Nurturing Talent: Created to honor Ronald E. McNair, the heroic astronaut and physicist who perished in the 1986 Challenger disaster, for the past 30 years EWU’s federally funded TRIO/McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program has helped dozens of talented first-generation, low-income and otherwise underrepresented undergraduates prepare for graduate programs that lead to careers as professors and professional researchers. This image, made in the early 2000s, shows McNair Scholar Yolanda Valencia ’02 during a student research presentation. Valencia, now a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, completed her doctorate at the University of Washington.

Eastern Washington University is the region’s polytechnic. We are the region’s oldest university. And we remain, proudly, a place of possibilities. We’ve become all of these things because every day we ask one essential question: What will help our students succeed?

This past year has tested us: from Executive Orders that threaten our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, to uncertainty in financial aid, grant support and the state funding that helps us keep tuition the lowest in Washington.

Through it all, we have remained clear and united in our focus: the students who choose Eastern as their place to learn, grow and build a future.

Each spring, I’m honored to deliver my favorite speech of the year: my commencement address (at Reese Court!). I always send our graduates off with one final assignment — stay rooted in who you are. Don’t chase someone else’s version of success. Define it for yourself, and build a life that reflects your values, your purpose, your dreams.

That’s an assignment I take to heart in my own work. I define success by how I lift up those around me. My purpose is ensuring higher education is accessible to all — not just legacy students or those with perfect GPAs or deep-pocketed families. I want Eastern to serve the dreamers and doers, the first-generation and the underserved, the artists and the scientists, and yes, the proud third and fourth-generation Eagles. That’s why I hold our faculty and staff — and myself — accountable for closing equity gaps, maintaining a student-ready campus, and preserving both affordability and academic excellence.

And our people rise to that challenge every day. Faculty are mentoring students through applied research that is already making a difference in our region. We’re graduating desperately needed new nurses. We’re boosting student success in critical computer science and math courses through proactive, tailored support. And we’re actively taking inventory of our applied learning efforts so that students have meaningful, hands-on experiences that prepare them for what’s next.

Our impact isn’t just reflected in today’s students — it lives on in our alumni. Every day, Eagles are out there improving communities, shaping policy, standing for what’s right and living out the dreams they began building here at Eastern. Alumni like Greg Deckard, Darby McLean, state Sen. Matt Boehnke and so many others that you’ll meet in this magazine who each remind us of what is possible when we stay focused on our mission.

I’m incredibly proud of the Eastern family — our students, faculty, staff and alumni. Together, we are transforming lives and shaping the future of our region. And we’re just getting started.

Shari McMahan, PhD

EWU President

EWU earns national recognition for its support of veterans.

Showalter Hall’s Room 122, home to the EWU Veterans Resource Center, is more than just an office. As Eastern’s home for student veterans, it’s a welcoming bridge between the military life and college, a place to come together to reestablish the camaraderie and common purpose that distinguishes those who serve in our nation’s armed services.

Now, the nation is taking notice. EWU has been named one of the Military Support Colleges of Distinction for 2025, an honor recognizing institutions that go above and beyond to support military-connected students. EWU is one of only three universities in Washington state to receive this recognition.

In their citation of Eastern and the other designees, the Colleges of Distinction organization said the recognition is meant to salute institutions working to overcome “the unique challenges military students face on college campuses” nationwide. “These institutions are proud to support and cultivate the skills that military students bring to the classroom, all while helping them achieve their personal and professional goals.”

At the heart of the center’s success are its experienced staff, who collectively have over 25 years of expertise in guiding students through the complexities of VA education benefits and Department of Defense tuition assistance.

The support goes beyond paperwork. EWU offers seven annual scholarships specifically for veterans and service members, along with several state-supported tuition waivers and a policy of granting in-state tuition for military-connected students who are not state residents. Each of these areas of support aims to ensure that financial barriers don’t stand in the way of veterans’ paths to graduation.

“The transition from military to college life can be challenging, but EWU makes it easier,” says David Millet, a former commander of EWU’s Army ROTC program who, since 2012, has served as the center’s director. “The VRC isn’t just a place to get help with benefits — it’s a community where we connect, study and support each other.”

Double-Decker busses will add a second floor to the Cheney commute.

They’re sleek, futuristic and ready to bring the magic back to the commute from Spokane to Cheney.

“They” are seven shiny new Enviro500 double-decker busses, one of which made an introductory appearance in front of Eastern’s PUB in late April.

When the dedicated campus bus route debuted 55 years ago, grateful students soon dubbed the service “the Magic Bus.” Over the decades its charms have not waned. These days, in fact, both the main routes serving EWU— the 66 and 6 — are often standing-room-only during peak hours.

Hence the need for Enviro500s, which will join the fleet serving the university at the start of the next academic year.

According to the Spokane Transit Authority’s website, the Enviro500 “is the world’s best-selling three-axle double-decker bus,” dozens of which are already on the road “in major cities such as New York, Hong Kong and Dublin.” Here in our humble Cheney home, the busses’ biggest attraction may have nothing to do with their superior top-floor views: Each will seat 82 passengers, a significant boost over the capacity of even the articulated 60-foot buses that now ply the route. 

