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WSU historian shares expertise for documentary on Buffalo Soldiers that airs Monday on PBS

“Oooh, horsies,” Dru Holley’s 7-year-old daughter, Andrea, exclaimed at a Juneteenth festival in 2018.

Those words that so many parents have heard for generations sparked Holley’s first feature-length documentary, “Buffalo Soldiers: A War on Two Fronts,” airing for the first time Monday on PBS.

The documentary explores the roles the members of six all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments, known as Buffalo Soldiers, played in conflicts in the American West and abroad following the Civil War.

Ryan Booth.
Booth

The documentary features Washington State University historian Ryan Booth, who studies the United States Indian Scouts. The scouts were Indigenous men acting as guides for the U.S. Army in the Indian Wars of the late 1800s.

In 2018, Holley’s daughter had spotted The Buffalo Soldiers of Seattle, a living history group that honors the regiments.

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Spokesman-Review

Inaugural Pullman campus vice chancellor for academic engagement named

Clif Stratton.
Stratton

Clif Stratton has been named the inaugural WSU Pullman vice chancellor for academic engagement, effective July 16.

As vice chancellor, Stratton will focus on undergraduate education and student success for the flagship campus to promote a seamless approach to student success inside and outside the classroom. In this capacity, he will partner with the academic colleges, the Provost’s office, and Student Affairs to support the needs of Pullman students.

“I am delighted to have Clif join the WSU Pullman Chancellor’s Office,” said Chancellor Elizabeth Chilton. “He will serve as a critical partner as we continue to support the academic success of our students. His collaborative approach to problem-solving, as well as his deep knowledge of undergraduate education, makes Clif an excellent addition to our leadership team.”

Stratton joined WSU in 2010 as a visiting instructor, and currently serves as a career-track associate professor in the Department of History and director of WSU’s system-wide general education program (UCORE). Stratton led the collaborative launch of Core to Career — a cohort-based fellowship program designed to assist faculty in helping students, no matter their intended major, recognize why career readiness is an essential marker of a college graduate, and provide clear correlations between their coursework and career competencies.

“What I love most about WSU faculty and staff is their sincere desire to support students in their academic endeavors,” said Stratton. “Curiosity, collaboration, and sense of belonging are hallmarks of this approach and are what makes WSU a special place. I am more than excited to work with Pullman campus and system partners to foster and grow these efforts in the coming years.”

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WSU Insider

Teaching Academy inducts 32 new members

The Teaching Academy at Washington State University added 32 new members to its membership roster at its first induction ceremony since 2020.

“The organization is made up of educators from every college and campus who provide advocacy, expertise, and the resources to enable faculty to engage students in transformative learning experiences and achieve academic success,” said Kara Whitman, academy chair and faculty member in the School of the Environment.

“New members infuse energy and ideas into the group and make valuable contributions to teaching and the scholarship of teaching across WSU. “We are very pleased that so many talented and qualified educators applied for membership this year.”

Induction ceremonies were held April 13 in Pullman, led by Whitman and Ashley Boyd, vice chair and faculty member in the English department.

The roster of new members includes from CAS:
Lisa Carloye, Biological Sciences; Blythe Duell, Psychology; Robin Ebert Mays, English, WSU Tri‑Cities; Brigit Farley, History, WSU Tri‑Cities; Leeann Hunter, English; Sergey Lapin, Mathematics and Statistics, WSU Everett; Yimo Liu, Biological sciences, WSU Tri‑Cities; Allison Matthews, Psychology, WSU Tri‑Cities; and Michael Pieracci, Languages, Cultures, and Race, WSU Tri‑Cities.

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WSU Insider
Big Country News

History graduate to speak at World War II conference in Washington, D.C.

History scholar and 2023 WSU graduate Alicia Callahan’s Honors College thesis about the heroic efforts of World War II soldiers has drawn national attention, earning her a summer speaking engagement in Washington, D.C., and a trip to Normandy, France.

Callahan, who was honored as this year’s Department of History Outstanding Senior, will present her thesis about the U.S. Army’s heroic 6th Armored Division’s service at the Friends of the National World War II Memorial’s annual teachers conference in July. She is one of eight presenters selected to speak at the conference and the only presenter not already working in academia or a similar field. Her presentation will occur at the Military Women’s Memorial.

Callahan’s undergraduate research efforts also gained the attention of the Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit organization created in 2018 to honor and commemorate veterans, often returning them to battlefield sites. She has been invited by the foundation to join military veterans who survived the D-Day invasion in 1944 for a special week-long trip to Normandy, to mark the invasion’s 79th anniversary.

“It’s exciting. I’m honored,” said Callahan, who is from the rural central Washington community of Royal City and whose own great-grandfather fought in World War II. “I know it’s going to be emotional. Hearing their stories is going to bring me to tears.”

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WSU Insider

Frank S. Matsura: Portraits from the Borderlands photo exhibit to open at the MAC

Photographer Frank Sakae Matsura spent less than a decade in northern Washington state in the early 20th century but left an unforgettable visual legacy of the Okanogan River Valley.

Matsura, born in Japan in 1873, grew up in Tokyo. His family, from a line of samurai warriors, was aristocratic but he was orphaned and raised by an aunt and uncle, who taught him English at a school they started.

At some point, he was trained to use cameras and process photographs, and his prospects changed.

It’s not clear why, but Matsura left Japan in his 20s, and traveled to the Seattle area, and he briefly visited Alaska. In 1903, he answered a newspaper ad for a cook’s helper in the Elliott Hotel in Conconully, Washington, and stepped off a stagecoach in a frontier area where farmers were planting orchards, workers were building an irrigation dam and small towns were popping up wherever settlers put down roots.

While working at the hotel, Matsura also snapped photos and processed them in the hotel laundry.

Around 1907, Matsura opened a two-room photography studio in the town of Okanogan, where he did portrait sessions, sold postcards, novelty photos and scenic pictures. The diminutive man mostly used a 5-by-7 view camera to document the people and landscape of the Okanogan Valley for several years, creating an impressive portfolio of work that is still treasured today for the depth and breadth of the subject matter and the detail of the photos.

Michael Holloman.
Holloman

Washington State University art and history professor Michael Holloman, who is also an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, has edited a group of Matsura’s portraits of American Indian neighbors into a new exhibit called “Frank S. Matsura: Portraits from the Borderland” which opens Saturday at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

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The Spokesman Review