Heidi Toth

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April 19, 2019

President Rita Cheng discussed the progress she’s seen in the last five years and how the strategic plan is helping to move Northern Arizona University forward at the spring 2019 campus forum on Thursday. She also talked about faculty, staff and student accomplishments, discussed increased community outreach and was joined by a special guest—a Starship delivery robot, representing one of the more visible changes to campus.

“The more successful we are, the more Flagstaff, Arizona, the nation and the world succeed,” she said. “This is evident in our accomplishments in just the last five years, ensuring that as higher education changes, NAU remains competitive and viable for our students, employees, community and state.”

NAU has come far in the last five years, President Cheng said, taking actions that have helped the university become more of an academic and research leader. Efforts such as updated IT infrastructure and upgraded classrooms that meet new technology standards have helped to recruit and retain students and faculty members alike, while the implementation of multi-term enrollment and centralized scheduling has helped students map out their degree plans and stay on track to graduate in four years. Reorganizing the advising team has led to increased consistency and more access for students, while One NAU brought online and community campuses under one umbrella that includes a robust support system, advising, academic collaboration and efficient business processes.

The university has taken steps to meet the needs of a rapidly changing workforce in Arizona and beyond, including creating the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Security. Creating the separate College of Engineering, Informatics, and Applied Sciences and the College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences also provides students and faculty in those fields with opportunities for more focused research and study. Additionally, NAU has created a number of new degree programs, including three new Ph.D. programs and the just-approved programs in Indian Country criminal justice and building sciences.

In the last five years, NAU has increased diversity among students, faculty and staff; added more student clubs than ever before; witnessed the unprecedented success of a number of athletic teams; experienced national recognition for dozens of academic programs; and for the first time reached out to alumni to identify strengths and challenges and seek ways to improve student outcomes.

In her speech, Cheng also announced that Gabe Montaño, a professor of applied physics and materials science, will be NAU’s diversity fellow. He was selected following a lengthy and thorough process.

“Diversity is a fundamental aspect of the learning experience, and I am proud of our ongoing commitment to diversity in our NAU community,” she said.

Increased communication

Looking forward, President Cheng said she and her team are eager for feedback from all corners of campus. She discussed the efforts she and her team have made to have conversations with community leaders and members, faculty and students, including more than 50 listening sessions in the last five years. These are intended to solicit feedback that can then be used to help NAU improve, and she thanked everyone who has participated in such sessions.

Student feedback has been particularly beneficial. Because of information based on students’ diverse lived experiences, NAU recently expanded space for the Office of Inclusion: Multicultural and LGBTQIA Student Services and created a student advisory group to review and recommend priorities for how to spend the athletics fee revenue. Collaboration between ITS and ASNAU created more affordable printing opportunities for students and provided information about the need for improved wireless Internet access across campus. The university’s bandwidth also will increase this summer.

Student leaders, along with faculty and staff, also noted the need for greater resources to treat student mental health, a challenge universities throughout the nation are facing. An increase to the Health and Learning Center fee will help fund mental health counseling and support services, including six new care providers.

President Cheng discussed the university’s move to the Prosci/ADKAR method of change management, which outlines a clear process for change that incorporates extensive participation and communication. It has been used in several new initiatives, including a recently launched Strategic Space Utilization Assessment that provided a comprehensive study of NAU’s internal spaces.

She also focused on outreach with the community, having recently invited elected and appointed leaders from the city to campus for an orientation and a discussion about NAU operations and the strategic plan. She highlighted a recent joint public meeting between NAU, the City of Flagstaff and the County Board of Supervisors that enabled NAU leaders to share the value NAU brings to the community and discussing collaborative issues like the 2020 Census, transportation and planning and forest restoration.

Student success

Student success remains high on the priority for NAU, Cheng said, and administrators are looking at admission, enrollment and retention rates as well as ways to increase access to higher education for both traditional and nontraditional students and those who can’t enroll in the Flagstaff campus. The university has teams that evaluate and coordinate the effectiveness of NAU’s programs in order to help students on their educational journey. The focus is on organizational linkages, improving pedagogy and reducing the rates of students who drop, fail or withdraw from a class. Universities throughout the country are on the same journey.

