Growing up on the Yakama Indian Reservation, Kiutus “Ki” Tecumseh Jr. told his high school counselor that he wanted to go to college and was told, “You will fail. You are good with your hands. You can be either a baker or a bricklayer.” Tecumseh applied for admission to Washington State University and was accepted. While earning a degree (’72 Comm.), he served as an ASWSU senator and was an assistant instructor in a contemporary American Indian Studies class. Many remembered him best as founder and first president of the Native American Students Association. “Indian people don’t consider themselves to be a minority people. They have their own religion, own culture, own life and land,” says Tecumseh, a member of the Winnebago Indians of Nebraska. During his student days, he and his Native American peers pushed the University to recruit more Indian students from the state and provide the support services they needed to be successful. He believes that traditional fishing rights, shoreline and mineral issues, and treaty rights transcend the reservation and are important to all people living in the Northwest. Ki is now retired in New Mexico, where he formerly chaired the advisory council on Indian education to the state board of education.
Named for WSU graduate Edward R. Murrow, the University’s Murrow School of Communication became the Murrow College of Communication on July 1. It had been part of the College of Liberal Arts.
In a 26-31 Cougar pigskin loss to San Jose State in Spokane, Glenn Johnson debuts as public address announcer for WSU football and men’s basketball, a position which soon earns him the title of “Voice of the Cougars.” In 1983, he starts the “And that’s another Cougar first down…” call which has since been copied by many others. Glenn was a faculty member in the WSU Murrow College of Communication faculty from 1979 to 2014.
WSU’s renowned Edward R. Murrow School of Communication was strengthened by the opening of a 24,000-square-foot building, now known as Goertzen Hall, that includes communication research and teaching labs, TV news studio, faculty offices, and an auditorium.
In 1973, the Edward R. Murrow Communications center was dedicated to WSU alumnus, Edward R. Murrow. In 1990 the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication was dedicated.
In 1994, Murrow was memorialized on a U.S. postage stamp. He was the first broadcast journalist honored this way. The national first day of issue ceremony was January 21 in the Murrow Communications Center on WSU’s Pullman campus.
KWSC-TV went on the air for the first time under the direction of Cal Watson. Though the university was already WSU, KWSC did not become KWSU until March 1, 1969.
He earns a degree in degree in speech while immersing himself in the campus culture during his four years in Pullman. Among his activities: president of the student body, actor in school plays, four-year participant in ROTC, debate team leader, member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, and president of the National Student Federation.
After college, Murrow works as a journalist in Europe during WW II, helps pioneer television news, and produces a series of reports that help lead to a censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Murrow was highly respected by journalists of his generation and praised for his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.
Edward R. Murrow (at right) walking from Pullman to Moscow in 1927.
Murrow and his Kappa Sigma brothers at Washington State College.
The radio station begins broadcasting from the Mechanic Arts Building, thanks to financial support from the Agricultural Extension Service, the Associated Students, and the Pullman Chamber of Commerce.
Known today as KWSU, the station’s founding goals remain in place:
To provide information and cultural service to a wide area of population
To draw on the expertise of the faculty and present their findings
To provide a vehicle for further research in broadcasting
To train young people in the use, operation, and “human service” of radio
The station is one of the oldest and largest university-owned radio stations in the country.
Homer Dana with the first of four microphones that KFAE (later KWSC and KWSU) used. Dana, along with Hubert Carpenter, founded KFAE in 1922.
The monthly publication lasts just more than a year, to be succeeded in 1895 by The Daily Evergreen. The Record’s editor, William D. Barkhuff, is an engineering student.
