Washington State Magazine has won a gold medal in the 2007 Circle of Excellence awards program of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, an international organization that promotes excellence in educational advancement through alumni relations, communications, marketing, and fund raising.
WSM was one of 53 competitors in the category of periodical staff writing for external audiences and, along with Tufts Dental Medicine (Tufts University), was one of two gold award winners. Silver and bronze medalists were Johns Hopkins Magazine, Stanford Magazine, University of Chicago Magazine, and Pitt Magazine (University of Pittsburgh). WSM was bested only by the University of Wisconsin’s On Wisconsin, which … » More …
Ten years ago, as Marilyn Eylar Conaway (’56 Hist.) rowed an inflatable boat on an Alaskan lake, she pictured herself as a girl working the oars of her father’s handmade boat.
The thought recalled the simple joys of an idyllic childhood in Grand Coulee, where her father had helped build the dam. But both of Conaway’s parents and three of her six siblings had since died, her husband Gerry’s heart was faltering, she herself had heart disease, and she was about to end a storied career in education.
That day, memory became mission: Conaway didn’t want to rock a chair; she wanted to row a … » More …
Nothing short of the opportunity to make the world a better place while making a lot of money could have lured Jim Torina ’84 out of his retirement. He’d already made a fortune building high-end homes around the Puget Sound and was happily surfing in Mexico.
Torina wasn’t about to give up his hard-earned surfing for just any tantalizing deal.
But this was different.
First, here was this clear need: According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people a year. The medical costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring at hospitals alone amount … » More …
When Shelley Patterson graduated from Washington State University in 1984, she thought her basketball career was over. A guard for the Cougar women’s basketball team, she was among the state’s all-time leaders in assists and steals. But in 1984 there wasn’t much work for a woman in basketball. So she started a career in computers. That didn’t last long. In her free time she volunteered with a team at a local community college. That, and her persistence in applying for open positions with college teams, led to her first professional job in NCAA basketball in the mid-1980s. Since then, her coaching career has taken her … » More …
Blackberry is a flavor of fall in the Pacific Northwest. Whether you sample blackberries straight from the bush, still warm from the sun, or bake it into a pie and top it with a cool scoop of ice cream, it’s a deep, sweet taste that conjures up those last days of sunshine.
Blackberries live in the rose family and are close relatives of red raspberries. Their commonly cultivated versions include the black and shiny marionberry and red-black hybrid Boysenberry. Both varieties are available mid-July through early August here in Washington. They are grown mostly on farms in the Puyallup and Mt. Vernon areas and sold … » More …
During spring break in April 1970 an arson fire destroyed the wood stands of Washington State University’s football stadium. The Cougars were forced to play off campus for two years while the University built a new stadium. To this day, the mystery of who started the fire and how they did it remains.
April 1970. Around 10 p.m. seven-year-old Joanna Law, asleep in her bed, is awakened by sounds in the living room. In her pajamas, she pads out of her bedroom to join her older brother and sister at a large picture window. Looking south over the Washington State University campus, they witness an … » More …
“When you come to a fork in the road,” said Yogi Berra, “take it.”
Xavier Perez-Moreno has done just that.
Last spring the effusive, pony-tailed Spaniard received a Ph.D. conferred by Washington State University and The Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. WSU officials think he is the first Cougar to earn a doctoral degree jointly with a foreign institution.
Xavi (SHAH-vee), as his friends call him, clearly isn’t big on either/or choices. Besides bridging universities on two continents, his dual degree also combines different kinds of research and departments: theoretical physics here, experimental chemistry at Leuven.
But Xavi didn’t set out to break institutional … » More …
Four children died in the 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli
outbreak. Attorney Bill Marler's client survived, but only after
spending six months in the hospital. Marler sued and won a $15.6
million settlement for Brianne Kiner. Even more significant, the work
he produced for the case made him an expert not only on E. coli, but on the whole food production system.
What makes some strains of pathogenic microbes nastier than others? Why
do they emerge when and where they do? Are we more susceptible now than
in the past, and if so, why? At least partial answers to these
troubling questions may lie with snails and salamanders.
In spite of nearly universal name recognition and a client list that
runs through the Pacific Northwest alphabet, Rockey himself rarely
shows up in the press. In this age of Google, it's unnerving to go
looking for someone who you know permeates a civic and business
culture, and he just isn't there.
