Social Sciences

Archeology: days of future past

Rapid global cooling 13,000 years ago challenged early occupants of Alaska to adapt. People used to hunting mammoths and other megafauna with big stone tools suddenly found their weapons shattering in the cold. Access to the stone they used to make them got buried under snow. As with any climactic change, the cold resulted in […]

Faculty receive Office of Research Awards

The WSU Office of Research presented awards to three faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences for their outstanding achievements in research as part of opening ceremonies for WSU Research Week. Read more about Kim Christen (English), Tammy Barry (psychology), and Peter Reilly (chemistry) >>

AAAS Fellow honors for WSU faculty

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology, is one of three WSU faculty named as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The honor, bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers, recognizes Johnson for her “distinguished contributions to research on life course development focusing on how adolescents transitioning into […]

McNair scholar bridges cultures in life, research

It’s fall 2014. New freshman Lysandra Perez, the first in her family to attend college, sits on the bed in her Streit-Perham Hall dorm room. The emotional farewells are done, and her parents are driving back home to the small town of Moxee, near Yakima. Her roommates won’t be arriving for another few days. She […]

The curation crisis

More than 8,500 years ago, a group of people used a rock shelter at the confluence of the Palouse and Snake Rivers as a base camp. When rediscovered in the early 1950s, the shelter amazed scientists, including Washington State University archeologist Richard Daugherty, with its wealth of artifacts—and the age of its human remains. Named […]

Northwest Indians used tobacco long before European contact

WSU researchers have determined that Nez Perce Indians grew and smoked tobacco at least 1,200 years ago, long before the arrival of traders and settlers from the eastern United States. Their finding upends a long-held view that indigenous people in this area of the interior Pacific Northwest smoked only kinnikinnick or bearberry before traders brought […]

Vancouver junior awarded National Udall Scholarship

WSU Vancouver cultural anthropology major Emma Johnson has received a prestigious and nationally competitive Udall Undergraduate Scholarship in its tribal public policy category. “The Udall (Scholarship) is incredibly important to me,” said Johnson. “Completing all the work to apply and then being successful, it’s a really huge deal. It is helping me complete my education.” Johnson, […]

Renewable energy offers common ground for Democrats, Republicans

As the battle lines are drawn for next month’s hotly contested midterm elections, some Americans may be comforted to know there is at least one area of common ground for Democrats and Republicans: regardless of political standing, age or gender, U.S. voters are in favor of renewable energy, according to research by Christine Horne, professor of […]

Crimson Spirit Award: Sheryl DeShields

Sheryl DeShields, secretary senior in the Department of Psychology, received the September 2018 Crimson Spirit Award. DeShields’ colleagues honored her for her noteworthy extra efforts and commitment to the unit. One nominator described her as “the heart and soul of our talented and close-knit department.” Another noted she is “outstanding in every way. I have […]

Psychology professor named Group Psychologist of the Year

David Marcus, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology, was named Group Psychologist of the Year by the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy (Division 49). The award recognizes Marcus’s fundamental contributions to the understanding of how people behave within the groups to which they belong and how they are […]