Search Results

Summer 2017

Space Cougs

Since the 1960s, engineers, biologists, and even historians who graduated from Washington State have contributed to the exploration of our solar system. You can read about a few of them below. If you know of other Cougs who have been involved in space exploration, please send their stories and we’ll include them here.

Thora Waters Halstead ’50

Space biologist

Microbiologist Thora Waters Halstead pioneered the field of space biology and her research now is a critical piece of NASA’s plans to send astronauts to Mars.

Waters, who earned her undergraduate degree at Washington State University in 1950, was a trailblazer at NASA … » More …

Summer 2016

It takes a (walkable) village

They call it Tangletown—a Seattle neighborhood where streets and trolley tracks intersect like wayward skeins of yarn. In the 1930s, local residents routinely chose the trolley for trips to work, the market, or hardware store. They did that several times a day and it involved a lot of walking, says Glen Duncan, professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine and chair of nutrition and exercise physiology at WSU Spokane.

Duncan lived in Green Lake near Tangletown for a time, and says public transportation systems like trollies provided a level of physical activity that is all but lost in today’s society.

“We’re completely … » More …

Summer 2016

Thin ice

Being put to the test at the ground zero of climate change

There’s the day the polar bear mangled the meteorological instruments. Or when a massive storm smashed two humidity sensors. Days of howling winds, extremely limited visibility, and weather so cold that power cords snapped like twigs.

For Von P. Walden, a professor in Washington State University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the most exciting day as part of the Norwegian Young Sea ICE Cruise (N-ICE2015) team was last May when the thin layer of Arctic sea ice on which the researchers were working started breaking up.

Wearing a Regatta suit … » More …

Summer 2016

Racing into history

The Olympic moment of WSU Hall of Famer Lee Orr

As rain fell in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium in 1936, Lee Orr, a Washington State College student not yet 20 years old, didn’t realize the magnitude of the events surrounding him.

“I was pretty young and didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

It had been over seven decades since Orr raced against Jesse Owens at the ’36 Olympic Games when, in 2008, the soft-spoken Orr recalled his Olympic experience in Germany.

A year after the interview, Orr passed away; however, the story he told lives in sports lore.

Owens’s four gold medals and his … » More …

Summer 2016

Class notes

To read more class notes or post your own, visit the online class notes site, MyStory

1950s

William Minshall (’51 Geog.) worked as a cartographer for 25 years with an aerospace firm in Glendale, California, where he also met his wife. After owning and operating an RV park near Tillamook, the Minshalls are now retired in Cloverdale, Oregon.

1960s

Northwestern Mutual honored Albuquerque financial representative William E. Ebel (’65 Ag. Econ.) with membership to its 2015 Forum Group in recognition of his helping clients plan for and achieve financial security. This is the fifteenth time Ebel has received the Forum honor.

Utah State … » More …

Summer 2015

Shattering some glass—Women sportscasters breaking into the big leagues

Women in sports broadcasting jump hurdles and work hard to succeed in the traditionally male-dominated field, as several WSU alumni can attest.

» More ...

Spring 2014

A dose of reason

Pediatric specialists advocate for vaccines

AS THE CHIEF OF PEDIATRIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital, Ken Alexander ’82 is no stranger to the measles, pertussis, or chicken pox.

He also works with children with HIV-related illness, pneumonia, and respiratory infections. He and his colleagues identify and treat infections caused by the typical viruses and bacteria as well as the little-known parasites and even fungi.

But when we sit down to visit near his offices on the north end of UC’s campus, Alexander wants to talk about something that isn’t a children’s disease at all.

He leans a little forward, … » More …

Spring 2015

After the war: Mud, floods, and modernization

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 …

Support our advertisers

We want to especially thank these advertisers who help us financially by their presence in our issue. All of us at Washington State Magazine are deeply appreciative of their dedication to our publication.

Click below for details.

Corporate sponsors

SEL® | Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. designs, manufactures, and supports products and services ranging from generator and transmission protection to distribution automation and control systems. Founded in 1982 by Edmund O. Schweitzer III, SEL shipped the world’s first digital protective relay.

SEL has … » More …

Infographics

FALL 2024
WSU campuses public artincludes interactive Pullman campus map

SUMMER 2024
Warming scenarios for Washington counties
interactive maps

FALL 2023
Adaptive Technology Center floor plan at the
Steve Gleason Institute

» More …