The Regents 16th, 17th, and 18th Distinguished Alumnus Awards are respectively awarded to Mel Hein, the “greatest all-around player the game of football has seen;” Robert Stevenson, the former head of Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co.; and world-renowned chemist Jacob Bigeleisen.
Robert Redford Institute for Resource Management announced at WSU and University of Idaho. Named for the famous actor, the IRM opened in fall of 1982 and brought together environmentalists and industrialists to resolve conflicts and promote sustainable development.
WSU dedicates the Warren G. Magnuson Nursing Education Building, home to Intercollegiate Center for Nursing Education, on Aug. 27. The building, located in Spokane, is named for State of Washington U.S. Senator.
Cooper Publications Building is the first building named to honor a classified staff member, Caroline Cooper. Cooper was Director of Duplicating and Mailing for 39 years.
Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson, Charles Schroeder, and Marshall Neill receive the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards.
The tenth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award goes to ABC television sportscaster, Keith Jackson.
Orville Vogel, developer of the world’s most productive wheat strains, receives Regents Ninth Distinguished Alumnus Award. Vogel received his Ph.D. at WSU in 1939 and stayed as faculty for several decades. His work helped start the “Green Revolution” in agriculture. He led the research team that produced the first commercially successful semi-dwarf wheats and was known for his inventions of scientific research equipment. He received the National Medal of Science, presented by President Ford in 1975, as well as the State of Washington Medal of Merit in 1987.
Geologist Roald Fryxell examines lunar rocks in Houston after all six manned moon landings. Fryxell was initially asked simply to present to the lunar teams on core-sample analysis, but so impressed NASA that he was asked to join the analysis team. A leader in the field of geoarchaeology, Fryxell was the co-principal investigator with Dr. Richard Daugherty of the Marmes Rockshelter site and designed the apparatus used for collecting the lunar rocks. A lunar crater is named Fryxell in his honor.
Matsuyo Yamamoto is presented with Regents Eighth Distinguished Alumnus Award and is the first woman honored. After receiving her degree in home economics in 1937 at then Washington State College, Yamamoto returned to Japan where she pioneered home economics extension programs, eventually overseeing a staff of 3,000 home advisors that served the rural populations of Japan and other Asian countries. The College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Studies offers the Matsuyo Yamamoto Endowed Scholarship in her honor.
Life magazine features WSU animal science reproduction research. S.E. Hafez, animal physiologist as WSU, is the primary researcher in planet colonization.
Howard B. Bowen, president of the University of Iowa, delivers commencement address and receives the sixth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award. Bowen received his bachelors of arts in 1929 and masters of arts in 1933 from then-WSC. He served as chancellor of Claremont University, as well as president of the University of Iowa, Grinnell College and the American Association of Higher Education. He researched and wrote extensively on the economics of higher education, and was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to chair his National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress.
Famed “Agony Hall” (Music Conservatory) is torn down to make way for the new Kimbrough Music Building.
J. Clifford Folger, Nixon’s 1960 campaign finance chairman and member of the board of directors of IBM, and C. Glenn King, one of the two biochemists to isolate vitamin C, are selected for the fourth and fifth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards. Folger receives his award on June 3, 1963; King on April 11, 1964.
History professor Herbert Wood gives the first WSC faculty member-led “Invited Address,” known today as the Distinguished Faculty Address.
Arthur Drucker, Dean of the School of Mines and Geology, donates the Minnie Barstow Drucker Oriental Art Collection, valued then at $50,000. The gift is presented in the memory of his late wife. Eight years earlier, the Druckers donated a collection of over two hundred rare books on Asia to the WSC library. Arthur Drucker came to Pullman in 1926 and was heavily involved in mining research during his tenure at WSC, retiring in 1945.
Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson graduates with a B.A. in Economics. Gibson attended WSC with the help of his Uncle, Arthur “Buck” Bailey, and was a member of the football team and the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. After graduating from WSC, Gibson studied at the Stanford Graduate School of Business receiving an MBA in 1940 and a Ph.D. in 1950. Gibson was a long-time executive at the Stanford Research Institute from 1947 until 1988. He earned the Legion of Merit in 1946, Commander of the British Empire in 1947, and the Washington State University Distinguished Alumni Award for his role in creating the Washington State University Foundation.
The football stadium at Rogers Field gets a complete renovation. The new horseshoe-shaped structure is named for former Washington State Governor, John R. Rogers. The wood bleachers supported by concrete pilings seat 23,500 fans.
During spring break of 1970, a fire destroyed the wood stands. The Cougars were forced to play off-campus for two years while the university built Martin Stadium.
On the air, the West Coast radio broadcast highlights the 45th Founder’s Day. The Alumni Association sponsored the occasion.
