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Summer 2024

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Spring 2004

3 Degrees of Cool

Works from the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection

A new exhibition from the collection of Virginia and Bagley Wright, curated by Chris Bruce, director of the Museum of Art at Washington State University, takes the definition of cool to new heights. Viewers “get into the groove” by moving through three conceptual spaces with a mix of hypnotic African and Oceanic masks, haunting minimalist paintings, and electric abstract acrylics.

Virginia and Bagley Wright, international art collectors who live in Seattle, lived in New York during the 1950s and bought works directly from artists such as Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg. The Wrights now have one of … » More …

Spring 2004

Grandfather Extraordinaire

Jordi Kimes had been a teacher before becoming a stay home mom. She dreamed of returning to Washington State University and earning a doctorate in pharmacy. But she didn’t want to put her daughters, ages 7, 3, and 1, in daycare. So she called her parents. Would they be willing to watch the girls while she went to school, and her husband, Ken, worked? Without hesitation, her parents said yes.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the WSU graduate (’94 Pharmacy) said.

In the summer of 2002, she and her family moved from Waterville, Washington, to Pullman, where she had been accepted in the College of Pharmacy. … » More …

Spring 2004

Solving Boeing's Problems

The Boeing Company has a problem.

Lindsey Caton, a Boeing vision sensors and optics specialist, has taken apart yet another $3,500 camera that he has been trying to use to document the company’s manufacturing processes. Out of it oozes Boelube, the fancy lubricant that Boeing uses for drilling airplane parts. It does not belong in the camera. In fact, the camera is ruined.

Later, Caton describes the problem via video conference to a small group of students at Washington State University. As part of the Boeing Scholars Program, the students are developing a new protective enclosure for the camera.

Started in 1999, the … » More …

Spring 2004

Author Sherman Alexie receives Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award

Sherman Alexie likes to remind people that attending Washington State University presented him with a real challenge. As a Spokane Indian, a liberal, and a writer, he did not fit the prevalent mold of students attending WSU in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Regardless, on October 10, 2003, WSU president V. Lane Rawlins presented Alexie with the University’s highest alumni honor, the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Since leaving WSU in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in American studies, Alexie has published nine books of fiction and poetry and has written and directed two award-winning movies. Widely popular, his short stories appear in the nation’s … » More …

Spring 2004

The Last Roses of Summer

Steve Smith has good news for those of us who like to satisfy more than one sense at a time. The domestic rose, bred too long for form and color only, to the detriment of scent, is regaining its fragrance. Smith ’76, the head rose gardener at Manito Park in Spokane, is showing us his charges, which in late September are still in full bloom, and we spend much of our time sniffing.

A visit to Smith’s All-American Rose Selection (AARS) display garden gives a portrait of things to come. Each year, Manito and the other 130 such gardens across the country display the new … » More …

Spring 2004

On the origin of species—again

Everyone calls them genius awards, except the foundation that gives them. When describing recipients of its annual $500,000 grants, the MacArthur Foundation avoids “genius”-rather, says the Foundation, MacArthur Fellows are people who transcend boundaries, take risks, and synthesize disparate ideas and approaches. That’s a dead-on definition of Loren Rieseberg (’87 Ph.D. Botany), an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University Bloomington who received a MacArthur Fellowship in October 2003.

When Rieseberg arrived at Washington State University in 1984 to pursue his doctorate, he was a model student, energetic and eager, recalls his advisor and former WSU professor, Douglas Soltis, now at University of Florida. Soltis handed him … » More …

Spring 2004

Building a better bee trap

Bee-trap manufacturers like to use a chemical substance called pheromones to attract bees into traps and away from people. Problem is, they don’t always work.

Providing the right amount of pheromones is imperative. Too many pheromones or too much of one of its components repels bees, and the amount of pheromones that is optimal for attracting bees may vary during a day, depending on temperature and light. Prashanta Dutta, assistant professor in mechanical and materials engineering, has been working with Spokane-based Sterling International to build a better bee trap-one in which the release of very tiny amounts of pheromones can be carefully monitored and adjusted.

… » More …