Spring 2021
Distanced but connected: Our global pandemic stories
Washington State University alumni pay it forward around the globe. » More ...
Sri Lanka
Fall 2006
Students design schools for Sri Lanka
A group of six students in civil and environmental engineering worked with Washington State University’s new student group of Engineers Without Borders and Asiana Education Development (AED), a Seattle-based nonprofit organization that runs schools for orphans in Sri Lanka, to design two schools that will be rebuilt in the region destroyed by the December 2004 tsunami. The organization is working to rebuild nine of its schools that were destroyed.
When completed, the schools, which will cost a total of about $100,000, will hold about 720 students altogether and contain about two dozen classrooms.
Student Alex McDonald started the WSU chapter of Engineers Without Borders about … » More …
Winter 2005
Maybe tomorrow: Graduate student follows his heart into uncharted territory
Just as Washington State University political science student Steve Overfelt was finishing his master’s degree coursework and preparing to write his thesis, he decided to put it off. And his advisor, Prof. Martha Cottam, encouraged him to do so.
Was this evidence of deteriorating academic standards at WSU? Hardly. It was a response to the tsunami that devastated coastal communities in Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004.
“I’d spent Thanksgiving in Indonesia doing research for my thesis on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), so I really wanted to go back to help,” Overfelt says. “But nobody wanted my physical labor, only the cash in my pocket. After … » More …