Spotlight

In the Spotlight: Oct. 30, 2020

Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs

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  • Northern Arizona University was on College Consensus’ list of Best No-GMAT MBA Programs 2020. The W.A. Franke College of Business’s MBA is designed for those who are early in their career and students can expect to improve their academic knowledge, leadership skills, communication and ability to work in teams.
  • Rebecca Trujillo, coordinator for transfer and online connections, was awarded the 2020-21 Supervisor of the Year Award. Trujillo was recognized for exceptional communication, dedication and support of her student employees, making them feel valued. She also set expectations and provided feedback that encouraged career readiness, creating a student-centered work environment.
  • Professor of forestry Kristen Waring was a panel member at the 2020 Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation Science and Management Virtual Conference alongside Nicholas Wilhelmi and Mary Lou Fairweather of the USDA Forest Health Protection, former NAU graduate students Christopher Looney and Betsy Goodrich and current forestry staff member Al Hendricks. The conference hosted three hours of science and management talks on the status of the National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan, climate change in high elevation ecosystems and post-fire dynamics in upper subalpine forests.
  • Björn Krondorfer, director of the Martin-Springer Institute, published the book, “Unsettling Empathy: Working with Groups in Conflict.” It is an in-depth reflection and analysis on why and how unsettling empathy is a crucial component in reconciliatory processes and presents fresh perspectives on concepts and practices when bringing divided communities together.
  • In the English Department, associate professor Jesse Egbert, postdoctoral scholar Tove Larsson and Regents’ professor Douglas Biber published the book, “Doing Linguistics with a Corpus: Methodological Considerations for the Everyday User” in the Elements in Corpus Linguistics series published by Cambridge University Press. The book explores ways to improve linguistics research that relies on quantitative corpus data and can be downloaded for free until Nov. 10.
  • Associate professor of practice William Carter held an online screening event for his film “Miss Sarajevo” in collaboration with the Women for Women organization. All proceeds went to Women for Women, an organization formed after the Bosnian war that aims to help women in war or recovering from war.
  • Kelley Hays-Gilpin, professor of anthropology, took part in an international partnership to develop museum catalogs that foreground interviews with members of Indigenous communities whose ancestors created artworks in the museum collections all over the world. From this work, Hays-Gilpin has co-authored the articles, “Decolonizing museum catalogs: defining and exploring the problem” and “Collections Review on 446 Silverworks and Related Items Labeled ‘Hope’ in the Museum of Northern Arizona.”
  • Lori Poloni-Staudinger, associate dean of the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences and professor of political science and international affairs, co-authored a blog titled, “Because Misogyny Is Still Alive and Well and Women Still Don’t ‘Rule’ Equally to Men” in Why Social Science? The blog discusses the struggles women candidates face because of gender and suggests traditional gender socialization and masculine ethos of politics can be overcome if tackled directly by teaching women to anticipate and respond effectively so that women’s political ambition will be promoted.
  • Paul Lenze, senior lecturer of politics and international affairs, gave the Moore Memorial Lecture at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. The college was founded in 1893 as a public undergraduate college dedicated to their academic, career and technical education and community programs.
  • Researchers from NAU’s Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) team won the 2020 Rural and Environmental Research Award for the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Aging & Public Health Section for their work with family caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Lead authors on the project Heather Williamson, assistant professor of occupational therapy, and Rachel Nixon-Bacon, administrative associate of the Civic Service Institute, received the award at the APHA annual convention. Also on the project were Julie Baldwin, Regents’ professor, director of the Center for Health Equity Research and principal investigator of the SHERC Supplement; Yolanda Garcia, associate professor of educational psychology; Michael McCarthy, associate professor of social work; Dorothy Dunn, retired associate professor of nursing; Mark Remiker, CHER project coordinator; and students Morgan Lee-Regalado Hustead, Andria Begay and Angelica Sanchez.
