Founded in 1993, the CWU Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) provided the spark that continues to fuel the primatology program to this day.

Former CHCI director Mary Lee Jensvold explained that the initial interest the institute received has directly led to the ongoing success of the program.

“Many of our key faculty members joined us because of the CHCI, and the fact that they’ve stuck with CWU is part of what makes the program special today,” she said. “Washoe and her family really kickstarted it all.”

When Washoe, Loulis, Moja, Tatu, and Dar moved to CWU in 1980-81, they were initially housed on the third floor of the psychology building, as part of their role in the Experimental Psychology program. The chimpanzees’ caregivers, Roger and Deborah Fouts, along with their students, successfully lobbied university administrators and Washington legislators to construct a dedicated housing facility for the family of primates, and officially opened the CHCI building on May 7, 1993.

The CHCI dedicated itself to humane research, and as such, did not permit any research projects which might in any way inconvenience or hurt the chimpanzees. This meant that most research conducted through the CHCI was purely observational, with students, staff, and faculty never depriving or forcing the chimpanzees to participate. Instead, they focused on taking the chimps on their terms and designing ethologically based studies including their learning of American Sign Language (ASL) and how they used it to communicate with each other and humans.

Jensvold said the attention brought about by the CHCI led to the formation of a distinct primate behavior program at the university, designed to accommodate all of the students who weren’t specifically interested in pursuing the psychology side of primatology.

“Students who were getting their master’s degrees working with the CHCI were getting them in experimental psychology, so there was an opportunity to create something a little more tailored to primatology,” she said. “It was frustrating to take so many psychology classes that didn’t seem relevant to the work, so the primate behavior program allowed students more freedom to examine what they really wanted to pursue.”

Over the course of her life, Washoe was confirmed to have learned more than 350 individual ASL signs. She combined them in new ways to communicate about objects she didn’t know the sign for, such as referring to a thermos as a metal cup drink, and to form unique phrases. She conversed with humans and chimpanzees using the pragmatics and grammar that humans use in signed conversations.

While debate continues as to whether the chimpanzees were using the signs as a form of language, or merely imitating their human caretakers, research at the CHCI showed that they signed to each other even when no humans were present. The interspecies communication that happened at CWU continues to inspire countless primatology students. Among them is Katie Seymour, who is currently finishing her master’s degree in the field.

“I absolutely fell in love with that stuff, and then I learned that CWU is where all of that research happened,” she said. “Knowing that the sign language research was the foundation of the program here made it clear that CWU was where I needed to go.”

Washoe passed away in 2007, and the CHCI closed its doors for good in 2013. The remaining chimpanzees, Tatu and Loulis, were rehomed at the Fauna Foundation in Carignan, Quebec, Canada. Washoe’s legacy is preserved through the conservation efforts of the Friends of Washoe nonprofit organization.