David Young glanced at the directions as he assembled a plastic floor fan he had bought at Wal-Mart.

David Young speaks with other Arizona State University officials outside of the future Lake Havasu City campus. Jackie Leatherman/News-Herald Photo

The practically vacant administration building at what will become Arizona State University’s campus in Lake Havasu City was a little stuffy, he said.

ASU’s senior vice president of academic affairs was sitting in a chair in the barebones conference room. The building used to be administrative offices for one of the two middle schools in the city.

There was a telephone on the table, a basic layout of campus buildings pinned to a bulletin board and an upside down Diet Coke can in the sink.

And soon there would be a fan.

“Hopefully this thing doesn’t fall apart,” he said, trying to screw on one of the plastic parts. “This doesn’t look very secure.”

He glanced at the directions again.

And then he talked about how he had planned to retire until officials, residents and business owners across Lake Havasu City grabbed the attention of one of the nation’s largest public universities.

David A. Young

“I get bored,” he said. “I’ve never stayed anywhere for very long. I’ve done things for five years and I get kind of bored and it’s time to do something else.”

But ASU put a stop to Young’s boredom. He’s been there nearly a decade — the longest he’s stayed put throughout his higher education career, he said.

And it’s all because he “kept getting more things to do that were different.”

Young’s resume isn’t short. He has a doctorate in botany from the Claremont Graduate University-Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in biology from California State University-Fullerton, according to his profile on the ASU website.

He was the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the University of Oklahoma. He was also Provost at Colorado State University, Director of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and a tenured faculty member in botany at Cornell University, where he also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School.

And that’s just leading up to ASU.

In the past decade, Young lead the university’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — typically the largest college within universities.

While he led the college, he created eight new schools within it and 20 new or refocused research centers, the website states. He also worked on a partnership with the University of Arizona and ASU for a College of Medicine and assisted with the academic programs for the Mayo Medical School.

After Young’s accomplishments, it may seem like creating ASU’s first small campus outside of the Phoenix-metropolitan area would be a walk in the park.

But for Young, Lake Havasu City may hold a special place in his career.

He finally gets to implement an educational idea he’s been kicking around in his head for more than a decade.

Sustainable Cultures

Young is adamant that the small class of Lake Havasu City students — between an expected 100 to 200 the first year — will know why each class they must take is relevant to today’s world.

But not only that, ASU at Lake Havasu students will learn how to give back to their community through research.

“Students are actually engaged in the community in their learning,” Young said. “What we hope to have here, every student would do some kind of project. The more we can embed those projects into the community, instead of students sitting in a classroom, they are out doing a project where they are applying what they’ve learned in their studies in real-world situations.”

Young envisions creating a private, liberal arts college atmosphere at the Lake Havasu City campus. Those colleges typically have smaller classes with “intense faculty interactions.” Large universities struggling to create that intimate academic setting typically create honors programs to develop the unique teacher-student relationships, he said.

But at ASU at Lake Havasu, every student — not just honor students — will experience that intimate design.

“That’s an opportunity to do something like that here that frankly the students wouldn’t get many places in Arizona … if you take the concept of the honors college and translate it to non-honors students,” he said. “How can we provide a similar kind of engagement? Because we are going to be small we can implement the program in a different way.”

Part of that different way is by Young crafting classes under one umbrella theme: sustainable cultures, he said.

Young said he started thinking about how cities sustain themselves more than a decade ago by observing how a dilapidating school system drove residents out of a city.

Throughout history, the rise and fall of cultures can often be linked to the environment, particularly water supplies, he said — a study that would be relevant to this region.

Cultures’ sustainability is broad enough to incorporate into all of the initial campus’s majors: biology, business, communication and psychology, he said.

College students typically take general education classes to learn “foundational skills” before moving into focused classes within their major, Young explained. Students first learn written and oral communication, critical-thinking and information literacy skills within general education classes such as basic English composition and history, he said.

At ASU at Lake Havasu, the general education classes would be built around the sustainable cultures theme. For example, students from all majors may attend the same lecture for one class, but then separate into groups by their majors and learn specifically how the lessons impact their field of study. All the while, linking each of the lessons back to the sustainable cultures theme.

