By Larry Clark The architectural responsibility of making more than just buildings When the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, planned to expand their convention center in the late 2000s, they wanted a structure that would reflect the city’s environmental values while tripling […]

By Jacob Jones A secretive telegram—wired to Santiago, Cuba, in April of 1962—forever reset the course of Lorenzo Pablo Martínez’s life, stripping away his teenage hopes for a prestigious musical scholarship in Europe and exiling him to an unfamiliar culture as a […]

By Larry Clark A FRUIT OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS For a staple found in backyard gardens and farmer’s markets everywhere, the tomato certainly carries its share of myths. The rich, acidic fruit that we often call a vegetable has been considered a […]

By Raymond L. Williams Recently on the streets of Panama, a t-shirt with the phrase “Keep Austin Weird” caught my attention. Pullman, unlike Austin, has never struck me as a particularly weird college town. The experience of being at Washington State University, nevertheless, […]

Dr. Jacob Jones WSU reinforced a sense of hard work and humility that carried him through graduation, his NFL career, and medical school In an exam room at his Yakima medical practice, former Seattle Seahawks running back Dan Doornink ’78 hunches his shoulders and […]

By Larry Clark Even though he didn’t realize it at the time, scientific education from Washington State University would help U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell ’76 tackle the challenge of managing 193 million acres of forest and grasslands during a time […]

By Rebecca Phillips WSU RESEARCHERS SEEK TO PROVE THAT AN UNTAMED TANGLE OF NATURE IS A PREREQUISITE FOR LONG-TERM SALMON SURVIVAL “Look at all these fish!” says wildlife officer David Karl. My eyes adjust to the dappled sunlight as I bend toward […]

By Rebecca Phillips On a cool evening last April, at exactly 8:01 p.m., the International Space Station traced a bright silver arc over Pullman. Inside, astronauts went about their routine while a small sensor scanned the air for hazardous vapors and relayed […]

By Larry Clark Simulating cybersecurity attacks to protect the smart grid Hackers had a banner year in 2014. They stole hundreds of millions of passwords and other pieces of confidential information from banks, retailers, credit card companies, even film company Sony Pictures. A […]

By Mary Hawkins Thomas S. Foley was a political gentleman. The Speaker of the House lived and worked from principles that defined his political career: civility, honesty, and integrity. Even though he lost his seat in Congress, Foley’s legacy continues to encourage […]

By Jim Kershner Dwayne Mack was, to say the least, skeptical when his faculty mentor at Washington State University, LeRoy Ashby, suggested he write his doctoral dissertation on Spokane’s black history. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, every time we pay a visit […]

By Rebecca Phillips Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at WSU 1999 Hundreds of people, cats, dogs, porpoises, birds, and other animals on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, fell victim to what was diagnosed as a rare fungal infection called Cryptococcus gattii. Though physicians […]

By Larry Clark A Mount Vernon high school teacher gets pulled into one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century Dick Spink ’85 never intended to hunt for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. He specializes in boats. He put himself through Washington State […]

By Rebecca Phillips A jar of foul-smelling clay sits on the cluttered workbench. “I’d better not open it,” says environmental engineer Richard Watts. He grabs a smaller jar filled with liquid the color of a dirty mud puddle. “These are soil and groundwater […]

By Alyssa Patrick …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 […]

By Larry Clark The call came into 9-1-1 from a Spokane YMCA last October: A middle-aged man was threatening to break the kneecaps of an eight-year-old, because he said the boy could “ruin my NBA career.” Corporal Jordan Ferguson of the Spokane […]

By Jason Krump The Olympic moment of WSU Hall of Famer Lee Orr As rain fell in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium in 1936, Lee Orr, a Washington State College student not yet 20 years old, didn’t realize the magnitude of the events surrounding […]

By Rebecca Phillips They call it Tangletown—a Seattle neighborhood where streets and trolley tracks intersect like wayward skeins of yarn. In the 1930s, local residents routinely chose the trolley for trips to work, the market, or hardware store. They did that several […]

By Rebecca Phillips Keeping a watchful eye in remote environments with aerial drones Stealing through the shadowed plantation, an orangutan stops to feed on the tender shoots of a palm sapling. An instant later, she crumples from a rifle shot, her baby […]

By Tina Hilding Being put to the test at the ground zero of climate change There’s the day the polar bear mangled the meteorological instruments. Or when a massive storm smashed two humidity sensors. Days of howling winds, extremely limited visibility, and […]

By David Wasson Shelves full of informational brochures, health aids, and other over-the-counter remedies. Pharmacists filling and checking prescriptions, tending to paperwork, and meeting with customers. Tucked into a portion of a busy Fred Meyer retail store, it looks like a typical […]

