Papers published

• Undergraduate student Nhat Nguyen (Physics Minor 2023), together with  Andrés Aragoneses, and  Carleton College Professor, Arjendu Pattanayak, have recently published a paper:
  • “TARDYS: Extracting Temporal And Reversible DYnamical Symmetries” Published in Photonics (MDPI), open access: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.organomet.2c00353

Faculty candidate seminar and teaching demonstration

• Biochemistry candidate Steven Karpowicz, from Eastern New Mexico University, will deliver a seminar titled “Taurine metabolism: How to make an abundant molecule” on Thursday 12th of January at 14:00, at Patterson 128.
• Biochemistry candidate Steven Karpowicz, from Eastern New Mexico University, will deliver a teaching lecture on “The role of thiamine in metabolism” on Friday 13th of January at 11:00, at Patterson 128.

Coming outreach

• Suds & Science: On February 4th, at 7 PM at the Golden Handle Brewery (154 S. Madison, Spokane), Rene Buell and Andrés Aragoneses will be talking about the science in the movie The Martian.

Physics Teatime

• Physics will continue with its usual social teatime. This term it will be Fridays from 2PM to 3 PM.

Name: Connor Bacon

Graduation Year: 2017

Job Title:Digital Media Manager

Organization: Vanderbilt University

Describe your design journey: I graduated with a degree in design, but took a hard pivot towards the world of photography and videography. Mainly focused around these disciplines, I learned some front end web design and webflow development that I carry with me into freelance gigs in the present day.

After about 5 years of freelance and working alongside a local advertising agency, I decided to branch out into the world of higher education here in Nashville, TN, heading up their video production for the Office of Digital Education.

What are some of the responsibilities of your current position? I am responsible for managing a production team centered around creating digital content for Vanderbilt’s online education directive. My responsibilities span from pre-production to production to post production and everything in between.

What is your favorite part about your position? My favorite part about my current position is the flexibility it allows for and the leadership doors that have opened for me. I am able to work closely with my team to produce high quality video productions and marketing materials.

How did the Design Program prepare you for your current position? The Design Program prepared me for this role by instilling design thinking into how I interact with the world. I am able to break processes down and design them to better suit the needs of my team and our clients. I still handle some graphic design on my day to day, and freelance on the side, however the thinking is what really has shaped the way I approach my work.

What was most memorable to you about your experiences in the design program? Most memorable were the people I was able to learn and grow alongside, as well as the faculty that helped shape the program and interactions within it. Being at Eastern allowed me to explore creativity and my capabilities with support and encouragement from my peers.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering pursuing a design degree? My advice for someone who is considering pursuing a design degree is to do it. The value that it brings to your worldview is extremely useful in negotiating the professional world, as well as many other aspects of life after school. Don’t worry so much about the tools, as they change and shift over time. Leverage design principles to shape the way you see the world.

Name: Tony Kuchar

Graduation Year: 2014

Job Title: Merchandise Designer

Organization: Fangamer.com

Describe your design journey: Started by designing merch for my silly little bands in high school. Now I design merch for silly little video games

What are some of the responsibilities of your current position? Overseeing the entire merch production process of my projects: concept, sketch, final design, approvals, speccing for production, reviewing production samples, adjusting specs and resampling, final production, marketing, launching, and every so often even shipping!

Communication: with fellow designers and artists, with licensors, with game developers, with prepress departments, with merch producers, with manufacturers, etc.

What is your favorite part about your position? The creative freedom I’m allotted. Generally speaking, if I have an idea for a piece of merch, and I can determine there is a decent demand for it among fans, I’m given the reins and means to make it happen. This allows me to always be trying new mediums, new styles, new types of design, and the ability to collaborate with a variety of other designers and artists.

How did the Design Program prepare you for your current position? Not that fun of an answer but… Deadlines. School provides a great opportunity to practice being creative within a set timeframe. Another helpful aspect of school was having to work within specific guidelines and boundaries. Every project or job is restricted in some way, either conceptually or physically; school offers a taste of what’s to come in a professional setting. Lastly, school is great at exposing you to critique and constructive criticism. In the workforce, your designs will be evaluated and approved by parties that are outside of your influence. Being able to parse feedback and adjust your approach is a vital skill. Additionally, participating in group critiques also helps you learn how to communicate why you do or don’t like something, why it works or doesn’t work, and most importantly, how to provide helpful and practical suggestions for how to refine or better focus a design.

What was most memorable to you about your experiences in the design program? The community! School allows you to immerse yourself in design and for me, the best part of that was being surrounded by other people that were just as interested in design as me. Outside of the professional realm, where else are you really going to find a group of people that are down to have an hour long discussion about fonts?

What advice would you give to someone who is considering pursuing a design degree? Make sure it’s really something you want to do. Like any career, but especially in design, to be successful you need to be passionate about the work. If you aren’t interested in thinking about design like, I guess all the time really, then it might not be for you. I can’t turn my designer brain off. I’m in the grocery store thinking “Dang, that’s a sick font on that ramen cup. What is that? I have to find that font when I get home.. Design will just become part of your day to day life: make sure that’s something you want.

