In 1996, the Arizona Legislature charged our universities, community colleges, and Board of Regents to collaborate to develop ways for students to seamlessly transfer from community colleges to universities. Meeting the higher education needs of our state was and is a priority of these three bodies. The Academic Program Articulation Steering Committee was formed as the cooperative body to carry out this charge. On behalf of the community colleges and Arizona Board of Regents, it prepares an annual report to the legislature on the progress toward improving articulation and transfer.

In the Arizona University System, research that leads to real innovations translates to technologies and products that improve lives and stimulate the economy. This report provides an in-depth and comprehensive review of Arizona's higher education research enterprise. It is designed to allow the reader to easily locate any single research metric for any of Arizona's three public universities and quickly compare each Arizona university's performance against those of its Board-approved peers.

In the 2009 report entitled "Vision 2020," the Arizona Board of Regents outlined the objective of raising Arizona to the national average of college graduates in the work force and moving Arizona to the status of a large scale center for academic research. This realignment plan outlines how both of these significant goals will be achieved in an era of more modest public investment.

The Arizona Board of Regents presents in this 2020 Vision a framework for the Arizona University System to improve the economic strength of our state and quality of life for Arizonans over the next 12 years. This plan lays out a series of touchstones for this ambition organized around four key themes: Educational Excellence, Research Excellence, Community Engagement and Workforce Impact, and Productivity. This plan builds on a foundation manifested in previous strategic planning efforts of the universities and the Board, including the establishment of a medical college in Phoenix, development of new health professions programs not offered by public institutions in the state, growth in the research enterprise, and increasingly intensive efforts to provide baccalaureate access to all regions of the state.

This contains two reports. The first is by authors from Statistical Research, Inc. that provides background information on the definition and application of the traditional cultural places designation under the National Historic Preservation Act. The second report is from the National Forest Service and expands on the first with examples of how traditional cultural places can be considered as part of land management planning.

This report is one of several from Statistical Research Inc. written to develop the Cultural and Historic Resources Element of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Divided into four parts, the report summarizes available information that reflects the experience of (1) ancient peoples of Southern Arizona; (2) indigenous peoples; (3) non-indigenous peoples of the historical period; and (4) Pima County today.

The TRIF budget provides seed-funding and support for significant research projects at all three universities. The supported research includes projects in bioscience to improve health and projects in sustainability and renewable energy, including water, solar, and forest health. At the UA, TRIF also supports space exploration and optical solutions, while at ASU it supports work with national security systems. TRIF dollars continue to support research critical to the future economic development of the state of Arizona and to a quality educational experience for our students. TRIF supported workforce development projects, especially in Arizona’s high-need areas, including The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix to train more doctors to address the shortage of physicians in Arizona.