In the Media

Getting ready for the first day of school and a new academic year is not just for students and their families.

Despite its name, summer vacation is a time for educators and administrators to plan and prepare for when class is back in session.

For three Lake Washington School District (LWSD) principals, this has meant more than just buying supplies and a few new outfits. On Tuesday, Karen Barker, Kirsten McArdle and Matthew Livingston will begin the first day of school as principals new not only to their respective schools, but new to the district as well.

And while being the new kids on the block can be intimidating, the three principals are looking forward to their new jobs.

Janet Cimino never considered herself an artist.
But the Cathlamet resident enjoyed creative expression in all its forms, friends and family said.
Cimino owned between 100 to 200 pieces of art. She enjoyed talking with artists and helping give them a chance to show their work by organizing community events.
"She saw beauty everywhere and wanted to encourage the human interaction, which can be demonstrated in the arts," friend Tom Doumit said.

Bellevue College leaders have selected a Florida search firm to find the institution’s next president.
The college selected Greenwood/Asher and Associates, a veteran in Washington State University and Western Washington University presidential searches, to find potential successors to longtime President Jean Floten.
Floten arrived at Bellevue College in 1989 and transformed the community institution into a college offering bachelor’s degrees and educating about 39,000 students each year.

Erin Pierce-Magdalik of Langley has received her baccalaureate degree in planning and environmental policy-disaster reduction and emergency planning from Western Washington University.

Music is all about expression. So why do so many photos of rock bands show them standing stolidly against a brick wall?

Oveth Martinez had it in mind to change that. Sure, there might be a brick wall somewhere in the shot, but when the 24-year-old Wenatchee photographer started shooting performers, he sought out ways to wring personality out of the image.

It's been a dozen years since the federal government moved thousands of black-capped squawking seabirds here to reduce their diet of endangered fish.

Things haven't exactly gone as planned.

The hope in relocating the world's largest colony of Caspian terns to this sandy mound near the river's mouth was that they'd eat more sardines and herring — and fewer young salmon and steelhead. And they have.

But the move came at a price. This year the birds' summer retreat was transformed into a place of violence. A strange chain reaction involving divebombing eagles and marauding gulls kept this colony from producing a single chick.

Traditional professors like Johann Neem, a historian at Western Washington University, see places like Western Governors University as anti-intellectual, noting that its advertising emphasizes how fast students can earn credits, not how much they will learn.

“Taking a course online, by yourself, is not the same as being in a classroom with a professor who can respond to you, present different viewpoints and push you to work a problem,” Professor Neem said. “There’s lots of porn and religion online, but people still have relationships and get married, and go to church and talk to a minister.”

Amid the financial gloom of the past three years, one part of the University of Washington has rebounded: Growth of the UW’s endowment fund has outpaced those of Harvard, Yale and other giant schools.

Future Boeing Co. engineers could soon be educated by the University of Washington in ... Abu Dhabi.

Should its proposal go through, the university will offer bachelor's degrees in aerospace engineering at the United Arab Emirates University beginning in the fall of 2013. The proposed $100 million deal would last 10 years. The plan has Boeing's backing.

"This program and partnership has been proposed by the Boeing Co. to help with their sales of aircraft in Abu Dhabi," according to a letter of intent submitted by the UW to the education board.

On Monday morning, Washington State University's Pullman campus will greet its largest freshman class ever — larger by 23 percent than any class it has ever admitted before, and bigger by more than 1,200 students than last year's class.

WSU, which last year reduced the number of freshmen admitted as a result of budget cuts, is now doing the opposite: It is growing the size of the school, with an emphasis on bringing in Washington state students. The school expects to have 1,100 more in-state freshman at the Pullman campus than it did last year.

That's a contrast to almost every other four-year public college in Washington, where the number of freshmen is holding steady or even shrinking. Only the University of Washington is expecting a bigger freshman class, but the increase is coming from out-of-state: The UW's in-state freshman enrollment is expected to be smaller than last year's by about 150 students.