From backwater to pacesetter - and back? by Joel Connelly

Joel Connelly, Pacific NW Columnist for the Seattle PI wrote this column, "From backwater to pacesetter - and back?" about WWU and Bellingham in 2003. What do you all think and feel about his thoughts and feelings?

www.seattlepi.com/connelly/102891_joel06.shtml

It was known as Western Washington College of Education when I was a kid. As enrollment swelled, it became Western Washington State College and eventually Western Washington University.

Washington provided for its baby boomers, vastly expanding higher education under Govs. Al Rosellini and Dan Evans. Nowhere was the job done better than on Western's handsome campus. The Ridgeway Dormitories won a national award for architectural excellence.

In the 1970s, Western's then-president, Jerry Flora, was invited to a White House briefing and Rose Garden reception. Richard Nixon strolled up, introductions were made and the U.S. president effused:

"Oh, President Flora, you must be very proud! That magnificent campus situated on the hill overlooking that lovely bay must surely rank among the most beautiful colleges in America."

Flora speculated that Nixon's brother, Edward, who lived in Edmonds, once took him on a Sunday drive through the campus.

As well, a visionary dean named Paul Woodring pioneered the concept of cluster colleges. Western created small and autonomous units within the campus in order to safeguard the university against becoming too large and impersonal. Fairhaven and Huxley colleges became nationally recognized models of the genre.

The innovations, in Bellingham and elsewhere, prepared Washington for transition from a smokestack to a mind-and-microchip economy.