The Bellingham Herald

• WWU grads face rough economy, but may fare better than others
  Hundreds of new Western Washington University graduates are now in the job market, one that has been labeled dismal for anyone looking for work.
  While some students are struggling to find a job or come up with a plan of what to do, in general college graduates are in a better position than people without degrees.
  

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• WWU grad gets through via Abba, Oprah - whatever it takes
  Leslie Umberger isn't an average student graduating from Western Washington University - she's a 49-year-old mother of two who put herself through college by teaching at Options High School.
  Meanwhile, she was diagnosed with and battled breast cancer.
  Although Umberger won't technically graduate until the end of summer quarter - she had to take time off for the most intense part of her chemotherapy - she's been named the Canadian-American Studies Department Outstanding Graduate of the Year. 
  

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• WWU Board of Trustees adopts tighter budget
  The Western Washington University Board of Trustees unanimously adopted the $127.8 million 2009-10 state-funded operating budget Friday, June 12, finalizing about $6.1 million in budget cuts for the next school year.
  "I'm convinced that we didn't do anything to damage the academic quality of this institution," Provost Dennis Murphy assured the trustees.
  

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• Bellingham women link up with villagers in Tanzania
  Villagers in Tanzania are better off because of a serendipitous chain of connections that leads back to Bellingham.
  As a result, a village mother receives help to put her children through school, a teen girl has vital heart medicine, and a group of women will soon have sewing machines to make clothing.
  Marceline Finda, a 24-year-old student at Western Washington University, is the link between the people in her village and a supportive group of 13 Bellingham women.
  

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• WWU's Koppenberg named to All-Nicklaus team
  Western Washington University men's golfer Jake Koppenberg, a senior from Everett, has been named to the 2009 All-Nicklaus Team announced today by the Golf Coaches Association of America. The 20-man squad is made up of the top collegiate golfers from NCAA Division I, II, III as well as the NAIA.

Seattle Times

• Natural gas: WWU running cars on cow manure
  Dung, manure, cow pies, cow power, biogas, biomethane, "natural" gas -- whatever you want to call it, if Eric Leonhardt and his students get their way, it's going to be powering the bus you ride to the 2010 Olympics.
  On the lot of Western Washington University's Vehicle Research Institute in Bellingham sits Viking 32, a car built by students and faculty that runs on biomethane. The plucky little car, painted electric blue, is one of the VRI's 40-plus vehicles built from scratch since the program was founded in 1972. And all have a forward-reaching vision toward innovation.
  

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• Middle school students united by common bond of adventure
  Call them a bunch of tree-huggers if you want. The students at Lake Washington's Environmental & Adventure School are used to it.
  Like Susan Good, a sophomore at Western Washington University, who said she was a "very timid, painfully inept little blond girl" when she started there in sixth grade.
  "The family atmosphere really brought me out and taught me the value of public speaking," said Good, who is majoring in Design at Western and now counts public speaking as one of her strengths.

WA Today

• Meet Microsoft's antidote to Vista
  Julie Larson-Green hopes you'll like Windows 7. If not, well, now you and a billion other people know who to blame.
  Microsoft is counting on Larson-Green, its head of "Windows Experience," to deliver an operating system that delights the world's PC users as much as its last effort, Vista, disappointed them.
  Larson-Green, a 16-year Microsoft veteran, grew up in tiny Maple Falls, Washington, about 220 km north of the software maker's headquarters in Redmond. She waited tables to put herself through Western Washington University, then took a job in 1987 answering customer support calls at Aldus, a pioneering software company in Seattle.

Tacoma News-Tribune

• All-Star Grads: "An inspiration to everybody"
  Anna Le bristles when her friends tell her she’s lucky to have amassed enough scholarships to pay for college and graduate school. It’s work, not luck, that earned her a Nordstrom Scholarship, and Gates Achievers and Millennium scholarships. Anna plans to study English and government at Western Washington University in Bellingham.