  • Graduates Kyle Doherty and Henry Grover, associate professor Matthew Bowker and assistant research professor Anita Antoninka, all from the School of Forestry, co-authored the article, “Producing moss-colonized burlap fabric in a fog chamber for restoration of biocrust” in Ecological Engineering. In their study, they developed a system that waters biocrust moss with fog on a burlap substrate, tested its production capacity and evaluated field establishment of the moss-colonized fabrics it produced.
  • Jeff Jenness, School of Forestry; J. Judson Wynne, part-time faculty with the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research; and Derek Sonderegger, associate professor of mathematics and statistics presented a poster demonstrating how thermal imagery can be used to find cave entrances by applying techniques to the thermal surface that are commonly used on topographic surfaces. The method they present was originally developed to find caves on other planets where only remote sensing data was available.
  • Richard Hofstetter, professor of forestry, co-authored the article, “Translocation experiment reveals capacity for mountain pine beetle persistence under climate warming” in Ecological Monographs. The study found genetic variability and extensive plasticity in multiple fitness traits that would allow bark beetle populations to persist in a warming climate and suggests that southern populations may not be limited by temperature.
  • Andrea Graves, coordinator for the Honors College, was an invited presenter at the University of New Mexico Mentoring Institute Annual Conference. Her article, “High-Quality Connections: Coaching for Success in the New Age” will be published in a special issue of Chronical of Mentoring and Coaching.
  • Karen B. London, adjunct faculty of biological sciences, published her sixth book, “Treat Everyone Like a Dog: How a Dog Trainer’s World View Can Improve Your Life.” The book is filled with real life stories and readers will learn how the principles of dog training can improve interactions as well as teaching and learning between people.
  • Several faculty, students and recent graduates in the Applied Linguistics and TESL programs have presented at conferences this fall.
    • Presenting at the Second Language Research Forum were professors Naoko Taguchi, Luke Plonsky, and Vedran Dronjic; doctoral students Tetyana Bychovska, Mohammadreza Dalman, Daniel Dixon, Tülay Dixon, Larissa Goulart, Eric Jordan, Daniel Keller, Maria Kostromitina, Ethan Lynn, An Sakach, and Ekaterina Sudina; recent doctoral graduates Jihye Shin and Romy Ghanem; recent master’s graduate Nicholas Rhea; and recent bachelor’s graduate Maren Greve.
    • Presenting at Intermountain TESOL were Lynn and master’s students Arika Molitor and Alexis Molitor.
    • Presenting at AZTESOL were professor Okim Kang; doctoral students Kevin Hirschi, Lynn and Margaret Wood; master’s students Monique Acedo, Andrew Dennis, Omar Eliwa and Ali Redling; and recent doctoral graduate María Nelly Gutiérrez Arvizu.
    • Presenting at INTERSPEECH 2020 were Kang and Hirschi.
    • Presenting at The East Coast Organization of Language Testers Conference were Kang and doctoral students Dalman and Kate Yaw.
    • Presenting at LTRC/ALTAANA Online Celebratory Event 2020 were Kang and Yaw.
    • Presenting at AZCALL were Taguchi and Kang; doctoral students Hirschi, Goulart, Maria Kostromitina; and lecturer Zachary Meyer. Meyer also presented at The East Coast Organization of Language Testers (ECOLT) Conference and the 8th East Asia New Directions in English Language Assessment Conference.
    • Presenting at the Twelfth Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language was Dronjic.
    • Dronjic was also invited to talk at Arizona State University’s ICOL Lecture Series.
    • Professor Randi Reppen was an invited speaker at the Incorporating Corpora in Teaching Symposium at Middle University, Sweden.
  • Samantha Clifford, instructional designer with NAU Online, published the article, “Eleven Alternative Assessments for a Blended Synchronous Learning Environment” on Faculty Focus. The article is a collection of alternative assessment ideas in an NAUFlex form and showcases the creative ideas of 11 faculty members:
    • Glenn Edgerton, clinical education coordinator, associate clinical professor of athletics
    • Corina Kellner, associate professor of anthropology
    • Ana Araya Anchetta, lecturer of biological sciences
    • Nora Timmerman, senior lecturer of sustainable communities
    • Paul Helford, principal lecturer of communication
    • Norma Zink, College of Education
    • Paulina Swiatkowski, lecturer of communication
    • Lawrence Lenhart, associate Chair of English
    • Tom Acker, Department of Mechanical Engineering
    • Deborah Huntzinger, associate professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability
    • Diana Coleman, lecturer of comparative cultural studies