WSU opened its new $38 million Veterinary Teaching Hospital. In 2007, the Veterinary Medical Sciences program was ranked among the top three nationally for scholarly productivity, according to Scholarly Productivity Index. On Sept. 9 the hospital made history when an 80-year-old woman became the first human patient to use the hospital’s magnetic resonance imaging unit. Under a cooperative agreement, the vet hospital provides imaging services for human patients.
Morty the Moose, a WSU research animal, was featured in the opening credits of television’s “Northern Exposure.” In 1994, Morty died of an illness linked to a mineral deficiency.
Morty the Moose and WSU Zoology professor Charlie Robbins
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.
In 1987, the State Higher Education Coordinating Board asked WSU to increase access to higher education in the Tri-Cities, Vancouver, and Spokane. On August 24, WSU offered its first three undergraduate courses in Vancouver and in 1989, the three branch campuses officially open. The branch campuses serve more than 6,000 students a year.
On March 7, 1985, the Board of Regents selected Samuel H. Smith to serve as the eighth president of Washington State University. He took office on July 1, leaving his position as the dean of the College of Agriculture and director of both the Cooperative Extension Service and Agricultural Experiment Station at Pennsylvania State University.
President Smith’s administration is best known for the establishment of the WSU branch campuses in Spokane, Tri-Cities, and Vancouver in 1989. In 1997 Smith chaired the NCAA Presidents Commission, the major governing body for college intercollegiate athletics. Smith served as president until January 8, 2000.
The Samuel H. Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, also known as the CUE, was named in his honor.
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.
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.
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.
WSU signs a pact with the Kingdom of Jordan to provide educational services. A team of twelve staff members (all but one from Pullman) traveled to Jordan to assist the creation of animal science, plant pathology, irrigation, agricultural marketing, and other programs, working with Jordanian students and faculty.
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 distributed at WSU/USC football game
KWSC-TV went on the air for the first time under the direction of Cal Watson. Though the university was already WSU, KWSC did not become KWSU until March 1, 1969.
The Regents adopted a Ph.D. in American Studies, an interdisciplinary degree within the Departments of History and English, for the 1961-1962 school year. It was the first doctoral program in American Studies in the Pacific Northwest and by 1975 it was only one of six programs west of the Mississippi.
J.W. Kalkus, superintendent of the college’s Puyallup Research Center, reported that “one new berry plant developed at the station has added $15 million to the state’s wealth during the last 10 years.”
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.”
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”.
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.
The one story brick structure (located where the Terrell Library now sits) houses agricultural and biology laboratories and a museum. The facility is absorbed as part of a new gymnasium, later known as the Temporary Union Building, or TUB, in 1901.
In 1969, the program that is today known as the WSU College of Nursing accepted its first class of 37 students. The WSU campus is rife with Vietnam war protests and student unrest.
In 1962, WSU archeologists Richard Daugherty and Roald Fryxell began excavating the Marmes Rockshelter, near where the Snake and Palouse rivers meet. During the excavation, they found what was then the oldest human remains in the western hemisphere at approximately 12,000 years old.
The site was scheduled to be flooded during the construction of the Lower Monumental Dam, but thanks to the discovery President Lyndon Johnson authorized the construction of a coffer dam to protect it. Unfortunately, in 1969, the site was flooded anyway because of leaks under the dam. It had only been partially excavated.
In September 1953, Dean S. Town Stephenson and a dozen science colleagues began planning to acquire a low-grade nuclear reactor for research. They received a $300,000 grant to construct a building to hold a swimming pool type reactor. In 1957 the Atomic Energy Commission gave $105,000 to purchase the equipment. In 1961, the WSU nuclear research program completes its first chain reaction.
The Honors Program is established under Sidney Hacker, professor of mathematics. In 2001, a grand opening was held for Honors Hall (formerly White Hall), the new home of the nationally-acclaimed WSU Honors College.
Soon after Pearl Harbor is attacked, the college began training soldiers to meet the challenges of World War II. Aviation, Japanese language, signal corps, radio, and gunnery are taught under government contract.
He earns a degree in degree in speech while immersing himself in the campus culture during his four years in Pullman. Among his activities: president of the student body, actor in school plays, four-year participant in ROTC, debate team leader, member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, and president of the National Student Federation.
