Northern Arizona University Paper Format & Writing Requirements

Northern Arizona University at a glance

A mountain campus at about 7,000 feet in Flagstaff, famous for its School of Forestry, a hospitality program with resort-industry pipelines and a Lumberjacks identity built on snow, pines and altitude.

The campus sits in Flagstaff, Arizona, operates as a public institution, and enrolls about 30,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1899 with an acceptance rate around 80%, NAU pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles Northern Arizona University actually requires

NAU courses predominantly require APA 7 or MLA 9. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses
• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

ENG 105 (Critical Reading and Writing in the University Community) is the four-credit composition anchor, with a second-course requirement for many majors; the Writing Center in Cline Library runs walk-in and online appointments around Flagstaff snow days.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about Northern Arizona University papers that surprise new students

• Bblearn, NAU's Blackboard Learn install, still hosts most course shells, so draft exchanges and grading rubrics live behind a name mainland transfers have never heard of.
• Flagstaff became the world's first International Dark Sky City in 2001, and Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was discovered in 1930, sits on the hill just above campus.
• The Walkup Skydome, opened in 1977, was among the largest clear-span wooden domes ever built and doubles as indoor practice space during winter snowstorms.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments Northern Arizona University students face most

• Essay — most frequently assigned across NAU's programs
• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across NAU's programs
• Lab Report — most frequently assigned across NAU's programs
• Coursework — most frequently assigned across NAU's programs

Popular programs at NAU include forestry, hotel and restaurant management, criminology and criminal justice — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.