Skip to main content Skip to navigation

William Bugge, Washington Director of Highways, and Laurence Peter, co-author of the Peter Principle, receive the fourteenth and fifteen Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award

William Bugge, Washington Director of Highways, and Laurence Peter, and co-author of the Peter Principle, receive fourteenth and fifteenth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards.

Bugge completed three and one-half years at then-WSC, leaving in 1922 to work for the Washington Department of Highways. He received an honorary bachelor’s degree from WSU in 1990. As Director of Highways, Bugge oversaw the design and construction of some of the states most ambitious projects. In 1963, he resigned his position to become the Project Director in charge of the design and construction of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, in San Francisco.

Peter taught in Vancouver before attending WSU. After graduation, he moved to California where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the University of Southern California.

William Bugge
William Bugge
Laurence Peter
Laurence Peter

Gibson, Shroeder, Neill receive the Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards

Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson, Charles Schroeder, and Marshall Neill receive the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards.

Hoot Gibson
Hoot Gibson
Marshall Neill in 1955, while serving as a special assistant AG for WSC
Marshall Neill in 1955, while serving as a special assistant AG for WSC
Schroeder
Charles Schroeder

Matsuyo Yamamoto is presented with the Regents Eighth Distinguished Alumnus Award, the first woman honored

Matsuyo Yamamoto is presented with Regents Eighth Distinguished Alumnus Award and is the first woman honored. After receiving her degree in home economics in 1937 at then Washington State College, Yamamoto returned to Japan where she pioneered home economics extension programs, eventually overseeing a staff of 3,000 home advisors that served the rural populations of Japan and other Asian countries. The College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Studies offers the Matsuyo Yamamoto Endowed Scholarship in her honor.

ua333b40f-yamamoto

Internationally acclaimed scientist receives the seventh Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award

Karl Sax, internationally acclaimed scientist, receives the seventh Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. Sax attended then-WSC from 1912 to 1916, earning a bachelors of science in agriculture, and while at WSC he met and married his cytology teacher, Dr. Hally Jolivette. Sax is perhaps most well-known for his research in cytogenetics and the effect of radiation on chromosomes.

67-2

Howard B. Bowen, president of the University of Iowa, delivers commencement address and receives the sixth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award

Howard B. Bowen, president of the University of Iowa, delivers commencement address and receives the sixth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. Bowen received his bachelors of arts in 1929 and masters of arts in 1933 from then-WSC. He served as chancellor of Claremont University, as well as president of the University of Iowa, Grinnell College and the American Association of Higher Education. He researched and wrote extensively on the economics of higher education, and was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to chair his National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress.

ua333b37f40_BowenHoward

Republican campaign finance chairman, biochemist receive the fourth and fifth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards

J. Clifford Folger, Nixon’s 1960 campaign finance chairman and member of the board of directors of IBM, and C. Glenn King, one of the two biochemists to isolate vitamin C, are selected for the fourth and fifth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards. Folger receives his award on June 3, 1963; King on April 11, 1964.

Folger receiving award
Folger receiving award
King receiving his award.
King receiving his award.

Hugh Campbell, WSU record-breaking football pass receiver, is voted MVP of the East-West Shrine game after setting a new catching record

Hugh Campbell, WSU record-breaking football pass receiver, is voted MVP of the East-West Shrine game after setting a new record after catching 10 passes. The East-West Shrine game, sponsored by the Shriners, has been played annually since 1925 and teams are drawn from the two geographic regions east and west, including Canada. Campbell played wide receiver from 1958 to 1962 and during that time he appeared in the Hula Bowl, the College All-Star game, the Coaches All-America game and the aforementioned Shrine Bowl, and while at WSU he was awarded the 1961 W. J. Voit Memorial Trophy as the outstanding football player on the Pacific Coast. After playing for WSU, Campbell went on to play for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders and coach several Canadian and US college and professional football teams.

 

Hugh Campbell

 

 

Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson graduates with a B.A. in economics

Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson graduates with a B.A. in Economics. Gibson attended WSC with the help of his Uncle, Arthur “Buck” Bailey, and was a member of the football team and the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. After graduating from WSC, Gibson studied at the Stanford Graduate School of Business receiving an MBA in 1940 and a Ph.D. in 1950. Gibson was a long-time executive at the Stanford Research Institute from 1947 until 1988. He earned the Legion of Merit in 1946, Commander of the British Empire in 1947, and the Washington State University Distinguished Alumni Award for his role in creating the Washington State University Foundation.

 

22

Marshall Allen Neill, future Washington State Supreme Court justice, graduates with a B.A. in political science.

Marshall Allen Neill, future Justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, graduates with a B.A. in Political Science. In 1938, Neill received his law degree from the University of Idaho. He engaged in private practice in Pullman from 1938 to 1967, and during this time he also served as Pullman City attorney, assistant attorney general for Washington State University, part-time assistant professor at WSU, state representative (1949-1956) and state senator (1956-1967). In 1967 Neill was appointed to Associate Justice in the Supreme Court of Washington, and in 1972, President Nixon appointed him to the prestigious U.S. District Court in Spokane, a post he held until his death on October 6, 1979.

