Chemistry’s Tim Kowalczyk honored for research

Associate Professor of Chemistry Tim Kowalczyk received one of only eight 2023-24 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar awards from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Each year, the foundation honors young faculty in the chemical sciences with outstanding bodies of scholarship and a deep commitment to undergraduate education. Each scholar is awarded a $75,000 unrestricted research grant.

Kowalczyk’s research aims to “clarify how it is that certain organic molecules pull off apparent ‘magic tricks’ in converting energy from light to electricity and heat,” he says.

Better understanding how heat and electricity are converted from light could drive down the cost for solar cells and sustainable fuels, Kowalczyk says.

Kowalczyk’s research group is interdisciplinary and regularly includes students majoring or minoring in chemistry, energy studies, material science, physics, mathematics, engineering and computer science.

Kowalczyk joined Western in 2014 after finishing his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University in Japan. He previously received a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation, which is awarded to early-career faculty who serve as academic role models in research and education.

Tim Kowalczyk

Kowalczyk has also served as a faculty mentor for Western’s Advancing Excellence and Equity in Science program since its inception.

Western has the second highest number of Henry Dreyfus teacher-scholars in the nation, with nine awardees within the Chemistry Department since the award's creation in 1994.

Building work begins on the House of Healing

Public officials from the Lummi Indian Business Council, the Nooksack Tribal Council, the city of Bellingham and Whatcom County joined WWU leaders in spring 2024 to celebrate the groundbreaking ceremony for Western’s new Coast Salish style longhouse.

Designed as a gathering and ceremonial space for Native American students, area tribes and community members, the House of Healing will include a gathering hall, a kitchen, areas for small group learning, an educational garden and outdoor cooking area.

The longhouse will be located next to campus in the Sehome Hill Arboretum and is planned for completion in fall 2025.

Visit the President's Report online to see more photos from the groundbreaking ceremony.

Several people wearing Coast Salish blanket shawls place golden-colored shovels into the lawn

Western’s House of Healing is under construction in the Sehome Hill Arboretum.

See a photo gallery from the dedication. 

Grad student researching the debilitating impact of single-sided deafness

Jayden Alexander is a third-year student in Western’s Clinical Doctorate of Audiology (AuD) program. Alexander works with adults with single-sided deafness (SSD) who also have a cochlear implant.

Single-sided deafness is when an individual has one ear that is either completely or near normal and the other ear is completely deaf.

According to Alexander, SSD can be really challenging for quality of life.

"One ear is going to be overloaded with information and the brain can only process so fast,” she said. This can cause difficulties with understanding people, with environmental awareness of where sound is coming from, and with hearing over background noise.

Alexander developed a series of tests that can be administered to patients remotely using the application called Portable Automated Rapid Testing (PART), which is a program for assessing auditory processing abilities. Alexander is using this application to create a test battery for participants with SSD and a cochlear implant to assess both how successful the cochlear implant is in alleviating symptoms for patients and how their binaural functions compare over time.

For this project, Alexander has been working with WWU faculty members Doug Sladen and Anna Diedesch. Having attended Western’s undergraduate audiology program before becoming a doctorate student, Alexander notes that now being able to work in collaboration with Sladen and Diedesch on this project has been amazing. Alexander’s project draws on their research to determine whether PART might be an application that works well for administering tests to adults with SSD and a cochlear implant.

Last fall, Alexander received a Graduate Research and Creative Opportunities Grant from Western. Alexander says this funding has helped her ship materials to participants across the country and ensures that they have access to the necessary materials for the study.

Click here to read more about Alexander's research

Jayden Alexander

Jayden Alexander

Faculty-led work on inclusion in science education gets NSF grants

A student adjusts a microscope and squints through the viewfinder.

The National Science Foundation is funding a key WWU initiative to boost equity in science education.

Western is collaborating on a $1.4 million NSF-granted project, Science Education for Equity in K-6 or “SEEK.”

The program will work with in-service elementary school teachers in Whatcom and Skagit counties to help build a community of teacher-leaders focused on integrating science into K-12 education.

“Our hope is that in each school we will build a culture of equitable and high-quality science instruction and help develop the skills of the teachers inside those schools,” says Emily Borda, Western’s director of Science Math and Technology Education. Borda is is collaborating on the project with Shannon Warren, director of STEM faculty development and K-12 partnerships for SMATE, and Tracy Coskie, director of Western’s master’s program in language and literacy.

Leading for diversity in computer science education

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Caroline Hardin was awarded $230,000 from the NSF to help lead an effort to diversify computer science teachers in schools across the Pacific Northwest.

The grant aims to understand the pathways and barriers to becoming a K-12 computer science teacher with the goal to design resources to train and retain educators.

A teacher points to something on a smiling student's computer screen.