Spring 2010
Article
Spring 2010
Of honor and friendship
One of the most successful partnerships in WSU history began in failure.
It was the spring of 1975, Kansas State University. Guy Palmer was given a piece of ore in an analytical chemistry class and told to figure out how much nickel was in it. He got it wrong, earning an F.
This happened to be in the highly competitive environment of undergraduates vying for veterinary school. About one in ten applicants would gain admission, so it was not exactly in students’ interest to help each other out. But Terry McElwain saw Palmer struggling to redo the assignment while working on a second one. … » More …
Spring 2010
Gangs of Chicago
Fifty years ago James F. Short Jr., a young sociologist at Washington State University, was asked to lead a study of Chicago gangs.
In smoky pool halls on Roosevelt Road, the baseball fields of Douglas Park, and the windy street corners of Lawndale, Short and a team of youth workers and sociologists spent three years trying to figure out if boys with monikers like Smack Daddy, Duke, and Commando were so very different from their counterparts in wealthier parts of the city.
The resulting groundbreaking analysis opened a window into the everyday experience of the Vice Lords, the Egyptian Cobras, the Imperial Chaplains, and … » More …
Spring 2010
Laboratories for the new century
First, six months of planning. Then, over the summer, came the actual moving of laboratory equipment, chemicals, papers, and all the rest. Finally, faculty, students, and staff from four separate science buildings are now under one roof in a gorgeous new facility beside Stadium Way.
“Our unit is large, with over 150 students, faculty and staff,” says John Nilson, director of the School of Molecular Biosciences. Previously, the school was fragmented, with bits of space in Fulmer Hall, Abelson (old Science), Eastlick, and Heald. “Moving from four buildings to one has already allowed unprecedented social and intellectual interactions that form … » More …
Spring 2010
Leave it to beavers
As we crunch through the snow in the hills above Winthrop, Steve Bondi ’02 and Ryan Anderson ’08 are eager to see evidence that their project to improve riparian habitat and provide late season water to the Methow Valley is working.
They’re building dams, but with the help of nature’s own unparalleled engineer—the beaver. The effort for a time seemed just a joke in the state capital—that of beavers building dams along rivers and streams in the Columbia River watershed to improve the hydrology of the region. “At the time, we couldn’t tell if they were laughing at us or with us,” says Anderson, watershed … » More …
Spring 2010
Language, Money, and Loss
Sometimes loss can be an occasion for newly discovered vitality. Where better than the university to challenge ourselves to avoid linguistic lemminghood? » More ...
Spring 2010
Vancouver Lake: A Search for Solutions Great and Small
This is the second time WSU scientists have worked on a plan to clean up Vancouver Lake. The first, in the 1960s, was monumental. This time it's microscopic. » More ...
Spring 2010
Desperately Seeking Sherman
Although his work is increasingly ubiquitous, the writer Sherman Alexie ’94 is a little harder to pin down. Our correspondent is undaunted. » More ...
Spring 2010
Of Time and Wildness in the North Cascades
Bob Mierendorf has spent the last couple of decades trying to convince the archaeological establishment that pre-contact Northwest Indians did not confine themselves to the lowlands, but frequented the high country. Now he has an ancient camping site to make his point. » More ...
Winter 2009
Old News
Just as several of Washington’s newspapers have vanished from the landscape, librarians and volunteers are bringing our state’s near-forgotten newspapers to light. Through a project in the Washington Secretary of State’s office, library employees and about 15 volunteers are digitizing the Washington State Library’s extensive newspaper collection to make it accessible to teachers, students, and the general public. In addition, WSU’s own Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections division recently assumed responsibility for an aging newspaper collection in the Holland library that contains Pacific Northwest papers dating back to 1851 as well as Colonial America papers dating to 1728.
Both … » More …