Whitman Stories

Three Whitman College alums are being featured in the college’s 2023–2024 Visiting Writers Reading Series (VWRS).

For the second year in a row, the Power & Privilege Symposium brought Sounds of the People, who’s mission is to showcase Pacific Northwest talent and highlight black and brown voices. The concert was free and students and locals gathered to enjoy the show in the Reid Campus Center on Whitman’s campus.

On Feb. 22, 2024, classes were canceled at Whitman College so the campus community could attend Power & Privilege Symposium sessions—and more importantly, engage actively in the social justice topics at hand. Activist, community organizer and author Linda Sarsour delivered the keynote address.

When their 2024 seasons open, the Whitman Blues and Walla Walla Sweets will have a new home. The 3,300-square-foot clubhouse will feature a team locker room, a training room, team spaces and more! See how the clubhouse is coming together.

Whitman College alum and global leader Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg ’01 establishes Black Women in Executive Leadership, or B-WEL, an initiative to create a connected global community of Black women leaders.

Pavel Blagov, Professor of Psychology and Director of Whitman’s Personality Lab, mentors students as they make connections between memory and personality while making meaningful connections in the Whitman and Walla Walla communities.

Madeline Senter ’25 discovers how to channel their passions into their studies at Whitman College. As a double major in Gender Studies and French and Francophone Studies, Senter is involved in the Métis Family Photo Archive research project.

Whitman College has a force in chemistry computing. Associate Professor of Chemistry Dalia Biswas is changing how science is taught and explored at Whitman—through her research and as part of an elite national faculty network. See how Biswas and Whitman are helping students and faculty harness the power of computational tools across disciplines to keep up with rapid changes in the sciences.

As part of the Upward Together launch weekend, President Sarah R. Bolton moderated a panel of inspiring alumni who spoke about “Finding Success and Purpose in a Changing World” in front of a large crowd, including many students, at Chism Recital Hall in Whitman’s Hall of Music.

Meet three Whitman College alums who received the prestigious Truman Scholarship, which supports graduate studies in public service. More than a decade later, the skills and values they learned as Truman Scholars and at Whitman still shape their unique careers.

Professor of French and Francophone Studies Sarah Hurlburt ’91 and student researcher Madeline Senter ’25 digitize and catalog nearly 2,000 photographers of Métis (“mixed race” in French) people of French and Indigenous descent taken in the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s.

Whitman Connect is an exclusive virtual platform for the Whitman community to mentor students and recent graduates, sharing experiences and professional guidance.