By Linn Parish

Four Eagle alums walk into a pub in Ireland. It sounds like the start of a joke. Which it is, kind of, since there were plenty of laughs on this particular evening of merrymaking, especially after a comical men’s room encounter left the (somewhat inebriated) group in stitches. What isn’t a joke — though all four would tell you they’re having fun with it — is the growing business venture that took its inspiration from that night 10 years ago.

But the origin story comes a little later. First the business.

That venture, Cooked As A Goat LLC, is a lifestyle apparel retailer started by Kory Kelly ’98 and three former EWU offensive linemen: Jeff Christiansen, Paul Terrell and, most famously, former Tennessee Titan and Eagles football legend Michael Roos, all 2005 graduates. 

Since its formal launch last January, the company has built a customer base with its online store and pop-up retail presence, while also making in-roads into the co-branded merchandise market as they navigate the crowded collegiate gear licensing landscape.

“We’re very excited about it, and it really feels like we’re gaining some very strong momentum,” says Kelly, whose legendary enthusiasm for his alma mater earned him the EWU Alumni Association’s Eagle4Life Spirit Award in 2023. “Our goal was to leverage local, and I absolutely think we’re doing that. And even a bigger spot than we probably could have imagined.”

Eags fans might have seen the Goat gear for sale at tailgates in the upper parking lot outside of football games last fall, or at Reese Court occasionally during home basketball games. Avid sports fans, if they were paying close attention, might also have spotted NFL Hall of Famer Jared Allen wearing a Cooked As A Goat t-shirt on the ManningCast show that’s hosted by fellow football legends Peyton and Eli Manning.

This spring, patrons of Qualchan Golf Course in southwest Spokane will be able to peruse a small selection of gear featuring both the course and the Goat. Other courses will likely offer the apparel in the near future and, if talks with the Eagle Store continue to progress, shirts, hats and other pieces could soon be co-branded with the EWU logo and the Goat insignia— a relationship that would generate royalties for Eastern. 

But while the business is off to a good start — both profitable and self-sustaining in less than 18 months — all involved say they’re committed to keeping their years-long friendship as the primary priority. 

“All four of us are friends first,” Jeff Christiansen says. “From the beginning we said, ‘If we do this, how do we structure it so we can maintain the friendship first; so the Goat doesn’t become more important than the friendship?’”

“The friendship is 100 percent,” adds Terrell, who is himself an Eagle4Life Spirit Award winner. “If this ever gets in the way in any form or fashion, it’s simple: We’re done. That’s one of the pillars of doing this.”

Another pillar is building their brand by word-of-mouth awareness, a strategy that is already paying dividends. On the South Hill in Spokane recently, a different set of four guys walked into a local watering hole, this time a coffee shop. While they’re ordering their morning caffeine blasts, one of the baristas says, “You have to tell me about your sweatshirt.”

Paul Terrell, who is part of this ensemble, doesn’t miss a beat as he launches into his now familiar explanation of the Cooked As A Goat logo. Maybe you’ve seen it already: an upside-down goat with legs in the air and X’s for eyes, the suggestion being that the goat depicted is likely no longer with us. 

The explanation of the Cooked As A Goat brand is that it’s activewear for people who “go hard, go all-in and get cooked,” regardless of where their passion lies — from golf to skateboarding to a multitude of other activities. The four Eagles are well-versed in the elevator pitch. 

Sometimes they even tell the origin story. 

It’s the spring of 2016, and the three former linemen and Kelly traveled to Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day — on the golf course, of course. They spend the evening of the big day in a famously festive pub. Fast forward to the early morning hours. Christiansen and Terrell need to make a stop at the restroom, or “the jacks” in the parlance of Ireland. There they happened upon a fellow patron, unsteadily doing his business, phone pinned precariously between his ear and shoulder. 

“You have to come get me,” they overhear the man say in a charming but barely intelligible brogue. “I’m cooked as a goat.” 

The two former football players look at each other, trying not to laugh. They then returned to their party and relay what they’d heard. 

The rest, as they say, is a retail-origins history. 

“Cooked as a goat” quickly became an inside joke for the four Eagles and their golfing friends, particularly when those friends were, uh, cooked. With Terrell, a graphic designer by trade, taking the lead, they soon crafted a handful of custom apparel items featuring the stylized goat. These were meant to be one-offs for themselves.

Still, before long they found themselves sharing “goat stuff” with their other golfing buddies, a cluster of roughly 15 men largely assembled by Roos (who, we should note, was inducted into the EWU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016 and whose name currently adorns EWU’s football stadium). 

The group began referring to each other as goats and talked about “getting cooked.” Yes, the saying has its roots in excessive drinking. But for these friends the meaning began to evolve into something deeper, and they’d talk about getting cooked when referring to going all-in on an endeavor; to giving it their all. 

Early on, they noticed that the apparel sparked conversation, similar to the exchange with the South Hill barista. Over time, they began to ponder whether they had developed something with wider appeal than just their friends group. 

They’d talk about starting a business together. On the surface, it appeared they had all the pieces to make a go of it. Terrell had the design chops, and Kelly had built a career in sales. Christiansen works in lending at STCU and understood business finance, while Roos brought all the contacts from his 10-year NFL career. 

Christiansen says one initial challenge involved learning how to communicate about business together. 

“There are two types of conversations you have, the one with your buddies and the one that’s more business oriented,” he says. “Early on, I think there were some lost-in-translation pieces as we were talking about what we wanted out of it; what we thought was most important. We never fought about it, but we’d have a conversation, circle back, and realize that’s not what the person meant at all.”

But they kept going on golf trips together, usually to Ireland or Scotland, and kept talking through the idea. 

Terrell refers to himself as “the biggest heel dragger” in the group, at least when it comes to going into business with friends. “I do some apparel work for clients, and I know what it involves. It’s parallel to the line of work I’m already doing. So, I had concerns about some of the reality of the business versus the excitement.”

While the business is off to a strong start, none of the four co-owners expects to quit their day jobs. Nor do they have illusions about making big money… “If it happens, wonderful,” Terrell says, “but that’s not necessarily the goal. This approach gives us the opportunity to grow slowly and navigate that growth properly.”

Indeed, the sports apparel market is saturated, and the fact that the Goat concept doesn’t fit into one niche — such as a company that makes golf apparel exclusively, for example — has both the advantages of broader appeal and the drawbacks of a more diluted marketing focus. In 2024, the four of them took a trip to Las Vegas to decide, once and for all, whether to go for it. They came home committed to the concept.

While the business is off to a strong start, none of the four co-owners expects to quit their day jobs. Nor do they have illusions about making big money. Instead, they’re reinvesting revenue generated by sales into the company. 

“If it happens, wonderful,” Terrell says, “but that’s not necessarily the goal. This approach gives us the opportunity to grow slowly and navigate that growth properly.”

Christiansen concurs, adding, “If you were to run this by a business class at Eastern, they might say, ‘Why didn’t you raise funds or do a big national advertising blitz?’ But that’s not what we’re really about. It could be years before we even see a penny back.”

As the business evolves, the golf trips continue. They still largely involve visits to Ireland and Scotland, though they don’t typically revolve around St. Patrick’s Day anymore. Many of the courses don’t open until early April these days, in order to better preserve the grounds.

Why keep going back to Irish and Scottish courses? In response, Kelly quips, “How much time do you have?” Adding, “it’s so green, so open. It is one of the birthplaces of golf. Some of these courses are older than America. You don’t get that type of culture, history in the U.S., especially on the West Coast.”

And while there aren’t any direct links between the apparel and EWU — yet— the four partners view Eastern as sort of an informal, honorary silent partner in the venture. 

“It’s such a big part who we are and what we do for fun. Almost all of our friends are Eastern folks. It’s hard to have Eastern be such a big part of your life and not have that tie-in to what we’re doing,” Christiansen says. “And I think the brand fits with Eastern. To be successful there, at some point, you have to get cooked.”

On Saturday, April 25, Eastern alumni and friends packed the Pend Oreille ballroom at Spokane’s Northern Quest Resort & Casino to honor seven graduates whose achievements in service and spirit make us all proud to be Eagles.

It is perhaps ironic that one of those graduate honorees, Gordon Hester ’89, our Benjamin P. Cheney Lifetime Achievement Award winner, began his tenure as a high-flying Eagle quite literally underground. After transferring from WSU, Hester helped fund his undergraduate studies at EWU by working part-time at the Rozell Physical Plant, maintaining equipment in the mechanical tunnels that run for miles beneath campus.

After graduation, Hester joined Kiemle Hagood, one of Spokane’s leading commercial real estate firms. He began as an assistant property manager and, over the next 35 years, worked his way up pretty much every rung of the ladder — senior property manager, director, vice president — before assuming the role of president and CEO in 2020. Along the way, he became a respected voice in the industry, chairing national committees for the Building Owners and Managers Association and serving as president of BOMA’s Pacific Northwest Region.

But Hester’s story isn’t just about business. In 2008, a brushfire near his property introduced him to the world of volunteer firefighting, and he spent the next decade responding to emergency calls — often before dawn — then heading to the office to run a company. He earned his EMT certification, rose to station captain, and in 2020 was elected fire commissioner for Spokane County Fire District 10, where he’s hired new firefighters and stabilize the district’s budget.

Hester’s long history of giving back is both public and personal. His son Mason, born with a congenital heart defect, survived three surgeries before the age of eighteen. Hester has since been a dedicated supporter of the Providence Foundation. He’s also been a generous benefactor to the university that gave him his foundation for success: he’s created an endowed scholarship for business students; a fund honoring his wife, Brenda, that supports student teachers; served on the university’s first College of Professional Programs Advisory Board and held a position on the EWU Foundation Board.

The contributions of Gent Welsh ’95,’03, our Lt. Col. Daniel M. Carter Military Service Award winner have truly spanned the globe.

Gent Welsh grew up in Vale, Oregon, and enlisted in the Air Force in 1988, starting his career as a security policeman at RAF Lakenheath in England. From there he transferred to the Washington Air National Guard, earned his commission, and began a steady climb through the ranks — from second lieutenant to major general — in deployments that took him to Saudi Arabia, Bosnia and Iraq along the way.

While building that military career, Welsh also became an Eagle for Life, first earning a bachelor’s degree from Eastern, and then a master’s degree eight years later.

Today he serves as the Adjutant General of Washington, the commanding general of all of our state’s Army and Air National Guard forces. Among his many duties is oversight of the state’s Emergency Management Division, the Enhanced 911 program and the Youth ChalleNGe Academy, a program that provides disciplined, safe and professional learning environments to help at-risk youth improve their education and employment prospects.

He also serves in the position of Homeland Security Advisor to the governor and manages federal homeland security grants across the state. First appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee, then reappointed by Gov. Bob Ferguson, he is a member of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet.

Welsh’s leadership shows up when it matters most. When, for example, historic flooding hit Western Washington last year, Welsh mobilized over 400 Guard members for sandbagging, swift-water rescue, aviation hoist missions, and levee stabilization — protecting homes, infrastructure and lives.

Through it all, he has never forgotten his alma mater. For years Welsh has been a steadfast supporter of EWU’s Army ROTC program, approving cadet internships with Air National Guard units, opening Guard facilities for training, and promoting Eastern to prospective students.

Olivia Dilling ’23, ’25, our 2026 Rising Eagle Award winner, is just beginning her own journey of achievement and service. She arrived at Eastern in 2019 and immediately started making the most of every opportunity the university had to offer. She joined Alpha Omicron Pi sorority, where she served as house manager for two years. She was elected president of the Panhellenic Council, bringing together Greek organizations around shared values of leadership, service and connection.

