In the Media

Another reality is that higher ed loves documents — especially PDFs, a much-maligned format among accessibility advocates. PDFs are, for example, often missing style “tags,” which define elements like headings, paragraphs, and tables, making them effectively unintelligible to assistive technologies like screen readers.

Indeed, Max Bronsema, director of web-communication technologies at Western Washington University, said he considers remediating documents like PDFs “the largest challenge” in complying with the new regulations.

When an ankle injury while playing pro soccer in Sweden derailed her athletic career in 2019, Gabbie Ewing felt bereft and unmoored. Ewing, an NCAA Division II All-American and the 2017 Great Northwest Athletic Conference player of the year for Portland’s Concordia University, hadn’t realized how much her identity and self-worth were wrapped up in soccer.  

Ewing saw her mental health unravel, adding to an eating disorder she had in college. 

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do career-wise. I didn’t really know who I was outside of my sport … I lost a lot of my self-confidence,” she said in a phone interview from Western, where she was hired in April as assistant athletic director of marketing. 

While back home in Hawaii, a discussion with younger brother Austin, a collegiate football player who endured three anterior cruciate ligament tears, revealed he was struggling, too. 

That sparked The Athlete Confidential, a website (athleteconfidential.com) and podcast Ewing created in 2021 where athletes from around the country lay bare their mental health struggles in hopes of helping others talk about them. Ewing said it was scary. 

Critics say the quarterly carbon auctions have driven up the price of gasoline, though the amount is hotly debated.

“There's multiple things going on with gas prices, which is why it's a little hard to tease out how much is potentially from this policy versus how much is from supply and demand fundamentals in the market,” Western Washington University economist Zoë Plakias said.

Plakias said businesses’ payments for their carbon emissions have not come close to covering the damage that their pollution causes.

“Emissions are incredibly costly for us as a state, right? They are costing us, and so the goal of this policy is then to reduce that social cost,” Plakias said.

In trying to understand why Democrats fared better in Washington state than elsewhere in the country — and why three of four conservative-backed state initiatives were rejected, even with appeals regarding inflation and taxes — Troy Abel, a professor of environmental policy at Western Washington University, went to the source: the voters; at least those in his classes.

“I started talking to my students about this, and I think they had some pretty good insight,” said Abel, who has taught at Western since 2006.

Just as other properties have used, refurbished, or retrofitted Anderson’s source material—Disney’s animated feature “Frozen” and the “Chronicles of Narnia” book series by C.S. Lewis are just a few examples—SCT’s “The Snow Queen” was a process of collaborative innovation, born from a unique partnership with Western Washington University’s Theatre Department. After extensive workshopping, it was publicly read at the National Nordic Museum for further feedback, which was incorporated into its final iteration.

The Seattle-area inflation rate is also higher than the national inflation rate of 2.6%, and the core rate of 3.3%. That means costs in the region are increasing a bit more quickly compared with the U.S. average, explained Hart Hodges, associate professor at Western Washington University and a director of the school’s Center for Economic and Business Research.

“Seattle already had a cost of living that was noticeably above the U.S. average,” Hodges said. That can be worrisome in the long run. “If inflation is always a little bit faster, a little bit higher, then you’re saying cost of living is just, relatively speaking, still going to go up and up in Seattle. And that causes problems.”

Hart Hodges and James McCafferty, co-directors of the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western Washington University, said the impact of the strike on the local economy is more likely to come as delayed spending, rather than permanent changes to economic activity.

“I see this as potentially going to create a huge bottleneck where ships coming into the East Coast are going to have to reorient how they get products to customers,” said Peter Haug, professor and director of the manufacturing and supply chain management program at Western Washington University. The knock-on effects can include delivery delays and higher costs for consumers.

Throughout October, Western Washington University faculty and visiting speakers will participate in panel discussions on topics relevant to the upcoming election, going beyond the surface on issues such as media literacy, U.S. foreign policy, the environment and immigration. 

The Beyond the Surface: Election 2024 series is presented by the Ralph Munro Institute for Civic Education and The Centers for Student Access, Community, & Intercultural Engagement. The Office for Civic Engagement will host voter registration events throughout the series. 

Jay Dimond, a research assistant professor at Western Washington University, is working with the Jamestown S’Klallam and Swinomish tribes within the crab research group to help understand Dungeness genetics, including correlations between adaptations and environmental conditions.

Researchers want to determine whether the crab represent multiple genetic populations, and how well connected the crab are from one part of the Salish Sea to the other. This could help answer questions about what happened in the South Sound, and how to manage fisheries to prevent it from happening elsewhere. Genetic diversity is a species’ best defense against environmental change.

“Ultimately, the more data you have about a fishery, the better you’ll be poised to respond to issues that may arise,” Dimond said.