Eagle students join the effort to measure local PFAS contaminations.

With grant support from the Washington Department of Ecology, an EWU professor and his team of student researchers are leading a project to measure the spread of potentially harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — the “forever chemicals” more commonly known as PFAS — to sources of drinking water on the West Plains.

The $450,000 grant covers the cost of testing private and public wells, and other water sources, for PFAS concentrations, says Chad Pritchard, the EWU professor of geosciences who serves as the project’s principal investigator. The grant has also helped the team acquire state-of-the art groundwater modeling software needed to create 3-D water flow maps, to fund student travel and to cover other expenses.

“If you go to most universities, these kinds of research projects would be given to master’s or PhD students,” says Pritchard. “But here, we push our students to the next level as undergraduates. And that’s why they get hired and have great futures.”

Polyfluoroalkyl substances were developed in the 1940s to repel oil and water while resisting heat, qualities that made them particularly valuable in firefighting. This was especially true at airports, where PFAS-containing foams were developed to extinguish flames and contain flammable vapors after crashes.

Unfortunately, in recent years the chemicals have been linked to harmful effects on humans and animals. And when media reports in 2017 revealed that PFAS foams had been used for decades at Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport, there was concern, soon borne out by testing, that forever chemicals might have compromised nearby water sources.

The work by Pritchard and his students is helping to discover the extent of that contamination, while providing a path to safe drinking water — and potential clean-up support — for residents of impacted properties.

Mapping contamination and conducting testing is ongoing. But so far the EWU team have collected samples from close to 150 private wells — along with water from local lakes, rivers and streams — and submitted them for evaluation. Most sites have tested within state limits. Some properties, however, especially those located closer to known sources of contamination, have not. For those households, the EWU team has been following up to help residents gain access to resources for water deliveries and filtration systems.

That has “brought a lot of people peace,” Pritchard says.

Eastern’s new RCU status will open doors for grants, research collaborations.

For decades, innovations and discoveries from EWU faculty researchers have brought big benefits to our state and region. Now, for the first time, those contributions have earned Eastern’s inclusion in the Carnegie Foundation’s classification of research-intensive colleges and universities.

Since its introduction in 1973, the Carnegie Classification has become “foundational in a variety of research and policy uses nationwide,” according to a recent report by the American Council on Education.

But even as its prominence has risen, the report continued, so have concerns that the classification was failing to account for the important work done at regional institutions — particularly those, like EWU, that do not award doctoral degrees.

A classification line-up change aims to fix this. Instead of just including colleges and universities with “high” and “very high,” levels of research and PhDs awarded, this year a third category has been introduced: Research Colleges and Universities, or RCUs.

Eastern qualified for RCU status after its annual research and development activities exceeded the $2.5 million spending threshold required by Carnegie. University research administrators say the recognition is a big step forward.

“It’s so huge,” said David Bowman, dean of Eastern’s College of STEM. “In one sense, it’s an acknowledgement of what we already do — student-centered research that is based on the teacher-scholar model. But more importantly, it opens up opportunities for us to obtain new resources, new grant possibilities, and new collaborations and research opportunities for our students.”

Eastern was notified of its RCU designation earlier this year. The official announcement came in April.

“We’re just so pleased,” Bowman added. “Eastern is an institution that has long prized quality teaching. And in our STEM fields especially, we teach through doing research with our students: hands-on, engaged research.

“That’s what the RCU classification means to us, an acknowledgement and endorsement of that work. It’s fantastic.”

One of Eastern’s most prominent faculty members, Stuart “Stu” Steiner, in June was awarded the Trustees’ Medal, the university’s most prestigious  faculty accolade.

Steiner ’01, an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is the founder and director of EWU’s Center for Network Computing and Cybersecurity. The center is home to a nationally prominent program that has placed Eastern students at the forefront of international efforts to make digital technologies less vulnerable to attacks.

The Trustees’ Medal is the university’s highest form of recognition for faculty achievement. Since 1978, it has honored teaching excellence, significant contributions to scholarship and research, and accomplishments in the development of academic programs and curricula. The award consists of a silver medallion and a $1,500 cash prize from the EWU Foundation.

