Just shy of 100 WSU students gathered in Olympia today for their annual Coug Day at the Capitol event, with all six university campuses represented.
The day of advocacy is organized by the Associated Students of Washington State University and allows an opportunity for students to meet with state lawmakers and discuss higher education priorities.
Follow the day’s events on Twitter with the hashtag #CougDay2018.
On Jan. 17, the WSU Edward R. Murrow College of Communication hosted Washington state’s chief privacy officer in an event at WSU Everett. Read about the presentation on the WaTech blog, home of Washington’s technology services agency, and watch the video below through Facebook.
Last night, we were all hit with the heartbreaking news that a member of the Cougar family took their own life. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Hilinski family, teammates and coaches of WSU Football and the rest of Cougar Nation. If you, or someone you know, is struggling with depression, anxiety and stress, or may be otherwise at risk, please reach out to WSU Everett staff or the support lines below:
WSU 24-Hour Line: 509-334-1133
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
At WSU Everett, you can refer to the Student CARE Committee and a linked guide for resources at this link: everett.wsu.edu/CARE
Dec. 6, 2017 – WSU medical school students met with regional policy-makers in Vancouver and Everett last week for an opportunity to get to know one another and talk about how the inaugural class of the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine (ESFCOM) is doing as students near the completion of their first semester of studies.
Policy-makers had the opportunity to learn about some of the journeys that brought the diverse inaugural class to the ESFCOM and ask questions about their experiences with the community-based medical school thus far, as well as their hopes for the future as doctors practicing in Washington State. It also allowed the students to engage some of the elected leaders, and their staff, that made it possible for the university to pursue accreditation and that provided necessary funding to support 60 first year and 60 second year medical students at WSU.
Students expressed repeated appreciation to legislators for the opportunity they are being afforded. Referring to the culture of the college, one student said, “It’s like a family. I’m really grateful every day to be a part of that.” Others spoke to how they were attracted by the college’s mission to increase access to health care in challenging health care environments. “It just aligned so well with all the things I was so passionate about. I’m so grateful,” shared another student.
The event took place during the college’s second intersession. As part of their first two years of studies, medical students spend three week-long intersessions per year at their assigned clinical campuses in Everett, Spokane, Tri-Cities and Vancouver to become integrated in those regional health care and greater communities. These established WSU campuses provide the necessary infrastructure and services to support the 15 inaugural medical students assigned to each location. In their third and fourth years of medical school, the students will study full time at their clinical campus and train in regional affiliate clinics and hospitals.
The university plans to hold similar events in Spokane and Tri-Cities during the next intersession, scheduled for spring, to allow policy-makers and medical students in those regions a similar opportunity.
EVERETT, Wash. – Western Washington residents now have the option to earn a Washington State University degree in organic agriculture in their own back yard.
Starting spring semester 2018, WSU will offer an organic agriculture major at the WSU Everett campus.
“There are a lot of people who have families, jobs or other factors that keep them from moving across the state to eastern Washington,” said John Reganold, WSU Regents Professor of Soil Science and Agroecology. “This allows them to get their degree without moving and to learn from our world-class teachers and researchers.”
Courses will be taught in-person or via videoconference by WSU faculty from the Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, WSU Pullman, and other sites statewide.
Community college coordination
“Washington, the number two producer of organic food in the United States, has the right climate, great farmland and farmers who love growing delicious, nutritious crops,” Reganold said.
What’s more, students can start the degree program at Everett Community College. WSU recently signed an agreement with the community college that allows students to study there for two years and then transition to the WSU organic ag program to earn a bachelor’s degree through the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resources.
WSU is working on similar agreements with other community colleges in the state, providing students a smooth transition into the WSU Everett program. All these efforts add up to greater access for students and more skilled graduates for Washington agriculture.
“This program expands the potential to provide trained graduates to support and expand the vibrant organic agriculture industry in western Washington,” said Desmond Layne, director of WSU’s Agricultural and Food Systems and Integrated Plant Sciences degree programs. “The possibility of more linkages with industry for student education, research and outreach is all excellent.”
More research, outreach
For farmers on the west side of Washington, the degree program spells more research and outreach as well. WSU received funding from the Washington state Legislature to enable the expanded organic ag major and to ensure the robustness of agricultural teaching, research and extension in Western Washington.
