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Fall 2013

Kathleen McChesney ’71—Agent of change

One day during Kathleen McChesney’s senior year, an FBI recruiter came to campus. Everyone was impressed with the smart looking fellow in the three piece suit. His pitch dazzled the class. “We all wanted to apply,” says McChesney. “But then he passed out the applications. He gave one to each student until he got to me. Then he said, ‘I can’t give you one. The FBI doesn’t have women as agents.’”

It was an inauspicious beginning for the girl from Auburn who would eventually become the highest ranking woman in the agency. The next year J. Edgar Hoover died and the policy was changed. But … » More …

Fall 2013

Booze, Sex, and Reality Check

Last August, before starting classes, before even really getting to explore campus, the 4,000-some members of the freshman class were required to take an hour-long clinic designed to improve their behaviors.

The Booze, Sex, and Reality Checks program came during the Week of Welcome. Amidst the moving in, concerts, picnics, and open houses, WSU’s new students ducked into cool classrooms for versions of a seminar on drinking and sex.

“We don’t normally have firsthand interaction with students,” says Leah Hyman, a human development graduate student who broke form to assist a WSU drug and alcohol counselor in the workshops. In a field rife with … » More …

Fall 2013

A Cougar trade show

A stroll through the grand ballroom at Bellevue’s Hyatt hotel one weeknight last spring took visitors into something that was part business networking event, part WSU Cougar reunion. The occasion, a CougsFirst! trade show, offered a chance to see and sample from an assortment of about 40 WSU alumni-owned businesses.

It was also as a time to catch up with old friends. Gary Wood ’79, sat at a table lined with beers and flyers for his business Great Artisan Beverage Company, a craft and specialty beer wholesaler. As Wood set up his samples, he explained that after school and a few jobs, he found his … » More …

Fall 2013

Apple-a-Day

Danielle ’12 and Megan ’13 LaRiviere could sell iceboxes to Eskimos. Or coals to Newcastle. Even apples to Yakima.

Three years ago, prompted by their insurance agent father who bemoaned the lack of good snack food, they started visiting businesses around their hometown of Yakima offering to provide them with a steady supply of apples. Subscribers get a small cooler stocked weekly with the best apple varieties available.

From the start, their Apple-a-Day service got a “pretty good response,” they say.

Good enough, that is, that when it came time to return to school for fall semester, they bought a van, hired a delivery driver, … » More …

Fall 2013

Dynamic duo

As seniors at Lewis and Clark High School, Eric Brandon ’12 and Nick Linton ’13 often skipped lunch to create plans for a zero carbon emission housing development.

“Our friends would come and ask if we were ready to go to lunch, and we’d say just 10 more minutes, or 15 more minutes” Brandon says, replaying the conversations. Linton interjects with his own reenactment, “We have to finish this last little façade.”

In 2008 Brandon and Linton entered their proposed sustainable housing development, called Green Ridge, in Washington State University’s inaugural Imagine Tomorrow competition. The competition brings students together in interdisciplinary teams to address energy … » More …

Fall 2013

Washington’s sweet corn secret

Washington corn? Midwesterners may scoff, but right now an abundance of sweet corn from Yakima Valley and around the Columbia Basin is heading to grocery stores, farm stands, and farmers markets from Anacortes to Zillah. It is something of a surprise that our state is also one of the largest sweet corn producers in the country.

The stuff at the farm stands is just a hint of how much of the crop is here. Three states dominate in the production of sweet corn for canning and freezing. The first two are no revelation: Wisconsin and Minnesota. But some years Washington is the source of 850,000 … » More …

Fall 2013

Cougar Crew Days

In March, alumni and team members of men’s crew, the oldest sport club at WSU, gathered for Cougar Crew Days, as they do each year. But this year’s celebration had special significance: 40 years of rowing competitions.

Rich Stager ’74 and Ken Abbey, vice president of business affairs, formed the crew team in 1969, built the Cougar Shell House on the Snake River, and appointed landscape architecture professor Ken Struckmeyer as the first coach. The team entered competition in 1973.

The Cougar Crew Days included a banquet, auction, and the annual race between team members and alumni. According to Doug Engle ’80, they raised … » More …

Fall 2013

Composing Cougar soccer

A music business graduate from Birmingham-Southern College, Keidane (Kih-Dawn-EE) McAlpine had designs on moving to Atlanta to work in the music industry.

He soon realized his disposition and the music business were discordant. “I’m not mean enough for that,” he says with a laugh.

Fortunately, McAlpine’s time at college had created other, more harmonious, opportunities.

“The doors that kept opening were the soccer doors,” says McAlpine, who is now the Washington State women’s soccer coach.

After his college playing days, BSC women’s coach, Lorrin Etka-Shepherd, offered him a position.

“She said I got a parttime job if I want it,” he remembers. “Next thing … » More …

Fall 2013

Constant Coffee

If there’s a liquid for which Olympia is more known than rain, it’s coffee.

With several roasters, and dozens of cafes, the community is pretty much fueled by caffeine.

Roaster Batdorf & Bronson arrived in the 1980s in the middle of the pack of Northwest coffee companies, some of which are now international names. While others have grown exponentially, even internationally, Larry Challain’s company has stayed constant—an Olympia presence, a craft roaster with carefully selected beans, and a community landmark.

From his childhood, Challain ’73 has vivid coffee memories. The smell of canned commissary coffee was a daily presence in his family kitchen. And the … » More …

Fall 2013

From Holland Library to hacking history

Of all the ways a college student can find trouble, at least Ralph Barclay started in the library.

It was 1960, and he was wandering through the engineering library, then on the third floor of Holland, when his eye was drawn to a freshly minted Bell Systems Technical Journal. Inside, amid some positively mind-numbing treatises, he found the article, “Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching.”

Years later, this one article would be referred to as “the keys to the kingdom,” a plain-spoken description of how the phone system evolved and, unbeknownst to the authors, the means by which an 18-year-old electrical engineering student from … » More …