Student services and innovative research in the health sciences were featured on the WSU Legislative & Congressional Staff Tour this year, as policy experts from both Washington’s state and federal delegations explored the WSU Pullman and WSU Spokane Health Sciences campuses over a three-day visit.
The tour began at Martin Stadium, where student athletes shared their experiences navigating name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities. Participants heard the challenges presented by differing regulations and navigating business deals, often directly with companies.
“I’m a psychology student, not a business major,” a WSU rowing athlete shared with the group.
Marie Mayes, director of the WSU Center for Entrepreneurial Studies within the Carson College of Business, is helping equip student athletes with the skills and resources needed to develop business savvy and market themselves through professional networks, including NIL deals in a rapidly evolving industry.
WSU coaches Jake Dickert and Kyle Smith said these opportunities are long overdue for collegiate athletes while emphasizing the challenge they present in the age of the transfer portal. The coaches also underscored the importance of educational attainment and how they are encouraging students to stay on the path to completing their degrees. WSU Athletic Director Pat Chun shared, “Our role is to compliment what is done in the classroom.”
The tour wrapped it’s first day at the WSU Brelsford Visitor Center, with remarks from WSU President Kirk Schulz who thanked the staffers for their dedicated public service to the state. He also shared exciting new opportunities that WSU is engaging in as a result of the hard work of Washington’s elected delegation— among them breaking ground for a new agricultural research building in Pullman which will conjoin scientists from the U.S. Department of Agricultural and WSU.
The second day began with a tour of WSU Pullman’s student health provider, Cougar Health Services (CHS). Participants saw the full suite of health care services that students can access at CHS, including a pharmacy, x-ray technology, and counseling support services.
The group then met with staff to learn about WSU’s ROAR program, a certificate-granting program for students living with developmental disabilities. A student from the program shared her experience at WSU, auditing courses, and living off campus in an apartment this summer as she works for WSU Dining Services.
Among the few residential college programs offered in the United States, the ROAR program is providing access to postsecondary opportunities for this underserved and often overlooked population of students. The program integrates students from the WSU College of Education to help guide students in the ROAR program through their academic and personal pursuits on campus and in the community, as friends and peer mentors.
In a lightning round of visits to the suite of student support services offered on the Pullman campus, the group then visited the WSU Veteran’s Center to learn about their work helping student veterans navigate their Veteran Administration benefits while acclimating to life on a college campus.
Across Glenn Terrell Mall, the group toured the WSU Women*s Center, which organizes a variety of resources for students including a safe ride program and Rosario’s Place, a resource available to students who are parents that provides items like diapers, wipes, books, and clothing for no cost.
Later in the day, the tour visited a similar resource available to all students at the Cougar Food Pantry which provides food at no cost to any student through a donation-based supply by the local community. Last year alone this resource saw more than 15,000 visits.
WSU Multicultural Student Services centralizes several culturally relevant spaces to strengthen and enhance the student experience and campus community. The tour guided participants through several of these centers, including the LGBTQ+ Center, the Chicanx Latinx Student Center, the First-Gen Center, the Asian American and Pacific Islander Student Center, the Undocumented Student Center and the African American Student Center.
At lunch on Tuesday, tour participants heard from a panel of students and campus experts involved with postsecondary access programs, including TRIO programs and the College Assistance Migrant Program, or CAMP. Students shared their journeys to WSU as first-generation college students or as students from low income backgrounds. “TRIO Student Support Services is what made WSU home for me,” shared one student whose parents are agricultural workers in central Washington. “My parents always told me education was the way.”
Directors of the various programs shared how these federally funded services foster a sense of community for students by helping connect them to people from similar backgrounds and campus opportunities in employment and academics.
The group also heard from WSU enrollment management leaders who shared an update on the WSU system’s enrollment trajectory for this Fall, which is expected to increase slightly. They provided a holistic look at how WSU recruits to build a class of students, through a network of admissions counselors engaging with K-12 partners, then seeks to retain them through the various access programs that were highlighted earlier in the day.
Campus security was also featured in a panel in the afternoon that included the campus chief of police providing an overview of how WSU monitors, responds and reports out to the broader campus community about security events happening on campus. Representatives from WSU Facilities also discussed how the university has scaled up the use of security cameras but is still hard pressed to collect video coverage for the substantial footprint of the Pullman campus.
At WSU Spokane Health Sciences on Wednesday, the group was welcomed to campus by health sciences Executive Vice President Daryll DeWald and Executive Vice Chancellor Celestina Barbosa-Leiker.
The day began with a tour of the Center for Native American Health, which embeds Indigenous health practices into clinical settings and better prepares health sciences students to engage in culturally-informed ways. This includes practicing in simulation spaces designed to accommodate Native American patients and learning about the medicinal purposes of certain herbs and oils that have not been included in Western medicine education.
The tour continued at the WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center, where the group had an opportunity to see and engage with the tools that the Center uses to study the effects of sleep deprivation on the human body. That includes studies into stressful events, like police use of force situations, and tiresome work, like driving long distances, which are observed using simulators that participants had the chance to try out.
At lunch, the group heard from researchers in WSU’s Colleges of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy, who presented a sampling of WSU’s work related to substance abuse disorders. This includes research on evidence-based treatment therapies, maternal and child health studies that explore the prevalence of neonatal absence syndrome, and interprofessional education efforts designed to better prepare the healthcare workforce in addressing the growing opioid crisis.
Participants toured the WSU Nursing Center for Experimental Learning and had the opportunity to engage with cutting edge technology, like anatomic manikins which emit heartbeats and noises to simulate patients, which is used for simulation practice among WSU nursing students. These spaces allow students to practice difficult procedures in stressful environments with their cohort, which help them be workforce ready.
The three day tour ended with a visit to the Autism and Neurodevelopmental Clinic on campus, operated by community partner Range Community Clinic. A typical autism diagnosis requires visits to a handful of specialists with wait times for each stop and in many cases, this process can result in a diagnosis taking over a year and subsequently, families can miss out on intervention methods. The clinic on Spokane’s campus centralizes those clinicians, reducing the process into what is typically a four hour stop on a single day with an appointment wait time of two to four months.