Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs.
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- Six students from the Sports and Adventure Media certificate program—seniors Bryan Adams, Reese Clarke and Connor Emery and juniors Jessalyn Garcia, Alyssa Munoz and Adriana Sparks—traveled to California last week to cover Super Bowl 2026. Watch the team’s behind-the-scenes video to learn more about their on-the-ground reporting.
- The Big Sky Conference office named 77 student-athletes from NAU’s football, soccer, volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country programs to its 2025 Big Sky Fall All-Academic Team. To be eligible, students must have participated in at least half of their team’s competitions and earned a 3.2 cumulative GPA by the end of their most recently completed term. Nineteen of NAU’s honorees currently hold a 4.0 cumulative GPA and 57 have a 3.5 or higher.
- Fred DeMicco, a School of Hotel and Restaurant Management retiree and affiliate, co-authored the article “The Ascent of Longevity Science in Lodging and Hospitality: A New Age of Wellness Travel,” published in Hospitality.net. The article explores how developers are updating existing hospitality models to meet guest demand for wellness programs.
- NASA made three new scientific investigation selections as part of its Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) program, and NAU’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences (APS) is featured heavily within one of the payload teams. The Emission Imager for Lunar Infrared Analysis in 3D (EMILIA-3D) project will create three-dimensional thermal models of lunar terrain that will help the U.S. better navigate the moon’s surface. APS assistant research professor Chris Haberle has a leadership role within the project, and assistant research professor Kristen Bennett and professor Christopher Edwards are co-investigators. The program’s camera suite will be built at NAU, bringing about $2.7 million to the university.
- NAU is now a registered station in the Research and Education Collaborative Occupation Network (RECON). RECON is a nationwide citizen science program dedicated to observing occultations, in which an asteroid passes in front of a background star. Those interested in learning more about the project can contact APS doctoral student Ivy Knudsen at iek26@nau.edu.
- APS associate professor Cristina Thomas was invited to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in January to accept the organization’s Group Achievement Award on behalf of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Period Change Determination Team. The group was recognized for making the first measurement of the change in an asteroid’s orbital motion caused by kinetic impact.
- APS part-time temporary employee Lauren McGraw, Thomas and professor Josh Emery co-authored the paper “Hydration Features on Near-Earth Objects: Integrating New Data with Prior Results.” The paper describes new observations of unique hydrogen and water features on near-Earth objects.