Tallie Valverde

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.

• The Hispanic Student Convocation Committee is seeking nominations to recognize three outstanding Latino graduating seniors and one outstanding graduate student. Please return completed award/nomination forms for the following to pablo@nau.edu by 5 p.m. April 19.
  • Cesar Chavez Award: Recognizes students with strong leadership skills, a demonstrated care and concern for fellow students and a history of involvement on behalf of the Hispanic community.
  • Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Award: Recognizes students with demonstrated leadership abilities, strong attachments to their cultural heritage and demonstrated advocacy regarding women’s rights.
  • Gabriela Mistral Award: Recognizes students with a strong commitment to education and promoting multicultural understanding.
  • Outstanding Hispanic Graduate Student: Recognizes a graduate student that serves as a positive role model for undergraduate colleagues; a student with strong leadership skills, a demonstrated care and concern for fellow students and a history of involvement on behalf of the Hispanic community.
• Freshman Adrianna Sosnowska was named the Big Sky Women’s Tennis Player of the Week. This is the first time Sosnowska has won the award in her career as well as the first time this season the conference has selected a league freshman to receive it. Following an unbeaten 4-for-4 performance against Portland State and UTEP, Sosnowski improved her singles record to 10-4 and doubles record to 9-6.
• Tennis player Chiara Tomasetti moved back into the Oracle/ITA Division I Women’s Rankings, coming in at No. 118 in the national rankings released by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. Tomasetti leads the Big Sky Conference in No. 1 singles wins and her 14 dual-match victories rank second overall in the league. She is the only conference player nationally ranked in either singles or doubles.
• A number of students were honored at the Golden Eagle Awards, which recognize the university’s top student-athletes for significant contributions in the classroom and athletics. Student-athletes with a 3.0 GPA or better are eligible for the award. A full list of recipients can be found on the athletics web page.
  • Hanneke Lodewijks of the women’s tennis team was named top Female Scholar-Athlete with a 4.0 GPA in exercise science and one of the most decorated careers in women’s tennis program history; her doubles win percentage is third all-time and her singles wins place her second all-time.
  • Kyle Havriliak, a member of cross country/track & field teams, was named top Male Scholar-Athlete with a 3.75 GPA in criminology and criminal justice. Havriliak has been a member of NCAA National Cross Country Championship teams in 2016-18 and set a new personal best in the 3000-meter run this season.
  • Noteworthy teams producing recipients: football team (35); women’s cross country and track & field (28); soccer (27); swimming and diving (26); men’s cross country and track & field (21); women’s basketball (14 of 15); volleyball (14 of 16); golf (6 of 7); women’s tennis (6 of 8).
• Students in the German Club and ENG 411C Capstone course collaborated on an act of support after recent vandalism at the Jewish Community Center. More than 50 handmade aluminum foil and paper hearts were created with messages of kindness written in German, Hebrew and English. The hearts were placed at the site of the Chabad to demonstrate that NAU stands with the Flagstaff community in representing diversity and inclusivity.
• A number of students, along with some faculty, in the English Department’s applied linguistics program represented the university at three spring conferences:
  • Doctoral students Panjanit Chaipuapae and Shi Chen and professor Soo Jung Youn presented at the Language Testing Research Colloquium.
  • Doctoral students Larissa Goulart, Brett Hashimoto, Daniel Keller, Mark McAndrews, Jihye Shin, Tyler True and Katherine Yaw and professors Youn, Bill Crawford, Vedran Dronjic, Jesse Egbert, Okim Kang, Luke Plonsky, Meghan Moran, Fredricka Stoller and Jersus Colmenares (global languages and cultures) presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference.
  • Master’s student Oguzhan Tekin and professors Stoller, Randi Reppen and Bill Grabe presented at the international TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) convention.

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.

• Ecoss director Bruce Hungate, Regent’s Professor of Biological Sciences, was named a 2019 fellow by the Ecological Society of America. Hungate was selected for his understanding of how soil nutrients regulate terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks to climate change and for developing new tools that fuse the molecular revolution in microbial ecology with quantitative ecological insights using stable isotopes, metabolic flux analysis and ecological theory. Elected for life, fellows of the ESA are those who have made outstanding contributions to a range of fields that advance ecological knowledge in academics, government, nonprofit organizations and the broader society.
• The February issue of Northern Arizona Mountain Living Magazine featured a profile on School of Communication lecturer Annette McGivney. The article includes McGivney discussing the Healing Lands Project and the Grand Canyon National Park Centennial.
• Creative media and film professor Kurt Lancaster published “Basic Cinematography: A Creative Guide to Visual Storytelling.” The book, supported through a Scholarly and Creative Activity Award from the Office for the Vice President for Research, features original cover and interior designs by Lancaster and a foreword by Netflix cinematographer Manual Billeter.
• Mechanical engineering assistant professor Amir Arzani, along with graduate student Symon Reza, published “A critical comparison of different residence time measures in aneurysms” in the Journal of Biomechanics. The paper focuses on a study using image-based computational models of blood flow to compare methods of calculating residence time, an important factor of diseased arterial flows.
• English department instructor Stacy Murison is the first writer in residence for the Flagstaff City-Coconino County Public Library. The position will include providing free services and events for the community such as assistance writing resumes and grants and creative writing workshops.
• School of Music professor James Leve was awarded an American Council of Learned Society Fellowship worth $70,000 for the project “Disability Musical Theater: Dramaturgy, Performance, Accommodation, and Access.” The project will focus on how people with disabilities experience theater and how musical theater shapes how society views disability. The project’s goal is to make mainstream musical theater portray more accurate and inclusive representations of disabilities that would more traditionally be seen in non-commercial theater productions.
• TheBestSchools.org featured Northern Arizona University on its 2019 list of The Best Online Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Education Degree Programs. All accredited online degree programs in the country were reviewed before the top 40 were selected. Highlights of NAU’s program include small class sizes with student-to-faculty ratio of 17-to-1, options for distance learners between traditional and competency-based online learning and an online learning environment with outstanding student support for technical issues, tutoring and other resources.