EWU’s annual Senior Send-off procession — in which graduating seniors reverse course through the Herculean Pillars they traversed as incoming freshman — took on particular poignancy this spring. These seniors were members of the so-called “covid class” of 2024. Each began their Eastern journey during lock-down, a time when remote learning and event restrictions replaced typical classroom and campus interactions — including the tradition of incoming students “passing through the pillars.” Nicole Aguilar, 22, a communications major from Alaska, was among the seniors at the send-off event. “I didn’t enter through the pillars, so this was surreal,” Aguilar said. “I’m so glad we were able to experience it going out.” Photo by Luke Kenneally.

An EWU program helps school kids advance their literacy skills.

Reading may be fundamental, but it doesn’t come naturally. Learning to make sense of the written word takes patience, practice and, if you’re lucky, guidance from educators who care.

Since its earliest days, Eastern has trained teachers who love sharing the gift of reading. It still does. These days, the work they do has never been more important — especially for kids at risk of falling behind.

Education professionals have long known that a critical part of teacher training involves real-world experience, both in the classroom and one-on-one with students.

“Capstone” programs are one way for about-to-graduate education students to gain this experience. Now in its sixth year, Eastern’s “literacy capstone” specializes in pairing student teachers with elementary school children looking to advance their reading and comprehension abilities.

The program is coordinated by Ashley Lepisi, a senior lecturer at EWU who specializes in literacy and technology. Over the past several years it has helped boost the literacy skills of more than 400 students attending Spokane’s Grant and Adams elementary schools.

Most recently, 22 EWU students, all seniors readying for their full-time student teaching placements, spent Wednesday afternoons at Grant, where more than 90 percent of the school’s 320 students qualify for free and reduced-price meals. During this winter quarter, Eagle students worked with 68 schoolchildren in grades two through five.

The program is a win-win, says EWU alumnus George Gessler, Grant Elementary’s principal assistant.

EWU’s soon-to-be teachers learn to understand some of the challenges present  in the lives of a diverse population of students, says Gessler ’88, ’89, ’20. Grant’s school children, meanwhile, some of whom have experienced poverty and trauma, benefit from the individual instruction — in literacy as well as in the social and emotional skills they may need to focus on learning.

“They get to have people work with them; young people that are really enthralled with them,” Gessler says. “They get a positive experience, and we get better readers in return. So that’s been huge for us.”

About 90 percent of participating schoolchildren demonstrate a measurable improvement in literacy skills by the end of the quarter, Lepisi adds. EWU’s future educators, in turn, discover what it’s like to teach in schools classified by the U.S. Department of Education as “Title 1, Part A,” where a majority of students come from disadvantaged households.

The experience sometimes changes the trajectory of their careers. “We’ve had a lot of students say, ‘I didn’t think that I had the capacity to serve in a Title 1 building,’” says Lepisi. “Many of them leave saying: ‘This seems a little bit more fulfilling to me — and, actually, I’d rather be in a Title 1 building now.’”

Faculty and staff get a taste of what it takes to keep Eastern beautiful.

Keeping the Cheney campus beautiful requires a year-round effort, and every season has its challenges. Say what you will about fall leaves, winter snows and summer heat, it is undoubtedly spring — that wonderfully vibrant time of floral fecundity — that really keeps Eastern’s Grounds Maintenance team on their toes.

So what better way to celebrate the dedication and professionalism of the grounds crew than pitching in, if only for a morning, in an annual rite of spring clean-up?

This year’s Spring Clean-up event, held April 16, saw more than two dozen faculty and staff volunteers pulling weeds, spreading mulch and prettying up the planting beds surrounding the campus mall, the science complex, and EWU’s iconic rose garden. Mother nature was kind, providing an overcast but mild, dry day as the Eagle employees divided up into teams and donned their gardening gloves.

Sabine Rishell, an assistant director of donor engagement with EWU Advancement, was one of those assisting in the effort. “I’ve been pulling weeds, which is new for me. Someone had to point out which ones were weeds,” said Rishell, who grew up in an apparently weed-free area of Kansas. “There’s new bark everywhere. Something has been accomplished today.”

Chris Galow, another one of the clean-up crew, is both a maintenance mechanic with the university’s carpenter shop and the president of Washington Federation of State Employees’ Local 931. Galow says the event was mostly about collaborating to create a nice campus environment for students.

“All of us like to see a beautiful campus,” he says. “It reflects on how we take care of our buildings, as well as our classrooms, and then how we follow through with an environment that supports our students. It’s all connected.”

