In the Media

All available tickets have been reserved for the free screening of "Undefeated" - this year's Oscar-winning documentary feature - at Western Washington University.
The special showing will be 5 p.m. Thursday, March 1, in the Performing Arts Center Mainstage.

Bellingham has more than one connection to "Undefeated," the movie that won the Oscar for best documentary feature.
Western Washington University graduate TJ Martin co-directed the film and accepted his Oscar at the Academy Awards show Sunday, Feb. 26. Another local connection: Cameron Rumford, 31, was an assistant editor on the film.

A top Boeing official recently shared this sobering statistic: that 50 percent of Boeing's engineers will be eligible to retire by 2015. Similar and equally frightening statistics pertain to the growing need for engineers in the energy industry, the transportation systems sector, and the civil infrastructure arena.

Another projection shows that by 2018 the state of Washington will have the third largest demand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the nation. Washington is one of only a few states with a significant gap between the level of "knowledge economy" infrastructure and the necessary supply of skilled workers. How will our state fill not only these critically important impending needs, but also help our country regain its technological momentum in an increasingly competitive global marketplace?

At a time when politicians and researchers warn that Washington isn't producing enough higher-education degrees, Central Washington University has come up with a program to make it easier for community-college students to get their bachelor's.

Starting in April, CWU will be offering dual admission to all community-college students — the chance to be admitted to the Ellensburg-based school while they are still enrolled in a two-year school.

House Democrats spared basic education funding from additional significant cuts in the budget they released last week, and maybe that’s all we can hope for at the tail end of the Great Recession.

But let’s hold the applause. The budget still slices another $65 million out of higher education and does nothing to meet the Supreme Court’s recent directive to fully fund basic K-12 education.

The House budget undoubtedly makes the best of a bad economic situation, and yet the American public’s clamor for education reform grows louder by the day. It is becoming obvious to many that our nation’s economic future depends on developing a work force prepared for 21st century careers.

When it comes to animals, Stacy Gaber has come a long way since her youth on her parent's spread in Missouri with cattle, turkeys and other critters.

"I was scared to death of birds," she says. "I was attacked by a chicken as a child."

Gaber got over her fears and now cares for birds of a wilder sort, including eagles, falcons and pigeons - plus wild mammals and the occasional amphibian - as director of Northwest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

Black-belt banter rarely impresses Michael Cain. Better to try a different approach.

Cain, who runs Pacific Martial Arts with his wife, Marsha McKenzie, says the black belt has lost its panache, a trademark standard now eroded by martial arts studios taking shortcuts.

"It's become a meaningless concept," says Cain, a karate fixture in Whatcom County. "You can go to a school that says, 'We'll guarantee you a black belt in three years.' Is the music teacher going to guarantee you the second chair in violin in three years?"

To Cain, a black belt can't be "sold." Rather, he says, instructors' expertise and a strong curriculum enrich a belt's value, fostering the assimilation of essential physical and psychological principles.

Western Washington University has its first Oscar-winner.
TJ Martin, who won an Oscar Sunday night, Feb. 26 for co-directing the documentary feature "Undefeated," recently completed his graduation requirements at Fairhaven College, where he studied multimedia and cultural studies.
"Undefeated" is the story of a football team in inner-city Memphis, Tenn. as they strive to end the high school's legacy of losing. Led by their volunteer coach, Bill Courtney, the Manassas Tigers must fight stereotypes and their own demons to win the game and the respect of their teammates.

Lighters flared on a gusty, damp day as smokers huddled under one of the few designated smoking gazebos on Skagit Valley College's main campus.

Smokers increasingly have had a tough time trying to light up between classes as they've been pushed into just a few areas on campus.

And in the future, smokers may be pushed to another place — their own vehicles — thanks to a proposed tobacco-free campus policy the college's Safety Committee could vote on at a meeting Friday.

Way across the county, in Charlottsville, Va., former college lacrosse player George Huguely V was convicted of second-degree murder Wednesday in the beating death of his former girlfriend.

Yeardley Love, a lacrosse player like her onetime boyfriend at the University of Virginia, died in May 2010, shortly before she and Huguely were to graduate.

And since the glitz of the Grammy Awards Feb. 12, Chris Brown has been a target on Twitter by county singer Miranda Lambert, who tweeted: "He beat on a girl ... Not cool that we act like that didn't happen."