WWU College of Science & Engineering

06/16/2026

06/16/2026

06/11/2026

Jackie Caplan-Auerbach studies “weird seismic signals that are accidentally recorded.” So, when her friends Jeffery and Christine Smith reached out to her on August 10, 2025, about an odd rising tide and surging waters in Alaska’s inside passage, she went looking for what might’ve caused it.

The Smiths had already confirmed that no earthquake had occurred to cause a tsunami, so the next likely story was a landslide in the area. Caplan-Auerbach found the nearest seismometer was far away from the Smiths, so identifying one lone wiggle that could confirm a landslide was proving difficult.

“Some slides, when they're about to fail, exhibit a slight stuttering behavior prior to failure. We call that a precursory earthquake sequence," said Caplan-Auerbach. “They're not big earthquakes. They’re tiny, tiny, tiny, little stuttering events, and it's not a hugely common signal. We've probably seen it about 15 to 20 times total. After doing some processing of the Tracy Arm data, I saw that there was a booming precursory signal. And I knew at that point that it was a landslide.”

The landslide occurred off the South Sawyer Glacier in the Tracy Arm fjord and caused a 1,520 foot tsunami wave. Tracy Arm is a popular cruise ship destination, but the fjord happened to be empty at the time of the landslide.

“Had anybody been there at that time, I think we would be telling a very different story today,” Caplan-Auerbach said. “We just got ludicrously lucky.”

Read more about Western Today: https://news.wwu.edu/wwu-professor-jackie-caplan-auerbach-co-publishes-paper-on-second-largest-tsunami-ever-recorded

06/09/2026

“It’s important to remember that at the end of the day, we have this thing that ties us all together: curiosity and desire for exploration.”

After years of learning how to be scientists in the lab, three Western Washington University students recently walked the halls of the U.S. Capitol to meet with the legislative representatives who hold sway over federal science funding.

Kaitlynn LaCost, Marshall Lowell-Gonzales and Julia Olson flew to Washington D.C. to take part in The Planetary Society's Day of Action on April 20, an annual day of advocacy for space-science funding (and got a chance to say hi to Bill Nye!).

LaCost, Lowell-Gonzales and Olson work in the NASA-funded Mars Research Group and with data collected from Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity under the supervision of Professor of Geology and Physics and Astronomy Melissa S. Rice.

06/01/2026

Three professors on how they embrace, or limit, generative AI use in the classroom

06/01/2026

Congratulations Tyanin Opdahl, our 2026 Presidential Scholar!

Faculty describe Tyanin as one of the most service-oriented students in the history of the Computer Science Department. She worked tirelessly furthering a variety of diversity and inclusion efforts in both the department and the college. Tyanin was the CS student ambassador to the dean, the student representative on CSE’s strategic task force, a regular panelist at quarterly CS New Major Orientations and an outreach officer for the Association of Gender Inclusion in Computing, to name just a few examples of her participation across campus. In addition to her service, Tyanin displayed excellence in academics by co-authoring a manuscript on disability fairness learning in data science and serving as one of the few undergraduate presenters at the Special Interest Group Computer Science Education Technical Symposium, the preeminent conference in computer science education.

05/28/2026

has been awarded a $3.1 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to expand biomedical student research opportunities on campus.

This funding builds on Western’s strong tradition of hands-on undergraduate research and opens the door for even more students to work alongside faculty on impactful, real-world scientific discovery.

A big thanks to the grant team who made this happen: Professor of Chemistry P. Clint Spiegel, Professor of Psychology Jacqueline Rose, Professor of Chemistry James Vyvyan and Dean of the Graduate School David Patrick.

Learn more: https://news.wwu.edu/wwu-secures-31-million-nih-grant-to-expand-biomedical-research-opportunities-for-students

05/28/2026

Congratulations to all of our spectacular faculty who were recognized for their excellence this year!

Jeanine Amacher, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Arlan Norman Award for Excellence in Student Mentoring (undergraduate)
David Hooper, Professor of Biology, Arlan Norman Award for Excellence in Student Mentoring (graduate)
Sura Al-Qudah, Associate Professor of Engineering, President’s Exceptional Effort Award

Thank you for making our college great!

05/11/2026

Western Washington University is launching an Industrial and Systems Engineering bachelor’s program to provide flexible education opportunities for students on the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas.

05/11/2026

Since 2023, WWU Assistant Professor of Geology Paul Betka has led students across the world and into the Himalayas.

Betka’s mission: explore the planet’s largest active zone of subduction accretion, which happens to lie beneath the feet of more than 200 million people.

It’s a process that can only be understood by putting boots to the ground, trekking through Indian jungles and wading through knee-deep river waters to directly observe and measure deformation associated with the faults.

“If you want to understand how these processes work, you have to go to the Himalayas,” Betka said.