Next, she worked as an undergraduate employee in the Student Engagement office, helping to create the sorts of campus experiences that turn a university into a community. All the while she was excelling in the classroom — graduating cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2023.

But Dilling wasn’t content to just study psychology from a textbook. Alongside her research partner and faculty advisor, she co-authored a study on interpersonal trauma and social desirability that she presented at the Western Psychology Association conference in Los Angeles. That same year, she was named both Sorority Woman of the Year and Psychology Student of the Year — two honors that capture the full picture of who Olivia is: someone who leads with heart and backs it up with substance.

Then she came back for more. Dilling returned to Eastern to earn a Master of Social Work degree, a program that she completed just last year. During her studies, she logged over a thousand hours of internship experience at Inland Northwest Behavioral Health hospital, where she supported individuals who were navigating serious mental health challenges.

All of this came full circle after graduation, as Dilling began her professional career as a social worker at the very same psychiatric hospital where she trained. She went from learning in those hallways to a valued professional working in them — each day making contributions that involve compassionate, person-centered care for people who find themselves  in some of their most difficult moments of their lives.

Malisea “Lisa” Gardner ’05, this year’s Sandy Williams Trailblazer Award winner, is deeply involved in the types of person-centered service that reflect the achievements of our awards’ namesake: activism, community journalism and an unwavering belief that every voice matters.

Gardner is a proud legacy Eagle. Her father and two aunts attended Eastern before her, making her time on campus part of a multigenerational tradition. As a communications major, Lisa was active in campus life — she pledged Zeta Phi Beta Sorority under the mentorship of Angela Jones, last year’s Sandy Williams Trailblazer recipient, and found her voice working at campus radio station KEWU. It turns out she was just getting warmed up.

After graduating in 2005, Gardner built an impressive career that took her from public relations work with McDonald’s and a copy writing role at Microsoft, to directing sales and marketing at a boutique hotel in Baltimore and coordinating important clinical operations at the National Institutes of Health. Then she came home to Spokane and really got to work.

Today, Gardner serves as the director of communications and community engagement for the Spokane City Council, where she bridges the gap between city leadership and the communities it serves. She has championed language access, recruited bilingual and multilingual staff, and worked to recognize people striving to make a more just and inclusive city. In recognition of her efforts she was named a 2025 Spokane Journal of Business’ Person of Influence and a 2026 YWCA Woman of Achievement.

But it’s her community leadership that truly reflects the spirit of this award. Just over a year ago, Gardner became president of the Spokane NAACP, where she has revitalized the organization’s Youth Council, a program started by her late grandmother, Sarah Gardner, a prominent activist and entrepreneur in Spokane’s Black community. She has also launched the “Challenging the Narrative” conversation series to confront difficult topics head-on, partnering with the Inland Refugee Center on digital equity, collaborating with Providence Health Services to promote healthcare careers to communities of color, and helping to revitalize The Black Lens, the community newspaper that Sandy Williams founded.

Jay Tyus ’91, ’94, our Gov. Clarence D. Martin Educator of Year Award winner, was also an Eagle legacy student. He arrived at Eastern in the fall of 1986, a kid from Reardan who followed his older brother Gordon to Streeter Hall’s 5th Floor South. He majored in chemistry and walked on to the EWU football team as an undersized offensive lineman with, in his own words, “a big heart and a long way to go.”

Tyus launched his teaching career at Ephrata High School in 1991. There his science classroom became famous for controlled chaos — flames, explosions and experiments that turned skeptical teenagers into curious learners.

On the football field, meanwhile, Coach Tyus taught young men that winning mattered, but that becoming a person of character mattered more. His players didn’t just respect him, they loved him.

From his perch in Ephrata, Washington, Tyus built a career specializing in turning around schools — among them Waterville, Mabton, Tonasket, and the Mead School District — earning state and national recognition along the way.

Today he serves as superintendent of the Wilbur and Creston Cooperative School Districts, where every week he reminds his community that, “it’s a great day to be a Wildcat, where each Wildcat belongs, learns and thrives.” At his district, he’s brought innovative programs such as drone-farming applications to rural students, worked local farms to generate scholarship money for graduates, and testified before legislative committees on behalf of students.

A line in his nomination materials perhaps put it best: “Jay Tyus could make friends with a honey badger.” That gift for connection has left a lasting mark. Fifteen years after Tyus led a two-day training module at a colleague’s high school, teachers there still reference his strategies by his name. And Jay’s Eagle spirit? It runs deep. His wife Julie is a graduate. And Jay himself returned to EWU a few years ago to earn a master’s degree.

It’s pretty common to list “service” on your résumé. Richard “Curly” Rousseau ’71, ’74, our Tawanka Service Award winner, has put it on his to-do list every single day for about 50 years. And somehow, he’s still not done.

Rousseau graduated from Eastern in 1974. A star pitcher on Eastern’s varsity baseball team — team captain, first team all-conference, the only EWU pitcher ever to earn honorable mention All-American honors — he also found the time to become president of Scarlet Arrow, a men’s service organization. Right from the start, Rousseau was mixing competition with community.

After Eastern, Rousseau built careers in education and the insurance industry, but what he really built were opportunities for other people. Early on, as a teacher at Central Valley High School, his work helped the Key Club student service organization dramatically grow. He also created a “Christmas Shopping Spree” that allowed  high schoolers to help disadvantaged elementary kids buy gifts for their siblings. And he launched a program in which students “adopted” residents with development disabilities at Lakeland Village, visiting them weekly throughout the school year. The Spokane Jaycees took notice, naming him their Outstanding Young Citizen.

Rousseau was just getting warmed up. When he reconnected with Eastern, he threw himself back in with everything he had. He served five terms as president of the Eagle Athletic Association, sat on the EWU Foundation Board for six years, and emceed fundraising events entirely from memory — no notes, just genuine knowledge of, and affection for, the people in the room. He and his wife Lori pioneered the “overnight tailgate” experience, arriving on Fridays and feeding TV crews, student workers and anyone who showed up cold and hungry on pre-game nights and game-day mornings. They opened their home to entire EWU teams — soccer, volleyball, basketball, cheer — creating a place where student-athletes were known by name and fed a home-cooked meal.

The Tawanka Service Award takes its name from the Eastern women’s organization whose motto was simply “to help.” Whether he’s hosting a team dinner, mentoring a struggling student or navigating a soggy infield before sunrise, Rousseau shows up to help — not for recognition, but because people matter to him.

If you’ve ever been to an EWU football tailgate, there’s a good chance you’ve been greeted by a man standing next to a big RV, offering you smoked beef and asking if you’re ready for kickoff. That man is Derek Brownson ’96, our Eagle4Life Spirit Award winner. And he’s been earning his spirit award every Saturday — and pretty much every day in between — for the past three decades.

During his undergraduate days, Brownson was a proud resident of Streeter Hall’s 3rd South, where he built friendships that have lasted a lifetime. He was also a fixture at Fast Fitness and, as some would have it, an intramural basketball legend. 

After graduation, Brownson launched a career in banking that took him to Beverly Hills, Phoenix and Las Vegas. But no matter his ZIP code, his heart never left Cheney. He has served on the Alumni Association Board of Directors, become the driving force behind the popular Tri-Cities Friends of EWU Athletics Facebook page, and has raised substantial funds to keep Eagles connected across the region.

He’s also a leader in the Eagle Football Network and a regular contributor to other EWU programs. Eastern’s athletic director, Tim Collins, says he doesn’t know anyone who spends more time and energy supporting all things Eagles. On social media, for example, Brownson is a one-man hype machine, amplifying every EWU achievement the moment it happens.

And then there are the tailgates.

At home games, Brownson and his wife, Kylee, regularly smoke 30 pounds of tri-tip — that’s right, 30 pounds — to share with alumni, parents and players’ families. He also hosts away-game gatherings so Eagles always have a place to connect. At every event, he feeds student-athletes’ families, and then makes a point of sending the leftovers home with their kids.

Win or lose, that’s the kind of Eagle4Life spirit we can all take pride in celebrating.

Eastern’s departments of art and design navigate a long-hoped-for union.

By Charles E. Reineke

Back in 1919, amidst the chaotic ferment of post-World War I Germany, a visionary architect named Walter Gropius was chosen to head a newly organized, state-sponsored school of architecture.

Gropius began his term with an audacious declaration: “The ultimate aim of all creative activity is building!” he wrote in the founding manifesto of the institution, the Staatliche Bauhaus. “There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art.”

With this assault on the status quo began an institution that, in its day, was less well known for its academic instruction than for its glorious impertinence; one that refused to recognize a meaningful distinction between art and craft, between the painter’s vision and the typographer’s grid, between the potter’s hands and the industrial designer’s blueprint. The Bauhaus insisted that form and function were not opposites to be balanced. They were a single language to be mastered whole.

That conviction echoed through the 20th century, shaping how creative programs were organized at universities across America and Europe. Today’s foundational, first-year art and design curriculum — exercises in color theory, composition, line and form — descends in nearly unbroken lineage from the workshops Gropius ran in Dessau more than a century ago.

For the past few decades at Eastern, however, the erstwhile “inseparable disciplines” of art and design have not only occupied different administrative homes, they’ve been located in different buildings in different towns, domiciles that in many ways reflect the divide at EWU that separated them in the first place.

The Fine and Performing Arts Department, part of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, is housed in Cheney’s Art Building, a structure suited to the beautifully messy pursuit of manual creativity: ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, painting. Design, meanwhile, is located in Spokane’s gleamingly modern, tech-heavy Catalyst building, where students and faculty members work under the auspices of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or CSTEM.

This arrangement, administrators long argued, made sense from an organizational perspective. Pedagogical sense? Creative sense? Maybe not so much.

Jenny Hyde came to Eastern in 2007 as a visiting assistant professor filling in for a colleague on leave. She assumed she would stay for a year before heading back east. Seventeen years later, Hyde is now professor and chair of fine and performing arts at EWU. She still seems mildly astonished by the institutional logic that kept art and design apart for so long.

“When I came here, it was surprising to me that design wasn’t part of art,” she says during a recent conversation in Isle Hall, one that included her colleague Mindy Breen, professor of design and the department chair.

Hyde did her undergraduate work at Seattle University’s Cornish College of the Arts, where, she says, the disciplines were very much commingled. “Art, design, theater, music, dance — all in the same building.” At Alfred University in New York, where she completed a graduate fellowship in integrated electronic arts, the disciplines were even more intertwined. “And then Eastern…” she begins, and then pauses.

“I’m glad that we’re seeing a shift in the culture at Eastern,” she continues. “When I first got here, it seemed as if the art program wanted nothing to do with design. It was a cultural thing, which was confusing to me.”

Confusing maybe, but, as Hyde acknowledges, it’s a boundary that has remained familiar and persistent: The idea that fine art inhabits a realm of pure creative expression uncorrupted by utility; while design, on the other hand — though indisputably a vital and inventive medium — is merely work in the service of someone else’s agenda, executed for a paycheck.

Mindy Breen has been a faculty member in design since 2000. Unlike Hyde, she didn’t start out studying art or design. But at Notre Dame, where she did her undergraduate work, Breen found her way into that world pretty quickly.

“My freshman year I took an econ class, and the professor put up these charts and graphs and was talking about economic theory,” she recalls. “I looked at them and I’m like, ‘I can’t understand a thing these are trying to tell me.’ It really was frustrating, because they were supposed to convey information, and I was having a really hard time understanding. That catapulted me away from business and into design… By the end of freshman year I was no longer a business major. I was a graphic design major and really interested in the idea of the design of information.”

