Fall 2007
Gallery: Impressions
A gallery of souvenir lithographs commemorating the United States Science Exhibit at the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962
WSM Fall 2007
Fall 2007
Video: A Buzz about Bees
Walter (Steve) Sheppard is one busy man, flying his own plane around the Pacific Northwest to meet with beekeepers and deliver queen-breeding stock produced in his honey bee breeding program to beekeeper collaborators. He also travels to countries such as Kazakhstan to study populations of honey bees from wild apple forests that have the potential to be added to Washington State University breeding stock. Over the years, he and his students have bred bees to resist parasites and diseases, produce more honey, and survive harsh winters better than their ancestors. He’s even bred friendlier bees that are easier for beekeepers to work with.
Among the … » More …
Fall 2007
Washington State Magazine wins top honors
Washington State Magazine has won a gold medal in the 2007 Circle of Excellence awards program of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, an international organization that promotes excellence in educational advancement through alumni relations, communications, marketing, and fund raising.
WSM was one of 53 competitors in the category of periodical staff writing for external audiences and, along with Tufts Dental Medicine (Tufts University), was one of two gold award winners. Silver and bronze medalists were Johns Hopkins Magazine, Stanford Magazine, University of Chicago Magazine, and Pitt Magazine (University of Pittsburgh). WSM was bested only by the University of Wisconsin’s On Wisconsin, which … » More …
Fall 2007
Frontline: Pullman
Sitting at Rico’s next to Frontline executive producer David Fanning was a defining moment for one Washington State University broadcasting student.
Senior communication major Kate Yeager was among a small group of broadcast students who closed the bar with Fanning and Frontline producer Mike Kirk after the Murrow Symposium. Kate was playing host to the Edward R. Murrow Award recipients from the PBS investigative reporting program.
The group discussed media, politics, and today’s hottest issues around a large table at the pub in downtown Pullman.
“We had this big table,” she says. “He was like a rock star-it was like walking in with Elvis.”
Fanning … » More …
Fall 2007
Marilyn Conaway: Charting new waters
Ten years ago, as Marilyn Eylar Conaway (’56 Hist.) rowed an inflatable boat on an Alaskan lake, she pictured herself as a girl working the oars of her father’s handmade boat.
The thought recalled the simple joys of an idyllic childhood in Grand Coulee, where her father had helped build the dam. But both of Conaway’s parents and three of her six siblings had since died, her husband Gerry’s heart was faltering, she herself had heart disease, and she was about to end a storied career in education.
That day, memory became mission: Conaway didn’t want to rock a chair; she wanted to row a … » More …
Fall 2007
Jim Torina: Playing well with others
Nothing short of the opportunity to make the world a better place while making a lot of money could have lured Jim Torina ’84 out of his retirement. He’d already made a fortune building high-end homes around the Puget Sound and was happily surfing in Mexico.
Torina wasn’t about to give up his hard-earned surfing for just any tantalizing deal.
But this was different.
First, here was this clear need: According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people a year. The medical costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring at hospitals alone amount … » More …
Fall 2007
Home-court advantage: Shelley Patterson
When Shelley Patterson graduated from Washington State University in 1984, she thought her basketball career was over. A guard for the Cougar women’s basketball team, she was among the state’s all-time leaders in assists and steals. But in 1984 there wasn’t much work for a woman in basketball. So she started a career in computers. That didn’t last long. In her free time she volunteered with a team at a local community college. That, and her persistence in applying for open positions with college teams, led to her first professional job in NCAA basketball in the mid-1980s. Since then, her coaching career has taken her … » More …
Fall 2007
Trees return to Ireland
Once upon a time, Ireland was mostly forest. In prehistoric and early historic times, trees covered an estimated 90-95 percent of the landscape. But English invasions, rebellions, and industrial demands moved the landscape toward its modern austere treelessness.
A hundred years ago, barely 1 percent of Ireland was forested. Now forest has reclaimed 10 percent of the landscape, and the Irish government would like to raise that coverage to 17 percent. Toward that goal, it has mounted a reforestation campaign, backed by a program of grants to landowners to plant trees. Trouble is, the Irish haven’t been used to seeing forest as part of their … » More …
Fall 2007
Their place in history: WSU women athletes made their mark
One day in 1948 four Washington State College students tugged on their white rubber swim caps, adjusted their nose plugs, and plunged into a cold swimming pool. Three of them locked together head to foot to form a vertical underwater ring, and the fourth swam through it toward a photographer who captured the maneuver on film.
Last year Ryli Clark ’06 found that picture-one of a series of photos of the Fish Fans, WSC’s swimming club-and she was stunned. “At first I couldn’t tell what or where it was,” says the alumna who had just graduated from WSU with a degree in digital technology and … » More …
Fall 2007
Behold the blackberry
Blackberry is a flavor of fall in the Pacific Northwest. Whether you sample blackberries straight from the bush, still warm from the sun, or bake it into a pie and top it with a cool scoop of ice cream, it’s a deep, sweet taste that conjures up those last days of sunshine.
Blackberries live in the rose family and are close relatives of red raspberries. Their commonly cultivated versions include the black and shiny marionberry and red-black hybrid Boysenberry. Both varieties are available mid-July through early August here in Washington. They are grown mostly on farms in the Puyallup and Mt. Vernon areas and sold … » More …