CAS Story Hub

New advantages for digital technology & culture students, faculty

Amid rising global demand for workers skilled in contemporary technologies who are also culturally literate, Washington State University is making changes to enhance the popular Digital Technology and Culture program. One of WSU’s fastest-growing degree programs with more than 400 students across four campuses—Pullman, Vancouver, Tri-Cities, and Global—DTC was recently elevated to department status, providing […]

AAPI students work together on art for racial healing

On Jan. 17, in a bustling hallway on the main floor of WSU Pullman’s Compton Union Building—known by students as the “CUB”—some people had stopped to stare. In between the crimson pillars was a long panel half-painted in earthen shades, periwinkles, and soft warm tones. Off to the side, the accompanying sign read: “AAPI Mural.”

Preserving the Puget Sound shoreline

Washington State University is partnering with conservation organizations to protect an ecologically important portion of Puget Sound shoreline along Henderson Inlet, south of Olympia. The agreement between Capitol Land Trust (CLT), WSU, and affiliated groups, including the Squaxin Island Tribe, will also provide environmental research and education opportunities to the entire region. The land trust […]

Unique cannabis use study looks at motives

A recent study titled “The Pot at the End of the Rainbow” is one of the first to examine motives for cannabis use among sexual minorities quantitatively. Led by Washington State University psychologists, the researchers analyzed survey data from nearly 4,700 university students from across the country. “People who are in sexual minority groups not […]

Human hikers effect wildlife behavior

Even without hunting rifles, humans appear to have a strong negative influence on the movement of wildlife. A study of Glacier National Park hiking trails during and after a COVID-19 closure adds evidence to the theory that humans can create a “landscape of fear” like other apex predators, changing how species use an area simply […]

Mayan “supermarkets”

More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought.  “Scholars have generally assumed that the obsidian trade was managed by Maya rulers, but our research shows that this wasn’t the case at least in this area,” […]

Likely cause of increasingly common birth defect

An alarming increase in the occurrence of the most common genital malformation in male babies, hypospadias, is likely due to environmental factors, such as toxicant exposure, which alter epigenetic programming in a forming penis.  That’s according to a new study in Scientific Reports that identified a direct link between hypospadias tissue samples and the presence of epigenetic […]

Honoring undergraduate excellence

The College of Arts and Sciences honored Zachary Humphreys, an aspiring lawyer and public official, as bearer of its gonfalon in the fall 2022 commencement ceremony at WSU Pullman. Humphreys, who majored in political science on the pre-law track, carried the college’s shield-shaped banner in the event celebrating December graduates. Selection as a college gonfalon […]

Once a Coug, always a Coug

Transfer student Carrie Colbert earned her bachelor’s degree in women’s studies at WSU, graduating in 2009, and then earning an MBA at Grand Canyon University. She currently works for ALSCO, a linen company. One of her tips for current students: ask for help when [you need] help and remember “that you become part of a […]