ancient Polynesian statues on the coast of Rapa Nui with a tall ship in the background

NAU ecologist joins Darwin-inspired expedition in Polynesia

NAU employees dig a fire line in the forest.

Campus & Community

Summer is a great time for volunteering!

Still have community engagement hours? Hear from three employees about how they've used their hours, then sign up for a service project (and volunteer your team!) during the summer months.

Univision reporter Hector Lagunas and Flagstaff Unified School District students pose with a video camera in a blue room.

Campus & Community

NAU pilots first Hispanic/Latine Youth Media Workshop

The School of Communication hosted its inaugural Hispanic/Latine Youth Media Workshop last weekend, allowing 13 Flagstaff Unified School District students to participate in faculty-led media production demonstrations and learn from Hispanic and Latine visual communication professionals. In the event the school gathers enough funding, workshop leaders hope to expand the experience to an annual seminar.

squares of 2 by 2 inch fabric with colorful drawings and writing

Research & Academics

Psych 101 for quilters

For psychology faculty member Jason Whetten, teaching and research go hand in hand: The classroom is his laboratory, and the students are his subjects and co-investigators. In his Fall 2023 Introduction to Psychology course, Whetten researched the concept of belonging by asking 1,200 students to design a quilt square describing how they belong at NAU. Throughout Spring 2024, Whetten and his TAs discovered that interactive, hands-on projects like these can help boost students’ sense of inclusion and belonging on campus.

Research & Academics

A forest of ponderosa pine trees at the base of Mount Trumbull.

Seeing the bigger picture: 5,200-acre ERI study explores long-term impacts of ponderosa pine restoration treatment

Members of NAU's Ecological Research Institute joined the Bureau of Land Management to complete a 21-year-long study analyzing the impacts of prescribed burns and mechanical tree thinning on dry ponderosa pine forests. After successfully decreasing tree density and wildfire vulnerability on their 5,224-acre research site, the ERI members published their findings in the academic journal Restoration Ecology.

Ishmael Munene sitting in his office in front of a large bookshelf

How do African universities approach DEI?

NAU professor Ishmael Munene is headed to Kenya this fall to find out. Thanks to support from a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award, Munene will spend the whole school year studying how universities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania think differently about diversity, equity and inclusion than their American peers.

ancient Polynesian statues on the coast of Rapa Nui with a tall ship in the background

NAU ecologist joins Darwin-inspired expedition in Polynesia

Conservation ecologist Jut Wynne will spend a month aboard a tall ship that’s retracing much of Charles Darwin’s famous HMS Beagle voyage 200 years ago. While on board, Wynne will study insects unique to eastern Polynesia in hopes of confirming that some of these animals were brought there by ancient Polynesians via voyaging canoe.

Campus & Community

Linda Robyn giving a presentation on violence against Native women in a classroom

Free summer seminar series untangles complex social issues

This year’s series showcases NAU’s diversity of scholarly expertise by exploring complex topics such as water conservation, traditional foodways and music’s potential to connect communities.

NAU employees dig a fire line in the forest.

Summer is a great time for volunteering!

Still have community engagement hours? Hear from three employees about how they've used their hours, then sign up for a service project (and volunteer your team!) during the summer months.

Resilience in the face of trauma fuels a future-focused gift

The son of two Holocaust survivors, an author and a nonprofit director, Mitchell Raff has established two planned gifts totaling $1.5 million to support Northern Arizona University’s Martin Springer Institute (MSI), which raises awareness of human rights through Holocaust remembrance and education. Raff established a $1 million endowment in memory of Holocaust survivors Sally and Issa Springer, who were relatives of the MSI founders and played a formative role in Raff’s life.

Lumberjack Features

Humans of NAU: Zane Jacobs

Zane Jacobs has always wanted a career that helped people. That desire has driven him not only to his job as a senior administrative services assistant at ITEP but also to his work with the Northern Arizona Pride Association, of which he is now president. Learn about how his identities intersect, what he's proud of and how you can participate in Pride in the Pines.

Brandon Piestewa with his mother when he was young.

What Memorial Day means to me

For Brandon Piestewa, whose mother was taken prisoner and later killed during the Iraq War, Memorial Day has a different importance. It's a time to remember and pass on the legacies of soldiers and their sacrifices.

Marcy Hurtado with the Arizona Cardinal mascot.

Humans of NAU: Marcy Hurtado

Marcy Hurtado found her professional home at NAU Yuma, where she is the director of enrollment management. She talks about the joy of seeing students in the YES program move from high school to college, her goal of graduating with her doctorate and how each day is different.