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Three CAS grad students earn top AFW awards

April 9, 2014

Amanda Vander Woude, right, with Sheila Converse, AFW president and music faculty member

Graduate and doctoral students in the College of Arts and Sciences won three of six annual awards presented last week by the WSU Association for Faculty Women. AFW’s top honors recognize students whose work benefits the community.

Ellen Preece, a doctoral student in the School of the Environment, won a Harriett B. Rigas Award. Elected president of the Washington State Lake Protection Association, at WSU Preece researches food and water safety issues.

Amanda Vander Woude, a graduate student in vocal performance, won an AFW Founders Award. Vander Woude studies the vocal injuries of professional singers, gives voice lessons to WSU undergraduates, and performs in various ensembles.

Amber Morczek, a doctoral candidate in criminal justice and criminology, received the Karen Depaul Leadership Award. Morczek has participated in violence-prevention programs, including the Prisoner Debate Project, which took WSU undergraduates to the Coyote Ridge Correctional Facility to collaborate with inmates during public debates in the facility about topics in criminal justice.

More about the 2014 AFW awards

Landslide: A mountain in Oso, a hill at WSU

April 8, 2014

For all the people who pass by an innocuous-looking hill on the Washington State University campus each day, with a quick turn of the head they will see proof that one wet winter day 18 years ago, a mass of Palouse mud broke loose and flowed toward Grimes Way.

Dazzling fluorescent rocks on display

February 5, 2014

Geologist Kurt Wilkie. WSU’s fluorescent rocks are beacons to students and visitors. (Photos by Shelly Hanks, WSU Photo Services)

“There’s always lots of oohing and aahing when kids see them and, as you can see, they get as close as they possibly can,” said WSU geologist Kurt Wilkie. He’s one of several scientists who give tours of the S. Elroy McCaw Fluorescent Mineral Display located on campus – and who sometimes must clean the viewing window of so many small hand and nose prints.

On display behind the glass, 150 rocks glow in brilliant yellows, purples, oranges and greens. Set against a dark background, they make up a nocturnal garden that captivates adult visitors as well, said Wilkie.

WSU astrobiologist contributes to Smithsonian blog

October 4, 2013

Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor in the School of the Environment, explores the mysteries of methane on Mars in his latest post on the Smithsonian Air & Space blog, The Daily Planet.

Read this and other posts by Schulze-Makuch, including “Life Raining Down from Space?” and “The Fermi Paradox Revisited.”

WSU researcher tracks levels of microcystins

September 18, 2013

Ellen Preece wants to know if microcystins, liver-damaging toxins produced by algal blooms in freshwater lakes, accumulate in Puget Sound seafood.

She’s not the only one who wants to know. Preece, a doctoral student in the WSU School of the Environment, is helping the Washington Department of Health determine whether seafood accumulates enough microsystins to be a health concern for populations who rely on locally harvested seafood to meet their protein needs.