Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs.
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- In 2022, students enrolled in health sciences professor Samantha Sabo’s HS 624 course—Community Based Participatory Research to Improve Health Equity—designed a community health action plan with the nonprofit program Kambia to bring potable water to the Jorge Alvarez community in Honduras. On Jan. 31, 2025, Sabo and these students were invited to celebrate the official inauguration of the community’s water system, an event made possible through a culmination of efforts that include the course’s action plan.
- Undergraduate anthropology student Makenzie Long won the People’s Choice Award for the best color artifact photo in the 2025 Archaeological Photo Festival, hosted by the Society for Historical Archeology and the Advisory Council on Underwater Archeology. Long’s winning piece showcased the “jack-o’-canterns” of Apex, Arizona, or artifact cans locals carved to resemble jack-o’-lanterns during the Great Depression.
- A team of seven students from NAU’s Model United Nations Club, alongside club adviser and Politics and International Affairs Chair Gretchen Gee, traveled to Montreal, Canada, for McGill University’s Model United Nations Assembly. Political science student and club president Bryce Girouard won an honorable mention award for his portrayal of Polish politician Antoni Stanisław Czetwertyński-Światopelk.
- Criminology and criminal justice graduate student Breanna Roberts was accepted into the sociology and criminal justice doctoral program at the University of Delaware with full funding. She plans on focusing on gender-based violence and victimization while pursuing her doctorate.
- Five students from the Sports and Adventure Media certificate program—Ava Nichols, Makayla Richardson, Connor Emery, Ashley Hinchy and Resse Clarke—traveled to New Orleans in February to cover the 2025 Super Bowl for an NAZ Today live show.
- School of Earth and Sustainability graduate student Valeria Cortés-Rivas was the first author of the paper “Interactions between megathrust behavior and forearc deformation in the Andreanof segment of the Aleutian Subduction Zone, offshore Alaska, USA,” published in Geology. The paper explores factors influencing the frequency of megathrust earthquakes, incredibly powerful earthquakes that occur when tectonic plates meet in subduction zones, in Alaska.
- T. Mark Montoya, associate dean for curriculum and student affairs and associate professor of ethnic studies in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, authored the chapter “Reclaiming Citizenship through Borderlands Pedagogy, Storytelling, and Praxis,” recently published in the book “Walled: Barriers, Migration, and Resistance in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” The chapter highlights the significance of counter-narratives in challenging exclusionary citizenship policies and practices in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
- After placing third in the San Diego American Mock Trial Association Regionals, NAU Mock Trial qualified to compete in the 2025 Opening Round Championship Tournament in Los Angeles from March 8-9. The Lumberjacks were one of almost 800 teams from more than 500 colleges and universities competing for fewer than 200 Opening Round Championship spots.