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Spring 2024

Diversity

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 …

Summer 2009

Conexión rises to a burgeoning market

Where demographers see change, Lauri (Smith) Jordana ‘88 sees opportunity.

Jordana is the founder of Conexión Marketing in Seattle, which is dedicated to marketing companies to the rapidly growing Hispanic/Latino market.

When Jordana graduated from Washington State University in foreign language and literature, she immediately left for Spain, which she’d fallen in love with during her year abroad, intending to spend the rest of her life there. But her life plans were pre-empted when she got homesick and returned to Washington after a year.

Back home, with fluent Spanish, she embarked on a series of positions with various companies, helping them reach Hispanic consumers. She … » More …

Summer 2009

Mixing it up

Not since white settlers surged west, overwhelming the native population, has Washington been at all diverse in its population, at least if one defines “diverse” by ethnicity rather than European country of origin. By 1890, whites represented 97 percent of Washington’s recorded populace, and that number remained static for decades. Now that mix has started to change. Just recently, the white (not Hispanic) portion of Washington’s population dropped below 80 percent, for the first time since the mid-19th century.

Annabel Kirschner, a professor in the Department of Community and Rural Sociology and an extension specialist, recently released “Increasing Diversity in Washington State 2000–2008,” the … » More …