Eastern Magazine | Spring 2019

UNION, REBORN

Work In Progress An eagle-eye view of construction work at Eastern’s new Interdisciplinary Science Center, a $67.9 million project that will stand alongside the university’s existing, 57-year-old Science Building, which is itself slated for renovation.

The new center, scheduled for completion later this year, will boast more than 100,000 squarefeet of energy efficient teaching laboratories, labtechnician spaces and a 100-seat auditorium.

PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Dear Alumni and Friends: I wrote you last fall to say that the new academic year would be amazing. Well, it has been! We’re seeing dramatic transformations both on the Cheney campus and at the beautiful new Catalyst Building emerging in Spokane. And we had a hugely successful football season that took many of us to Frisco, Texas for the FCS Championship game.

Of course, we all wanted a win on January 5. However the spirit at the game, throughout the state of Washington, and in communities all over the country was amazing.

We were on TV in a million homes. Spokane turned Eagle red. The governor and cities across the state proclaimed their Eagle pride. Spokane’s mayor named the Eagles as Spokane’s football team.

For me, some of the most exciting moments occurred in Frisco when I met throngs of EWU alumni and supporters. Their love for EWU was powerful, their pride impressive. I heard so many stories about how Eastern had transformed their lives; how it had changed the trajectory of their parents’ lives and their children’s lives. Football was a compelling reason for us to be in Frisco, but Eagle pride was the glue holding us all together.

While we were gathering in Texas, the campus was cheering for our team in the newly renovated PUB. A jewel at the heart of campus, the new PUB immediately became a special place for the Eagle family to come together.

The students who are now studying, working, eating, and playing in the new PUB are creating memories that will sustain them for a lifetime, just as the old PUB—and our whole campus—did for those who preceded them.

We’ll always cherish our Frisco experience, and I hope we’ll meet there again in the near future. But meanwhile, throughout the year, the beautiful new PUB is here to welcome us all and to generate compelling memories for new generations of Eagles.

Mary Cullinan President, Eastern Washington University

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THE CHARITABLE IRA ROLLOVER: USE YOUR IRA FOR GOOD If you are 70 and a half or older, the IRS requires you to take an annual minimum distribution from your IRA retirement account. Along with that distribution comes tax on your previously untaxed assets. For some, this means taking unneeded income and paying more tax.

But there is a way to take your required minimum distribution, skip the tax and make a meaningful gift to support EWU. The IRA Charitable Rollover is easy to do, has definite tax advantages and allows you to use your savings in a way that means the most to you.

This information is not intended as tax, legal or financial advice. Gift results may vary. Consult your personal financial advisor for information specific to your situation.

“I instruct my retirement account custodian to send all, or a portion, of my RMD to EWU Foundation every year. Because EWU Foundation is a tax-exempt charity, there is no tax paid on the transfer, and I lower my taxable income. The minimum distribution requirement is met, and my money goes straight to work for EWU ROTC students.”

Jerry Mellick ’67

FOR INFORMATION, CONTACT: EWU Office of Gift Planning Laura Thayer Director of Planned Giving 509.359.6901 lthayer3@ewu.edu www.ewulegacy.org

SPRING/SUMMER 2019 EDITOR Charles E. Reineke ART DIRECTOR Ryan Gaard ’02 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dave Meany Bart Mihailovich ’06 Emily Oliver ’19 PHOTOGRAPHY Eric Galey Austin Frostad VICE PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT Barb Richey DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI RELATIONS Lisa Cargill ’03 MAGAZINE ADVISORY BOARD Cassie Devaney ’96 Karene Garlich-Loman ’03, ’98 Brian Lynn ’98 Kory Kelly ’98 Nick Lawhead ’07 Lisa Leinberger ’98 Kelly Naumann ’10 Robin Pickering ’03, ’97

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! EMAIL easternmagazine@ewu.edu PHONE 509.359.6422 WRITE Eastern Magazine, 102 Hargreaves Hall Cheney, WA 99004-2413 Eastern magazine is published spring/ summer and fall/winter by EWU Marketing & Communications and is mailed free to alumni of record in the United States. View this and previous issues online at ewu.edu/ easternmagazine.

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CONTENTS

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CONTENTS Features 16 Breaking Through

Chris Patterson survived life on Spokane's streets.

Now he helps others stay off them.

20 Union, Reborn

New life for an iconic Eagle hangout.

28 For the Love of Lichen

An EWU researcher helps an 'odd organism' take its turn in the spotlight.

34 An Eagle in Frisco

Outnumbered but undaunted, an Eastern fan stays strong at the FCS Championship game.

46 Remembering George Lotzenhiser

Beloved music professor, decorated veteran and composer of Eastern's Alma Mater dies at 95.

Departments 04 06 40 42 44 47

President's Letter Eastern Etc. On the Road Class Notes In Memoriam Last Word

On The Cover: The dawning of

a new day, and new era, for the Pence Union Building. Photo by Kevin Scott.

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Dramatis Personæ

EWU students shine in theatre arts competition Each year the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts encourages thousands of student theatrical artists to present their best work in eight regional competitions. Those who emerge on top – a mere 125 in all — win an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to participate in the center’s America College Theater National Festival.

Eastern students have long distinguished themselves in the Region VII competition. Last year, for example, three EWU undergraduates advanced to the final round of the Irene Ryan acting competition.

One of those students, Varinique Davis (BA, Theater ’18) performed so well that she was awarded a Lin Manuel Miranda scholarship to travel to Puerto Rico with the cast of the Broadway smash “Hamilton.” A fourth EWU student, Hazel Bean, won the Mark Twain comedy award.

At this year’s regional event, held in February at the University of Oregon in Eugene, two additional EWU students, MJ “Maddy” Daly, shown at right, and Lysbeth Neel, below, each won their respective competitions: Daly the “Musical Theatre Scholarship Audition” and Neel the prize for stage management. In April, both represented the university at the national competition, where they joined in master classes at the Kennedy Center, visited with the professional cast and crew of D.C.’s theatrical landmarks, and networked with their talented peers from across the nation.

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Man of Sustenance

A recent Eastern grad is providing a feed for those in need More than a third of Eastern undergraduates reported being “food insecure” during the previous academic year. Aarik Erechar, ’18, knows we can do more to help. The veteran of the Eastern Cheer Squad is now using his abundant energy to lead a team of student volunteers at the EWU Food Pantries, a series of drop-in depositories for those in need.

How is food insecurity defined, and how prevalent is it among students at Eastern?

Food insecurity is about not having access to healthy and affordable food. An estimated 36 percent of EWU students are food insecure.

What are some of the reasons students might struggle to obtain adequate nutrition?

Often it’s a lack of adequate financial support. Other students tell us they don’t know how to budget their money, or how to cook their own nutritious food. Many rely too much on expensive, unhealthy fast food. My sense is that students often don’t know how to start eating better because no one showed them where to begin.

How do EWU Food Pantries help?

The EWU Food Pantries help by providing an array of food options for students to choose from. The pantries are always accessible as long as the building is open, which enables students to go when they want.

How did you become involved?

By becoming an AmeriCorps VISTA worker. Helping the community and others has always been a motivation for me, so AmeriCorps was something that I wanted to become a part of — especially since this position enables me to be involved with helping the community that I live in.

Going forward, what can we do to ensure that all of our neighbors — and young people in particular — have permanent access to nutritious food?

Providing support for programs that help alleviate hunger is one of the best things that we as a community can do.

Hunger is not a simple problem to fix. It takes time, but it can be accomplished if we all work together to make it happen.

What about you personally? What are your plans after your service is completed?

After my service is done, I plan on either getting my teaching certificate or master’s degree in education so that I can teach at a public school.

My goal is to one day become the superintendent of a school district in Washington.

Want to help? Nonperishable, shelf-stable food items, toiletries and, especially, personal hygiene products are always needed. Call 509.359.6255 or email communityengagement@ewu.edu for more information.

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Where the Signs Are

It’s getting easier to locate Eastern’s hallowed halls As university campuses go, Eastern’s 300-acre grounds are not particularly large. But thanks to the charmingly quirky layout of classroom, administrative, dormitory and other buildings, quickly pinpointing campus locations can be a challenge — a fact that would be of particular concern in an emergency.

A new Campus Fire Life Safety Signage project will help. The project, designed to bring EWU into compliance with bestpractice standards of the widely adopted International Fire Code, involves upgrading GPS mapping data available to first responders and, more visibly, ensuring that all buildings — especially those set back from roadways — are equipped with fully legible, “street-view” addresses.

“Eastern is unusual in that it has quite a few buildings that are not linked to city streets,” Shawn King, associate vice president for facilities and planning, said earlier this year.

“In order to be responsive to emergency needs, we decided to make this a priority.”

The result is a flock of new addresses and corresponding street signs, all in bright Eagle red, for the Cheney campus. When the project is completed in September, every building will have a designated street address that will be loaded into the county’s database.

For those structures not already tied to the transportation grid — buildings, for example, like the venerable Hargreaves Hall, home of this magazine — new designations such as “Study Lane” and “Swoop Lane” have already been deployed.

Safety is not the only benefit, King says.

The new program will allow the university to provide a virtual walk-through that will serve as an automated tour for new students, parents and others unfamiliar with Eastern’s park-like grounds. “We’re looking at this as a comprehensive way for people who come to campus to get around,” says King.

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Joy in Giving

On a day of sharing, the Eastern community comes up big Members of the Eastern community responded in recordsetting fashion to the university’s 2018 Giving Joy Day, an event timed to coincide with the annual International Day of Giving held on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

The EWU community raised more than $1.8 million in cash, pledges and in-kind gifts, far surpassing the event’s goal of $275,000. The contributions, officials say, will benefit Eastern and its students for years to come.

Donations were bolstered by two significant gifts, one aimed at expanding and enhancing Eastern’s jazz program and another that will provide equipment for students studying computer science.

The donors, who asked to remain anonymous, had been working with university advancement staff for some time, says event coordinator Kyndell White, EWU’s assistant director of annual giving. They both asked to finalize their contributions on Giving Joy Day. “They wanted to be a part of it, to be a part of something bigger than just their individual donations,” she says. “They wanted to help us reach our goal, but also to feel the spirit of Giving Joy Day and to share that feeling with other friends of Eastern.”

Another significant gift came from Eastern’s president, Mary Cullinan,

who offered to personally match faculty and staff donations up to $10,000.

