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Larry Clark ’94

BIXI green bikes at WSU
Summer 2012

What moves you at WSU

One fuzzy old photograph of construction in downtown Pullman shows images of early days in the city: men laying a foundation by hand, a horse-drawn carriage on the street, a bicycle leaning on a post in the foreground. The photo has no date, but that bike, like a relic dropped by a time traveler, looks remarkably modern.

You won’t see a horse-drawn anything on Pullman’s streets now, except in parades, but you still see bikes among the buses, pedestrians, and a lot of cars.

Bridgette Brady, director of Washington State University’s Transportation and Parking Services, envisions bike use on campus increasing over the next … » More …

Rebecca Portnoy, Mike Morgan, Katie Witkiewitz eat lunch at WSU Vancouver
Summer 2012

The company that eats together

Rebecca Portnoy started thinking about shared meals and came across a memory of closing time in a particular restaurant.

“I had been at a Seattle sushi restaurant at the end of the night, and the leftover sushi was being moved to a communal table for a staff meal,” says Portnoy, an assistant professor of management at WSU Vancouver. “I had worked at restaurants and I was baffled and amazed that they were going to take the time at the end of their shift to eat together.”

When she worked as a waitress, Portnoy usually saw people take off right after their shifts. She wondered, what … » More …

Spring 2012

Eat your broccoli or no cookie: Feeding styles and childhood obesity

Ever try to get a child to stop munching potato chips and eat some carrots? That push toward healthier foods can sometimes contribute to familial strife, make it difficult for children to tell when they are full, and even increase the possibility of children becoming obese.

“Parents struggle all the time to get their kids to eat the right foods or to try their fruits and vegetables,” says Thomas Power, chair of Washington State University’s Department of Human Development. And a child’s innate ability to determine how much to eat can be compromised in these situations, he adds.

» More …

Spring 2012

All You Can Eat

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Richard Harlan Miller
Gray Dog Press, 2011

In an expensive downtown Spokane condo lives a predator. You wouldn’t guess it from his expensive wine, conservative clothes, classical music, and penchant for nature and historical TV programs, but Darius is part of a group who must drink the blood of humans.

They don’t use the v-word, turn into bats, or sleep in coffins, but the bloodsuckers in All You Can Eat live a very long time … » More …

Chance (Chad) McKinney ’94, ’96
Winter 2011

Chance McKinney ’94, ’96—Country music working man

It’s vacation season, mid-August. A light breeze off Lake Chelan wafts over Manson, where Chance McKinney and his band Crosswire prepare to open for country music star Dierks Bentley at the Mill Bay Casino.

For McKinney ’94, ’96—an all-American javelin thrower at Washington State University, former high school math teacher, songwriter, and country music artist—it’s a working day. “We don’t have a full team like these artists that are coming out of Nashville. It’s running a small business,” he says.

McKinney wears a baseball cap, t-shirt and jeans, and his rich voice and country-boy good looks have an edge of exhaustion from days, weeks, … » More …

Winter 2011

The lost and found flourmill

Steve Fulton grew up in the 1960s with his uncle Leonard’s flour milled with a process called Unifine. Fulton ate whole wheat bread baked by his mother Lee x’38 from the flour. His father Joseph x’39 promoted and delivered the flour all over the Northwest. But the Spokane area mill closed in 1986.

So in 2008 when Fulton started researching the family mill—built at Washington State University—he was surprised to learn that Oregon company Azure Standard was using the Unifine name for its flour.

He emailed Azure Standard’s president, David Stelzer. “David called my cell phone and said, ‘I know where your uncle’s mill is,’” … » More …

Winter 2011

Building New Pathways to Peace

peace

Noriko Kawamura , Yoichiro Murakami, and Shin Chiba, editors

University of Washington Press, 2011

 

The idea of “peace” in our complex and conflicted world sometimes seems out of reach or even antiquated. The authors in this collection recognize these realities and make a concerted effort to build a new theory of peace studies.

Noriko Kawamura, a WSU assistant professor of history, co-edited the volume, which includes contributions from a number of Washington State faculty along … » More …

Winter 2011

The Man Who Dammed the Yangtze: A Mathematical Novel

kuo

Alex Kuo

Haven Books, 2011

 

Ge and G, mathematicians in northern China and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, respectively, navigate parallel academic paths at the beginning of this unique and challenging novel by WSU English professor Alex Kuo. The two characters don’t know each other, but their lives reflect a common experience over the course of 30 years.

The Chinese woman Ge and Chinese-American man G share a disgust for the emptiness of their teaching and the revolutions … » More …

Fall 2011

A Leonard legacy

Elmer O. Leonard started as a student at Washington State College in 1915. When the call came in 1918, he headed to Europe and the Great War as a soldier. Like a number of other young men, he was killed in combat and never returned to Pullman and the college.

His nephew and namesake Elmer F. Leonard was born a year later. He followed in his uncle’s footsteps to Pullman, enrolling at WSC in 1939, joining the Army and serving in World War II from 1942 to 1946, and eventually graduating from WSC in 1949.

Ever since the first two Elmer Leonards, WSU has … » More …

Fall 2011

Running with the Pac-12—A conversation with Bill Moos

This summer, Washington State University and the other nine schools in the Pac-10 conference expanded to the Pac-12, welcoming the University of Colorado and the University of Utah. WSU Athletic Director Bill Moos has been part of the changing conference for decades: as a football player at WSU in the Pac-8, as an associate athletic director and athletic director in the Pac-10, and now back at WSU for the Pac-12. The conference also gained the most lucrative television deal in the history of college sports, worth up to $20 million a year for WSU, which splits conference games between ESPN and Fox.

Larry Clark of … » More …