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College of Arts and Sciences education

Service-learning boosts student success

Large group shot.In a first of its kind study at WSU, students taking introductory biology coupled with a service-learning project performed better academically and had improved first-year retention rates compared with students who did not participate in service-learning. The differences were most profound among first-generation and multicultural students.

The study titled “Service Learning as a Portal to First-Year Student Success”, is a collaborative project between » More …

Textbook learning issues, literally

Anne Marie GuerrettazA Spencer Foundation grant for $50,000 is funding research into textbooks for Spanish-language classes and how those may help or hinder student learners.

Anne Marie Guerrettaz, assistant professor of language, literacy, and technology in the College of Education, is the principal investigator, with co-PIs Nancy Bell from the Department of English, and Nausica Marcos Miguel from Denison University’s modern languages program.

“I have discovered over the past year that 90 percent of English-speaking American kids that study a foreign language » More …

Leading WSU UCORE general education program

Clif StrattonHistory professor Clif Stratton has been named the new director of WSU’s University Common Requirements Program, known as UCORE.

“It’s a great honor to lead UCORE,” Stratton said. “It is central to the mission of the university. It touches virtually every student on every campus, regardless of their major, from their first-year through capstone courses.

“UCORE meets students’ academic needs by advancing knowledge, understanding, and skill development. It helps them make connections across disciplines. In many ways, UCORE provides a foundation » More …

A point of reference

A waterway at Meyer's Point“There are oysters out there,” says Ed Bassett, “and they are good.”

Out there are the mudflats of Henderson Inlet where a thriving community shellfish garden supplies delicacies for neighborhood parties and celebrations. Bassett (’89 Ed.) is standing in the eelgrass on the shoreline of WSU’s Meyer’s Point Environmental Field Station. He’s a science teacher at nearby Olympia High School (OHS), and he, his students in the OHS Earth Corps, and Meyer’s Point facilities manager Chuck Cody (’84 MS Hort.) have been planting native trees here since » More …

Future math teachers instruct, learn from rural school children

Middleschoolers working with a hands-on project.Giddy at the end of another school year, middle schoolers in Nespelem, Washington, will charge into summer with a new way of viewing even their oldest and most familiar things, thanks to a WSU mathematics professor and her students.

Clinical Associate Professor Kimberly Vincent and a small group of aspiring math teachers visited the sixth through eighth graders at their school last fall and used some of the youngsters’ prized possessions—from spiraled seashells to a violin—to teach them about ratios and how to calculate proportions. » More …

Motivation and opportunity: from prison to PhD

Noel VestNoel Vest’s goal was to go to community college to earn a degree as a chemical dependency counselor when he walked out the doors of a Nevada prison on June 28, 2009. Other than hard labor, it was the only career he thought was possible for a formerly incarcerated person.

Almost a decade later Vest is will graduate from Washington State University with a PhD in psychology and start the next chapter of his life as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. » More …

WSU among top 10 innovative schools for foreign language study

WSU recently was recognized among colleges and universities nationwide for its pioneering approach to teaching foreign languages. TheBestColleges.org, a national reviewer of online education, lists WSU among the 10 Most Innovative Colleges for Foreign Language Study.

Read the full story at WSU News >>