In the Spotlight: June 5, 2020
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 Northern Arizona University Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) programs at the Flagstaff and Phoenix Biomedical Campus received a full 10-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE) this spring. The physical therapy program, accredited since its inception, was started in 1978 with the first class graduating in 1980 with baccalaureate degrees. Over the past 41 years, the program has adapted to changes in academia, the profession and health care, and offers master’s and doctoral degrees in physical therapy.
- Joe Collentine, professor of Spanish, presented his work titled, “Corpus research in the acquisition of Spanish as an L2” for the Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics (LAEL) at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He discussed his recent research projects on the acquisition morphosyntactic complexity with corpus linguistic tools.
- Assistant research professor of biological sciences Bradley Butterfield and his colleagues collaborated with the USGS Restoration Assessment and Monitoring Program for the Southwest (RAMPS) to write three articles featured in a special edition of Restoration Ecology: Arid Lands, a journal dedicated to advancing the science and practice of ecological restoration for the benefit of biodiversity, ecosystems and humans. This journal edition is a collection of the most innovative and impactful articles previously published by the journal on arid lands.
- “Beyond traditional ecological restoration on the Colorado Plateau” synthesized past and current restoration activities on the Colorado Plateau—one of the most intensively-studied arid regions in the world—and their effectiveness in achieving management goals. This assessment helps guide new areas of research in arid land restoration and the critical policy and public-private collaborations necessary to achieve positive outcomes.
- In the most extensive regional assessment of public land vegetation treatments to date, “Long-term trends in restoration and associated land treatments in the southwestern United States” identified trends in the type, extent, cost and drivers of land management activities across the western United States. This study helps inform managers and policy makers when planning and carrying out increasingly expensive, wildfire-driven land treatments across the region. First author Stella Copeland was a former NAU postdoc in Butterfield’s lab.
- As the first author on the article titled, “Prestoration: using species in restoration that will persist now and into the future,” Butterfield and his colleagues introduced the idea of “prestoration”—using species in restoration that will persist now and into the future. The case study from the Colorado Plateau demonstrated a new analytical approach to identify new, native species that should be used in restoration to account for climate change impacts, incorporating assisted migration of entire plant communities into restoration projects in quantitative and predictive ways.
- Also featured in Restoration Ecology: Arid Lands were two articles by associate professor of forestry Matthew Bowker.
- “Biological Soil Crust Rehabilitation in Theory and Practice: An Underexploited Opportunity” examines the ecological roles biological soil crusts play in succession models and discusses the practical aspects of rehabilitating them to disturbed ecosystems.
- Bowker coauthored the article titled, “Production of greenhouse-grown biocrust mosses and associated cyanobacteria to rehabilitate dryland soil function,” which determines how to rapidly produce moss species Syntrichia caninervis and ruralis vegetatively in a greenhouse.
In the Spotlight: May 29, 2020
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 Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings released new rankings for three subject areas at Northern Arizona University. NAU was ranked No. 40 for archaeology, No. 29 for Linguistics and No. 82 for materials science.
- NAU staff members won several individual awards at the National Association of College and University Residence Hall meeting. Residence Life assistant director Jamie Lloyd was recognized with a Silver Turtle pin and awarded the Spotlight Regional Advisor of the Year and was re-sworn in for a new term as Regional Advisor.
- Daniel Burton-Rose, lecturer of Chinese history, wrote a reflection titled, “Teaching the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Colorado Plateau” published on Teach311+COVID-19. The article reflects on the changes he made and the experience of teaching his seminar course Medicine in East Asia as the pandemic was rising. Burton-Rose also is an editor on “Asian Medicine,” a multidisciplinary journal that explores historical, anthropological, sociological and philological dimensions of Asian medicine.
- Disabilities resource director Jamie Axelrod received the Ronald E. Blosser Dedicated Service Award from the Association on Higher Education And Disability (AHEAD). The award recognizes his service to AHEAD through teaching, leadership and mentorship by instructing classes and workshops on disability law and engaging people on how to effectively interpret the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Amit Kumar, assistant professor of physical therapy and athletic training, co-authored the article titled “A comparison of three methods in categorizing functional status to predict hospital readmission across post-acute care” published in PLOS ONE. The study compared three methods that categorize functional status to predict 30- and 90-day hospital readmission across inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies.
- Lori Poloni-Staudinger, associate dean in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and professor of politics and international affairs, co-authored the article titled “Linked Fate, #MeToo, and Political Participation,” which has been nominated for the Marian Irish Award. The award recognizes the best paper on gender and politics and is presented at the Southern Political Science Association’s annual meeting.