Environment

$3M grant supports transformative graduate student research

Washington State University will soon be preparing graduate students to tackle a difficult, interdisciplinary problem that is more than 1,200 miles long: the Columbia River. With the support of a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, WSU will develop a research training program focused on the relationships among rivers, watersheds, and communities. The […]

Meet the new faculty of fall 2021

Meet the college’s newest faculty, whose scholarly expertise and interests—from transnational geographies to transgender studies, culturally relevant music to immigration law, and mind and body awareness to fluids in the Earth’s crust—enrich and expand the arts and sciences at WSU.

Research and innovation highlights

As COVID-19 swept the nation in March 2020, faculty with ongoing studies were required to put them on hold or pivot to make the research relevant to the pandemic. “Science and teamwork are our best hope for a way forward,” said WSU President Kirk Schulz in October 2020. “I am incredibly proud of our faculty […]

Ask Dr. Universe: How do mountains form?

When you walk around on land, you are walking on top of Earth’s rocky crust. Below the crust is another thick layer of rock. These layers form Earth’s tectonic plates and when those plates collide with each other, they often form mountains. To find out about how mountains form, I visited my friend Julie Menard, a […]

Teaching the teachers

Earlier this year, six CAS professors spent 12 weeks as learners themselves in the new WORD! Faculty Fellowship program. The experienced educators were challenged to think about how to help students write within the context of their various disciplines. WORD! workshops help faculty understand “how writing can be the process through which students learn the […]

Making a difference

The 2021 WSU President’s Awards for Leadership and Engagement Award of Distinction (LEAD) recognized 17 CAS students and a faculty member for outstanding contributions across our diverse campus communities. “This is a prestigious award that recognizes…the ways they give back to the community and empower others,” said Phillip Sinapati, ASWSU advisor and

Measuring greenhouse gas emissions from water reservoirs

A new study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles shows per-area greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s water reservoirs are around 29% higher than suggested by previous studies, but that practical measures could be taken to help reduce that impact. According to the analysis by Washington State University and University of Quebec at Montreal scientists, much of the increase […]

Top Ten Seniors for 2021

Five of the WSU Top Ten Seniors are graduating with degrees in the College of Arts and Sciences: Dallas Hobbs, Brandt Fischer, Samantha King-Shaw, Kyle Kopta, and Ariel Medeiros. For more than 80 years, WSU has recognized top seniors in each graduating class. These women and men represent the highest standards in specific aspects of […]

Too much of a good thing?

On most summer days, Vancouver Lake is a popular place for windsurfing, boating, and birdwatching. More and more, however, this picturesque place is closed to recreation for months at a time due to harmful algae blooms (HABs) that contain toxins which can cause sickness, or even death, in people, pets, fish, birds, and wild animals. […]