A big part of those efforts is improving the experience for students throughout the state. More than a quarter of NAU’s students attend classes in Phoenix, Yuma, Yavapai or at one of 20 community college campuses throughout the state or they take online courses while living and working in other parts of the country and world.

Many of these degree programs are delivered in flexible formats with an emphasis on affordability and in partnership with the community colleges. They allow for the transfer of up to 90 credits in several degree options so students don’t have to retake courses.

 “Offering students a distinct choice between experiences, locations, academic program options and costs is a critical element of NAU’s mission of access to a university education for all Arizonans,” Cheng said. “NAU is addressing both student and workforce demands to assist local families and communities meet their individual needs within their economic abilities.”

President Cheng also talked about NAU’s partnerships throughout the world. In March, an NAU delegation attended the opening of a joint Forest Biosecurity Research Center with the University of Tyumen in Siberia, Russia, where forestry professor Rich Hofstetter has done research for years. Almost a fourth of the world’s forests are in Siberia, so this relationship gives Hofstetter and his students, as well as other professors interested in doing research there, strategic access to these environments.

NAU also has increased the number of student and faculty exchanges opportunities with various universities in Mexico and is building a greater presence in South Asia, Latin America and Europe at a time when international enrollment is down at universities throughout the U.S.

Budget questions

President Cheng addressed the budget, reiterating her team’s desires to ensure NAU’s financial status is strong. NAU is facing similar problems as many institutions of higher education, including the challenges of lower birthrates; fewer students graduating from high school; less money from the state; and large populations of first-generation and underrepresented minority students who face unique barriers to education.

She credited not only her team but also administrators throughout the university who responded by tightening budgets when tuition revenue was less than expected this year and said NAU looks to end the fiscal year with a balanced budget while ensuring an excellent educational experience for students. Making those adjustments, while also ensuring NAU is enrolling and retaining students, is critical to the long-term health of the university.

Administrators also are looking at ways to diversify revenue sources, including through philanthropic donations, research and public service grants and indirect cost recovery revenue. President Cheng shared that she has met with Gov. Doug Ducey and leaders in the Arizona Legislature to advocate for NAU. Ducey is particularly invested in the Teachers Academy; NAU’s academy saw its enrollment double in its second year, and it continues to grow at locations throughout the state. The additional funding budgeted this year for the Teachers Academy should allow NAU to implement this program at the Flagstaff campus.

NAU has seen an increase in research money flowing into the university; in 2017-18, NAU exceeded the research funding goal ABOR set with $52.9 million in research and development expenditures. Faculty and staff at NAU have 50 invention disclosures, 15 patents issued and $88.2 million in research and public service expenditures in the last year. All of that contributes to the educational experiences of NAU’s students.

“We want to provide answers, create solutions and empower our students to be innovative and overcome obstacles,” she said. “You are elevating NAU’s reputation, connecting our students to work that expresses, and answers, the world’s greatest challenges.

Tuition remains top of mind; ABOR approved the smallest increase in the pledge rate NAU has ever proposed, as well as the elimination of more than 300 class fees and the reduction of another 300 fees. This will not only save students money but also increase transparency and help students see for what they are actually paying.

President Cheng announced an up to 3 percent salary increase for eligible faculty and staff, effective July 1. It’s a first step in addressing the challenges NAU faces with market competitiveness, she said. Her administration also is working to raise the lowest level student salaries from $8 to $10 an hour. That increase will affect 28 percent of student workers.

Community relations and the economy

A recent study from the Alliance Bank Economic Policy Institute estimated that NAU contributes more than $2.6 billion to Arizona’s economy every year, an increase of 25 percent from just two years ago. More than 100,000 NAU alumni live and work in Arizona.

NAU has many partnerships with organizations in the county and state to help improve the lives of Arizonans. Partnerships with the community including the Museum of Northern Arizona, NAIPTA, United Way, the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County and Northern Arizona Healthcare. Nursing and dental hygiene students serve thousands of patients annually, education students provide more than 100,000 volunteer hours in local schools each year and the Civic Service Institute has more than 1,500 volunteers who provide close to half a million hours of community service to almost 300 agencies.

