Heidi Toth

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What do you get when you mix fresh eggplant with a tiny apartment kitchen and a student who doesn’t know how to cook it?

Well, if you ask Cat Sullivan beforehand, you may get a delicious and healthy dinner, a newfound love of cooking and a desire for more fresh produce.

That’s what the Open Air Market at Northern Arizona University is for.

The Open Air Market, just east of the University Union on the pedestrian walkway, is part farmer’s market, part craft show and part opportunity to raise awareness of sustainable living. The market, which is cosponsored by Union Activities and Campus Dining, is in its third year and runs every Wednesday for a month in the spring and fall. The market is open through April 26.

Sullivan, who is in charge of sustainability for Sodexo, which provides the food on campus, said the purpose of the Open Air Market is to promote sustainability. To fulfill that mission, all the produce comes from local farms, the baked goods (vegan and regular) come from Campus Dining, the vendors are from the community and the occasional live music showcases NAU students, faculty and staff.

Community shoppers can pay for their products in the usual ways and students can use Dining Dollars, which Sullivan says is the most popular form of payment.

Student shopping at the Open Air Market

A student shops at NAU’s Open Air Market.

“We have students who are interested in cooking who come back each week and tell us how they cooked the food they bought,” Sullivan said.

The market, while it is small, has a little something for most people. In addition to the produce and baked goods—a popular purchase among employees, Sullivan said, is a loaf of blueberry or banana bread that gets taken back to their offices to share—there are vendors selling crafts, clothes and other artisan items.

Heather Chamorro is one of those regular vendors. She owns Pink Sky Creations and sells soaps, lotions and other unique and pretty beauty and hygiene products. After years of selling in the city’s farmers market, she connected with Sullivan and started at the Open Air Market last year.

Business has gone well so far, she said, with bath bombs and lotion bars being her best-sellers. Everything is vegan and sourced in a way that’s good for the environment, and students have responded.

“There’s always a crowd coming in and just talking with us, having a conversation,” she said. “We enjoy being around the students.”

For people who don’t want to shop, the Open Air Market has a few options. Although it’s not a regular thing, Sullivan will occasionally invite local musicians or performance troupes; past markets have included performances by the NAU Capoeira Club and Swing Jacks Dance Club.

The market also is a good place for various clubs to advertise. At a recent market, first-year student Carlie Callaway, co-chair of Green Jacks, handed out fliers and answered questions about the group’s sustainability-oriented mission and its upcoming events for Earth Month, including Earth Jam on April 21.

“We’re out here raising awareness for that and recruiting more sustainable leaders,” she said, adding the Open Air Market was a great way to talk to people who may not be part of the sustainability movement. “People know who we are, but not everyone knows what we do.”

The Open Air Market runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Union pedway by the Wedge Market. It is open April 12, April 19 and April 26, then it will reopen sometime in the fall. Contact Cat Sullivan for more information or to participate in a future market.

Live music at the Open Air Market
Students browse the stalls at the Open Air Market and listen to live music. The market is every Wednesday through the end of April.

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In the Student Spotlight: April 6, 2017

Kudos to these students

Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?

E-mail your announcements to Inside@nau.edu, or use our online submission form.

  • Daniel SanchezOut of 13,000 applicants, doctoral student Daniel Sanchez was among 2,000 chosen to receive the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Sanchez received his undergraduate degree from NAU and has been working as a research specialist for the School of Forestry’s Bat Ecology & Genetics Lab and the Pathogen & Microbiome Institute. Sanchez will undertake his doctoral research with Faith Walker and Carol Chambers in the School of Forestry. His project will use emerging genetic technologies to better understand the diet and population history of the endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse for conservation and management of the species. NAU alumni Yordano Eleazar Jimenez studying at Brown University and Ricardo Peterson studying at Stanford also received the award. NAU alum Benjamin Rene Luginbuhl studying at the University of California-Santa Barbara received Honorable Mention.

 

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In the Spotlight: April 6, 2017

Kudos to these faculty and staff

Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?

E-mail your announcements to Inside@nau.edu, or use our online submission form.

