Tallie Valverde

Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs

Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?

E-mail your announcements to Inside@nau.edu, or use our online submission form.

• The KNAU news team won three regional Edward R. Murrow Awards honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. The team won Best News Series for “Eats and Beats.” Individual awards were given to the following:
  • Melissa Sevigny, best writing: “Can Beer Save the Verde River?”
  • Aaron Granillo, best sports reporting: “Gear Girls”
• English professor Laura Gray-Rosendale was awarded a silver medal in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Education (Commentary/Theory) category for “Getting Personal: Teaching Personal Writing in the Digital Age.” The book explores how to use personal writing most effectively in various digital contexts.
• NASA selected professor Scott Goetz of the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems to continue in his role as science team lead for the ABoVE (Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment) project for at least five more years. In this role, Goetz leads 680 science team members representing institutions from the U.S., Canada, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and the UK who are involved in more than 100 projects studying the vulnerability and resilience of ecosystems and society to the changing environment.
• A number of academic advisers presented at the Region 9 & 10 National Academic Advising Association Conference in Hawaii . The annual conference promotes and supports quality academic advising in institutions of high education to enhance educational development of students.
  • Sarah Friedmann and Kelly Weston presented “But I’ve always wanted to be a Doctor! Challenging First Year Exploratory Students to Go Beyond Their Preconceived Ideas About the Health Professions.” The paper focused on their experience teaching a course geared toward exploratory students interested in health care and guiding them through the process of finding a major that fits their academic and career goals.
  • Precilla Cox and Joseph Wright presented “Empowering Students Through the Power of the Internet,” which provided an overview of the creation of enrollment tutorial videos and the use of social media as a platform to communicate with students.
• Northern Arizona University was included in a number of rankings:
  • Social Work Degree Guide named NAU one of the 15 Best Online Bachelor’s Degrees in Public Health for 2019. Ranking factors included student satisfaction, affordability, Alumni salaries, SAT scores and retention rates.
  • College Choice named NAU as a university where students can earn one of the Best Education Degrees. Factors included program affordability, quality, reputation and value as well as student satisfaction.
  • Animation Career Review ranked NAU No. 2 on its list of Top Graphic Design School Programs in Arizona. More than 700 schools were considered for academic reputation, admission selectivity, depth and breadth of program and value.
• A number of faculty in the Physics and Astronomy Department had significant achievements recently:
  • Cristina Thomas was quoted in an article published in The Atlantic about the NASA mission to the asteroid Bennu.
  • David Trilling and Andrew McNeill were co-authors on the paper “Taxonomic Study of Asteroid Families from KMTNet-SAAO Multi-band Photometry.” The study focuses on the photometry of more than 2000 Main-belt asteroids.
  • Trilling also co-authored “A Software Roadmap for Solar System Science with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope” and “LSST: From Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products.”
  • Tyler Robinson co-authored “Earthshine as an Illumination Source at the Moon.” The paper explores how earthshine may allow exploration of new areas of the moon that don’t receive solar illumination.
  • Chad Trujillo co-authored “A New High Perihelion Trans-Plutonian Inner Oort Cloud Object: 2015 TG387,” published in The Astronomical Journal.

Kudos to these students

Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?

E-mail your announcements to Inside@nau.edu, or use our online submission form.

