educational quality is a cornerstone of our institution, ensuring our students receive the best education possible and can be confident in our dedication to their success.
The UAGC faculty, the backbone of our institution, is growing increasingly weary of misleading and disparaging remarks against the university and the faculty. It is time to move forward constructively and collegially. In the name of higher education, we implore you to stop defaming our university, staff, faculty, and students. To that end, we welcome meeting and educating any skeptical faculty or staff on our university’s mission and approach to serving non-traditional adult learners. Above all, we’re eager to clear any misconceptions by providing accurate data, helping to ensure that your words align more closely with the truth moving forward.
As we look to the future (Dr. Cabrera), the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed the unprecedented G.I. Bill into legislation, stated, “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor” (Roosevelt, n.d.).”
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How a new Arizona school will use AI to teach students in 2-hour models (ABC 15 Arizona)