“In addition to the degree program offering, the Legislature’s investment will result in more research and outreach to support farmers in Western Washington,” said Chad Kruger, director of the Mount Vernon Research and Extension Center. “There is a double benefit for Western Washington agriculture: access to more employees with a WSU education and more research to help solve the ongoing problems facing westside agriculture.”
To learn more about the WSU Organic Agriculture Systems major, visit: http://cahnrs.wsu.edu/about/org-ag.
Contacts:
- Chad Kruger, director Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, 360-416-5222, cekruger@wsu.edu
Nov. 3, 2017 – Provost Dan Bernardo is delighted to recognize professors Jacob Murray and Sena Clara Creston as Provost’s Featured Faculty Members for the Nov. 4 football game against Stanford.
Murray is a clinical assistant professor and program coordinator for the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at WSU Everett.
“It’s an honor to work for WSU, being able to help build a brand-new campus and teach courses that I am passionate about is a dream come true,” Murray says. “It has been an excellent experience helping to shape a program from the ground up and bringing more crimson and gray to the west side of Washington.”
Creston is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Fine Arts at WSU Tri-Cities.
“As a professor, I value the opportunity to work with students from diverse backgrounds that are professionally oriented and creatively motivated,” she says. “My initiative working on interdisciplinary art projects has been embraced by multiple colleges and units on campus resulting in three major projects: The Umbrellaship, The Huminal and The Machinescape.”
SEATTLE, Wash. – Sept. 28, 2017 – City of Everett, Snohomish County and Washington State University have won a 2017 VISION 2040 Award from the Puget Sound Regional Council for WSU Everett. The awards recognize innovative projects and programs that help ensure a sustainable future as the region grows.
“This was a huge undertaking, many years in the making – decades even – that required incredible partnerships to make a reality,” said Josh Brown, Executive Director of PSRC. “The new campus will bring economic opportunities to Everett and provide advantageous degree paths for students seeking area employment in aerospace and tech.”
WSU Everett can accommodate just over 1,000 students a year in its 95,000 square foot building.
The award was presented at the Snohomish County Tomorrow annual meeting on September 27.
VISION 2040 is the region’s growth management, economic, and transportation strategy, designed to meet the needs of the 5 million people expected to be living in the region in 2040. It is an integrated, long-range vision for the future that lays out a strategy for maintaining a healthy region – promoting the well-being of people and communities, economic vitality, and a healthy environment.
PSRC develops policies and coordinates decisions about regional growth, transportation and economic development planning within King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties. The Council is composed of over 80 entities, including all four counties, cities and towns, ports, state and local transportation agencies and tribal governments within the region.
Contact: Michele Leslie, mleslie@psrc.org
August 15, 2017 – Everett, Wash. – WSU Everett students studying STEM fields just received a financial boost from The Boeing Company. At the WSU Everett open house on Aug. 15, Boeing Vice President Bill McSherry announced the establishment of the Ray Stephanson Scholarship for STEM Leadership. A scholarship will be awarded annually to a student in technical field who has demonstrated leadership skills.
“Ray Stephanson has dedicated his career to improving the lives of people in his city and state, and demonstrated an unwavering commitment to building the higher education capacity in Snohomish County,” said Kevin McAllister, President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “Boeing and our tens of thousands of employees in the state – thousands of whom are WSU graduates – are pleased to be able to create a lasting scholarship in his name that will help prepare local students for exciting STEM careers.”
Stephanson has served as mayor of the City of Everett since 2003. During his time in office, he was a vocal supporter of Boeing and a champion of strengthening and diversifying the economy of the city and region. Stephanson was also a tireless advocate for the community’s efforts to bring a four-year research institution to Everett. He and the late WSU President Elson S. Floyd were the driving forces behind the establishment of WSU Everett.
“Ray Stephanson’s leadership for the last four decades in Everett, on the Everett City Council, as president of Puget Sound Regional Council and as mayor, has resulted in unprecedented success for citizens and industry in this region,” said WSU Everett Chancellor Paul Pitre. “The scholarships that stem from this endowment will help students, families and industry.”
