BRING YOUR ASPIRATIONS

Our student-to-faculty ratio remains 19:1 today, the same as it was a decade ago, though our Lumberjack family has grown by more than 7,000 students since then.

According to a recent Strada-Gallup survey, 90 percent of NAU alumni reported their experience at NAU to be “inspiring” and “if they had it to do all over again” they would still attend NAU.

As our alumni know, the university’s national reputation for high-quality educational experiences attracts world-renowned scholars to study, research, and teach at NAU.

Our main campus in Flagstaff—the #3 best college town in the US, ranked by both Business Insider and the American Institute of Economic Research (AIER)—anchors the region’s culture of innovation.

From NAU–Yuma, designated by the US Department of Education as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, to Flagstaff, recently ranked #1 in diversity among the top 20 college towns by AIER—and well beyond—we are collaborating with Arizonans to create a better future.

We are continually evaluating programs to ensure we prepare students for careers that will be relevant to today’s and tomorrow’s economy.

New programs recently launched:

• Data Science BS
• Indian Country Criminal Justice BS
• Building Science MS
• Informatics MS
• Applied Physics and Materials Science PhD
• Clinical Psychology PsyD
• Mechanical Engineering PhD
• Building Science graduate certificate
• Higher Education Leadership graduate certificate
• Wind Energy graduate certificate

Programs about to be launched:

• Online BS and MS in Cybersecurity
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology BS
• Electrical Engineering Technology BS
• Multidisciplinary Engineering BS
• Software Engineering BS
• K-12 College and Career Readiness Counseling MEd
• Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD

The mountain peaks, pine trees, and food delivery robots on our Flagstaff campus are only the beginning. The hallmarks of an NAU education—vibrant programs and rich student experiences—are the same for Lumberjacks in Flagstaff, at our community campuses throughout Arizona, and online.

NAU is committed to pursuing the discovery, advancement, and application of knowledge in research areas unique and important to the region.

In 2019, NAU reached $58.9 million in research expenditures. As our research dollars grow, so do opportunities for undergraduates to participate in faculty-mentored research in areas that interest them.

Every spring NAU hosts an undergraduate research symposium featuring a wide range of subjects from designing tiny affordable homes to treating veterans with PTSD to identifying the role of culture and identity in treating patients in northern Arizona healthcare facilities. Last year, the symposium featured 240 presentations, 500 posters, and 3,500 attendees. The number of students presenting at the symposium has grown from 1,110 in 2013 to 1,554 in 2019.

Our faculty are working across disciplines making significant discoveries, advancing academic knowledge, and improving lives. Here are just a few of the ways NAU faculty are changing the world.

NAU has a long history as a leader providing access to teacher-preparation programs for Arizona students. We are continuing that tradition with more than 850 Arizona Teachers Academy students. The majority are residential students seeking degrees in elementary education and special education. Hundreds of students are already benefiting from this, pursuing teacher certifications where they live and work and preparing to graduate as debt-free as possible. Our first graduating class received diplomas in May and those graduates are in their first year of teaching in Arizona.

• Professor Ben Ruddell and Professor Eck Doerry’s flood research project is developing smart-image processing techniques to determine water level from a simple snapshot image. The results of this research will enable residents and cities to better prepare for monsoon flooding.
• NAU Associate Professor Dirk de Heer and Professor Priscilla Sanderson are partnering with the Navajo Nation Tribal Epidemiology Center to conduct an impact study of the unhealthy food tax—supported by a $1.4 million grant from the NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. In 2014, then-Navajo Nation president Ben Shelly signed the Healthy Diné Nation Act into law, mandating a 2 percent tax on “unhealthy foods” to help reduce overconsumption of soda, fat, and processed foods.
• A company in South Korea—a country with few forest resources—is paying to import biomass from Flagstaff. In addition to bringing income to the state of Arizona, the company’s partnership with NAU’s Ecological Restoration Institute helps forest restoration efforts and prevents wildfires. This project, led by Professor Han-Sup Han, has strong potential for regional economic benefits including the creation of jobs, the expansion of the wood products industry in northern Arizona, and the possibility of attracting other wood products industries to the area, potentially even scaling it into a hub.
• A team of researchers from NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, including Regents’ Professor Bruce Hungate, Professor Michelle Mack, Professor Paul Dijkstra, Professor Egbert Schwartz, and Research Associate Benjamin Koch, are collaborating with national partners on a project funded by a three-year, $3.3 million grant from the US Department of Energy to investigate how soil bacteria, viruses, and fungi contend with global warming. The study will help scientists better understand the rapidly changing global carbon picture.

NAU researchers are using advanced scientific knowledge and know-how to fight the coronavirus pandemic, working across disciplines to get results, including:

• disease experts at NAU’s Pathogen and Microbiome Institute, who launched the new COVID-19 Testing Service Center to evaluate new drugs against the virus
• NAU physicists, biochemists, and pathogen scientists, who are collaborating to develop new COVID-19 vaccines and testing methods based on nanotechnology
• NAU data scientists, who are working together to map the nation’s supply chains and develop predictive disease models
• NAU public health experts, who are collaborating with local communities and health officials to better understand the spread of the disease and address inequities in care