Image of the Week

Image of the day (May 21, 2008)

Photo by Matthew Anderson | WWU

Anybody know where this is? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail message to fast@wwu.edu.

The first person to correctly identify the setting for this photo wins a pat on the back.

Image of the day (May 9, 2008)

Photo by Dave Wheeler | WWU

The photo of the day was taken by Dave Wheeler, an intern in the Office of University Communications.

Anybody know where this is? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail message to fast@wwu.edu.

The first person to correctly identify the setting for this photo wins a pat on the back.

Image of the day (May 6, 2008)

Photo by Dave Wheeler | WWU

The photo of the day was taken by Dave Wheeler, an intern in the Office of University Communications.

Anybody know where this is? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail message to fast@wwu.edu.

The first person to correctly identify the setting for this photo wins a pat on the back.

Image of the day (May 2, 2008)

Photo by Dave Wheeler | WWU

The photo of the day was taken by Dave Wheeler, an intern in the Office of University Communications.

Anybody know where this is? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail message to fast@wwu.edu.

The first person to correctly identify the setting for this photo wins a pat on the back.

Staff band performs in Old Main Theater

photo by Matthew Anderson | WWU

Fritz and the Freeloaders perform during a noon concert April 8 in the Old Main Theater. From left: Linda Luttrell (Facilities Management), Gary McKinney (Assessment), Chris Powell (Academic Technology) and Nathan Matson.

Fritz and the Freeloaders, three members of which are Western Washington University staff members, played a noon concert in the Old Main Theater on the WWU campus April 8.

Band frontman Gary McKinney said he hopes the concert is just the first in a series of lunchtime concerts by bands containing members who are WWU faculty or staff members. He hopes to get at least one act to perform each month.

Read this story for more information.

Professor named 'Outstanding Educator'

photo by Matthew Anderson | WWU

Walter Schwede, a professor of music at Western Washington University, points out a trouble spot in a piece he’s playing with freshman art major Angela Evans during a recent lesson in Schwede’s office in the Performing Arts Center. Schwede recently was named Educator of the Year for 2008 by the Washington chapter of the American String Teachers Association. Like Evans, some of Schwede’s students aren’t music majors but love to play anyway. “It’s unusual to have as a non-music major somebody with her skill level and background,” Schwede said.

To read this story, click here.

Glacier National Park

Photo by John Harris | WWU

John Harris, an assistant professor of journalism at Western Washington University, made this image of a boat on Lake McDonald in Montana's Glacier National Park.

North Cascades butterfly survey

Photo by Susie Imholt

Western Washington University faculty member John McLaughlin has received a $45,000 grant from the National Park Service to conduct a butterfly census of the North Cascades National Park and the Mount Rainier National Park over the next two years.

McLaughlin, an associate professor of Environmental Science at WWU's Huxley College of the Environment, said a species inventory is especially important now because butterflies are an important indicator of climate change. They are extremely sensitive to dips or changes in the climate, he said, meaning that abnormally high temperatures or low snowpack levels can cause extinction in certain areas.

For more photos from this project, visit the collection in the FAST Online Image Gallery.

WWU professor researching how climate change affects Bering Sea fishery

Courtesy of David Shull | WWU
The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy sits among hundreds of ice floes in the Bering Sea. WWU’s David Shull, an assistant professor of Environmental Science at Huxley College of the Environment, is doing research on how climate change affects the fishing industry in the area.

The Bering Sea produces a catch worth $1 billion annually--half of all the seafood taken in the United States each year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Western Washington University faculty member David Shull, an assistant professor of Environmental Science at WWU's Huxley College of the Environment, is researching how climate change and global warming are affecting the prodigious sea.

[...] Read more!

Climate data gleaned from world's longest-lived organisms

A group of researchers is turning to the world's longest-lived organisms--the bristlecone pine--for signs of how the world's climate has changed in the past.

Because of the trees' longevity, core samples taken from them are extremely useful in reconstructing the temperature and climate data for periods long before modern data began to be tabulated. A team of paleoclimatologists from the University of Arizona, along with a Western Washington University professor and some WWU undergraduate students, is studying the trees in their natural habitat--high atop California's White Mountains at roughly 11,000 feet above sea level.

For more photos, please visit the FAST Online Image Gallery.

Decorating is a yearly holiday affair for Lundquist

Every year, Pat Lundquist, the assistant to the dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Western, puts up and takes down five beautifully laden Christmas trees in her Bellingham home.

Along with volunteers Serena Viens, Hayley Krogh, Amy Martin and Jane Fraser, she finished the last of the trees this past Saturday.

For more photos, visit http://onlinefast.org/v4/index.php?blog=12.

Huxley's Jim Helfield researching fish-habitat restoration in Sweden

WWU assistant professor James Helfield is conducting research on reversing the environmental damage to fish habitats caused by years of intensive logging in Sweden. Helfield began working on the project on the Vindel and Pite rivers in Northern Sweden in 2002 as a postdoctoral researcher. He left Sweden in June 2005 to join the faculty at WWU’s Huxley College of the Environment, but has continued to crunch the data obtained by more than two years of field work. He will return to Sweden in September 2008 to continue the project.

[...] Read more!

WWU Students work with HIV/AIDS patients in Kenya

Last spring, when Community Health majors Jessica Bell and Casey Henson were looking at options for their senior internships, they knew they wanted to choose projects where they would work firsthand with people in need – and placing themselves squarely in the middle of East Africa’s HIV/AIDS pandemic certainly fulfilled that goal. For more photos of the WWU graduates' work in Kenya, visit the FAST Online Image Gallery.

Doug Clark conducts ice-core research project on Mount Waddington

WWU geology professor Doug Clark's base camp sits near the impressive Combatant Col between Mount Waddington and Mount Combatant in British Columbia's Coast Range. Clark is conducting research on a 600-foot-thick sheet of ice in the Canadian mountains, hoping to glean centuries of climate data from seasonal deposits left year after year in the strata of the ice. For more photos of Clark's trip to Mount Waddington, visit the FAST Online Image Gallery.

Photo by Doug Clark

Jason Morris designs cargo bike for use in Uganda

Industrial Design assistant professor Jason Morris spent three weeks in Uganda last summer testing a prototype of a bicycle he had developed for use as a sort of taxicab in that country. Morris stayed in Uganda for three weeks, helping lead clinics on bike repair, filming a bicycle-safety video and meeting with faculty at Kampala’s Kyambogo University who hope to start the country’s first program in Industrial Design. For more photos of Morris' work in Uganda, visit the FAST Online Image Gallery.

President Morse, trustees tour AIC site

President Karen W. Morse talks with Western staff members Scott Slagle, Dale Krause and Don White after a recent tour of the University's Academic Instructional Facility, now under construction on south campus, by the Board of Trustees.

Photo by Amy Fields

Image of the week: Alaskan cottongrass

For the past three summers, WWU Assistant Professor of Biology Eric DeChaine has researched the impact of historic climate change on plant species in order to better understand how the current changing climate patterns will affect biodiversity. DeChaine's research involves paddling down some of Alaska's wildest rivers, from the mountains to the ice-choked Arctic sea, collecting specimens as he goes. More photos from his three Alaska transects are available here. Fore more on DeChaine's research, see the story here.

ALG recipient Tim Werwie and friends; Guinea, West Africa

ALG recipient Tim Werwie hears a concert; Guinea, West Africa

Adventure Learning Grant Recipient Tim Werwie hitches a ride in Guinea, West Africa