Symposium to highlight NAU’s undergraduate experience

Undergraduates at Northern Arizona University are getting ready for a campus-wide show and tell.

An Undergraduate Student Symposium, scheduled for Thursday and Friday, April 17 and 18, will feature highlights from each college as students share their creative ideas, research and discoveries.

“We hope to increase awareness of the work NAU undergraduates are doing that will help shape the future of disciplines, professions and communities,” said Karen Pugliesi, vice provost for Undergraduate Studies.

From a student-designed, super-mileage car to an automated catheter and various poster presentations, art exhibits, musical performances and more, the symposium “is an opportunity to find out how NAU is making involvement in research and inquiry a distinctive component of its undergraduate education,” Pugliesi said.

Student-led activities will be hopping at each college on the Flagstaff campus. Times vary and all events are free and open to the public. Information is online.

The College of Engineering and Natural Sciences will celebrate its student research and design at the du Bois Center by displaying a number of projects created to help the environment. Nursing students in the College of Health and Human Services will discuss their experiences during a field study course in Kenya.

Forestry students will discuss forest restoration efforts. History students will present a history of the World Wide Web, and the School of Art is exhibiting student art and presenting new ways to restore old buildings.

A keynote presentation at 7 p.m. April 17 in NAU’s Prochnow Auditorium will feature Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor for The New York Times, who will present the keynote address, “Meeting the Global Challenges That Will Shape Our Future.”

Rosenthal’s address will marshal in further discussion with Felice Nudelman, director of education at The New York Times and Erik Peterson from the national Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Nudelman will discuss “What is Northern Arizona University Doing to Prepare its Students for the Future?”

Peterson will introduce the basic principles behind the center’s Seven Revolutions initiative, a project that maps seven key trends that will effect change out to the year 2025 and beyond.