In the Spotlight: Nov. 15, 2019

Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs

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  • The High Country Conference Center has been named winner of the 2019 Gold Stella Award for Best Conference Center in the Southwest. This makes the facility a back-to-back winner. The Stella Awards were established in 2017 by the Northstar Meetings Group to recognize hotels, convention centers, conference centers, cruise lines and meeting organizers for their consistent quality service and innovation.
  • W. A. Franke College of Business accounting senior lecturer Shirley Navarro was recognized by Delta Sigma Pi as the Desert Mountain Region Chapter Advisor of the Year. Navarro is well-liked by both her peers and students within the NAU community. She has been teaching at the university since 2012.
  • Juanita Heredia, Spanish professor in the Department of Global Languages and Cultures, was invited to participate in a presentation and conversation about the award-winning book “The Aztlán Mexican Studies Reader.” Heredia was a contributor to the text edited by UCLA professor Héctor Calderón. Her chapter examines the films of legendary Mexican actor Pedro Infante and the effects of gender and race on a group of feminist spectators in the U.S. in a transnational historical context.
  • Cross country director Michael Smith has been named the Big Sky Conference 2019 Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year. He has received this award 12 times throughout his career; this is his third year in a row to receive it. Smith and his staff led the Lumberjacks to a sweep of the Big Sky Conference Championships last week in Colorado. The team is preparing for the NCAA Division I Mountain Regionals in Utah on Nov. 15.
  • English Professor Sherwin Bitsui is the November editor for the Academy of American Poets. Each year, the organization invites 12 guest editors to curate a month of poems. Bitsui selected poems from poets he admires and respects and wants to give the 500,000-person subscriber base a glimpse of the diversity of American poetry, including poems in Indigenous languages.