By noon, that total had been raised.

In addition to Cullinan’s match, Numerica Credit Union donated $25,000 to their own EWU scholarship fund. Numerica also surprised two Eastern students with $2,500 scholarships for the 2019-20 academic year.

As gratifying as these numbers may be, says White, it was the “joy” part of the day that resonated most with her. Adding “giving joy” to the giving-day concept was intended to allow cash-strapped students and others to participate in ways that reach beyond simply writing a check.

Legally Binding

EWU and Gonzaga team up to benefit next-generation attorneys Law-school expenses and shrinking private-sector employment prospects have led an increasing number of potential attorneys to question the viability of law as a career choice. But the need for quality lawyers, especially in the public sector, remains as high as ever.

So what gives? Why can’t great law schools provide great value — the sort of bang-for-buck education that will allow young lawyers to do important work without stressing so much about the bottom line?

They can, say administrators at Eastern and the Gonzaga School of Law. Thanks to a new collaboration plan announced in March, EWU students hoping to be lawyers may soon be able to shave a year off their projected time to degree completion. This thanks to a “3+3 articulation agreement” that would allow them to complete a combined bachelor’s degree and a GU law degree in six years instead of seven.

The plan is part of a larger effort to identify and explore potential legal education programs that would enhance EWU student opportunities to access GU Law programs and services.

According to a memorandum of understanding signed by EWU Provost Scott Gordon and Jacob Rooksby, dean of the Gonzaga School of Law, the 3+3 Program would allow a law-school bound EWU student to complete her core, non-elective classes in three years. She would apply to GU during her junior year and, if accepted, attend her first year of law school during what would have been her senior year at EWU. These first-year law school courses would, in turn, satisfy the electives she needed to complete the EWU bachelor’s degree.

“The collaborative work between Gonzaga and Eastern Washington University is a tremendous achievement for the two universities and one that benefits the community,” says Gordon. “The expansion and strengthening of public-private collaborations in Spokane shows the commitment both institutions have to furthering the success of our students, the city and the region.”

“We are thrilled to establish this partnership, which is a ‘win-win’ for both institutions,” added Rooksby. “For years, talented Eastern students have contributed to the vibrancy of our law school. We look forward to strengthening our long-standing relationship with EWU, and growing it in ways that will enhance the educational opportunities available to students in the region.”

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Machine Learning

Mechanical engineering students score big in high-profile competition Machines may be getting smarter, but, for now at least, they still need humans to design, assemble and guide them. Eastern students are distinguishing themselves on all three fronts.

Earlier this spring, members of EWU’s American Society of Mechanical Engineers student chapter traveled to the campus of Michigan State University to participate in E-Fest, the society’s annual engineering festival, where they scored a victory and a final-round finish in two of the festival’s most highprofile competitions.

The event, sponsored by corporate titans such as Boeing and Siemens, allows student attendees to take part in engineeringrelated workshops, presentations and networking sessions aimed at educating and inspiring next-generation inventors and innovators. But it is the competitions — hands-on exercises that push to the limits the skills and expertise student participants have already acquired — that steal the show.

In the Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D Challenge, student teams were asked to design and manufacture an emergency-resupply hovercraft that would be put to the test in challenging conditions. Rules demanded that the remotely operated craft, which had to be sized to fit in a 24-squareinch cube, must fly its way around an obstacle course and, eventually, pick up a small payload. Eastern’s first-prize entry earned top marks for design, bested the competition for speed around the course, and was judged to have used the highest percentage of parts created with “additive manufacturing,” a type of 3-D assembly.

For the Student Design Competition, participants were asked to create

a robot that could retrieve balls — each ranging in size from ping-pong to basketball — placed on an array of freestanding PVC pipes. The robot and its controllers, batteries and parts had to fit within a student-created, 50-square-centimeter box. Eastern’s robot aced the preliminary matches but was eventually eliminated by an entry from Texas Tech University.

These successes were particularly notable given the university’s relative newness to the competition: it was only EWU's second year attending E-fest, and the first year Eastern students competed in the IAM3D Challenge. Their excellent showing in East Lancing qualified EWU’s ASME student chapter to compete at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition in Salt Lake City, a gathering team members will be attending this November.

Return Flight

A prominent Eagle proves you can come home again Homecoming 2019 is happening early for Barb Richey, Eastern’s newly named vice president for university advancement and executive director of the EWU Foundation.

Richey returns to Eastern after employment in a senior marketing position at Pacific University in Portland and, more recently, serving as vice president of marketing for STCU. Prior to joining the credit union, Richey spent eight years on the leadership team at EWU, where she served as director of development and later associate vice president for advancement. While a student at EWU, Richey earned a bachelor’s degree in applied psychology in 1992, and a master’s degree in communications in 1999.

“Barb brings a high level of experience and Eagle enthusiasm to the university,” says Dr. Mary Cullinan, Eastern’s president. “I’m delighted that

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someone of her experience and knowledge is joining my executive team as we work to shape Eastern’s future.”

Richey was chosen after a nationwide search that produced applicants from universities across the country. In her new position, Richey will provide leadership for the EWU Foundation and advancement services, as well as heading up EWU’s Office of Marketing and Communications, publisher of this magazine.

“I am thrilled to be joining Eastern at a time of transformation and new energy,” says Richey. “The alumni, faculty, staff and students are truly special to me and I am eager to work with them to reach new heights.”

Spirit of Service

To celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, Eagles embrace his credo While preparing a sermon early in his career, a 25-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. jotted down a reflection on altruism that, over the years, would become a staple of his personal and political philosophy.

“No man has learned to live,” he wrote, “until he can rise out of his mere concern for self to the broader concern for others. Indeed, the prayer that every man should learn to pray is: ‘Lord, teach me to unselfishly serve humanity.’”

King’s spirit lives on at Eastern, embodied by students, faculty and staff who strive to follow his example of giving. Their commitment is especially evident during the annual commemoration of King’s birth, held this year on Jan. 21.

During this year’s celebration, for example, dozens of EWU participants joined in Spokane’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Unity March, then spread out around Spokane County to take part in service projects benefitting area nonprofit organizations. These included six different service sites, the Mobius Children’s Museum and Mobius Science Center, Habitat for Hunanity’s Spokane Store, the Naomi Community, Catholic Charities Chore Services, Everybody Counts and Meals on Wheels.

Most EWU participants were involved in cleaning, organizing or sorting donated goods, according to Brian Davenport, director of EWU’s Office of Community Engagement. At Mobius, he said, “students were either at the

science center or the children’s center, spending time with children and helping to lead activities.”

“This is an opportunity for us at EWU to share support, community and solidarity surrounding this day,” Davenport says. “It’s an opportunity to get outside of ‘self’ and do something as a community.”

For Future Officers, A Top-Ranked Trainer EWU's Jason Hennig named nation’s best ROTC instructor

Sergeant First Class Jason Hennig, an EWU faculty member and instructor in the university’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program, in February was named 2018 U.S. Army Cadet Command Non-Commissioned Officer Instructor of the Year.

Each year, Cadet Command, the authority that oversees ROTC programs across the nation, recognizes just one noncommissioned officer from those serving in 274 ROTC battalions.

Hennig is the first Eastern ROTC instructor to receive the accolade.

“This is a prestigious honor," says Lt. Col. Jonathan Stafford, chair of Eastern’s Military Science Department. “The fact that he won the award over other NCOs instructing at the Citadel, VMI and much larger universities demonstrates how cadets that graduate from EWU are receiving a high level

of training before being commissioned as Army officers.”

In a move his peers say is typical, Hennig told campus and local media that the award was not about him, but rather the program he serves.

“This award solidifies the hard work the program has done over the last few years,” said Hennig. “I am thankful to work in an environment where I am supposed to teach in the way that I find most effective for the cadets.”

Hennig and Stafford also said the university as a whole deserved credit.

“The ability to use facilities and land on campus and the outstanding support we receive from the EWU faculty, College of Social Sciences, the administration, and alumni is important to the success of the EWU ROTC program.”

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Painfully Close

For both women’s and men’s basketball, tournament glory was just out of reach.

For Eastern hoops fans, it was a weekend of might-have-beens. After a spirited, improbable Big Sky tournament run and a heartbreaking, final-seconds loss in the championship game, the EWU women’s basketball team left CenturyLink Arena in Boise, Idaho achingly close to an NCAA tournament birth.

A tournament appearance would have been a first for Eastern’s longtime head coach Wendy Shuller, who was wrapping up her 18th season at the helm.

For Shuller, the sadness she felt was all for her team. “I couldn’t be prouder to be their coach and honestly, I just feel really bad that I couldn’t get them to the NCAA Tournament,” she said. “They deserved it and worked so hard for it, and I feel bad I couldn’t get them there.”

On that same March weekend, Eastern’s men were also denied a trip to the Big Dance, falling for a second straight year to top-seeded Montana.

“We’ll be back here next year, and hopefully we’re on the other end of this thing,” EWU coach Shantay Legans told The Spokesman-Review just

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moments after the game's final buzzer. “I’m just hurting for the guys.”

Next year, indeed, is looking good for both teams. The women will be without senior standouts Violet Kapri Morrow and Alissa Sealby, but will reload with a group of solid performers from this season’s remarkable class of underclassmen.

The men will return with a roster that includes Mason Peatling, a second-team All-Big Sky selection, Jacob Davison, a third-team selection, and Kim Aiken, Jr., who made the All-Big Sky Tournament team. The Eagle men will also acquire the services of high-flying recruit Ellis Magnuson, a 6-1 point guard who is expected to boost Eastern’s already three-pointfriendly front court. Stay tuned.

Resolved, Eagles Rule

Eastern student athletes earn accolades from state lawmakers

In a win perhaps as sweet as anything achieved on its playing fields, Eastern athletics has managed to bridge, at least for a time, the sometimes-contentious relationship of Washington lawmakers representing the Democratic and Republican parties.

In April, the Washington State Senate passed a unanimous resolution recognizing the “extraordinary athletic and academic achievement” of the 2018 football team, while also commending Eastern’s 14 intercollegiate sports programs for “offering unique opportunities for personal growth.”

The resolution was sponsored by Senator Jeff Holy (R-Spokane), who represents the sixth legislative district that includes EWU and the city of Cheney. He offered it in keeping with a longstanding practice for the Senate to honor outstanding athletic achievements.

