The test was developed by Microbiologist Katherine O’Rourke, immunologist Timothy Baszler, large animal clinician Steven Parish, class of 1973 and USDA Animal Disease Research Unit Leader Donald Knowles.
The CL Davis Foundation for the Advancement of Veterinary and Comparative Pathology honor Dr. John Gorham, Dr. Thomas Jones, class of 1935 and Dr. Floris M. Garner, Class of 1950, former chairman of veterinary pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington D.C. by naming them Legends in Veterinary Pathology.
Charles H. Drake was a popular, well-respected professor at Washington State University for 36 years. His introductory class in bacteriology attracted many non-science majors as well as students preparing for careers in health care. In his lectures, he displayed an acute sense of humor and love of puns. In 1989, the Drakes created a trust to provide assistance for WSU graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in microbial ecology. He was 86 when he died on May 20, 2002 in Pullman.
Paul Castleberry was a faculty member in the WSU Department of Political Science from 1949 to 1983. He taught courses in American government, international law and organization, and American foreign policy for 34 years at WSU and taught overseas in Egypt and Turkey under Fulbright scholarships and in Paris and London as part of a study abroad program. Castleberry was acting chair of WSU’s political science department in 1957 and 1961-62, and chair from 1964 to 1968. He was also active in the University Senate and as chair of the International Education Committee, directed two Institutes of World Affairs, and was co-founder of the Northwest Inter-Institutional Study Abroad Program.
Herbert Eastlick, a devoted mentor and self-described “taskmaster and autocrat in the classroom” who taught at WSU for 33 years, passed from complications to Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 94. Eastlick came to then-WSC in 1940 as an assistant professor in zoology from the University of Chicago where he earlier became acquaintances with President Holland. He was chairman of the Department of Zoology from 1947 to 1964 and chaired the Faculty Executive Committee in 1955-56.
He also helped create WSU’s nationally ranked Honors Program and presented the University’s eighth Faculty Invited Address on his research in 1961. In 1979 the new Eastlick Biological Sciences Building was dedicated in honor of the Herbert and his wife Margaret Eastlick.
Despite a national economic downturn and reductions in state funding across a two-year span, WSU faculty and researchers achieve more than a 40 percent increase in the amount of outside research and other grant funding.
Faculty members Thomas Besser, School for Global Animal Health; Don Dillman, Department of Sociology and Community and Rural Sociology; and B.W. Poovaiah, Department of Horticulture are elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences.
Ralph Yount, a distinguished chemist and Regents Professor Emeritus, receives first WSU Eminent Faculty Award, granted for distinguished lifetime service at WSU. His research was funded through National Institutes of Health without interruption for 40 years, one of the longest continually funded projects at NIH.
WSU electrical engineering and computer science professor Diane Cook and psychology professor Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe receive a National Institutes of Health grant funding for smart adaptive technology research. The smart adaptive technology helps people with memory loss manage everyday tasks, allowing them to live independently in their homes for as long as possible.
Michael D. Griswold, Regents Professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences and dean of the College of Sciences, is the ninth recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award.
Robert Nilan, WSU professor emeritus and former College of Sciences dean, received the WSU President’s Award for Distinguished Lifetime Service. Nilan is a leading international authority on barley genetics who came to WSU in 1951 as an agronomist and geneticist. While at WSU he served as chair of genetics, and his worldwide recognition as a plant geneticist earned him an appointment to the Danish Academy of Science. He trained more than 75 graduate students during his career at WSU and, as dean, he oversaw development of programs in statistics, environmental science and plant physiology; laboratories in bio-analysis and biotechnology; and centers of electron microscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance.
Nilan and his wife Winona have given generously to the arts and sciences at WSU. Attracting students to WSU’s Department of Genetics and Cell Biology was at the center of their decision to create the Robert A. and Winona P. Nilan Graduate Fellowship in Genetics.
The School of Music holds the 20th Annual Festival of Contemporary Art Music. Charles Argersinger, WSU music faculty member and the Festival of Contemporary Art Music’s founding director, was the guest composer at the event.
Anjan Bose, Regents Professor in electrical engineering and computer science, was honored as the eighth recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award.
LeRoy Ashby, the Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Distinguished Professor of History and a Regents professor, receives the WSU President’s Award for Lifetime Service.
