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Spring 2016

Sweet solution to toxic waste

A jar of foul-smelling clay sits on the cluttered workbench. “I’d better not open it,” says environmental engineer Richard Watts. He grabs a smaller jar filled with liquid the color of a dirty mud puddle. “These are soil and groundwater samples from an industrial waste site in North Carolina.”

The repugnant samples arrived in comparatively pristine Pullman to be analyzed by Watts, who then advises the best ways to remedy the mess. In a twist, one of those methods involves the use of sugar.

Watts, a pioneer in oxidizing systems for the detoxification of polluted soil and groundwater and a professor of civil and environmental … » More …

Spring 2016

Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West

Jen Corrinne Brown ’12 PhD

University of Washington Press: 2015

With help from Hollywood and even popular beer labels, the Rocky Mountain region of the American West enjoys an iconic reputation for wild and natural fishing. It’s where rugged individualists reconnect with nature through timeless traditions.

Missing from the customary narrative are the generations of human intervention, environmental manipulation, and social transformation.

Brown, who earned a history doctorate from WSU in 2012, calls … » More …

Spring 2016

Leen Kawas is on a mission…

…to cure the disease that took her grandmother’s life.

A scientific discovery that could lead to treatments for Alzheimer’s and cancer drives biochemist and executive Leen Kawas. For her, it’s a personal and professional quest to develop that discovery into innovative, affordable drugs for the millions of people facing those diseases—a quest that started at seven years old, when her grandmother got cancer.

At 30, Kawas ’11 PhD is one of the youngest biotech CEOs in Seattle and, as a woman from Jordan, one of the most diverse. In her first year at the helm of M3 Biotechnology, her small but … » More …

Spring 2016

Briefly noted

American Indian Health and Nursing

By Margaret Moss ’81

Springer Publishing Company: 2016

A nursing faculty member and assistant dean of diversity and inclusion in the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Nursing, Moss published this work because American Indians have the highest suicide rate for teens, the highest prevalence of diabetes, and one of the lowest life expectancies in the United States. It is the nation’s first nursing textbook tailored to Native Americans.

My Years in the Information Technology Trenches, From Data Processing to Information Technology

By Bruce Johnson ’59, ’62 MS

Trafford Publishing: 2015

Involved in computers since … » More …

Spring 2016

Class notes

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

1970s

Retired public school secondary language arts teacher Suzanne Cofer (’71 English) published a book in 2013 about her maternal grandmother, Ruth A. Haworth, and early pioneer life in the state. She donated a copy of the book to the WSU Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections. Recently, she was informed that her book will be online at the Legacy Washington website.

Gene Estabrook (’76 Police Sci., ’77 Poli. Sci, ’79 MA Crim. Jus.) retired in December after more than 35 years of public service as a juvenile probation … » More …

Spring 2016

A grand gathering place

Cougar-owned landscape architecture and design firm Land Expressions in Spokane won a top national award in December for work on Spokane’s Huntington Park and the Spokane Tribal Gathering Place.

This project won over much larger design build projects from all over the country. The Grand Award from the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) “is the biggest award we can receive in our industry,” says Dave Nelson ’83, president and owner of the company.

The Land Expressions team—which includes senior landscape architect Clayton Varick ’00 and landscape architects Nicholas Hamad ’10 and Fernando Camargo ’10—had a very good year in 2015.

They won the … » More …

Spring 2016

The Mott Squad

Before broadcaster Robert Mott founded NPR, he helped bring Washington State’s communication education into the television era.

National Public Radio cofounder and former Washington State professor Robert Mott briefly appeared on a large projection screen before the video image froze and then disappeared. Again.

Mott waited patiently in his San Diego home as some of his former broadcast students, now in their 60s and 70s, double-checked the video chat settings from the Yakima conference room where they’d gathered. He wasn’t too worried.

Their bond, after all, had been forged in an era of technological innovation, though that was a half century earlier when many problems … » More …

Spring 2016

A veterinarian to the corps

He was the old guy in airborne training at Fort Benning, Georgia, a U.S. Army veterinarian holding his own with soldiers half his age, preparing to leap from a plane.

JOHN L. POPPE ’86 DVM had parachuted recreationally back in his Pullman days but was taking command of a special airborne veterinary unit in 2001 and wanted to be jump ready.

“I was determined to do it,” recalls Poppe, now a brigadier general and chief of the U.S. Army’s multifaceted Veterinary Corps.

He was a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel back in jump school and his commitment to readiness was no academic exercise. Two years later, … » More …

Spring 2016

Police training in a new light

The call came into 9-1-1 from a Spokane YMCA last October: A middle-aged man was threatening to break the kneecaps of an eight-year-old, because he said the boy could “ruin my NBA career.”

Corporal Jordan Ferguson of the Spokane Police Department responded, fully aware of the suspect’s antagonistic and unpredictable behavior. Ferguson’s body camera footage shows what happened next.

In the lobby of the YMCA, an employee first describes the man’s erratic statements. Ferguson tracks the man to the gym, who then walks away yelling. Rather than restraining the man immediately, Ferguson asks him questions and listens carefully and calmly, taking his time as the … » More …

Winter 2015

Makin’ Cider

A visit to Bishop Orchard in Garfield, Washington to make apple cider the old-fashioned way promises a fun time for all ages. Read more about the return of cider to the United States.