Spotlight

In the Spotlight: Nov. 17, 2016

Kudos to these faculty, staff and 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.

  • Lisa Campos, Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics, and Erin Kruse, Senior Corps Programs Project Director, were recently recognized as two of the 20 Under 40, a collection of the best and the brightest of Flagstaff’s young businesspeople. The new award program is a collaboration between the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce and the Arizona Daily Sun.
  • 2016familyfieldguidebookNAU ballet master Andrew Needhammer was selected to receive the Arts Advocate Award by the Greater Arizona Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters Arizona. There will be a ceremony to honor his achievement March 19, 2017, at Paradise Valley Community College.
  • Northern Arizona University received the Outstanding Publication Award for New Students or Family Members for its “Family Field Guidebook,” distributed to family members during new student orientation. The award—which recognizes “the best of the promotional materials submitted for the 2016 orientation season”—was presented by NODA, the Association for Orientation, Transition, and Retention in Higher Education, during the association’s annual conference in Indianapolis. The piece was produced collaboratively by EMSA Communications, University Marketing and Undergraduate Admissions and Orientation.
  • Northern Arizona University has been ranked No. 5 in the nation for its master of science in nursing program in the Best Online Nurse Practitioner Programs: 2016-2017 by Affordable Colleges Online. The ranking was generated by analyzing cost and quality metrics across thousands of U.S. colleges with online nursing degree options.
  • Sue Belatti, director of Residential Learning Communities for Housing and Residence Life, and Rebecca Swain, assistant director of Residential Learning Communities for Housing and Residence Life, recently participated in the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International Living-Learning Programs Conference in Scottsdale. More than 175 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada were represented at the conference. Topics ranged from marketing and assessment, to staff selection and training, to overall Living-Learning Program structure. Housing and Residence Life, in partnership with the Provost’s Office and Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, is currently working on the expansion of the Residential Learning Community program at NAU.
  • Martha Lee, professor in the School of Forestry, has been selected by the U.S. Forest Service for the Connie G. Myers Award for Leadership in Wilderness Education. This award is in recognition of Lee’s partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, which has provided more than 300 students in her Wilderness Management class the opportunity to work with Forest Service staff on practical land management issues. This partnership began in 2000 and in recent years has grown to include other agencies such as the Arizona Game and Fish Department, National Park Service and Coconino County Search and Rescue.
  • Shelley Jones, director of biological safety, was awarded the 2016 Hashimoto Recognition Award at the American Biological Safety Conference International last month in Grapevine, TX. She moderated a National Science Advisory Board Update session during the event. Jones also presented and led a discussion during the Arizona Biosecurity Workshop hosted at ASU on Nov. 4. Read more online.
  • 3+1 program student cohortDaniel Palm, executive director of the Center for International Education, and delegates from NAU, including Paul Jagodzinski, dean of the College of Engineering, Forestry and Natural Sciences, recently met with President Li Lin from Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, CQUPT, to discuss the ongoing 3+1 dual-degree partnership in electrical engineering. There are currently 280 Chinese students in the program at CQUPT with the first cohort planning to arrive at NAU in fall of 2017. Pictured right is the third cohort of 99 students.
  • Peter Friederici, director of the master’s in sustainable communities program, completed a new book titled A New Form of Beauty: Glen Canyon Beyond Climate Change, which was published Oct. 31 by the University of Arizona Press. A collaboration with the photographer Peter Goin, it looks at one of the Southwest’s most iconic landscapes through the lens of climate change.
  • Bruce Sullivan, professor of comparative cultural studies, presented a lecture at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland at the invitation of the Religious Studies faculty in the School of Divinity. The lecture concerned the sponsoring by museums of yoga and meditation sessions in their galleries and the diverse attitudes participants and museum officials express regarding such practices in museum settings.
  • James Leve, professor of music, Donelle Ruwe, professor of English, and graduate student Erica Thompson presented at the 114th Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association Conference this month in Pasadena, Calif. Leve’s paper, “Bring My [  ]”: Porgy and Bess in the Context of Disability Studies, argued that, because Gershwin’s glorious score “ennobles” the protagonists, the opera reinforces the ideology of disability overcome and ignores the reality of living with disability. Ruwe’s paper, Illustrating Secret Gardens: Images as Ritual in Trimmer, Brontë, and Burnett, examined 200 years of illustration history, showing how an iconic scene from an 18th-century children’s novel was reframed and reinterpreted in Jane Eyre and the Secret Garden. Thompson’s paper, Secrecy, Power, and Identity in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, looked into the power dynamics of secrecy and gender in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
NAU Communications