The Western Washington University Cyber Competition team competed against 70 other colleges and universities in the Department of Energy Competition at the Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland on Dec. 1.

The team placed first in Washington state, second in the Pacific Northwest and sixth nationally.

Western Washington University Professor of English Laura Laffrado has received the 2018 Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) Edition award for her book, “Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature.”

Laffrado was presented the award in early November at the SSAWW conference in Denver.

At the conference, Laffrado was honored for her outstanding contribution to the study of American women writers. Laffrado began work on her book a few years ago and was nominated for the award by her publisher.

When Hailey Fagerness of Snohomish was a senior in high school and taking AP calculus, she struggled with deciding what college to go to and what to study.

“I looked at the classes I was taking and what I had taken that I liked,” she said. “I liked calculus and I liked math, which is something most people don’t gravitate toward. “A big reason I fell into the Math major here stemmed from me liking math and just saying, ‘why not?’"

A mysterious disease has infiltrated the waters of the West Coast, leaving hundreds of once-healthy sea star colonies dead in its wake. For several years, researchers worked tirelessly to identify the cause, to no avail.

WWU graduate school alumna Chelsea Hutchinson, native of the Tri-Cities, may have gotten us one step closer to understanding the epidemic. Hutchinson recently defended her thesis regarding a potential link between the disease and bacteria.