“I believe the grounds crew are appreciative of the work we are providing today,” Galow adds. “We’re just giving them extra hands to help maintain what is a constant area of work in terms of cleaning our grounds. It’s a never-ending battle. Anything that grows you are constantly maintaining.”

For students with mental health challenges, the availability of assistance is key.

Eastern students typically find their collegiate experience to be an exciting time of personal and intellectual growth; a demanding but joyful four-year sojourn that they will long remember fondly.

But it’s also not unusual, at EWU as elsewhere, for students to find themselves caught up in mental health and substance-abuse challenges.

At Eastern, staff and faculty members are committed to ensuring that struggling students have access to the assistance they need. Now, a new federal grant will expand existing mental-health wellness and help-seeking opportunities for such students, particularly those who may be at risk for self-harm.

It’s not unusual, at EWU as elsewhere, for students to find themselves caught up in mental health and substance-abuse challenges.

The three-year, $285,000 Garret Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention Grant, awarded to the university last fall by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is helping EWU counseling and wellness staff enhance suicide-prevention training and skill-building programming across campus.

“Because of this grant, 10 staff and faculty members have already been trained as Mental Health First instructors,” says Laura Gant, associate director of wellness services. These courses, she says, teach university faculty and staff how to better identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance-use disorders. The training can also help mitigate hesitation in starting conversations about potential problems.

Thanks to the grant, she adds, there will now be additional training opportunities: “More faculty and staff will know how to connect students to these services.”

In addition the grant funding will make possible a campus-wide collaboration to create a comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable plan for addressing mental health promotion and suicide prevention on campus.

“Poor mental health can impede students’ ability to persist and complete college,” says Gant. “Expanding education and resources is essential to providing support to students at EWU.”

A prize-winning urban planning student works to expand Latino housing opportunities.

During her time as an economic development specialist for the nonprofit Latinos en Spokane, Mayra Velazquez, an EWU senior studying urban planning and economics, was tasked with the sort of job one might expect would go to a much-more experienced staffer: documenting how disparities in home ownership were affecting Spokane’s fast-growing Latino community.

Velazquez, undaunted, responded by doing a deep dive into federal data sets, using the results to create a series of maps that highlighted areas of growth and need. “We used all the data of the census to tell the stories of communities,” she says. “From a 15-page demographic report, we learned that the Latino community has more than doubled in Spokane. We then looked at housing and healthcare disparities for that population.”

The mapping project — one of many contributions she provided to the group — was among the notable achievements that earned Velazquez a Governor’s Student Civic Leadership Award earlier this spring.

The mapping project — one of many contributions she provided to the group — was among the notable achievements that earned Velazquez a Governor’s Student Civic Leadership Award earlier this spring.

Recipients of the award are chosen from students enrolled in institutions that are part of the Washington Campus Coalition for the Public Good, a consortium that works in partnership with state colleges and universities to “cultivate vital and sustainable communities based on civic engagement and social entrepreneurship.” Velazquez received the prize at a ceremony held at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The governor’s award wasn’t her only spring-time accolade. Velazquez was also named one of Eastern’s President’s/Chancellor’s Student Civic Leadership Award winners (an honor she received with Sanai Maraire, president of Eastern’s Black Student Union.)

Velazquez is quick to share credit for her successes with both EWU and a recent Eastern alumna, Jennyfer Mesa ’17. “I’m grateful for what I’ve learned from my professors at EWU and from Jennyfer at Latinos en Spokane,” says Velazquez, who, at press time, was set to graduate in June.

Mesa is the founder of Latinos en Spokane, a group that works to advance Latino participation, integration, community development and empowerment in our region.

Housing is critical to moving these goals forward, she says. A solution her organization has proposed involves construction of a Latino-friendly housing cooperative, one that would create affordable dwellings for up to 76 families. While in its early stages, Latinos en Spokane has already partnered with ROC Northwest and Spokane Regional Land Holding Properties LLC to locate a site and develop plans for construction. 

“The idea for the housing cooperative started from [our census research],” Velazquez says. “We wanted folks to own their homes, and the land their homes were on.”

A new, old-school printer helps student artists, and visiting professionals, revel in the retro.

Eastern’s Risograph copier, a “digital duplicator” named Ferdinand, isn’t old. But the art it produces — funky screen-prints created in layers of stenciled spot color — reproduce the retrograde vibe craved by today’s creatives.

Built by Japan’s Riso Kagaku Corporation, EWU purchased its Risograph just over a year ago with the help of funding from Gemini, a company that specializes in made-to-order dimensional signage. Students have been testing Ferdinand’s creative potential ever since.