  • Group Photo From Arizona-Mexico Signing ceremonyNAU-Yuma, in partnership with Arizona Western College, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Universidad Politecnica de Baja California, Instituto Tecnologico de Mexicali, and Universidad Autonoma de Baja California signed a memorandum of understanding on March 30 (pictured right). The memorandum is an agreement to collaborate across the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • NAU’s Parking and Shuttle Services, which accommodates more than 12,000 bus passengers a day, was featured in the April 2017 issue of Metro Magazine. NAU was the first retail customer to buy ARBOC Specialty Vehicles’ new Spirit of Liberty bus, which features low floors, making it easy to load passengers from the curb.
  • Rick Szal, lecturer of economics from the W.A. Franke College of Business, received the 2017 Association for Business Simulation and Experimental Learning (ABSEL) Award for best paper in the area of innovations in education. The paper is under review for publication in the Journal of Statistical Education.
  • Professor Fé Murray is in line to become the first Latina president of the Arizona Speech-Language-Hearing Association in its 60 years of existence. Murray, an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, is currently the president-elect. Her term as president begins July 1.
  • Student Academic Success CenterTwo of NAU’s Flagstaff Campus buildings received Leader Awards from USGBC Arizona this year. The Student and Academic Services Building (pictured right) received the award for Innovative Design, New Construction and the International Pavilion received the award for Climate Champion. NAU officials will be honored at the Heavy Metal Awards Luncheon on April 19 hosted at the Salt River Project’s PERA Club in Tempe, Arizona. The Leader Awards recognize buildings that raised the bar for sustainable design in the state of Arizona in the past year. Projects were selected for demonstrating excellence in design, operations and innovation in meeting program challenges with sustainable solutions.
  • Eric Dieterle, assistant professor of practice in the W.A. Franke College of Business, recently published a book, “Where the Wind Dreams of Staying,” which has been named a finalist in the 2016 Foreword INDIES, Essays (Adult Nonfiction). According to their site, “Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards honor the best books from independent publishers, chosen from over 2,250 individual entries. Finalists for the Foreword INDIES represent some of the best books from non-Big 5 publishers and authors.” Winners will be announced at the American Library Association conference June 24.

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A Northern Arizona University junior is one of three students from Arizona selected as a Goldwater Scholar in 2017.

After years of doing undergraduate research and months of editing and revising his application, Etude O’Neel-Judy, a junior Honors student majoring in mathematics and physics, knew his work had paid off when he received the email telling him he was selected for the prestigious national award.

“I was in a classroom at the time, so I quietly walked into the hall, where I ran around flapping my arms and cheering silently; I didn’t want to disturb anyone,” O’Neel-Judy said. “It just so happened that Goldwater made the announcement on my birthday, so my 22nd was marked by some of the most exciting news of my college career.”

For undergraduate students who want to pursue STEM research, selection as a Goldwater Scholar is a highly sought after recognition from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation based on academic merit in research-focused STEM programs. The award pays for tuition, fees, books and living expenses up to $7,500 a year. This year 240 students were selected as scholars, while another 300 were given Honorable Mention.

NAU junior Robert Voinescu, also majoring in mathematics and physics, was one of the students recognized with a Goldwater Honorable Mention. In his application, he credited his physics background with teaching him about experimental techniques and his math background with teaching him about the methods of theoretical research, which he plans to combine in his chosen career field of condensed matter theory.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is highly competitive and provides the opportunity for undergraduate researchers to have their efforts rewarded and recognized by the research community as a whole,” he said. “The process began long before I put pen to paper. My mentors, Dana Ernst and John Gibbs, have played an integral role in making me the researcher I am today and narrowing down my field of interest.”

Goldwater Honorable Mention Robert Voinescu
Robert Voinescu

Universities can only nominate a few students each year, so nominees who get to the Goldwater Foundation have already gone through a rigorous application process. NAU is no different; O’Neel-Judy and Voinescu worked with Melissa Riggs, coordinator of National and International Scholarships and Fellowships, as well as his faculty and research mentors at NAU to craft an application that showcased his research and academic interests.

President Rita Cheng lauded the accomplishments of O’Neel-Judy and Voinescu, as well as those faculty members who have contributed to the students’ success.

“Our students are so talented and driven, and the experiences our NAU faculty and staff provide prepare them for great things, both during college and in their personal and professional lives,” she said. “I am so proud of Etude and Robert for this recognition, and we are all indebted to their faculty mentors.”

O’Neel-Judy has been involved with research since he arrived on campus; he’s also worked two jobs for the last three years to pay for school, which ate up research time. The financial portion of the award will take away some of that pressure, allowing him to focus more on research his final year at NAU.

After graduating, he wants earn a doctorate in mathematical physics or find a research position in industry or at an institution, allowing him to focus on novel approaches to the theoretical development of quantum gravity through new models of quantum spacetime.

“I love mathematics—but only when it makes sense to me,” he said. “What I mean by this is I understand math best when I can relate it back to the world in which I live. Because of this desire to relate math to the real world, I really enjoy mathematical physics. It is essentially the development of math as it pertains to problems in the real world and encompasses many wonderful topics.”

