I’m sharing highlights today regarding Arizona State University’s new Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication campus facility in Downtown Phoenix. I was invited to tour the new building earlier this month with PRSA Phoenix Chapter members.

Kristin Gilger, Assistant Dean, and Marrianne Barrett, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, were our tour guides. Barrett indicated that roughly a third of the School’s students have a PR focus.

The $71 Million, six-story building boasts two state-of-the-art TV studios, a two-story public forum events hall, five working newsrooms supporting TV, print, radio, multimedia, and PR instruction, a theater-style auditorium, and eight additional digital computer labs, among its many features. Arizona PBS Channel Eight (KAET) also broadcasts from the facility.

The surroundings certainly gave me the feeling that ‘new media’ learning opportunities are abound in Downtown Phoenix. The building evokes a modern J-School environment that, and is likely to be considered a cornerstone of the revitalization and development that has been occurring Downtown.

The Cronkite News Service and Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship were two programs featured during the tour. The News Service appropriately leverages the talents of advanced students to produce stories and packages that publications and news stations statewide can pick up to augment their own programming. The Knight Center focuses on digital media product and service innovation and is directed by new media expert and author Dan Gillmor.

Barrett also showed off the PR Lab, noting that in the coming year it will staff a seasoned PR Director who will run the lab as if it were an agency.  This has the makings of a great situational learning environment for students, and an interesting career move for whoever finds their way into the director position.

Want to learn more? The majority of links in this post go to the School’s Web site, which is a comprehensive resource I recommend for anyone considering enrollment or interested in the School’s history.

While the facility first opened on August 25th of this year, a formal dedication is set for November 20th in the building’s First Amendment Forum. Check here for the week-long celebration’s schedule of events.