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Spring 2013

Posts for Spring 2013

Patrick Siler

I was thrilled to see the feature on Patrick Siler in your fall 2012 issue. I am a proud fine arts graduate from WSU and as a former professor of mine, Patrick Siler had (and continues to have), a huge influence on me.

I never considered myself a natural artist. I was drawn toward computer arts, that is until I took Patrick Siler’s drawing class. My advisor warned me that he was hard, but I am so glad that I took it. During the class he not only gave me invaluable feedback, but he, in his quirky way, encouraged me toward a … » More …

Spring 2013

Tastes like Beethoven

The 1909 National Apple Show in Spokane featured competitions, band concerts, vaudeville shows, and 1,525,831 apples. Spokane schools closed for a day so all the students could visit the exhibition, which spread across three and a half acres and featured intricate displays such as a giant American flag composed of apples and boxcars full of neatly packed apples.

Growers, shippers, bankers, and hundreds of the merely curious from around the Northwest flocked to the exhibition to revel in the fruit that Washington grew so well. When everyone had had their fill of the spectacle, the whole show was packed onto a special train and shipped … » More …

Winter 2012

The 1710 Senex map of North America

There were still plenty of blank spots on maps when cartographer and engraver John Senex (circa 1678-1740) created this 1710 map of North America. It is one of 33 early eighteenth-century maps from a Senex atlas in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, acquired by the WSU Libraries in the mid-1950s. The atlas lacks a title page, but it is almost certainly Senex’s Universal Geographer, published circa 1725. It includes the bookplate of Sir Archibald Grant of Monymoske, Baronet (1696-1778), and was formerly part of his library.

Courtesy WSU Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections

» More …

Winter 2012

Awards and Volunteer Recognition

The Alumni Achievement Award was created by the WSU Alumni Association in 1970 to honor those who have made significant contributions to their professions, their communities, the world, and WSU. Of the nearly quarter of million people who have attended WSC/WSU since 1890, fewer than 600 have received this prestigious award. We salute the following Cougars who were recognized with the Alumni Achievement Award over the past year and thank them for the prestige they bring to their alma mater:

Retired Major General Paul J. Fletcher ’72

Chad Little ’85, former NASCAR driver

Rueben Mayes ’92 & ’00, retired NFL player

James B. Niblock … » More …

Winter 2012

Chris Dunagan ’74, ’75—Bearing witness to the sights and smells of our soggy backyard

If you cover the waterfront the way Chris Dunagan does, you have to expect a fair amount of smells. There’s the fresh, tangy scent of estuary and the mild musk of beach wrack. There’s the stench of rotting shellfish during the great Oyster Rescue of 2010, and the outsized rot of a beached gray whale. Dunagan, 60, has documented a lot of beached whales, although the numbers are hard to nail down.

Counting just grays, not killer whales or humpbacks or dead whale reports over the phone, he says, “I’ve probably gone out to 20.”

Dunagan (biochemistry ’74, ’75 communications) has been the environmental reporter … » More …

Winter 2012

What I’ve Learned Since College—An interview with Ruth Bindler ’01

Ruth Bindler ’01 PhD grew up in the Adirondacks of New York. In the 1960s, when she started college at Cornell, the typical paths for women were teaching and nursing. Since she enjoyed her science classes, nursing seemed a logical route. Turned out it was a great fit. After working for a time at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, she moved to Wisconsin with Julian Bindler, who later became her husband, and found both nursing work and graduate school.

Bindler not only went on to become a successful public health nurse, she authored several books on children’s health and medication, was a … » More …

Winter 2012

Bob Hanson ’82—When bowling was big

Bob Hanson was just 18 when he bowled his first 300 game.

He remembers that day in 1977 when he threw 12 consecutive strikes on lanes 9 and 10 at Tower Lanes in Tacoma. At the time he was the third bowler to ever record a 300 game in the history of the Tacoma Junior League. The achievement, which made the front page of the Tacoma News Tribune, was just one of many milestones in Hanson’s 47-year career. But nothing has topped being part of the WSU men’s 1982 national championship bowling team, he says. “When you win something with the team, it is an … » More …

Winter 2012

The Law and the Land

Indian Law Attorney Brian Gunn pushes into new territory for his tribe and others

In the summer of 1951, a Colville Indian named Peter Gunn sued the United States government for the loss of a portion of his ancestral lands. He joined members of a number of other tribes including the Lake, San Poils, Methow, Okanogan, and Nespelem, all living on the Colville reservation and whose homelands, which once covered nearly half of Eastern Washington, had been given to the public for settlement in the late 1800s.

Two generations later, Gunn’s grandson Brian, 38, filed another suit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, this … » More …

Winter 2012

The Ethics of Climate Change

In 2012 the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, in conjunction with the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, began a new public symposia series that focuses on the ethical and public policy ramifications of new scientific innovations and knowledge. Each semester the symposia, which are open to the public, bring together WSU faculty with other internationally prominent scholars. The first in the series, “Ethics and Global Climate Change,” was held in April 2012, and brought to WSU’s campus Andrew Light, director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University and a fellow at the Center for American … » More …

Winter 2012

A Summer of Science

If the world of cutting-edge research has a glamorous side, it was lost on Laurel Graves this summer as she found herself digging trenches for soil probes on the Cook Agronomy Farm north of Pullman. In the high summer heat, Graves dug for two hours. Palouse soil covered her arms.

It was a hard-earned insight into the nature of science.

“You mean I’m not doing complex equations constantly?” she wondered. “Oh wait, I’ve got to be a farmer for a while.”

She was not alone in the grunt work department. Jeronda Hunt wrangled scores of petri dishes harboring white, smelly bacteria. Naeh Klages-Mundt spent three … » More …