In the Media

Hundreds of Western Washington University students marched to Depot Market Square on Wednesday, Sept. 27 to celebrate the first official day of fall quarter with Western Wednesday: First Night Out.

The march kicked off from Red Square, led by the pep band, and ended with live music, free Boundary Bay Brewery & Bistro macaroni and cheese, booths from local businesses and more.

As classes start at Western Washington University, increasing retention is top of mind for the university’s administrative team. 

Western is running a $2.2 million deficit this year after a 3% budget cut across the board last spring due to enrollment declines since the pandemic. In 2019, the university had 16,142 students enrolled — in 2022, there were only 14,747. 

However, last year’s freshman class was the biggest in history. Early numbers show promising first-year enrollment this year, near the level of last year’s class of 3,223, Western Communications Director Jonathan Higgins said.  

“That’s all a very encouraging development for us here,” Higgins said. But a big challenge for the university is now making sure those freshmen come back for a second year. Last year, the university reported that only 77.1% of freshman students from fall 2021 returned in fall 2022.

Major earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest are fairly uncommon, yet a significant threat looms: “The Big One” is an anticipated earthquake of magnitude 8 or higher.

And it could happen any day.

This projected earthquake — which would occur along the Cascadia Subduction Zone spanning from Southern British Columbia to Northern California — prompted the formation of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT) and $15 million in funding recently approved by the National Science Foundation.

Two Western Washington University geologists, Emily Roland and Colin Amos, will support CRESCENT’s mission to help the Pacific Northwest prepare for earthquakes by studying the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

“It’s very possible that we could have a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake tomorrow, or in 10 years, or in three weeks from now,” said Roland, an assistant professor of geophysics at Western. “And so it’s an important goal, I think, for us to keep pursuing a better understanding of that.”

Jane Wong, whose debut memoir “Meet Met Tonight in Atlantic City” has received rave reviews, will be the first speaker for this academic year at Stockton University’s Stephen Dunn Reading Series.

The 2023 book is “an incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore,” according to publisher Tin House.

Wong, who now lives in Seattle, will speak and read from her book at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 27 in Campus Center Meeting Room 5. The appearance will also be streamed over Zoom. Admission is free, and the public is welcome to attend.

Here are just some of the comments from reviews of Wong’s newest book:

“Her story is a love letter to Atlantic City and the Asian American working class.” — The Los Angeles Times

“Wong’s memoir invites those who have been overlooked in America to hold up their verses, accolades and solidarity in a collective rejoinder to their detractors.” — The Washington Post

“With a poet’s ear for language and a satirist’s eye for human foibles, Wong masterfully marries her personal story with larger questions about Chinese America identity.” — Publishers Weekly

Some three-quarters of workers say they’ve felt excluded at work, according to new global EY research. One way for organizations to make themselves more inclusive is to intentionally cultivate a culture of allyship, argues organizational psychologist Meg Warren, an associate professor of management at Western Washington University who studies workplace allyship and inclusion. But many workers and workplaces, she argues, aren’t going about it the right way.

We spoke with Warren about common myths around what it means to be an ally and how to embed allyship into organizational culture.

Major earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest are fairly uncommon, yet a significant threat looms: “The Big One” is an anticipated earthquake of magnitude 8 or higher.  

And it could happen any day.  

This projected earthquake — which would occur along the Cascadia Subduction Zone spanning from southern British Columbia to northern California — prompted the formation of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT), and $15 million in funding recently approved by the National Science Foundation.  

Two Western Washington University geologists, Emily Roland and Colin Amos, will support CRESCENT’s mission to help the Pacific Northwest prepare for earthquakes by studying the Cascadia Subduction Zone. 

“It's very possible that we could have a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake tomorrow, or in 10 years, or in three weeks from now,” said Roland, an assistant professor of geophysics at Western. “And so it's an important goal, I think, for us to keep pursuing a better understanding of that.” 

“Boston is built on the business of slavery, whether that’s slave trading or trading with the slave economies in the Caribbean,” added Jared Ross Hardesty, a history professor at Western Washington University.

A collaboration between Los Alamos scientist Jianxin Zhu and Armin Rahmani, associate professor at Western Washington University, will explore the emergent properties and interaction of Majorana fermions using high-performance computing and noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing. Majorana fermions are fundamental counterparts of ordinary electrons but have also been interesting because of their potential for topological quantum computing. The project will support a postdoctoral student and an undergraduate on the research, including a paid summer internship at Los Alamos for the undergraduate student. The project will build infrastructure for advanced research at WWU, primarily an undergraduate institution. It will provide educational opportunities for students from underrepresented groups to gain experience on solving challenging fundamental science problems.

Cities are hit hard from climate change through a phenomenon known as urban heat islands.

Urban heat islands refers to how cities create a pocket of higher temperatures than their surrounding areas. This is caused by a number of factors, most common the amount of impermeable surfaces there are in the city. These surfaces, such as concrete, gravel and asphalt, absorb heat and release that heat slowly over time, Nabil Kamel, Western Washington University Chair of Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy told The Bellingham Herald in an interview.

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Zoë’s educational journey was a diverse one, commencing with an English degree from Western Washington University and culminating in a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing from University of Alaska Fairbanks. Initially, she considered pursuing a career in academia as an English professor.

However, her life took a different turn when she got a job as a paralegal at a family law firm around the time of the McGirt Decision, a federal Indian law case in which her tribe played a central role. Witnessing the impact of Tribal law in an Indigenous context sparked a fire in Zoë, igniting her passion for the legal realm and setting her on a new course.