Academic Subjects

Pandemic makes teaching abroad ‘surreal experience’

Thomas Preston, a political science professor and expert in international security policy, had just begun a four-month, Fulbright-sponsored teaching stint in Constanta, Romania, when the entire country was placed in lockdown and martial law was declared. It was early March, the coronavirus was threatening to become a global pandemic and the Romanian government was having […]

Chemistry at-home lab kits keep students on track

To help chemistry students complete hands-on lab requirements while transitioned to remote instruction due to COVID-19, the Department of Chemistry will provide home lab kits to students taking selected undergraduate chemistry courses during the Summer 2020 term. “Given the current ‘Stay Home, Stay Healthy’ order in Washington state, we revisited the idea of lab kits […]

Dynamic art project gives students fitting, real-world experience

Like the gears in a finely tuned machine, donor contributions keep many non-profits – including the Palouse Discovery Science Center – running smoothly. So when digital media students at WSU were asked to visually represent donor support for the PDSC, the idea of interconnected gears quickly emerged and became, quite literally, the perfect fit. Seventeen […]

English students aid game translation

Go Fish. Life. Apples to Apples. Checkers. These are games that bring people to together for the purpose of family and friend bonding. But for some new to the English language, translating how to play the games into a structure that is easy to understand can be difficult, considering the complexity of some instructions. That […]

Restructured course improves student success

Thanks to the hard work of several faculty members, Math 100, Basic Mathematics, has seen a dramatic increase in student achievement. Instructors Emily Sablan and Justin Eld, together with Associate Professor Sandy Cooper, have spent the last several years changing and refining the course to identify and address the fundamental mathematical knowledge and concepts that […]

Dr. Universe: How do places get their names?

One way a place might get a name is from the person who explored it. The Americas are named after an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. But Amerigo wasn’t the first person to explore these continents, and people living there when he arrived. For the most part, people name things because they are claiming possession of […]

Boeing grant supports peer mentoring program

Helping students succeed in mathematics is a passion of Associate Professor Sandy Cooper, which is why she has developed a peer mentoring program in several foundational WSU courses. With financial support from a Boeing grant, she began with the pre-algebra course and has since expanded the program to include courses such as college algebra and […]

Biomarkers could help diagnose male infertility

It can take a year or longer of trial and error for a doctor to determine if a man is infertile but new research by Michael Skinner, a WSU reproductive biologist, could change that. Skinner and an international team of collaborators discovered infertile men have identifiable patterns of epigenetic molecules or biomarkers attached to their […]