Whitman Stories

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.”

What is childhood? What is the process of othering? How do we differentiate between humans and animals? How do humans experience time? How do we conceive of community and solitude outside of the boundaries of the ordinary? This fall, new students will engage these questions and more while they sharpen their critical thinking, writing and reading comprehension skills in Whitman College’s new First Year Seminars program.

Davenport, an internal medicine doctor at Virginia Mason Memorial Hospital in Yakima, Washington, a national hotspot for coronavirus cases, tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep how encouraging everyone in the community to wear masks helped cut transmission of the virus in half.

Jackson is the author of “Law Without Future: Anti-Constitutional Politics and the American Right."

On a late spring day, Clara Hoffman is creeping through the woods, as quietly as possible. She and her fellow researchers are using radio signals to triangulate the location of a cow elk in the area. Somewhere near her, a calf is hidden in the woods. Their mission is simple: Find the calf, blindfold it to keep it calm, fit it with its own radio collar, take measurements, and then clear out.

As teams are set to kick off a shortened, 60-game season, the Mariners are following strict guidelines for testing, tracing, cleaning and more. Even though fans won’t be in T-Mobile Park, the safety of players, coaches and ballpark personnel is paramount.

The politics graduate is serving as campaign manager for April Berg, a Democrat and Everett, Washington, school board member vying for a 44th District open seat in the House. After attempting to work remotely together on the campaign, they recently combined households.

In April 2020, Emily Brucia '11 launched Elemental Telehealth — a health tech company focused on connecting people with psychologists in private practice who provide holistic, evidence-based care. The business was always designed to exist in the telehealth space, but launching it during a global pandemic was never her intention.

This summer, Christian Moreno '21 is an intern for Haser Inc, a nonprofit group that works to strengthen other nonprofits in Puerto Rico by offering administrative support, strategic planning and proposal development and fiscal sponsorship. Moreno is helping create business plans for organizations that focus on sustainable education, agroecology and community well-being.

When prospective students visit Whitman College, they often get the chance to meet with faculty, sit-in on classes, and get an up-close view of the academic excellence for which the college is known. But this spring, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered in-person classes, and forced the Admission Office to suspend its Spring Visitors Day and Admitted Students Day on-campus events.

Born in a new millennium, the students in Associate Professor Jim Russo’s infectious disease course have never known a time that HIV/AIDS wasn’t treatable. But Russo was a graduate student in the 1980s as the virus was first discovered