In the Spotlight: May 9, 2019

Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs

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  • Chief information officer and vice president of IT Steven Burrell wrote an article for Ed Tech magazine. “To Optimize Campus IT, Start by Building a Better Team Culture” highlights the process that Northern Arizona University’s IT program went through to simplify systems, provide faster response times, build a team that is service-focused and become a proactive IT culture.
  • Professor in the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management Allen Reich, one of 23 voting faculty on the Conference for Food Protection (CFP), authored the reports to consolidate efforts to justify a name change to Congress for Food Protection and the general policy guidelines for preparing future memorandums of understanding. The CFP is the organizing body that coordinates the food protection efforts of the USDA, FDA, CDC, state and local health inspectors and members of academia.
  • Professor of biological sciences and Ecoss researcher Ted Schuur co-authored an article published in Nature recently. “Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release” focuses on how large swaths of permafrost in the Arctic are collapsing and leading to abrupt thaw, a phenomenon and feedback current climate models haven’t accounted for. The authors call for better data gathering, support of global monitoring sites, incorporation into reports for policymakers and the development of holistic models.
  • Ecoss and SICCS postdoctoral researcher Bijan Seyednasrollah and Ecoss/SICCS professor Andrew Richardson have launched xROI, an interactive open-source toolkit that facilitates the process of time series extraction and improves the quality of the final data.
  • Carly Banks, media relations officer for NAU Communications, is one of four 2019 CASE SimpsonScarborough Scholars. Banks will be provided a full scholarship to attend a weeklong institute in Boston in August. She will represent NAU along with hundreds of higher education communications and marketing professionals from throughout the world.
Cheyenne Jarrette