Resources and Offices

The art and craft of historical narrative

Buddy Levy, a longtime clinical professor in English, likes to make the trip. He specializes in historical narrative, paying meticulous attention to detail, writing cinematically, and traveling to the sites of the stories he’s researching—sometimes several hundred years after they’ve occurred. Travel, he says, is necessary for scene-setting and description, and can be more meaningful than […]

If these walls could talk

The University’s Historic Preservation Committee recently launched a new website that provides the first comprehensive online history of WSU Pullman’s buildings and landscapes. Developed as a teaching tool and an eventual community history repository, the WSU Building and Landscapes website features photographs, maps and plans from the WSU Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections (MASC).  Currently, the website includes […]

Library instruction increases student educational success

Clif Stratton knows the difference library instruction makes for his students. For more than five years, he has brought students in his “Roots of Contemporary Issues” class to Terrell Library to meet with Corey Johnson, WSU’s instruction and assessment librarian. Johnson teaches the students how to find suitable primary and secondary sources for their research […]

The fabric of Washington

Stories, photos, paintings, and belongings like baskets and tools tell the rich history of Plateau tribes of the inland Pacific Northwest, a history now shared online. The Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, a gateway to those cultural materials, is maintained by Washington State University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) in partnership with WSU’s Native […]

WSM review: Bringing Water to the Idaho Desert

Growing up on a farm near Inkom, Idaho, the young Hugh Lovin (’56 MA history) would engineer ways to divert water to the crops he produced for his livestock. Later in life, after years of writing histories of labor, Lovin turned his attention again to irrigation. In a number of articles, collected for the first […]

Crimson Spirit Award: Sheryl DeShields

Sheryl DeShields, secretary senior in the Department of Psychology, received the September 2018 Crimson Spirit Award. DeShields’ colleagues honored her for her noteworthy extra efforts and commitment to the unit. One nominator described her as “the heart and soul of our talented and close-knit department.” Another noted she is “outstanding in every way. I have […]

Long journey of WSU’s newest student regent

Jordan Frost was a sophomore at Kent-Meridian High School when a teacher, Andrea McCormick, handed him a packet of materials to run for student body president. She already had filled them out. “You just need to sign your name,” she said. Later, she gave him a Washington State University hoodie, “which was really the first […]

Crimson Spirit Award: Fran Meserve

Fran Meserve, principal assistant in the School of Music, is the Crimson Spirit honoree for July 2018. Presented by WSU Human Resource Services, the award recognizes faculty and staff who provide superior customer service to their peers, colleagues, and students. Ms. Meserve’s nominator says, “She does not hesitate to follow up with colleagues and students […]

What’s at the core of a dark personality?

Dark personality traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are socially aversive personality styles that are often confused because of their similarities. Using a quantitative technique called network analysis, WSU psychologists David Marcus and Jonathan Preszler, along with their colleague Virgil Zeigler-Hill at Oakland University, are investigating the behaviors that make up the common core of dark personality traits.

2017 Wilson Award and Symposium

WSU created the William Julius Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice in 2009 to recognize individuals who promote social inclusiveness and diversity in social policies and strive to reduce joblessness. Wilson received his doctorate in sociology from WSU in 1966 and is widely considered one of the nation’s most influential sociologists. He is […]