• A number of Supplemental Instruction (SI) leaders were recognized recently:
  • Madison Clark, Martha Hawthorne, Sarah Kline, Holly Macholl, Erica Sanders, Jack Sullivan and Bryant Tran earned NAU Spring 2019 Excellence in Leadership Awards.
  • Mitchell Feldman was selected by his SI peers to receive the Excellence in Peer Leadership award.
  • David John, lecturer in biology, won the SI Faculty Partner Excellence in Leadership award.
• Parks and Recreation Management internship student Joseph Nagle was featured in an Arizona Daily Sun article on April 7. The story focused on Nagle’s task of mapping the signs, benches, trash cans, bollards and fences that are part of the Flagstaff Urban Trail System.
• Kellen Brandel and Katherin Vargas Henao, master’s students studying Spanish, and Ellie Broadman, a doctoral student in Earth sciences and environmental sustainability, won a Graduate Teaching Assistant Award from a pool of almost 20 applicants. The Graduate College and NAU Faculty Professional Development announced the winners at an awards ceremony on Tuesday.
• A number of students received awards from the American Society for Microbiology at the Arizona/Southern Nevada regional ASM conference. This year’s conference had 35 presentations and 52 posters.
  • Shelby Hutton won for Undergraduate Poster. Karisma Kocos and Nikola Williams were runners-up in this category.
  • Oliver Kask was a runner-up in the Undergraduate Talk category.
  • David Panisello was a runner-up in the Graduate Poster category.
  • Kim Celona was a runner-up in the Graduate Talk category.
  • Professor Bridget Barker won a Peggy Cotter Travel Award.
• Tennis player Tim Handel moved up to the No. 72 nationally ranked singles player in the Oracle/ITA Division I Men’s Rankings. This is his highest ranking of the season. Handel also was ranked No. 80 in the country. Handel leads the Lumberjacks and the Big Sky Conference with 20 wins this season.
• Members of the women’s golf team won Big Sky honors recently:
  • Aleksandra Chekalina and Ashley Croft were named to the 2019 Big Sky Third Team All-Conference.
  • Elle Kocourkova and Lexi Keene were placed on the Honorable Mention team.
• Students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy had significant achievements recently:
  • Doctoral student Lori Glaspie received an Honorable Mention in the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship competition.
  • Justin Castaneda, Mike Ortiz, Edgar Villalpando and Benjamin Pieczynski received an Honorable Mention at the 2019 Posters on the Hill event for their project “Simulating Dark Matter Deficient Galaxies.”
  • Visiting doctoral student Samuel Navarro-Meza had his first lead-authored paper, “First Results from the rapid-response spectrophotometric characterization of Near-Earth Objects,” published. The study focuses on rapid response observations of small Near-Earth Objects.
  • Graduate student Sarah Lamm spoke at back-to-back conferences: The Joint Regional Geological Society of America and Scicomm 2019. At Scicomm, Lamm won Best Sci Comm Prop for her string rover display that demonstrates the full size of the Curiosity Rover. Lamm also was put on The Mars Generation’s list of 24 Under 24 Leaders and Innovators in STEAM and Space Award winners, which recognizes young people from throughout the world making contributions to the STEAM fields and bringing science to the public.
• Seventeen students completed internships through the NAU/NASA Space Grant Undergraduate Research Internship program. The students were mentored by NAU faculty, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and Lowell Observatory and the editor of the Arizona Daily Sun. They presented their results at the Arizona Space Grant Consortium’s 28^th Statewide Symposium, where NAU faculty members Anita Antoninka, Lisa Chien and Inès Montaño moderated. Michael Smith, Faith Walker, Michael Shafer, Mark Loeffler, Rebecca Best, Amir Arzani, Ryan Porter, Amy Whipple, Nancy Riggs, Egdar Civitello, Atoninka and Montaño served as program mentors.
  • Solvay Blomquist: “Analysis of Meteors and their Light Curves.”
  • Gabriel Carrillo: “Creating Topographic Maps of Mars using a Software Pipeline.”
  • Mildred Diaz: “The Effects of Forest Management Practices and Feedbacks between Plants and Soil Organisms.”
  • Trae Doty: “Quantifying Coastal Erosion along the Lost Coast, California.”
  • Samantha Hershauer: “Moose on the Loose.”
  • Timothy Johnson: “Science Writing at the Arizona Daily Sun.”
  • Ryan Kelly: “Cloud Finder: Automated Cloud Identification for Robotic Telescopes.”
  • Collin Krawczyk: “Attitude Measurements based on Direct Solar Irradiance Vector.”
  • Adrian Luna: “Quantum Engineering following Nature’s Lead: Using Genetic Algorithms to Develop Nitride Optoelectronic Nanodevices.”
  • Mitchell Magnuson: “Space Weathering Experiments as they Relate to Carbonaceous Asteroids.”
  • Lauren Mason-Sarantopulos: “Variation in Temperature Tolerance in Native and Introduced Amphipods of Northern Arizona, Hyallela Azteca Gammarus Lacustris.”
  • Connor Moreno: “A Novel Method to Study Heat Transfer Enhancement and Cooling.”
  • Sarah Nolt-Caraway: “Mapping Crustal Deformation using Seismic Anisotropy in Ruby Mountains, Nevada.”
  • Briana Palmiero: “Evaluation of Plant Moisture Stress and Overall Drought Tolerance in Relationship to Climate Change in Southwestern White Pine (Pinus Strobiformis).”
  • Benjamin Pieczynski: “The Formation of Spiral Structures in the Flocculent Galaxy M83.”
  • Ryan Shiner: “Sproul Crater: An Eruption History.”
  • Alyssa Smith: “Synthesis of Copper(I) Oxide Nanoparticles.”