Eastern's Director of Athletics Lynn Hickey was on hand at the State Capitol building for the reading of the proclamation accompanying the resolution. “It was an honor to represent Eastern Washington and our football program in Olympia,” she said. “Many thanks go to Senator Holy for initiating this recognition, and to the other senators who spoke as well.

The visit to the State Capitol was an outstanding experience and another proud moment for Eastern Washington University.”

In an address to the Senate prior to the resolution’s adoption, Holy emphasized the extraordinary run of success experienced by the Eastern football program. He both cited EWU’s NCAA Division I championship in

2010, and what he described as the school’s thrilling route to last season’s national championship game. All totaled, the Eagles have won six Big Sky Conference titles since 2010. Last season at the Inferno — where EWU is 52-10 since the iconic red turf was installed in 2010 — they were unbeaten.

Also included in the resolution was a shout-out to accomplishments of Eagle athletes in the classroom. Last year, lawmakers noted, the university won the Big Sky Conference Presidents’ Cup for the third time in the last four seasons, and a total of 32 Eagles were selected to the Big Sky Conference All-Academic team.

The conference awards the Presidents’ Cup annually based on both academic and athletic success. The academic side measures the progresstoward-graduation rates from the previous year, as well as each team’s grade point average. For athletics, regular-season team standings in eight of the league’s 14 sports are considered, with points awarded in men’s and women’s cross country, indoor and outdoor track and field, and golf by virtue of teams’ finishes at the conference championships.

In the latest Cup competition, Eastern’s 3.42 GPA led all institutions and every Eagle squad recorded a 3.0 or higher, the only Big Sky school to do so.

EWU also had six teams register a GPA of 3.5 or higher, with women’s cross country recording the highest mark at 3.71.

The Eagles also boasted the conference’s second-best Academic Progress Rate, a complicated measure by which the NCAA calculate teams’ eligibility for championship play.

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reaking THrough CHRIS PATTERSON WASN’T SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE THE STREETS OF SPOKANE. NOW HE'S HELPING OTHERS STAY OFF THEM.

By Dave Meany

T

he words left quite an impression on the young Chris Patterson. They stand out as one of those pivotal life moments many of us look back on as a possible turning point.

Only this wasn’t a motivational speech. Things hadn’t really turned. Yet. But the words have stuck with him all these years: “I wouldn’t be too concerned, because Chris isn’t going to live to see 18.”

The year was 1984. The words came from a state social worker tasked with delivering a 13-year-old Patterson to a new foster home in Spokane.

“I think the lowest point is when you start to realize, it’s just you… and you’ve got to figure it out,” Patterson says quietly. “And there is really nobody else there to do the work, and so you’ve really got to get up off your backside and do what you’re supposed to do. Or you’re going to sink.”

On that day Patterson, a self-described “runner,” a streetwise kid who was proud that he never stayed put in a foster home, was doing nothing but sinking: “I wouldn’t be too concerned, Chris isn’t going to live to see 18.”

“It sort of hits you,” he recalls. “I knew that I was hanging around with a lot of the tougher crowd, getting in fights almost every day.” He knew, in short, that the social worker had it right.

Patterson still doesn’t look like the type of guy you’d want to pick a fight with. A full framed, 6-feet, 5-inches tall, he cuts an imposing figure. His office wall is adorned with the mounted head of a wild boar that he shot in California.

Dozens of hunting photos and souvenirs add to the toughguy aura.

But it’s not the whole picture. His workspace also includes a framed drawing from his young daughter, along with a set of her sweetly smiling class photos.

There are awards from Leadership Spokane and Rotary International, both signifying Patterson’s deep involvement in the community. There is an image of Patterson standing alongside U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a testament to the broad reach and wide recognition his work has gained.

And there is a bright red banner from EWU, a prominent reminder of the place that helped him to become the man he is today; a person who is, in fact, deeply concerned about each and every youth who may not live to see 18.

Patterson, who recently turned 50, owns BreakThrough, Inc., a state-supported agency that operates 10 residential service homes for children who resemble his former self, atrisk youth from here in the state of Washington, most of them living in the Spokane and Tri-Cities areas.

“We deal with the most intense population that there is in the state,” he says. “A lot of those kids that come to us can’t be returned to a foster home at the time, they have to actually work with their behavior management. Some of these kids can be pretty destructive to their own path, their own future and to themselves as well as maybe other people.

They are really, really challenging to work with until you can figure them out, get them stable.”

“I think his past experiences definitely have a huge factor in how he operates the business,” says Marcus Kelsey, BreakThrough’s quality-assurance manager who oversees the Spokane-area programs. “That’s the reason I came to this company. I was drawn.”

Kelsey’s own life experiences are another reason he was likely drawn to BreakThrough. He also grew up in foster care, living in California and Montana before coming to Spokane. And, like Patterson, he also earned a degree from Eastern, studying visual arts. Kelsey’s path took a turn after he befriended a classmate with multiple sclerosis during his freshman year, helping to care for him during their time

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on campus. This eventually led Kelsey toward helping at-risk populations. “This is kind of natural to me,” he says.

It’s a natural fit for Patterson as well, who says he loves every minute of his challenging vocation. He knows the road these children have traveled. And he believes he knows how to get them on the right path, even if it means working on seemingly small things like table manners and proper hygiene.

“It’s not a one size fits all,” Patterson says. “Every client has his or her own unique way or specific needs, so we develop a plan for each one.”

After Patterson had his revelatory moment at age 13, he gradually began to develop a plan for his own success. College was a big part of that plan. After graduating from Riverside High School north of Spokane, he entered the Job Corps’ forestry program outside Curlew, Washington — a gig that helped him save tuition money by spending long hours working the fire lines at places like Yellowstone National Park.

His first stop after returning home was Spokane Community College, where he earned multiple associate’s degrees while studying fire science, administration of justice and liberal arts.

At the urging of a friend, Patterson decided to try a four-year institution. Being from Spokane, he says Eastern was an obvious, and fortuitous, choice. “It definitely opened up other doors that I didn’t have before.”

Although at one time he thought he might try law enforcement, by the time he enrolled at EWU Patterson knew he wanted to pursue a career that was closer to his heart — social services. He quickly immersed himself in special education

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classes and still remembers some of the EWU instructors who pushed him to succeed, especially Ron Martella, then a professor of education, and Martella’s wife, Nancy Marchand-Martella, a professor in the departments of applied psychology and counseling, educational, and developmental psychology.

“I remember him because of his motivation,” says Martella, now a faculty member at Purdue University, where his wife is the Suzi and Dale Gallagher Dean of Education and a professor of special education. During a recent phone conversation, Martella instantly recalled Patterson’s enthusiasm and commitment to learning.

“He was incredibly inquisitive,” Martella says. “He would be one that would come into the office quite a bit to talk about the material and how you apply it. And so he was always wanting to know more than what was going on in the class.”

Martella spent more than 20 years at Eastern teaching special education and behavior management classes, and still takes pride in the program he left behind. He believes proper training is the key to running successful behavior programs like BreakThrough. Martella thinks Patterson learned critical behavior analysis methods at EWU that are even more relevant to the occupation today.

“You have to have those skills in order to deal with those issues, and he gained those skills in the program,” says Martella.

During the course of the conversation, Martella spoke glowingly of the many former EWU students, like Patterson, who are making differences in their communities. He says he has kept in touch with Patterson over the years, even doing consulting work for him on a few cases when he first started his work.

MORE THAN 9,200 CHILDREN IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON NEED SOME TYPE OF CARE - FROM FOSTER CARE TO GROUP CARE. IN SPOKANE COUNTY, 9.1 CHILDREN PER THOUSAND ARE IN NEED OF CARE, THE HIGHEsT RATE IN THE STATE.

Patterson is thankful for what Martella and his wife did for him at Eastern. “I always respected them,” he says. “They were straightforward, to the point. They taught you, they wanted you to learn, and they wanted you to be successful. And it wasn’t just ‘here read the book and have a test.’ We went over laws, we went over WAC’s, we went over RCW’s, we went over everything there was to know about special education law.”

Patterson graduated from EWU in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies and a minor in childhood educational psychology.

The expertise he acquired led to jobs in private group homes for children, as well as work involving special programs for developmentally disabled adults.

“The more severe the client was, the more I enjoyed the job.”

With his EWU degree in hand, Patterson worked in the industry until he was ready to start his own business helping troubled kids and their families. “I love it," he says. "I think the biggest challenge, it’s not the kids. We know why the kids are here and we know why we’re supposed to be working with them. It’s just getting the rest of the adults in the room and the professionals and legislators and everyone else to figure it out.”

Martella seems certain Patterson had things sort of figured out during his Eastern days when he talked about running his own program. “This goes back to when he was a student and that’s one of the reasons why he was driven to learn the material so well because he already had a goal, I believe, of doing something like this when he was a student,” Martella says. “So it doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“He always showed a lot of tenacity in classes and when he started his business.”

BreakThrough now holds two contracts with the state. One, for the residential homes, was developed with the Division of Developmental Administration. The other

involves work with the Department of Children, Youth and Families. The business employs more than 100 people, including Kelsey, the quality assurance manager.

“He (Chris) has an unorthodox approach, but I think it’s very fitting. He cares about the kids,” Kelsey says. “I’ve worked with other companies, and I think with him there is a little more empathy, compassion, just because he can relate. He’s been on both sides of the fence, if you will.”

With its low youth-to-staff ratio, BreakThrough aims to help their young clients develop critical social skills such as personal accountability, workplace responsibility and appropriate family communications. Many of the children have learning disabilities or serious behavioral issues, so individualized treatment is supplemented with special programs at school and at home.

Patterson must also navigate complicated state regulations and codes to ensure it all runs smoothly.

The name BreakThrough came from Patterson’s wife, Dalene, who noticed her husband would come home and talk about how much of his work involved developing the right program to help troubled youth break through barriers.

There are a lot of barriers to break. According to the policy and advocacy group Partners for Our Children, more than 9,200 children in the state of Washington need some type of care — from foster care to group care. In Spokane County, 9.1 children per thousand are in need of care, the highest rate in the state.

These daunting numbers are no deterrent to Patterson, who nevertheless acknowledges his efforts are typically just a first step in a process where success is hard to measure.

“Success is measured for each kid. And it could be an hour at a time, a day at a time or a month at a time,” he says. On a personal level, success can also come from a simple phone call that reminds Patterson he’s giving back to a system he himself was able to navigate and survive.

