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CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

WSU Everett celebrates 10 years of STEM education in North Puget Sound

In 2012, 24 mechanical engineering students began their studies at Washington State University on the Everett Community College Campus. This year, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture celebrates 10 years of STEM education in the North Puget Sound region. Voiland College students, faculty, staff, and alumni from WSU Everett are making a difference from coast to coast.

Now, a decade since Voiland College made its debut at WSU Everett, the campus offers 10 bachelor’s degree programs through WSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, CAHNRS, Carson College of Business, and the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. They also operate in a 95,000-square-foot building filled with the state-of-the-art equipment students need to prepare for the workforce. “We are proud to make higher education accessible to students who need to be closer to home, work opportunities, and family,” said Chancellor Paul Pitre. “Our commitment to creating new programs and connecting students with rewarding careers has never been stronger.”

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WSU Insider

 

Doctoral Training Is Ossified. Can We Reinvent It?

Lessons from the short-lived Next Generation Humanities Ph.D. program.

Todd Butler.
Butler

In 2016, Todd Butler, an English professor at Washington State University, joined a committee charged with exploring changes in graduate education. At first, the group’s planning sessions felt typical: the slow consensus-building, the circling conversations. But then something shifted. “Two months into our planning process, the dean of the grad school said to all of us who were assembled there, ‘Are we just going to talk about doing something, or are we going to do it?’” Butler perked up: “I was not interested in writing another internal white paper that would get read, be appreciated, and stall out somewhere.” He saw the work as vitally important — an opportunity not just to improve graduate education but to articulate the importance of the humanities to a rural, land-grant university like Washington State.

Butler and his colleagues had received a grant from National Endowment for the Humanities under a new grant program called the Next Generation Humanities Ph.D. Begun in 2015, its mandate was broad, offering funds for graduate institutions to rethink doctoral education in the humanities. The goal was to focus on what the NEH delicately called “disparities between graduate-student expectations for a career in academe and eventual career outcomes,” and to further the role of the humanities in public life. Colleges could apply for either a planning grant, with the NEH matching an institutional commitment of up to $25,000, or an implementation grant of $350,000, to further efforts already under way. In 2016, the NEH awarded an initial round of grants: 25 planning grants and three implementation grants. Grantees planned to study a host of possible changes in doctoral education: practicum internships, curricular reform, professionalization, changes in academic advising and mentoring, and even new dissertation formats.

And then, in 2017, the program was quietly canceled. What went wrong?

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Chronicle of Higher Education

WSU students awarded Gilman Scholarships to study abroad

Eight CAS students are among 13 WSU undergraduates who recently received the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship toward study abroad programs of their choice. Cougs will use the funding to study in Austria, Italy, Japan, Portugal and Spain this summer and fall.

“The Gilman scholarship is a federally funded initiative and is the top study abroad award in higher education,” said Senior Advisor Tiffany Prizzi. “Besides looking great on a resume, this award is an open door to international opportunities and consideration for post-graduate awards, such as the Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships.

“The Gilman award also grants 12 months of federal job eligibility, meaning recipients can be considered for vacant federal government jobs with as little as an application, sidestepping what’s typically a lengthy process for consideration.”

CAS students receiving the award, their major, and their intended study abroad destination are Zoe Alamillo, Psychology (Sociology minor), Italy; Jesus Avina, Sociology (Human Development minor), Spain and Portugal; Makayla Daniels, International Business (Japanese minor), Japan; Emily Dickson, Pre-Pharmacy (Psychology minor), Spain; Milo Edwards, Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies (Queer Studies minor), Italy; Citlaly Gomez-Ledezma, Criminal Justice, Italy; Claudia Jacobo, Japanese (Business Administration and Digital Technology and Culture, minors), Japan; and Johan Luna, Biology and Pre-Dentistry.

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WSU Insider

 

SURCA presents undergraduate research awards

Several students from across the College of Arts and Sciences were among WSU scholars who presented posters at the Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA) 2022 on March 28.

SURCA is the unique WSU-wide venue for students from all majors, years in college, and all WSU campuses to share their mentored research, scholarship, and creative activities, and have judges evaluate their work shown on a poster. At this year’s event, around 140 students from four campuses were among those accepted to present 112 posters to 90 judges. Faculty, postdoctoral students, and community experts used a common rubric to evaluate and score presentations across nine SURCA categories.

At the awards ceremony, 43 students from WSU Pullman and Vancouver and the Global Campus were announced as recipients of 33 awards. In total, nearly $8,000 will be given to support their efforts.

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WSU Insider

Undergraduate researchers tackle important questions in sciences, humanities

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, relieving chronic pain, understanding protest behavior and conserving wildlife are among the goals of eight faculty-mentored undergraduate research projects funded this spring by the College of Arts and Sciences.

Students from across the college—in mathematicschemistryforeign languages and politicalpsychologicalenvironmental and biological sciences—are working with faculty researchers to solve questions as diverse as what are a book’s chances of becoming a best seller and which food sources threatened butterflies prefer.

Courtney Meehan.
Meehan

“The College of Arts and Sciences enthusiastically supports our students’ intellectual curiosity and the wide range of exciting and impactful research they conduct,” said Courtney Meehan, CAS associate dean for research and graduate studies. “Providing funds for these projects, and many more, advances the college’s ongoing commitment to support undergraduate students’ participation in an array of innovative research, scholarship and creative activities.”

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WSU Insider