Videos

Western Washington University’s Concert Choir and Advanced Women’s Chorale will debut their new annual holiday concert at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 2117 Walnut St. in Bellingham.

Conducted by Professor of Music Leslie Guelker-Cone and Associate Professor of Music Timothy Fitzpatrick, “A Light in the Darkness: Songs of Hope and Comfort” invites the community to join together to usher in the holiday season with songs that inspire and uplift, bringing light to Bellingham's wintry days.

“This is choral music as it was originally intended to be heard,” said Fitzpatrick, who will serve as conductor. “Many of the songs feature our students’ voices without accompaniment, allowing the acoustics of the stone church to surround our audience with song and warmth.”

As Thanksgiving approaches in the Pacific Northwest and the days grow short in preparation for winter, thoughts often turn to home, hearth and comfort. People are reminded of the joys of family, community and celebration and are thankful for the incomparable surrounding beauty. Bellinghamsters greet the season with a mixture of feelings – nostalgia and loss, gratitude and hope. “A Light in the Darkness: Songs of Hope and Comfort” reflects these varied themes and showcases a range of beautiful choral music.

Tickets are available through the WWU Box Office and cost $15 for general admission and $10 for students and seniors. A selection of tickets will also be available at Village Books, the Community Food Co-Op and at the door.

WWU Box Office hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and one hour prior to the performance. For individual tickets or disability accommodations, contact the WWU Box Office at 360-650-6146 or visit http://www.tickets.wwu.edu.

For more information, contact Leslie Guelker-Cone at 360-650-3772 

Graham Meriwether, director of the documentary “American Meat,” will discuss the film as part of Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment Speaker Series at 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 16, in Communications Facility Room 125 on Western’s campus.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

There's a new movement of farmers who are "grass farmers" – farming with rotations on pasture. Such methods of production maximize the efficiency of energy flows on the farm. Concurrently, with the advent of the internet, and the numerous tools that allow farmers to more easily market and sell directly to their customers, it is now possible for farmers to make a reasonable living raising and selling animals through self-marketing. There's more than enough land, and productivity in these alternative methods.

Meriwether has spent the last five years directing and producing his documentary, “American Meat,” which documents these methods. Meriwether has previously directed, produced, shot and edited video for Al Jazeera English, PBS, A&E, and the New York Times. He is also the founder of the Leave It Better Foundation (leaveitbetter.com) a nonprofit which has brought gardens to 10 New York City public schools.

The remaining fall quarter speakers in the Huxley College of the Environment Speaker Series are:

• Nov. 30: The Future of Land, Land Trusts, and Food. Panelists: Laura Ridenour (Sustainable Connections Food and Farming Manager), Steve Hollenhorst (dean of the Huxley College of the Environment), Eric Carabba (Huxley Grad, Whatcom Land Trust Development Director), Samya Lutz (Fairhaven grad, Whatcom County Planning and Development Services).
• Dec. 7: Scott Miles and Rebekah Green of Western’s Resilience Institute will speak on Japan's recovery in housing and critical infrastructure following its devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Anyone interested in these topics is encouraged to come and participate; the presentation will include a question-and-answer period. The speaker series is held by Western's Huxley College of the Environment to bring together the environmentally minded community and other interested members of the WWU and Bellingham communities. Speakers address topics of contemporary environmental concern in the region and the world.

For more information, please contact the main office of Huxley College of the Environment, at (360) 650-3520.

Western’s Huxley College of the Environment is one of the oldest environmental colleges in the nation and a recognized national leader in producing the next generation of environmental stewards. The College’s academic programs reflect a broad view of the physical, biological, social and cultural world. This innovative and interdisciplinary approach makes Huxley unique. The College has earned international recognition for the quality of its programs.

A new online textbook platform provides professors an opportunity to write their own text, as well as develop an evaluation process that gives immediate feedback to students.

Western professor Eric Kean has developed the online platform which he calls “More than a Textbook” (itsmorethanatextbook.com), and said that the platform can be adapted for any class. Evaluation options include multiple choice, numerical, fill-in-the-blank and free-response questions.

Kean said the process of writing a textbook in the traditional publishing method can take more than two years. However, many Western professors have written their online texts in only three months, he said.

Professor Sandra Alfers is currently writing an online textbook for a German literature course that she will be teaching in winter 2013. She said the textbook can add different media, including videos, while also being specific to the course and her planned curriculum.

