For 12 hours at Arizona State University, a sold-out crowd of 3,000 people gave a group of famous scientists a pop-star welcome, cheering their remarks and lining up for autographs after a day full of discussion about black holes, string theory, and evolutionary biology. At a time when program cuts and faculty layoffs dominate the headlines of local and national newspapers, and educators are bemoaning the state of science education, the Origins Symposium held here during the first week in April provided an expansive start to an ambitious university-wide project. The goal is to bring together scholars from the sciences, the social sciences, engineering, law, and the humanities to study the origins of just about everything, and support expanded research, education, and outreach. The Origins Initiative, as the project is called, "is designed to ask some of the deepest questions that people have ever asked," said Lawrence M. Krauss, director of the project, and a professor in Arizona State's School of Earth and Space Exploration. The program has also prompted questions about the university's ability to sustain it during an economic slump. The ambitious plan includes hiring five to 10 key faculty members over the next five years, and adding an equal number of internationally known visiting professors who would come for a couple of months at a time. The program will be mostly privately supported.