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Virtual gallery doesn’t ‘Soften’ art’s impact

June Sanders.
Sanders

Is being “soft” powerful? How can “soft” ways build strength? These are just some of the questions that June T. Sanders and Krista Brand, guest curators from Washington State University, pose in a new group show titled “Soften.”

“The word ‘softness’ is an idea that can contain multitudes,” said Sanders, a prize-winning curator, photographer, writer and assistant professor of digital arts and culture at WSU. “Softness can be a color palette; softness can be a way of relating to each other; softness can be a form of harnessing your own power.”

To celebrate the power of softness, Brand and Sanders have gathered a dozen works by diverse artists Sarah Barnett, Jessica Earle, Sydney McLeod, Nadiya Nacorda, Morganne Radziewicz, Mica Lillith Smith and Azzah Sultan. The artworks display softness of form and aesthetics within a variety of mediums, including video, painting, printmaking and collage.

“Soften” is online now at spokanearts.org through June 26 and hanging at the Chase Gallery in the basement of Spokane City Hall. The gallery is closed to the public until restrictions due to COVID-19 lift.

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The Spokesman-Review

WSU Vancouver Creative Media program granted $10K from NW Food and Wine Society

Dene Grigar.
Grigar

The Creative Media and Digital Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver has received $10,000 from the Northwest Wine and Food Society to support program needs and student fellowships.

Dene Grigar, director and professor in the CMDC program, is the project’s faculty mentor.

Four students who received $1,500 fellowships for tuition and other needs are creating a website, logo and social media promotions for the society, collaborating over the web on Zoom and Slack to complete the work by mid-June. They began the 10-week project in March, just days before the state of Washington’s “Stay Home. Stay Safe.” order went into effect, and students left the campus.

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Vancouver Business Journal

2020 Excellence in Online Teaching Award winner announced

Jack McNassar.
McNassar

Jack McNassar, a Washington State University Global Campus anthropology instructor, is the winner of the 2019-20 Excellence in Online Teaching Award. The student-nominated annual award is sponsored by Academic Outreach & Innovation.

The award, now in its fourth year, seeks to acknowledge and reward WSU faculty members teaching on Global Campus who employ best practices to engage, inspire, support, and show care for students in an online environment. He will receive $3,000 in faculty development funds and a trophy in recognition of his win.

“Professor McNassar continually inspired me and the other students in the course,” said one of his nominators. “He is open for questions, and he always responds in such a kind and caring way … his encouraging words made everyone want to be a better student and do their best work.”

McNassar earned his doctorate in anthropology from WSU in 2016 and has been teaching online through WSU Global Campus for five years.

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WSU Insider

Information drove development of early states

Who could imagine a 21st century without data? Sophisticated information processing is key to the way societies function today. And it turns out it was also critical to the evolution of early states. According to new research led by an SFI team, the ability to store and process information was central to sociopolitical development across civilizations ranging from the Neolithic to the last millennium.

Tim Kohler
Kohler

“There’s a fundamental relationship between the way in which societies process information and how large they are able to become,” says SFI External Professor Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University and an author on a new paper published this month in Nature Communications.

Kohler and his colleagues—a range of SFI resident and external faculty and researchers—dug into what’s called the Seshat Global History Databank, a massive assembly of historical and archaeological information spanning more than 400 societies, 30 regions, and 10,000 years of human history.

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Phys.org

WSU Insider

When the Sky Fell

Forty years later, the angry-looking ash cloud billowing above Mount St. Helens remains one of the most iconic images in state history. Those living in the state of Washington at the time of the May 18, 1980, eruption all have a where-were-you-when-it-blew moment.

Don Dillman.
Dillman

Within an hour of the eruption, WSU geology alumnus Don Swanson (’60) was documenting the cataclysm from an airplane, flying in figure-eights on the south side of the volcano to film and take photos. On the other side of the state, students at WSU Pullman were studying for finals and doing everyday chores like laundry.

Don A. Dillman, now a Regents Professor in sociology, was roller skating with his wife and two young children. He wrote a detailed account, which the Manuscripts, Archives & Special Collections at WSU Libraries keeps for posterity.

Swanson, now 81, went on to become the scientist-in-charge of the Cascades Volcano Observatory and, later, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on the rim of the Kilauea Caldera—where he still serves as scientist emeritus. But Mount St. Helens has never left him. He knew three people who perished in the blast zone and dedicated his career to better understanding eruptions in order to prevent similar tragedies. “I think about it almost every day,” he says.

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Washington State Magazine