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.
Roger O. McClellan, DVM, an expert in toxicology and human health risk analysis, was honored as the 39th recipient of the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award.
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.
In December, Paul Wulff, WSU graduate and former Cougar football player, is named WSU football coach following eight years as head coach at Eastern Washington University. He succeeds Bill Doba who was at WSU for 19 years, the last five as head coach. In late November, Doba’s coaching career concluded in Seattle in the 100th Apple Cup football game where WSU defeated the University of Washington Huskies, 42-35.
Johnnetta Cole, former WSU faculty member and administrator and President Emerita of Spelman College in Atlanta and Bennett College in North Carolina, received an honorary doctoral degree from WSU at fall commencement on December 6.
In 2007, WSU installed and tested outdoor warning sirens and public address units on the Pullman campus. The system was created to alert and provide information to students, faculty, and staff in the event of a campus-wide emergency.
Renovations on the Compton Union Building and Martin Stadium continued on the WSU Pullman campus. The nine-hole WSU Golf Course was also renovated into an 18-hole championship course and renamed WSU’s Palouse Ridge Golf Club. The renovations were completed and both the CUB and Martin Stadium were open for the fall semester in 2008.
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.
Jay Starratt became dean of the WSU Libraries. He had been associate vice chancellor for information technology and dean of library and information services at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.
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.
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.
Phyllis J. Campbell, a member of the class of 1973 with a B.A. in business administration and the president and CEO of the Seattle Foundation, was honored as the 36th recipient of the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award.
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.
The WSU women’s rowing team took fourth place at the 2006 NCAA Championships in May in New Jersey. In the Cougars’ best finish ever at the NCAA level, the varsity eight and varsity four each finished fourth. Earlier that year, the Cougars finished second overall at the Pac-10 Championships in California. Jane LaRiviere of WSU was named “Coach of the Year” for Pacific-10 Women’s Rowing and for the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association West Region.
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.
During the 2005-06 year, the WSU Cougars had a football and men’s basketball “sweep” of rival University of Washington Huskies. In fall 2005, WSU beat the UW in the annual Apple Cup football game. In the winter of 2006, the Cougars beat the Huskies in both basketball games. The last time the Cougars had such an academic year “sweep” of the Huskies was 1968-69.
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.
“Good Night, and Good Luck,” a new motion picture, depicted WSU alumnus and broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow taking on U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. Murrow’s legacy continues in the WSU Edward R. Murrow College of Communication and the Murrow Symposium.
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.
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.
