Courtesy of George Mariz | WWU

George Mariz, a professor in Western’s History Department and the director of the Honors Program at WWU, poses in front of College Hall on campus.

Name: George Mariz

Title: Professor of History and director of the Honors Program

Hobbies: Music (classical), architecture, travel and cross-country bicycling

Favorite Restaurant: Busara

Favorite Books: Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” many Shakespearean plays, Greek tragedy, William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” and “The Sound and the Fury” and works by Dostoevsky, Kafka and Austen

Favorite Movie: “Citizen Kane”

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Photo by Matthew Anderson | WWU

Rudi Weiss, a professor of German and linguistics at WWU, is retiring in December after more than 38 years of service to Western. Weiss, who says people often tell him he looks like Albert Einstein and Kurt Vonnegut, attended WWU in the early 1960s on a music scholarship, graduating in 1963 with degrees in music education and German. He returned to his alma mater in 1970 to teach, and he's been here ever since.

[ Editor's note: This article has been corrected to reflect the correct age of Rudi Weiss. ]

by Matthew Anderson | WWU

Rudi Weiss knows that others see him as the stereotypical professor. His hair is long and wild. He’s absentminded and forgetful—every day, almost without fail, he misplaces his keys (ask him sometime; he'll tell you of the time he lost his keys in the snow and the time he locked them inside a sonograph machine). He also has the gift of gab, something he says no professor should be without.

But there’s much more to his legacy at Western than just that, he says. What Weiss really is most proud of in his time at Western is the number of people he’s seen succeed, both students and fellow faculty members.

“I’ve taught thousands and thousands of kids, and that’s really rewarding,” he says. “And then as chair (of the Modern Language Department), being able to hire good faculty members. Watching both students and faculty members succeed has been very rewarding for me.”

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Kate McLean, right, an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at Western Washington University, sits with friend Rebekah Krell at Oyster Dome.

Name: Kate McLean

Title: Assistant professor, psychology

Hobbies: Hiking, cooking, gardening, playing/listening to music, reading fiction

Favorite Book: This is a very hard question, so I will say that my favorite book (in the last year) was “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy.

Favorite Movie: Again, very hard, but “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is always a winner.

Favorite Restaurant: Duarte’s (in Pescadero, Calif.)

Favorite Place in Bellingham: Anywhere with a view of the water and the mountains.

Favorite Thing to Do in Bellingham: Mallard Ice Cream.

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Courtesy of Tara Perry | WWU

On a mission trip in Mexico, Tara Perry, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Western Washington University, helped add a roof to the house of a man named Jose. Here, Perry poses with Jose’s son.

Name: Tara Perry

Title: Assistant professor, Department of Communication

Hobbies: I enjoy spending time with my mother, going for walks with friends, hanging out with my small group, watching movies, scrapbooking, jogging, dancing and communicating with people on a regular basis.

Favorite Movies: “The Sound of Music” and “Grease”

Favorite Restaurant: Mambo Italiano in Fairhaven

Favorite Books: “Savage Inequalities,” by Jonathan Kozol; “Too Busy Not to Pray,” by Bill Hybels; “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff,” by Richard Carlson; and “Black Looks: Race and Representation,” by bell hooks.

Favorite Place in Bellingham: Fairhaven and Boulevard Park

Favorite Thing to Do in Bellingham: Walking in the parks

Favorite Quote: "If you want help, help others. If you want trust, trust others. If you want respect, respect others. That’s how it works." —Dan Zadra; and "You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." —Charles Bruxton

Most Memorable Vacation: Week-long mission trip to Mexico

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Photo by Matthew Anderson | WWU

Randy Senf, who works in the WWU Foundation office at Western, recently retired from the U.S. Navy. In 1998, while serving in the Reserves, he spent time in the Balkans with the Defense Logistics Agency.

While there, Senf met a woman working in a children’s library and later determined to collect books to donate to the library. This June, Senf and his wife went back to that library to visit.

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Courtesy of Michael Karlberg | WWU

Michael Karlberg, an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Western, demonstrates the art of rock balancing on a recent hike in a gorge outside of Ithaca, N.Y.