Breen says her program’s origins, like her own background, do indeed point to a decidedly instrumentalist (i.e., ideas as instruments for action) pedigree.

Over the ensuing decades the department evolved through a succession of names and organizational homes‚ the Department of Technology, then Engineering, Technology and Multimedia Design, then Engineering and Design, and finally, in 2020, simply Design.

“The design program, really the origin of design at EWU,” Breen says, “was a ‘printing technology’ program, originally in the Department of Manual Arts, as it was called.” There were photography courses, printing facilities and applied technical skills, she says. Pragmatic arts rather than the fine ones.

Over the ensuing decades the department evolved through a succession of names and organizational homes‚ the Department of Technology, then Engineering, Technology and Multimedia Design, then Engineering and Design, and finally, in 2020, simply Design. But it never quite shed the utilitarian antecedents those early roots implied.

What is perhaps most striking about EWU’s art–design divide, in retrospect, is how artificial it often felt to the students experiencing it. In the mid-2000s, Breen says she began to notice that a significant number of them were double-majoring across the two programs, voting, as it were, with their schedules for a curriculum integration that nobody had thought to offer.

In response, the two departments collaborated on creation of a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication Design, a co-located degree drawing equally from art and design coursework. It was the first cross-disciplinary, cross-college degree in the university’s history. And it worked, at least for a while.

“The students who graduated with that degree‚ it was such a great experience,” Breen says. “They got the best of both worlds: the conceptual, hands-on studio practice, and also the applied, skills-based design work.” But the arrangement proved labor-intensive for faculty, and structurally awkward. When a key faculty member departed for the University of Denver, the load became unmanageable. The shared degree quietly dissolved and the programs resumed their parallel trajectories.

The story might have ended there, two adjacent disciplines operating in polite proximity. But a certain confluence of circumstances made pursuing the current merger feel, as Breen puts it, “like finishing something we started years ago.”

The immediate trigger a set of course proposals from one department that duplicated offerings in the other. “We had a conversation,” Breen recalls, “and it was like, ‘This is ridiculous‚ neither of us wants this.’”

Hyde felt the same way. “We all realized it was just too hard to explain to students what the difference is. It just became another layer of heaviness that doesn’t really need to be there.”

Practical considerations also played a role. With EWU’s new emphasis on bringing health sciences instruction together on its Spokane campus, the Catalyst building’s space was needed for health sciences and other CSTEM programs. With Design slated to return to Cheney, the case for continued separation became harder to make. More fundamentally, as Hyde said, it was becoming ever more difficult to explain to prospective students how, say, a photo class in design was different from the photo class in art. Or why a student passionate about visual storytelling needed to choose a program affiliation before understanding what each could offer.

“It’s confusing for new students to land here and be interested in art and design, but then have two separate places to navigate,” Hyde says. “For me, that was a major incentive: Can we just get all the students that are interested in visual creativity and visual things to start in one place, and then be able to go from there?”

When Breen and Hyde brought the merger proposal to the deans of the two affected colleges, both were supportive. The provost’s office signed on. There was, as Breen notes with some relief, “not much of a case that needed to be made.”

Now that it’s settled, there remains only the pedagogical tension that needs navigating, that friendly friction between those who see art as mostly vision and those who see design as applied problem-solving. The most obvious resolution at EWU has been essentially the Bauhaus resolution; an embrace of the two disciplines’ shared inheritance.

“Design really goes back to the Bauhaus,” Hyde says. “Our foundation classes, the main foundation classes that you’ll see typically in most art and design programs link directly to the principles and rules of design and art that were formed in Bauhaus.”

What the Bauhaus artists understood, and what the EWU merger implicitly argues, is that the capacity to solve visual problems and the capacity to make visually meaningful art are made up of a single sensibility, one that, if not always shared, most certainly should be. 

How this translates into employability is another matter. The professional logic that originally pushed Design toward CSTEM, the idea that employers respond more readily to programs that provide outcome-oriented credentials, remains a central concern. Breen says design students often choose their major partly because “at least I can explain to my parents that I might get a job in web design with this.” The merger, she hopes, will give those same students access to the fine arts without requiring them to ghost their moms and dads.

“When they have a choice,” Breen says, “they can then say, ‘Oh, right‚ let’s think about that beautiful creative aspect,’ that maybe they wouldn’t have gotten had we not had art classes available to them.”

“Design really goes back to the Bauhaus,” Hyde says. “Our foundation classes, the main foundation classes that you’ll see typically in most art and design programs link directly to the principles and rules of design and art that were formed in Bauhaus.”

Hyde says she’s comfortable with the exchange also running in the other direction. “I’d love for all of our art majors to take typography and graphic design,” she says. “I don’t care if AI is doing that work. They still need to understand what it is.

“There’s something really important about understanding process in the use of making something. It is part of the problem-solving exercise from start to finish.”

Or, as Breen puts it: “Craft. Understanding craft, absolutely.”

These days, of course, terms such as “process” and “craft” are very much implicated in the “AI question,” that specter haunting any conversation about creative education. When the topic came up during the conversation with Breen and Hyde, both were ready with answers. But their ambivalence was clear.

“Our students are using AI as a tool right now,” Breen says, “but they also need the humanities. What the humanities have to offer is an approach of how best to use it, how best to include it in their process.”

“Or when not to use it,” Hyde adds.

The fine arts might be expected to harbor more resistance to AI than design disciplines, for reasons that go deeper than tech aversion. If design has always been to some degree an intersection of tools and materials, fine art has been, at least in the ways it thinks about itself, a practice whose value is inseparable from consciousness and intention. Generative AI doesn’t participate in that discussion. It iterates, approximates, and produces, typically at dizzyingly high speed, outputs that too often look like what has come before.

Tro Trujillo is a junior who studies both art and design at EWU while working as a photographer for fine and performing arts. He sits, one might say, squarely in the middle.

Trujillo’s path to Eastern was classically “nontraditional.” He spent a decade as a hairdresser, followed by a stint as an EMT during the early days of Covid and then enlistment as an Army medic with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

He came to EWU planning to use his veteran’s benefits to study business, but was redirected to design by a perceptive admissions counselor. He eventually found himself drawn to both art and design, something that the programs’ separation made administratively complicated and, at times, financially painful.

“I fought tooth and nail,” he says of his efforts to get the VA’s vocational rehabilitation program to approve art courses alongside his design coursework. “And both my design and art advisors have to work together in tandem when building out my [VA required] four-year plan to get approval.” An earlier merger, in his view, would have made the path much smoother.

“I would have loved for this merger to have already been completed before I started Eastern, because I think it would have accelerated my trajectory, rather than everybody figuring out workarounds.”

On AI, Trujillo is an unabashed enthusiast, at least insofar as he typically deploys it. “I use AI as an idea generator,” he says. “I have a hard time staring at a blank canvas.”  But he’s alert to the tensions the technology produces.

“You’ll find that a lot of the design students are against it and a lot of them are for it,” he says. “The art department really doesn’t like AI.” After a quick pause, he adds. “I think they fear it takes identity away from the works being created.”

Trujillo’s sense of AI’s value mirrors that of his academic advisor, EWU design professor and nationally recognized AI expert Travis Masingale (see our Fall/Winter 2024-25 issue).

Masingale’s approach to AI offers one possible model for how the merged program might navigate the technology; not as a replacement for craft, but as a way of building tools that serve it. “His vision, at least as I understand it, is something like this: If I run into a problem, I should have the opportunity to use AI in creating my own tools to deal with it,” Trujillo says.

While AI integration in some form will undoubtedly be the future at EWU, the past is certain to continue to assert itself. It’s easy, for instance, to imagine how a renovated Isle Hall, the 70-year-old building into which Design will move this summer, might serve as a not-so-subtle anamnesis to new generations of young artists and designers.

It sits on the west end of Eastern’s central campus, a two-story red-brick structure built in the post-WWII boom years when American universities were expanding rapidly, and architectural ambitions were running high.

On the clear May morning of the conversation with Breen and Hyde, its warm brick facade glowed auburn under a cobalt blue sky. Indoors it asserted a worldly self-confidence: Solid, purposeful, comfortable with its eccentricities.

“I think it’s a gem,” Hyde says. She says she first encountered the building through a storage room the art program had been using, and came away converted. “When I was in here, I was like, ‘What? Design just needs to move in here. It’s amazing.’’’

Breen has loved the building even longer. “Back when Anthropology was in the building, I would spend a lot of time in here,” she says. She and her colleagues have already begun thinking about furnishings, mid-century desks and chairs and lighting that belong to the aesthetic of the space. The building’s history adds layers. Isle Hall served for years as the university’s student union, and many Eastern readers will fondly remember the bowling alley (gone) and the fireplace (still stands).

The plan is for it to eventually house a “makerspace” open to students across disciplines, equipped with laser cutters, 3D printers, and large-format printing equipment. This will be built out alongside faculty offices, classrooms and a projection-mapping installation that students are already developing around the building’s exterior. Design students have been asking about murals.

Design is slated to move into Isle Hall in the summer of 2026. Curricular changes will be drafted and submitted for approval in 2027, with new integrated programming taking effect in 2028. The question of which college the combined program will ultimately inhabit, whether art moves to CSTEM, design moves to CAHSS, or some new arrangement is negotiated, remains open. “We haven’t figured that out yet,” Breen says.

What they have figured out is that students, the ones, at least, who are already moving between the programs, are almost uniformly in favor. Trujillo, who may be the Eagle most personally inconvenienced by the current separation, expressed a sentiment that the department chairs echoed from their own vantage point.

“We are already integrated,” Trujillo says. “Making it official isn’t going to be this big, scary thing. We already implement design in art, and art into design. So the fact that Eastern is facilitating that, and just making it easier for students to get what they need out of their program, I think that can only be a good thing.”

Key component upgrades bring reliability, sustainability and safety improvements to Eastern’s Rozell Physical Plant.

Weaving his way through a warren of ductwork, piping and electrical conduits, past boilers and chillers, condensers and blowers, Matt Deppa, chief engineer at EWU’s physical plant operation, pauses in front of a 10-inch programmable logic control display. After a quick look, he turns toward a visitor. “Here’s the thing,” Deppa says, his voice rising to be heard above the rumble and whirr of machinery, “a lot of people really don’t know what we do in here.”

“In here,” is EWU’s Rozell Physical Plant building, an unprepossessing structure perched above the corner of Elm and Washington streets. What they “do” in there is operate and maintain the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that keep Eastern comfortably habitable through every season of the year.

Now, thanks to a combination of a $20 million state budget appropriation and targeted grants, Deppa and the rest of the Rozell crew are two years into a multi-faceted overhaul, one that includes key structural and component changes. The goal? To boost the reliability, sustainability and safety of Eastern’s heating and cooling systems for decades to come.

Upgrades already in place include two new high-efficiency, low-emission boilers that provide safer, more consistent heating with less fuel. There are also five new liquid-cooled “chillers” — massive units that cool water used by campus buildings for air conditioning — along with four new cooling towers that boost the chilling system’s performance. Electrical upgrades include moving high-voltage switches previously located in Eastern’s tunnel loop, to safer, above-ground locations.

For the crew members who operate and maintain this dizzyingly complex array of infrastructure — many of whom, like Deppa, learned the trade while serving on ships with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps — changes in the 1970s-era facility were welcome indeed.

