{"id":77116,"date":"2026-02-23T15:05:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=77116"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:05:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:05:58","slug":"in-the-spotlight-feb-23-27-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/in-the-spotlight-feb-23-27-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Spotlight: Feb. 23-27, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">E-mail your announcements to\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"mailto:Inside@nau.edu\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">Inside@nau.edu<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, or use\u00a0our\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/news-tip\/#.YEjwNWhKg2w\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">online submission form<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"1\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Daniella Quiroz<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, a psychological sciences undergraduate student, was one of six students named to the GIFFORDS 2026 class of Arizona Courage Fellows. Students selected for their demonstrated interest in political activism spend five months learning from gun policy experts and\u00a0participating\u00a0in lobbying training sessions, a process that culminates in a gun violence prevention project that the student presents to their community.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"2\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Undergraduate mathematics students\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Gabby Stewart\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">and\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Shaye\u00a0Fordring\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">presented at the 2026 Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Wisdom in Mathematics. Both students discussed the implications of their collaborative research projects, titled &#8220;New Results in Graph Pebbling\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;Pattern avoidance in signed Cayley permutations,\u201d with industry leaders.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"3\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science (APS) associate professor\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Cristina Thomas<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, part-time temporary employee\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Lauren McGraw<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0and graduate research assistant\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Aidan Madden-Watson\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">co-authored the paper \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/2602.08732\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">The Nysa family as the main source of unequilibrated LL ordinary chondrites<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u201d published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The study investigates the likelihood of two major models of diverse ordinary chondrite formation, the most common meteorites on Earth.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"4\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">APS adjunct faculty member\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Will Grundy\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">will join the department as a research professor this week. Grundy\u2019s research portfolio includes extensive lab work, telescopic\u00a0observations\u00a0and student mentorship through NAU project involvement.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"5\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Interdisciplinary health doctoral student\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Hosava\u00a0Kretzmann\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">qualified for the 2028 Olympic marathon trials, being the first Native American runner to do so. He completed the event with a time of 2:15:50, 10 seconds under the Olympic trials qualifying standard.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/in-the-spotlight-feb-23-27-2026\/\">Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs. Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community? E-mail your announcements to\u00a0Inside@nau.edu, or use\u00a0our\u00a0online submission form. Daniella Quiroz, a psychological sciences undergraduate student, was one of six students named to the GIFFORDS 2026 class of Arizona Courage Fellows. Students selected for their demonstrated interest&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}