Two anthropology faculty join WSU
adriana
Meet two of the college’s newest faculty, whose disciplinary expertise—from moral psychology to energetics of immunity, growth, and reproduction—enriches and expands the arts and sciences at WSU.
College of Arts and Sciences
Anthropology
Researcher named to Washington State Academy of Sciences
seabertson
Timothy Kohler, Regents professor in anthropology, has been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences
He is an eminent archaeologist and evolutionary anthropologist specializing in quantitative analyses of prehistoric behavior set in climatically accurate paleoenvironments. He is well known for his work on cooperative behaviors, wealth inequalities and their consequences, and models of pre-Hispanic agricultural » More …
Arts & humanities faculty awarded 2018 fellowships
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Seven College of Arts and Sciences faculty received WSU Arts and Humanities Fellowship awards through a program funded by the Office of Research.
“These grants showcase the range and innovation of creative and humanistic work at WSU,” said Todd Butler, chair of the fellowship review committee. “These faculty are taking on challenging questions and demonstrating the vital contributions the arts and humanities » More …
2018 CAS awards honor faculty, staff, grad students
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Fourteen faculty, three staff, and five graduate students were honored for outstanding achievement at the 2018 College of Arts and Sciences Appreciation and Recognition Social last week.
Regents Professor Kerry W. Hipps, an international leader in chemistry, and Barry Hewlett, a veteran anthropologist with a global reputation, received the top two faculty awards. Patricia Thorsten-Mickelson, a financial and personnel manager with more than three decades of experience at WSU, was honored with the outstanding staff career award.
“Our annual awards recognize individual achievement and are a wonderful opportunity to bring the college community together to celebrate » More …
Grad student selected as AAAS Congressional Science Fellow
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Kathryn Harris, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, has received an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellowship for the 2018-19 year.
Fellows are provided a transformative career opportunity within the federal policy arena that includes not only hands-on work with policymaking, but also a series of trainings and » More …
CAS leads top 20 WSU research stories of 2017
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From rising inequality and declining Monarch butterfly populations to a particle with negative mass, news coverage about the College of Arts and Sciences research reached millions of people last year.
News outlets carrying the stories ran the gamut of the nation’s most popular media, including CNN, The Washington Post and National Public Radio, as well as specialty science publications like Science and all the region’s major news vehicles. » More …
2018 CAS faculty award recipients
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Every year, the College of Arts and Sciences recognizes faculty excellence in teaching, service, and career achievement. Congratulations to our 14 awardees for 2018: » More …
Nicotine identified in ancient dental plaque
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A team of scientists including researchers from Washington State University has shown for the first time that nicotine residue can be extracted from plaque, also known as “dental calculus”, on the teeth of ancient tobacco users.
Their research provides a new method for determining who was consuming tobacco in the ancient world and could help trace the use of tobacco and other intoxicating plants further back into prehistory.
“The ability to identify nicotine and other plant-based drugs in ancient dental plaque could help us answer longstanding questions about the consumption of intoxicants by » More …
A mother’s microbial gift
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Old assumptions about human breast milk are giving way to new thinking about microbes in milk and their role in children’s health and our immune systems.
It happened again, most recently at a conference in Prague. After she gave her talk, a scientist came up to Shelley McGuire, a pioneer exploring the microbial communities found in human breast milk, and told her, You don’t know how to take a sample. Your samples must have been contaminated. Human milk is sterile. » More …
Master’s student blends overseas research, local outreach
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Passionate about plants and nearing graduation with a master’s in cultural anthropology, Amanda Thiel has traveled overseas for her research and educated elementary school children about botany.
Thiel went to rural Guatemala in the summer of 2016 to research ethnobotany, the study of how people use plants in their region. During her two-month stay, she interviewed Q’eqchi’ Maya villagers about the type of plants growing in their gardens, and used the information » More …