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.
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories incorporates in 1982, but marks their official beginning from their first microprocessor relay shipment, in 1984. Today, SEL is the largest private employer in Pullman. Schweitzer, class of 1977, would receive the Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2014.
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.
During World War II, WSU investigators demonstrated the first successful establishment in the US of radio-telephone communication by micro-waves. WSU staffers, working with the Army Air Forces, also found a solution for the important problem of aircraft radio static.
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
In early 1988, WSU Library archivists revealed that more than 357 books and 2,500 manuscripts, worth $500,000 total, were missing from the rare artifacts collection. Two years later, the FBI arrested the book thief, Stephen Blumberg, at his home in Iowa and discovered a cache of 16,000 rare books and manuscripts he had stolen from universities all over the country. Officials estimated the value at the time to be between $25 and $35 million. The book thief spent four and a half years in prison and was released on parole despite a WSU librarian and police officer arguing Blumberg would reoffend if released.
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.
Jason Gesser broke several Cougar football records during his time at WSU. He was the only player to be selected as team captain three times, and the only quarterback to have back-to-back double-digit win seasons. The “winningest quarterback in WSU history” played briefly in the NFL, CFL, and AFL, then coached for the Idaho Vandals and the Wyoming Cowboys, and in 2014 returned to WSU as an analyst for the football radio broadcast team.
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 Samuel H. Smith Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE), a $32 million, five-story, 94,000 square-foot building, opened in early 2002 as a hub for student-centered and active learning. The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, the WSU Writing Program, General Education Program, and the Student Computing Services Lab are all housed in the building along with 20 classrooms of various sizes. The building was named for WSU’s eighth President, Samuel H. Smith, who served from 1989-2000.
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.
The WSU boxing program, started by coach Issac “Ike” Deeter in 1932, ended after the 1959-1960 school year. The NCAA closed all college programs in 1961 following a death at an NCAA tournament a year earlier. A shortage of opponents in the west coast also spelled doom for the boxing program as transportation costs continued to rise.
Deeter, a 1929 WSC alumnus, coached for 24 years, directing the Cougars to eight Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) titles, produced 53 PCC champions, and his fighters won 15 individual NCAA titles. Deeter continued to teach physical education classes at WSU until his retirement in 1967.
Dietz arrives on campus to take over the reins of a football program that hasn’t compiled a winning record in five seasons. He transforms the squad into a juggernaut that finishes 7-0 and holds opponents to a total of 10 points for the season. The historic year culminates with a WSC blanking of Brown, 14-0, in the 1916 Rose Bowl.
Dietz comes west after attending and then serving as assistant coach at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a teammate of the immortal Jim Thorpe and was coached by Glenn “Pop” Warner, considered one of the game’s greatest coaches and innovators.
Dietz guides WSC’s gridiron fortunes for 3 years. His teams post a 17-2-1 record with 15 shutouts. After leaving Pullman, Dietz goes on to a successful coaching career at Mare Island, Purdue, Louisiana Tech, Wyoming, Stanford, Haskell, the NFL’s Boston Redskins, Temple, and Albright College. Also an accomplished artist, he contributes sketches for the Walt Disney film Bambi.
The National Football Foundation selects Dietz for the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012.
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.
For the third consecutive year WSU Pullman is the safest campus among the six public universities and colleges in the state of Washington, according to reports from StateUniversity.com.
In the aftermath of a devastating January earthquake in Haiti, WSU students raise funds in a variety of ways to support the people impacted during the natural disaster.
Chris Bruce, the director for Washington State University’s museum of art, travels to Seattle in late February to help sort out the disposition of the one of the most significant art donations in Washington State history – that of Safeco Insurance’s gift of more than 800 artworks.
The Princeton Review’s Guide to 286 Green Colleges recognizes reduced water consumption on the WSU campus and water conservation efforts. In another announcement, WSU is ranked 10th among national universities for its development in clean technology by CleanTech.com, a prominent sustainability organization.
Former White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas and CBS News Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer receive the Edward R. Murrow Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism and in Broadcast Journalism, respectively, during the WSU Edward R. Murrow Symposium.
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.