Additionally, student groups contributed more than 20,000 hours of volunteer service to the community, and community members came to campus for more than 400 performing arts and 75 athletic events in the last year. President Cheng reminded the audience of how important these relationships are to all of the participants. NAU is proud to be part of the Flagstaff and Arizona communities.

“At our campuses throughout the state, NAU’s economic impact is growing,” she said. “We create jobs, intellectual property, technology transfer and business incubation, and we educate and develop the sophisticated, high-level workforce that meets the demands of today’s industry. An increasing percentage of Arizona students choose NAU for their education, and the increasing number of those Lumberjacks who live and work in Arizona after their graduation positively affect the quality of life, health, education and economic outcomes of our communities and our state.”

The entire forum is available for viewing from NAU-TV.

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April 18, 2019

At Northern Arizona University, research is open to every undergraduate in every discipline, and at the 2019 Undergraduate Expo, which runs from April 17-28, the NAU and Flagstaff communities are invited to meet students from every college as they present the results of their research projects.

The weeklong Expo is a showcase of undergraduate research in the arts, business, education and the humanities. The flagship event of the Expo is the 11th Annual Undergraduate Symposium from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 26 at the University Union/Fieldhouse, where more than 1,000 students come together to share their creative discoveries and present in-depth research and scholarly work. Symposium activities include poster presentations, exhibits, performances and demonstrations.

Come to the Expo and Symposium to meet students who are changing the world, one discovery at a time, including:

  • Anthropology and biology major Taylor Lambrigger, who uses isotopic analysis to identify human remains in forensic cases
  • Biomedical sciences major Jordan Ojeda, who works to prevent cancer by promoting screenings among men in the Hopi community
  • Nursing major Mia Ornelas, whose research focuses on protecting substance-exposed newborns and their mothers
  • Exercise science major Joseph Espinoza, who studies environmental toxins in the drinking water in his hometown of Yuma
  • Business management major Giulia Paulet, who develops simulation games to improve instructional design for management education

Taylor Lambrigger: Anthropology and biology major seeks to restore humanity through chemistry

Undergraduate researcher Taylor Lambrigger’s work is about using chemistry to restore humanity to unidentified individuals. Lambrigger, double majoring in anthropology and biology, works in bioarchaeologist Corina Kellner’s stable isotope lab. Funded by a Hooper Undergraduate Research Award grant, Lambrigger is testing unidentified human remains in collaboration with the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s office. When broken down to an elemental level, human remains can tell an origin story.

“You are what you eat, what you drink and where you’re from,” Lambrigger said. “Isotopes embed into your enamel and bone every time you eat or drink something. We can grind those up and look at the ratios of those isotopes and we can tell what you ate and where your water came from.”

Lambrigger is working with samples of human remains from the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office. The samples consist of small amounts of bone or tooth that she crushes and processes using different kinds of chemicals. Once they have been processed, Lambrigger can identify the amounts of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, strontium and lead in the samples. From that, she can extrapolate where the person was from. The carbon, oxygen and nitrogen analyses are being done in house at the NAU Colorado Plateau Stable Isotope Laboratory in Wettaw, while Lambrigger and Kellner are collaborating with Frank Ramos of the Department of Geological Sciences at New Mexico State University for the strontium and lead analyses.

“It works well with ancient populations because they were pretty stagnant,” Lambrigger said. “But with globalization, we’re testing the utility on these remains.”

The method has been used successfully. In 2005, human remains found in Ireland were tied to a missing man after isotopic evaluation showed he had emigrated from Africa. Governments use the process to identify the remains of soldiers.

Lambrigger, who is president of NAU’s Model United Nations club, hopes to someday work with mass grave excavation and remains repatriation.

“These people have had their humanity taken from them in horrible, violent ways, and if there’s anything I can do to give that humanity back or to help healing occur, then I want to help.”

The opportunity to write a grant and get funding for research as an undergraduate has been transformative for her.

“I’m unbelievably grateful for the chance I’ve had to do what I’m doing,” she said. “Where else can I get $3,500 for a project that I’m the principal investigator on? That’s an unbelievable opportunity.”

