Western Washington University has just launched its new minor in Salish Sea Studies, with a multidisciplinary curriculum spanning all seven of the university’s colleges.
The Salish Sea Studies program develops students’ sense of place by deepening knowledge about the complex ecologies and human experiences of our shared ecoregion. Students will learn how the international Salish Sea is governed by the US, Canada, and over 60 sovereign Tribes and First Nations.
The pinto abalone once ranged in large numbers from Alaska to Baja California, but overfishing, poaching and other factors have caused them to become functionally extinct in the Salish Sea; according to figures from the Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, the species has experienced a 98 percent drop in numbers since 1998 in local waters alone.
The Western Washington University Department of Theatre and Dance will present “HereToo-WWU” – a devised theatre production exploring stories of gun violence, survivors and activism, at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 24-26 and Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Oct. 26 in the DUG Theatre at the WWU Performing Arts Center.
A group of faculty and staff from Western Washington University has teamed with Seattle-based aerospace manufacturing company First Mode to win a new $302,000 contract from NASA to design and build a new instrument called a goniometer that will help scientists and members of the Mars rover teams better understand what they are seeing and sampling on the Red Planet.
About 1,100 fifth graders from Skagit and Whatcom counties will be visiting Western Washington University on Tuesday, Oct. 15, to see firsthand what a university campus is like. The tour kicks off the 11th year of Compass 2 Campus, a proactive effort that sends trained WWU student mentors into schools in order to get more kids to see themselves as capable, lifelong learners.
Western Washington University Professor of Biology Eric DeChaine is working through a three-year grant from the U.S. National Park Service’s Shared Beringian Heritage Program to document the diversity and distribution of plants across the North Pacific — including the Alaskan Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands, and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula— in an effort to understand how arctic plants are reacting to a planet that is growing ever warmer.
Julia Tatum, a first-year Environmental Science graduate student at Western Washington University, scans the dense forest underbrush around her, decides on a direction, grabs the end of a cloth measuring tape, and pushes off into the thicket to mark the edge of her sample site with surveyor’s tape.
Each weekday this fall, Office of Communications Visual Journalism interns Joely Johnson and Alix Condit will share their views of the student experience at Western through images that help tell Western's story. Check back often!
Western Washington University Professor of English Kate Trueblood’s newest novel, “Take Daily as Needed,” has just been published by the University of New Mexico Press.
Work is continuing on Western’s new Residence Hall, to be sited on the Ridge at the location of Highland Hall and Highland Lounge, which are now in the process of being demolished to make room for the new residence hall.
Demolition and new parking lot