Boeing has supported WSU Everett students in several ways. A $250,000 gift from Boeing means WSU Everett’s new campus will be equipped with state-of-the art technology. In recognition of the generous gift and Boeing’s long-standing support for the university, WSU President Kirk Schulz designated an engineering lab on the first floor of the new 95,000-square-foot building in Everett as the Boeing Innovation Studio.
Each year, several teams of four WSU Everett students (one communication, one hospitality business management and two engineering) are selected as Boeing Scholars. These students participate in a multidisciplinary design course in which they address a Boeing-sponsored project with engineering and business components. At the end of the year the project concludes in a formal presentation to a team of Boeing mentors. Those mentors volunteer their time and expertise to help guide the teams through the real-world issues they would face on their product.
By Katherine Long, The Seattle Times
She was a self-described aviation buff who earned her private pilot’s license after high school, but when she got up in the air, Jennifer Johnson decided that piloting a plane was kind of boring.
What she really liked was the stuff under the hood — the complex systems that make up a commercial airplane. But Johnson, who by her late 20s was married and living in Marysville with a toddler, couldn’t pick up and move somewhere to earn the engineering degree she’d need to do that kind of work.
Then in 2014, an opportunity opened up close to home. Washington State University began offering engineering degrees in Everett, using space on the Everett Community College campus. Johnson brushed up on her math and science skills, then enrolled.
She’s now a mechanical engineer for Aviation Technical Services in Everett — a dream job that allows her to do engineering work on airplane systems, including repairs and modifications.
This month, WSU Everett will cut the ribbon on a $64 million building that can accommodate many more students like Johnson who can’t move to the college’s main campus in Pullman but want to earn an engineering degree and some of the other degrees WSU also offers.
For many Everett politicians, the building is the culmination of 23 years of work to establish a four-year university in Snohomish County.
Pat McClain, a former governmental-affairs director for the city of Everett, says he was moved to tears when he and his wife attended the first graduation ceremony for students of WSU Everett a few years ago.
“You listened to the stories of young people and what it took to get their degree — and it wasn’t that long ago they couldn’t get that degree in Snohomish County,” he said.
McClain, who now serves on the WSU Everett Advisory Council, calls the opening of the new building “the biggest thing Everett has ever done in terms of its future.”
The 95,000-square-foot glass-and-brick building, across the street from Everett Community College, is one of the tallest, and newest, buildings north of downtown.
Much of the building is designed for students studying the three engineering degrees WSU offers in Everett: mechanical, electrical and software. It’s filled with state-of-the-art equipment to help them do their work, including 3-D printers and high-end computers for software engineering. Flat-screen TVs for videoconferencing are everywhere, allowing professors in Pullman to teach classes in Everett.
“We had some lab space and equipment” when the program shared space at Everett Community College, said WSU Everett Chancellor Paul Pitre. “But it’s nothing close to what we have now.”
Convenience for students
Everett politicians had lobbied for years for the University of Washington to open a branch campus in their city. When that idea fell by the wayside, they shifted their attention to WSU.
In 2011, then-Gov. Chris Gregoire signed legislation giving WSU management and leadership, starting in 2014, over a building on the Everett Community College campus where a consortium of eight four-year colleges offered classes.
In 2012, WSU began offering engineering degrees in Everett. In 2013, the university’s governing board approved a $10 million expenditure to begin design of the new building. And in 2015, it got money from the state Legislature to construct the building.
About 200 students have enrolled in WSU’s Everett offerings this fall, and the building has enough space to take 600 more.
With a solar array on the roof and a 19,000-gallon underground cistern that collects rainwater, the building will use half the energy a building of that size would normally use, and its toilets will flush with water from the sky.
Along with Johnson, the Marysville mom who went back to college, WSU Everett is set up to help students like Amy Felt, a 2009 graduate of Mount Vernon High School.
Felt earned her associate degree at Skagit Valley and Everett community colleges, then earned her mechanical-engineering degree at WSU Everett in August 2016. Moving away from home to get a degree wasn’t an option for her, either.
Today, she too is in a dream job — as a fluid systems test engineer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Pitre, the chancellor, said about 96 percent of WSU Everett’s students are from Washington state. And they’re older than the average college student — about 26.
