Videos
Approximately 327 undergraduates and about 50 master's candidates received degrees during Western Washington University's summer commencement on Aug. 24, 2013.
Robert H. Brim, CEO and founder of Dealer Information Systems Corp., addressed Western graduates and their families at the ceremony.
Brim, a Distinguished Alumnus of the College of Sciences and Technology, graduated from Western in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in Physics and Mathematics. He also holds master's degrees in Electronic Engineering Technology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and in Business Administration from the University of Washington. He is the founder and CEO of Dealer Information Systems, a Bellingham-based company that develops software systems for more than 2,300 heavy equipment dealerships in North America. Brim is also a consultant to small and emerging businesses in China, Vietnam, Canada and the U.S. He serves on the board of directors of the Mount Baker Theatre and as chairman of the College of Sciences and Technology External Advancement Board.
Approximately 327 undergraduates and about 50 master's candidates received degrees during Western Washington University's summer commencement on Aug. 24, 2013.
The ceremony's student commencement speaker was Kelsey L. Looper, a graduate in Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management. Looper is completing an internship at The Boeing Co., leading a team of colleagues through projects focused on improving efficiency on the manufacturing floor. The daughter of Mark and Denise Looper of Sammamish, she is a graduate of Eastlake High School.
Sara Richey, a nutritionist and dietitian with Western Washington University's Campus Recreation, counsels students, faculty and staff on nutrition and eating. Her keys: balance, variety and moderation.
Contact Richey at 360-650-3254 or sarah.richey@wwu.edu.
Western Washington University students collaborate to produce this monthly magazine show.
This ninth episode of Western Window features an interview with David Suzuki, a profile of the Western Women's Rowing Team, a look at Camp Team and a visit with three students who got the chance to study opera in Italy.
The Adaptive Sports Day is part of a required course in the Recreation Degree Program at Western Washington University. Committed to the principle of social justice, the program prepares students to work in diverse settings and design inclusive recreation environments.
Kathryn Trueblood is a faculty member in the English department at Western Washington University.
In this video, she talks about her award-winning story "No-Tell Hotel," her work with the student-produced Jeopardy magazine and her love for the department in which she works.
An associate professor of English, Trueblood won the 2013 Bellevue Literary Review Goldenberg Prize for Fiction for her story “The No-Tell Hotel.”
The contest was judged by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jane Smiley.
The Bellevue Literary Review is a literary magazine published twice a year by the Department of Medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center. According to the publication’s website, topics examine human existence through the prism of health and healing, illness and disease, including poetry, short stories and essays.
“The No-Tell Hotel” follows a mother who has opened her door to her son’s friends who have run away or been kicked out of their homes after high school graduation. One of these teenagers in particular, Sid, has a mother with multiple sclerosis who the narrator must care for after Sid runs away.
Trueblood herself was hospitalized and diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2007.
“The experience of illness has affected my work profoundly,” Trueblood said. “Many of the stories in the collection I'm writing now, ‘The Medicated Marriage,’ are about children and parents finding love in the imperfect. There’s very little in our society that recognizes living well with pain or illness. This award has made me so happy, beyond words."
Trueblood’s book, “The Baby Lottery,” was a Book Sense Pick in 2007 and more recently, she won the 2011 Red Hen Press Short Story Award. She has been published in The Los Angeles Review, The Seattle Weekly, Poets and Writers Magazine and many other publications. She has taught at Western since 1991.
The Commercial Street Theatre Project at 1302 Commercial St. in downtown Bellingham will hold an open house from 6 to 10 p.m. during the Friday Art Walk June 7.
The project, led in part by Western Washington University faculty members Pam Kuntz (Dance) and Mark Kuntz (Theatre), is a group of artists and community leaders who intend to renovate the city-owned vacant space in the Parkade downtown into a 200 seat state-of-the-art community-based performing arts venue.
The project is looking for community support to build this much-needed performance space for Bellingham's community of artists, families and audiences.
