Winter 2012
Video: Twin Vista Ranch donated to WSU
Twin Vista Ranch near Port Townsend was donated to WSU, to be kept in sustainable, organic production for the community and educational purposes.
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Winter 2012
Awards and Volunteer Recognition
The Alumni Achievement Award was created by the WSU Alumni Association in 1970 to honor those who have made significant contributions to their professions, their communities, the world, and WSU. Of the nearly quarter of million people who have attended WSC/WSU since 1890, fewer than 600 have received this prestigious award. We salute the following Cougars who were recognized with the Alumni Achievement Award over the past year and thank them for the prestige they bring to their alma mater:
Retired Major General Paul J. Fletcher ’72
Chad Little ’85, former NASCAR driver
Rueben Mayes ’92 & ’00, retired NFL player
James B. Niblock … » More …
Winter 2012
Chris Dunagan ’74, ’75—Bearing witness to the sights and smells of our soggy backyard
If you cover the waterfront the way Chris Dunagan does, you have to expect a fair amount of smells. There’s the fresh, tangy scent of estuary and the mild musk of beach wrack. There’s the stench of rotting shellfish during the great Oyster Rescue of 2010, and the outsized rot of a beached gray whale. Dunagan, 60, has documented a lot of beached whales, although the numbers are hard to nail down.
Counting just grays, not killer whales or humpbacks or dead whale reports over the phone, he says, “I’ve probably gone out to 20.”
Dunagan (biochemistry ’74, ’75 communications) has been the environmental reporter … » More …
Winter 2012
What I’ve Learned Since College—An interview with Ruth Bindler ’01
Ruth Bindler ’01 PhD grew up in the Adirondacks of New York. In the 1960s, when she started college at Cornell, the typical paths for women were teaching and nursing. Since she enjoyed her science classes, nursing seemed a logical route. Turned out it was a great fit. After working for a time at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, she moved to Wisconsin with Julian Bindler, who later became her husband, and found both nursing work and graduate school.
Bindler not only went on to become a successful public health nurse, she authored several books on children’s health and medication, was a … » More …
Winter 2012
The Law and the Land
Indian Law Attorney Brian Gunn pushes into new territory for his tribe and others
In the summer of 1951, a Colville Indian named Peter Gunn sued the United States government for the loss of a portion of his ancestral lands. He joined members of a number of other tribes including the Lake, San Poils, Methow, Okanogan, and Nespelem, all living on the Colville reservation and whose homelands, which once covered nearly half of Eastern Washington, had been given to the public for settlement in the late 1800s.
Two generations later, Gunn’s grandson Brian, 38, filed another suit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, this … » More …
Winter 2012
The Ethics of Climate Change
In 2012 the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, in conjunction with the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, began a new public symposia series that focuses on the ethical and public policy ramifications of new scientific innovations and knowledge. Each semester the symposia, which are open to the public, bring together WSU faculty with other internationally prominent scholars. The first in the series, “Ethics and Global Climate Change,” was held in April 2012, and brought to WSU’s campus Andrew Light, director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University and a fellow at the Center for American … » More …
Winter 2012
A Summer of Science
If the world of cutting-edge research has a glamorous side, it was lost on Laurel Graves this summer as she found herself digging trenches for soil probes on the Cook Agronomy Farm north of Pullman. In the high summer heat, Graves dug for two hours. Palouse soil covered her arms.
It was a hard-earned insight into the nature of science.
“You mean I’m not doing complex equations constantly?” she wondered. “Oh wait, I’ve got to be a farmer for a while.”
She was not alone in the grunt work department. Jeronda Hunt wrangled scores of petri dishes harboring white, smelly bacteria. Naeh Klages-Mundt spent three … » More …
Winter 2012
Feasting on the Salish Sea
It must have been quite the feast.
No one remembers the host. Or how many guests there were. Or how long it lasted. Or even when it was exactly, though 650 years ago is a good guess. We do, on the other hand, know what they ate—approximately 10,000 sea urchins.
Archaeologist Colin Grier and I are standing at the back corner of what was once a longhouse on the northern tip of Galiano Island at the southern end of the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia.
In 2010, Grier and his crew, intent on another project, had nearly passed on this ancient longhouse. But … » More …
Winter 2012
That voice
It’s 8:00 a.m., Saturday, September 8, when Bob Robertson arrives at Martin Stadium. Four hours from now, kickoff between the Washington State Cougars and Eastern Washington University will occur in the first game at the newly renovated stadium.
And when kickoff does happen, Robertson’s signature voice will carry the action to Cougar football fans for the 510th time.
It’s a voice Cougars everywhere connect with Washington State football—even when at a rival school.
“I must say when it worked, and when I was in Portland and the Cougars were playing, I’d get Bob Robertson on the radio,” says Washington State Director of Athletics Bill Moos … » More …
Winter 2012
Onions
Think of all the recipes that begin with this simple instruction: Cook (saute, melt, etc.) onions. In spite of that ubiquitous beginning, however, the literature of food, which can wax poetically and extensively about salt or beans or wine, gives the onion, which provides the savory structure for thousands of dishes, short shrift.
Maybe it is just that onions are so fundamental that we take them for granted, chopping and ingesting them as casually as we breathe air or drink water. Perhaps it is that the onion is a basic and ancient staple, like rice, corn, garlic, its wild ancestors an inherent part of our … » More …