“One of the big motivators for the double-decker is the second story is full of seating,” says Dainon Setzer, business development manager at STA. “Standing from Spokane to Cheney or back makes for a long bus ride.”

And those riders? Is he confident they’ll see the magic? “Oh yeah,” Setzer says, gesturing toward a group waiting to tour the busses’ interior. “We’ve got people coming out when the bus isn’t even moving!”

Native grass plantings check an important box in EWU’s Palouse Prairie restoration.

After overcoming obstinate weeds and uncooperative weather, members of Eastern Washington University’s prairie restoration team earlier this year announced another milestone in the project’s development — the seeding of native grasses across the whole of its 120-acre restoration site.

It’s an important step, Prairie Restoration Project leaders say, in advancing the university’s plan to devote a third of its campus land to reestablishing a patch of natural Palouse Prairie — an ancient ecosystem largely lost to agricultural development. When completed, the restoration will become a “living laboratory” for interdisciplinary collaborations and research.

“We’ve learned a lot through this seeding process,” says project head Erik Budsberg, director of sustainability at EWU. “Living systems are very dynamic, and there are always going to be complications that come in, challenges that you weren’t expecting.”

Among those challenges was the persistence of invasive, broadleaf weeds that, in earlier testing, had proven lethal to native grasses. Taming the floral interlopers involved repeated mowing, tilling and, eventually, herbicide applications to completely clear the ground. Eventually, it worked. “I think we got the site looking about as pristine as you possibly can,” Budsberg says.

“We’ve learned a lot through this seeding process,” says project head Erik Budsberg, director of sustainability at EWU. “Living systems are very dynamic, and there are always going to be complications that come in, challenges that you weren’t expecting.”

Sadly, Mother Nature then stepped up to offer a new complication: a warm, wet, early winter. Counterintuitively, prairie grass seeds require sustained cold to sprout in spring. “What they need is called ‘cold moisture stratification,’ ” says Erin Endres, an EWU nursery services specialist whose work is crucial to helping the prairie bloom again. “That means they have to be planted in the cold to break their dormancy and germinate.”

Getting the timing right fell to Chris Fitzner, a local farmer with an interest in sustainable agriculture.

“Chris just had to sit and wait for the right conditions,” says Budsberg. “We needed it to get cold, and then to stay cold, so that the seeds wouldn’t germinate too early.” There were also issues with the soil not freezing sufficiently for the drill seeder — specialized planting machines developed for no-till farming — to operate effectively.

“So he had to wait until we got a good ground freeze,” Budsberg continues. “When it finally came, Chris went out at ten o’clock at night and seeded the site until three in the morning.”

That sort of dedication bodes well for the project’s future; a future that is increasingly coming into focus. “With getting these grasses in the ground, I think we’re truly at a turning point,” Budsberg says.

Like many colleges and universities, Eastern is always looking for ways to better serve its students, support its faculty, and maximize the value it provides to the wider community.

One recent initiative, a potentially transformative, two-year “strategic resource allocation” review, reached a critical phase earlier this fall.

In September, senior administrators issued their initial response to recommendations made by a Strategic Resource Allocation Task Force comprised of EWU faculty and staff members.

Those recommendations, divided into separate reports for “university services” and “academic programs,” contained the task forces’ findings on whether particular university programs and services should be expanded and invested in, maintained as currently operated, streamlined, transformed, or disinvested.

Moving forward on the recommendations will be a multi-year process, Shari McMahan, EWU’s president, has stressed, adding that she does not expect that any of the reallocations will involve faculty or staff layoffs. But some form of restructuring, she wrote in a letter to the university community, is inevitable.

On the services side, McMahan said, her leadership team “has prioritized finding ways to maximize productivity, reduce redundancies, and build a better customer service and learning environment for the campus community and visitors.”

Decisions on investment, transformation, or disinvestment of academic programs, meanwhile, will be finalized in early 2025, said Jonathan Anderson, EWU’s provost, in an earlier campus communication.

At this stage, he said, 27 programs have chosen to make program modifications, whether through curricular reorganization and/or resource reduction. Plans from those programs were completed by Nov. 1.

Additionally, Anderson wrote, “55 programs mutually agreed to consolidate or eliminate their offerings. There are currently 20 programs working through the program review and discontinuance process as outlined in academic policy. We expect the Board of Trustees to take final action on discontinuance recommendations in February 2025.”

Strategic allocation decisions are never easy, and administrators have said difficult choices will need to be made throughout the university.

But the goal, they add, is straightforward: “To ensure that our academic programs are best aligned to meet regional workforce needs, and our university services aligned in such a manner as to ensure the student experience is meaningful and campus resources are efficient and effective.”

Increasing participation among underrepresented university faculty members, particularly in STEM fields, is critical to building and maintaining our nation’s knowledge and science economies, experts say. Now, thanks to a three-year, $975,000 initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, EWU will be better equipped to make its own STEM faculty more representative.