“The book is written with Western students in mind,” Alfers said. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all model.”

Alfers said the platform gives professors the freedom to change the text if it isn’t working. The text is accessible at any time for edits, she said. This also keeps the price of the text lower for students, because they don’t need to buy a new edition every year. 

Western Washington University held its annual Veterans Day Ceremony on Friday, Nov. 9, on campus.

Featured speakers included Western President Bruce Shepard; Western student and former U.S. Marine Lucas Coffey; Western employee and former U.S. Army and Vietnam veteran Tom Brandstrom; and community member William Marshall, retired from the U.S. Air Force.

The ceremony was co-sponsored by the Veterans Outreach Center and the President’s Office.

Ryan Gilbert, a firefighter with the Bellingham Fire Department, enjoys spending time with his family in the outdoors.

His boys, 9 and 6, are old enough now that they can navigate the many trails in the northern Cascade Mountains, and they're out there often.

This past summer, in the process of documenting his family's many adventures, Gilbert used his Canon 7D to capture these stunning time-lapse images of the Bellingham area.

View more of Gilbert's work on his Vimeo page.

For more infomation about Western, visit http://www.wwu.edu/about.

Shirley Osterhaus, a senior instructor at Western Washington University's Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, has been awarded the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center’s “Howard Harris Lifetime Peacemaker Award.”

This award, given for the past nine years to someone committed to peacemaking, is in honor of Howard Harris, a retired anthropology professor and one of the last World War II conscientious objectors; he was the person who started the peace vigil in front of the downtown Bellingham Federal Building 45 years ago. This vigil is the longest weekly vigil happening in the United States.

As an educator, organizer and activist, Osterhaus has been involved in solidarity and human rights work for the greater part of her life. Having lived in Bellingham for over 20 years, she was one of the co-founders of the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force, Central American Refugee Assistance and the Bellingham-El Salvador Sister City Organization. She has traveled on multiple educational delegations to various conflict areas of the world to better understand the reality of people on the ground. Most consistently, she has stood in solidarity with the people of Mexico and Central and South America. For more than a decade as Catholic Campus Minister at Western, she organized and took groups of students on cross-cultural, educational/service trips to Tijuana, Mexico.

Western Washington University’s Extended Education Youth Programs is seeking 20 households to provide a home for students from Wooshin High School in South Korea for four weeks this winter; approximate dates are Feb. 2 to March 2.

Each host family can house one to two students; room and board will be compensated by the program. Wooshin High School students will shadow a local student at Bellingham, Sehome or Squalicum High Schools for those four weeks.

Wooshin has participated in Western’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) youth program for the past two summers and would like to enhance the summer program with a winter immersion opportunity for its high school students.

By allowing students to stay in their homes, families provide a rich experience for them to participate as a family member and gain insight into another culture.

Interested families can call now through the Dec. 31 deadline.

For more information, please contact Debbie Gibbons at Debbie.Gibbons@wwu.edu or (360) 650-6820.

Stephen Sulkin will be retiring as professor and director of Western Washington University’s Shannon Point Marine Center.

“Dr. Sulkin's contributions to Western have been many. I would go so far as to say that Western is a different -- and much better -- place because of Dr. Sulkin's superlative work. The record of uninterrupted funding from the National Science Foundation and receiving a presidential award for excellence in mentoring are just two of the many examples of success the marine center has enjoyed under his leadership,” said Western Provost Catherine Riordan.

Sulkin, who has been professor and director at Shannon Point Marine Center since 1985, will retire next summer, with his successor starting next fall. A national and international search for his successor will begin early next year.

“It has been a great honor to serve the university and contribute especially to development of the marine sciences at Western over the past 28 years. The achievements of Shannon Point Marine Center over that time are a testament to the hard work and excellence of the faculty and staff who I have been privileged to work with, and to the support from the university that I have been fortunate to receive throughout my tenure as director,” Sulkin said.

Asked to identify his most significant accomplishments as SPMC director, Sulkin pointed to his helping secure $4.9 million for the Marine Education Center facility constructed at SPMC in 2006, his obtaining continuous funding from the National Science Foundation since 1991 for the SPMC Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site and Multicultural Initiatives in Marine Science: Undergraduate Participation programs, and the implementation in 2012 of the WWU Marine Science Scholars program that successfully recruits high-performing students to the university from around the nation. Sulkin also represented SPMC at a White House ceremony in 2003 at which the marine center received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math and Engineering mentoring.

