In the Spotlight: Feb. 14, 2014

Kudos to these faculty, staff and students

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  • Araceli Olivas will be the first NAU undergraduate student to present her research at the Council for Undergraduate Research’s annual Posters on the Hill event in Washington, D.C. The council accepted 60 presenters out of 600 applications. Olivas will present her poster, “Association of Motivation on Physical Activity in Middle School Boys and Girls,” at this year’s event, being held April 28-29. Her faculty mentor is Meghan Warren, associate professor of physical therapy and athletic training.
  • Javeon Butler, an electronic media and film major, and Jenna Lyter, an electronic media and film and advertising dual major, took top honors in the 2014 Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts competition. The pair earned the Best of Festival (Non-Fiction) award for their work on the Northern Arizona University; The Campaign for NAU promotional video that showcases the “Only at NAU” experience as part of the university’s $100 million fundraising campaign. View the video at right.

    The Broadcast Education Association is the professional association for professors, industry professionals and students who are interested in teaching and research related to electronic media and multimedia enterprises. Its Festival of Media Arts is an international juried creative competition open to faculty and students. Butler and Lyter will receive a $1,000 cash award in addition to recognition and exhibition of their work during the Best of Festival Awards Ceremony at BEA’s annual convention April 6-9 in Las Vegas.

  • The Arizona Commission on the Arts awarded an artist’s grant for writing to Nicole Walker, associate professor of poetry and creative nonfiction. Walker will write essays that combine research-based investigations with lyric vignettes to explore the notions of scarcity and sustainability. Walker is the author of the nonfiction book Quench Your Thirst with Salt, which won the Zone 3 Press Creative Nonfiction Book Award, and a collection of poems titled This Noisy Egg Barrow Street. In 2013, she co-edited Bending Genre: Essays on Nonfiction.
  • Martin Kalb, lecturer for the Department of History, has been invited to share his research on youth in Munich at the German Historical Institute’s conference, titled “War and Childhood in the Age of the World Wars: Local and Global Perspectives,” in Washington, D.C., in June.
  • Chambers, Nowak, Platts
    Carol Chambers, Erika Nowak and Cami Platts

    NAU professors, students and alumni won awards at the Arizona/New Mexico Chapters of the Wildlife Society and the American Fisheries Society Chapters’ joint annual meeting in Pinetop, Ariz., on Feb. 7. Carol Chambers, professor of wildlife ecology in the School of Forestry and the southwest section representation to the Wildlife Society, won the Professional Service Award, given annually to an Arizona biologist for outstanding contributions to management and conservation of wildlife and for their professional work standards and conduct. Erika Nowak, associate research professor in biological sciences and herpetologist at the Colorado Plateau Research Station, won the Doug Morrison Award, given to an Arizona biologist who has made significant contributions to the management and conservation of wildlife in Arizona. Cami Platts, senior in the School of Forestry, with NAU mentors Faith Walker, a postdoctoral research associate in biological sciences, and Chambers, won the best student poster in the meeting-wide competition for her poster, titled “Genetic Relatedness among Maternity Colonies of Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fucus) in Flagstaff: Implications for Disease Transmission.” Scott Sprague and Jeff Gagnon, who earned their master’s in biological sciences in 2010 and 2006 respectively, won the Wildlife Habitat Relationship Award, given to a professional wildlife biologist in Arizona for their contribution to understanding or applying habitat principles to management of an animal species or group of species. Sprague also had two prize-winning photographs in the meeting-wide photo contest.

  • Colin Burke, a graduate student in the applied criminology master’s program, co-authored a paper with Nancy Wonders, professor of criminology and criminal justice, titled “Public/Private Surveillance: Reassembling Power, Reconsidering Justice.” The paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Western Society of Criminology in February.
  • Danielle Richards, assistant clinical professor of educational psychology, along with counseling psychology doctoral students Kelly Donohue, Alani Rabaino and Danielle Busby, recently received a research award and $574 grant from Chi Sigma Iota,  an international honor society that values academic and professional excellence in counseling. They received the Excellence in Counseling Research Award for “Predicting Student Counselor Self-Efficacy with Predictors of Healthy Personal Adjustment: Mindfulness, Self-Compassion and the Indivisible Self.” The award will be presented at the American Counseling Association 2014 conference in Hawaii in March.
  • Jennifer Cardoza, a Gilman Scholar who received the competitive Boren Scholarship last year, has received an extension of the scholarship to remain in South Korea this winter and next fall. She has also been accepted to the Peace Corps.
  • Northern Arizona University’s bachelor of science in business administration, finance, recently was added to the select list of Charter Financial Analyst Institute University Programs. The institute recognized that NAU’s degree program places an emphasis on the institute’s code of ethics and standards of practice while incorporating at least 70 percent of the institute’s Candidate Body of Knowledge. NAU’s bachelor degree program prepares students for Chartered Financial Analyst examinations, an investment credential considered the gold standard around the world.