Several CAS graduate students from WSU Vancouver and WSU Tri-Cities vied for the honor of representing their campus in the 2021 WSU Three Minute Thesis competition.
Shawnee Kasanke, the semi-finalist from the WSU Tri-Cities campus, is a CAS graduate student in biological sciences. In her 3MT presentation, she explains how » More …
The five-year WSU Transformational Change Initiative (TCI) created an excellent model for boosting student success, and plans are in the works to continue improving the program.
“The intention is to help the students connect with opportunities that align with their values, play to their strengths, and move them toward their goals,” said Samantha Swindell, associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and » More …
Harm reduction treatment helped people experiencing homelessness and alcohol use disorder reduce their drinking and improve their health–even if they didn’t quit drinking alcohol.
“This approach has the potential to help anybody who would like to change their alcohol use but might not be ready or able to stop entirely,” said WSU psychology professor Susan » More …
Each semester, students in Janet Peters’s “Statistics in Psychology” course partner with a regional nonprofit to analyze data and turn it into usable information.
“When I started doing service learning in my classes, the first question I asked was ‘How do I help students understand the power of the skills they are learning?” said Peters. “It becomes so much more apparent when you are helping somebody. » More …
A study conducted by a team of WSU researchers found rats with regular access to cannabis seek more of the substance and tend to show increased drug-seeking behavior when cannabis is absent.
The research—a collaboration of chemists, psychologists, and neuroscientists—is the next step in better understanding cognitive and neural effects of cannabis use in humans. » More …
In a year dominated by COVID-19, popular research news played on questions of how things could get worse, or how we might leave this troubled planet altogether. Overall, news stories about WSU research that did the best still had a focus on real world impact.
CAS faculty featured in five of the top 10 most popular stories, and were well-represented in the next 90-plus press releases tracked by WSU News.
New venture ideation is critical to the entrepreneurial process. To generate creative ideas, some entrepreneurs turn to cannabis, proposing its benefits.
A new study by WSU psychology and business professors found cognitive, motivational, and experiential factors jointly shape creativity in new venture ideation. And while cannabis-using entrepreneurs in the study generated new business ideas that were more original—such as a weightless, gravity-free virtual » More …
In March 2020, when the University moved to distance learning to comply with stay-at-home orders, some WSU Vancouver researchers who were unable to pursue their existing projects turned instead to look at how COVID-19 was affecting various communities.
The new projects are “a lot broader than what people might expect. We are not looking for better testing or a vaccine or methods of contact tracing, but rather the impacts of the pandemic on various communities,” said Christine Portfors, vice chancellor for research and » More …
Each year the WSU Showcase awards recognize the outstanding achievements of faculty and staff. Eight CAS faculty were among those honored in the spring of 2020. These individuals stand among the world’s top scholars, the nation’s most effective and beloved instructors, and the University’s most dedicated and visionary professionals.
The 2020 CAS honorees are: » More …
Female rats that inhaled vaporized cannabis daily for a month developed a blunted physiological response to stress, according to a new study by WSU researchers.
In contrast, male rats that were provided access to the same potency of cannabis over the same 30-day window did not experience any physiological changes in » More …