In the Spotlight: July 25-29, 2022

Kudos to these faculty, staff, students and programs 

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  • Northern Arizona University’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis and men’s and women’s outdoor track & field programs combined for 58 Big Sky Spring All-Academic awards. Already this year, NAU Athletics saw an increase from 40 to 62 honorees in the fall and 47 to 60 in the winter from the 2019-20 year to this year. Did the news release list the students who won the awards? Please list them and bold all of their names, if so. 
  • The Big Sky Conference announced that the NAU Lumberjacks were once again voted to finish seventh in both the coaches and media preseason polls for football, while offensive lineman Jonas Leader and safety Morgan Vest were named to the 2022 Big Sky Football Preseason All-Conference Team. 
  • Frederick DeMicco, executive director and professor of the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, authored the article “New Revenue Enhancing Opportunity for Hospitality Operations: Food to Seniors via Home Delivery.” This is a new opportunity for hospitality operations to deliver food to seniors; the program is funded by Medicare in order to effectively deliver healthy and high-quality meals to seniors at their homes. 
  • For the second consecutive year, NAU won the Big Sky Conference Presidents’ Cup, an annual award given to the university that best promotes a commitment to academics and overall success in the classroom and athletic competition.  NAU’s successful defense of the Presidents’ Cup is the Lumberjacks’ fifth all-time, tying Weber State for the most in conference history. 
  • NAU alumnus Luis Grijalva put together an incredible performance in the 5,000-meter finals at the 2022 World Athletics Championships on Sunday. With a season-best 13:10.44, Grijalva nearly medaled and came away with a fourth-place finish in his first world championship appearance. 
  • Men’s basketball players Nik Mains, Keith Haymon and Mason Stark, were recognized on the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Honors Court. In order to be named to the Honors Court, a student-athlete must be a junior or senior academically, hold a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher and have spent at least one year at their current institution. 
  • Valerie Payré, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences, authored the article “Tridymite in a lacustrine mudstone in Gale Crater, Mars: Evidence for an explosive silicic eruption during the Hesperian.” The unexpected detection of ∼16 wt. percent monoclinic tridymite, a high-temperature silica polymorph, within an otherwise lacustrine mudstone in Gale crater, Mars, raises significant questions about its formation and the extent of magmatic evolution on that planet.