Steiner, who has served on the Eastern faculty for more than 20 years, has a reputation for operating an inclusive program that opens doors for all students. This commitment to the university and his “unwavering support” for students was cited in the multiple endorsements that supported his Trustees’ Medal nomination.

In a letter signed by more than 60 Eagle undergraduates, for example, Steiner was credited for significantly advancing their academic and personal development.

“His larger-than-life presence can be felt in every corner of the campus, and we have always known that we can turn to him with any concern, however big or small,” the letter said.

On a professional level, his students’ experiences include helping small Washington cities, among them Liberty Lake and Kittitas, fend off cyberattacks. An Eagle team coached by Steiner also earned a national title for EWU at the 2023 NCAE Cyber Games in Florida.

His contributions to the university aren’t limited to academic work. In addition to serving on the EWU Foundation board, Steiner and his wife, Shirlee, have contributed significant scholarship support for students who are underrepresented in the cybersecurity field. Steiner also works to engage next-generation students by organizing cyber camps, regional competitions and mentoring activities.

Beyond the EWU campus, his work has earned the attention of the federal National Security Agency, which tapped him to mentor faculty members at other universities as they work to establish their own cybersecurity programs,

“In all my time working in higher education, I can think of few people with both the passion, the expertise and, most critically, the commitment to the institution that Stu Steiner embodies,” said David Bowman, dean of Eastern’s College of STEM. “I can think of no person more deserving of EWU’s highest honor.”

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.

The itpa protein plays a crucial role in several metabolic processes that are essential to human life. Severe defects in ITPA are uncommon, but the results can be devastating.

Infants born with a rare ITPA abnormality, for example, face the risk of a lethal neurological condition known as Developmental and Epileptic Encephalopathy 35. Few diagnosed with the disorder live past their third birthday. Even patients with less severe ITPA deficiencies can experience dangerous side-effects to medications prescribed for other conditions — including life-threatening conditions.

Nick Burgis, professor and chair of chemistry, biochemistry and physics at EWU, is perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the ITPA protein and the genetic processes it regulates. Together with his colleague Yao Houndonougbo, also a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Eastern, Burgis is using that knowledge to pursue development of first-generation molecular-level treatments for ITPA-related disorders.

Burgis’ and Houndonougbo’s efforts recently received an important boost from the National Institutes of Health, which last month announced a three-year, $350,000 “research enhancement” award that will extend the agency’s previous support for the two scientists and their students.

The focus of the work supported by the grant, says Burgis, is to identify a molecule that can restore the ITPA’s proper functionality. To do this, he, Houndonougbo, and their students will deploy a battery of digital and biochemical tools to look for promising molecules among a virtual and physical library of 300,000 molecules housed at UCLA.

As part of this effort, Burgis — along with two, yet-to-be-named Eastern undergraduate researchers — will travel to Southern California to conduct the molecular hunt with Robert Damoiseaux, the professor of molecular and medical pharmacology who directs UCLA’s Molecular Screening Shared Resources Laboratory.

The hoped-for outcome, Burgis says, is a molecular-drug therapy that would benefit all at-risk populations: both infants with encephalopathy as well as older populations with less severe forms of the ITPA deficiency.

The project is funded by the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

On July 30, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed Executive Order 7681 to create the Turnbull Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, a 23,000-acre, federally protected home for migratory birds and other wildlife in the Channeled Scablands near Cheney. Thirty-seven years later, after energetic lobbying by members of Eastern’s biology faculty, what is today known as the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge also became a home for Eastern faculty and student researchers, as federal officials and the Washington State Legislature agreed to establish EWU’s Turnbull Laboratory for Ecological Studies. Now, after five decades of service, that laboratory is still fulfilling the mission imagined by its founders, serving as a research destination to “further our understanding of the biological processes shaping populations, ecological communities and ecosystems of the Inland Northwest.” Photo: Unidentified students and their instructor at Turnbull, circa 1980. Photo Courtesy of Steve Bingo, JFK Library.

An EWU biologist explores the foundations of bone regeneration.

