Student Ambassadors pose at last Friday's V.I.Preview Day, a program designed especially for applied and admitted students.

A big thank you goes to the faculty and staff who participated in the 2014 Faculty & Staff Campaign this year. The College of Business, human development, including the Child Development Program, public safety and parking services, and the library all achieved 100 percent employee participation. The overall participation rate this year is 65 percent. That’s way above the national average, which hovers at about 23 percent, and higher than the other WSU campuses in the system.

Your support of WSU Vancouver is a big point of pride for this campus and your gifts make a difference.

Student Affairs is pleased to announce that Kafiat Beckley has been promoted to the position of Cougar Center supervisor. Kafiat will oversee the Cougar Center one-stop shop in the lobby of the Student Services Center to ensure we provide exemplary service in the areas of admissions, financial aid, registration and student accounts. She will also continue to offer direct service to students in these same areas.

On May 10 at 1 p.m. Cougars across the state will participate in commencement. Previously when we held graduations on different days, we borrowed Pullman’s mace and it was carried by the chair of the Faculty Senate. This year, we will display a new mace created by Northwest artists especially for WSU Vancouver. It will be carried by Susan Finley, chair of the FOEC.

For the first time since 1992, the commencement speaker will be a graduating student. ASWSUV President Shavey Winters will give the commencement address. Shavey will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in public affairs and minors in business administration, Spanish and sociology.

Faculty, there is a slight change in the processional. This year the students will process first followed by faculty, followed by the Platform Party. Marshals will be on hand to lead the way.

Faculty who do not need to rent regalia are still encouraged to RSVP by April 15 to participate in commencement.

12:30 – 1 p.m. April 16
Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room 125

Attend an overview of the Tobacco and Spouse/Partner Premium Surcharges and Wellness Incentive benefit that WSU benefit-eligible employees are required to address before May 15. Attend to learn more about the steps you need to take. The session is short—just 10 minutes—followed by plenty of time for Q&A.

6:30 p.m. April 23
Dengerink Administration Building, Room 110

The Center for Social and Environmental Justice and the Gifford Pinchot Task Force will host author Bill Carter who will talk about a proposed copper mine near Mount St. Helens. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Carter wrote “Boom, Bust, Boom – A Story About Copper, the Metal that Runs the World.” The book is an account of the presence of copper in our lives and its cost on health, the economy and the environment. Carter was poisoned by vegetables grown in his family garden, contaminated with invisible pollutants from a once prosperous copper mining industry. His experience sent him on an international discovery mission to learn more about what he describes as the most important metal in modern society.

The Canadian company Ascot Resources Ltd. has begun exploratory drilling 12 miles from the crater of Mount St. Helens in the Green River watershed, which provides clean drinking water to Southwest Washington communities.

Chancellor Mel Netzhammer unveiled the 25th anniversary logo at the Campus Update last Tuesday (see image). Faculty and staff are encouraged to save the date for the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 6 to help staff a 25th anniversary open house for community members. Each department will be asked to provide information to our guests. Save the evening of Friday, Nov. 7 to attend the 25th anniversary edition of the annual Scholarship & Recognition Dinner. More exciting information to come!

President Elson S. Floyd announced the creation of two task forces to evaluate academic and administrative relationships with urban campuses in his April 11 Perspectives column.