“I’ve got kids that I worked with 20 years ago that will find a way and they will call me. They call to say ‘hello,’ to see how things are going. And then they say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Their consistent answer is that they’re sorry they didn’t listen. And they appreciate the fact that someone was there to go toe to toe with them at that worst moment — that moment when they were being the worst possible kid — and I didn’t back down and give up on them.”

Maybe that’s why the tattoo on Patterson’s right forearm is so meaningful. It reads “never quit.” It’s one of his favorite sayings, a “life rule” for both for him and the youth he serves. It’s also a reminder that he didn’t quit on himself after hearing those words so many years ago: “I wouldn’t be too concerned, because Chris isn’t going to live to see 18.”

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By Emily Oliver and Charles E. Reineke

Union, Reborn

A recently completed renovation transforms an iconic, if unloved, Eastern edifice.

Photos by Kevin Scott

21

n a sunny Friday last October, after nearly six years

of planning and construction, a crowd of students,

faculty and friends gathered beneath the soaring entryway of Eastern’s newest old structure – the rebuilt, refurbished and reimagined Pence Union Building.

“The PUB,” said a smiling EWU President Mary Cullinan as she cut a ceremonial ribbon, “has been transformed.”

Crowd members nodded in agreement and anticipation. Even from the outside looking in, it was obvious the new PUB was very different than the old: open and gracious, not closed and opaque; welcoming and warm, not citadel-like and icy. Guests at the event remarked on how its blond wood gleamed, how its polished glass glowed with the colors of the sky, how its angled elevations seemed to reach up and out across its clean-scrubbed entry plazas, as if inviting surrounding structures to embrace it.

“It brings everything together,” said one of the new PUB’s architects. “Before, there were two existing buildings that had never quite connected.”

No kidding. By almost all accounts the two merged buildings connected neither with the campus nor the students they were meant to serve. For almost 50 years in fact, the old PUB and its 1990s-era addition stood as an awkward, unappreciated rebuke; a cautionary testimonial, if you will, to the incontrovertible truth that decisions in brick and mortar have especially long-lasting consequences.

The PUB’s story begins around the same time the Ford Motor Company foisted its Pinto upon an unsuspecting car buying public.

The date: November, 1970. The place: EWU’s rapidly expanding Cheney campus. A new, $2.3 million student-union structure was nearing completion, part of a building boom that would see some half-a-dozen new facilities expand and modernize Eastern’s physical

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footprint. This project, to be named for faculty stalwart Omer Pence, was behind schedule — the planned September opening had been pushed back to sometime “between fall and winter quarters.” Don’t worry, planners said, the building would be worth the wait.

More than just a home for “student activities and food service,” they promised the new union would rise as a modernist monument; a statement in brick and steel to Eastern’s ambitions, to its sense of itself as an institution on the rise.

But from its start, like Ford’s Pinto, the Pence Union Building was not easy to love.

Though not executed in textbook form, PUB designers were heavily influenced by a wave of “Brutalist” architecture that was rolling across the nation’s collegiate landscape. The austere, angular style was named for the béton brut — the “raw concrete” — that period superstars like Le Corbusier made a conspicuous part of their oeuvre.

For administrators on rapidly growing college campuses, the style offered obvious advantages: Brutalist structures were easy to build, relatively inexpensive and, perhaps most importantly, powerful visual demonstrations of the “forward thinking” nature of their institutions.

Yet instead of becoming what one period architect called “richly expressive citadels for high culture,” Brutalist buildings soon became objects of derision: dark, maze-like, uninviting, ugly, were all common descriptors. At Eastern, students were baffled by the new PUBs lack of windows, and found its brooding, fortress-like footprint off-putting. They puzzled over why a student union building, a place that, by definition, was meant to bring people together, lacked open, welcoming spaces. They were even confused, apparently, about what to do with their trash.

Within weeks of the PUB's grand opening, administrators took to the pages of The Easterner to plead with students to use the rubbish receptacles: “There is no way [for custodial staff] to keep up with

It brings everything together,” said one of the new PUB’s architects.

“Before, there were two existing buildings that had never quite connected.

6,000 students, nearly 500 coming in during every class break, who drop paper cups, cigarette butts, gum wrappers, and all kinds of trash on the floors, not more than 20 feet from a garbage can,” an exasperated Walt Zabel, director of student activities, told the paper.

What was perhaps most vexing to students was the stark contrast between the new PUB and the SUB, the previous “student union building,” it replaced. That union, now Isle Hall, was a crowded but convivial space. Bill Stimson, ’70, remembers how at home he felt there, and how much Eastern students — perhaps more so than at other universities — valued its friendly confines.

“That was my whole world,” says Stimson, now a professor of journalism at EWU. “Eastern was a commuter college, even more so back then, so a lot of people hung out at the SUB. It was the perfect connecting place. A student union building really is the heart of education, and the conversations you have about teachers, occasionally about ideas, and the arguments you have are an important part of college. You need that kind of human connection.”

Imperfections notwithstanding, over the years the PUB did, in fact provide such connections for thousands of Eastern students.

Mark Nysether, ’78, was one of them. “It was my place to go,” says Nysether, a former Beta Kai Epsilon fraternity member who now runs the Everett-based Sea-Dog Corp., a supplier of marine hardware. He says he has particularly fond memories of ping-pong sessions in the PUB’s game room.

Beyond old-school gaming, Nysether, a transfer student from Everett Community College, was keenly focused on the advancement possibilities offered by Eastern, an institution seeking to shed its commuter-college reputation by emphasizing its status as a residential, four-year institution. On the Cheney campus he

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quickly built a home for himself, becoming active in both the Greek system and student government. He came to care deeply, he says, about the future of the university and its long term well-being.

That interest has continued over the years, and Nysether has leveraged his business success to make donations to various Eastern undertakings. But there was one project in particular that, almost the moment he learned of it, he knew he wanted to be a part of.

“I had donated to causes every couple of years,” says Nysether.

“Then, in the spring, I heard they were going to be doing some fundraising for the PUB. I was in.”

Like thousands of other students over the years, the memories Nysether made in the PUB were tempered by the building’s limitations; that lack of light, those cramped spaces, the incoherent “circulation” — a term architects use to describe how people move, or “flow,” from area to area. A major expansion in 1994, meant to expand student dining options, added a second, less-forbidding-looking building to the mix. But that structure did little to broaden the PUB’s appeal. The two buildings were joined haphazardly, creating a structural muddle that mostly accentuated the liabilities of both.

Finally, as the PUB approached its 50th birthday, EWU students, administrators and alumni donors like Nysether all found themselves of one mind; it was time to de-Brutalize the PUB. The push began almost six years ago. EWU administrators first engaged Perkins+Will, a Chicago-based architectural firm with offices in Seattle, to radically rethink the PUB’s look and feel.

The Perkins+Will plan was then pitched to EWU students, who, by voting to increase their student-services fees, would bear the brunt of its estimated $47 million costs. University community

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engagement professionals, meanwhile, contacted potential donors such as Nysether, asking if they might be willing to pitch in with private support.

By late 2016, the project had approvals and funding in place. In December, the old PUB shut its doors for the last time as Spokane general contractor Leone & Keeble, Inc. — the same firm that led the recent overhaul of Patterson Hall — began work. Their goal, according to a published account from Perkins+Will’s Anthony Gianopoulos, was to upend the Brutalist approach, creating instead “an easy-to-navigate, open-concept layout that is infused with natural light and supports a rich array of spaces in which students can interact, work, eat, study, lounge and socialize.”

Over the next two years, workers made this happen. They created an open floor plan by gutting the walls and ceilings of the old PUB’s 120,000-square-foot interior and adding an additional 4,000-square-feet. They tore out the awkward connection between the original building and its 1970s-era addition, replacing it with a stunning atrium of glass, steel and blond wood.

This soaring, light-infused atrium space is the heart of the new PUB. Envisioned as a multilevel “stairway through campus,” it ties together all three floors of the re-envisioned building, providing access to student-club suites, conference rooms and food service areas. All of these, Gianopoulos says, were purposebuilt to be highly visible to passersby, encouraging students, faculty and staff to connect and engage in a way that wasn’t possible in the old building.

On one side of the ground floor, meanwhile, workers built a “modernized multipurpose room” that includes a state-of-theart stage, sound equipment and acoustical fixtures for music

performances and speaking engagements. On the other side they created a new, expanded space for the Eagle Store, one that couldn’t come soon enough for its managers.

“It’s a lot brighter and more open,” says Lynn Junge, the store’s merchandise manager and assistant director. “The whole PUB is now cohesive,” adds Kristen Zitterkopf, the store's marketing coordinator. “It’s easy to navigate and very welcoming.”

Student leaders agree. Designers of the new PUB made a point of providing members of Eastern’s Associated Students with new, glass-walled meeting spaces — rooms meant to allow passing Eagles a chance to see their student government in action.

During the two-year construction period, ASEWU offices were relocated to a spot in Sutton Hall that was seldom visited, says ASEWU President Dante Tyler. With the grand reopening the offices are not only back, but highly visible. “The number of students coming in and talking to us has increased,” Tyler says.

“More students [now] know what ASEWU is. And being able to talk to them is great.”

It is exactly this sort of engagement that had Mark Nysether hooked on the project from the beginning. It’s thus not surprising that PUB planners chose to recognized his contributions by dubbing the multipurpose space the Nysether Community Room, a space suited for similarly meaningful interactions that, perhaps in a slightly ironic way, the Brutalist designers of the original PUB would also have been thrilled to see.

Nysether, for his part, couldn’t be happier about the whole thing. “It’s amazing,” he says after attending the sneak-peek tour last fall. “It’s just a beautiful, well thought out, well-done building.”

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28 EASTERN MAGAZINE

Thanks to an intrepid Eastern researcher, an ‘odd organism’ gets its turn in the spotlight.

By Charles E. Reineke

She is a renowned star of stage and screen, a media mogul and philanthropist. It is a previously unidentified “symbiotic organism formed by close cooperation between a fungus and an alga.” Now, thanks in part to an EWU biologist, that organism — a lichen — and the voluble celebrity — Oprah Winfrey — will be forever linked, at least in the annals of lichenized-fungi taxonomy.

