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WSU fine artist explores ‘internet addiction’ with paintings

Joe Hedges.
Hedges

Washington State University fine arts faculty member Joe Hedges has been thinking hard about the slash in his title: Assistant Professor of Painting/Intermedia.

“There’s a lot of ambiguity with that slash,” Hedges said. “Is it painting or intermedia, painting and intermedia, or paintings that are both painting and incorporate other media? I have basically been trying it all.”

Among Hedges’ latest artworks are oil paintings of beautiful landscapes but with a twist. They incorporate flat screen televisions, smart phones or other objects to become what he calls “Hypercombines” — paintings that are connected to the internet.

“I started thinking about this buzz phrase that was going around a few years ago, ‘the internet of things,’ and asking myself why couldn’t an oil painting be part of the internet of things? What would that look like?” he asked.

Those questions have inspired and informed several of his new works to be exhibited at Artworks Gallery in Loveland, Colorado, Nov. 8–Dec. 18, and at Chase Gallery in Spokane, Wash., Jan. 3–March 25.

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WSU Insider

Fuse justifies lie as way to show Woodward not being transparent

A progressive political organization that accuses a Spokane mayoral candidate of not being honest about her political leanings defends using a lie of its own to prove its point.

Fuse Washington, which has endorsed Ben Stuckart for Spokane mayor, sent an activist to a campaign stop by Nadine Woodward last July, claiming to be a supporter of President Donald Trump and asking the former television news anchor whom she voted for in the 2016 presidential election.

When Woodward declined, saying the race is nonpartisan and it doesn’t matter what party you are if you’re filling pot holes, the activist persisted. He said it was a key factor in deciding his support. After several minutes of discussion, Woodward said “I’ll tell you one thing, I did not vote for Hillary Clinton. Is that good enough?”

Cornell Clayton.
Clayton

Cornell Clayton, political science professor and director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University, said lying by activists in a campaign “falls into a gray area.” A conservative group, Project Veritas, has used it repeatedly to compile video exposes of groups it targets, justifying the tactic by arguing its opponents are hypocritical, he said.

Secret ballots have been standard in American elections for more than a century. Candidates often deflect questions about how they voted in other races or for controversial measures by citing the secrecy of the ballot, Clayton said.

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Spokesman-Review

Wall Street seeks a valuable resource from Washington state’s aging farmers: their water

The faces behind Washington’s farms are wrinkling.

The average age of a Washington farmer is 58.1 years, up from 56.8 in 2012, according to the Census of Agriculture. Meanwhile, farmers under age 44 make up less than 18 percent of those in the business.

Marcia Ostrom.
Ostrom

The years ahead will be defined by “high transition,” said Marcia Ostrom, an associate professor in the School of the Environment at Washington State University.

That represents an opportunity for investors in farms, land and water.

Older farmers often don’t have relatives interested in farming, Ostrom said. Their retirements are often tied to farm assets. Younger farmers often find it difficult to build capital to enter a high-cost industry.

Water rights offer farmers another option.

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Seattle Times

Watching Marmots

Scientists studying marmots in the high meadows of the North Cascades are concerned about their decline

Logan Whiles.
Whiles

Logan Whiles is a graduate research assistant at Washington State University studying predator-prey interactions, and Rawley Davis is his summer field technician. The three of us are about to spend a week in Washington’s North Cascades National Park observing hoary marmots, collecting carnivore scat, and checking on wildlife cameras. This will be Logan Whiles’s fifth time making the roughly sixty-mile trek.

There is evidence that hoary marmots are in serious decline in the North Cascades National Park. One hypothesis for the loss suggests that less snow due to a warming climate opens the restaurant doors for carnivores that otherwise dine at lower elevations (such as coyotes and bobcats). If more marmots are being eaten by these lower elevation animals, then the rare higher elevation carnivores like wolverines and lynx could be forced into competition. This in turn could throw already stressed habitats further out of sync.

Scientists are still determining to what extent human or carnivore activity in the North Cascades affects hoary marmot behavior. They want to know which carnivores up here are eating marmots. Whiles and his team theorized maybe bear (grizzlies are known to dig marmots out of their burrows), but there are currently no grizzlies here, and last season the team collected enough scat to realize that local black bears chomp more veg than they do meat.

Data compiled from this research is giving us a clearer picture of climate change impacts on sensitive mountain habitats across Cascadia.

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Cascadia Magazine

Building a new generation of female leaders in higher ed

Research shows the associate professor rut, where faculty linger at a mid-rank position for years and sometimes indefinitely, is not only very real but also disproportionally affects women, particularly in STEM fields.

The National Science Foundation reports that women comprise only 21 percent of full professors in science fields and 5 percent of full professors in engineering despite earning about half the doctorates in science and engineering in the nation.

Masha Maria Gartstein.
Gartstein

Maria Gartstein was nevertheless able to beat the trend. She is now a full professor in the WSU Department of Psychology and her research on infant development is being featured in an upcoming Netflix documentary.

She said one of the keys to her success was participating in the WSU External Mentor Program, an experience so worthwhile she’s building on its approach with the help of a new $1.2 million NSF grant supporting education leadership development for women in STEM.

The External Mentor Program connects WSU female faculty members with off-campus academic leaders. It was created with support from the NSF in 2008 as part of WSU ADVANCE, an initiative designed to promote institutional transformation, increasing diversity in the highest ranks of STEM at WSU.

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WSU Insider