Jordan Ojeda: Biomedical sciences major takes cultural approach to cancer prevention

The first time he drove to the Hopi reservation, undergraduate Jordan Ojeda found himself in an unfamiliar landscape. Unlike the Phoenix suburb where he grew up, the reservation has no fast food restaurants or super stores, and the streets have only a single lane in either direction. But as soon as Ojeda began to interact with the Hopi men who are the focus of his research project, he realized they had a lot in common.

“It’s showed me that we’re not all that different,” he said. “We do things culturally different, but at the end of the day we’re all humans.”

He quickly bonded with one man over a love of boxing. Some of the elders reminded him of the wisdom of his grandparents. And many of the men displayed a familiar machismo.

“I come from a Hispanic background, so there’s definitely a level of machismo in my family,” he said.

Over the past two years, Ojeda has been part of a research project seeking to increase the rates at which Hopi men are screened for colorectal cancer. While Hopi men have some the highest rates of colorectal cancer in the country, they also have some of the lowest screening rates. As with most cancers, early detection saves lives.

The project, headed by public health researcher Priscilla Sanderson, is called Namitunatya—Hopi for “taking care of yourself.” Sanderson, an associate professor of health sciences, guides student researchers like Ojeda as they study Hopi culture and test different methods of reaching out to Hopi men to encourage them to undergo screenings.

Ojeda’s work included extensive background research into Hopi culture in addition to conversations with Hopi men. The more he got to know the men, he said, the more he was motivated to help.

“Hearing their stories just makes me want to work harder and try to get these cancer screening rates up,” he said.

Based on his research, Ojeda carefully crafted messages promoting cancer screening to use in radio advertisements and on posters that were placed around the reservation. He said the lessons he learned about culturally appropriate and respectful communication will be invaluable in his future career.

The biomedical sciences student plans to attend medical school and become an anesthesiologist with a sub-specialty in pain management. Ojeda’s ultimate goal is to open a pain management clinic where he can help people suffering from chronic pain find relief. In that capacity, he said, he’ll need the communication skills and the depth of understanding he developed as part of the Namitunatya project.

“My experience with undergraduate research has just been wonderful. I’ve loved every single second of it,” Ojeda said. “Being able to talk to people that are culturally different from me, and just being able to relate one-on-one, has been awesome. I’ve loved it.”

Mia Ornelas: Nursing major helps babies by helping moms

Initially, Mia Ornelas’s research project focused on problems faced by infants born to mothers who used drugs during pregnancy. Based on her findings, however, the scope of her research expanded.

During her first semester on the project with faculty mentor Laura Karnitschnig, she compiled health department data and found drug-exposed babies with expected low birth weights and developmental delays.

“Second semester, we addressed the correlation between maternal drug use, intimate partner violence and postpartum depression because we realized you can’t really help the baby until you address the factors that are causing the baby to be exposed,” Ornelas said.

The data she gathered repeatedly underscored the association between abused and economically disadvantaged women and drug use and depression and revealed the need for prenatal care for at-risk moms.

“I think we can all agree that the children obviously need help, but we also came to the conclusion that the moms really need help, which is a difficult thing for people to address because addiction has so much stigma behind it.”

Ornelas is a nursing major, and her research experience has underscored her belief that every patient deserves the same level of care and empathy. She hopes her research will lead to changes in care for pregnant women—care that will ultimately result in better outcomes for their babies.

“You can’t really help the baby by just treating it after birth,” she said. “Helping the mom leave a dangerous home environment and treating her own mental health—that can help the baby and the entire family dynamic can be changed by that.

Treating both the mom and the baby can make profound impacts. It’s not as easy as taking away these children because the mom uses drugs. These women have the potential to be amazing mothers; they just need help with themselves first in order to be good mothers.”

Joseph Espinoza: Mom’s cancer diagnosis makes research personal

Fate? Coincidence?

“I don’t know what to call it, but I feel like I have to do something about it,” Joseph Espinoza said. “ I have to try to find some answers.”

In 2018, Espinoza experienced an unexpected confluence of his personal life and his work as an undergraduate researcher. Espinoza, who grew up near Yuma, was accepted into the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) program. He also learned his mother had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

Espinoza had joined a research project—led by ecotoxicology professor Frank von Hippel and health sciences professor and founding director of the Center for Health Equity Research Julie Baldwin—focused on the effects of the chemical perchlorate in the Colorado River, Yuma’s source of drinking water.