Name: Michael Karlberg

Title: Associate Professor, Department of Communication

Hobbies: I enjoy playing acoustic finger-style blues guitar, woodworking (including guitar building) and traveling.

Favorite Book: Hmm … that’s a tough one. … I would say it’s a three-way tie between “The Lorax,” “The Sneetches” and “Yertle the Turtle,” all by Dr. Seuss. I rediscovered them when my kids were young. Who knew Dr. Seuss was such a radical, prophetic and insightful social critic?

Favorite Movie: I don’t have a single favorite, but the range of my favorite films would include films such as “Life is Beautiful,” “The Commitments,” “Schindler’s List,” “Bulworth,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Hotel Rwanda,” “Fargo,” “Gandhi,” “American History X,” “Memento” and “Bebette’s Feast.”

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Courtesy of Garth Amundson | WWU

Garth Amundson, an associate professor in Western’s Department of Art, stands at his opening reception at Universidad Latina De America in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico.

Name: Garth Amundson

Title: Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts-Photography

Hobbies: Collecting (I've been using collecting, collating, indexing and classifying as source material for artwork for the last 10 years).

Favorite Book: “Speaking for Vice: Homosexuality in the Art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and the First American Avant-Garde,” by Jonathon Weinberg, Yale Press (I was introduced to this book in a methodologies class in graduate school. It continues to have a huge impact on the direction of my artistic work).

Favorite Movie:

• Historic: Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” (This film informs how I make art and how I teach. Montage editing is critical to still photography).
• Comedy: Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” (The concept of chocolate fudge being good for you still makes me laugh).
• Foreign: Carlos Diegues’ “Bye Bye Brasil” (I saw the premier of this film while I was living in Brazil doing a foreign exchange. It established my appetite for travel).

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Courtesy of Kristen Larson | WWU

Larson poses for a photo while backpacking on the Kepler Track in New Zealand in December 2007.

Name: Kristen Larson

Title: Associate professor of Physics and Astronomy

Hobbies: Gardening and Hardanger (a Norwegian pulled-thread embroidery)

Most memorable vacation: Hiking the Routeburn, Kepler and Milford Tracks in New Zealand in December of 2007

Favorite restaurant: My house when my husband Jeff is cooking

How many years have you been at WWU? I arrived at WWU in 1998 and have been here in my current position since 2002.

How did you get involved in your line of work? I fell in love with physics when I was 13, and I've never looked back. I was looking for a summer job in college, and the first person who said she would take a chance on me was an astronomer. I was hooked! I've been involved in astronomy research ever since.

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Title: Assistant Professor of Elementary Education

Hobbies: Miller enjoys hiking, biking, singing and acting with the Bellingham Theatre Guild and spending time with his 7-month-old daughter, Claire.

Favorite book: “Geek Love,” by Katherine Dunn, which he says is an “entertaining and scary look into the lives of a group of on-the-fringe circus performers.”

Favorite vacation: Miller spent three weeks in northern Minnesota with Outward Bound on a dog-sledding expedition.

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John Rybczyk

Name: John Rybczyk

Title: Associate professor of Environmental Science

Hobbies: Rybczyk owns a number of boats and loves to spend time on the water, and he could not live in the Northwest without skiing. Cooking also is a treasured hobby.

Favorite book: “The Cadillac Desert,” by Marc Reisner, which Rybczyk says is one of the best environmental books he has ever read.

Favorite vacation: The Big Island of Hawaii. Rybczyk also enjoys traveling to the Yucatan Peninsula for the good food and culture.

How he got into environmental science: Growing up in Hawaii, Rybczyk was close to the water, and that exposure spurred his interested in coastal issues and climate change.

Reason he began teaching: Rybczyk got into the university system because he likes to teach and being able to do research. For Rybczyk, the best part about teaching is getting students involved in studying and researching. Environmental Science 101 is one of his favorite classes to teach, and it’s also among the largest on campus. Rybczyk says he likes this class because through it a lot of students find they are interested in science.

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