Earlier this year, Jessica Allen, a lichenologist and assistant professor of biology at EWU, and James Lendemer, an assistant curator at the New York Botanical Garden, found themselves puzzling over an unfamiliar lichen found growing on tree bark in rural Alabama. The leafy, jigsaw-puzzle-like “foliose” lichen, so called because of those leaf-like lobes, didn’t quite fit the characteristics of any known species. Back in the lab, chemical analysis showed a distinct profile, while an examination with ultraviolet light yielded a bright-yellow glow that further confirmed its uniqueness.

When it comes to the few dozen new lichens identified each year, naming rights belong to the discoverers. Because this glowing member of the genus Hypotrachyna was found near Koscuisko, home town to — you guessed it — Oprah, Allen and Lendemer called it “Oprah’s sunshine,” or, as it will be known in the trade, Hypotrachyna oprah.

H. oprah joins the roughly 20,000 lichen species already identified. There are plenty more waiting to be discovered; botanists estimate that only five percent of the world’s fungi have been fully documented.

Researchers such as Allen and Lendemer are determined to lessen that deficit, a task motivated in part by scientists’ growing

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awareness that lichens, always a crucial environmental player, are now emerging as an important “bioindicator” of our planet’s overall health.

“Even though they are really small, lichens are actually important pieces of the whole, overarching ecosystem,” says Allen. They are habitats for tiny invertebrates, she says, like water bears, nematodes and small worms. Insects use them for camouflage and for food. Slugs and snails also eat them, as do larger, more charismatic creatures such as deer — who

Right: A view of H. Oprah glowing green in the laboratory.

Above: The lichen in its natural state, attached to the bark of a pine. Previous Spread: EWU's Jessica Allen at the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.

depend on lichens for winter forage — as well as caribou and bighorn sheep that eat them yearround. Because lichens don’t hold water and naturally produce antibiotic and anti-bacterial compounds, numerous bird species use them for nesting materials.

“As far as humans go,” Allen adds, “most lichens are really sensitive to the same air pollutants that cause health problems, so we use them for large-scale air quality monitoring worldwide.”

This wasn’t the first time Allen and her research partner linked a new lichen to an A-List personality. “James and I named a species after Dolly Parton, I think, three years ago.

So this was the second in our series of Southeastern lichen celebrities,” she says with a laugh.

Allen, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Eastern before completing a doctorate at the City University of New York, gets why some might think linking Dolly and Oprah to lichens is simply a ploy to capture the attention of, well, media organizations like this one. But there’s nothing frivolous about it, she says.

“Some people feel really strongly that you should give species’ names that describe what they look like, only in Latin,” says Allen. “Our purpose was to honor two women who have accomplished some incredible things in their lives, women who are really strong philanthropists. It’s also because there are just very few species named after women.

We’re honoring them for their work, but also highlighting this gap that we see in our nomenclature.”

Make no mistake, she continues, lichen nomenclature is a serious business. “The name sticks with the organism, basically, forever,” she says. “You can change the genus, change how its organized evolutionarily, change how it fits with our overall knowledge of how it and other species are related to one another. But unless someone demonstrates a flaw in the identification, that second name, Oprah, is stuck to it.”

Allen does concede, however, that she and Lendemer aren’t averse to using the glow of celebrity to give lichens a bit of a PR boost. On this score there is much work to be done.

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not many people know what lichens are, and who would?

They seem as though they are from another planet!

Left and above: Lichens from Turnbull, ready for their closeups.

Photos by Eric Galey.

In an otherwise informative webpage, for example, the U.S. Forest Service admits up front that “not many people know what lichens are, and who would? They seem as though they are from another planet!”

Lichens are indeed odd organisms. Neither entirely fungus or algae, they exist in what biologists call a “mutualistic relationship” between the two. Lichens typically consist of a thallus — the vegetative body produced by the fungus — and a photosynthetic agent that feeds it, either algae or cyanobacteria (a bacterium sometimes mistakenly referred to as “blue-green algae”). Unlike plants, they do not have roots, stems or leaves.

Lichens grow very slowly, reproducing in both sexual and non-sexual ways. They need only air and rain to sustain themselves, and, also unlike plants, can shut down completely to survive long-exposures to drought and other extreme conditions.

Lichen-friendly substrates — the surfaces on which lichens grow — can be found all over, from mountain peaks to coastal marshes, from scalding savannahs to freezing tundra. One lichen, Xanthoria elegans, even survived outside the International Space Station. But lichens seem happiest in warm places where there is plenty of water, air, nutrients and light.

The rural Southeast is one of those places, which explains in part why Allen and Lendemer spend so much time trudging through the backyards of southerners like Dolly Parton and Oprah Winfrey.

The discovery of H. oprah happened, for example, while the two scientists were participating in the lichen-collecting workshop near the Alabama/Mississippi border, about 50 miles from Winfrey’s birthplace. The area is a classic biodiversity hotspot, home to astonishing range of plants, animals and, of course, lichens.

“It’s the last tailings of the Appalachian Mountains spilling down into the coastal plain of the Southeast,” says Allen. “Deciduous trees, mixed deciduous forests, really high tree diversity, pretty dense understory. It’s basically, but not quite, subtropical. Really wet, lots of rain. A tropical influence without quite being subtropical.”

Lichen hunts are decidedly low-tech: pinpoint a promising spot and start collecting. “We use wood chisels to pry them off wood, rock chisels to collect on rocks, clippers for lichens on limbs — these things are usually growing on trees, or on rocks or on the soil,” Allen says, noting that she and Lendemer often attract the attention of curious, if standoffish, locals.

“We end up with whole pillow cases stuffed full of lichens – we look crazy, right? Most of the time they will give you a look, but they never say anything.”

The researchers typically don’t discriminate among lichens in the field, instead taking samples from pretty much every species they see. The reason, Allen says, is two-fold. One, it’s easy to mistake one lichen for another. H oprah, for example, was likely confused with H. osseoalba, another lichen also found in the warm, wet forests of the southeastern U.S. The other reason involves a more general need to catalog what’s out there. “We’re basically just trying to document the full diversity of species in the area, preserving them so that

other scientists can study them for years, even centuries, to come,” says Allen. “We still have specimens from Darwin and earlier, some collections have samples dating back to the 1500s.”

Back out in the field, newly collected lichens are plopped into paper lunch bags, Allen says, “like you’d send with your kid to school.”

The scientists then record the lichens’ location and note their substrate. Eventually, they’ll haul them off to reside with older specimen in an herbarium, a building housing a preserved collection of plants and fungi.

“We have an herbarium here at Eastern actually,” Allen says. “This work was mostly done at the New York Botanical Garden, which is the second-largest herbarium in the world. But here at Eastern we have our own slowly growing collection housed in the Science Building.”

For specimen deserving of extra attention, like the lichen that became H. oprah, a trip to the laboratory is next. Here state-of-the-art tools come into play. Dissecting microscopes and imaging software help scientists produce a detailed description of the lichen’s physical characteristics. Analyses involving exposure to ultraviolet light — part of a process called thin-layer chromatography — helps determine how the lichen’s compounds compare to previously documented species. Sometimes the scientists take tissue for genetic testing. The process, from collecting in the field to preparing their findings for publication, can take months, even years.

Allen says the effort is more than worth it, especially for researchers like her who love both lichens and the challenge they represent. The love part began, she says, back when she was an undergraduate at EWU, where she became enthralled by lichens’ peculiar attractions.

“I still think they’re beautiful,” she says. “But as a scientist, I like working with lichens because there is just so much we don’t know about them, and so many contributions that, as a researcher, you can make to the field. And it’s great to be here at Eastern, because there is so much that the students can do, as graduate or even undergraduate student researchers, that can substantially contribute to our body of knowledge.”

Allen and Lendemer’s discovery was published in Castanea, the journal of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. Oprah was unavailable for comment.

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An E gle in

Frisco

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Outnumbered but undaunted, a dedicated alumnus makes memories at the FCS National Championship game

BY BART MIHAILOVICH, ‘06

T

hey say that fear brings people together. Not that I was ever fearful in the sense of being terrified, but it was certainly jarring — and a little unsettling — to stumble into a swirling sea of Bison fans. I do not exaggerate when I tell you there was neither a familiar face, nor a hint of Eagle red, anywhere to be seen in this sea of Bison green and yellow.

That’s what it was like on a cool January morning in Frisco, Texas, just outside of Toyota Stadium, two hours before the kickoff of the FCS National Championship between my beloved Eastern Eagles and the North Dakota State University Bison.

Task one: find friendly faces at the Eagle tailgate. An attempt to triage an onslaught of texts and DMs lead us to where we thought the unofficial pocket of Eag faithful were hanging out. We were wrong. Or were we? Could our tailgate have been overwhelmed by the mass of NDSU fans filling the stadium’s concourse?

Not likely, I thought. I had been paying attention to the Eagle message board and social media channels. I knew Eagle boosters had descended on Frisco. At that moment, however, I briefly secondguessed whether anyone had actually shown up — outside, at least, of the trio of my traveling companions: my wife, Sara ’07, and friends and fellow alumni Rich Dempsey ’05 and Daren Bosted ’06.

That’s when we were plucked out of the crowd by friendly faces who happened to be passing by. “You look lost,” they said. “Eagles fans? That’s the other side!” And so, like thirsty sojourners being steered toward an oasis in the desert, we circled the stadium until we were at last united with our people. And it was glorious.

Eagle fans did show up, my friends, and then some. And while our legion of red and white may not have equaled our rivals in number, I can confidently report that it far surpassed them in enthusiasm.

The Road to Frisco

May 1

June

Loaded with returning talent and with no key injuries, Eastern is favored to win the Big Sky Conference.

Two of the three major preseason polls rank Eastern in the national Top 10. Projected starting quarterback Gage Gubrud is named a preseason All-American by HERO Sports and Athalon.

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Above: The author and his wife, Sarah. Middle: Gunner Talkington, Ketner Kupp and Sam McPherson prepare for the coin toss. Right: Eagle meets Bison.

Between the brats and burgers there was much catching up to do. Having been part of the EWU community for many years, I am fortunate to have been able to nurture relationships that stretch beyond those with whom I went to classes. As a student, I spent much of my free time working with University Special Events, an organization that allowed me to meet and build lasting relationships with faculty members, deans, administrators and other personalities at the university. I felt like I saw them all in Frisco. Writing for The Easterner and interning for the Athletics Department also allowed me to meet many more EWU stalwarts; many of these old friends were also in Frisco. Finally, I spent six years serving on the EWU Alumni Association Board of

Directors. You will perhaps not be surprised when I tell you that just about everyone I served with made an appearance. The FCS Championship was not just a football game: it was a reunion of epic proportions.