Voinescu is looking at study-abroad programs and additional research opportunities to broaden his knowledge base, including doing research at the University of Michigan this summer. He plans to earn a doctorate in theoretical physics, after which he wants to conduct research in the area of ultra-cold physics, write textbooks and teach at the university level.

Since 2013, NAU has had four Goldwater Scholars and three Honorable Mentions.

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Wildflowers splashed across a meadow in different sizes, shapes and colors offer more than just beauty. The natural mix of plant species in an ecosystem—its biodiversity—helps it grow faster and cycle nutrients more efficiently. These ecosystem functions also deliver life-sustaining services on which humans rely, such as purifying water and providing food, fuel and oxygen.

Biodiversity is declining around the world due to a variety of causes, including changes in land use, pollution and climate change, so it is more important than ever that land managers and other policymakers are better informed when making decisions that affect biodiversity in their regions.

But how do you measure the value of biodiversity? Northern Arizona University ecologist and Regents’ Professor Bruce Hungate led a team of scientists who developed one of the first models to assign a dollar value to the loss or gain of species in an ecosystem. The team’s findings, recently published in Science Advances, offer both an economic argument for preserving biodiversity and a practical tool for land managers.

“Biodiversity is valuable, but it’s hard to tell how valuable in monetary terms,” said Hungate, director of NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society.

To build the model, the researchers had to identify some measurable service of biodiversity that society has already priced, so they turned to the carbon capture and storage market. Concern about climate change has produced a $175 billion global market for activities that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

“We tackled the problem by blending models of carbon cycling and economic valuation to make explicit, quantitative estimates about the marginal value of species richness for carbon storage, one of the many ways species in nature provide value to people,” Hungate said.

Wildflowers splashed across a meadow in different sizes, shapes, and colors offer more than just beauty. The natural mix of plant species in an ecosystem—its biodiversity—helps it grow faster and cycle nutrients more efficiently.
Credit: David Hooper

The scientists theorized plant biodiversity could be considered a carbon storage “provider” through the process of photosynthesis, a 4-billion-year-old form of carbon storage. Plants “breathe in” carbon dioxide for energy and growth, store the carbon in their body tissues and transfer it to the soil through decay. The key is to link biodiversity and carbon storage in a quantitative way, so researchers asked whether changing the number of plant species in an ecosystem affects the amount of carbon it stores over time.

They analyzed data from two 10-year experiments in Minnesota grasslands that measured how plant and soil carbon changed with the number of plant species in a plot. Modeling results over 50 years, they estimated the “marginal” increase in carbon storage to determine how much additional carbon is stored for every species added to the mix.

Each additional species in a grassland plot increased the plot’s overall carbon storage, on average. One reason for this gain may be that new species can fill new niches, yielding more overall growth.

With more species, however, came diminishing returns in cumulative carbon storage. A change from five to six species stored almost 10 times more carbon than a change from 15 to 16 species, showing the biggest benefit came in the least diverse plots.

At small scales, such as one hectare, going from one to two plant species over a 50-year time period would store an additional 9.1 metric tons of carbon, potentially saving $804.55 per hectare based on a mid-range estimate of the social cost of carbon. At larger scales, cost savings could hypothetically be significant. For example, adding just one species to the 12.3 million hectares of cultivated lands restored to grasslands by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program could save more than $700 million.

While the value of biodiversity is larger and more complex than just one economic measure, this new tool explores the dollar value of what is lost or gained with changes in biodiversity. In grasslands, specifically, it suggests the biggest cost savings from carbon storage will come from restoring the most degraded, species-poor lands, and from introducing more diverse seed mixes.

Hear Hungate discuss his research in a recent podcast.

 

 

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The Hispanic Student Convocation Committee is seeking nominations to recognize three outstanding Latino graduating seniors and one outstanding graduate student at Hispanic Convocation. The nomination deadline is April 17.

The Cesar Chavez Award recognizes students with strong leadership skills, a demonstrated care and concern for fellow students and a history of involvement on behalf of the Hispanic community.

The Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award recognizes students with demonstrated leadership abilities, strong attachments to their cultural heritage and demonstrated advocacy regarding women’s rights.

The Gabriela Mistral Award recognizes students with a strong commitment to education and to promoting multicultural understanding.

The Outstanding Hispanic Graduate Student recognizes a graduate student who serves as a positive role model for fellow undergraduate colleagues, demonstrating strong leadership skills, care and concern for fellow students and a history of involvement on behalf of the Hispanic community.

Please email completed nomination forms to Sylvia Macias. Hispanic Convocation, which celebrates the students’ commitment to education, will be at 6 p.m. May 11 in the Ardrey Memorial Auditorium.