More recently, these Eagle artists have been joined by a rotating cohort of professionals who have been named to participate in month-long, Risograph-centered residencies each quarter through 2024.

“We had applicants from all across the country,” says Jamin Kuhn, the EWU Design Department lecturer who manages the 4D Lab in the Catalyst building. “It kind of speaks toward the allure of the printer, and how popular it is among the print communities.”

The four residents, selected by a jury for their skill sets and creative ideas, include two regional designers alongside one from Hawaii and another from Wisconsin. The first of these artists, Brianna Miller, completed her residency earlier this year. Miller, 31, grew up in Salem, Oregon, and studied at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. She moved to Spokane about five years ago, and it didn’t take long before she had established herself as one of the city’s most accomplished young artists. “I love how similar the print production is to screen printing, with the color layers and separations,” says Miller, a detail of whose work is shown alongside the previous column. “I also admire how the Risograph’s soy inks produce such vivid colors —  specifically neon — that you can’t achieve in most printing.”

A $10,000 Spokane Arts Grant Award covered the cost of purchasing Riso-related materials to be used by the residents and students. In addition, each resident receives a $250 stipend and $250 for supplies. Miller made the most of these modest resources. “Throughout the month,” she says, “I met EWU faculty and students through class visits, workshops and the [closing] show. I also presented a mini talk on my career, portfolio and education. It made me really appreciate the vibrancy of the local art community.”

For Hilary Baird, graduate school will be just the latest in a long line of triumphs.

From a rejection on her first application to Eastern, to admission as a graduate student at one of the nation’s top music programs, EWU’s Hilary Baird has lived a true Cinderella story.

In January, Baird was shocked and delighted to receive an acceptance letter and a partial scholarship from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. She was admitted to the college’s music education program, where she will pursue a master’s degree with a concentration on music education for those on the autism spectrum.

The program, administered by Berklee’s Institute for Accessible Arts Education, is the only one of its kind in the country.

“It is highly competitive due to the school’s national reputation and how exclusive the area of study is,” says Jonathan Middleton, a professor of music theory and composition at EWU who has worked closely with Baird. “Admission to the program is a life-changing experience for her, and for the future students she will serve.”

Baird, a talented pianist who has long struggled with reading and mathematics, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 24. Today she is passionate about teaching music to others whose musical ambitions are challenged by physical or cognitive obstacles — something she has been doing for the past eight years.

“There are so many with disabilities, and other marginalized groups of people, who are not getting their talents shared or having their needs met,” Baird says. “They are very intelligent, but they need to learn their way, not the [traditional] system’s way.”

Baird herself has had to surmount many such obstacles to reach success.

As a young person on the spectrum, progressing through school was an uphill climb. She graduated from high school, but her application for admission to Eastern was rejected due to a low GPA. “The idea of college was not in the cards for me,” Baird says she told herself at the time.

But after four years of service in the U.S. Navy — and accruing the educational benefits that her service provided — Baird chose to give college, and Eastern, another try. She has since flourished.

  Baird is currently on the university’s Dean’s List with a 3.7 GPA, and will graduate in June with a bachelor’s degree in music composition.

“I know there are people at Berklee who will put me in the position to get me where I want to go, and to do what I want to do,” says Baird.  “For me, it’s really monumental. I’m fighting for the right of my students to be heard.”

An EWU biologist explores the foundations of bone regeneration.

Scientists have long known that the bones in our bodies are constantly repairing and rebuilding themselves, this thanks to an extraordinary regenerative process that is essential to maintaining mobility, organ protection and other critical skeletal functions.    

The molecular-level mechanism behind our bones’ remarkable “remodeling” ability, however, is less well understood. Learning more, says Jason Ashley, an associate professor of biology at EWU, could one day lay the groundwork for therapies to assist the more than 50 million Americans who suffer from a host of pathologies related to bone degeneration — most notably osteoporosis.

   Ashley’s efforts recently received a big boost in the form of a four-year, $480,000 federal grant from the National Institutes of Health. The funding will allow him and his student research team to continue their exploration of how certain “signaling” proteins regulate the initial stages of the remodeling process. More broadly, it will also provide funds intended to help EWU develop “expanded research capacity” in both molecular biology and other disciplines.

Ashley says the scale of the federal grant represents a potential game changer, paving the way for new and exciting avenues of discovery. “To put it simply,” he says, “research is expensive. You can only do the experiments that your budget allows. When you get a budget the size of this award, it just really opens up possibilities that you couldn’t even consider before.”