Name: Makenzie Ley

Graduated: Fall 2018

Job Title: Color Design Associate

Organization: Nike

Describe your design journey: My design journey started with drawing. I’ve always loved doodling for friends and family since a very young age. In 7th grade, I taught myself web design, competed in design related events in FBLA from 8-12th grade, and volunteered as a web designer my senior year. After a year at community college, I applied to EWU to major in VCD and worked at the art gallery (now defunct) doing design + promotional work. I was accepted into the BFA program for my senior year and also interned at Seven2 that summer. After graduating, I interned at Nike before being hired full time in February 2020 (incredible timing) and have been there ever since, moving across different teams but staying under the umbrella of design.

What are some of the responsibilities of your current position? Color design and theory (including understanding of color achievability and digital color), creating long term color palettes/concepts/narratives, graphic and production design, trend research, building presentations, etc.

What is your favorite part about your position? The talent Nike attracts is endlessly inspiring! It’s a privilege to work with such a diverse group of creative minds. Not to mention that work we touch and the brand as a whole has a global impact.

How did the Design Program prepare you for your current position? Comfort with a variety of Adobe products (Photoshop! Illustrator! InDesign! A little After Effects!) and design thinking.

What was most memorable to you about your experiences in the design program? I loved being involved with Design Club! Getting to connect with folks in the program and other clubs through design was invaluable, plus just super fun.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering pursuing a design degree? Just college courses are not enough, and contradictory, just YouTube isn’t either! Discover your design niche—whatever it is you’re passionate about within the broad world of design—and really use it! Not only will it help you stand out from the crowd, but you’ll stay saner in the process.

Grant awarded

• Ashley Lamm has received a 1.5 million dollar Track 1 NSF Noyce Grant entitled “Expanding collaborations that recruit, prepare, and retain diverse and highly-qualified STEM teachers in Eastern Washington”.

This grant provides scholarships to recruit and prepare STEM majors to become K-12 teachers. The program seeks to increase the number of K-12 teachers with strong STEM content knowledge who teach in high-need school districts.

Alumni panel

• What do Physics do? A panel of EWU Physics alumni will share with our undergraduate students, and faculty, their experiences and perspectives as physicists after college. Tea and pastries will be served.
  • Spacetime coordinates:
    • ISC 009.
    • Friday June 3rd at 2 PM.

Outreach to the community

• Jason Stoke and Andrés Aragoneses, together with  Jessica Allen and Javier Ochoa-Reparaz (from Biology), will be giving a presentation about the Science of Star Wars: “May the Science be with you!” .
  • • Spacetime coordinates:
      • Golden Handle Project in downtown Spokane (111 S. Cedar st.).
      • Saturday June 4th at 7 PM.

Undergraduate Women in Physics

• Undergraduate students Layla Abrams and Taylor Mundel have been accepted to and registered for the APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on January 21 – 23, 2022

New publications

• Andrés Aragoneses and David Spichak (EWU undergraduate) published a new paper on the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals (Elsevier), under the title Exploiting the impact of ordering patterns in the Fisher-Shannon complexity plane, where they characterize complexity in chaotic systems and unveil hidden structure, such as self-similarity.

Alumni summer research

• Joel Price (’21) did a presentation at the American Vacuum Society (AVS) 2021 conference about the optical properties of LaNiFeO3, based on his research this summer at PNNL with Dr. Stoke. He won first place for the undergraduate presentations.

Science Outreach

• Andrés Aragoneses will give a presentation on the Science in the work of Salvador Dalí, at The Hive (Spokane Public Libraries), on Saturday October 23rd at 14:30.

Nobel price 2021

• Not to the department, but we’ll continue working hard:
  • Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was awarded jointly to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.”
  • Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems” with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

Eagle Graduate Awardees 2021:

• Joel Price (’21) did a presentation at the American Vacuum Society (AVS) 2021 conference about the optical properties of LaNiFeO3, based on his research this summer at PNNL. He won first place for the undergraduate presentations.

Outreach Coming On:

• Andrés Aragoneses will give a presentation on the Science of Salvador Dalí at The Hive (Spokane Public Library), on Saturday, October 29 at 2:30 p.m.

Design alumna Melissa Diaz sits down with CareerExplore NW to describe what she does as an art director. Diaz describes some of the crucial skills she learned at EWU.

EWU biology professor and Eagle alum Jessica Allen was featured on Science Friday last week. She discussed the important, often unconsidered role that cemeteries play in urban plant and animal life.

Science Friday is a favorite for science enthusiasts across the globe that tune in via radio or podcast each week to learn about the latest, greatest or quirkiest news in science. It is one of the nation’s most downloaded podcasts. And it’s pretty cool to have one of Eastern’s own featured.

Take a listen to her segment (run time just under 12 minutes).

Cemeteries Offer A Green Refuge For Urban Plant And Animal Life