Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Spring 2024

WSU faculty

Spring 2007

Spillman memorial rededicated

A memorial marker for William Jasper Spillman, a crop research pioneer and one of Washington State College’s first professors, was returned to campus last fall.

Spillman was the sixth faculty member to be hired at WSC, and the researcher responsible for developing new wheat varieties for the region. During his time here, he independently rediscovered Mendel’s law of genetics. He left WSC in 1901 to become a founder of agricultural economics, the first president of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and editor of Farm Journal. In the 1930s, before he died, he asked that his family return to the Palouse that he loved and spread … » More …

Summer 2007

The presidents

Depending on how you count, Elson S. Floyd becomes Washington State University’s tenth, eighth, maybe twelfth, president. Whereas the tenures of the first two, Lilley and Heston, were tumultuous, brief, and of corresponding effect, other interim presidencies, including those of Wallis Beasley and William Pearl, were more subdued, yet productive and vital to the progress of WSU.

Regardless of how you count our presidents, though, the story of WSU and its presidents is rich, wonderful, and filled with drama, pathos, and even a little scandal here and there. Obviously, much has changed over the past 115 years. When George Lilley was named the first president … » More …

Spring 2003

Drake enlivened the college experience

For 36 years Charles H. Drake was a popular, well-respected professor at Washington State University. His introductory class in bacteriology attracted many non-science majors, as well as students preparing for careers in health care.

“He was an extraordinary articulate lecturer, … the quintessential eccentric professor who enlivens the college experience for students and opens their minds through dedicated teaching and irreverent questioning of their comfortable ideas and beliefs,” recalls Martin Favero (’61 M.S. Bact., ’64 Ph.D. Bact.), San Clemente, California.

Drake retired in 1981. He was 86 when he died May 20, 2002 in Pullman.

He is credited with inaugurating Introductory Bacteriology (Bact. 101), which … » More …

Spring 2003

Rebuilding a city, repairing psyches

“You can’t put the blame on one side. Everybody has made some contributions to the misery.”

So thought Rafi Samizay, professor in the School of Architecture and Construction Management at Washington State University, as he stood in what is left of his high school in Kabul, Afghanistan. As he tried to chat cheerfully with students about favorite teachers they shared, the remains of the school teetered around them. Classes are still held in part of the building that was blown up, so students have to gingerly make their way across a second-story, narrow piece of concrete that falls off to nothing. Others walk below. Where … » More …

Winter 2001

Gorham earns award for animal disease research

John Gorham, longtime professor of veterinary microbiology and pathology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University, received the Gold Head Cane Award in July. The award from the Hartz Mountain Corp. recognizes his landmark contributions to the epidemiology of certain animal diseases, some of which also affect humans.

Gorham is an international authority on slow-virus disease research in animals. He is perhaps best known for his 1953 co-discovery of the microorganism responsible for salmon poisoning in dogs and foxes.

In recent years, Gorham’s research group has worked on three fronts—developing a diagnostic test for scrapie in sheep; investigating the molecular biology, immunology, … » More …

Winter 2001

Arts for all

“WOULDN’T you like to write music for someone famous like NSYNC?” a Clarkston High School student asked Greg Yasinitsky.

Tough crowd.

But Yasinitsky, a Washington State University music professor and jazz studies coordinator and a nationally recognized composer, arranger, and saxophonist, can handle it.

“We’re in the only field where we have to compete with dead people for jobs. In jazz, everyone can buy a John Coltrane CD. Why buy yours?” he says.

Yasinitsky reflected on the first of his three years as composer-in-residence at Clarkston High (CHS), sponsored by the Commission Project of New York. He received the project’s inaugural Washington state residency in … » More …