Scientists have long known that the bones in our bodies are constantly repairing and rebuilding themselves, this thanks to an extraordinary regenerative process that is essential to maintaining mobility, organ protection and other critical skeletal functions.    

The molecular-level mechanism behind our bones’ remarkable “remodeling” ability, however, is less well understood. Learning more, says Jason Ashley, an associate professor of biology at EWU, could one day lay the groundwork for therapies to assist the more than 50 million Americans who suffer from a host of pathologies related to bone degeneration — most notably osteoporosis.

   Ashley’s efforts recently received a big boost in the form of a four-year, $480,000 federal grant from the National Institutes of Health. The funding will allow him and his student research team to continue their exploration of how certain “signaling” proteins regulate the initial stages of the remodeling process. More broadly, it will also provide funds intended to help EWU develop “expanded research capacity” in both molecular biology and other disciplines.

Ashley says the scale of the federal grant represents a potential game changer, paving the way for new and exciting avenues of discovery. “To put it simply,” he says, “research is expensive. You can only do the experiments that your budget allows. When you get a budget the size of this award, it just really opens up possibilities that you couldn’t even consider before.”

Support for pricey material costs are just one benefit, Ashley adds. “My hope is that through this funding, grad students working on this project are going to be under less pressure to supplement their income with outside employment. That will allow them to become more focused on our research.”

The grant will also expand outreach to potential undergraduate researchers: “So we accomplish research goals, but we are continuously expanding the education piece as well.”

Ashley says the scale of the federal grant represents a potential game changer, paving the way for new and exciting avenues of discovery.

Instruction and research aren’t always considered complementary, Ashley continues. But, as a scientist who has long placed a special emphasis on teaching, he’s bullish on both at Eastern.

At EWU, he says, faculty success is not contingent on bringing in grants like his own. “You are not judged solely on your ability to bring in grant funding. You’re judged on your ability to teach. So, if you’re a good teacher and you want to do research, this is the place you should be.”

The project, Fringe Regulation of Notch Signaling in Osteoclasts, was awarded through the NIH’s Support for Research Excellence Program (R16), with funds provided by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

A new educational partnership will take experiential education to new heights.

Since it was founded during the Second World War, Fairchild Air Force Base, located just up the road from EWU’s Cheney campus, has been a critical part of our nation’s air defense system. Now it is poised to be a vital partner in education.

Earlier this spring representatives from Fairchild gathered with EWU faculty and staff to celebrate the finalizing of a formal “Educational Partnership Agreement,” one that officials say will provide important experiential learning opportunities for EWU science, technology, mathematics and engineering students.  “This will be a mutually beneficial partnership, one with far-reaching impacts,” said EWU President Shari McMahan during the ceremony.

The signing event was especially gratifying for Stu Steiner, the EWU assistant professor of computer sciences who played a key role in making the agreement a reality.

The relationship will pave the way for further interactions with Department of Defense installations such as Fairchild Air Force Base.

Steiner leads the university’s Center for Network Computing and Cybersecurity. He says the partnership idea originated after EWU cybersecurity students began working with the National Security Agency as part of its National Security Innovation Network. That relationship, he added, paved the way for further interactions with Department of Defense installations such as Fairchild Air Force Base.

Initial discussions with Fairchild were, not surprisingly, centered around cybersecurity. However, after a few meetings, Steiner says, Air Force officials suggested expanding the agreement to include C-STEM students.

“We’re focused on the experiential learning,” says Steiner. “So if Fairchild needs a new fuel pump created, we’re going to invite mechanical engineering students to work on it. If they need design work, we’ll let the design students work on that. There are plenty of projects out there.”

After the ceremony, Col. Chesley Dycus, commander of the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild, offered his own insights.

“There are a lot of problems that the Department of Defense and, more specifically the Air Force and team at Fairchild, need help with,” Dycus said. “This helps us get academic — and a lot of other perspectives — involved to help us with those problems. And, hopefully in doing so, maybe help us recruit some of those students into the Air Force.”

Dillon Dalton, a recent computer science graduate, joins the space race.

