Washington State University women's rugby team members explain the basics of the game. In the 2008-09 season, the Cougs took third in the nation for Division II women's rugby after going undefeated in league play and regionals. Read about their team and more about rugby in Washington State Magazine's Spring 2010 issue: wsm.wsu.edu
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Fifty years ago James F. Short Jr., a young sociologist at Washington State University, was asked to lead a study of Chicago gangs. The resulting groundbreaking analysis in 1956 opened a window into the everyday experience of the Vice Lords, the Egyptian Cobras, the Imperial Chaplains, and the Blackstone Rangers and set the stage for gang research for years to come. In this video, James F. Short, Jr. narrates a slideshow of photos from the 1956 gang study. Read the story "Gangs of Chicago" in the Spring 2010 issue of Washington State Magazine: wsm.wsu.edu
Tags: gangs chicago sociology washington state university wsu professor research james short jim short group process narrated slideshow gang
Can trumpet players improve by changing the position of their feet and body? At Washington State University, honors student Leah Jordan and music professor David Turnbull measured trumpet students' breathing and playing to analyze the difference a change of posture can make. "Anyone who has taken music lessons has probably absorbed enough instructions about posture to feel like a raw recruit at basic training: Stand straight! Head up! Toes forward! Leah Jordan, who is starting her senior year at Washington State University, says not to worry about forcing yourself into the proper position for playing an instrument. In fact, she says youll probably play better if you dont—and she has the hard scientific evidence to prove it." — from "Poised for playing," Washington State Magazine, Fall 2009
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Good friends Gina and Sue graduated from Washington State University in 1978. They tell the story of how they met as freshmen at Kruegel-mcallister Hall and have remained close friends. In fall 2009, WSU history students fanned out around Martin Stadium before some home football games and gathered stories from Cougar alumni about campus life. We call our project "for the record..." -- part of Our Story, an informal, shared history of WSU. Our Story is a project of Washington State Magazine, WSU Department of History, WSU Alumni Association, and WSU Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections division. Read more and share your WSU story at wsm.wsu.edu
Tags: Washington State University alumni alumnus alumna WSU Coug Cougar story memory memories campus life Kruegel-mcallister Hall residence students history stories Washington State Magazine
A time-lapse video of Garfield-Palouse High School students, with support from Washington State University, building an award-winning lift to heft farmers with disabilities into combines. "Sean Neal is good at math, but one bit of geometry he cant master involves moving ten feet up and two feet over. The wheelchair-bound teen isnt able to climb into a combine to help harvest his familys wheat fields. While Neals dad was carrying him up a ladder and helping him into the operators seat, his math teacher at Garfield-Palouse High School was pondering ways to nudge students toward careers in which they could use their number-crunching skills. Jim Stewart thought an engineering design contest might do the trick. A former baseball coach, Stewart knows kids like to compete. Sure enough, his Gar-Pal design team knocked it out of the park. Their Paraplegic Agricultural Lift (PAL), inspired by the Neal familys dilemma, won second place in a national competition." - from "Elevating engineering...
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Strollin' and Trollin': A tour of Ray Troll's Ketchikan, with music unlike anything you've ever heard before. He draws. He paints. He writes songs and—oh lord—he sings them! Hear him for yourself as you tour the world of Ray Troll '81 via an audio slide show produced especially for Washington State Magazine Online. Read more about Ray in the Spring 2007 issue of WSM (plus you can get a free coloring activity!) : wsm.wsu.edu Ray Troll '81 is an all-around artist who paints, draws, and writes songs about fish and evolution. Don't miss his interactive Web site, trollart.com. It has art, history, shopping through his gallery, details about his exhibits, an "evolvovision", and links to Ray's artist friends, science news, and "fishy stuff." You can also find Ray-related information at the on-line Hairy Museum of Natural History, where he is the curator of "Ich-theology." But first, listen to Ray perform one of his latest tunes, "The Devonian Blues," as you view glimpses of Ray's world...
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WSU student Todd Griffiths performing gymnastics atop a stationary, then a cantering, horse. Todd Griffiths, a veterinary student at Washington State University, discovered vaulting in college. Since he was raised around horses and had studied gymnastics in high school, he found the sport of doing acrobatics atop a horse to be a perfect fit. In summer 2006, he joined the US Vaulting Team and competed at the World Equestrian Games in Germany. Last October, he borrowed a horse from a local stable to show us some of his vaulting moves. Watch Todd's gymnastics atop a stationary horse, and then get a taste for what vaulting atop a moving horse is like. If you watch carefully, at the end you'll see the jump that made us all catch our breaths. Read the whole story, "Vaulting ambition," in the Spring 2007 issue of Washington State Magazine: wsm.wsu.edu
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Washington State University architecture professor David Wang talks about the often undirected and chaotic proliferation of architectural styles in today's China. Read more in the Summer 2006 issue of Washington State Magazine: wsm.wsu.edu
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Eugene Thrasher, a trained Washington State University Beach Watcher with more than a thousand volunteer hours under his belt, has been digging and eating clams in Washington for half a century. Thrasher is the guy to ask if you want to learn how to find and dig a clam. Follow him through a clam dig at Penn Cove on Whidbey Island, and then learn about types of clams found in Washington. Finish up with a dose of Northwest icon Ivar Haglund singing "Acres of Clams." You can read more about clams in the Winter 2009 issue of Washington State Magazine.
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See how specimens at Washington State University's Conner Museum are being used to solve puzzles in ecology, evolution, and archaeology. Part of a video series on Washington State University's natural history collection, featured in "Fine Specimens," Washington State Magazine Winter 2008/09 issue. Read more at: wsm.wsu.edu
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