Joseph Espinoza in a lab

Perchlorate is a chemical used in explosives, rockets, air bags and many other products that, in certain concentrations, causes hypothyroidism in people and animals. This project is investigating whether higher levels of perchlorate in drinking water could be connected to an increased incidence of thyroid disease.

When he learned of his mother’s diagnosis, Espinoza’s relationship to his research took on a new dimension. Though his mother is now cancer-free, the implications of the research project, for his family and people in his town, were profound.

“We’re collecting data on health issues from patients at the Yuma Regional Medical Center and the Regional Center for Border Health,” Espinoza said. “We’re trying to see if there are any issues with the thyroid in general, because in Yuma there is a history of contamination with perchlorate.”

While the research has not yet produced definitive results, the experience has underscored for Espinoza that his NAU education includes much more than amassing theoretical information. He’s doing real research that can have a tangible impact on the people he loves, his hometown and beyond.

Giulia Paulet: Business management major finds unexpected depth of learning possible through simulation games

Giulia Paulet has strong feelings about academic simulation games. Strong negative feelings.

“As soon as I find out there’s a simulation, I want to drop the class,” she admitted.

So it was ironic that when Paulet decided she’d like to do research, the management major found herself involved in a research project to assess the effectiveness of a business management simulation.

She is working with NAU instructor Geoffrey Dick in The W. A. Franke College of Business as part of the Interns-to-Scholars program. The research project surveys students when they complete a management simulation to assess what part of the program worked and what could be improved. Paulet distributes and collects the surveys and compiles the data for Dick, who can then refine the simulation based on feedback from the students.

Two years into the project, she’s also taking the course in which Dick uses the simulation. For her, it’s been a revelation into the potential power of a simulation.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “I genuinely played it and I was like, ‘Yes! This is what needs to be in the classroom.’ Now it all has a meaning; it’s not just words on a paper.”

The experience has given her a unique view into how similar simulations can provoke drastically different responses. She credits Dick’s years of surveying and tweaking his simulation program with its success as a learning tool.

With a well-run simulation, she said, the learning happens at a much deeper level. Dick’s simulation involves putting students into groups with each group managing a virtual bottled water company.

“One person’s looking at financial statements, one’s looking at marketing, one’s looking at profit loss, one’s changing prices and looking at inventory—all of these things are being done at once. You’re making quick decisions and putting in place everything you’ve learned from previous classes; everything’s moving very fast. It felt awesome. Awesome.”

Based on the decisions of the group, the company either performs well or it doesn’t. But since it’s all virtual, there’s no downside, just a great opportunity to take risks, fail, learn and apply knowledge. Thanks to her research and her experience with the course, Paulet believes there’s hope for other simulations.

“I think if everyone who has a simulation in their class would look at this research, and see what they can modify in theirs, we could make it better.”

In March, Paulet traveled to an academic conference on business simulations in San Diego to present two papers based on this research.

Expo events are free and open to the public

All Expo events are free and open to the public, including:

  • April 17-19: Student Water Symposium, an annual student-organized event where undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines have the opportunity to share their research and collaborate on water resources issues.
  • April 17-28: NAU’s School of Music presents the Student Artist Series, recitals and concerts performed by undergraduate and graduate students on instruments including violin, piano, oboe, trombone, viola, voice and more as partial fulfillment of their respective requirements for a degree in music.
  • April 18: Industry Engagement with Academic Researchers, a workshop featuring panel discussions focused on industry engagement.
  • April 24: NAU President’s Distinguished Speaker Series presents Jaime Casap, Google’s Chief Education Evangelist. The topic of the talk is “Generation Z and the Future of Work.”
  • April 26: The 11th Annual Undergraduate Symposium, which includes poster presentations, exhibits, performances and demonstrations. 

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April 19, 2019

Northern Arizona University now has two new degree programs on the books as well as the creation and reorganization of two academic departments.

At its meeting earlier this month, the Arizona Board of Regents approved an Indian Country criminal justice (ICCJ) bachelor’s degree—the first such degree to be offered in the country— and a master’s degree in building science. Additionally, they also said yes to creating the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science (APMS), which combines the established physics program with the incoming program in materials science.

