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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

 

Hearts in Darkness

Jordan Boersma.
Boersma

Iridescent little fairywrens drew doctoral student Jordan Boersma to the grasslands of Papua New Guinea, but it was the unexpected generosity of the people that captured the researcher’s heart.

“I’ve traveled all over Asia and never experienced this level of hospitality. If you accept their culture, they’ll really take you in and look after you,” he says.

Hubert Schwabl, professor in the Washington State University School of Biological Sciences, says Boersma is one of the rare students who is able to do field work under difficult tropical conditions.

Boersma, who joined the project in 2015, says white-shouldered fairywrens are good models for mate selection studies. The sparkly birds, found only in Papua New Guinea, are easy to observe as they hop around in the grass looking for insects.

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Washington State Magazine 

New cave installed for bears

The Washington State University Bear Research, Education, and Conservation Center has a new man-made cave, giving the bears something novel to explore in their exercise yard.

“Our bears enjoy digging dens in the yard, but they always collapse, so we figured we’d give them something permanent,” said Brandon Hutzenbiler, the manager at the center, which is jointly run by the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Agricultural, Natural, and Human Resource Sciences.

He hopes the bears will use it as another place to escape the weather, get some privacy, or play.

“In the heat of summer, this should give them a location that’s a little cooler,” Hutzenbiler said. “We’ll put in some straw and make it as comfortable as possible in there.”

The cave is actually a 10-foot long steel culvert buried in the side of a hill in the existing 2-acre exercise yard. The culvert was specially made to have a flat top and bottom, to be more comfortable for the bears.

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WSU Insider