Ignite Northwest, a business accelerator located on our campus and an important partner of ours, recently won a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Ignite will also welcome its first class of ten companies to begin courses this fall that include mentoring, and other aspects of building a business.
In May, we celebrated the groundbreaking of a teaching health clinic (photos!) that will allow students in our health sciences programs to gain valuable experience working in a clinic and serving the public – all on our own beautiful campus.
Since the groundbreaking ceremony, work has continued on the site. Much of that work has consisted of clearing the site to get it ready. Currently, crews are excavating and placing concrete in the foundation footings and grade beams. The building permit should be secured by mid-July (the foundations are allowed under a separate foundation permit).
By the end of the summer, work on the site will be much more visible, but that doens’t mean nothing is happening. In fact, a lot of important work is taking place so crews can start building vertically. We have some photos of what the site currently looks like:
The Na-ha-shnee Health Science Institute is on campus this week, giving Native American high school students the chance to be introduced to higher education opportunities and possible future careers.
The Spokane STEMposium was on campus last week, featuring more than 200 area middle and high school students giving presentations on STEM-related projects.
This video, produced by Spokane Public Schools, features students from Ferris High School talking about why they want to enter STEM fields:
The programs on our health sciences campus reach across the state, so these students are in a good place as they work toward their career goals.
The Spokane STEMposium came to campus again this year, giving more than 200 local middle and high school students the chance to present STEM projects in a conference setting.
We enjoy hosting this event since our academic programs fall well within the STEM umbrella. STEM, of course, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
In our pursuit of a medical school headquartered in Spokane, we’ve talked about how the community-based model will send third- and fourth-year WSU medical students to locations across the state. It is a model that will introduce medical students to communities that are in need of physicians.
This won’t be entirely new territory for us, as some of our other health sciences programs already reach across Washington, offering students in other communities the chance to study close to home.
Comcast Cable Channel 17 is now featuring video programs produced at WSU Spokane as part of its daily offerings.
The following was written by Dr. George Novan, FACP, Associate Dean, WSU College of Medical Sciences, for the April issue of The Message, a publication printed monthly by the Spokane County Medical Society (SCMS). It is republished here with permission from both Dr. Novan and the SCMS.
It’s not often a person has a chance to be part of starting a new medical school. We at Washington State University have been picturing what we want to create with a new WSU College of Medicine.
The WSU Spokane health sciences campus sits along the Spokane River on the east end of downtown Spokane. Photo courtesy of Isaacson Aerial Photography.
(Ed. Note: The latest edition of the WSU Spokane Magazine is available as a PDF here. It is also distributed statewide to WSU alumni and friends. This is the final story from the magazine. Enjoy!)
By Terren Roloff
From as far back as Spokane’s early years, the 50 acres a few blocks east of downtown were anything but pretty.
By the 1960s, when community leaders realized that area and the rail yards downtown had become a blight on the community, those 50 acres were plagued by waste and neglect.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too long after that realization that things changed for the better.
Dr. Eva Szentirmai is researching the link between obesity and sleep loss.
(Ed. Note: The latest edition of the WSU Spokane Magazine is available as a PDF here. It is also distributed statewide to WSU alumni and friends. We will share a story each day from the latest issue on the blog. Enjoy!)
By Judith Van Dongen
Research Explores Link Between Obesity and Sleep
Recent studies have linked obesity and chronic sleep loss, but scientists still don’t know how the two are related. Éva Szentirmai, M.D., Ph.D. (pictured above), an assistant professor in the College of Medical Sciences, is looking at brown fat to help find the answer. She and her colleagues recently received a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study this beneficial fat, which helps us burn the calories stored in white fat and regulates our body temperature.