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.

Where will Eastern magazine be spotted next? Share a photo of you, our latest issue and the details of where your travels have taken you. Send to easternmagazine@ewu.edu.

Argentina

Dave Heyamoto, Jerrie Little Heyamoto ’88, Janice Hijiya Price ’70 and Jim Price (pictured from left) recently trekked to the Argentinian rainforest to experience Iguazu Falls, the world’s largest waterfall system. “The falls were at low flow if you can believe it,” Dave Heyamoto says.

Croatia

Under a picture-perfect summer sky, Terry ’95 and Crissy Robinson ’95, enjoyed a commanding view of the Medieval walls surrounding the historic city center of Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Indonesia

Jim ’99 and Kristin Williams ’99 recently visited the Gate of Heaven at the Amarta Penida restaurant on Nusa Penida, Bali. The Williams journeyed to the Indonesian archipelago to celebrate the 50th birthday of Kristin’s brother, Bob.

Malaysia

This fall Jennifer Hicks ’94 visited the famed City Mosque in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The majestic structure, also known as the “floating mosque,” is modeled on the Masjid an-Nabawi  in Medina.

New Zealand

During a three-week-long trip to New Zealand and Australia, Dwayne Deckard and Danice Deckard ’84, along with Matt Portch and Linda Portch ’80 (pictured from left) took in the spectacular scenery at Milford Sound, a UNESCO World Heritage site on New Zealand’s South Island.

Romania

Holly Grisamore ’91 and her husband, Charles, this summer celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary with a seven-day cruise on Europe’s fabled Danube River. Holly displayed her Eastern magazine as the ship navigated the “Iron Gates” gorge separating Romania and Serbia.

United States

Eagle pride took center stage as Ryan ’86 and Marcie Rader ’87 (left) along with Gary ’86 and Peggy Smith ’86, earlier this year traveled to Fabulous Las Vegas to experience a concert at the Sphere, that city’s impressively immersive concert venue. 

Former Eastern roommates Joyce Callison ’63, (left) Linda Murphey ’63 (standing), and Susan Stannard ’63, ’79 this summer got a prime view of the vastness of Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam, a marvel of Depression-era engineering that remains the largest hydropower production facility in the United States.

]]> https://www.ewu.edu/magazine/news/the-future-is-polytechnic/ Fri, 10 Jan 2025 19:03:36 +0000 https://www.ewu.edu/magazine/?post_type=stories&p=3110   Just after the beginning of the 2023 academic year, Eastern’s Board of Trustees met to discuss, among other pressing issues, how the university could better share its strengths with the wider world: “How might we more authentically communicate who we are,” they asked, “while differentiating ourselves in our region’s competitive higher education landscape?” Eastern’s...]]>

Just after the beginning of the 2023 academic year, Eastern’s Board of Trustees met to discuss, among other pressing issues, how the university could better share its strengths with the wider world: “How might we more authentically communicate who we are,” they asked, “while differentiating ourselves in our region’s competitive higher education landscape?”

Eastern’s leadership responded by working with a Baltimore-based consulting group, idfive, and faculty representatives from EWU’s four colleges to engage the entire campus community in the quest for answers.

After months of research and market analysis, strategic-planning and surveys of stakeholders, a plan that emphasizes Eastern’s long history of hands-on, experiential learning took shape. And earlier this year, with the BOT’s approval, that plan became official: Eastern, in both mission and messaging, would now publicly define itself as “the region’s polytechnic” — “polytechnic” being broadly defined as an emphasis on applied learning — as it works to provide its students with experience-based pathways for success.

“There has been a lot of chatter, and even a few news stories already, about this next evolution for Eastern — our regional polytechnic brand,” Shari McMahan, Eastern’s president, said with a laugh during her annual convocation address in September. “As I continue to say, this is an exciting opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves and to capitalize on the work we are already doing… Our goal is to make applied learning a hallmark of every EWU degree.”

“To be clear,” she continued, “we are still a regional comprehensive public university grounded in a liberal arts education.”

Currently, some 75 percent of EWU students graduate with experience in their intended career fields. Eastern will now be working even harder to provide professional experiences to all of its students. “There has been a lot of listening that’s gone into this — a lot of back-and-forth and creativity,” McMahan said. “To me, it really defines the authentic Eastern Washington University.”