A little after kickoff, I felt something bounce off the back of my head. I turned around and saw Nadine Arévalo laughing, waving and yelling, “hi!” Eastern’s former first lady and her husband, President Emeritus Rodolfo Arévalo, were a few rows behind us.

Seeing their smiling faces brought back a flood of memories from some of our favorite times in and around campus. Sara and I both worked University Special Events, and while there we got really close to the Arévalos — heck, we even invited them to our wedding.

58-13

677 TOTAL YARDS

Aug. 6

Aug. 18

Sept. 1

Sept. 15

Sept. 29

Spokesman-Review profile of Eric Barriere touts the sophomore backup quarterback’s rapid development as a “great sign” for Eastern fans.

Annual Red/White scrimmage.

Eagles start season with 677 yards on offense as they dismantle Division II power Central Washington, 58-13.

Four turnovers doom Eagles’ upset bid over in-state rival Washington State.

Gage Gubrud injures foot in Eastern’s road win over Montana State. Gubrud would miss the remainder of the season.

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When you choose a university to attend, you hope you’re doing more than signing up for an education; you anticipate becoming part a community, and making memories that will last a lifetime.

I’m not saying a single event can or should define the success or failure of that proposition. But when it took me 20 minutes to make a bathroom run, all because I ran into so many people from so many different chapters of my EWU life, I felt like calling my parents to thank them again for helping me get to Eastern.

Looking back, I can’t believe there was a time in November when Sara and I debated making the trip. Like a lot of you I’m sure, after every playoff victory we went through the whole song and dance of asking ourselves, “If they keep winning, will we go?

Should we go? Let’s just look at plane tickets now just to see how much it would be. Let’s talk to the grandparents and see if maybe they are free that weekend to watch the kids — just in case.”

And then, as soon as the Maine Bears were dispatched, there was no debate. We were going. Our Eags were going, so we were going. There are some experiences you just can’t miss. You do them whether you think you can or not. You do them when it means stretching the budget. You do them when it means taking that extra day off. I went to Frisco in 2011 when we beat the University of Delaware for our first FCS National Championship. So I tried to frame planning for this trip through the lens of that one. But besides the eight years which have crept by, there have been some major advancements in the world of EWU football, and campus life, that would make this trip unique.

At the most basic level, there are more of us fans now. We’ve had a decade’s worth of alumni classes who only know winning EWU Football. And not just winning, but dominance. Behind only NDSU, Eastern is the second most dominant FCS college football team of the last dozen years. With winning comes fanbase growth, as is evidenced by the Eags’ regular season home sellout streak, the explosion of pregame fanfare and the immensely increased exposure of EWU in the media.

This luxury of sustained success can sometimes breed a complacency that was unthinkable in 2011. “We’re actually not going to go this year because it’s bad timing for us, but we’ll head down next time they make it — probably next year.” That was a real conversation I had with an alum before heading to Frisco.

Back during our first championship game experience, I remember thinking I had to go out of fear that it may never happen again.

Another change between 2011 and 2019 involves social media and email marketing. In advance of our trip, I knew almost everyone who was going and every possible pre- and post-game

Oct. 6

Oct. 13

Nov. 10

Nov. 16

Eric Barriere dazzles in his debut as Eastern torches defending Big Sky co-champs Southern Utah, 55-17.

The high-flying Eagles are grounded after a dispiriting 14-6 loss to Weber State. It is the first time since 2008 that an Eastern offense has failed to reach the endzone. EWU drops to 4-2.

Eastern bounces back, wins its third straight game after a 59-20 rout of fourth-ranked UC Davis.

Eagles clinch a share of the Big Sky Conference Championship with a road victory at Portland State. EWU is seeded No. 3 for the upcoming FCS playoff.

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Above: Eagle fans, including the family of Head Coach Aaron Best, making noise beneath the Frisco sun. Right: A very vocal booster.

plan — this thanks to the university's many social-media channels and the digitization of the support system around EWU Athletics.

In both the real and virtual worlds, it is really a great time to be an Eagle.

The flip side of these advances is a sense of "ownership" of winning. So even while knowing we were going up against a dominant, dynasty of a program, I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say I traveled to Frisco expecting a win. In 2011, it was just about being there. In 2019, it was about winning.

And then we lost. Not in epic fashion, not a loss that felt like

it should have been a victory. Just a game in which the other team played a little better and got a few more breaks. Looking back, our defeat felt kind of weird. Almost anticlimactic.

Which made what happened next interesting. Everyone from the EWU section made their way down to the field and over to the Eastern sideline. Just twenty or so yards away, in the endzone, the NDSU faithful were celebrating their seventh championship in eight years. As it was in the pregame, by the same margin, we were a group of red surrounded by a sea of green and yellow. But it didn’t feel like we were outnumbered.

Nov. 20

Nov. 21

Dec. 1

Dec. 8

Nose tackle Jay-Tee Tiuli named the Big Sky’s Defensive Player of the Year.

Head Coach Aaron Best named Co-Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year.

After a slow start, Eagles cruise to firstround playoff victory over Nichols State, 42-21.

In an instant classic, Barriere and runningback Sam McPherson engineer a four-play, 47-second touchdown drive to secure a come-from-behind win over UC Davis.

38 EASTERN MAGAZINE

We walked around the sideline and thanked players and coaches. Old roommates and teammates took pictures, hugged and high fived. Even though their emotions were running high, as you would expect, the team and their coaches stuck around to interact with the traveling community of EWU fans. It was a surreal experience as we blocked out the on-field trophy presentation happening just a few steps away and simply enjoy the fact that a university and its football program could bring so many people into the Texas sunshine.

For us, the experience kept on giving as we made our way 40 miles south to an NFL playoff game scheduled between the hometown Dallas Cowboys and another beloved Washington team, the Seattle Seahawks. It was pretty evident from on-the-field conversations that a majority of EWU fans were heading down to complete the daily football doubleheader.

Though I’m not really an NFL fan, I couldn’t pass up the chance to join them. Walking through the labyrinth of AT&T Stadium wearing the same EWU gear I wore in Frisco felt like a badge of honor; especially when other EWU fans would shout, “Go Eags” (or even when NDSU fans would stop to talk about the game).

I don’t know how much different the experience would have been had we been able to pull out the victory. But I do know that I’m glad we didn’t talk ourselves out of going, and I can’t wait until we can go back again. Frisco is a great venue for the game; a beautiful stadium with great amenities that fully delivers on the unique qualities that make FCS football so special.

I’m also incredibly proud of our fanbase and community. These are the people who make the alumni game day experience what it’s really all about: a celebration of our collective college memories, and an affirmation of the bonds of friendship that run deeper than any one game or season.

I’ll close with just one more thought. Back in 2001, the student section at Woodward Field was on the opposite side of its current location at Roos Field. Attending my first Eagles game as a freshman, I remember it was hot, and the few of us who showed up were forced to shield our eyes from a relentlessly bright September sun. No one wore EWU gear, there was no gameday experience and, really, there just wasn’t much of anything at all to get excited about.

Fast forward to now, 18-years later. Soon another set of freshmen will be gathering beneath the September sun. For them, as for all of EWU's alumni and friends, so much has changed: a football team now to be reckoned with, a university growing in reach and prestige, and an increasingly cohesive and enthusiastic Eastern community. All share in the confidence that comes with success; all can bask in the glow of a future has never been brighter. Go Eags!

Dec. 10

Dec. 15

Dec. 22

Jan. 5

Jan. 10

Eagle place kicker and punter Roldan Alcobendas wins Fred Mitchell Award, top honor for a kicker not at an FBS institution.

Eastern punches its ticket to FCS title game with 50-19 win over Maine.

Hero Sports names Eagles’ Head Coach Aaron Best FCS Coach of the Year.

Eastern falls to North Dakota State in the FCS National Championship game in Frisco, Texas.

Head Coach Aaron Best agrees to a two-year contract extension.

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on the road with eastern magazine Where will Eastern magazine be spotted next? You are invited to send photographs holding up the latest issue. Include some information about yourself with your submission. We may not be able to publish every submission. Extras will be posted on the Eastern magazine Facebook page and on the magazine’s website.

Send to easternmagazine@ewu.edu or Eastern Magazine, 102 Hargreaves Hall, Cheney, WA 99004-2413.

Left: Curt Barclay ’89 at Africa’s highest point – Mount Kilimanjaro’s Uhuru Peak, 19,341 ft.

Clockwise from right: Chris Yamada '72 with his wife, Sherri, and son, Christopher, visited family homelands in China and Japan in November.

Mount Fuji looms in the background.

EWU Board of Trustees member Kim Pearman-Gillman and Diane Quincy ’80, ’87 in Paris last fall.

Jeanette Wills Cornwall ’68,’02 visited South Africa in 2018 and met Jessica, the "world famous" hippo.

Bea Tysor MA ’87 at the Plaza de la Catedral in Havana, Cuba.

Scott LaPlant ’03, his wife, Andrea, and future Eagles Brendan and Callu at Cerro Campanario in Bariloche, Argentina.

Kimberly M. Mayer ’06 celebrated her 35th birthday in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

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CLASS NOTES 2010's ’18 Kevin Dejong, DPT, has joined the Spokane Valley practice of Inspire Physical Therapy. While at Eastern, he served as the president of the physical therapy class of 2018. ’18 Nick Duke, BS computer science, has been hired by etailz, Inc., an online marketplace retailer, as a software engineer I. ’18 Andrew Hayes, BA anthropology, has joined etailz, Inc., as lead generation associate. He previously worked at Pacific Park Children’s Center. ’18 Matthew McGee, BS computer science, has been hired by etailz, Inc., as a software engineer I. ’18 Jason Nazzaro, BA finance, has been hired by etailz, Inc., as a product analyst I. ’18 Kaily Wasserman, BA criminal justice, has been hired as a legal assistant by Wolff, Hislop & Crockett, PLLC. ’17 Michael Espinoza, BS environmental science, has joined Hart Crowser, an engineering, science and consulting firm in Seattle, as a field geologist. ’17 Joseph B. Figg, technical communication, has joined Microsoft as a communication manager. ’17 Nicholas Taylor, BS exercise science, and ’17 Zoe Cheeseman, BA physics education, married July 14, 2018. The couple lives in Spokane, where Zoe is teaching at Mountainside Middle School and Nick is completing his master’s degree in exercise science at EWU. ’16 Seth DeNardi, BS economics, BA accounting, has been promoted to staff accountant at Nicholas Knapton, P.S. ’16 Kathryn Munro, BA music education, has joined etailz, Inc., as a product compliance coordinator.

