University of Arizona in the News

University of Arizona Chief Safety Officer Steve Patterson created the nighttime safety walk program last month to hear from students about areas on campus that make them feel unsafe. "It's a great opportunity to see how we're doing and get a view of this campus from a perspective that I normally don't have," Patterson said.

Kent Campbell, an instrumental figure in the global battle against malaria – most notably in Africa, where he led an innovative program providing bed nets to protect rural villagers from the mosquitoes carrying the disease – died on Feb. 20 in Oro Valley. He was 80. Campbell was instrumental in the creation of the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

Driven by climate change, population growth and drug resistance, the danger of fungal infections is growing, reinforced by new warnings from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. John Galgiani, director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence at the University of Arizona, estimates that up to one-third of what look like pneumonia cases in the area could actually be Valley fever.

Willem de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre" was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985. It was found in 2017 and valued at more than $100 million at the time of its recovery. But it wasn't the only painting found in the New Mexico estate of Jerry and Rita Alter. There were at least two other valuable paintings in their estate by famous Western artists. Works by artists Joseph Henry Sharp and Victor Higgins were unknowingly donated after the Alters' death to a non-profit and auctioned off in 2018.

The addition last month of the first veterinarian to the Navajo Nation Veterinary Management Program is part of a concerted effort to by Navajo President Buu Nygren to expand veterinary services on the reservation. In 2022, President Nygren signed a memorandum of agreement with the University of Arizona to reward seven eligible Navajo veterinary students with a full scholarship, with its funding shared between the nation and the College of Veterinary Medicine.

University of Arizona professor of nutritional sciences Floyd "Ski" Chilton, director of the Center for Precision Nutrition and Wellness, developed his four-part CAST system as a framework for daily mindfulness. CAST emphasizes consciousness of action while remaining aware of the influence of unconscious thoughts. "The biggest misconception is that happiness is natural, and there really couldn't be anything further from the truth," Chilton said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the winter of 2023-2024 is the warmest one it's seen in the 130 years it's been tracking. Per the University of Arizona-led National Phenology Network, signs of spring in certain parts of the country – like the budding of the first lilac and honeysuckle leaves – have emerged the earliest they have since the organization began keeping records in 1981.

A recent study calculates University of Arizona athletics' events generated approximately $265 million in economic output for the state during 2023 fiscal year. The economic effect comes in the form of direct spending from visitors, taxes generated by their purchases and the thousands of jobs supported by university athletics events.

A team of scientists co-led by University of Arizona planetary sciences researcher Naman Bajaj used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the first example of a stellar wind dispersing the dust and gas from a star system's planet-forming disk. The phenomenon occurred around the relatively young star T Cha, which sits about 350 light years away in the constellation of Chamaeleon.

University of Arizona director of athletics Desireé Reed-Francois discusses her priorities for the department, the career path that led her to intercollegiate athletics administration, and her return to Tucson.