Search Results

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

Phyllis Campbell

Before she became a bank executive, philanthropist, and civic leader, Phyllis Campbell ’73 felt the powerful impact of a benevolent act.

Former WSU Regent Campbell was trying to raise money to attend Washington State University, when a check for $2,500 arrived from a WSU scholarship fund aimed at low-income students. “The thing that left the impression was this person who gave back, who paid it forward,” she recalls. “I know the power of a check, the power of somebody’s message, somebody paying attention,” she once told a reporter.

Now Campbell is receiving recognition for giving back to others with the Seattle-King County First Citizen … » 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 …

Lowell Liebermann - 88 Squared album cover

Spring 2016

Lowell Liebermann: Complete Works for Two Pianos

88 Squared Piano Duo

Albany Records: 2015

WSU piano faculty members Jeffrey and Karen Savage are the formidable pianists of 88 Squared, a critically acclaimed piano duo. This remarkable recording of Liebermann’s music for two pianos will only add to their international reputation. Liebermann’s piano music requires keen attention to color, texture, balance, and lyricism. His ample use of counterpoint requires absolute precision between the four hands.

88 Squared … » More …

Spring 2016

Still Cougs after all these years

Golden and Diamond grads back in Pullman

WSU may have transformed a lot since 1955, or even 1965, but the camaraderie of graduates from those years hadn’t changed a bit.

One of the largest groups of golden and diamond alumni in years gathered late last October at the Lewis Alumni Centre, where they joined their old friends from 50 or more years ago. Gerry Danquist ’65 thought it was great to see so many fellow pharmacy students.

“We have about half the class of 26 pharmacy graduates here,” says Danquist. He traveled from Indianapolis, where he retired after getting his MBA from Harvard Business School and working 34 years at Eli Lilly. “I saw several pharmacy students I … » More …

Spring 2016

Cuisine du campus

Sautéed swiss chard, tender braised short rib, and Cougar Gold polenta. Tuscan grilled chicken with seasonal heirloom tomatoes, artichoke hearts, lentils, capers, and fresh herbs. Bacon seared Caesar salad with tomato jam toast and avocado Caesar dressing. These are dishes one would expect to find at a fine-dining restaurant, not a dining center at Washington State University.

Your memories of eating campus food, wherever you went to college, might consist of standing in long cafeteria lines where servers plopped their latest mystery food creation on your plate. It’s a totally different and much better experience than many of us remember.

Not only do the dining … » More …

Spring 2016

Fine beef

It was a beautiful sunny day in May when six WSU chefs, decked out in their white uniforms, stood on a hillside 1500 feet above the Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River, squinting to make out cows grazing on the steep terrain across the valley. Looking like little black dots on the massive hills, Jerry Reeves looked through his binoculars, suddenly pointing and exclaiming, “There they are! Can you see them?”

A retired WSU animal sciences professor, Reeves was giving the chefs, four from Dining Services and two from WSU’s School of Hospitality, a tour of his ranch and pastureland located less than an … » More …

Nancy Rodriguez, Courtesy National Institute of Justice

Spring 2016

Beyond Just Training: A conversation with NIJ Director Nancy Rodriguez

Police training is just one piece of the complex scientific puzzle to measure law enforcement effectiveness, says Nancy Rodriguez PhD ’98, the director of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The NIJ is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, and Rodriguez was appointed in October 2014 by President Barack Obama.

“This goes beyond just training,” she says. “In the past there was a focus on behavioral research, or on technology. We need to understand the connections between different areas.”

Rodriguez’s deep expertise—from her doctoral research at WSU with Professor Nicholas Lovrich and later her professional career at Arizona State University—gives her … » More …