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’16, ’09 Amanda Swan, MS communications, BA studio art, has been recognized by Catalyst magazine as one of the top “20 Under 40.” She is the community relations manager at Numerica Credit Union. ’16 Meghan Upton, BA marketing, has joined the branding and marketing agency Klündt|Hosmer as digital marketing coordinator. Previously, she was with etailz, Inc. ’15 Colton Arias, BA government, and Olivia Newhouse, of Bothell, Washington, married on Sept. 1, 2018. He earned his JD from Seattle University School of Law in 2018, and is employed by Mix Sanders Thompson, PLLC, in Seattle. ’14 Kate Casbon, BA accounting, had been elected vice chair/treasurer of the board of directors for the Spokane Chapter of the Washington State Society of CPAs. ’14 Tracy L. White, BA experiential learning, was selected as president for Washington State Society for Human Resource Management, effective Jan. 1, 2019. White is the chief human resources officer of Clark Nuber, PS, in Bellevue, Washington. Previously, she served on the EWU College of Business's advisory board. ’13 Jacob Bromley, BS computer science, has joined etailz, Inc., as a software engineer II. Previously, he worked for LaunchedIT, LLC. ’12 Daniel J. Brownlow, BA criminal justice, and Carolyn Manka were married April 28, 2018, in Yakima, Washington.

He works at Expeditors in Kent, Washington. The couple lives in Kirkland, Washington. ’10 Scott Carver, BA management, has joined Spokane Federal Credit Union as its director of human resources. Previously, he worked at Northwest Farm Credit Services as a human resource adviser.

’10, ’98 Cara Coon, MA communications, BA English education, was named vice president of communications and public affairs at Greater Spokane Inc. She previously served as the government affairs director at Umpqua Bank, and as the communications and public affairs director at Sterling Savings Bank before that. ’10 Alissa Muñoz, BA communication disorders, has joined the Community Colleges of Spokane as operations manager for the Center for Workforce and Continuing Education. Previously, she served as vice president and interim president at the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce.

2000's ’09 Dustin W. Massie, BA international affairs and Spanish, was recognized as an “Up and Coming Attorney” in 2018 by Minnesota Lawyer, and Super Lawyers Rising Star, for the top-rated employment litigation attorney in Minneapolis, for 20172018. An attorney with Baillon Thome Jozwiak & Wanta, LLP, his practice includes representing workers facing forms of unlawful treatment in the workplace, and he has served as a leader in the Twin Cities’ chapter of the Human Rights Campaign. ’08, ’04 Emily Kratzer, MA literature, BA English, has joined Alliant Insurance Services as an account representative. ’07 Benjamin H. Rascoff, BS communication studies, has been named a principal at Winston & Cashatt, Lawyers.

Rascoff specializes in employment matters, personal injury, class action and commercial cases. He joined Winston & Cashatt in 2015. ’06 Susan Joseph Nielsen, MS interdisciplinary studies, has joined the Washington State Department of Commerce as rural services manager in eastern Washington. In this position, she will lead Economic Gardening and Startup 365 programs, as well as provide export training and other technical assistance to

1990's small businesses east of the Cascades. She serves on EWU’s College of Business and Public Administration’s advisory board. ’06 Jillian Robison, BA accounting, is the past chair of the board of directors for the Spokane Chapter of the Washington State Society of CPAs. ’05 Nicholas Farline, BA economics, is the city of Valdez, Alaska’s new director of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services.

He come to Valdez from the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department, and has more than 17 years’ experience in outdoor recreation programming and management. ’07 ’05 Stephanie Oakes, BA English, MFA Creative Writing, won the Washington State Book Award for Young Adult Literature in October for her second novel, The Arsonist. Stephanie was a Running Start student at EWU. Her first novel, The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, was adapted into a 10-part Facebook Watch series titled Sacred Lies last summer. ’03 Lisa Cushman, BA accounting, has been elected chair of the board of directors for the Spokane Chapter of the Washington State Society of CPAs. ’02 Ben Ferney, MEd, is the new superintendent of the Valley School District after spending the previous five years as the principal of Freeman Middle School. He has had a 32-year career in education and was recently honored with an Award of Merit by the NE Washington Association of School Administrators. ’01 Kelly Behne, BA outdoor recreation, has joined Community Health of Central Washington-Ellensburg clinic as a physician's assistant. She earned a master's of physician assistant studies from Idaho State University. ’00, ’96 Kim Resleff, ARNP, BS nursing, BS biology, has joined Kimberly Grandinetti, MD, in opening Spokane Pediatrics.

’97 Beth Thew, BA liberal studies, has been appointed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to a second five-year term on the Community Colleges of Spokane’s board of trustees. Thew currently serves as chair of the governing board and is the retired secretary-treasurer for the Spokane Regional Labor Council, AFL-CIO. ’96 Jason T. Vail, BA economics, has been promoted to director of the American Bar Association (ABA) Division of Legal Services. He also serves as chief counsel to the ABA standing committee on legal aid and indigent defendants. ’95 Ron Corbin, BA biology, has been named the city manager of Cottonwood, Arizona. ’94 Mark Kettner, BA business administration, has been selected as chief executive officer at Eastern State Hospital (ESH) in Medical Lake, Washington.

He has worked in healthcare for nearly 30 years and had served as the chief administrative/chief financial officer at ESH since 2014.

1980's ’89 Joel Mackay, BA mathematics, owner of MonteScarlatto Estates Winery, has opened Renegade, a tasting room, in downtown Spokane. The winery specializes in Bordeaux-style wines.

Barbera, an Italian varietal, is one of MonteScarlatto’s signature wines. ’88 Dennis Medina, MFA creative writing, lives in southwest Colorado and recently published the genrebending novel, The Madness of the Brave (Moonshine Cove Publishing, July 2018).

The novel is set in the late 1970s world of political activism, a time of shifting alliances and betrayal.

primary-care provider group. She was one of the founders of Community 1st Bank. ’85 Jim McElwain, BA physical education, a former quarterback at EWU (19801983), will take over as head football coach of Central Michigan. Most recently, he served as the wide receiver coach for Michigan. ’81 Loyal Baker, BA journalism, and his wife ’95 Charlotte, BA music, have purchased the East Washingtonian, Pomeroy, Washington’s 136-year-old community newspaper. It is the newspaper of record for Garfield County and the city of Pomeroy. Tom has served as publisher since July 1987.

1970's ’75 Edmond A. Bruneau, BA journalism, has recently released his third book of poetry, The Totem and Other Poetic Musings, published by Boston Books in 2018. In addition to poetry, he also continues to craft the lyrics for the group Robot Raven robotraven.com. His books and music are available on Amazon and other outlets. ’73 Susan Hollinsworth, BA biology, was one of the first female graduates of the University of Washington School of Dentistry in 1978. After 40 years in practice in Kent, Washington, she retired in October 2018. Over the years, she was actively involved in the dental profession at the local and state level. She has also volunteered her services, helping those who could not afford dental care and mentored students.

’85 Kathie Lyon, BA accounting, has been named to the board of directors of Heritage Health, a North Idaho nonprofit

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IN MEMORIAM 1990's

Faculty and Staff

’96 LuAnn Brown, age 62, Oct. 12, 2018

’76 Yvonne R. Swanberg, age 73, Nov. 2, 2018

’96 Kristina L. Ewing, age 44, July 30, 2018

’75 Roy A. Laitinen, age 71, Sept. 4, 2018

’92 Traci A. Cromwell, age 49, Aug. 25, 2018

’73 Jack M. Hogg, age 67, Sept. 30, 2018

’91 Pamela J. Spehar, age 73, July 11, 2018

’70 Paul P. Carosella, age 76, Aug. 10, 2018

’90 Joretta M. Hartley, age 86, Nov. 8, 2018

’70 Diane B. White, age 70, Aug. 3, 2018

1980's

1960's

’88 Mahilani Gutina, age 58, Sept. 20, 2018

’68 Harold L. Crawford, age 76, Oct. 24, 2018

’86 Wanda K. Dirks, age 79, Aug. 11, 2018

’67 James D. Johnston, age 81, Aug. 25, 2018

’86 Thomas R. Wright, age 62, Aug. 15, 2018

’66 Robert W. Spencer, age 76, Aug. 21, 2018

Mabel Bright Kaiser, professor emeritus, died March 20, 2019. She retired from Eastern in 1974 after 33 years of service in the Department of Education.

’85 Leona G. Harris, age 85, Oct. 28, 2018

James C. Arnold, age 76, Nov. 8, 2018

Don Killin, died March 20, 2019. He served in Facilities Services since October 1994.

’84 Myrl W. Chapman, age 77, Aug. 3, 2018

’65 Richard A. Clauss, age 82, Sept. 28, 2018

H.L. “Lindy” Lucas, died on April 9, 2019. He served for 22 years in Facilities Maintenance.

’84 Ronald J. Swords, age 66, Sept. 29, 2018

’64 Doris E. Johnson, age 93, Sept. 27, 2018

’84 James M. Triplet, age 55, Oct. 23, 2018

’63 Darlene Russell, age 76, Jan. 11, 2018

Helen Matlock, died on Jan. 21, 2019. She retired in 2015 after nine years of service in Continuing Education.

’82 Laverne R. Foxley, age 81, Aug. 30, 2018

’60 Helen B. Boots, age 98, March 3, 2019

’81 Cheryl S. Foulon, age 64, Nov. 8, 2018

’60 Jack R. Hall, age 85, July 17, 2018

’81 Betty J. Keeler, age 95,

’60 Karl F. Nehammer, age 81, Nov. 9, 2018

Nov. 24, 2018 ’80 Lance L. Walker, age 65, Nov. 4, 2018

1970's ’78 Viola M. Cournyer, age 81, Oct. 14, 2018 ’78, ‘92 Darrelyn McDermott, age 80, Nov. 24, 2018 ’77 Loretta L. Kister, age 84, Oct. 17, 2018 ’76 Gary W. Nelson, age 69, July 30, 2018

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1950's

LuAnn Brown, died Oct. 12, 2018. She served for 16 years as a senior lecturer and associate director of field work in the Department of Social Work.