When you’re on an oil rig out in the middle of the ocean, you have plenty of opportunity to think about both life and livelihood. It’s exactly where Sola Adesope found himself in the late 1990s, working for Chevron Nigeria Limited. The […]

Doctoral graduate Yu “Will” Wang believes that polymera ubiquitous material made from hydrocarbons and other elements bonded togethermay play the most important role in our daily lives. His undergraduate degree in polymers and desire to earn a doctoral degree in the area […]

DAVENPORT, Wash. – Along a blustery rural highway, foresters from Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are proving that living snow fences – windbreaks made of live trees – can protect Northwest roads and farms from winter’s fury. More […]

Go ahead, make a snide remark about rugby. Carly MacKinnon will then knock your teeth in! That may be an exaggeration. Or not. She’s pretty friendly and down-to-earth. But at the same time, she’s pretty darned serious about rugby; crazy about it. […]

Kathryn Mireles has always been interested in math and engineering–an early indication that she might be a good fit for Washington State University’s graduate program in Materials Science & Engineering. Following her academic work at New Mexico Tech, Kathryn looked to WSU […]

When Tiffany Alvarez studied women’s health through the lens of life history theory as an undergraduate student and McNair Scholar at UNLV, she didn’t know how far it would eventually take her. Now a doctoral student at Washington State University in evolutionary […]

Curiosity He was naturally curious as a child growing up in the Netherlands. At the age of 8 or 9, he recalls being more interested in reading volumes of the encyclopedia than in playing outdoors. He credits his dad, who worked at […]

Validation Her face lights up with a broad grin as she recalls the moment. Her breathing was shallow, her heart racing. She blinked, and swallowed hard, anticipating the announcement. Then, like a slow-motion dream sequence in which you accomplish the near-impossible–stepping onto […]

Winds of change The wind whistled and rattled the bare tree branches throughout the Palouse that cloud-covered morning, as it often does in early March, when Old Man Winter and Lady Spring engage in regular tugs-of-war to determine the reigning season of […]

Roots Stirring rods, funnels, a balance, pipets, and test tubes beckon from a counter. Boxes of common kitchen ingredients, including gummy bears, corn starch, and giant wooden spoons line other shelves. Well-loved graduated cylinders and beakers wait their turn, perched at the […]

Inspiration When Edward R. Murrow penned those heartfelt words in the early 1930s he wasn’t describing the influence of a love interest, a CBS colleague, or his wife Janet on his legendary broadcasting career. Instead, the 1930 graduate of then Washington State […]

Engineering wizard Ian Richardson wants to find ways to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen. He wants to design and build bigger rockets to take people farther than we’ve ever gone before. And he wants to travel in space. In grade school, Richardson […]

It started with a car, a ’69 Corvette Stingray to be exact. When Arron Carter, the director of the Washington State University Winter Wheat Breeding Program, was in high school his agricultural teacher had a ’69 Corvette Stingray. Every year this teacher […]

Doctoral student Erim Gomez has a driving interest in saving endangered animals. From his undergraduate work with the flat-tail horned lizard of California and the Colorado fringe-toed lizard to his graduate research on the leopard frog and redband rainbow trout of Washington […]

Meeting a great need–and having a blast Alarms bells sounded in his head. Observing the epidemic-like speech and language difficulties demonstrated by the children on a daily basis can prompt that type of reaction in someone who cares–passionately–about kids’ futures. So Douglas […]

Generosity Mention community service to Devon Seymour, and the high-level energy radiating from the graduating WSU senior goes up a few notches. Her voice becomes more animated. Her crystal-blue eyes shine bright. She leaves little doubt she cares deeply about the topic. […]

She describes the moment as if it occurred yesterday. The then middle schooler was lying on her back on the rooftop of her family’s home in Ranaghat, West Bengal, India, gazing idly at the puffy white clouds drifting by overhead. She daydreamed […]

Jeremiah Allison is the real deal. He’s the kind of guy who holds doors for other people when he’s supposed to be the center of attention. Who stops an old friend for an enthusiastic hug as he passes by. Who keeps his […]

For more than half a century, West Nile virus was someone else’s problem. The mosquito-borne pathogen was first isolated from a feverish human in 1937 in northern Uganda’s West Nile district. It then lay low for a decade before emerging in an […]

John Mullan closed the last link of the Northwest Passage and vanished from history–until now. ON A MAY MORNING IN 1858, along a small creek on the northern edge of the Palouse, hundreds of warriors from several Inland Northwest Indian tribes closed […]

