Category: Science

Bob Quinn, a geography professor with a passion for the weather, died on Oct. 10. In 1967, Robert “Bob” Quinn, a newly minted assistant professor of geography at Eastern Washington State College, arrived in Cheney to find himself confronted by the coldest, snowiest winter in the city’s recorded history. His new colleagues no doubt thought…

Eastern students take on the cyber crooks.   A ransomware attack shuts down Colonial Pipeline, largest fuel supplier to the East Coast; a cryptocurrency heist drains $600 million from the accounts of the PolyNetwork blockchain site; a data breach exposes the personal information of 50 million T-Mobile account holders: These brazen cyberattacks, all pulled off…

  Once they were migrant and seasonal farm workers. Soon they’ll launch careers in health care.   CAMP, the College Assistance Migrant Program, is a federally funded program designed to help young people from migrant and seasonal farm worker backgrounds enroll in — and succeed at — the nation’s colleges and universities. Eastern’s program, led…

Along with his students, an EWU chemist takes his place among the quantum vanguard. Few recent scientific developments are as promising to contemplate, or as maddeningly difficult to comprehend, as quantum computing — a process in which the 1s and 0s of traditional digital processing are replaced with the exponentially more capable quantum bits, or…

Travel restrictions fail to deter Eastern’s determined geologists.   Covid-19’s disruptions over the past year-and-a-half haven’t just affected indoor learning at Eastern, they’ve also upended many of the outdoor experiences that make higher education in the magnificent Inland Northwest so rewarding. Happily, organizers in EWU’s geosciences program found a way to preserve perhaps the premiere…

A gleaming new Interdisciplinary Science center Promises a new era for ‘teaching, learning and discovery’ at EWU.   By Charles E. Reineke On a rainy fall Friday in October, the kind of weather only a meteorologist could love, a small crowd gathered to witness David May, EWU interim president, join pre-med student Tayrn Wilson in…

Eastern celebrates a new home for learning and discovery. When it opens for research and instruction this fall, Eastern’s new $68 million Interdisciplinary Science Center will advance EWU scientific exploration and discovery with state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms and spaces for collaboration. The stunning brick, glass and steel building, according to its designers at Seattle’s LMN Architects,…

Eastern students and alumni are used to attacking rims at Spokane Hoopfest. Now they’re bringing the backboards.   Hoopfest, the massive three-on-three basketball gathering that modestly bills itself as the “Best Basketball Experience on Earth,” now counts EWU as a major sponsor. To celebrate, three university design students, Matthew Barden, Tannor Glumbick and Delaney Umemoto,…

A 10-year, $500,000 gift aims to encourage ‘experiential learning’ at the Catalyst.   EWU research to be conducted at Spokane’s new Catalyst building — the zero-energy engineering marvel featured in the Fall/Winter edition of Eastern magazine — got a big boost earlier this year. The McKinstry Charitable Foundation, headquartered in Seattle, announced in February a…

An EWU program pairs mathematics-education students with the children of health workers.   Eastern students studying to be teachers have had a unique perspective on the upheavals wrought by the coronavirus. They’ve experienced pandemic disruptions both as students and as educators. This double whammy is an unfortunate but potentially profitable experience, says Carlos Castillo-Garsow, an…