A graduate in a wheelchair returns to her seat after receiving her diploma.

NAU honors Class of 2022 in two commencement ceremonies

Group of student walking into the forest with trees on both sides

Research & Academics

NAU Flagstaff receives its first Hispanic Serving Institution grant: Meet the two women who made it happen

Lorie Lee and Family

Campus & Community

Mother, teacher and non-traditional student finds passion in special education

Lorie Lee never imagined she’d make it to university; she is now graduating with two degrees and having won a prestigious President’s Prize. Mother of three and a non-traditional student, her inspiring tale begins earlier than her first day at NAU. As a child, Lee experienced poverty, a mother with substance abuse issues and a father unwilling to care for her. Through the support of her friends and teachers, Lee found a love and passion for education and began to excel academically. Behind most successes are stories of perseverance that often go untold. Married and raising three children with special needs Lee went to university and attained a bachelor's degree in elementary education and special education.

Valentin Gamez with a woman holding a dog in front of a Christmas tree

Campus & Community

Engineering an escape (room)

Figuring out how to get out of an escape room can be stressful. Now imagine your challenge isn't to get out of the escape room—it's to build an escape room, troubleshoot it and then make fixes on the fly when things break as people move through them. That's what mechanical engineering student Valentin Gamez did alongside his compatriots in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It was a great opportunity to put their engineering skills to good use as well as let the community have a good time. It also provided a rare opportunity for Gamez's family to come from California and experience the work he did. Gamez graduates next week and starts his new job at Gore in 2023.

Research & Academics

Plant ecologist awarded NSF grant for restoring the culturally important Emory oak

The five-year multidisciplinary initiative is focused on tree species critical to Western Apache tribal communities and includes multiple researchers from throughout NAU.

A collage of desert land, farmland and ocean

NAU introduces new certificate to address growing workforce needs in area of climate change mitigation

A new online certificate program for greenhouse gas accounting will help train professionals on the best practices for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions and ways to use reported emissions to design effective emission reduction strategies. A similar certificate is available for graduate students.

Representative organisms in each of the panels are connected by white arrows to four channels of data above the panels. These channels, labeled from top as qSIP 18O 13C, metabolome, transcriptome, and metagenome, depict data streams the researchers will collect about the growth rate, metabolism, enzymes, and genes of microbes in the soil.

Does a warmer future favor microbial friend or foe? NAU researchers win $3.4M to study interactions in changing soil

A 20-year-old experiment taking place on a Flagstaff mountainside has measured the way soil microbes interact as the climate changes. Now, Ecoss director Bruce Hungate and a nationwide team have received a new $3.4 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct a deeper dive into what these buckets of soil have to say about the future. Mapping and better understanding the interplay of soil microbes and how they control nutrients like carbon and nitrogen will help researchers predict and potentially manage soil microbial communities to keep more carbon out of the air and in the soil.

Campus & Community

Lorie Lee and Family

Mother, teacher and non-traditional student finds passion in special education

Lorie Lee never imagined she’d make it to university; she is now graduating with two degrees and having won a prestigious President’s Prize. Mother of three and a non-traditional student, her inspiring tale begins earlier than her first day at NAU. As a child, Lee experienced poverty, a mother with substance abuse issues and a father unwilling to care for her. Through the support of her friends and teachers, Lee found a love and passion for education and began to excel academically. Behind most successes are stories of perseverance that often go untold. Married and raising three children with special needs Lee went to university and attained a bachelor's degree in elementary education and special education.

Madi Kimball and Bill Harper in LA

New program pairs students with alumni mentors, helping them thrive in their future careers

Madi Kimball knew she wanted a career in film but had no idea where to begin. Through the Lumberjacks Thrive Externship Program, she was paired with alumnus Bill Harper, a graduate of NAU’s theatre program who now is a Hollywood producer and screenwriter. After months of virtually meeting with Harper, donations and funds from the NAU Foundation paid for a trip for Kimball to visit her mentor and shadow him on set. There, she networked with professionals in the industry, toured studios and sat in on a writer’s room. “It was genuinely the best weekend ever, and I know that when I go back to Hollywood to start my career, I’ll have this program and my mentor to thank for my success,” she said.

Valentin Gamez with a woman holding a dog in front of a Christmas tree

Engineering an escape (room)

Figuring out how to get out of an escape room can be stressful. Now imagine your challenge isn't to get out of the escape room—it's to build an escape room, troubleshoot it and then make fixes on the fly when things break as people move through them. That's what mechanical engineering student Valentin Gamez did alongside his compatriots in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It was a great opportunity to put their engineering skills to good use as well as let the community have a good time. It also provided a rare opportunity for Gamez's family to come from California and experience the work he did. Gamez graduates next week and starts his new job at Gore in 2023.

Lumberjack Features

Brian Stone with a landscape painting of a train

Humans of Flagstaff: Brian Stone

Can learning science be fun? Absolutely, says professor Brian Stone. He talks about his research, which focuses on how make learning fun, what inspired him to love science and what's on his bucket list when he can find the time.

Monica with daughters, Isabella & Juliana, on beach in La Jolla, CA

Humans of Flagstaff: Monica Brown

Books enlarged Monica Brown's life when she was younger. Today, as an English professor and an author herself, she uses books to make the lives and worlds of children bigger, more diverse and more creative.

Monika Damron in an Indigenous fashion dress

Humans of Flagstaff: Monika Damron

There’s a good chance that at any moment, digital media coordinator manager Monika Damron has a child strapped to her back while she climbs a mountain. Find out how she spends her days **cough** hiking **cough, what inspires her at work and how she lives her Native American heritage.