Support for pricey material costs are just one benefit, Ashley adds. “My hope is that through this funding, grad students working on this project are going to be under less pressure to supplement their income with outside employment. That will allow them to become more focused on our research.”

The grant will also expand outreach to potential undergraduate researchers: “So we accomplish research goals, but we are continuously expanding the education piece as well.”

Ashley says the scale of the federal grant represents a potential game changer, paving the way for new and exciting avenues of discovery.

Instruction and research aren’t always considered complementary, Ashley continues. But, as a scientist who has long placed a special emphasis on teaching, he’s bullish on both at Eastern.

At EWU, he says, faculty success is not contingent on bringing in grants like his own. “You are not judged solely on your ability to bring in grant funding. You’re judged on your ability to teach. So, if you’re a good teacher and you want to do research, this is the place you should be.”

The project, Fringe Regulation of Notch Signaling in Osteoclasts, was awarded through the NIH’s Support for Research Excellence Program (R16), with funds provided by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

A new educational partnership will take experiential education to new heights.

Since it was founded during the Second World War, Fairchild Air Force Base, located just up the road from EWU’s Cheney campus, has been a critical part of our nation’s air defense system. Now it is poised to be a vital partner in education.

Earlier this spring representatives from Fairchild gathered with EWU faculty and staff to celebrate the finalizing of a formal “Educational Partnership Agreement,” one that officials say will provide important experiential learning opportunities for EWU science, technology, mathematics and engineering students.  “This will be a mutually beneficial partnership, one with far-reaching impacts,” said EWU President Shari McMahan during the ceremony.

The signing event was especially gratifying for Stu Steiner, the EWU assistant professor of computer sciences who played a key role in making the agreement a reality.

The relationship will pave the way for further interactions with Department of Defense installations such as Fairchild Air Force Base.

Steiner leads the university’s Center for Network Computing and Cybersecurity. He says the partnership idea originated after EWU cybersecurity students began working with the National Security Agency as part of its National Security Innovation Network. That relationship, he added, paved the way for further interactions with Department of Defense installations such as Fairchild Air Force Base.

Initial discussions with Fairchild were, not surprisingly, centered around cybersecurity. However, after a few meetings, Steiner says, Air Force officials suggested expanding the agreement to include C-STEM students.

“We’re focused on the experiential learning,” says Steiner. “So if Fairchild needs a new fuel pump created, we’re going to invite mechanical engineering students to work on it. If they need design work, we’ll let the design students work on that. There are plenty of projects out there.”

After the ceremony, Col. Chesley Dycus, commander of the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild, offered his own insights.

“There are a lot of problems that the Department of Defense and, more specifically the Air Force and team at Fairchild, need help with,” Dycus said. “This helps us get academic — and a lot of other perspectives — involved to help us with those problems. And, hopefully in doing so, maybe help us recruit some of those students into the Air Force.”

Eastern’s track and field athletes, stars in the classroom, aim to up their game.

Athletes with Eastern’s men’s and women’s track and field teams have long been leaders in the classroom — this year’s women’s team tallied 25 Big Sky All-Academic awards, while the men earned 17. These days they are also asserting themselves in competition.

At the 2024 Big Sky Championships, led by redshirt junior Caitlin “Egypt” Simmons, Eagle athletes braved the April snows in Bozeman to lay the groundwork for what Erin Tucker, director of Eastern track and field, says will be a bright future. 

 Simmons brought home gold and established herself as the Big Sky’s premier women’s jumper after hitting the 6.18-meter mark in her long jump performance. In the triple jump, she came up just short of a second gold after nailing a personal best of 12.88 meters. Her teammate Savannah Schultz joined her on the podium with a third-place finish and a bronze medal.

“Egypt is still the Big Sky jump queen in my book, winning three of the four horizontal jumps and placing second in the fourth, is dominant,” Tucker said after the event. “I know Coach Jo [Brinson] and Egypt wanted to sweep, and that will be the goal next year for sure.”

On the men’s side, senior Cody Teevens earned the Eagles a silver in the decathlon, with a 6,184 total score to secure an All-Conference honor. During the event, Teevens earned wins in the 100 meter and the 110-meter hurdles, adding second-place finishes in the long jump, discus throw and javelin. His teammate Colin Hughes added a win in the 1,500-meter decathlon race.

Overall, the Eagle women finished eighth, while the men secured ninth place. It was a finish, Tucker says, that’s not in any way predictive of where his athletes are headed next spring: “I promise you we are a better team than we finished today, and we will never finish this low again!”