Karen Pugliesi, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said the new ICCJ program builds on the strengths of the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice and the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies. In creating this degree program, faculty worked with the Native American Advisory Council at NAU and Navajo Nation leadership to ensure the curriculum meets local needs and can be delivered online.

NAU, which has students from 127 Native American tribes, has one of its strategic goals to be a leading university serving Native Americans and Native American communities. This program will provide training and education for Indian Country criminal justice professions, including tribal law enforcements, officers from federal agencies, judges and others, providing an education that looks at doctrines, laws, rules and institutions unique to Indian Country as well as the understanding of these communities, peoples and cultures as they relate to the practice of criminal justice. The online degree program will be available this fall; apply now through NAU Online.

“The faculty experts we have in these areas collaborated to design a distinctive, first-of-its-kind degree that will prepare graduates for work in various criminal justice fields in tribal nations, Native American communities and bordering areas,” Pugliesi said. “Our faculty recognize the unique challenges of criminal justice practice in such contexts and responded with a degree program that will serve a need across the country.”

The master’s degree in building science, which will begin courses in the fall semester, is part of the Department of Civil Engineering, Construction Management, and Environmental Engineering. Diane Stearns, interim dean of the College of Engineering, Informatics, and Applied Sciences (CEIAS), said students in the program will develop expertise in the technical performance of buildings, materials and systems and convey best practices in engineering, architecture, construction, public policy and the environmental and applied sciences, all of which will help graduates become leaders who can optimize the modern build environment.

The new program also will help strengthen industry partnerships that NAU’s internationally recognized construction management program has developed. Apply for this program now through NAU’s Graduate College.

The new APMS department, which will be in CEIAS, is partly a response to a new degree approved in April—a doctorate in APMS, of which professor Gabe Montaño is the program director.

“After extensive discussions and voting over the last year, the faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy decided to restructure and redefine their academic programs to better meet the needs of students and future employers, and to rebrand their research efforts to be more competitive for external funding opportunities,” Stearns said. “We are excited to continue the support of our outstanding students in these competitive and high demand fields.”

With ABOR approval, the physics program merged with materials science to create the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science, joining CEIAS, and the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences was rebranded, still as part of the College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences. All current academic majors, minors and graduate programs will remain as they are, and NAU is looking at new programs in APMS, in addition to the doctorate program starting in the fall.

For more information about applying to the doctoral APMS program, visit NAU’s academic catalog. To learn about NAU’s astronomy program, including undergraduate and graduate degrees and research opportunities, visit the department’s website.

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April 17, 2019

Editor’s note: Gordon Bonan, a researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is speaking at NAU as part of Earth Month. NAU News invited him to share more about his work in environmental stewardship. Hear the entirety of his speech at 4 p.m. April 22 at the International Pavilion.

In “The Invention of Nature—Alexander von Humboldt’s New World,” Andrea Wulf described the life and scholarly works of Alexander von Humboldt. Hailed by The New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2015, Wulf portrayed Humboldt as a 19th-century visionary whose study of the natural world as a single interconnected system predated our modern understanding of Earth as a system. In his travels throughout the tropics, Humboldt developed a viewpoint in which, for example, tropical rainforests are essential to healthy planetary functioning and tropical deforestation alters climate. Meteorologists of Humboldt’s era parochially dismissed the notion that deforestation could affect climate. One leading meteorologist wrote that “rational climatology gives no basis for the much-talked-of influence upon the climate of a country produced by the growth or destruction of forests.”

Humboldt’s broad view of the Earth was largely forgotten over time, and the development of atmospheric science and ecology as academic fields of study followed disciplinary trajectories. The modern study of Earth as an interconnected system—the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere—has only emerged in the last two decades as global models of Earth’s physical climate evolved into models of the Earth system.