“How do we leverage this place to design programs that are relevant to all students who happen to come here?” he said. “This place is different. It’s not Flagstaff. It’s not Tucson. It’s not Phoenix. It’s not Tempe. So I’m trying to figure (that) out.”

Once students near the completion of their degree, there’s a good chance they’ll have to complete a community project using research in their field of study to graduate, he said.

“This is a design, build, redesign and build as we go,” Young said.

The beginnings of ASU at Lake Havasu

Young knows one route to get to the former Daytona Middle School campus at 98 Swanson Plaza. He heads straight up Swanson Avenue in his 2006 maroon Toyota Tundra and forgets about the construction project blocking his path to the future ASU campus.

Young said he travels from Phoenix to Lake Havasu City every other week and spends about three days, staying nights at the London Bridge Resort. But during his last visit he started looking at condos. He said it just made more sense to be able to keep belongings in one place. Not to mention his visits will slowly become more frequent and longer.

Young will be the one heading the new campus during at least its first year, he said.

While the Havasu Foundation for Higher Education continues fundraising to start renovating the campus, Young is pulling together potential faculty and staff, designing the skeleton for the academic programs and gearing up for student recruitment.

During his most recent visit, he spent Tuesday talking to the superintendent of the Western Arizona Vocational Education district. Voters approved a tax in 2008 to fund the district that is charged with bolstering career and technical education classes in high schools throughout Mohave and La Paz counties. Young also met with Mohave Community College President Michael Kearns. They’re all collaborating to ensure the educational pathways compliment each other. Then he bought a couple of fans at Wal-Mart, grabbed a hamburger at London Bridge Resort and called it a night.

He was up at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and showed up to the HFHE’s 7 a.m. monthly meeting with a large Diet Coke from McDonald’s. The zero-calorie soda is how Young jumpstarts his day, he said.

Then he was off to the ASU administration building to meet with a potential student, then a possible faculty member. He showed ASU officials around the campus for a few minutes before heading off to speak to The Shops at Lake Havasu about fundraising.

He then had a 2 p.m. appointment with Mohave Mental Health to figure out how they can work together for the campus’s psychology program. Then he had appointments with residents who are interested in teaching and a business owner inquiring about selling food on the campus. He was supposed to wrap up his day by 6 p.m.

“Then I’ll quit, go back to the hotel and have a beer,” he said.

On Thursday, he was looking at condos, meeting with a local realtor group and other potential faculty members before heading back to Phoenix.

Young said he responds to every e-mail inquiry about hiring and student interest. He said student recruitment has to begin by August 1 for the campus to be a success.

“We don’t open if we don’t get students,” he said. “I’m feeling pretty good about that though. I’m getting enough inquiries to lead me to believe that we will be okay.”

But he doesn’t see the Lake Havasu City campus growing into a major branch or a research center.

“I guess I would hope the campus would evolve into what would be viewed by the outside world as a high-quality, student-centered institution of higher education that is embedded in the community that produces students who are critical thinkers, problem solvers who know how to work in the real world,” he said. “The identity may evolve over time. Because it is starting from scratch, (the identity would evolve) that would distinguish it from other institutions. Students would want to come here because of the programs.”

Young said he’s stayed at ASU for so long because its president, Michael Crow, allows for change.

“You just don’t see that in many institutions,” he said. “You get bogged down in the politics and bureaucracy of the institution. They don’t want to do anything that upsets their corner of the world and actually affecting change is very difficult. There are constraints at ASU, but they weren’t of the magnitude that I’ve found at other places, particularly if you wanted to be radical.”

But Young insists that he’s not the who’s going one to make this campus happen, he said it’s going to be up to the faculty he brings on board.

Young finished piecing together the fan and plugged it into an outlet; it didn’t work.

“Oh man, it’s hot already,” he said, trying another outlet.

The fan started blowing cool air.

“Some of the things that I’ve done here, I’ve tried elsewhere,” he said. Then he stopped and picked a piece of metal off of the floor, not sure if it should have been installed in the fan.

“What the hell is that?” he said and walked over to the conference table and glanced at the directions.

You may contact the reporter at jleatherman@havasunews.com