After college, Murrow works as a journalist in Europe during WW II, helps pioneer television news, and produces a series of reports that help lead to a censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Murrow was highly respected by journalists of his generation and praised for his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.
Edward R. Murrow (at right) walking from Pullman to Moscow in 1927.
Murrow and his Kappa Sigma brothers at Washington State College.
La Verne Almon Barnes of Opportunity, Washington, receives WSC’s first Ph.D. He writes a dissertation titled Studies in Local Immunity and receives his doctorate was in bacteriology. Barnes earned his bachelor’s and master’s, also in bacteriology, at Washington State.
The building opens with “all the latest in equipment.” Later it’s renamed White Hall in honor of Mary Elmina White, who served 33 years as a WSC cooperative extension leader. In 2000, White Hall is remodeled to include a 117-student, 67-room dormitory area for Honors Program students. White Hall is renamed Honors Hall in fall semester 2001.
The building covers a part of one of the university’s most significant open spaces, the original walk to Thompson Hall (former Old Administration Building) from Reaney Park. The brick building mass is symmetrically balanced, making a cross formation with the central section protruding on the east/west axis. The overall style of the building is Georgian Revival, which creates an elegant architectural statement.
N.J. Aiken, head of the WSC vocational school and professor of business administration, launches the placement service. During the Great Depression, N.J. is commonly known as “No Job” Aiken.
The radio station begins broadcasting from the Mechanic Arts Building, thanks to financial support from the Agricultural Extension Service, the Associated Students, and the Pullman Chamber of Commerce.
Known today as KWSU, the station’s founding goals remain in place:
To provide information and cultural service to a wide area of population
To draw on the expertise of the faculty and present their findings
To provide a vehicle for further research in broadcasting
To train young people in the use, operation, and “human service” of radio
The station is one of the oldest and largest university-owned radio stations in the country.
Homer Dana with the first of four microphones that KFAE (later KWSC and KWSU) used. Dana, along with Hubert Carpenter, founded KFAE in 1922.
Two-thirds of the student body has disappeared from campus following the country’s entry into World War I in April 1917. More than 700 students and alumni are in the military or naval service or working to produce food and war materials for American military forces, allies, and the home front.
The federal government and the college sign a contract in May which converts considerable portions of the campus and educational facilities to military instruction. The Army begins sending units of 300 recruits to the campus for training every 2 months, beginning June 15. Shortly after the Armistice ending the war is signed on November 11, the Army cancels the contract.
Pull-Men was the newspaper of the student military during WW I.
In June 1917, President Holland announces that the institution will reorganize into 5 colleges (Agriculture, Mechanical Arts and Engineering, Science and Arts, Veterinary Science, and Home Economics) and 4 schools (Mines, Education, Pharmacy, and Music and Applied Design), with deans as administrative heads. The College of Home Economics is to be one of the first of its kind in the nation. However, World War I interrupts these plans, delaying implementation of the new structure to the 1919-1920 school year.
The act links cooperative extension services to land-grant universities. The program is designed to keep citizens informed about developments in agriculture, home economics, public policy, economic development, and other subjects.
The decision ends a program implemented not long after WSC’s founding to offer high school-level coursework to teenagers in the era before high schools became commonplace in Washington. The primary non-college program began as the Preparatory School, was retitled the Elementary School in 1905, and later became the Department of Elementary Science. Several other programs offering pre-college level coursework existed side-by-side with their college-level counterparts, including ones in agriculture, artisanship, and business.
Program enrollment slowly decreased as the number of high schools in the state grew (when WSC opened the only high schools that existed were in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane). Following a brief increase in enrollment following WW I, enrollment decreased steadily until the program was discontinued after the 1925-26 academic year.
Van Doren Hall is built to house the domestic economy department. The building name honors Nancy Van Doren, an English instructor and the campus librarian.
The coursework is introduced with the arrival of Alfred A. Cleveland, assistant professor of psychology. The 1909-1911 course catalog describes the purpose of the education program as training physical science teachers who will further the application of science to industrial pursuits.
The Board of Regents grants the president 3 months of sick leave to recover. He returns to campus feeling refreshed from his first extended vacation since arriving in Pullman in 1893. The incident forces Bryan to realize he needs to share major administrative responsibilities, so he appoints faculty member O.L. Waller as his first vice president.