In a familiar classroom scene, lab partners take turns squinting into a microscope. They spy a wriggling paramecium, if the organism doesn’t swim away from the field of view. These days they also peer into an iPad to watch videos and access […]

Controlling Growth Factors Who you are is largely dictated by a group of biochemicals called growth factor proteins. Growth factors orchestrate embryological development, guide our maturation from infant to adulthood, regulate immune function, direct the ever-changing alterations to our brains that underlie […]

Cori Kane calls it “underwater skydiving.” She’ll be out in the middle of the North Pacific, more than 1,000 miles from Honolulu and most anything else that might be called civilization. Flopping out of a perfectly good boat, she will rocket down […]

On the first day of class this semester, Kristine Leier, a senior majoring in history and anthropology, returned one of the more macabre items owned by the WSU Libraries: a lock of hair from the murdered missionary, Narcissa Whitman. Hair is not […]

Jesse A. Logan ’77 PhD is hiking up a mountainside in Yellowstone National Park and walking back in time. He starts at 8,600 feet above sea level, in a forest thick with the scent of fir and lodgepole pine, and with almost […]

Kale’s culinary star has certainly enjoyed a recent rise. For a long time this basic brassica was a humble, overcooked, nutrient-rich winter green. But now it has become a salad, a crispy chip, and even a baby green. It features on the […]

Hearing birdsong and the screams of howler monkeys, Richard Zack ’82 awakens in a tent high in a misty Guatemala cloud forest. He rouses himself for breakfast–it’s been a long night of bug collection.Thousands of miles away, in the M.T. James Entomological […]

Criminal justice doesn’t end when the prison gate clangs shut behind the departing offender. Unseen, but of great value, are the officers who serve as guardians on the outside, watching over the former prisoners and guiding their integration back into society. While […]

Among the once-mighty foods that have fallen from grace, barley may have fallen the hardest. Kevin Murphy (’04 MS, ’07 PhD) and Mary Palmer Sullivan ’88 are trying to change that. Barley was there at the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years […]

Fifty years ago, activists in Alabama called for people to come from the far corners of the country to participate in what would become one of the most significant events in the history of the civil rights movement: a five-day march for […]

“Do you know what kind of wine this is?” Thomas Henick-Kling, director of the viticulture and enology program at Washington State University Tri-Cities, asks me as he gently places his hand on a wall in the new Wine Science Center. “Red?” I […]

Winding its way through southern Idaho, the Snake River sidles along a stretch of dark basalt rising above arid farmland. In the Thousand Springs region, an enormous aquifer sends water bursting from the rock in a cavalcade of waterfalls and creeks. Cold, […]

Shortly after the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the American Red Cross had to wrestle with an odd sort of philanthropic success. So many people donated blood, there was far more than what was needed for the […]

As the chief of infectious pediatric disease at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital, Ken Alexander ’82 is no stranger to the measles, pertussis, or chicken pox. He also works with children with HIV-related illness, pneumonia, and respiratory infections. He and […]

Winthrop to Marblemount-North Cascades Highway–87.4 miles I was running late, headed for Marblemount over Washington Pass. As it grew darker, I drove through thick, swirling clouds. The clouds would part, revealing a jagged peak, then close quickly, then reveal another. It was […]

“Oh, no, no, no,” says Sonoko Sakai as she jets across the test kitchen at the WSU Mount Vernon Research Station to school a student on the proper technique of draining a freshly cooked hand-cut soba noodle. “Don’t stir it. You have […]

With his fierce gaze and swift, powerful muscles, Chinese American martial artist and actor Bruce Lee inspired John Wong and a generation of Chinese people in the early 1970s. Lee embodied a new and potent physicality as an Asian man on film, […]

The bodyguards standing sentry outside James Brown’s dressing room were as tall as the ceiling–an impossible 20 feet or so, remembers Tim Hills ’93 MA. But maybe it was his nerves. After a long wait, the door opened and the historian was […]

After decades of researching gender differences in the effects of drugs, Rebecca Craft has found that females using marijuana are likelier than men to become dependent on the drug and suffer more severe withdrawals. At the same time, females seem to be […]

Back in the ’90s, scientists for two major cancer-research organizations reviewed thousands of studies and saw armies of broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, onions, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, and citrus fruits turning the tide on various cancers. Then, just a decade later, the same […]

The pain wasn’t acute or sharp, more a powerful, throbbing ache focused on the lower back. Ron Weaver was in his early 20s. He was a meat cutter, and at first he thought it was a typical problem for the trade–twisting, working […]

In spite of the fine centennial histories by George Frykman, Bill Stimson, and Dick Fry, as well as earlier histories, Washington State University has no comprehensive history of research and scholarship, no history of ideas. This is a collective effort to generate […]