For recent Eastern graduate Dillon Dalton, not even the sky’s the limit. Dalton, a 23-year-old computer science alumnus, is currently part of a NASA team working on the Mars Sample Return project. The goal? To bring rock and atmospheric samples from the Red Planet back to Earth.

Dalton’s team, an elite group of seven, works specifically on the cameras that will guide a Sample-Retrieval Lander as it makes its way through Mars’ notoriously thin atmosphere. “The cameras are pretty instrumental in navigating the spacecraft,” Dalton says. “They also generate the data which give you more information on different geographical features of Mars, like its topography and map products.”

The cameras are just one part of a complex system designed to help guide the lander during its six-month collection sojourn. When completed, a capsule containing the surface stuff will be launched toward an Earth Return Orbiter circling the planet. The orbiter will then snag the samples and prepare them for their journey home. The mission will take an estimated five years. Launch is expected to happen as soon as 2028.

Dalton’s work takes place at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “We have something called the Mars Yard,” he says, “which is essentially just dirt and rocks that look like Mars, where they do testing for the different spacecraft.”

JPL is a world-renowned center of robotics, the facility where former NASA space greats such as Voyager, Curiosity and Perseverance were built. “If it is in some way robotic, JPL has had a hand in that,” Dalton says. “There’s a lot of history here.”

One piece of JPL’s history, however, is a tradition based not at all on science. “We have lucky peanuts,” Dalton explains. “It’s a tradition at JPL to have peanuts on hand when there’s something crazy going on, like a landing or launch.” Lucky peanuts, he adds, have already been passed around among his colleagues — colloquially known as “Martians” — in preparation for their lander’s mission.

Uprooting his life and moving to California has been quite the experience for Dalton, who says he’s had a “fascination with space” since childhood: “To walk into some of the clean rooms —which is where they build the spacecraft — and to see the process of things getting assembled was an incredible experience.”

Dalton says he still can’t quite believe he’s now working among scientists he once watched in documentaries. Getting on board wasn’t easy: the application process lasted two months and involved nearly 10 interviews. Undaunted, Dalton made the grade and started work in October 2022.

He credits Eastern for helping to make it happen. “I don’t think being from a smaller school was a hindrance,” Dalton says. “I had the skills and experience they were looking for.”

A new summer event aims to sell kids on STEM.

Despite making tremendous professional progress over the past several decades, women are still distressingly under-represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. According to the National Science Board, last year they represented only 26 percent of the college-educated workforce in STEM occupations.

One key to improving these numbers, science educators say, is giving girls an early introduction to the allure and excitement of hands-on STEM activities.

Hence the creation of EWU’s new Girls+ STEM summer camp, a fast-paced, two-day romp that saw girls (and boys) in grades 3-5 growing colonies of microbes, calculating Barbie doll bungee jumps, and creating wetlands in a bottle — all activities designed to get campers, especially the girls, psyched about science.

Organizer Melissa Graham, an EWU senior lecturer and CSTEM faculty fellow for diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, said the camp was made possible by a $2,000 Diversity Initiative Grant from the EWU Board of Trustees. Seven Eastern STEM faculty members — all with advanced degrees— volunteered their time.

Students paid just $20 each to join the instructors at Eastern’s Interdisciplinary Science Center during the August camp. Although it was designed with girls in mind, the camp was open to all students, regardless of gender.

“I think that it was a great experience. If I could go again next year I would go, but I can’t because I’ll be a sixth-grader,” says Grace Lynch, 10, a student at Betz Elementary School.

Lynch says she particularly enjoyed a session on the chemistry of making lip balm: “It was fun because we had to get the ingredients at just the right number.”

Other exercises involved using a compass to solve a scavenger hunt, creating chemical reactions to tie-dye shirts and etch jewelry, building a circuit board to power a light, and swabbing various surfaces to collect and identify interesting-looking microbes.

Graham started recruiting faculty members to help with Girls+STEM back in February. Planning sessions began in March.

The experience for participating kids was a great “first-foot-in-the-door to Eastern,” says Graham, who adds that she considers year one a resounding success. “What I wanted them to take away is that they can be scientists, and that there are lots of different ways to do it,” she says.