Text excerpted, by permission, from The Nature of Nebraska: Ecology and Biodiversity, by Paul A. Johnsgard ’55.
There is a Place…
If you plan for one year, plant rice. If you plan for 10 years, plant trees. If you plan for 100 years, educate mankind. —Kuan-Tzu
There is a place in America where East and West merge together as smoothly as one river flows into another. That place is called the Great Plains. There is a river in America that gave sustenance to perhaps a hundred thousand migrants who trudged westward in the mid-nineteenth century along the Mormon and Oregon Trails. That river is called … » More …
On the 90-minute commute from Cheney to Pullman to attend graduate school, Laurie Carlson’s eyes often strayed from the road to the cows grazing the rolling hills of the Palouse.
Carlson, who was completing her Ph.D. in history at Washington State University, found herself wondering what the animals were eating, how they were fed, and what their days were like.
To answer her questions, she decided to raise them.
Her interest in the animals also inspired her to write Cattle: An Informal Social History, looking at the symbiotic roles of cattle and humans.
It’s often like that. She recently published a children’s book about … » More …
The meeting happened a few weeks after Scott Carson had accepted his new job.
In December 2004, Carson (’72 Bus. Admin.) was put in charge of the Boeing Co.’s Commercial Airplanes Group sales team and mandated to recapture the lead in the worldwide airliner market, which had been seized by European rival Airbus. It was a tall task—Airbus had out-sold Boeing in three of the previous four years.
To complicate the problem, says Carson, he had to deal with some lamebrain sales procedures installed by a previous chief financial officer. Carson was reviewing the procedures with his top sales executives. He couldn’t believe some of … » More …
So I’m riding around Bellevue with this very high-energy 27-year-old painter, and I’m starting to think, “Well, maybe I should take up painting.” That’s how infectious my companion is. She makes it sound like so much fun.
Jordan Swain ’00 offers me a warm diet soda from her emergency stash of supplies she keeps in the back of her car because she often doesn’t have time to stop and eat. We pull into Children’s Village, a safe haven in Renton for women and children who have been homeless, refugees, or victims of domestic violence. Swain and other artists donated their time and talent to brighten … » More …
On February 2, 1991, during the first Iraq war, Capt. R. Dale Storr (’83 Mech. Engr.) was captured by Iraqi soldiers after his A-10 Thunderbolt was shot down near Kuwait. The 29-year-old Air Force pilot from Spokane was a prisoner of war for 33 days, spending a portion of that time in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, while his friends and family believed he had died in the plane crash. He was regularly beaten and interrogated by the secret police, but used techniques taught to him at the survival school at Fairchild Air Force Base to get through it.
Now a lieutenant colonel in the Washington … » More …
Audubon himself would have trouble keeping up with this dynamo. Artist,
author, and photographer Paul Johnsgard '55 gives us a glimpse into his
lifelong obsession with birds. » More ...
In late January students, friends, and faculty gathered on the Pullman campus for a memorial service and candlelight vigil for First Lieutenant Jaime (Krausse) Campbell, who died when the BlackHawk helicopter she was flying went down in northern Iraq January 7. The 25-year-old graduated from WSU in 2002 with a degree in apparel, merchandising, and textiles.
Campbell grew up in Ephrata and had been the Washington State Rodeo Queen. At WSU, she was a member of the Army ROTC program, where she developed an interest in flying. After finishing her degree, she chose to pursue a career in aviation with the National Guard. She and … » More …
The Alumni Achievement Award was created in 1970 by the alumni association board of directors “to recognize and honor alumni who have given outstanding service,…and provide encouragement to alumni for perpetual service to Washington State University.” Criteria for nomination include “significant service to Washington State University and/or outstanding contributions to community and/or profession and/or nation.” Since 1970, more than 400 deserving alumni have been honored with this award. Unfortunately, we’re able to include here only a few of the many fine Cougars honored with Alumni Achievement Awards. Following is a list of awardees since 2002.
One rainy afternoon this spring filmmaker Francine Strickwerda entered the El Diablo coffee shop in Seattle. She ordered a cubano latte and then sat at a table overlooking Queen Anne Avenue. She looked around the busy room. The scene brought back memories of a time, a few years before, when she was working on her first documentary, a film about breasts. “I wrote a lot of grants for Busting Out sitting in this coffee shop,” she said.
Five years in the making, the hour-long movie is, in her words, “a strange mix of pop, politics, and history, and economics, and health, all these things that … » More …