Scientific American named WSU reproductive biologist Patricia A. Hunt to their “SciAm 50” list, identifying her as one of the top 50 researchers in the world. Her research showed a potential threat to human health posed by bisphenol A (BPA), a component of the polycarbonate plastics used to make food and beverage containers.
Johnnetta Cole, former WSU faculty member and administrator and President Emerita of Spelman College in Atlanta and Bennett College in North Carolina, received an honorary doctoral degree from WSU at fall commencement on December 6.
Travis McGuire, professor in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, received the WSU President’s Award for Distinguished Lifetime Service.
George Mount, WSU civil and environmental engineering faculty member since 1997, became director of a new university system-wide interdisciplinary Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach (CEREO). In 2004 NASA launched a satellite into space that includes a pollutant-measuring device that professor George Mount helped develop.
Patricia G. Butterfield became dean of the WSU Intercollegiate College of Nursing. She had been a professor and chair of the Department of Psychosocial and Community Health Nursing at the University of Washington.
Thomas J. Dickinson, Regents Professor in the Department of Physics, was honored as the seventh recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award.
The WSU Regents renamed two Pullman campus buildings. Wilson Hall became Wilson-Short Hall, honoring James F. Short, Jr., influential WSU sociology professor. This building was first named for James Wilson, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1897 to 1913. The Plant Biosciences Facility I, part of a multi-building bioscience complex, became the Orville A. Vogel Plant Biosciences Building, named for one of WSU’s great agricultural researchers and wheat breeders.
Dr. Guy Palmer, a veterinary pathologist at WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, was elected a member of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, one of the highest honors for those in biomedical research and human health care.
The Spillman Stone, a two-ton granite rock with William Jasper Spillman’s name engraved on it, was rededicated October 21 at Clark Hall Plaza on the Pullman campus. A wheat breeder at WSU from 1894 to 1902, Spillman was the only American to independently rediscover Mendel’s Law of Heredity and was also influential in early agricultural economics.
Jack D. Rogers, professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, was honored as the sixth recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award.
Sociologist James F. Short Jr., nationally respected researcher and university leader, received the WSU President’s Award for Lifetime Service.
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.
Work by WSU molecular biologist Michael K. Skinner and his research team was chosen as one of the top 100 science stories of 2005 by Discover magazine. The researchers found that exposing fetal rats to environmental toxins can affect their sexual development in a way that also shows up in subsequent generations. The mechanism was an epigenetic one.
R. James Cook received the WSU President’s Award for Distinguished Lifetime Service. Prior to becoming interim dean of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences, he was a plant pathologist with the USDA-ARS at WSU and later held an endowed chair in wheat research at the university.
Clarence A. Ryan Jr., emeritus professor, plant biochemistry researcher in WSU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, and first WSU professor in the National Academy of Sciences, received WSU’s honorary doctoral degree at spring commencement.
Yogendra M. Gupta, professor of physics and director of the Institute for Shock Physics, was honored as the fifth recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award.
A bronze memorial in Holland Library was dedicated to honor the “Grandfather of Chicano poetry,” Ricardo Sánchez. Sánchez was a celebrated poet and WSU creative writing and Chicano studies faculty member from 1991 until his death in 1995.
The first “Celebrating Excellence: An Evening Honoring Our Faculty and Staff” banquet in Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum honored WSU award-winning faculty and staff.
Frances K. McSweeney, professor of psychology and vice provost for faculty affairs, was honored as the fourth recipient of the 2004 Eminent Faculty Award.
Rodney Croteau, Eisig-Tode Distinguished Professor of Forest Biotechnology in WSU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, was honored as the third recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award.
Construction began on the new Plant Biosciences Building, the first of several new buildings that will create a new research and education complex along Stadium Way. The building was dedicated on October 14, 2005 and named for wheat researcher Orville Vogel in 2007.
WSU named Don A. Dillman the second recipient of the WSU Eminent Faculty Award. Dillman was the Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy and a social scientist in the Departments of Sociology and Rural Sociology.
WSU received a $10 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to create an Institute for Shock Physics. The institute is directed by WSU physics professor, Yogi Gupta. In 2001 the university held a ground-breaking for a new building to house WSU’s internationally recognized Institute for Shock Physics. In 2003, the new building housing WSU’s internationally recognized Institute for Shock Physics was inaugurated.