In the Spotlight: Oct. 18, 2006

Kudos to these faculty, staff and students

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  • Jean Boreen, an associate dean for the College of Arts and Letters, was elected to the board of directors of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, a special interest group of the National Council of Teachers of English. Boreen has been a member of the assembly for 10 years. The group is comprised of teachers, authors, librarians, publishers, teacher-educators, students and others interested in supporting quality young adult literature.
  • History professor Eugene Cruz-Uribe appeared on the History Channel’s Where Did It Come From? series Oct. 12. Cruz-Uribe was featured on the episode “Ancient Egypt: Iconic Structures,” which examined the construction of Egyptian monuments, such as the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx.
  • Bruce Fox, director of the NAU Honors Program, was the guest speaker at Flastaff’s Coconino High School induction ceremony for the National Honors Society last week. His talk, “Dreams, Risks, and Responsibilities in the Honors Community,” addressed the ideals of the National Honor Society: scholarship, service, leadership and character.
  • Daniel Kraker, a news director with KNAU’s Indian Country News Bureau, was in New York City recently to accept a RTNDA/UNITY Award from the national Radio-Television News Directors Association to honor his outstanding achievements and ongoing commitment to covering the cultural diversity of the communities KNAU serves.
  • J. Judson Wynne, an NAU graduate student and cave research scientist with U.S. Geological Survey’s Southwest Biological Science Center, was recently elected into the Explorers Club as a Research Fellow for his cave research in Belize, Chile and northern Arizona. The Explorers Club honors individuals who combine exploration with scientific inquiry. For more information, www.explorers.org.
  • Several faculty and students from the Department of Geology will be in Philadelphia Oct. 22-25 to present their research at the 118th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. NAU presenters and their topics include:
    • Jason Raucci, M.S. geology graduate, professor Ron Blakey and associate professor Paul Umhoefer—”A New Map of Petrified Forest National Park with Emphasis on Members and Key Beds in the Triassic Chinle Formation”
    • Blakey—”The 450-Million-Year-Long Fragmentation of Gondwana in Time (4D) and Space (3D): A Paleogeographic Pictorial”
    • Michael Zahler, geology undergraduate, and Blakey—”Evaluation of Stratigraphic Data-Management and Displays Using GIS and HTML: Example from the Permian Western Interior, USA”
    • Michael Gripshover, geology graduate student, and Blakey—”Regional Correlation of the Sonsela Member of the Chinle Formation, Petrified Forest NP, Arizona to Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, Utah”
    • Umhoefer and Luke Martin, M.S. geology graduate—”Miocene Extensional Tectonics as Recorded by the Horse Spring Formation, Longwell Ridges, Lake Mead, Nevada: Potential for 100-ky Time-Scale Basin Analysis Using a Multidisciplinary Approach”
    • Rebecca Schmeisser, M.S. geology graduate—”Description of a New Specimen of Plesiosaur and Implications of the Biodiversity of the Tropic Shale of Southern Utah”
    • Erin Young, M.S. geology student, and associate professor Abe Springer—”Numerical Optimization of Readily Acquired Data to Determine Maximum Frost Depth and Freeze Thaw Frequency”
    • Springer—”Vegetation and Invertebrate Species Diversity and Richness at Springs Ecosystems of the Southwestern U.S.”
    • Candice Swaim, geology undergraduate—”The Fate of Arsenic in Poultry Litter-Amended Fields, Northwest Arkansas”
    • Kaitlin McCormick, geology graduate student—”Environment of Deposition at the Excavation Site of the Dinosaur Nothronychus sp. (Therizinosauria, Theroposa) from the Upper Cretaceous Tropic Shale in Southern Utah from Sedimentological and Microfaunal Analyses”
    • Karen Vanaman, geology graduate student, and associate professor Nancy Riggs—”Pleistocene History of Lake Millican, Central Oregon”
  • October’s issue of Mountain Living Magazine is dedicated to athletes and altitude, and features three articles highlighting NAU’s Center for High Altitude Training and its athletes.