Across the nation, the use of clean, renewable energy sources is revolutionizing the way Americans power their lives and livelihoods. Already, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, alternatives to the carbon-based status quo are generating hundreds of billions in economic activity, with much more to come.

Now, thanks to a Washington Climate Commitment Act grant from the state’s Department of Commerce, EWU is poised to play a bigger part in pioneering more planet-healthy ways of fueling our future. Earlier this fall, EWU was awarded close to $2.2 million to support two projects that will advance both Washington’s and the university’s clean energy goals. Project leader Erik Budsberg, EWU’s director of sustainability, says the clean energy initiatives will also provide applied-learning opportunities for Eagle students who one day hope to solve tough climate challenges as working professionals.

“These learning opportunities will give students a chance to get hands-on experience as they build careers that will ultimately tie into the clean energy revolution and help them secure good jobs  — jobs in which they can help address the root causes and impact of climate change,” Budsberg says.

The bulk of the funding, $1.9 million, will support development of a carbon dioxide capture component for the university’s natural-gas powered steam heating system. EWU will partner with CarbonQuest, a local engineering and manufacturing firm, to implement this “demonstration carbon capture system,” which will reduce emissions while providing a research space for investigating new, emission-reduction technologies.

The hands-on study of emission capture, Budsberg says, will position Eastern to provide a road map for other institutions and businesses seeking to mitigate their own near-term, carbon-emission challenges — all while planning for deeper decarbonization in the future.

The state also awarded EWU a $275,000 planning and pre-development grant to explore installation of a 3.5-megawatt solar-energy system. Among the issues to be investigated, Budsberg says, are potential construction challenges, utility impacts and interconnection agreements.

EWU’s projects were among 46 grants funded as part of the Washington Climate Commitment Act. “We’re very thankful to the Department of Commerce and the state of Washington for seeing the potential for clean energy development in Eastern Washington and, specifically, at Eastern Washington University,” Budsberg says.

For most teams, a painful season like EWU’s 2023 soccer campaign would take years to bounce back from.

Matches were usually tight, play was always competitive, but poor results spoke for themselves: Just two wins, 14 losses and one draw. After a particularly frustrating, season-ending losing streak that concluded with a dismal 4-0 beatdown at Northern Colorado, there seemed to be only darkness at the end of the tunnel.

But the Eagle women were undaunted. And well before the 2024 season commenced in August, they were laying the groundwork — both mentally and physically — for the powerful comeback that propelled this years’ squad to conference-title contenders. “I saw it last year,” said junior defender Becca Gaido. “I knew the players on our team were capable of this, and I knew what we could do. We were just not getting the results we thought we deserved.”

“Our record didn’t match our ability” added Chloe Pattison, the team’s superstar striker. “A lot of the Big Sky felt we were a good team; we just couldn’t find our results.”

That all changed this fall. Picked in preseason polling to finish eighth, Eastern instead finished 4-1-3 in conference play, earning third place and their first conference tournament appearance since 2019. It was one of the most dramatic win-loss turnarounds in the nation.

Pattison, a junior from Lake Stevens, Washington, was a catalyst for the Eagle offense all season long, leading the conference in goals, shots on goal, and points. In November, she was named the Big Sky’s co-offensive Player of the Year and, along with the Eagle’s attacking midfielder  Kendall Moore, earned a place on the Big Sky’s All-Conference First Team.

Pattison and her teammates credit the confidence and work ethic of fourth-year head coach Missy Strasburg for fueling the turnaround. That assessment was shared by Strasburg’s coaching colleagues, who awarded her the Big Sky’s Coach of the Year honors, the third Eastern coach to be so named.

All told, Eastern earned four Player of the Week awards in 2024, and matched 2017 with a total of six players named to All-Conference teams. Eastern’s junior goalkeeper, Kamryn Willoughby, was one of these six standouts, leading a defense that kept five clean sheets.

Unfortunately, after earning a three seed in the conference tournament, the Eagles’ title hopes ended — after 20 minutes of overtime and a penalty shoot-out — against Portland State, 1-1 (7-6). “Having such an incredible season end in PKs is absolutely gut-wrenching,” said Strasburg after the match. “But our women put everything they had into that tournament quarterfinal, and we are deeply proud of their effort and commitment to each other.”