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.
The new Carnegie Classifications ranked WSU as one of 94 public and private research institutions nationwide with very high research activity. This recognition brought attention to WSU research and Ph.D. educational programs.
The College of Business and Economics was renamed the College of Business by the WSU Regents to reflect the impact of business on society and the relocation of the new School of Economic Sciences to the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences.
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.
Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Dr. Irwin “Ernie” Rose received the 35th Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award. A graduate of Spokane’s Lewis and Clark High School, he attended WSU in the mid-1940s and was influenced by Herb Eastlick, a prominent WSU zoology teacher.
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.
A solar home constructed on campus in Pullman by WSU engineering and architecture students was part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C. The home was later moved to a permanent exhibit at Shoreline Community College.
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 WSU College of Veterinary Medicine was granted seven years of continued full accreditation by the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Council on Education. It is the highest level of accreditation any veterinary college can attain.
Frances K. McSweeney, professor of psychology and vice provost for faculty affairs, was honored as the fourth recipient of the 2004 Eminent Faculty Award.
A test developed at WSU was used to diagnose the nation’s first case of “mad cow” disease. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service at WSU and from WSU’s Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology were credited. The USDA chose WSU for one of seven laboratories nationwide to conduct tests for the disease.
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.
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 graduate and sociologist James E. Blackwell received the 31st Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. Blackwell is a leading scholar in the areas of minorities in higher education and social movement in black communities. Blackwell received his Ph.D. in Sociology from WSU in 1959 and worked during the turbulent early 1960s as the president of the San Jose NAACP and as a teacher at San Jose State University. In 1970 the University of Massachusetts hired Blackwell to build its fledgling Department of Sociology and Anthropology at its five-year-old Boston campus where he stayed for 20 years. Blackwell remained passionately dedicated to teaching, not for the sake of knowledge alone, but to help students ” go on to graduate and professional schools and becoming important, contributing citizens.”
WSU graduate and scientist Jack Gorski, a National Academy of Sciences member, received the 30th Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. Gorski was known for his discovery of the estrogen receptor.
At age 102, Dorothy Otto Kennedy, the oldest living graduate of the WSU College of Pharmacy, died in Everett. She earned her degree in 1916 and went on to practice pharmacy in Reardan in eastern Washington and Everett in western Washington.
Built by the Works Progress Administration in 1937 with a knotty pine interior, it was operated as a cooperative house, independent of the university’s housing system. In 1963, fire safety concerns brought an end to its use as a dormitory. WSU purchased it and renovated it into headquarters for an internationally recognized anthropology program, the Center for Northwest Archeology.
The first students recruited to WSU through the College of Education’s Future Teachers of Color program graduated during the 1998 Commencement.
The new $27 million, 100,000-square-foot Engineering, Teaching, and Research Laboratory opened. Adjacent to Dana Hall, the four-story structure was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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.
WSU biochemists Rod Croteau and Linda Randall were elected to the National Academy of Sciences. They joined four other WSU researchers in the academy: C.A. “Bud” Ryan, a biochemist; Jim Cook, a USDA plant pathologist at WSU; John Hirth, a materials scientist; and Dieter H. von Wettstein, a plant geneticist.
WSU officially dedicated the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service. It is named for the former speaker of the house and State of Washington Congress member.
Time magazine named WSU graduate William Julius Wilson, noted sociologist, one of America’s 25 most influential people.
Thrifty PayLess contributed more than $100,000 for computer equipment, software, and student scholarships for the College of Pharmacy.
Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Norman Borlaug, received an honorary doctoral degree from WSU during commencement in 1995. Borlaug and WSU professor, Orville Vogel, are credited with research crucial to the “Green Revolution” in wheat breeding, which has saved an estimated one billion lives in the twentieth century.
John Gorham, internationally renowned veterinarian and WSU faculty member, received the 28th Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. Gorham was the first student to earn a graduate degree from the College of Veterinary Medicine and contributed heavily to the study of feline and canine disease.