On a recent tour, Steve Schmedding, EWU’s facilities engineer and senior project manager, joined up with Deppa to show off the new additions. Schmedding, a Navy veteran, explained how identifying modernization priorities, then obtaining funding and moving forward, has been a 10-year-long process. “Our plans are in a binder that’s 80-pages thick, at least,” Schmedding says. He estimates that work on the whole of the plan is just over half-way to completion.

For his part, Deppa says showing off the fruits of this planning is something he’s always happy to do. Usually that means tours for students, faculty members and community groups.

“It’s great when people are interested,” Deppa says. “We’re definitely proud of the work we do here.”

With its Science Building renovation nearing completion, Eastern’s polytechnic future comes into focus.

By Charles E. Reineke

Back in 2022, just three weeks after the inauguration of EWU’s gleaming new Interdisciplinary Science Center, construction began on the renovation of the 148,000-square-foot Science Building next door.

The second and final phase of that $110 million project is now nearing completion, its new laboratories, faculty work spaces and areas for student engagement just months away from full occupancy. When the final ribbon is cut and all the doors opened, the conjoined Science Building and Interdisciplinary Science Center will represent the culmination of perhaps the most significant research and development investment in Eastern’s history, one that promises to usher in a new era of faculty discovery and student learning. 

For an institution now proudly known as the region’s polytechnic, the moment represents a watershed, albeit one occurring during a period of significant political headwinds for higher education and scientific research.

Eastern’s new chief academic officer, Provost Lorenzo Smith, joined EWU earlier this year after serving in a similar position at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. Smith holds a PhD in engineering, and arrives at Eastern with a distinguished background as an educator, entrepreneur and researcher.

“I really have a passion for teaching,” Smith says. “But when I learned about the polytechnic designation, it got me very excited because it showed that EWU is a hands-on type of institution. Very applied. And to me, that’s where the rubber meets the road.”

While the term “polytechnic” typically conjures up images of engineering labs and computer-science classrooms, Smith emphasizes that applied learning has a place in every field — from English majors working with nonprofits, to history students identifying racially restricted property deeds. It’s all about applied learning, he says, taking classroom knowledge and putting it to work in internships, capstone projects and community partnerships. 

Research faculty members such as Jason Ashley, an associate professor of biology who specializes in the cellular and molecular processes involved in bone generation, is fully on board with the polytechnic transformation. But for now, he’s focused on facilities.

“We’ve been able to make good progress on our research projects in our temporary spaces that are spread across the Interdisciplinary Science Center, but I’m excited to have everything centralized.”

Resource upgrades, he says, are only the beginning. “Another benefit of the renovation will be to bring all biology faculty back into a single building. I’ve found that some of my most exciting ideas came from spontaneous discussions with my colleagues from biological disciplines that are quite different from mine.”

For Ashley, the state’s investment signals something important about EWU’s trajectory. “I think that the investment in our research infrastructure is a sign that we’ve gotten better at showcasing what we accomplish and what more we can achieve with the right resources,” he says. Like Smith, he doesn’t see this as a departure from Eastern’s teaching mission. “As a scientist, I welcome a greater institutional interest in research and development. Our students’ learning isn’t limited to classrooms, and an increased research capacity will create more educational opportunities for them to develop critical skills.”

Yet even as EWU invests in its research future, headwinds have been gathering at the federal level. The current administration has taken a markedly different approach to federal research funding than previous administrations of both parties, calling into question decades of bipartisan consensus that university-based research is crucial to American innovation, economic strength and national security.

According to the American Association of Universities, federal science budgets for three major research funders, the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology are at a 25-year low, while additional grant-making agencies across the government have also found themselves under fiscal pressure.

Other nations, meanwhile, are ramping up their spending. According to recent data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, China, for example, is rapidly closing their deficit with the U.S. in research and development spending, potentially reshaping the balance of scientific power.

Cuts and priority changes at NSF are particularly concerning to EWU faculty members such as Charlotte Milling, an assistant professor of biology at EWU. Milling and her students are part of a multistate effort to preserve the critically endangered pygmy rabbit, along with the sagebrush ecosystem that it depends upon for survival.

Earlier this winter, Milling and her project collaborators at the University of Idaho submitted a $500,000 grant proposal to NSF. Their aim is to use the funding to better understand how sagebrush-dependent animals and plants are responding to climate change. The timing was fraught: The application was due just days after the presidential inauguration, and Milling knew that during the incoming president’s previous term, language related to climate change had been scrubbed from NSF funding lines. 

“We had a list of words that were flagged, basically saying: ‘you can’t be using these in any of your applications,’” Milling recalls, adding that this left researchers in the dark on key questions. “How fluid is this list? Is ‘climate change’ going to hit it? I mean, we were applying for a climate-change-specific grant.” Despite the uncertainty, she and her colleagues carried on. “Both my collaborators and some of my colleagues here at Eastern just emphasized: Until you hear otherwise, pretend like it’ll go through,” Milling says. “Invest in putting it together.”

The application did, in fact, go to reviewers at NSF, where it received positive feedback. Milling remains hopeful that the proposal, if not now then at some point, will be approved. “No work that we do is ever wasted. It’s always an investment in the future,” she says.

Still, concern for that future is a common theme among university-based scholars and scientists, especially those early-career faculty researchers who feel they’ve been left, as Milling puts it, “without a road map.”

There are also questions around the training of those who have yet to begin their careers — federal grant support is typically the driver for funding graduate and undergraduate research assistants. Without that support, investigators like Milling fear we may find ourselves struggling to fill the ranks of next-generation scientists and scholars.

For Ashley, too, the sense of uncertainty is palpable. He currently receives funding from a National Institutes of Health grant that’s designed to support research at primarily undergraduate institutions. It funds his investigations while also providing tuition waivers for graduate students.

“I’ve got a little over two years left on this grant, which means it’s time to start writing a renewal to avoid a lapse in funding,” he says. “I hope that the R16 mechanism that I’m currently funded under continues. Otherwise, it will mean fewer graduate and directed-study students.”

Nicholas Burgis, professor and chair of chemistry, biochemistry and physics, finds himself in a similar situation. The current three-year extension of his NIH grant, which funds the molecular-level investigation he and EWU Professor Yao Houndonougbo are pursing into a rare but lethal genetic disorder affecting infants, is moving forward. But worries remain. “Research is a very challenging and time-consuming endeavor,” Burgis says. “Additional barriers to participating in that endeavor will only leave the USA behind the competition. I have serious concerns about future funding and my ability to take the next steps necessary to advance my research.”    

Students these days are wise to the challenges. Ashley says he used to assume they didn’t pay much attention to the intricacies of research funding. “But our students are now acutely aware of how science and education policies can directly impact their experiences as students and their future careers,” he says.

Burgis echoes this sentiment, particularly when it comes to STEM workforce needs. “We have to pass the torch. The Boomers are retiring and Gen X is a smaller generation. There will be lots of vacant jobs, especially considering our leaky pipeline from high school to professional positions.”

“The open nature of academia encourages collaboration and sharing,” he continues, “unlike the environment of corporate America. We can’t simply shift innovation to businesses. They don’t have the capacity to do it at scale, and they carefully guard their intellectual property.”

For his part, Provost Smith recognizes funding uncertainty requires universities to be more strategic and diversified in their approach. By focusing on teaching and learning — along with applied research with community partners and undergraduate research experiences — Smith says EWU can play to its strengths while reducing dependence on federal grants and contracts. Smith also makes a point of emphasizing the value of research to the public. “We have to show that higher education is worth it,” he says. “And I think the polytechnic model helps us do that because we’re very focused on applied learning, on career outcomes, and on partnerships with industry.”

“In strictly economic terms, every dollar the NIH spends generates more than two dollars of economic activity; the only federal spending that beats that return is education. Support of university research accomplishes both,” Ashley says.

This line of reasoning is not new. In the months just before the end of WWII, Vannevar Bush, a leading intellectual who served as president of Carnegie Science, submitted a landmark assessment of how the United States might best position itself to thrive in the post-war world. His report, Science: The Endless Frontier, made two key points: that scientific research was vital for the country’s continued security and economic well-being, and that governmental, industrial and academic research could create far more value in partnership than in isolation.

Think of today’s research as a great return on the investment envisioned by Vannevar Bush, both Burgis and Ashley say. “In strictly economic terms, every dollar the NIH spends generates more than two dollars of economic activity; the only federal spending that beats that return is education. Support of university research accomplishes both,” Ashley says.

Recent studies back them up. According to a new report from the nonprofit United for Medical Research (as cited by the Harvard Gazette), every research dollar funded by the National Institutes of Health delivered just over $2.50 in economic activity. In the previous fiscal year, the report found, NIH awarded more than $36.9 billion to researchers whose work supported more than 408,000 jobs and generated over $94.5 billion in new economic activity nationwide. Closer to home, the report found that NIH expenditures in the state of Washington totaled some $1.2 billion and supported 12,250 jobs.

Ultimately, however, the case for university research needs to rest on more than economics. “Our students are doing fantastic work and, if we showcase that, people will notice,” Ashley says. “If we continue to make necessary investments in faculty and infrastructure, I’m confident we can both grow our research corpus and continue to produce graduates that thrive.”

Seven months into his tenure, Smith also remains upbeat. “Yes, we have a long way to go. Not because we haven’t done a lot, but because we have very high aspirations. We just have to continue to reinforce how seriously we take applied learning here at EWU, and how we want to grow it. I’m feeling good about the future.”

Jess Walter reflects on how class, ambition, and a fifteen-dollar decision shaped his path to literary stardom.

By Charles E. Reineke

The backyard of Jess Walter’s house on Summit Boulevard isn’t huge, but there’s plenty of room to spread out. To the left is a patch of close-cropped lawn; on the right a concrete patio next to a tarp-covered swimming pool.

Back near the alley sits a carriage house, constructed circa 1910. It’s been beautifully restored, with double-wide doors and sturdy, river-rock walls. This is where Walter ’87, arguably Eastern’s most famous alumnus, creates the work that has made him a beloved, best-selling author. The “office,” he likes to call it.

The writing happens in the loft above the place where the carriages used to go. It’s a comfortable space, nothing fancy. There’s a plain wooden desk and a black office chair. A computer and a monitor. A saggy cinnamon-colored couch for napping; an upholstered leather armchair for reading.

There’s also, lined up under a sloping part of the ceiling, an untidy stack of cardboard boxes. Most are of the bankers’ box variety. Others are shoeboxes left over from the kicks that Walter, a basketball fanatic and keen student of the game, wears when shooting hoops. He’s got on a pair of low tops now.

It’s an unseasonably warm day in November. Looking fit and relaxed, Walter chats with a reporter and photographer as he approaches the line of boxes, a three-inch-thick sheaf of unbound paper in hand.

Turns out the boxes are filled with notes and ideas for new projects, along with manuscripts for most of the many books he’s published. The papers are the typescript for So Far Gone, his latest novel, a work published to universal acclaim just a few months ago. “Like closing a door,” he says as pages drop down and the box-top goes on.

“A lot of these are full of notes for projects I want to work on,” he says, surveying the pile. “They all get thrown in there, and they eventually become drafts.” It’s not the sort of filing system one would expect of a writer who has published short stories, essays, criticism and eleven books. One who has been a finalist for the National Book Award and a Pulitzer, won an Edgar Award, and has written four bestsellers, including Beautiful Ruins, which reached No. 1 on The New York Times list. But, clearly, whatever Jess Walter is doing, it’s working for him.

It’s been just under a decade since Eastern magazine last visited with Walter. He’s still in Spokane, the place where he was born, grew up and, against what might have seemed like long odds, traveled down the road to EWU. “I’ve just turned 60, and it’s my 30th year of publishing,” he says. “You start to look back, to think about which things are important.”

