Celebrating the accomplishments of our Faculty, Staff, and Students!

Science Education Student McKenzie Bailey Awarded NASA Research Grant

"As a future teacher, I felt a lack of resources for teachers when it came to teaching about certain content areas. When I found out about the research grant I immediately realized that I could create these resources we were lacking in the classroom. That being said, for my research I will be researching and figuring out ways for teachers to have more free resources and interactive videos when teaching about Earth and Space Sciences. This research grant will give me the ability to provide teachers today, as well as future teachers, with more resources that are intriguing to their students and easier to access.

To get a good idea about what is truly lacking for this content area, I will be researching what teachers believe to be the most difficult concepts for students to understand. I will also be researching what resources teachers already have and what I can do to provide more for the classroom. The resources that I will be creating will be not only an interactive video for students to watch, but for teachers to also be able to stop and extend upon. To make life a little easier for my fellow teachers, I will be aligning them with some of the Next Generation Science Standards so they can be used within their curriculum. In order to complete this research I will be using our on campus Planetarium, as well as the technology we have on campus.

My biggest goal for this project is to have a successful, and free, resource for teachers in Washington State. I also hope that this is just the beginning for expanding student knowledge and teaching resources about Earth and Space Sciences. I am thankful for this grant and excited to see where it will go from here!"

Chemistry Club Visits Hanford Site

Recently the Chemistry Club made a visit to the Hanford Site and toured the reactor as seen at right (left to right: Hayley Gower, Scout Wesselman, Sydney Galbreath, Olivia Dittrick, Wilson Tramel and Sarah Sanders). The students learned the history of the Hanford Site and how it was included in the Manhattan Project, the process of making plutonium, and how the reactor worked. At the end of the day, the group received junior ranger badges, shown to the right by Sarah Sanders and Wilson Tramel.

PBS Eons Video Goes Viral
 

Dr. Meaghan Wetherell wrote a PBS Eons video on the Megalodon that went viral and has 3.2 million views and growing.

2019-2020 Faculty Early Career Grant Recipients
 

The College of the Sciences Faculty Early Career Grant is available to professors who are in their second or third year of teaching. Being awarded this grant allows a professor five workloads of time to prepare a scholarly grant or paper. The following are the 2019-2020 recipients:

Dr. Adriano Cavalcanti, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and STEM Science Education, will write an article proposing the implementation of an effective instrumentation platform for nanorobotics. The author will present an integrated communication nanonetwork and a nanorobot circuit architecture to illustrate how to provide a practical approach towards the development of nanodevices for application in medicine.

Dr. Nicole Jastremski, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies, will write a manuscript regarding pre-Columbian human remains analysis. The author will also detail effects the environment, such as termites, has on the body after death. Skeletal remains from the Napo culture (A.D. 1188-1480) have not been analyzed before, making this an important contribution to South American culture, history, and biology.

Dr. Arne Leitert, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, will write an article addressing variations on the Dominating Set Problem. Perfect Domination, Semitotal Domination, Total k-Domination, and Dominating Set Reconfiguration have not been studied as intensively as Dominating Set; therefore whether these variants can be solved efficiently for dually chordal graphs is still an open question. The work behind this article is to develop algorithms for each of the problems and further them by making them more efficient.

Dr. Sooie-Hoe Loke, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, will work jointly with Dr. Enrique Thomann of Oregon State University to write a manuscript that will examine pricing of variable annuities with path-dependent assets. Variable annuity is a life insurance contract which is linked to investment subaccounts and has become a highly successful product in the US, UK, and Japan. This work will pay particular interest to the valuation of insurance products that depend on the entire historical performance of the stock.

Dr. Sterling Quinn, Assistant Professor of Geography, will write an article that will look at understanding the blank areas on maps with the help of Geographic Information Systems. The Pacific Northwest will serve as the study area for finding answers such as how do empty geographies in modern digital maps compare with those on more traditional print maps? And what physical, political, and economic activities are most common in empty spaces, and how can this knowledge inform future map making practices?

The Museum of Culture and Environment Awarded Two Grants
 

The Museum of Culture and Environment (MCE) has been awarded two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) totaling $6,673 along with a traveling exhibit.

The NEH On the Road grant ($1,000) allows the museum to bring a world-class exhibit to Ellensburg this coming winter 2019: For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. In addition, funding received will allow the museum to work with faculty from CWU's Africana and Black Studies Program and Black student leaders to develop engaging programs and events. For All the World to See will open on January 30 and run until March 16, 2019.

The Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions ($5,673) will fund improvements to the museum's permanent collection storage spave that will better preserve fragile cultural objects.

NEH announcement.

Latinx Firsts Project