Tuition
Student Regent Arliegh Cayanan was the only regent who opposed the tuition increase.
The tuition increase aims to provide the university with additional funding in the form of tuition waivers to support students’ mental health and “basic needs,” according to the Board of Regents agenda.
Mary Jo Gonzales, WSU vice president of Student Affairs, said university general health and mental health services vary depending on campus, but they hope to increase access to resources.
WSU is trying to pursue a way to create equity within the system. The university has been working on a system-wide effort to provide students with telehealth and telemental health services, Gonzales said.
May 6, 2021
Seniors in landscape architecture and interior design researched tiny homes communities and drafted a model ordinance that would allow and regulate them in Lewiston.
By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
A Washington State University student project might someday lead to more affordable housing options for residents in Lewiston, Idaho.
Seniors in landscape architecture and interior design researched tiny homes communities and drafted a model ordinance that would allow and regulate them in Lewiston. They recently presented their ideas to city planners and community members.
“Tiny homes provide options for the unhoused and housing insecure people within the community,” said Jesus Gomez, a senior in landscape architecture who worked on the project. “We took it as a possibility of coming together as a class and trying to develop new ways and solutions to provide ideas in a time when housing is a crisis.”
May 4, 2021
By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
PULLMAN, Wash. Professor Arda Gozen looks to a future someday in which doctors can hit a button to print out a scaffold on their 3D printers and create custom-made replacement skin, cartilage, or other tissue for their patients.
Gozen, George and Joan Berry Associate Professor in the Washington State University School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and a team of researchers have developed a unique scaffolding material for engineered tissues that can be fine-tuned for the tricky business of growing natural tissue. They report on their research in the journal,
April 28, 2021
By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
Washington State University researchers have shown the fundamental mechanisms that allow tiny pieces of plastic bags and foam packaging at the nanoscale to move through the environment.
The researchers found that a silica surface such as sand has little effect on slowing down the movement of the plastics, but that natural organic matter resulting from decomposition of plant and animal remains can either temporarily or permanently trap the nanoscale plastic particles, depending on the type of plastics.
The work, published in the journal Water Research, could help researchers develop better ways to filter out and clean up pervasive plastics from the environment. The researchers include Indranil Chowdhury, assistant professor in WSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with Mehnaz Shams and Iftaykhairul Alam, recent graduates of the civil engineering program.
April 23, 2021
By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
When Philip Whitener first began dreaming of a high-speed, fuel efficient ferry for the Puget Sound region, the first moon landing was a few years away.
After his retirement as a Boeing engineer decades later, he designed his dream, the Dragonfly, and then built and tested a plywood prototype in the 1990s and early 2000s.
At that time, the current seniors in WSU’s mechanical engineering program at Olympic College at Bremerton were still in grade school.
Whitener died last year at 99 years old, but a few days before he died, he handed the Dragonfly and several of his other projects and patents to students, hoping they will improve on his ideas while learning to look even further into the future. WSU students are getting the chance to finish his dreams.