Light refreshments will be available during the open house. For more information, visit www.cstproject.org.
Western Washington University’s Veteran Outreach Center will be showing the documentary “The Lost Airmen of Buchenwald” at 6 p.m. May 21 in Western’s Academic Instructional Center West room 204.
The event is free and open to the public.
Joe Moser, a Ferndale native, was one of the imprisoned airmen and will be at the showing.
After the documentary there will be a short question and answer session with Moser.
The documentary is about a group of Allied airmen in World War II who were captured by the Germans and send to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
For more information contact Janelle Marshall, Western’s Associated Students Veterans Outreach Center Coordinator, at 360-650-6115 or as.voc@wwu.edu.
A motivational speaker, Xerxes Whitney will present “Busting Through Your Challenges: Don’t Fight it. Embrace It” at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 20, in Miller Hall Room 138 on Western Washington University’s campus.
The presentation is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by Western’s Physical Education, Health and Recreational Department; College of Humanities and Social Sciences; and Woodring College of Education.
An athlete, poet, teacher, and coach, Whitney is a motivational speaker who brings his relevant message to a variety of fields including recreation, special education, and physical education.
Born with cerebral palsy, he has transformed his impairment into strengths and accomplishments, inspiring others to take their lives to new heights.
Whitney graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz where he was a manager, player, and assistant coach on the school’s tennis team that finished second in NCAA Division III four times.
He discovered his public-speaking skills when he was chosen to give his university graduation commencement speech. Recently, Whitney was the keynote speaker for the 2013 National Adapted Physical Education conference.
Whitney has taught sixth-grade Physical Education at Windsor Middle School in Windsor, Calif. for 13 years. He was named Teacher of the Year in 2009 by the California League of Middle Schools and was also named the Windsor Rotary Teacher of the Year.
He started the girls’ and boys’ tennis teams at Windsor High and has led the girls’ team to two Sonoma County League Championships, coached the boys to a league title, and has been named Sonoma League Coach of the Year.
Whitney has run five marathons, finishing in the top 40 percent of all runners despite his impairment. One marathon enabled him to raise funds for a rock-climbing wall at Windsor Middle School, an accomplishment that was featured on the local ABC News.
Whitney has self-published two books of poetry, “What’s Your Name?” in 1999 and “Busting Through, Exploring My Truth” in 2007.
Testimonials about Whitney’s speeches can be viewed online.
For more information, please contact Keith Russell at (360) 650-3529, or keith.russell@wwu.edu
Western Washington University Associate Professor of Environmental Science Andy Bunn will take two students to the Siberian Arctic this summer as part of The Polaris Project, an international research project that started in 2008 to look at how global climate change is affecting the Arctic.
Western students Heidi Rodenhizer (Biology, Seattle) and Katie Heard (Environmental Science, Pine Grove, Calif.) will join Bunn in July for the month-long research trip.
Also on the trip is Logan Berner, a 2010 graduate of WWU now studying for his doctorate at Oregon State University.
“It’s an incredible, once in a lifetime, lottery opportunity for science students to get to do this,” Bunn said.
The project has begun; follow along with the project's blog at http://www.thepolarisproject.org/blog/.
Students will assist in collecting baseline data for the project, while also being able to conduct research on their own areas of interest. Bunn said this is unique to research trips, where students normally assist a professor or graduate student and can lack the freedom to do their own projects.
Rodenhizer’s project will include collecting data about the above-ground carbon stores in the Kolyma watershed of Siberia. Carbon is stored in the plants in the area, but the current amount of carbon there is not well known. Her work will help to figure out the amount currently in the Kolyma watershed.
Heard’s project will focus on carbon stocks (the amount of carbon in the ecosystem) in a small area of the Kolyma watershed. She will also look at the relationship between the carbon stocks and variables in biological processes.
For more information about The Polaris Project visit http://www.thepolarisproject.org or contact Andy Bunn at (360) 650-4252 or andy.bunn@wwu.edu.