It’s one of those quintessential late-summer days in Seattle. Clear in the morning, warm, gathering clouds by late afternoon, the air heavy and muggy. The tourists are tired, making their way back to the hotel for an early dinner. It is Friday, rush hour, and the Cougar Marching Band, full 250 strong, is playing the fight song on the terrace in front of Westlake Center.
Who knows how many of the hundreds of people gathered for this late-afternoon pep rally are alums. But everyone’s a Cougar for now. Everyone’s smiling. The band is giving it everything, the cheerleaders are pumping the crowd and defying gravity, … » More …
Seth Lake of Olympia mimicked the fetal position he reverted to the day his roommate’s family met him for the first time, shivering under a hat, coat, and blanket on the couch, sicker than a dog.
A hungry John Leraas, also of Olympia, overspent his dining plan the first half of the semester. Limited to eating on $6 a day, he bought a rice cooker and skillet to supplement his meals. Mariah Maki of Washington State University Admissions, seated next to Leraas, passed him her plate of hors d’oeuvres.
Amy Gordon of tiny Lacrosse radiated the bigheartedness and positive spirits of someone raised in a … » More …
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 …
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.
Just as Washington State University political science student Steve Overfelt was finishing his master’s degree coursework and preparing to write his thesis, he decided to put it off. And his advisor, Prof. Martha Cottam, encouraged him to do so.
Was this evidence of deteriorating academic standards at WSU? Hardly. It was a response to the tsunami that devastated coastal communities in Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004.
“I’d spent Thanksgiving in Indonesia doing research for my thesis on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), so I really wanted to go back to help,” Overfelt says. “But nobody wanted my physical labor, only the cash in my pocket. After … » More …
Maxime Guinel wanted to do something different. So he left his home in Brittany, went to college in Manchester, England, then came to Washington State University in 2002 to pursue his doctorate. A week after he arrived in Pullman, he met Sophia Sushailo from Ivano-Frankivsk, in western Ukraine. They fell in love.
Maxime is a doctoral candidate in materials science and is a member of Grant Norton’s materials science research group. Sophia has just finished her bachelor’s degree in biotechnology. She plans to work for a year while Maxime finishes his degree. She has already been accepted into two graduate programs in pharmacology.
The annual Mom’s Weekend fashion show last spring featured the work of 13 Washington State University student designers. It was an impressive display, considering that it was the first time many of the young designers had created a multi-piece collection.
Not so for Beth Hearnesberger (’05 AMDT), who was participating in the show for the second time. This year, she received one of the “Best of Show” Mollie Pepper Outstanding Student Designer Awards. Like many of her classmates, Hearnesberger traded sleep for sewing to prepare her collection. She even hand dyed the fabrics for her dresses.
The brief fashion show is the culmination of a … » More …
Would you paint your airplane crimson and gray? Or drive hundreds of
miles to wave the Cougar flag at a non-Coug game? Or keep a concrete
cougar in your yard? Well, how Coug are you? » More ...
In Mechanical Systems Design, a course required for graduation, mechanical engineering students at Washington State University complete real projects for real companies. Last fall, project sponsors included Sterling Technology and Siltronic Corporation. Previous sponsors have included British Petroleum, the Grand Coulee Dam, Bechtel Corporation, and the U.S. Army. In the past 10 years, about 90 projects have been completed in the design clinic.
When Associate Professor Charles Pezeshki created the clinic, he decided the students would complete tasks for companies free of charge. But he soon found that no one took the class seriously in the absence of fees for services. Neither students, professors, nor … » More …
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.”
