Whitman Stories

Whitman College students are known for their passion for serving the Walla Walla community. But this summer, more than a dozen students were able to explore community engagement in a new, more holistic model thanks to a community-engaged learning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Caity Collins ’08 has spent her career studying families, starting during her time at Whitman College. The sociology major began with a research project with Professor Michelle Janning, looking at the way that divorce was represented in children’s rooms.

As research experiences and internships around the nation were canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Assistant Professor Michael Coronado picked up the phone. He wanted to make sure that Whitman College’s first two fellows in the Whitman-Mayo Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program didn’t miss out on the chance to work with Mayo Clinic. So he reached out to DeLisa Fairweather ’87, his mentor and director of Translational Cardiovascular Research at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

As the United States endures unprecedented times — from a global pandemic to racial conflict and a volatile political climate — the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) are planning to step up and support students in new ways. 

Duncan “Tim” Hay ’57 and I-Chin Maeda ’98 are in a neighborly stand-off about who deserves recognition most. Hay insists that its Maeda who’s worthy of praise, for stepping up to help him and his wife Betsy (Jones) Hay ’60 with grocery shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This spring, Dorothy Mukasa '19 received the John Lewis Fellowship (JLF) based in Atlanta, Georgia. Mukasa is one of 39 Whitman graduates to receive a prestigious fellowship or scholarship for the 2019-2020 award year.

Pahlke provides examples of what to read and how to talk to children about white privilege at every developmental stage. "From early on, it is important to give children the tools to understand white privilege and motivate them to fight unjust systems."

Professor Matthew Prull has been fascinated by the mental processes associated with aging and memory for as long as he can remember. This summer, Prull teamed up with psychology senior Nikita Adhikari to test theories about the psychological phenomenon known as the attentional boost effect.

Semerdjian argues that police tactics and technologies recently deployed in U.S. cities were developed in the Middle East to suppress dissent, and calls for both ending police violence at home and ending America’s wars abroad.

Like much of the nation, Whitman College students, staff, faculty and alumni are joining together this summer to dig deeply into issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. As part of that conversation, in mid-July President Kathy Murray announced Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to be an Antiracist” as the summer 2020 common read.

The Whitman College campus may be largely closed, but dozens of students are still spending their summer engaged in meaningful research, though it may not look like they expected. Keeping that group connected and working to build a community among student researchers are the college’s three Beckman Scholars — new graduate Alexandra Moore ’20 and rising seniors Silas Miller and Hunter Hansen.

Jensen, who is also chair of the college's coronavirus task force, explained how Whitman and other schools around the country reached their decisions about remote learning after seeing virus cases continue to rise this summer. “How fortunate we feel that we had the ability to say to our students we’re going to go remote and we’re going to manage and weather the financial challenges that come with that and Whitman will be financially strong,” he said. “I don’t know that every college is able to say that quite as confidently.”