The Bellingham Herald

• Big names in children's lit come to WWU
  Fans of children's books will be busy this week at Western Washington University. Starting Monday, March 2, Western's Children's Literature Interdisciplinary Collection will host a variety of events leading up to the Bond Children's Literature Conference from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, March 7, in the Performing Arts Center. Western English professor Nancy Johnson, who started the conference six years ago, refers to this year's event as a literary stimulus package. Every year, librarians, budding writers, parents and teachers come to the conference to take a lesson from four prominent writers or illustrators in the field of children's literature.
  

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• Interim VP of Finance named at WWU
  Kathy Wetherell was recently named the interim vice president for Business and Financial Affairs at Western Washington University.  The current vice president, George Pierce, is retiring March 24. Wetherell, who is the assistant vice president for Business and Financial Affairs, will start her duties the next day.
  

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• Citizens need energy to track legislature's doings
  Here's a sad irony, courtesy of Floyd McKay, a retired journalism professor from Western Washington University who covered Oregon's legislature as a newspaper reporter in Salem and a TV journalist in Portland. Laws requiring public meetings are now entrenched in Salem and in Olympia, Wash., but the number of reporters covering state government has dropped dramatically.
  "We've got the open meetings and you've got no one to go," McKay said.
  

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• Learning Academy offers classes for curious retirees
  Imagine taking a class just because you find the topic interesting.
  No worry about grades. No worry about class credit. No term paper. That's one of the charms of classes offered by the Academy for Lifelong Learning. Many of the sessions are offered during work hours, so most of the people who sign up are retirees, but the classes are open to all adults.
  The academy came to life in 1997 with support from Western Washington University, and Western still provides office space and computers. Membership costs $65 a year, or $110 for a couple. Members take classes at a reduced cost, and can attend many Western events at the student rate.
  

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• Weekend sports wrapup: Softball doubleheader postponed, but not before the Vikings sweep Central; men beat MSU-B on the road, while the women lose a heartbreaker at home.
  

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• WWU to host war-resistance conference in March
  Western Washington University will host a free conference next week on issues raised by war.  Panels and workshops, part of the War and Resistance Conference, will examine a variety of war-related issues, from human rights to veteran affairs to gender and sexuality in the military.

Peninsula Daily News

• Port Townsend Police add victims' advocate
  The Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Program of Jefferson County has found a way to get one step closer to victims in Port Townsend. A victim advocate has been added to the Port Townsend Police Department in an effort to make the program more available to individuals going through what police describe as a "very difficult time in someone's life."
  Police Sgt. Ed Green said he was happy to add Nicole Barnard to the office to provide those in need with additional support. Barnard, a native of Port Townsend, trained in counseling abuse victims at Western Washington University and University of Washington.
  "This is where my passion has been for a long time," Barnard said.

University of Buffalo

• "Border Barometer" assesses U.S./Canada border performance
  A Border Barometer released by the University at Buffalo Regional Institute and the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University reports on several key border performance indicators for major regions along the U.S.-Canadian line, including trade flows, vehicle crossings, binational governance networks and even NEXUS enrollment.