The modern view of climate and global planetary change requires a broad view of the many physical, chemical and biological processes in the Earth system and how human intervention in these processes alters Earth system functioning. The study of planetary change is no longer simply about physical climate change but also about changes in land use (e.g., deforestation, reforestation, afforestation), biogeochemical cycles (e.g., carbon, reactive nitrogen) and biological feedbacks such as greening of the Arctic or browning from tree mortality that affect the trajectory of anthropogenic climate change. This science requires a new generation of scholars and intellectual leaders with a multidisciplinary perspective that integrates: atmospheric physics and dynamics; biogeochemical cycles, plant physiology and ecosystem functions; hydrology and soil physics; applied mathematics; and computational science.

This talk introduces Earth system models, how they are used to understand the connections between climate and ecology and how they provide insight to environmental stewardship for a healthy and sustainable planet. Global models of Earth’s climate have expanded beyond their geophysical heritage to include terrestrial ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, vegetation dynamics and anthropogenic uses of the biosphere. Ecological forcings and feedbacks are now recognized as important for climate change simulation, and these models are becoming models of the entire Earth system. Two prominent examples discussed in the talk are anthropogenic land use and land-cover change and the global carbon cycle.

However, there is considerable uncertainty in how to represent ecological processes at the large spatial scale and long temporal scale of Earth system models. Further scientific advances are straining under the ever-growing burden of multidisciplinary breadth, countered by disciplinary chauvinism and the extensive conceptual gap among observationalists developing process knowledge at specific sites and global scale modelers. The theoretical basis for Earth system models, their development and verification and experimentation require a new generation of scientists who are adept at bridging the disparate fields of science and using a variety of research methodologies including theory, numerical modeling, observations and data analysis. The science requires a firm grasp of models, their theoretical foundations, their strengths and weaknesses and how to appropriately use them to test hypotheses of the atmosphere-biosphere system. It requires a reinvention of how we learn about and study nature.

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April 17, 2019

Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), which works with the private sector to ensure all children and young adults have the opportunity to live healthy, active lives, announced that Northern Arizona University has completed its three-year commitment to expanding healthier options across campus.

NAU is one of 32 institutions of higher learning to successfully complete its commitments to implementing PHA’s rigorous Healthier Campus Initiative (HCI) guidelines. The HCI guidelines are designed to create a culture shift toward greater health and wellness among the entire campus community. They range from providing healthier meals and convenient access to potable water to providing diverse opportunities for physical activity.

“We recognize that students’ well-being affects their academic success. As such, we celebrate our collective efforts to create a vibrant, healthy community where students and staff can thrive,” NAU President Rita Cheng said. “Over the years, NAU has demonstrated a strong commitment to creating a healthy campus and improving our strategic efforts around fitness and nutrition. We are proud to partner with Sodexo to achieve the HCI Healthy Campus designation.”

The effort was coordinated through the Healthy Campus Coalition and involved significant input from Campus Health Services and Campus Recreation.

“We congratulate Northern Arizona University’s commitment to supporting students and their wider campus community to form healthy habits that will last a lifetime,” said PHA President and CEO Nancy E. Roman. “Their demonstrated leadership is an important step forward towards realizing Partnership for a Healthier America’s goal that all young people grow up free from obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other conditions associated with excess weight.”

As part of their Healthier Campus Initiative commitment, NAU worked collaboratively with PHA to build upon existing campus wellness efforts to encourage and support greater physical activity and healthier eating habits. Every Healthier Campus Initiative partner commits to meeting 23 of 41 PHA guidelines within three years. With a focus on wellness, NAU had already met several of the guidelines, but new commitment elements include:

  • Implementing a comprehensive, strategic product placement/merchandising program/policy within dining venues to encourage healthier food consumption.
    • While many factors influenced the renovation of the new DüB resident dining facility on campus, NAU used this strategy to help guide the placement of different platforms. As a result, the first thing students see when they walk into the new DüB Dining District is Plant Forward, featuring fresh, exciting vegan and vegetarian dishes. NAU was recognized as one of Food Management’s 2018 Innovators of the year for its focus on health in campus dining.
  • Provide marked walking routes on campus, one of which must be at least two miles in length and have distance markers at regular intervals. A route map is made available to individuals on campus.
    • NAU’s Blue & Gold 5K offers a 3.2-mile hike through campus. The route is marked with a trailhead with distance markers every half-mile. Campus Recreation’s Bites and Hikes initiative offers an additional five hikes, ranging from one to 2.6 miles, on and around campus, with trail maps online. Each map, including for the Blue & Gold 5K, offers information on campus landmarks and healthy dining options along the way.

