Cole later returned to teach advanced courses in Electrical Engineering at WSU in 1997, and began designing adaptable circuit boards for his students to use. After sharing them with colleagues in different universities nationwide they became so popular that he formed his own company, Digilent, to manufacture and market the circuit boards. Cole received his B.S. in computer science in 1987 and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2000, both from WSU. He continues to teach junior and senior-level electrical engineering courses.
His research had a significant influence in the semiconductor industry where dislocations in a thin layer have a detrimental effect on conductivity. Hirth was later named a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Harriett B. Rigas joins Washington State University, eventually becoming full professor and chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering school. A pioneer in her field, she received one of the earliest national awards from the Society of Women Engineers and was later named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Thomas M. Maloney led the Composite Materials and Engineering Team that developed the particleboard process and authored many scholarly reports, articles, and book chapters on wood composite materials, as well as the book “Modern Particleboard and Dry-Process Fiberboard Manufacturing.” In 1967 Maloney instigated the first international symposium on Particleboard & Composite Materials.
Don Adams, founder of the Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, developed and patented an analyzer that measures atmospheric gases. Adams led pioneering research in the measurements of air pollution and its effects from lumber mills and smelters after being asked to put aside his research in extracting alumina from clay to investigate complaints about lumber mill odor. In the 1960’s, he was able to demonstrate for the first time that sulfur emissions were causing downwind die-offs of pine trees.
Adams was born in Spokane and grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attending then-WSC and earning a bachelors in analytical chemistry in 1941 and a masters in chemistry in 1942. Don Adams passed away in August, 2006.
The first degree program in physical metallurgy, forerunner for today’s materials science and engineering program, is established by Clarence Zener, inventor of the Zener diode.
Smith replaced Weaver as Campus Architect, and as such worked as professor, architect, and construction manager for many projects on and off-campus. These included Commons, completion of Troy Hall (begun by architect Julius Zittel), rebuilding the barn now called Lewis Alumni Center, (following destruction by fire), Duncan Dunn Hall, Bohler Gym, Memorial Hospital, White Hall, Hollingberry Field House, Stock Judging Pavilion, Waller Hall, Steam Plant, Pine Manor, Wilmer-Davis Hall, and Smith Gym. Smith also prepared preliminary architectural work for several buildings on which the main architectural work was done by commissioned architectural firms.
Also in 1923 Fred G. Rounds joined the architecture department, serving as assistant professor and assistant designer to Smith in the campus architects office. Rounds joined Smith in the architectural firm Smith & Rounds, and the partnership designed many residences on Pullman’s College Hill, including the present-day Casa Latina and Native American Cultural House, and several other houses in the College Hill Historic District (on the National Register of Historic Places) and on the Pullman Register of Historic Places.
Commons Hall, also known as Brick CommonsDuncan Dunn HallBohler GymWashington Building (Formerly Finch Memorial Hospital) in 1933.White HallHollingbery Field HouseWaller HallPine ManorWilmer-Davis HallSmith Gym
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.
Catherine Matthews Friel is born in Colfax, Washington, in 1901 to Pullman attorney and one-time mayor John W. Matthews and his wife, Serena. Growing up in Pullman, she is dedicates much of her next 101 years to the institution, forming close connections to six presidents, starting with Enoch A. Bryan, and their families.
Friel enrolls at Washington State in 1919 and joins Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She holds several house offices and is inducted into the Mortar Board and Phi Kappa Phi scholastic honoraries. She also serves as president of the Army ROTC Women’s Auxiliary or “Sponsors.” During her freshman year, she meets Jack Friel, future famed Cougar men’s basketball coach, who at the time aspires to be a teacher.
The Friels’ three eldest children are WSU graduates: Charlotte (’51 Speech), a former CBS administrator; Wallis (’53 Polit. Sci.), retired Whitman County Superior Court judge; and internationally known artist John (’62 Fine Arts). Catherine Friel receives numerous awards and honors during her lifetime, including the WSU Foundation’s 1999 Outstanding Service Award, and she is credited for saving Stevens Hall from demolition due to her personal activism. Stevens was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
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.
Four generations of the Appel family, starting with Don in the 1930s, have migrated from farming on the Palouse to cultivating their knowledge at WSU. While Don had to withdraw due to failing eyesight one semester short of his degree, he made sure that all nine of his children (Dick Appel ’59, David ’61, Tony ’63, Fred ’65, Donna ’67, Colleen ’68, Steven ’74, Laurette ’78, and Renata ’82) received their college degrees at WSU. Most of their spouses are WSU degree-holders, plus a host of cousins. They were followed by a third and fourth generation of graduates. Dick and his wife Helen, also a WSU graduate, farm on 1,700 acres near Dusty, Washington and many of the Appel children have degrees in agricultural or engineering related fields.
The $39 million, 145,000 square-foot Health Science Building was the third building opened on the WSU Spokane campus and houses pharmacy, speech and hearing sciences, exercise science, health policy and administration, and food sciences and human nutrition. Other WSU programs inside include the Health Research and Education Center, Area Health Education Center, Washington Institute for Mental Illness Research and Training (WIMIRT), and the Institutional Review Board-Spokane.
Eastern Washington University programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and dental hygiene are also housed here. The Health Science Building adds to Spokane’s status as an important regional medical community, the largest between Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
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.
Gary P. Brinson (69′, MBA), a nationally recognized leader in investment management renowned for his intellectual contributions to the financial investing world, is the 41st Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award honoree.
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.
WSU ranks among the nation’s top 15 percent of colleges, universities, and trade schools providing the most opportunities and support to American veterans pursuing their education, according to G.I. Jobs magazine.
The Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health breaks ground on its new headquarters and research facilities. The new facility, dedicated in 2012, provides a place for the program to continue building on it’s strengths in discovery, development, and implementation of life-saving protocols at the human-animal interface.
During the spring, Bill Moos joins Cougar Athletics as director. A 1973 WSU graduate in history, former Cougar football player, and WSU Athletics administrator, Moos returned to WSU after serving as director at the universities of Oregon and Montana.
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.
Music Professor Charles Argersinger and Student at Keyboard
The first group of WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) medical program students began classes at a new site, WSU Spokane, in 2008. WSU Pullman first had WWAMI students in 1972.
Provost and Executive Vice President Robert Bates stepped down on July 1 after six years as WSU’s academic leader. A WSU master’s graduate in bacteriology, after leaving his position he joined WSU Vancouver as Director of Research and Graduate 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.
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.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grants WSU $25 million to help construct the $35 million building that will become the centerpiece in the WSU School for Global Animal Health. This is the largest grant in the history of WSU.
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.
A WSU team of physicists successfully completed the first experiments using the nation’s premiere synchrotron X-ray facility to detect shock wave-induced changes in a crystalline material.
David Miller and Robert Hull, members of the class of 1968 and founding partners of Seattle-based The Miller|Hull Partnership, LLP, were honored as the 37th and 38th recipients of the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2003 the Miller Hull Partnership received the 2003 American Institute of Architects Architecture Firm Award, the AIA’s highest honor.
