Navarro‑Daniels named Matteson Distinguished Professor

Recognizing her international reputation in service to language and culture studies, the College of Arts and Sciences named Vilma Navarro‑Daniels recipient of the Marianna Merritt and Donald S. Matteson Distinguished Professorship in Foreign Languages and Cultures. “Professor Navarro‑Daniels is a prolific scholar whose international recognition and prominence continue to rise, and the Matteson award, with its […]

Unusually ultrasonic

For decades, scientists have been intrigued by a black hummingbird that appears to be singing, its throat and jaw moving in all earnestness, but without making any obvious sound. Augusto Ruschi, a naturalist who catalogued dozens of hummingbirds in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, first noticed it in 1959. The bird, called a black Jacobin, appeared to […]

McNair scholar bridges cultures in life, research

It’s fall 2014. New freshman Lysandra Perez, the first in her family to attend college, sits on the bed in her Streit-Perham Hall dorm room. The emotional farewells are done, and her parents are driving back home to the small town of Moxee, near Yakima. Her roommates won’t be arriving for another few days. She […]

The curation crisis

More than 8,500 years ago, a group of people used a rock shelter at the confluence of the Palouse and Snake Rivers as a base camp. When rediscovered in the early 1950s, the shelter amazed scientists, including Washington State University archeologist Richard Daugherty, with its wealth of artifacts—and the age of its human remains. Named […]

Defining his own non-traditional path

Family is core to who Geoff Schramm is as a friend, a person, but especially as a father and husband. It’s the reason why he decided to go back to school at Washington State University Tri-Cities in his late 30s – a decision that led to many people asking him, “Why?”

$3M interdisciplinary grant to pursue epigenetic biomarkers

Washington State University researchers have received nearly $3 million from the John Templeton Foundation, the second such grant in four years, to see if they can anticipate and prevent diseases by developing epigenetic biomarkers that could provide early stage diagnostics for disease susceptibility. Their approach would be a departure from traditional “reactionary medicine,” which treats diseases after […]

Diversity, creativity lead to opportunity

For student Lian Jacquez, finding the ideal university fit was a bit of a challenge – that is, until he arrived at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Originally from eastern Oregon, he attended a university located in his home state, but found that the decision was an expensive one and more based on impulse than it […]

The physics of fall

With murmurs and pointing, the crowd watches as a face and then hands—holding a large object—appear in the twelfth-story window of WSU’s Webster Physical Sciences Building. On the ground, Butch T. Cougar begins a countdown: five, four, three, two… At one, the hands release a 10-pound, half-frozen pumpkin that rockets to the courtyard, exploding in […]

Northwest Indians used tobacco long before European contact

WSU researchers have determined that Nez Perce Indians grew and smoked tobacco at least 1,200 years ago, long before the arrival of traders and settlers from the eastern United States. Their finding upends a long-held view that indigenous people in this area of the interior Pacific Northwest smoked only kinnikinnick or bearberry before traders brought […]

Vancouver junior awarded National Udall Scholarship

WSU Vancouver cultural anthropology major Emma Johnson has received a prestigious and nationally competitive Udall Undergraduate Scholarship in its tribal public policy category. “The Udall (Scholarship) is incredibly important to me,” said Johnson. “Completing all the work to apply and then being successful, it’s a really huge deal. It is helping me complete my education.” Johnson, […]