Winter 2004
Search Results
Summer 2007
Jill Harding: A love of nature
When Jill Harding was growing up in Maple Valley, Washington, there was a patch of woods on her street where she nurtured a love of nature. Then the trees vanished, victims of urban development elbowing out from Seattle and Tacoma.
“Those woods won’t be there for other kids,” Harding says, a twinge of sadness still in her voice.
Yet here she was on a sunny August morning, helping to preserve a much different development site: the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s 200-year-old winter encampment. The land surrounding Fort Clatsop in northwest Oregon once more is cradled by conifers.
Harding (’92 Wildlife & Wildland Rec. Mgt.) is … » More …
Winter 2004
Cutting out the middle, building income
Craig Meredith wants to help Ethiopian coffee farmers become competitive in a world market. He’s using his knowledge as an agricultural engineering to assist growers in Yirgacheffe in Southern Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, where some 445,000 farmers produce premium arabica coffee beans.
“Ethiopian coffee is 60 percent of the nation’s gross national product,” says Meredith, a resident of Post Falls, Idaho. “It is the second-most-traded commodity in the world behind oil.” However, Ethiopian farmers are some of the world’s poorest in a country where the per capita income is $100 per year, according to the office of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Meredith got involved … » More …
Winter 2004
WSU honors alumni Sande, Finch, Norris, Habereder
The Washington State University Alumni Association created the Alumni Achievement Award in 1969 to honor alumni who have rendered significant service and contributions to their profession, community, and/or WSU. Four individuals were recognized recently.
Merle Sande, M.D.
Dr. Merle A. Sande (’61 Zool.), Salt Lake City, is one of the country’s foremost authorities on infectious disease and AIDS. He spent 16 years as professor and vice chair of internal medicine, University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, and chief of medical services at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). From 1996 to 2002, he was a professor and chair of the Department of Medicine, University of … » More …
Summer 2007
Rob Barnard: An uplifting endeavor
When Rob Barnard ’84 was earning degrees in architecture and construction management, his professors scheduled project deadlines and tests on the same day.
“What that was teaching you was time management, how to work with a small amount of sleep and under pressure,” says Barnard, who brought that work ethic home to Portland. During the next two decades, the once-sleepy Rose City gained acclaim for innovatively solving urban problems, including transportation woes that vex most cities. Barnard’s blueprints are all over that reputation.
In magazine rankings last year, Men’s Journal deemed Portland the best place to live in the United States, praising its “nearly flawless” … » More …
Summer 2007
Dana Patterson: The path ahead
Yellow Springs, Ohio, is a small college community with a rich history of social justice. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad and, much later, home to Antioch College, where civil rights activist Coretta Scott King went to school.
Dana Patterson, who completed her doctorate in higher education administration at Washington State University last spring, was seeking a career that would lead her into social justice and human rights activism, when she applied to be first director of the new Coretta Scott King Center at Antioch. Looking at the job description, she realized, “It’s a perfect fit for me in light of what I … » More …
Summer 2007
Anatomy of Murder: Robert Keppel '66 Police Science, '67 MA Police Science
In 1974, during Robert Keppel’s second week as a major crimes detective with the King County Sheriff’s Office, he was assigned the cases of two women who had gone missing on the same day from Lake Samammish. They turned out to be two of Ted Bundy’s victims, and the beginning of Keppel’s career-long study of serial killers. Keppel left the Sheriff’s Office in 1982 to become the lead criminal investigator for the Washington State Attorney General’s office. At the same time, he worked on the Green River Killer Task Force. From death row in Florida, Bundy contacted Keppel, offering to help him find the Green … » More …
Winter 2004
Marissa Lemargie—Busy providing humanitarian assistance in Africa, South America
Marissa Lemargie tends to take things in on a global scale. An interest in other cultures and societies led to an anthropology degree at Washington State University in 1999. A master’s degree in international development from the London School of Economics and Political Science followed.
Lemargie is now employed by USAID as an international cooperation specialist for Colombia and Paraguay in Washington, D.C. Already, the 26-year-old Ephrata native has traveled to Africa and South America on humanitarian missions. Recent plans called for her to visit Paraguay in August 2004, and Colombia in September.
Like her older brother, Kyle (’98 Polit. Sci.), who works for the … » More …
Summer 2007
Baseball's my game
“Bobo’s my name, baseball’s my game,” says Frederick Charles “Bobo” Brayton as he sits down across from me. His face crinkles into a grin. “That’s what I tell everybody.”
At age 81, Brayton doesn’t appear intimidating–former Washington State University catcher Scott Hatteberg describes him as “a Yogi-Berra-type guy”–but Bobo’s career overwhelms me. Brayton won 1,162 games in his 33 years at WSU and was honored as the co-namesake of WSU’s baseball field.
Brayton played baseball with his father in Birdsview, Washington (near Mount Vernon), from the time he was eight years old–and not your everyday father-son game of catch. Dad pitched for a local team … » More …
Summer 2007
It’s rhubarb pie time!
Barry Swanson, professor of food science, and I see eye to eye on at least one significant issue. We like our rhubarb pie to be made exclusively with rhubarb. NOT strawberries. Just rhubarb.
However, Swanson actually prefers his rhubarb as sauce, over ice cream. Although Swanson does no research on the tart vegetable, he is an avid enthusiast and considers it an acidic parallel to his work with cranberries. And obviously, given his rhubarb enthusiasm, Swanson is from the Midwest, where every old farmstead has a rhubarb patch. “Mom always made rhubarb pie in the spring,” he says.
Rhubarb is also known by Midwesterners as … » More …