News

Western Washington University’s Joseph Trimble has won the University of Oklahoma 2019 Distinguished Alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences award.

Trimble, a distinguished university professor of Psychology and a research associate at Western’s Center for Cross-Cultural Research, will be honored during University of Oklahoma’s Kaleidoscope Evening on March 8, attended by students, faculty and alumni. He will also be invited to speak briefly on the importance of his educational experience.

Western Reads Announces Fall Events

Christina Keppie has been named director of the Canadian-American Studies program at Western Washington University.

Keppie has been an associate professor of French and Linguistics in Western’s Modern and Classical Languages department since 2008. She is the first Canadian-American Studies director with a background in French studies. She succeeds director David Rossiter, who will return to his faculty position in Western’s Department of Environmental Studies.

WWU Associate Professor of Political Science Shirin Deylami, has been appointed director of Western’s new mentoring program, designed to help new faculty thrive and succeed at Western.

Western Washington University’s Ralph Munro Institute for Civic Education will host the annual Munro Seminar on Oct. 23 and 24; this year’s theme is former Washington Secretary of State, WWU alumnus and former WWU trustee Ralph Munro’s legacy in international affairs.

Programs will highlight Munro’s role in stimulating trade between Washington and the Far East, and his humanitarian work in East Africa.

The keynote speaker will be David Bachman, professor of Political Science at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

Western Washington University Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders Douglas Sladen will present “Adult Onset Hearing Loss: Current Trends and Emerging Technologies” at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 29 in the Bellingham City Council Chambers as part of the WWU College of Humanities and Social Sciences Dean’s Lecture Series.

All lecture series events are free and open to the public.

Jonathan Miran, professor of Liberal Studies at WWU, was appointed to serve as General Editor of the journal "Northeast African Studies" (see http://msupress.org/journals/neas/) for the next five years.

About 1,100 fifth graders from Skagit and Whatcom counties will be visiting Western Washington University on Tuesday, Oct. 16, to see firsthand what a university campus is like. The tour kicks off the 10th year of Compass 2 Campus, a proactive effort that sends trained WWU student mentors into schools in order to get more kids to see themselves as lifelong learners.

The Linguistics Program, the Behavioral Neuroscience Program, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences will host Reyna Gordon, the director of the Vanderbilt University Music Cognition Lab, at 3 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5 in Miller Hall 152. 

The event, titled “Individual differences in language and rhythm skills: a journey from behavior to brain to genetics," is free and open to the public.

Western Washington University was recently ranked 15th in the “25 Best Green Colleges in The United States” list by Collegeconsensus.com, and was the top-ranked institution in the Pacific Northwest.

The Environmental Protection Agency recognizes those ranked on the list as higher education institutions using the largest amount of green power. Ranked institutions also share values such as environmental stewardship, respect for human impact on the planet and reputation for sustainability.

The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Western Washington University is seeking reaccreditation for the Master in Speech-Language Pathology by the Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology (CAA) of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2200 Research Boulevard, #310, Rockville, MD 20850, (800) 498-2071 or (301) 296-5700, or at https://caa.asha.org/.

Derek Moscato, assistant professor of Journalism at Western Washington University, will give a talk entitled “Pipelines and Prairie Protest: How Great Plains Environmentalists Win Hearts and Minds and Change the Media Narrative,” at Western Washington University from 4-5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 17 in the Western Libraries Reading Room (Wilson Library 4th floor Central).

The event is free and open to the public.

WWU Professor of Psychology Jeff Grimm's research lab team recently published an article in the journal Scientific Reports.  The study identified the expression level of DARPP32, a protein that mediates signalling in neurons that appears to be related to neuroplasticity, in 9 brain regions of rats that were responding for a cue previously associated with sugar availability.  Some rats had also been exposed to environmental enrichment (housing with toys and friends), an experience the team had previously documented to reduce motivation to seek and consume sugar. 

Western Washington University plans to test its emergency notification system known as Western Alert at 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 9 and also conduct a campus lockdown drill.

Western Alert is a group of ways to reach students, faculty and staff with important safety information.

Western Washington University Associate Professor of Psychology Jeff Carroll has secured a new funding stream from the CHDI Foundation to assist in his continuing research into the causes and potential treatments for Huntington’s disease, a fatal genetic degenerative brain disorder.