In the Spotlight: Feb. 22, 2013

Kudos to these faculty, staff and students

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  • NAU President John Haeger will be one of the featured panelists at “Research Universities and the Future of America: Southwestern Regional Workshop to Renew the Partnership for Innovation, Prosperity, and Security.” The workshop, sponsored by the three state universities and Ventana Medical Systems, will be held Monday in Oro Valley, Ariz.
  • Tom Sisk, Olajos-Goslow chair of environmental science and policy, was selected to receive the Grand Canyon Trust’s 2012 John Wesley Powell Award. The award is periodically granted to an exceptional individual who or institution that has accomplished significant conservation for the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau
  • Alexandra Carpino
    Alexandra Carpino presented “Etruscan Faces: From the Symbolic to the Real” at the Parthenon in Nashville, Tenn., this month.

    Alexandra A. Carpino, professor of art history and chair of the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, was selected to participate as the Cinelli Lecturer for the 2012-2013 Lecture Program of the Archaeological Institute of America. The Etruscan Foundation established this lecture in 2002 through an endowment and its focus is Etruscan and Italic Archaeology. Carpino delivered her lecture, “Etruscan Faces: From the Symbolic to the Real,” at the Parthenon in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 5.

  • Susan Marks, professor in the College of Education, recently produced the film Vectors of Autism, which will be screened at the Sedona International Film Festival this month. The 50-minute documentary is about a 57-year-old northern Arizona woman who has autism and has much to say about the influence it has had on her life.

    Marks’ production received the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 2013 Media Award. The documentary will be featured at the International Association of Special Education Conference in Vancouver in July.

  • Amy Vogler, assistant director of NAU’s Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics, was the lead author on a study recently published in the online science journal mBio. “A Decade of Plague in Mahajanga, Madagascar: Insights into the Global Maritime Spread of Pandemic Plague” examines a cluster of human Yersinia pestis cases that struck the seaport city of Mahajanga between 1991 and 1999 after 62 years of no evidence of plague. The full study is available here.

    Additional authors are Paul Keim, NAU Regents’ professor and director of MGGen, Roxanne Nottingham, coordinator at MGGen, Kevin Drees, research associate at MGGen, Stephen M. Beckstrom-Sternberg, associate professor of biological sciences, David Wagner, associate professor of biological sciences, and Genevieve Andersen, undergraduate microbiology major.