For a hundred years the Washington State University student-owned bookstore, affectionately known as the Bookie, has served as a social hub, a source of funds for the student body, and, of course, the place to get textbooks and supplies.
Read more about the history of the Bookie.
The Riverpoint Campus in Spokane has become a lively urban setting for WSU, Eastern Washington University, and University of Washington programs. A health sciences focus has drawn hundreds of pharmacy, nursing, and medical students to its classrooms, laboratories, and library.
Read more about WSU Spokane’s history in “For the Health of a City.”
Photos by Zach Mazur.
Murals from the old Troy Hall Ferdinand’s ice cream shoppe now grace the walls of the Food Science Building at WSU Pullman.
The Innovation and Triumph of the 1916 Washington State Rose Bowl Team
Darin Watkins ’84
Aviva: 2015
“I have decided to put my fate in your hands,” said Washington State College football coach William “Lone Star” Dietz to his players, as they prepared to take on Brown University in the 1916 Rose Bowl after an astounding 1915 season. Dietz promised to return as coach if WSC won.
The team fought hard, using Dietz’s … » More …
A life-size shadow box sculpture celebrates 125 years of pharmacy at WSU. It is located in the lobby of the Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Science Building on the Spokane campus.
Click on items in the photos below to learn more about the accomplishments, milestones, and contributions of Washington State University in the world of pharmacy.
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Stevens Hall at Washington State University has been home to women for 120 years.
Read more about this historic hall in “Tea Traditions.”
Elson S. Floyd, PhD – 1956-2015
President of Washington State University, 2007-2015
Photos by Shelly Hanks, Dean Hare, and Robert Hubner
Read the tribute to President Floyd from the Fall 2015 issue
After World War II, Bill Fitch left the Army, packed his duffel in Seattle and, with the U.S. government’s guarantee of free college tuition, headed to Pullman. When he and Al Smith, a fellow veteran and high school classmate, arrived at Washington State College, they found themselves on a campus crowded with thousands of GIs.
Spurred by unprecedented growth in student numbers from the “GI bulge” in the late 1940s, the small rural state college was becoming a modern higher education institution, and a decade later would bloom into a full-blown university. Wave after wave of student-veterans, a faculty newly empowered to govern itself, and … » More …
No roads. No electricity. Just long summer days filled with fishing, huckleberry picking, and exploring the northern shores of remote Priest Lake in Idaho with family and friends.
It was 1948 and plans to develop a private retreat for Washington State College faculty and staff were taking shape at Beaver Creek, a primitive 54-acre resort accessible only by boat. The site, purchased by former WSC President Wilson Compton (1944–1951) and his wife Helen, already had eight small cabins. It was eventually subdivided into about 40 private lots selling for as little as $300 each.
“There’d be potlucks and children’s activities,” recalls Lois Castleberry, whose late … » More …
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, William Jasper Spillman, one of Washington State’s first faculty members, recognized that eastern Washington farmers were committed to lucrative wheat as their primary crop. Spillman experimented by crossing wheat varieties to find traits desirable for the Inland Northwest.
Variations didn’t appear in the first generation, but Spillman soon observed that the second generation of plants had combinations of the parents’ traits. He then applied a mathematical formula to predict inherited traits, to the benefit of the wheat farmers.
Many of us know the basics of this research from high school science: Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance, published in … » More …