Over the past few weeks you might have had the pleasure of meeting one or more of the 10 students visiting Western Washington University from their homes in distant Peru. With wide-eyed enthusiasm they have taken an array of classes during the winter quarter and thoroughly soaked up the Pacific Northwest’s winter splendor.
The Peace Corps today released the 2019 rankings of the top volunteer-producing colleges and universities across the country, and Western Washington University was ranked No. 5 among medium-sized schools, with 32 alumni currently volunteering worldwide.
Since the Peace Corps’ founding in 1961, more than 1,010 alumni from WWU have served abroad as volunteers.
Supply chain professional Deborah Dull, a Western Washington University alumna, will address WWU graduates and their families at the winter commencement ceremony March 23 at 9:45 a.m. in Carver Gymnasium.
About 675 undergraduate and 60 master’s students are expected to graduate from Western winter quarter. There will be one ceremony for all graduates and each graduate will receive four tickets for guests. Overflow seating will be available on campus.
WWU’s senior Urban Transitions Studio (UTS) and Urban Planning and Sustainable Development program, in conjunction with the university’s Sustainable Communities Partnership, will present the findings of its research project focused on student-researched proposals to reimagine Ferndale’s downtown core at a Town Hall meeting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19 at the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce.
Western Libraries will once again be joined by members of the “Canines & Cats on Campus” registered therapy animal program from Monday, March 11 through the morning of Thursday, March 21.
Teams of humans and animals will be located in the gallery space at the end of the Mann Family Skybridge on the Wilson side of the library off and on between the hours of 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. during both the week preceding and the week of final exams.
Western Washington University’s Engineering and Design Department has been awarded a five-year, $1 million S-STEM grant from the National Science Foundation to help low-income students in their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in one of the three Engineering programs at WWU.
WWU Associate Professor of Journalism Brian J. Bowe, along with colleagues Lawrence Pintak of Washington State University and Jonathan Albright of Columbia University, recently received funding from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication's Senior Scholars Program on a research proposal titled “Mediatization of Islamophobia in the 2018 Election.”
ODESZA and Death Cab for Cutie have announced Double Major, a co-headline benefit show at Bellingham's Civic Stadium at 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 18.
WWU Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences Jenise Bauman and two of her students are working this winter and spring on a monitoring project at Port Orchard’s Harper’s Creek estuary, at the site of an $8 million two-phase restoration effort led by Kitsap County and the state Dept. of Ecology.
Harper’s Creek is a small but important estuary on the southeast shore of Kitsap County. The site of a former brick factory, the estuary has important value for fish and wildlife and is used recreationally, and as a boat launch.
John All, director of Western Washington University’s Mountain Environments Research Institute, will lead an international team of students and researchers – including a pair of WWU graduate students, Colin Schmidt and Morgan Scott, and Biology Professor Eric DeChaine – on an expedition to Mount Everest and its neighboring peak, Lhotse, this spring to research the impact of global climate change on the Himalayas.