Eastern, Walter says, is very much one of those things. The working-class son of a pipefitter, Walter was the first of his family to go to college. A smart kid who loved to read, both his mom and dad encouraged him to get a degree. It was his dad, however, that made him an Eagle. Walter likes to tell the story when he gives public lectures and readings. Never fails to get a laugh.

It goes like this. After being advised by a counselor at East Valley High School that his exceptional SAT scores made him a can’t miss college prospect, Walter came home from school one day with applications from the University of Washington, Washington State and Eastern.

“I said to my dad, who was going to help pay for school, ‘alright, these are the places I want to apply.’” His dad pointed out that each of the applications cost $15. “So pick one!” his dad said. “Well, I guess the University of Washington,” Walter said. “That one’s too expensive,” replied his dad.

“Washington State?” 

“Nope.”

“How about Eastern?”

“Good choice!”

The decision made, Walter was admitted to EWU and its Honors College. There he thrived while studying under academic luminaries such as the late English professor Don Wall, while at the same time reporting for The Easterner student newspaper. It was at EWU that he also began the single-minded pursuit of what Walter describes as his “improbable dream,” that of becoming a professional writer of fiction.

It was never easy.

At age 19, Walter and his girlfriend, Danette Driscoll, also an Eastern undergraduate, discovered they had conceived a child. They’d only been dating for five months. Walter proposed, they got married and Danette ’87, ’03 gave birth to a daughter, Brooklyn (today age 40, an educator with a PhD in English). Both parents, now amicably divorced, stayed in school and graduated in four years. “I was so proud of us,” Walter says of his parenting experience. “I came back from class one day with a sweatshirt that said, ‘Eastern Dad.’ I said to my wife, ‘Look! They make sweatshirts for guys like me!’”

She was only mildly amused. “I’m not sure you are the type of dad they had in mind,” she said.

Even at the time, Walter knew having a daughter was going to change things. He made the most of it. “Suddenly, when you’re 19, just turning 20, you’ve got another human being relying on you. Your ambitions move to another level,” Walter says. “I had always been ambitious as a writer, but now I had to get serious about paying the bills.”

He worked at Gatto’s Pizza. He wrote tickets for EWU parking and transportation services. He even had a security gig on campus. “It was a job I could do from midnight to 2 a.m.,” he says.

All the while, Walter moved forward with his studies and his work at The Easterner. Success at both led to an internship at The Spokesman-Review, a prized gig in those days. After graduation, Walter parlayed this foot-in-the-door start, followed by a long string of unpaid positions, into a staff job.

“Even getting in at The Spokesman was a leap,” he recalls, adding that The Spokesman in those days almost exclusively hired young writers from the nation’s top journalism programs. Walter never doubted, at least not outwardly, that he was as good as any of them.

“You first want to prove yourself as a reporter,” Walter recalls, pausing for a moment before continuing. “And I was also reading all the time, thinking about that other, secret desire to be a novelist. This all sounds now like it came from a place of confidence. It probably came from the opposite place; a place of deep insecurity, a desire to prove yourself.”

Walter admits he began his career with a chip on his shoulder, a need to show that an EWU grad could play with the big boys. He knew there was a class system out there; that meritocratic principles were often little more than window dressing. It kind of pissed him off. “You want to show up everyone who went to a ‘better’ college, you want to show everyone who’s on the list of best novels of the year that you belong. At some point that insecurity shifts to something a little healthier. I don’t know that it ever lands totally in the land of confidence, but it’s just offshore.”

At The Spokesman, it took a while before his newsroom colleagues caught on that the kid from Eastern had staying power. But after grinding through the internships and unpaid gigs, he finally merited a graveyard shift on the cops-and-courts beat. Walter loved it, filed good stories, and soon moved up to daytime work. A couple of years later, his big break came.

In the summer of 1992, word reached Spokane of an armed standoff across the state line in rural Boundary County, Idaho. Soon the entire nation was transfixed by what became a deadly siege at Ruby Ridge, as federal agents sought to enforce a firearms warrant against a resistant Randy Weaver and his well-armed family.

Through the type of dogged reporting that would be at home in one of his novels, Walter — even though he wasn’t initially assigned to the team working the  story — managed to track down a relative of the Weavers that the FBI was about to bring to Ruby Ridge to speak with the family, mid-siege. That point of contact, which led other family sources to open up to him, turned out to be a major reporting breakthrough, one that helped bring to light facts that complicated — to put it mildly — the narrative offered by federal officials.

Walter’s reporting on the siege and its aftermath eventually became the basis for his first book, Every Knee Shall Bow (reissued as Ruby Ridge). That non-fiction title, both a critical and commercial success, remains the definitive account of what many now recognize as a watershed moment in contemporary American history. It also showed, with its expertly drawn character sketches, perfect pacing and keen eye for detail, that Walter was a born storyteller. No accident that several critics pointed out that the book “reads like a novel.”

Ralph Walter ’91, Jess’ younger brother, is today the sports editor for The Spokesman-Review. He says no one in the family was particularly surprised by Jess’ successes. Even as a little kid, it was obvious there was something special about him.

One early anecdote stands out, Ralph says. They were at their grandparents’ house in the country. All the young cousins were there, and the kids were expected to entertain themselves. Jess thought it’d be cool to do a magazine. “He called it Reader’s Indigestion,” Ralph recalls. “I think I was maybe 4 or 5 years old at the time. He would have been 8 or 9. Jess would have me draw a picture, and that would be one of pages. All the cousins would write something. We had that thing going for probably five or six years. It was just so obvious that Jess was something different. So creative.”

Walter’s childhood publishing effort might not have been so remarkable, Ralph adds, were it not for the milieu in which it was executed. Their Spokane Valley community, he suggests, was a long way from Bloomsbury.

“One day our bikes got stolen,” Ralph says. “I remember being in the front yard with Jess. The kids who stole them rode by — on our bikes — just laughing.” Of course, Ralph also recollects happier moments in the ’hood. Like when the local youth would gather at the Walters’ house, put on oversized boxing gloves and, as Ralph put it, “beat on each other.”

“It was, you know, tough,” he says with a laugh. “You just had to survive.”

Turns out that surviving, or at least developing a thick skin, was key to Walter’s perseverance in his quest to make it in fiction. Even after the success of the Ruby Ridge book, publishers were slow to pick up on his potential.

Walter spent seven long years collecting “no thank you” letters before selling his first piece of short fiction. “Seven years of writing stories, sending them out and getting rejected,” he says. “And it was brutal. But it was also necessary. I wasn’t good enough yet.”

Getting better, Walter believes now, owed much to his newsroom experience. Constant deadlines conditioned him to write — not just when the spirit moved him, but every day, day after day. That’s an essential skill for a novelist, he says. “If you’re waiting for inspiration, you’re not going to write very much.”

Journalism also gave him important insights into our shared human experience, lessons that continue to inform his work today. “I remember early on, I was afraid to interview certain people, to go talk to them,” Walter says. “There was a woman who had been shot to death in a robbery, and my editor wanted me to go talk to her boyfriend. He was living in a little trailer behind the convenience store where she worked. I didn’t want to. He said, ‘Just go. Go talk to him.’”

Walter remembers knocking on the trailer door. “I explained what I was doing. I said, ‘You don’t have to talk.’ And he said, ‘No, no, I’d like to talk.’ So we just sat. He told me about his girlfriend. I took notes. His grief was so profound, and I sat there with my notebook watching him struggle. He’d look around the trailer for help—for some object that might help him describe who this person was, what she meant to him.

“I distinctly remember thinking that the inability to express your deepest emotions is not the same thing as not having the deepest emotions. I thought to myself, ‘This is my job as a reporter: to translate the untranslatable.’”

It’s also been his job as a novelist, especially when it comes to characters who are often far less sympathetic. It’s a skill that other professional writers have long marveled over. One of them, novelist Richard Russo, put it like this: “Here are characters who seem to live of their own volition, who talk out of a terrible inner need to make themselves known and understood, who reveal not just themselves but the yearning heart of our great flawed democracy.”

Walter, who stands all of 5-feet, 10-inches tall, sometimes gets asked what he would have done if he couldn’t be a novelist. “Professional basketball player,” he answers. Maybe not the NBA, he adds, though he admits he long dreamed of becoming a point guard for the Seattle SuperSonics. On this day he’s wearing a SuperSonics t-shirt.

“I imagined myself more as like a small college basketball player. And then maybe I’d become a coach,” he says. “I’m like the second assistant at a liberal arts college somewhere. And my favorite thing about it is that, at this small college, various writers come through, and I get to go sit in the back and imagine being a writer.”

In real life, of course, he doesn’t need to imagine. He’s a full-time professional, writing with both determination and discipline pretty much every day. “I jokingly tell the story that my dry periods tend to lead to a solid chiding in my journal, where I write, ‘You need to get back to work and stop whining,’” he says.

Both the discipline and determination paid off spectacularly with Beautiful Ruins, his 2012 novel that became a surprise No. 1 bestseller, spending months on The New York Times list. The book had been 10 years in the making. Even then, Walter wasn’t sure it was ready.

“He’s always trying to make the work better. He’s never satisfied with just good enough. Jess is one of those writers who just keeps getting better. Every book is better than the last one. That’s rare. I mean, a lot of writers, they have a great book or two and then they kind of plateau.”

Warren Frazier, Walter’s agent at John Hawkins & Associates — the oldest literary agency in the country — has represented him since 2000. Among Frazier’s other clients are Joyce Carol Oates, Adam Johnson, and Robert Olen Butler, all internationally acclaimed novelists.

Frazier remembers the long wait for Beautiful Ruins, reading drafts that he thought were amazing, but that Jess thought weren’t quite there yet. “And I think that’s part of what makes him such a good writer,” he  says on a phone call from his office in New York.

“He’s always trying to make the work better. He’s never satisfied with just good enough. Jess is one of those writers who just keeps getting better. Every book is better than the last one. That’s rare. I mean, a lot of writers, they have a great book or two and then they kind of plateau.”

Yet Walter, Frazier continues, keeps pushing, challenging himself, trying new things. “I think that is what’s made his career so successful. Readers can tell that he’s not just phoning it in; not just repeating himself. He’s always trying to do something new, something interesting, something that will surprise both him and the reader.”

The success of Beautiful Ruins, his sixth novel, changed things for Walter. People recognized him on the street. He got calls from Europe wanting him for events. Hollywood asked him to write scripts. It was cool, Walter admits, and he took what he calls “a slightly longer victory lap.” But soon enough he was back at work on Summit Boulevard, hunkered down for hours each day in the “office.”

This is not to suggest Walter is a literary recluse. After finishing a novel, in fact, he’s usually had more than enough “me” time, and welcomes the touring that invariably accompanies new releases. For these events, Walter, a self-professed “extroverted introvert,” says he’s perfected the art of mixing eight minutes of jokes, 15 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of chatting. “I was always kind of a class clown, so to be in front of the class and have people have to listen isn’t the hardest thing.”

What surprises him most about his audiences are their quality, depth and genuine interest in his work: “They’re excited to meet you, and you share this common thing, this book. It’s great fun. Really is one of my favorite parts.” There tends to be lots of curiosity about his process, he adds. Lots of questions about craft, about how he manages to keep moving forward with his work. His advice to aspiring writers is both practical and, unexpectedly, spiritual.

“Read everything. Write every day,” he says. “Don’t wait for permission or validation. And be patient with yourself. Becoming a good writer takes time. The seven years it took me to publish my first story was humbling. But it was also necessary. You have to put in the work.”