A famous national debate almost happens between Claudius O. Johnson, chair of the WSC Political Science Department and humorist / actor Will Rogers. Johnson gives a speech for the Pullman PTA in December of 1932, and in the course of the evening cautions people against accepting Rogers’ expertise on foreign policy issues. Some of his comments are soon reprinted in the Pullman Herald, and several people forward copies of the article to Rogers. The comedian sends a telegram back to the Pullman Herald, threatening to come up and debate Johnson. The offer is gleefully accepted, and for many months thereafter the proposed debate is both bandied about in the press and discussed in telegrams between Johnson and Rogers. Will Rogers describes the debate as “Ignorance vs. Knowledge – and I’m going to be Ignorance.”
The two correspond for a few months thereafter, but their final exchange comes in March of 1933. Though the proposed debate gains a public life of its own, it never comes about. The death of Rogers and Wiley Post in a 1935 Alaskan plane crash forever ends the possibility, though the passage of time would turn this almost into an urban legend, reframing it with Rogers fatally canceling the debate at the last moment in favor of the Alaska trip.
Though originally dedicated on June 9, 1909, a 1916 naming ceremony honors the presidential contributions of E.A. Bryan, who led the college from 1893 to 1915. Designed by respected Spokane architect J. K. Dow and built in 1908 and 1909, the highly eclectic building was is not dominated by a single architectural style. The broad bracketed eaves and the round arched windows link it with the Italianate Style. The tall clock tower is related to the Italian Campanile. The elaborate bracketing under the eaves may have resulted from an oriental inspiration.
U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” ranks the WSU writing program amongst the best for the 9th time in ten years.
WSU’s Anjan Bose, an international expert in the power grid control industry, and Jim Asay, an expert in shock-wave research and high-pressure science, join The National Academy of Engineering. Bose is internationally known for his development of training simulators and computational tools for reliable power-system operation, and for contributions to education and research on power systems.
A three-quarter size replica of WSU’s historic entryway arch is installed near the original’s location.
William Julius Wilson, Ph.D. (’66) received the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States.Wilson was a behavioral and social scientists and received the medal “for his innovative approach to studying urban poverty, his dedication to the proposition that rigorous social science change will improve his fellow American’s lives, and his advocacy of policies which reflect more accurately what we have learned from research and which therefore take a broader point of view with respect to the interactions of race, class, and location.”
Wilson received the award at a White House ceremony April 27, 1999.
Money magazine ranks WSU among the top 15 best value four-year undergraduate universities in the West.
WSU wins a friendly fundraising competition with the University of Washington. As a result, Seattle’s Space Needle roof got a crimson and gray paint job.
WSU began construction of the $17 million Student Services building, named for benefactors Phil and June Lighty, in 1994. The Lightys established one of WSU’s largest scholarship endowments for students with demonstrated leadership potential.
The WSU Veterans Memorial is dedicated on Veterans Day in 1993, honoring all alumni, faculty, and staff who died during 19th and 20th century conflicts. In 1996, the class of 1949, with help from former registrar James Quann, began a campaign to complete the memorial. It was rededicated on October 7, 2000.
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.
R. James Cook, USDA plant pathologist and WSU professor, was elected into membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
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.
The Alumni Centre opens in the name of benefactors Jack and Ann Lewis. It was part of a $50 million construction initiative on the Pullman campus, which included the Chemistry Building and the Food Science and Human Nutrition Building.
In 1985, Jack and Ann Lewis pledged $1 million toward the new facility. In 1991, the Lewis Alumni Centre dedicates a library in honor of Phillip and June Lighty, the Past President’s Room in honor of Henry and Anna Magnuson Reaugh, and the Reception Gallery for Weldon “Hoot” Gibson. In 1994, the Lewis Alumni Center completes its fifth year of operation and hosts 150,000 visitors and 1,500 meetings.
John Stickney, a troubled youth and ex-boyfriend of WSU student Lisa Clark, detonated a bomb on the fourth floor of Streit-Perham Hall, killing himself and wounding two policemen. Stickney, a high school dropout, was employed by Industrial Rock Products as a powder man. He drove from his home in Mercer Island to attempt a reconciliation with Clark. Stickney twice attempted to talk with Clark at her dorm room and then detonated the bomb after a failed attempt to force entry.
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.
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.
WSU created a major exhibit featuring Albrook Hydraulic Laboratory work, titled “Waterworld,” for the Spokane World’s Fair/Expo ’74.
The recently constructed Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum opened for hosting the 1973 commencement ceremonies. In previous years, commencement ceremonies had been held either in Bohler Gym or, weather permitting, at Rogers Field (now Martin Stadium).