Led by principal investigator Edwin Elias, an associate professor of Chicana/o/x studies at EWU, the new program is called Utilizing Practices to Leverage Institutional & Intersectional Formative Transformation, or UPLIIFT. It was funded through the NSF’s ADVANCE program, which, since 2001, has invested over $270 million to support projects at more than 100 university and STEM-related not-for-profit organizations. Eastern last received support from the ADVANCE program in 2010.

“[The grant] allows me to conduct research and to provide tangible solutions for retaining and recruiting historically excluded faculty,” Elias says, emphasizing that at Eastern, as elsewhere, barriers to boosting inclusivity remain substantial.

According to an UPLIIFT project overview released by Elias and his team of co-investigators, the new work at Eastern will utilize “an intersectional approach to examine and mitigate the processes that create inequities.”

This approach, says Elias, will help him and his team create a “more complete picture of the specific challenges underrepresented groups face, allowing us to enact institutional practices, structures, relationships and campus climate into an equitable and meritocratic workplace.”

Work for the UPLIIFT project began this fall. It is funded through the summer of 2027.

It’s not at all surprising that university research libraries, according to the nonprofit Council on Library and Information Resources, are taking on a range of new roles in the digital age, becoming “more deeply engaged in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.”

Eastern’s JFK Library & Learning Commons is no exception, having evolved in recent years to accommodate the latest advances in collection development, information access and user services.

This summer saw more progress as the library completed a much-anticipated series of services upgrades, including an expansion of digital resources, improved organization, greater access to its collections and an increase in quiet study and collaborative spaces.

Many of the changes, library officials say, came in response to feedback from the campus community, including faculty members who requested additional databases to support student-faculty research and experiential-learning projects.

Other improvements included a consolidation of books on the upper level of the library’s campus building, which increased access to — and convenience in — browsing among the stacks. Books that hadn’t been borrowed in 20 or more years were shipped out, creating additional space for current and emerging curriculum needs. Maps were redesigned to help students more easily discover resources, services and study areas.

“We’ve already had positive feedback from patrons over the summer and intercession. We encourage everyone to check out the improvements, both physical and new online resources,” says Ielleen Miller, an associate professor at EWU who serves as library faculty chair and director of the School of Libraries.

Many of the projects were years in the works, says Miller, adding that “they were only made possible with the dedication of all of the library staff, faculty and our fantastic student workers.”

In September, Drew Shirk, director of the Washington State Department of Revenue, was named by Gov. Jay Inslee to the university’s Board of Trustees. He joins new members Carol Evans ’91 and Alexis Alexander ’08, ’14, who were also named to the eight-member board in 2024.

As Eastern’s governing body, the Board of Trustees establishes and reviews university policies and oversees the general management of EWU. It also sets the university’s strategic direction, approves budgets and ensures its fiscal integrity.

Shirk comes to the board with a long history of public service. In his current role as director of the Department of Revenue, he leads an agency of 1,500 employees. The Wenatchee native earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington, and attended the Master of Public Administration Program at EWU. Shirk received the Governor’s Leadership in Management Award in July 2013.

Carol Evans was named to the board earlier in 2024. She was the first woman to serve as tribal chair for the Spokane Tribe of Indians, breaking barriers and paving the way for future generations of Indigenous women leaders.

In addition to her bachelor’s degree from EWU, Evans was awarded an honorary doctorate from Eastern last June in recognition of her outstanding contributions to her tribe and community. “We must continue to educate ourselves throughout life,” says Evans “I am honored to be appointed to the EWU Board of Trustees, and hope to help make college education a success for all students.”

Alexis Alexander, also appointed earlier in 2024, holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern, where he was a standout student athlete. He currently serves as director of information-technology infrastructure with Spokane’s Avista Corporation. “I am humbled by the opportunity to serve the university, particularly among such a talented leadership team,” says Alexander.

Cola Boyer, an Eastern graduate who has excelled in training next-generation tribal leaders, was recently named the university’s new director of tribal relations.

Boyer ’20 says she’s “incredibly excited” to return to EWU where, she adds, “I’m going to be in a place where I can make a difference with tribal relations and tribal communities.”  

EWU President Shari McMahan said Boyer, an enrolled member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation, brings a wealth of knowledge, cultural advocacy and relationship-building experience to the role. “We’re confident in her abilities to lead with passion and dedication in fulfilling the mission of EWU,” McMahan said.

Prior to accepting her position at Eastern, Boyer established herself as a force in leadership training and development via her role as administrator of the Kalispel Leadership Academy, a tribal education program established by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians. Her success with the academy was recently recognized by the Spokane Journal of Business, which last year selected Boyer as a “rising star.”

As an alumna, Boyer has stayed active at EWU by volunteering, most notably as a member of the EWU Alumni Association Board of Directors. What stands out about her service, says Kelsey Hatch-Brecek, director of alumni relations, is her collaborative leadership style.

“Cola makes everybody just come together. She is all about unity and how we can use even our differences to come together,” Hatch-Brecek says. “I’m really excited for the doors she will open here.”

For her part, Boyer says her leadership role at Eastern will allow her to grow a stronger campus presence for Native people, helping both students and tribal community members overcome obstacles, and build upon successes, as they go forward.

“I look forward to spending some more time with all the faculty and staff and really building that strong collaboration with everybody,” she says.