PHA’s guidelines were developed in collaboration with some of the nation’s leading nutrition, physical activity and campus wellness experts. Each of the commitment elements have been verified by an independent third party and are publicly reported in PHA’s annual progress reports.

A full overview of Northern Arizona University’s commitment can be found here. 

To learn more about PHA’s participating colleges and universities, visit ahealthieramerica.org/campuses.

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April 16, 2019

As the climate changes, extreme weather and flooding are intensifying and occurring more frequently worldwide. Scientists believe that by studying warming events in Earth’s past, they can better understand how the current warming trend is triggering other changes to the environment.

As part of a large, multidisciplinary study involving eight institutions and a multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation grant, assistant professor Michael Elliot Smith of NAU’s School of Earth and Sustainability’s Division of Geosciences recently received a $190,000 subaward to excavate a climate report from the past.

By mapping the layers of rock in the Green River Formation in Wyoming—one of the world’s richest systems of ancient lake strata—Smith hopes to learn about the climate and flooding events during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO) period 50 to 53 million years ago, when the climate was much hotter than it is now and carbon dioxide levels spiked, causing a greenhouse effect.

“We want to extract a record of climate change from a time when global warming was in full effect,” Smith said. “We want to know whether increased moisture in the atmosphere creates conditions for bigger storms and floods and test whether that actually happened during the Eocene’s greenhouse climate. Some of the preliminary data suggest that there is, in fact, a pretty strong correlation between flooding and higher temperatures.”

The project team, led by director Alan Carroll at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, represents a collaboration between more than 20 faculty researchers, postdoctoral scholars, Ph.D. students and undergraduate students at Northern Arizona University, the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, the University of Minnesota, The University of Arizona, Boise State University and Binghamton University.

The NAU team will provide the stratigraphic framework of the basin so researchers at the other institutions can analyze the rock samples using chemical and magnetic techniques.

Smith’s team of graduate and undergraduate students also will spearhead the effort to map ancient river channel deposits. Most of the work involves measuring vertical columns of sedimentary rock from surface exposures in and around Rock Springs, Wyoming, where the landscape provides a rare detailed record of vastly different environmental conditions during the EECO.

Studies have shown that at that time, equatorial regions were likely so hot they were uninhabitable. Fossil evidence revealed the climate in southwestern Wyoming was subtropical, supporting palm trees, monkeys, ostriches and crocodiles. Smith wants to investigate that climate in detail—for example, was it hot but stable, or did temperatures fluctuate and spike? The information Smith and his students collect will be compared with information collected from ocean contexts that date to the same time.

“A lot of effort has gone into ocean-bed drilling to extract a record from this period and others. What we find in the EECO is that there’s so much ocean acidification corresponding with this warming event that often the record is condensed; there’s just not a lot of detail left. The opposite is true in this basin in Wyoming where this sediment was deposited in the lake bed.”

Augmented reality app to bring backyard geology to school-aged children

Another goal of the project is promoting geology to school-aged children. PI Smith realized that many elementary and middle school students aren’t exposed to much geology because field trips to interesting sites can be prohibitively expensive. To encourage kids to explore local geology, NAU and the University of Minnesota have partnered to develop an augmented reality app that will enable kids to use their cell phones to learn about the rocks around them.

“Imagine walking up to one of the cliffs outside and holding your phone up to it to learn what each layer means,” Smith said. “It will be like Pokémon Go, but with rocks!”

Smith, who joined NAU in 2014, focuses his research on the geochronology of sedimentary basins, deep time stratigraphy and marine geomorphology. He leads the Sedimentary Research Group at NAU, which seeks to better understand tectonic and landscape processes as they are recorded in terrestrial and marine basins.

“We work at the interface between sedimentary geology, geomorphology and geochronology,” he said. “We’re focused on the terrestrial stratigraphy of the North American Cordillera and the effects of bedrock lithology on modern and ancient sedimentary processes across a variety of environments.”

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Kerry Bennett and Amy K. Phillips
Office of the Vice President for Research