The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office has achieved the National Certification Program Seal of Excellence from the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement for a new training course, Interaction and Perception.
The first course of its kind nationally, Interaction and Perception was developed by Bryan Vila, professor of criminology and criminal, and his team at Washington State University with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. The goal was to make personnel into “good strangers” who can appropriately assess a situation and adapt in order to socially engage in any given circumstance.
Spokane Sherriff’s training will combine two programs into one: Strategic Interaction and Implicit Bias Training.
Researchers at WSU Spokane have analyzed well over 100 police deadly force encounters captured on dash cam video or observed in a simulator. That academic research has now turned in a “counter bias” training program.
The course grew out of a series of attention-getting papers on the dynamics of deadly police encounters including racial factors published by Professor Lois James and colleagues, including Bryan Vila, recently retired professor of criminal justice and criminology.
“We have two kinds of major findings from our research in the lab,” James said. “One is that officers when you hook them up neurophysiologically — and also when you test them using implicit bias tests — we find they tend to quite strongly associate African American suspects with increased levels of threat.”
The other finding runs almost the opposite.
WSU School of Music students earned state and regional honors at competitions and a performance in November.
“I am exceedingly proud of our outstanding students and faculty,” said Greg Yasinitsky, Regents professor and director of the school. “This enhances the visibility and reputation of our school, the College of Arts and Sciences and Washington State University.”
By Raymond Sun, associate professor of history, WSU Pullman.
The living memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor is almost extinguished. It’s time to rethink how we want to remember Dec. 7, 1941, 75 years later—and beyond.
To acknowledge the many negative effects that the memory of Pearl Harbor had on how Americans fought the Pacific War is not only intellectually and historically honest, but provides the moral integrity required to build a national memory that can guide us wisely in the present when facing severe challenges about race, religion, refugees, immigration and national security. This is neither to deny the honor due to the dead of Pearl Harbor, nor to displace the site from its central place in American memory.
Seventy-five years later, we have a great opportunity to craft a more mature, complex understanding of the multiple legacies of Pearl Harbor.
Horace Alexander Young, chair of contemporary music at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, was honored recently with the WSU Alumni Association Alumni Achievement Award in recognition of his three decades of professional touring and recording jazz music with top performers worldwide while also teaching privately and at the university level.
Young earned a master of arts degree in music at WSU in 1983 and returned as an associate professor of music 1998-2008. He developed courses in music business and established internships for WSU students in major music industry companies in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and at the Seattle branch of the Recording Academy, which awards the annual Grammys. » More …