But, he continues, try not to think of the work as work. “Treat your writing time the way some people treat their religious practice. Make it sacred. Read that way too — find yourself transported and transcended in the way people are by their faith. One of my great writing times used to be on Sundays. I would trudge out and write on Sunday mornings and then again at night after the kids went to bed (Walter and his wife, Anne, have two children, Ava, now 28, and Alec, 25). Approach writing, I always say, with the same kind of reverence and faith that some people bring to a Sunday service.”

Of course, this being Jess Walter, he punctuates this high-minded counsel with a joke. “When I give this advice, people usually just stare at me, like,  ‘All I wanted was your agent’s name.’ So I give them Warren’s name, and we part ways.”

Through it all, Walter has remained deeply connected to his eminently affordable alma mater. His passion for Eastern football and basketball, for example, seems boundless. He’s also contributed to EWU publications (including this one), engaged with student writers, and in 2016 gave a celebrated commencement address to Eastern graduates.

A newly endowed Jess Walter scholarship and writer’s fund, meanwhile, will likely help other first-generation college students who want to pursue writing. He’d love it, Walter says, if it eased the financial stress on some student who followed as unlikely a path as his own.

He is also ramping up his engagement with Eastern in other ways. In February, the university will be honoring Walter with a week-long series of celebrations highlighting his life and work: a public “Evening With Jess Walter” at the Catalyst building; a student symposium on the Cheney campus; an EWU-organized exhibition at the Spokane Public Library on the historical antecedents of Walter’s critically acclaimed 2020 novel, The Cold Millions; and a special shout-out during halftime of an upcoming Eastern men’s basketball game.

These valedictory moments might suggest Walter is resting on his laurels. Nope. Even now, in his sixth decade, Walter shows no sign of slowing down. He’s still thinking about the boxed-up ideas ranged against the carriage house wall. A basketball novel about ambition is in the mix, he says. Maybe a book about Robert Oppenheimer’s self-imposed, post-Manhattan-Project exile in the Caribbean.

What else might emerge? “The next book could be about a circus clown because, who knows what I’ll actually finish?” Does he ever think about taking a break? “Weirdly, if you’re a rock star, no one would have a problem with you pissing off to the south of France to live in a village,” he says. “But I think if you’re lucky enough to get to do this thing for a living, why would you stop?”

These valedictory moments might suggest Walter is resting on his laurels. Nope.

One of Walter’s favorite scenes in So Far Gone portrays a hapless Christian Identity group member who, in the midst of an armed confrontation, is mostly concerned about the well-being of his truck’s new tires. “I just can’t imagine a better way to spend a day than writing a scene like that,” Walter says. “It’s the same reason we read — to be thrilled by some discovery. So much of writing is just play. When I’m thinking like that — when I’m trying to find great sentences— things tend to go well. I always talk about how I take great inspiration from my musician friends, you know? They never say ‘I’m going to work’; they say they’re ‘playing.’”

Jess Walter is still playing. The boxes are still full, and he’s still walking across the lawn to the office every day. The chip on the shoulder is still there, too, that formidable drive to be heard that turned a working-class kid from Spokane into one of America’s finest novelists.

“The thing I fear the most,” he says, “is that I won’t have stories to tell, things to imagine.” Not likely.   

For more than two decades, Eastern’s CAMP program gave the children of migrant parents a better shot at obtaining a college education. When budget cuts threatened to close its doors, donors stepped up.

By Linn Parish

During long, hot summers back in the late 2000s, Tanya Núñez would spend 10 to 12 hours a day harvesting crops in the fields of central Washington.

A high schooler at the time, those sweaty days harvesting corn, onion and cabbage suggested to Tanya that maybe a career different from her parents would be best. “I remember telling myself, ‘I can’t do this for the rest of my life,’” Núñez ’12  says. “It was a rude awakening: You need to go to college, and you need to study.” That epiphany led her to Eastern Washington University and its CAMP program in 2008.

CAMP stands for College Assistance Migrant Program. The program got its start back in 1972, developed by the federal Office of Economic Opportunity to support migrant students in college. It was transferred to the Department of Education in 1980.

Eastern’s participation began 23 years ago, and, in the years since, the program has provided crucial support services for first-generation Eagles from migrant families. The goal? Helping students succeed in their studies and, ultimately, earn a degree.

Tanya met all of the criteria for CAMP. Her father, who was born in Mexico, and her American mother have spent most of their working lives in farm fields, much of that time moving from harvest to harvest before settling in Othello, Washington.

While Tanya is in the first generation of the Núñez family to attend college, she’s not the first of her siblings to attend EWU, nor is she the first to benefit from CAMP. She was preceded at Eastern by her sister, Jennifer, and her brother, Ricky. For the Núñezes, CAMP is thus a family affair, though they’ve all taken different paths to the program.

Jennifer  is the oldest of the Núñez children. Nine years her sister’s senior, she came to EWU before CAMP was established. She says she was drawn to the university because it was located in Cheney, a town somewhat similar in size to Othello and an ideal distance from family.

Though her matriculation predated CAMP, she says she found a great deal of support in Eastern’s Chicano/a/x Studies program, especially with the late professor Carlos Maldonado serving as a mentor.

By the time Jennifer ’05, ’18 graduated, Eastern’s CAMP program was up and running, a development that benefitted Jennifer and Tanya’s brother Ricky. He was already a CAMP veteran, having participated in Columbia Basin College’s program before he transferred to EWU. (He now works as a real estate agent  in Othello.)

Having two older Eagles in the family meant Tanya received lots of sound advice about Eastern. Both siblings urged her to take advantage of what CAMP had to offer. 

“I remember my sister said, ‘I want you to focus on college and not have the struggles that I had as the first-generation,” Tanya recalls. “And I never understood that, right? But as I’m older now, I’m able to reflect and be appreciative of the opportunities that I was able to have with Eastern, especially as part of CAMP.”

Tanya pursued a couple of different degree programs before committing to social work. Despite this circuitous path to her major, she graduated in four years, went on to earn a master’s degree at Walla Walla University, and is now working in her chosen field as a clinical manager at Renew Behavioral Health & Wellness in Moses Lake.

“I love Eastern. I love the opportunities and the network it provided for me,” she says. “It felt like a home away from home.”

The Núñez siblings’ time in CAMP didn’t end when Tanya graduated from the program. Jennifer had served as an adviser and recruiter for the Chicano/a/x Studies program from 2005 to 2009, eventually serving as its coordinator. During her tenure with the program, she worked closely with CAMP, often referring students who came from families of migrant workers to the program.

“I love Eastern. I love the opportunities and the network it provided for me,” she says. “It felt like a home away from home.”

Federal funding for EWU’s CAMP program has ebbed and flowed through the years, and in the early 2010s, the program for a time lost its revenue source. When that funding was restored in 2014, Jennifer became the director. She held that position until 2019.

“I very much related to the challenges students faced when transitioning from their high school communities to higher ed,” says Jennifer, who currently serves as director for dual/concurrent enrollment and summer sessions with EWU’s Running Start and College in the High School programs.

Like Jennifer Núñez, Rocío Rangel, EWU’s current CAMP director, grew up in a migrant family. A Texas native, Rangel was a benefactor of one of the longest running CAMP programs in the United States, which started at St. Edwards University, a small private school in Austin, Texas.

Initially, Rangel says, she was reluctant to go into CAMP, because she didn’t want to be stereotyped with a “migrant” label. “It wasn’t a good thing in high school,” Rangel says. “When certain teachers saw my peers going into a migrant meeting, they would treat them differently. And then I got to college and realized none of that mattered.”

Through the years, she says, the word “migrant” has been politicized and frequently is lumped in with “immigrant.” But a migrant worker simply is someone who travels from one place to another for seasonal work, she says. While it frequently describes agricultural workers, the term technically applies to workers in a host of other industries.

Migrant workers Rangel adds, are predominantly, but not exclusively, of Latino descent —one in five are from other backgrounds. By extension, participants in CAMP are predominately of Latino descent, but the program isn’t specifically for Latinos.

Rangel points out students from migrant families face challenges when moving from one state to another during an academic year. School districts in different states frequently have different curricula, which can lead to a loss of credits. Often, those students must take make-up classes during the summer months.

For those who reach college there can be significant barriers, among them financial instability, cultural and language hurdles, and a lack of familial or institutional support. CAMP at EWU provides one-on-one counseling, financial assistance, and a series of social events  meant to help mitigate these potential obstacles to success.

“This is a community away from your community to make sure that you feel like you have a sense of place,” she says.

Jennifer Núñez says the program also can help those students deal with issues that go deeper than just homesickness. “A lot of migrant students are providers for their own households and help them to make ends meet,” Núñez says. “And so I think there’s a lot of guilt behind leaving that community and not being able to provide that day-to-day support.”

At EWU, up to 40 incoming freshmen enter the program each fall. Each receives a modest, $500 quarterly stipend, in addition to specialized advising, registration assistance, peer mentoring, student leadership skills training and other benefits. The hope is that more than 80 percent of CAMP participants have a successful first year, defined as earning 36 credits with at least a 2.0 grade-point average. Another goal is that some 90 percent of the students move on to their sophomore year.  “That’s a high percentage,” Rangel says, “and we reach it every time.”

Despite this track record of success, and what would appear to be an indisputably positive return on taxpayer investment, securing federal funding for CAMP has at times been elusive. Back in the 1990s, for example, the Clinton Administration at one point sought to zero out CAMP’s budget. An uproar ensued, and Congress acted to ensure the program remained solvent.

A more recent challenge has come from the current administration, which has called for an end to the program. The White House has also effectively frozen funding already appropriated by Congress, a move that has plunged the nation’s CAMP programs into crisis.

CAMP receives federal funding commitments in five-year cycles. EWU’s funding ended this year, and the U.S. Department of Education announced it wouldn’t be holding a competition for renewals. Other universities throughout the U.S., having no funding alternative, were forced to shutter their programs. Here in the Inland Northwest, the  University of Idaho announced it would close its CAMP program.

Fortunately, Eastern donors have stepped up to help. Most crucially, the university announced earlier this year that it had secured a five-year, $2.1 million commitment from the Krumble Foundation — funds which will allow EWU to both sustain and expand CAMP. One goal is to provide more services to CAMP participants during their sophomore years, an initiative meant to ensure that even more participants graduate.

CAMP already has a rolling six-year graduation rate of about 60 percent, which is typically 15 to 20 percentage points higher than the university as a whole. CAMP and foundation leaders share the goal of further improving that rate.

The Krumble Foundation, founded by Burke and Muriel Blevins after the couple sold Spokane Valley-based manufacturer VPI Quality Windows Inc., is dedicated to addressing the need for more skilled workers in the Inland Northwest by providing post-secondary education opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The foundation has in the past made seven-figure contributions to EWU scholarship programs. The move to dedicate resources to CAMP represents an expansion of its philanthropy.

Last September, Burke Blevins explained the rationale to a Spokesman-Review reporter. “For our region to be economically viable, we need an institution that provides a high-quality education at as reasonable costs as possible …” he said. “That’s why Eastern is really essential to the Spokane region. And this is a program that’s aimed at the kind of people that really drive our economy; those who are going to college, the first generation in their family, and making socioeconomic movements for generations to come.”

It’s unclear when or if the federal funding will return. Regardless, EWU’s program is secure for the near future. That’s good news for Rangel, her staff and their students. What’s more, she says, “all of the goals from the Krumble Foundation are aligned with what we already want to do”.