Mike Cannon, died Oct. 2, 2018. He served for 8 years as a stationary engineer in plant operations.

Gary Gasseling, died Sept. 23, 2018. He retired in 2018, after serving 12 years with EWU’s Campus Police.

Mahilani Pearl Gutina, died Sept. 20, 2018. She served for more than 35 years as a member of the EWU Libraries’ team.

Linda Heiydt, died Feb. 18, 2019. She served for 9 years in EWU’s Student Financial Services Office.

Elita Henderson, died Oct. 24, 2018. She worked as a snack-bar lead in Dining Services since October 2015.

Garry McClatchey, died on April 15, 2019. He served for 31 years in Facilities Services.

Joseph F. Schuster, PhD, professor emeritus of political science, died July 16, 2018. He retired from EWU in 1996 after 28 years of service.

Floyd Sumey, died Feb. 2, 2019. He served for 15 years in Facilities Services.

Joan I. Tracy, died on March 8, 2019. She retired in 1990 after serving for 23 years with EWU Libraries.

’55 Charles J. Kallestad Jr., age 89, Aug. 25, 2018

Keith Tracy, PhD, professor emeritus of English, died on April 8, 2019, on what would have been the 70th anniversary of his marriage to his wife, Joan, who passed away in March. He retired in 1987 after 23 years of service.

’53 Walter Edmiston, age 85, July 20, 2018

Lance Walker, died Nov. 4, 2018. He retired in 2015 after serving for 29 years in information technology.

’52 Bob A. Warnecke, age 90, July 24, 2018

Alan Whiteside, died Jan. 20, 2019. He retired in 1997 after serving for 28 years with the Purchasing & Contracts Department.

’56 Thomas E. Martin Sr., age 89, Oct. 24, 2018

’50 Bart L. Bartlett, age 93, Nov. 2, 2018

An Eastern Kind of Person Charles V. Mutschler, interim dean of EWU Libraries, was a beloved archivist and historian.

He was an Eastern person through and through. He graduated from Eastern. He worked at Eastern. He lived its history and enjoyed every minute of it. Perhaps no one knew more, or cared more, about the university’s legacy than Charles V. Mutschler, PhD, who died in an auto accident on March 11. He was 63.

Charlie, as his friends and colleagues fondly referred to him, was polite, helpful, genuine and unique. “A kind soul,” is a common descriptor. Here in Eastern’s Office of Marketing and Communication, publisher of this magazine, he often worked with us to make sure we got our facts straight when writing about bygone professors, past administrators, important anniversaries and historical buildings.

Most recently, Mutschler served as a professor of history and the interim dean of EWU Libraries. A true historian, he loved the library, and his main role as university archivist only fueled his passion.

“I’m going to miss my friend,” said Library Faculty Chair Justin Otto as he paid tribute to Mutschler while speaking to television reporters on the Cheney campus.

“He believed in Eastern. He was proud of Eastern. So I think the way we can honor him is by continuing to be a good library that supports Eastern’s students.”

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mutschler came to EWU as a freshman in 1973 earning a bachelor’s degree in history four years later. Later he completed two master of arts degrees. The first, also in history, was from Eastern in 1981. A second, in archives and records management, was from Western Washington University. He added a doctorate in history from Washington State University in 1999.

Mutschler began his Eastern career in 1978. He was promoted to archival assistant in the EWU and the Washington State Archives in 1983, and became University Archivist in 2001. In 2012 he achieved the rank of professor.

Jay Rea, University Archivist Emeritus, mentored and encouraged Mutschler as he pursued his education and training. “When he set out

to do something, he did it well. He’s that kind of person,” says Rae. On campus, Mutschler worked tirelessly to make better use of digital technology so that students, faculty and staff might have greater access to publications and materials. He told stories, shared history, led walking tours of EWU’s historic district, listened to the concerns of students and just made people smile.

Off campus, Mutschler served as chair of the Cheney Historic Preservation Commission, and was widely known and respected for his deep knowledge of, and love for, all things related to railroads, including railroad history, photography and modeling. He was also active at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Cheney, where he often used his snow blower to clear walkways after a storm.

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IN MEMORIAM

Remembering George William Lotzenhiser George William Lotzenhiser, PhD, a long-time Eastern faculty member and administrator who played a key role in the academic restructuring of the institution, passed away January 26 in Spokane. He was 95.

Professor Lotzenhiser was an EWU alumnus, a former dean of the university’s Division (College) of Fine Arts, and a veteran of World War II. An accomplished musician and music teacher, he is also credited with composing the words and music for both Eastern’s fight song, “Go, Eagles, Go,” and “All Hail to Eastern Washington,” EWU’s Alma Mater.

The Spokane native was active on campus during his undergraduate years, serving as president of the Associated Students, student director of the marching band and assistant director of the orchestra.

Although Lotzenhiser’s education was interrupted by his wartime service in the U.S. Navy, he graduated in 1947 from EWU, then known as Eastern Washington College of Education, with both a bachelor’s degree in education and a Bachelor of Arts in music. He would go on to earn a master’s degree in music education at the University of Michigan, and a doctorate in education at the University of Oregon.

In 1960, after he had served 12 years on the music faculty at the University of Arizona, EWU asked Lotzenhiser to return to the Cheney campus to lead the music department. He accepted and quickly rose up the administrative ranks, eventually serving as the first dean of the university’s newly formed School of Fine Arts, a position he held until his retirement in 1983.

During his time on campus, he witnessed the dramatic transformation of the institution to Eastern Washington State College in 1961 and to Eastern Washington University in 1977. In 1981, Lotzenhiser received the Distinguished Alumni Award. After his retirement he was named Dean of the School of Fine Arts, emeritus, with the official observance of his status being part of the June 1983 commencement.

While pursuing his academic career, Lotzenhiser continued his military service as a U.S. Navy Reserve officer, including two years of active duty as a lieutenant commander in the early 1950s. He eventually retired after attaining the rank of Rear Admiral.

Military service also played a prominent role in his personal life.

46 EASTERN MAGAZINE

While playing trombone for a Navy dance band during WWII, Lotzenhiser, then still an enlisted man, met and fell in love with B. Kathryn Tuttle, a Navy WAVE petty officer. They married in 1944.

“BK” as Lotzenhiser affectionately referred to her, played a leadership role in many important civic organizations, and was responsible for founding the Women of Achievement Luncheon fundraiser for the Spokane YWCA. She preceded him in death in 2006.

The couple are survived by a son, Jon Call Lotzenhiser of Walnut Creek, Calif., and a granddaughter. Their eldest son, William D. Lotzenhiser, died in 1991.

Visit our website to learn more about how Lotzenhiser composed All Hail to Eastern Washington, as well as details about a 2016 Honor Flight that honored him and other veterans in Washington, D.C.

LAST WORD

tions

EWU Marketing & Communica

Transitions

change. oss the nation, spring is a time of acr es siti ver uni and es leg col at Here at EWU, as class ready -wizened members of the senior now the and , om blo s bud lts, n as Snow me to their time as collegians. Yet eve end an for ss, lne tfu wis of ch themselves, with a tou h the excited gowns, Eastern’s campus rings wit and s cap for ed fitt are n me lass these upperc ive, stand at the shmen who, eager but apprehens fre e o-b n-t soo , ces voi new of chatter student memories. threshold of creating their own “transition” of /Summer cover story marked the ing Spr our t tha n, the , ing fitt s It is perhap , the award-winning from old to new. Eastern magazine ng ildi Bu ion Un ce Pen nic ico ture of the ds, is a similarly indispensable fea han r you in d hol you icle veh communications ve to more is growing and evolving as we stri too it B, PU the like d, An ty. nti nity.

Eagle ide mni and the larger EWU commu alu its , sity ver uni the of ds nee effectively serve the lication excited to begin helping our pub I’m , tor edi new ndbra ’s ine gaz As Eastern ma with, the university r connection to, and engagement you ing anc enh of ys wa new p ts and develo piring students: with these subjec ins i, mn alu ng azi am y, ult fac you love. Innovative stories — that ries — and ways of telling those sto out k see ly ive act re mo l wil others we versity. We will aim at ctual and cultural life of the uni elle int the to ser clo you ng bri l wil d we will work ance your visual experience. An enh to ies teg stra ign des n ive deploying art-dr ntific and datagraphics for communicating scie n atio orm inf d bol of use the to expand driven content. ted to bringing with Eastern magazine is commit ed olv inv ne ryo eve re, mo and In these ways what Eastern is, what it ces, past and present, that define pla and ple peo the to ser clo you was and what it may become. be an Eagle. mising future. It’s a great day to pro a to k loo we t, pas ble era From a ven Charles E. Reineke Senior Editor 2413 aves Hall Cheney, WA 99004Eastern Magazine, 102 Hargre sternmagazine /ea edu gazine@ewu.edu | www.ewu.

509.359.6422 | easternma

SPRING/SUMMER 2019

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Eastern Washington University University Advancement 102 Hargreaves Hall Cheney, WA 99004-2413

Nonprofit Org. U.S. POSTAGE

PAID

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SUMMER EVENTS WITH EWU Day at the Tacoma Rainiers July 13, 2019

Cheney Stadium, Tacoma Join fellow Eagles and friends for a night of family-friendly fun as the Tacoma Rainiers take on the Reno Aces.

Tickets are a steal at $18 per person

(includes pregame tailgate, reserved seat, ballpark meal and a special Eagle 4Life swag gift).

EWU Day at Silverwood August 2, 2019

Silverwood Theme Park, Idaho Enjoy big rides, big slides and big discounts for EWU Day at the largest theme park in the Northwest. Your ticket includes admission, all-you-can-eat buffet lunch and a bottomless beverage wristband for $49 –less than the regular price of admission only at the gate.

Eagle Family Homecoming EAGLE FAMILY

HOMECOMING EASTE

R N WA S H I N G T O N U N I V E R S I T Y

October 9-12, 2019 Come back to campus for one of Eastern’s most honored (and fun!) traditions.

Eagle Family Homecoming is your opportunity to reconnect with classmates, visit favorite campus hangouts, attend special events and cheer on your EWU Eagle Football team at the most spirited home game of the year.

REGISTER FOR EVENTS AT ALUMNI.EWU.EDU/EVENTS