Alumni

Winter 2005

Peru: In the middle of the jungle with no Walgreens

In summer 2004 my husband, Stuart, and I made our first trip to Peru. We traveled with a charitable organization that hoped to build an orphanage and medical clinic there. Having completed my second semester of nursing studies at the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing, I was the most medical-savvy person on the trip. But that didn’t stop us from doing a lot of good work. We set up clinics in Iquitos, a port city of about 400,000 residents near the headwaters of the Amazon River, and worked farther downriver in less populated areas with the Yahua and Bora Indian tribes. We were … » More …

Winter 2005

Honduras: What Patients We Saw!

During those long, hot, humid, and exhausting days, we saw, experienced, and accomplished things we had never before imagined possible.

We were a team, 24 strong, who came together for 10 days in the early spring of 2005 to travel to Honduras. We were nurses, physicians, dentists, dental hygienists and assistants, optometrists, and support personnel on a mission to provide medical, dental, and eye care to people who were otherwise unable to obtain it.

Our way was carefully prepared for us by an advance team of in-country personnel who work with Worldwide Heart-to-Heart Ministries, our mission sponsors. We flew into the city of San Pedro … » More …

Winter 2005

What I've Learned Since College: an interview with Theodore Baseler

Ted Baseler is president and CEO of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. The interview with Hannelore Sudermann took place in his second-floor office at the Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville in late July. Journeying from advertising and marketing into the world of wine hasn’t been the easiest trip, but certainly one worth making, he says, as he now steers Washington’s largest wine company ahead. Baseler graduated from WSU in 1976 with a degree in communications. His wife, JoAnne, is also a Cougar (’75 Ed.), as is his daughter Andrea, who started at WSU this fall.

Look for what you want.

I took a job in advertising … » More …

Fall 2005

Cougars abroad

With more and more Europeans on the roster of NBA teams, Americans like Jan-Michael Thomas ’01 have to look outside the United States if they want to continue their hoop careers.

As a Cougar basketball player, Jan-Michael Thomas (’01 Bus. Mgt.) was one of the top long-range shooters in the country. Now he’s a lot farther than a three-point shot from his American roots.

Thomas spent this past basketball season playing for a pro team in Szolnok, Hungary, about an hour southeast of the capital, Budapest.

“It is a great country, in terms of basketball, for someone who wants to get the opportunity to play,” … » More …

Fall 2005

Home run at the bottom of the world

When I was completing my last semester at WSU 10 years ago, I never imagined I would end up in Antarctica, providing computer network support for the U.S. Antarctic Program. I work on the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP), an icebreaker that is contracted by the National Science Foundation for scientific research in Antarctica. The ship spends several months a year in the waters and sea ice surrounding the world’s coldest, driest, and most remote continent.

I am currently working on a science cruise called SHALDRIL-Shallow Drilling Along the Antarctic Continental Margin. Core drilling from a single, unassisted icebreaker has never been done before in … » More …

Fall 2005

Dillard finds the world in a village in Africa

In June 2001, at the village of Mpeasem in Ghana, West Africa, Cynthia Dillard was enstooled as Nkosua Ohemaa Nana Mansa II.

“To be enstooled,” she explains, “I was bathed and dressed, then to music and dancing, joined in a procession of the local chiefs as they seated me on the stool that symbolizes that authority. I was named for an early queen mother of the village. It was an intense honor.”

For Dillard, an associate professor at The Ohio State University (OSU), the roots of that experience extend back to Washington State University, where she received a master’s degree in 1987 and a doctorate … » More …

Fall 2005

Operation Chow Hound

In 1945, the German occupation had Holland on its knees. The Dutch were starving, because the Germans were not supplying them with food. Adelderd Davids of Nijmegen, Holland, six years old at the time, lived in Rotterdam. “It was awful,” he recalls. “We ate tulip bulbs. Some people ate rats, because there was absolutely nothing. We had two or three potatoes for 10 people. Our mother would ask after dinner, ‘Who is still hungry? You can eat the peelings.’ On a feast day they made a torte out of the bulbs.”

England’s Royal Air Force and the United States 8th Air Force joined together to … » More …

Fall 2005

Cracking the Code

Nevins talks quickly and waves his hands when describing his own special tools, the challenges of making rings out of fragile marble … “I get daily requests for plans,” he says.

Justin Nevins loved all the riddles in The DaVinci Code, the secret of the Holy Grail, the messages the Renaissance master had hidden in his paintings. But what really grabbed him was the marble cylinder box in which secret messages were locked. From the moment he heard it described on a book on tape, he wondered how it would work.

But that was a year and a half ago, and Nevins had other things … » More …

Fall 2005

What I've Learned Since College: an interview with Judy Dann

Judy Dann graduated from Washington State University in 1985 with a degree in engineering and soon found a job with the City of Tacoma. Her life changed dramatically one day when she was hit by a car while crossing a street in Seattle. The accident damaged her brain stem, affecting her eyesight, speech, and mobility. She now uses a walker and a wheelchair and lives independently in a small community south of Tacoma. The following is excerpted from an interview with Washington State Magazine’s Hannelore Sudermann, April 8, 2005, in DuPont.

Life can change at any time.

I got a job at the City of … » More …