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Nine faculty selected to receive seed grants

The WSU Office of Research has awarded nine faculty with 2022 New Faculty Seed Grants.

The grant program provides support for junior faculty to develop research, scholarly, or creative programs that lead to sustained professional development and extramural funding. The program is sponsored by the Office of Research and the Office of the Provost.

Since the New Faculty Seed Grant program began in 2000, junior faculty have submitted 963 proposals to the program. Of these, 279 awards were given with $4.75 million invested in the program. Over the years, seed grant winners have submitted 734 external proposals related to their projects, bringing in over $49.4 million in externally funded awards.

Jacqueline Wilson.
Wilson
Andra Chastain.
Chastain
John Blong.
Blong

The 2022 New Faculty Seed Grant recipients in the College of Arts and Sciences include:

  • John Blong, Department of Anthropology, will apply a novel suite of methods to investigate how prehistoric people in the Great Basin region of western North America maintained food systems over millennia of climate change.
  • Andra Chastain, Department of History, will research how urban air pollution is represented, experienced, and ultimately understood as a public health crisis in Santiago, Chile; Mexico City; and Los Angeles.
  • Jacqueline Wilson, School of Music, will create an album of works for the bassoon by Māori composers to bring new depth to the Indigenous representation in the bassoon repertoire, combat monolithic racial depictions, and promote artistic sovereignty.

Full descriptions of these projects are available online.

Everyday Heroes: Class of 2022 at WSU Vancouver includes 81-year-old

Close to a thousand students took that walk across the stage to become WSU Vancouver’s official graduating class of 2022.

Some of those graduates feel like that day was a long time coming.

Marilou Cassidy.
Cassidy

The last time Marilou Cassidy wore a cap and gown was during her high school graduation in 1959.

Sixty-three years later, Marilou just earned her BA degree in Humanities from WSU Vancouver at the age of 81.

“I wanted to finally be a college graduate. I am surrounded by them. My grandkids, my husband and children are all college grads. I decided that it was time to complete that BA,” she says.

Marilou attended Clark College and Marylhurst over the years. She got halfway to earning a degree. After the long break, she jumped back into classes in the summer of 2019.

“It was the learning that I really started enjoying. I liked the entire learning process. It was hard, but I was dedicated to it.”

It was in her women’s studies and art history classes where Marilou found her passion for learning.

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KATU
NW Crimson & Gray

History lecturer selected for Excellence in Online Teaching Award

Karl Krotke-Crandall.
Krotke-Crandall

Karl Krotke-Crandall, lecturer for Washington State University’s Department of History, is the winner of the 2021-22 Excellence in Online Teaching Award. The student-nominated annual award is sponsored by WSU Academic Outreach and Innovation.

The award, now in its sixth year, seeks to acknowledge and reward Washington State University faculty members teaching Global Campus courses who employ best practices to engage, inspire, support, and show care for students in an online environment. Krotke-Crandall will receive $3,000 in faculty development funds and a trophy in recognition of his win.

“I’m honored to be selected, and a little surprised. It can be challenging to know what type of impact I make as an educator in an online environment,” said Krotke-Crandall. “To see the comments from my students is heartwarming and validates my aims to provide them with an engaging learning environment.”

Krotke-Crandall earned his Ph.D. in Russian history from WSU in 2021 and began teaching Global Campus courses that same year. He was one of 40 online instructors nominated for the award.

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WSU Insider

History professor Katy Whalen named Libraries’ Excellence Award winner

Katy Whalen.
Whalen

Washington State University History Professor Katy Whalen has been named the 2022 recipient of the WSU Libraries’ Excellence Award.

The award recognizes a non-library WSU faculty or staff member who has shown consistent support for the WSU Libraries. Recipients are chosen based on encouraging students to use the libraries; personal use of the libraries; personal support of or contributions to the libraries’ collections or services; interaction and cooperation with library faculty; and service on library-related committees.

The Excellence Award program began in 1980, honoring C. Gardner Shaw of WSU’s Department of Plant Pathology as the first recipient. Some 35 faculty and staff have received the honor.

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WSU Insider

Columbian digital archives now available to public free

On Monday, The Columbian’s digital archives became available to the public for the first time, allowing users to search with keywords and date ranges.

The archives, available at columbian.newspapers.com, open up a new world for historians, students and curious Clark County residents who may want to search for their own names, an ancestor’s name, addresses, or a date of a specific paper or an event.

Donna Sinclair.
Sinclair

“The digital newspaper archives are a really great resource,” said Donna Sinclair, history professor at Washington State University Vancouver. “They bring life to the past.”

Historians and students previously had to use microfilm or microfiche projectors to scan through each roll of film, a slow and inefficient way to find information without a specific date of an event.

Sinclair, who teaches history classes at WSUV, said that the online archives will save historians and students time, opening up new ways for them to discover stories.

“I plan on developing an exercise where there’s a timeline or history of a place, and students are looking at material in The Columbian,” Sinclair said.

Other archives projects

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Rome News Tribune/Northwest Georgia News