Overhead view of Thanksgiving table

Lumberjack Thanksgiving traditions

Oak Creek Canyon

Fit it in a Minute

Lumberjack Features

Fit it in a Minute with Sara Maltinsky

2021 Gold Axe winners

Campus & Community

President's Prize recipients, Gold Axe Award winners, Distinguished Seniors recognized at ceremony

NAU and President Cruz Rivera honored the Class of 2021 President's Prize recipients, Gold Axe Award winners and Distinguished Seniors at a formal ceremony on Nov. 16.

Empty shelves with a sign about shortages

Research & Academics

Worried about the supply chain? Here are the 5 commodities that will be hardest to find

Booking a flight, buying goods from China or gearing up for a cold winter? The supply chain may not be your friend. Data scientist Ben Ruddell lists those things that may be hard to find or cost more than normal.

Research & Academics

map of world's biodiversity

NAU, partner institutions selected for international sustainability award

The recognition, coming at a time when the planet is facing global biodiversity, climate and public health emergencies, reinforces NAU’s leadership in producing top-tier scientific research that can support national policymaking, implementation, and reporting to address our planetary crisis.

DART spacecraft illustration

DART launch could be key step forward in planetary defense

Can NASA impact an incoming asteroid enough to move it out of range of hitting Earth? A test mission, which is being launched Tuesday, will do a practice run on an asteroid in the country's first planetary defense mission.

New experimental design

Decoding biological mysteries with algae: NAU team wins $3M from NSF to model microbiome

The tiny cosmos of organisms living on a streamer of algae in a river could help scientists learn what turns an environment from healthy to toxic and back again. A multidisciplinary team led by NAU has won $3 million from the NSF to translate the codex contained in the microbiome of common algae into computer algorithms that can predict a wide range of microbial interactions. The team will combine field experiments with high-tech molecular tools and machine learning to unravel the complex interactions among bacteria and algae into a set of predictive rules. The experiments they conduct and computer models they develop will illumine which interactions among micro-organisms have the power to change the health of a river or a human gut.

Campus & Community

Overhead view of Thanksgiving table

Lumberjack Thanksgiving traditions

One of our favorite NAU Thanksgiving traditions is winning a national cross-country championship… but we’ll get to that in a minute. For the rest of us, it means cutting down a Christmas tree, spending days putting together a puzzle, drinking at a local dive bar, crafting with kids, creating a tablecloth full of memories, celebrating Native American heritage and more. Here’s how our Lumberjacks spend the holiday.

CASA for Kids’ Giving Tree Program begins 

The NAU community is invited to participate in the program that supports Coconino County wards of the state to spread the spirit of the holiday with gift donations. The Staff Advisory Council has set a goal of providing gifts to 25 children.

2021 Gold Axe winners

President's Prize recipients, Gold Axe Award winners, Distinguished Seniors recognized at ceremony

NAU and President Cruz Rivera honored the Class of 2021 President's Prize recipients, Gold Axe Award winners and Distinguished Seniors at a formal ceremony on Nov. 16.

Lumberjack Features

Three pinecone Christmas trees

DIY holiday decoration: Pinecone Christmas trees

Trevor Irioin and his mother, Shari

Graduate Trevor Irion: PT student finds inspiration in education through his mother’s accident

After his mother was hit by a car while running, Trevor Irion moved home, putting his future on hold while he cared for her. While working with physical therapists who had gone to school at NAU, he was impressed with their confidence and abilities and decided to apply. He’s since put everything he learned in classes to use doing at-home PT with his mother, which was especially valuable when the pandemic derailed her in-person appointments.

Graduate Xinyue Tao: English learning to an English degree

English major Tao had a less-than-proficient understanding of the language when she began her two-year study abroad experience at NAU. Not letting these challenges stop her, she is graduating as a highly skilled speaker, reader and writer of English with plans to pursue a master’s degree in the subject.