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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.”

WSC art student, Randall Johnson, creates the first cougar head logo

In the summer of 1936, Randall Johnson, a fine arts student at Washington State College, was hired as a sign painter by Fred Rounds, director of Buildings and Grounds. Johnson’s job was to paint door numbers and names on buildings around campus.

One day, Rounds mentioned to Johnson that the college needed a trademark. After that, Johnson designed the first WSC cougar logo, which appeared on the door of a college truck.

When the college became a university in 1959, President French asked Johnson to revise the logo, changing the “C” to a “U”.

 

 

“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.

 

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Campus dedicates Entrance Arch

The arch, located over the Opal Street entrance to campus, is a gift from the class of 1905. The arch is razed in 1955 and some of the rock is included in the Stadium Way entrance sign.  The rock is maintained through various reworkings of that sign and entrance until 2015, when it is removed entirely.

 

Entrance_Arch_to_Campus