While Jennifer Núñez hasn’t been involved directly with CAMP for a number of years, she’s also relieved that it is surviving and thriving.

“Being able to see the students, so timid their first year, go on to graduate and then, in most cases, move on from that goal to something bigger… it’s just so nice,” she says. “And I think that’s definitely because of the help from CAMP — the resources, the staff and the mission — that has given them the start they need to accomplish their goals.”

More to the Story: Rangel Honored for Distinguished Service

Rocío Rangel, CAMP’s director, recently received Eastern’s 2025 Distinguished Service Award — recognition of her leadership, innovation and commitment to student success.

Rangel has led the CAMP program for the past four years. During her tenure, she has both improved financial efficiencies while enhancing services for the first-generation and migrant students who depend on the program, the award citation said.

Among her other notable successes, Rangel introduced an innovative staffing model that replaced a recruiter position with a second advisor, allowing for more direct student engagement and improved program outcomes. The change streamlined operations and strengthened the program’s capacity to serve students more effectively.

Her emphasis on communication, meanwhile, has led to dramatic reductions in students-facing financial holds during registration. Rangel made this happen by creating bilingual outreach materials and a communications plan that ensures students clearly understand financial aid processes and deadlines.

Rangel and her staff have also emphasized supporting and building relationships with Spanish-speaking parents, helping them manage delays and tech issues to maintain a 100% financial aid submission rate among the program’s first-year students — something the team has accomplished every year since 2020.

EWU recently celebrated its 2025 Alumni Award winners.
As always, the stories of our inspiring honorees made it an occasion to remember. Photos by Young Kwak and Luke Kenneally.

Benjamin P. Cheney Lifetime Achievement

When it comes to Greg Deckard ’86, the 2025 Benjamin P. Cheney Lifetime Achievement Award winner, it is pretty much impossible not to be a little bit in awe of his long roster of success: his distinguished work in the banking industry; his lifelong commitment to community service; and, of course, his generosity to his alma mater. Deckard has been a passionate advocate for community banking throughout his 40-year career. As CEO and chairman of State Bank Northwest for the past 24 years, his leadership has played a key role in building and sustaining the continued prosperity of our state and region.

Deckard’s professional influence extends well outside of the bounds of the PNW, however, thanks to his service with the Independent Community Bankers of America, his testimony on key banking issues before Congress, and his time as chairman of the Independent Community Bankers of America Board of Directors. His fervent support for Eastern, meanwhile, spans decades, including his 11 years of service on the EWU Foundation Board, 13 years with the School of Business Advisory Board, and his longstanding support for Eagle basketball’s 6th Man Club. His generous financial support, totaling over $110,000 from him and State Bank Northwest, has helped the university fund everything from athletic facilities to business scholarships.

Beyond banking and university service, Deckard has held leadership positions with the Union Gospel Mission of Spokane, Sacred Heart/Providence Hospital Foundation, and the Spokane Country Club.

“Greg has been a leader in his own bank and a leader in community banking within the state and nationally for decades,” one of his admiring colleagues said. “He has provided a lifetime of service to his community, his profession and to EWU — a true role model for other Eagle alumni to follow.”

Gov. Clarence D. Martin Educator of the Year

Over his almost three decades of service, Shawn Carney ’97, ’98, our Governor Clarence D. Martin Educator of Year Award winner, has made “immeasurable contributions” to Spokane’s Rogers High School, having, as one of his nominating letters put it, a “profound impact on his students, colleagues, and the broader educational community.”

Carney doesn’t just teach physics. In his classroom, every lesson represents a broader opportunity to ignite curiosity and build confidence, particularly in students who might never have envisioned themselves in STEM careers. Year after year, his understanding of, and compassion for, the challenges many Rogers students face infuses his teaching with greater purpose and relevance. In short, every lesson opens doors.

This same level of compassion and concern extends to his fellow teachers. As Science Department lead, Carney cultivated a culture of excellence through collaboration and genuine respect. His guidance honors individual teaching styles while elevating effectiveness throughout the department. As an instructional coach, this gift for mentorship truly shines. For 15 years, educators at all stages of their careers have trusted Carney with challenges ranging from classroom management to technology integration.

Beyond academics, Carney coaches wrestling and golf, arguably the two most dissimilar sports imaginable. But Carney has long used both to help his young athletes do more than just succeed on the mat and greens; he helps students absorb the far more consequential lessons of perseverance and dignity.

“He is one of the most passionate and kind educators and coaches I have ever worked with,” wrote another of Carney’s admiring colleagues. It’s a combination of passion and kindness that defines Carney’s approach to both coaching and teaching — demanding excellence while providing the support his students need to achieve it.

Tawanka Service

During her time as an Eagle undergraduate, Ana Munguia ’13, our Tawanka Service award winner, already stood out for her passionate commitment to service, student advocacy and cross-cultural relationship building. Now, as the community connections manager for the Pasco School District, she’s making an even greater difference for students in the Tri-Cities.

At EWU she showed off her remarkable leadership skills when, in 2009, she founded Eastern’s chapter of the Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority. With Munguia’s guidance, the sisters of Lambda Theta Alpha actively served the university community by “adopting” streets in Cheney, supporting local Relay for Life events, and organizing fundraising drives for St. Jude’s Research Hospital.

These days, Munguia’s work for the Pasco School District is building on the commitment to community she established as an EWU student. Every day, her colleagues say, Munguia works to empower students and foster opportunities for their personal growth, providing guidance and mentorship that impacts both students’ career readiness and self-assurance.

Munguia’s community involvement extends beyond her professional obligations. From 2014 to 2017, she contributed to the Hispanic Academic Achievers Program, a scholarship committee promoting higher education opportunities for Hispanic youth. In addition, she has served as the vice president for membership in our state’s chapter of the Public Relations Association, where she led recruitment efforts and helped organize two annual conferences for public relations professionals.

Through her journey from campus leader to community connector, Munguia has been a shining example of how EWU alumni can continue to make meaningful service impacts long after commencement.

Sandy Williams Trailblazer

Angela Jones, our Sandy Williams Trailblazer honoree, has forged a laudable career dedicated to transforming educational landscapes for underrepresented students across Washington state.

Jones began in Yakima’s Wapato School District, where, as a substitute teacher, she first recognized — and worked to alleviate — the unique challenges faced by Black and Brown students as they strove to break the cycles of poverty that too often affected them and their families. This commitment to equity eventually propelled her through successive leadership positions at Spokane Public Schools, Washington State University, and EWU, where she served for a time as a member of the university’s executive leadership team.

Today, as director of the Washington Initiative for the Gates Foundation, Jones leads efforts to create clear pathways for post-high-school success for students. Her team focuses specifically on communities facing the highest barriers, providing crucial support systems where resources are often scarce.

Her current position is just the latest in her three-decades-long quest to improve outcomes for students and other community members of color. These efforts are not just restricted to education. During the height of the pandemic, for example, she co-founded and launched the Black Future Co-Op Fund — a resource designed to support the recovery and sustainability of Black-led organizations and businesses across Washington.

Through all this, Jones’ commitment to Eastern has remained steadfast. In 2022, for example, she and her family made a transformative gift that led to the establishment of the JLR Multicultural Center at EWU. Today that center is a vital space where students receive the support they need to successfully complete their journeys to degree completion. “Dr. Jones’ contributions,” wrote one of her nominators, “exemplify the qualities sought for recipients of the Sandy Williams Trailblazer award. She is an educator, storyteller and author who aspires to leave impactful and sustainable change for students pursuing their education beyond high school.”

Lt. Col. Daniel M. Carter Military Service

As an elected representative, an educator and a businessperson in his hometown of Kennewick, state Sen. Matt Boehnke has amassed a long and distinguished list of contributions in service to our state and region. But at this year’s Alumni Awards Gala, EWU celebrated Boehnke, the Lt. Col. Daniel M. Carter Military Service Award winner, for a different form of service:  his 21-plus years as an officer in the U.S. Army, where he never failed to exemplify an exceptional dedication to duty.

His devotion to duty began as an Eagle. At Eastern, Boehnke was recognized as an ROTC-Distinguished Military Graduate before graduating in 1990 and receiving his active-duty commission. He spent the next two decades as both a proud U.S. Army aviator and a pioneer in military cyber operations, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

During his years of service, Boehnke quickly built a reputation as a natural leader. At the Fort Sill, Oklahoma-based aviation battalion where he served, Boehnke piloted the formidable CH-47D Chinook, a medium-lift assault helicopter crucial for tactical transport operations. His final post was at the Network Enterprise Technology Command, where he played a significant part in helping to establish the U.S. Army Cyber Command.

What distinguished Boehnke most among his peers wasn’t just his technical proficiency, but his leadership philosophy. In a nominating letter, one fellow service member described him as “dedicated, compassionate, and capable” – a leader who “consistently embodied selfless service by supporting his subordinates while readily shouldering more than his share of responsibilities.”

Boehnke’s commitment to service now extends far beyond his active-duty years. According to those who know him best, Boehnke has “devoted his entire adult life to the service of his country and the American people.”

Rising Eagle

After earning a health services bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in business administration, Kori Jackson ’22, ’23 — our Rising Eagle award winner — could have pursued any number of opportunities. Instead, she chose to return to the Colville Reservation, where she has stepped forward with determination and vision to serve where she’s needed most.

When she started her new job as the business services manager and accountant for the Paschal Sherman Indian School, for example, Jackson was determined to do more than just crunch numbers. After seeing that her school, like so many across Washington state, was dealing with post-pandemic behavioral challenges, Jackson quickly set to work channeling her education and leadership experience from the Native American Student Association at EWU into creative solutions.

Because she recognized that the reservation’s kids needed a boost in inspiration and motivation, Jackson orchestrated back-to-school nights featuring speakers who could ignite young minds with possibility. She also began working directly with students — most notably girls participating in fast-pitch softball and volleyball —  becoming the sort of role model whose active presence demonstrated, for both girls and boys, the power of education and engagement.

In the larger tribal community, Jackson has also been invaluable. When families are in crisis, she helps find safe spaces. When basic needs go unmet, Jackson mobilizes resources. Such practical compassion earned her recognition from the Colville Tribal Tribune and others. But public recognition has never been Jackson’s motivation. Instead, she has focused on amplifying attention to urgent causes, working with tribal leaders and businesses to pursue solutions that honor both tradition and progress.

In true Eastern fashion, Jackson’s recent graduation from EWU marked not an ending but a beginning in her commitment to creating positive change. Her Rising Eagle journey has always been about more than just personal growth. It’s about lifting up others.

Eagle4Life Spirit

During his student days, Mike Mumford ’81, our Eagle4Life Spirit award winner, studied finance and economics while playing defensive back for the Eagle football team. Mumford was a solid defender and hard worker, but it was his commitment to fair play that illustrated the essence of his character.

During the spring practice window preceding Mumford’s senior year, a freshman walk-on showed up to compete for a place in the defensive backfield. Instead of seeing competition, Mumford took the young player under his wing, mentoring him and pushing him to succeed. After spring ball concluded, the next season’s starters were announced. That freshman was named to Mumford’s position, relegating him to the bench for his senior year.

What did Mumford do? Rather than harbor resentment, he continued to support, encourage and work with his replacement. That freshman, Mark Puyear, nominated Mumford for the Eagle4Life Award, and their friendship has endured for more than four decades.

This selfless spirit has always been a hallmark of Mumford’s relationship with Eastern. Now the senior vice president of wealth management at UBS in Spokane, where he’s worked since 1988, Mumford has long channeled his professional success back into his alma mater. You’ll find his name quietly supporting fundraisers. You’ll see “sponsored by UBS” signs at events because of his influence. You’ll spot him at games—both home and away—always proudly sporting Eastern gear. You’ll find him rallying fellow alumni to attend events, contribute to causes, or to simply gather to show their Eagle pride.

