The 2021 WSU President’s Awards for Leadership and Engagement Award of Distinction (LEAD) recognized 17 CAS students and a faculty member for outstanding contributions across our diverse campus communities. “This is a prestigious award that recognizes…the ways they give back to the community and empower others,” said Phillip Sinapati, ASWSU advisor and
WSU evolutionary biologist Joanna Kelley studies genetic adaptation to extreme environments: tropical fish that thrive in waters thick with hydrogen sulfide; an Antarctic midge which can survive brutally cold temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius; and now, the charismatic grizzly bear, a species that is insulin-resistant—a metabolic state similar to diabetes in humans—during hibernation but insulin-sensitive during […]
The good news from the 2020 election? Record turnout. Nearly 67 percent, 155 million Americans voted. That is the highest turnout since 1900, when William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan. Faith in the power of voting is vital to democracy. We should celebrate so many Americans believed their votes mattered enough to stand in lines, […]
Writers, researchers, scientists, musicians, athletes, activists, adventurers… the 23 students who received this year’s Outstanding Senior honors from the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) excelled in academic performance and in service to their department or school and to the broader Washington State University community. Among those honored for 2021 are Regents scholars, National Merit […]
After years of polluting Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems with nuclear material from atomic bomb tests, the U.S. government in 1953 launched “Project Sunshine,” a secret, international program to study the amount of radioactive fallout in the environment. The cheery-sounding program sought particularly to understand the impact of strontium 90, an unstable, radioactive version of a […]
No billionaires live among the Tsimane people of Bolivia, although some are a bit better off than others. These subsistence communities on the edge of the Amazon also have fewer chronic health problems linked to the kind of dramatic economic disparity found in industrialized Western societies. “The connection between inequality and health is not as […]
CAS faculty members are engaged in new projects to improve undergraduate education, thanks to funding from the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Teaching and Learning Endowment. “The wide scope of projects selected this year reflects a breadth of interests among faculty,” said Mary Wack, vice provost for academic engagement and student achievement. “Their work […]
For decades, wealthy nations have transported plastic trash, and the environmental problems that go with it, to poorer countries, but WSU sociology researchers have found a potential bright side to this seemingly unequal trade: plastic waste may provide an economic boon for the lower-income countries. Yikang Bai (’15 MA, ’19 MS, ’20 PhD) and former […]
As images of George Floyd suffocating beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer were broadcast globally last spring, WSU’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology was mobilizing. “We are training the next generation of criminal justice professionals and have a responsibility here,” said department chair Melanie-Angela Neuilly. “Systemic racial bias, fairness and equity are […]
Alterations in the epigenetic programming of hatchery-raised steelhead trout could account for their reduced fertility, abnormal health and lower survival rates compared to wild fish, according to a new Washington State University study. The study, published May 18 in Environmental Epigenetics, establishes a link between feeding practices that promote faster growth, as well as other […]