Marshall Neill in 1955, while serving as a special assistant AG for WSC
Marshall Neill in 1955, while serving as a special assistant AG for WSC

William Julius Wilson, Ph.D. receives National Medal of Science

William Julius Wilson, Ph.D. (’66) received the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States.Wilson was a behavioral and social scientists and received the medal  “for his innovative approach to studying urban poverty, his dedication to the proposition that rigorous social science change will improve his fellow American’s lives, and his advocacy of policies which reflect more accurately what we have learned from research and which therefore take a broader point of view with respect to the interactions of race, class, and location.”

Wilson received the award at a White House ceremony April 27, 1999.

Prominent Native American author Sherman Alexie graduates from WSU

Sherman Alexie, a Native American writer, poet, and filmmaker who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, graduated from WSU cum laude with a B.A. in American studies. Some of his best known works are the book of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven and the film Smoke Signals, for which he wrote the screenplay. In 2003, Alexie received the WSU Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2007, Alexie received the National Book Award for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  

 

Sherman Alexie Jr. receiving the Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award
Sherman Alexie Jr. receiving the Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award

WSU alumnus Edward R. Murrow honored by the College of Communication

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.

 

Col. John Fabian becomes the first Cougar astronaut aboard the Challenger II space shuttle

Col. John Fabian (’62) becomes the first Cougar astronaut aboard the Challenger II space shuttle. Fabian made two trips to space and logged over 316 hours, and was the first person to deploy and retrieve a free-flying satellite. Fabian graduated from Pullman High School and then enrolled at WSU, receiving a bachelors of science in mechanical engineering. He later received the 19th Regent Distinguished Alumnus Award.

1-6

 

 

Edward R. Murrow delivers the annual commencement address

WSU alumnus Edward R. Murrow returns to campus and delivers the annual commencement address at Rogers Field. Rogers Field was located where Martin Stadium is today. The introduction was delivered by President C. Clement French who can be seen with Murrow in the first photo. The video seen here is the audio from that address, with a select few photographs from the ceremony overlaid upon it. Murrow died from cancer just three years later in 1965.

Vogel receives the National Medal of Science for his work in wheat breeding

Orville Vogel (left) and President Gerald Ford
Orville Vogel (left) and President Gerald Ford

On October 18, 1976, President Gerald Ford presented the National Medal of Science to WSU Professor Emeritus, Orville Vogel. Vogel helped develop wheat varieties with stronger stalks and higher yield potential, which now grow on five continents. This research launched the “Green Revolution,” a push in agricultural research to help feed the world’s hungry. Vogel worked at WSU from 1931 to 1973, receiving his Ph.D. here in 1939.

Film actor Dolph Lundgren attends WSU for one year

Dolph Lundgren, best known for his action roles in Rocky IV (as Ivan Drago) and The Expendables, spent the 1976-1977 school year at WSU as an exchange student, working on a chemical engineering degree. He was also a member of the Cougar Marching Band. Contrary to some reports, he did not actually graduate from WSU. Instead, he finished his coursework at Sweden’s Royal Academy and the University of Sydney in Australia.

 

Hans "Dolph" Lundgren, page 302, 1977 Chinook
Hans “Dolph” Lundgren, page 302, 1977 Chinook

WSU graduate George Nethercutt elected to Congress

George Nethercutt, elected to Congress in 1994 by unseating then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley, graduated from WSU in 1967 with a B.A. in English. Nethercutt would serve five terms in the House of Representatives and then run unsuccessfully for the Senate against fellow Coug Patty Murray.

Nov. 8, 1994 campaign handout from WSU/USC football game
Nov. 8, 1994 campaign handout distributed at WSU/USC football game

 

 

Timothy Leary, troubled psychologist and counterculture figure of the 1960s, graduates from WSC

Timothy Leary, a troubled psychologist and popular counterculture figure of the 1960s, who coined the phrase “think for yourself and question authority” and was once called “the most dangerous man in America” by Richard Nixon, graduates with a master’s of science in psychology from WSC.  Leary only attends WSC for about a year, moving to Pullman in early 1946, gaining admittance in March of that year, and graduating in June of 1947.  He and his wife Marianne lived in a house at the corner of C Street and Alpha Road, enjoying what one biographer would later call “the only uneventful period of their life together.”

“Father of the atomic submarine” graduates with a degree in chemistry

Phillip Abelson graduates in chemistry and two years later earns his master’s degree in physics from WSC. He is later recognized as the “father of the atomic submarine”, the co-discoverer of neptunium (element 93), and later serves as editor of Science magazine and president of the Carnegie Institution. He is also the first recipient of the WSU Regent’s Distinguished Alumni Award. He is the son of Olaf and Elle Abelson, who first attended WSC in 1905 and built a home where Fulmer Hall now stands.  The Philip M. Abelson Hall was named in his and his wife’s honor in 2002.

 

19