Mumford also serves on numerous committees and organizations, including the EWU Foundation Board, that are vital to the university’s future. He never seeks recognition for these efforts. His fulfillment comes not from accolades, but from goals attained.

There’s something else Mumford’s friend Puyear shared: “He is involved in many things, but what stands out is his ability to get things done. His fulfillment in this comes not from getting recognized, but in seeing the goal achieved.”

Ask Darby McLean about her childhood in Cheney, and you’ll hear her wax enthusiastic about the subtle beauty of its college-town setting, its quiet charm and its strong sense of community. How it was the kind of place where a kid could bike its streets without a care in the world. About how it pulsed with the energies and ambitions of very bright people, both young and old.

What you won’t hear her talk about are spices. At least not in the ways you might expect. McLean ’00 runs Spiceology, a Spokane-based purveyor of bespoke blends that has, seemingly overnight, set the nation’s spice scene on fire. Her company’s products, instantly identifiable thanks to their eye-catching “periodic table of flavors” design, are seemingly everywhere. They’re in grocery stores, both plain and fancy. On the sets of food shows and culinary competitions. In ads for ritzy kitchen remodels. And, of course, in the TikToks and Instagrams of food-obsessed cooking fans. They’ve even made a surprise appearance during last year’s Super Bowl — this thanks to an unsolicited placement in a Fox promo for the latest Gordon Ramsey-hosted chef spectacle.

Back in Cheney, none of this would have entered even the wildest imaginings of the younger McLean. In her mother’s kitchen, she recalls, spices were, at best, an afterthought.

“My mom was a middle school counselor for close to 30 years,” McLean says. “She cooked all the time, which was impressive for someone with a career. But I think she suffered from the exact reason why our spice company exists today — spices become boring and stale by the time they get to consumers.” (And perhaps even after they reach consumers. Not that any of us would leave our spice jars neatly arranged and mostly untouched for years at a time, only to wonder why they fall flat in that special dish.)

Freshness is a big point of emphasis at Spiceology, but it’s just one of the features that has fed the company’s rapid rise. Just as important is its novel — some might suggest audacious — approach to blending.

 

Celebrity chefs notwithstanding, it’s moments with folks like her mom, curious but spice-challenged consumers, that get McLean super excited. “It’s really fun,” she says, “to see people try our fresh spices and have their eyes light up when they realize that, ‘Wow, you can actually taste the difference!’”

Freshness is a big point of emphasis at Spiceology, but it’s just one of the features that has fed the company’s rapid rise. Just as important is its novel — some might suggest audacious — approach to blending.

Mixing spices is as old as cooking itself. Archaeological evidence has shown the Egyptians, for example, were blending as early as 3,500 BCE, using cumin and coriander, along with anise and fenugreek to enhance the savor of stews, breads and vegetable dishes. Cooks and traders in China and India were also building blends in the same era; spice combinations that, over the centuries, became foundational to culinary tastes and food-prep experiences of cultures across the globe.

At Spiceology, such time-honored flavor combinations are merely a launching point, an invitation to innovation. When it comes to mixing and matching, pretty much nothing is off the table. Unexpected combinations like Raspberry Chipotle and Black and Blue (blue cheese with blackening seasoning) comprise the norm. Versatility and flexible flavor profiles are the goal. “You can put Raspberry Chipotle on ribs, add a couple tablespoons to your brownie mix, or shake it on popcorn,” McLean says. “Black and Blue is amazing on steak, but mix it into a box of mac and cheese, and the whole thing’s upleveled. You could serve it to guests at dinner, and nobody would know it came from a box.”

Hence the “light bulb” moments when home cooks “taste the difference.” Even professional chefs, who now make up close to half of Spiceology’s rapidly growing food-service business, favor the company’s blends alongside traditional single-ingredient spices.

Like her company’s unique products, McLean’s route to Spiceology doesn’t follow the familiar path. A microbiologist by training, she spent almost two decades successfully working in biotech — a career choice for which she largely credits her time as an undergraduate at Eastern.

Even well before college, however, McLean knew science would be her thing. She remembers it was a middle school project working with fruit flies that “got me really fascinated with the concept of genetics.” After high school, she says, friends and family figured she’d head up the street to EWU, precisely the kind of place that could provide her with the undergraduate research experiences she was looking for.

But McLean instead decided on a different direction, traversing the Cascades to attend Seattle’s Bellevue College. “I had an itch to have other experiences, like many young people do,” she says. “I played softball at Bellevue, a community college at the time. I was a lefty pitcher and had a great couple of years there.”

Still, she says, in spite of the many West Side higher-ed options, a return to Cheney was never far from her mind. EWU wasn’t just close to home, McLean says, it offered something unique.

“Eastern had one of the only biotechnology areas of study west of the Mississippi River,” she says. “And I knew it was a place where I would be able to do bench-science research as an undergrad, which is completely different from what you’d be able to do at a larger university like UW.”

In spite of the many Westside higher-ed options, a return to Cheney was never far from her mind. EWU wasn’t just close to home, McLean says, it offered something unique.

 

And so McLean became an Eag, where she found the intimacy of Eastern’s biotech program, and the readiness of even senior scientists to work directly with undergraduates, to be transformative. She laughs now as she recalls her ravenous appetite for acquiring knowledge: “I had an insatiable thirst for learning, and I still do. That’s a core part of my personality. Always learning.”

She adds that faculty members such as Don and Haideh Lightfoot were particularly instrumental in encouraging this youthful hunger for knowledge. “Haideh was in the microbiology program, and Don was part of the biotech program. I worked closely with both of them. The size of the programs at EWU helped — you can’t have a close relationship if there are 100 people in the class. I got to know Don and Haideh very well. They even invited me and other students to their house for dinner.”

Soon the Lightfoot’s were more than just influential instructors. They became research collaborators who were eager to include McLean in something bigger.

That “something bigger” was the Lightfoots’ idea for commercializing a new technology developed by a student in Don’s program, one that made possible more efficient forms of rapid microbiological analysis. Along with their EWU colleague Jim Fleming, an adjunct professor of biology who had worked for NASA and the Linus Pauling Institute, the group approached the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute for seed funding. They got a green light, and soon their proposed start-up, GenPrime, was open for business. McLean, still an EWU undergrad, was one of their first hires.

“Our first products were in food science,” says McLean. “These were methods for rapidly enumerating, or counting, bacteria. Our niche was applications outside of heavily regulated industries like medicine; those turned out to be in the fermentation industry, especially cheesemaking and brewing. What a fun job as a college student to be eating cheese, drinking beer and doing science!”

After graduation, McLean began working for GenPrime full time. She says it was a great gig, one that allowed her to pick up a range of valuable skills. It wasn’t long before history intervened and her skill set, by necessity, grew even larger.

“September 11th happened,” McLean says. “And right after that came the anthrax attacks.”

Suddenly, government agencies urgently needed technology to quickly detect biological threats. Turns out GenPrime’s food-science applications could be adapted to do just that. “With some minor adjustments to the underlying technology,” says McLean. “we became one of a handful of devices in the world that could be used as a point-of-detection device for police, fire and hazmat agencies.”

Thus the company pivoted into government and military sales. McLean, ever the insatiable learner, soon found herself absorbing the intricacies of procurement, product development and supply chains. “It was a terrible event, but great timing for us,” she says.

McLean followed up her success at GenPrime with five years of navigating FDA clearances for Abbott Labs and Labcorp. Her career trajectory seemed set. “I was at a place where I really knew what the next five years of my life would look like,” she says. “That wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t super exciting. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to learn anything new by doing that.”

That’s when she encountered a fledgling spice company called Spiceology. Founded by local chef Pete Taylor and food blogger Heather Scholten, the two started offering blends in area farmers’ markets just over 10 years ago. Their mission? Disrupting “a stale spice and seasoning market” while helping cooks “bring an extra dose of magic to their cooking.” Taylor was the tastemaker. His first blend, Smoky Honey Habanero, put Spiceology on the map, the company says, “with its smoky-sweet heat that brightens every dish.” (It’s still Spiceology’s biggest seller). Scholten, one of the nation’s most followed food bloggers, brought social media expertise and storytelling skills.

McLean, who over the years had made a point of staying connected to Spokane’s entrepreneurial scene, says she had first seen Taylor and Scholten doing local “pitch competitions.” She was intrigued. “They were getting really good traction, but struggling to scale,” McLean says. “All the operational procedures and efficiency gains they needed were things I thought I could help with.”

Before long McLean was all in. She officially joined the company in 2020 as its vice president of channels and distribution. When her boss retired two years later, she succeeded him as CEO. It’s since been a bit of a wild ride, she says, one supercharged by culinary media, with Spiceology products appearing regularly on shows like Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef. “Growing from $1 million to $2 million is hard. Going from $2 million to $5 million is hard. Growing from $5 million to $10 million – oh my gosh — every level presents challenges,” she says.

During a conversation held over the hum of the canning line in Spiceology’s 45,000 square-foot facility, McLean, dressed for the occasion in an Eagle-red blazer, expands on the scope of that growth. Back when she came on board, she says, there were just over 30 employees. Today there are 84. When Spiceology moved to their current location in the months just after the pandemic, the cavernous space seemed like it might never be filled. Now, 25-foot-high rows of product and packaging stretch from end-to-end, bottom to top. Other areas hold 18-wheeler friendly skids of ready-to-ship spices and blends bound for retail outlets like Costco, e-commerce customers ($10 million in sales through this channel alone), and, of course, larger restaurant operators and their distributors.

McLean brought characteristic precision to managing all this, introducing Six Sigma processes that transformed operations. The Six Sigma approach, pioneered by Motorola in the 1980s, is a set of tools and techniques for minimizing manufacturing “defects” by reducing processing variabilities — think of it as a high-tech analog to Henry Ford’s assembly lines. At Spiceology, Six Sigma translates into helping employees do their jobs with accuracy and efficiency. McLean credits Bryce Burchak, now vice president of operations, and fellow Eastern graduate Ned Woodward ’10, the company’s director of logistics and fulfillment, with making it happen. Woodward, in particular, has been “a pretty big reason why the company is so effectively growing,” she says.

For his part, Woodward says, it’s McLean’s leadership, and the managers and creative talent she’s assembled, that makes it all come together. “Takes a village,” he says.

What’s next for McLean and Spiceology? With characteristic passion, McLean says job one is keeping the company at the forefront of culinary trends. Her team of working culinary pros, led by Tony Reed, is continually engaging with consumers, chefs and the wider restaurant community to identify emerging flavor preferences.

“We’re not just asking questions about trends, we’re helping to decide what those trends will be,” she says, adding that their latest data on trends points to global flavors that tap into foodies yearning for cross-cultural comfort foods — think Korean barbecue chicken instead of buffalo chicken.

Through it all, McLean leans on her background in science for both grounding and inspiration. It’s a background that also leads her back to her roots in Cheney and at Eastern, where she is intent on helping today’s students have some of opportunities she did. She serves, for example, as chair of the College of STEM’s Advisory board, and will become a member of the EWU Foundation Board next year. She has also connected with other Eagle-run companies in Eastern’s Alumni Business Directory (ewu.edu/alumni/directory).

“I love this business and am excited by it, which I think comes through in our products,” McLean says. “I’m passionate about what I’m doing. Just like I was back there at Eastern.”

—  Story by Charles E. Reineke