“The common denominator is that for some reason, they need to be closer to home, work opportunities, and family,” Pitre said. “And in a lot of cases, they can’t afford the cost of a traditional college campus. Here, they could live with their families, cut down on the costs.”
In addition to engineering, the Everett campus also offers a hospitality and business management degree, and will be starting an organic agriculture degree this fall.
Earlier this month, McClain — the Everett city official, took out an ad in The (Everett) Herald commemorating the new building.
It featured a photo of his granddaughter, who is 3, and the words: “Thank you from the class of 2036.”
WSU Everett students are applying what they learn in real-life projects, giving them a hands-on experience that few engineering students obtain through their education. They are getting practical experience in the fields that companies like Boeing are looking for – electrical, software and mechanical engineering. And they won’t need to look far to start their careers.
By Jim Davis, The Herald Business Journal, June 1, 2016
Even on a college campus, a Mars rover draws attention.
The go-kart-sized rover darts over a large rock, claws at the sidewalk with a robotic arm and rests on a lawn on a sunny day in May at Everett Community College.
Students, administrators and even a couple of campus visitors wander over to see what’s going on.
The 100-pound, remote-controlled rover is the work of the Engineering Club for Washington State University North Puget Sound at Everett.
More than a dozen mechanical engineering majors spent what precious little spare time they had during the school year building the rover to compete in an international contest featuring 30 university teams from seven countries.
“We get no academic credit for this, whatsoever, this is all extracurricular,” said Blaine Liukko, the Engineering Club president. “This is the Engineering Club that we built to further ourselves. We learn so much in the classroom and in the labs, but this gives us the ability to design and be creative. It allows us to be engineers.”
The WSU Engineering Club in Everett started in the last school year and entered the University Rover Competition, but the club didn’t make it through the preliminary phases. This year, the club made the cut to be invited to the competition to be held June 2-4 at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah.
Liukko and Robert Blosser graduated in early May from the WSU mechanical engineering program but held off on their job search. They and other students continued coming to campus, working 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. days to complete the last details.
“For us, we wanted to finish out the rover,” Blosser said. “Some of the other seniors in the club, they already have jobs and they’re going straight to work and they were unable to continue to work on this. We decided we wanted to finish out the project.”
The rover, named simply Rover 2 — since this is the second one that the club worked on — will need to undergo a series of tests at the competition including showing how well it traverses rough terrain as well as how it can help an astronaut by delivering tools and flipping switches and opening up valves.
The rover will also need to make soil analyses while in the competition. The Engineering Club students will control the rover during each of these tasks at times from as far as a half mile away.
With the exception of the tires, bolts and battery and a few other pieces, the Engineering Club designed and manufactured every piece of the rover.
The students went to companies around the area asking for parts and material to build Rover 2. Janicki Industries in Sedro-Woolley and Boeing gave the students carbon fiber for some of the rover’s body. Pacific Power Batteries in Everett donated a 5-pound lithium ion phosphate battery for the power source.
The students also needed help with money for travel expenses. WSU alumni as well as other businesses including Mukilteo’s Electroimpact donated nearly $4,000. To donate to cover the students’ costs, click here.
Many of the clubs competing in the contest include students with biology and computer science majors who could help with coding as well as figuring out how to test soil samples. The still-new WSU in Everett doesn’t have the luxury of a large number of programs yet so the Engineering Club students needed to learn those skills themselves.
“I had to contact a lot of geo-technical engineers around the country to find out about digging into soil and doing some tests and how can these tools can actually measure the soil,” junior Phil Engel said.
The contest requires all of the rovers to be built for under $15,000 in costs; even donated materials need to be priced in that equation. Rover 2 comes in about $12,000, Liukko said.
While the WSU students worked on this rover, eight EvCC students worked this school year on a project called Aerospace Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering, helping build drones that could explore the Mars landscape. They helped students from three other universities build drones that could fly from a rover and explore Mars.
This type of innovation — and what the students will do after they graduate — is why civic leaders have sought so long to expand higher education opportunities in Snohomish County.
It’s been good for students like Liukko and Blosser who went to community colleges in the county before transferring to WSU for their junior and senior years.
“That was my goal with going to college,” Blosser said. “I wanted to be able to pay for all of it and leave school with no debt and I’ve been able to do that. That’s a big testament to this program.”