Sulkin received his undergraduate degree in Zoology from Miami University (OH) and doctorate in Marine Biology from Duke University (1971). He came up through the professoriate ranks at the University of Maryland, where he served as the first Head of the Horn Point Environmental Laboratories from 1976-1982. He assumed his present position as SPMC director in 1985 and will have served in that role for 28 years.

In addition to his administrative role at Shannon Point, he has served WWU in a variety of capacities, including as acting provost and vice president for Academic Affairs in 1993, as chair of search committees for two deans of the College of Science & Technology and for a provost/academic vice president, and as a committee member on three other provost searches and a dean search. He also chaired a task force that created a White Paper on the Role of Graduate Education at WWU.

During his tenure at WWU, Sulkin has obtained grants from external funding agencies totaling more than $4.6 million, mostly in support of academic programs and instrumentation/equipment at SPMC.
Sulkin’s professional interests have included research on the behavior and nutritional ecology of the early life history stages of crab species. He has published 55 papers in refereed scientific journals and is considered an expert in the laboratory cultivation, behavior and nutritional ecology of larval crabs. Prior to coming to SPMC, he co-led a team of scientists in the Chesapeake/Delaware Bay complex who conceived and demonstrated a new model for recruitment of the blue crab, a principal commercial species in the region.
He served as U.S. Editor of the international scientific journal Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Sciences for 17 years while at WWU. He also served as president of the Western Association of Marine Laboratories in 1994.

Sulkin and his wife Shelley, a science teacher at Whatcom Middle School, will continue to reside in Bellingham upon their retirements.

Western Washington University’s 30-minute TV show “Western Window” is now airing at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays on Me-TV KVOS.

The TV show features a magazine format and is intended to showcase the excellence of Western’s students, faculty and programs while also highlighting the university’s partnerships and collaborative efforts in the local community and beyond.

“Western Window” is hosted by Patrick Disney, Western Theatre Arts Department senior instructor, and is produced by WWU students participating in an internship class led by instructor Suzanne Blais.

“We are pleased that the people of Western Washington will have the opportunity to see the excellence of the students and faculty of Western in action here on campus and in communities throughout the state and beyond,” said Steve Swan, vice president for University Relations.

“We are grateful to Me-TV and KVOS for recognizing that at Western ‘Active Minds are Changing Lives’ and for providing the venue that makes it possible for others to see that commitment in action. The show itself is a great example as it is a product of our student internship program,” Swan said.

Me-TV KVOS broadcasts throughout southwest British Columbia and western Washington. Their signal reaches four large urban areas, Vancouver, Victoria, Bellingham and Seattle and their surrounding areas as far north as Whistler, British Columbia, and south to Seattle. Recent population statistics show over 6 million people in their coverage area on both sides of the border. Me-TV is available through various cable and satellite TV providers. Find one in your area.

In addition, “Western Window” will continue airing on the City of Bellingham’s TV Channel 10. BTV10 airs on cable television and on the city website.  Viewers can check the BTV10 schedule to confirm airtimes by checking the schedule link on this page.

Western Washington University freshman Zach Becker produced, shot and edited this video entirely on his own during the WOOT! hiking trip in the Chuckanut foothills.

The WOOT! (Western Outdoor Orientation Trips) program, part of the Associated Students Outdoor Center and Student Outreach Services, allows incoming Western students to spend a week in the wilderness exploring their new backyard while getting to know other new students and gain great outdoor skills. Now in its third year, WOOT! takes place the week before the beginning of fall quarter.

Becker's only background in video production, he says, "is basically just watching a ton of YouTube videos as I was growing up, and creating them as well."

He taught himself the process of shooting and editing by making videos of himself pogo sticking or juggling (he used to get really bored in his hometown of Silt, Colo., he says).

This WOOT! video is just the second he's made in this style, he says, the first being an overview of a family vacation at Bay Lake in Minnesota.

Becker says he'd love to make a career of videography. Exactly how, though, he's not yet sure.

This year, 45 incoming freshmen took part in one of five six-day WOOT! excursions. Some went kayaking or bike touring in the San Juan Islands, others went rock climbing in Leavenworth, and more (Becker among them) backpacked through the Chuckanuts or the North Cascades.

All of the trips filled up within four hours after online registration opened, and many more were added to a waiting list.

For more information on the WOOT! program, contact program coordinator Marli Williams at (360) 650-7592 or marli.williams@wwu.edu.