Is WSU Tri-Cities still relevant? What’s next for the campus as it turns 35

If you ask James Cochran what’s changed the most since Washington State University Tri-Cities was christened in 1989, he’ll flip the question on its head.

“One thing that hasn’t changed: You can’t do anything at WSU Tri-Cities, in my opinion, without cooperation. Everything is done with cooperation,” said Cochran, now 88, who served as the campus’ first dean.

From its foundation as an engineering school in the salad days of plutonium production at the Hanford site, to its role as a research hub leading Washington’s transition to clean energy sources and technology, WSU Tri-Cities’ history and successes are shared with the very community it’s served for 35 years.

Chancellor Sandra Haynes says they continue to meet the needs of the Mid-Columbia region at every turn.

Today, the university conducts research and educates students in dozens of in-demand fields — including wine sciences, education, nursing, engineering and earth sciences. They offer more than 20 bachelor’s degrees and more than 30 graduate degrees.

“If you look around at the major industries in the Tri-Cities, we have programs that meet their needs. That was our history, that’s what we were founded on more than 35 years ago, and I think we’ve remained very true to that,” she told the Tri-City Herald.

The campus’ anniversary marks a “testament to the dedication and vision of all who have contributed to our growth and success,” Haynes said.

At the same time, the satellite campus shares in many of the struggles its larger peers have dealt with in recent years, including slowed enrollment growth , fallout over the new FAFSA rollout , turnover in instructional staff and questions about the value of a four-year degree .

While higher education headwinds are affecting colleges and universities around the country, Phil Weiler, WSU’s VP for marketing and communications, says their background as a land-grant institution sets them apart.

“We weren’t created to necessarily serve the average, stereotypical student. We’re really created to serve communities that have traditionally been under served by higher ed,” he said.

College degrees remain highly sought after, especially for first-generation students. And an employee with a degree on average will still make tens of thousands of dollars more in annual salary than their counterpart without.

Enrollment outlook

WSU Tri-Cities said about 1,440 students attended the fall 2023 semester. Enrollment grew 36% from 2014 to 2017 — peaking at nearly 1,940 — but has slowly withered in the years since.

The number of students today is comparable to 2014’s levels. About 95% are Washington residents, most from the Tri-Cities, and half are students of color, mostly Latino.

Fall semester instruction began Aug. 19, but the current enrollment count wasn’t yet available.

Last year, total fall enrollment at WSU Tri-Cities grew for the first time since 2017 . The five-year slump was broken by a large incoming freshman class.

Haynes characterized WSU Tri-Cities’ enrollment woes as a “long-term rebound,” adding that they expect to see continued growth.

“To be flat this year is going to be great, given the FAFSA (rollout problems), and I think we’re only going to go up from here,” she said.

WSU, UW and OSU partnership

So much has changed over the last 3 1/2 decades.

When it transitioned into the WSU family in 1989, the Richland campus was home to six full-time faculty, 100 part-time faculty and 25 staffers.

Together, they served 800 part-time students in a single 40,000-square-foot building.

Today, 160 full- and part-time faculty and 168 staff serve students across seven buildings on 200 acres on the north Richland campus near Hanford High School.

But in order to understand its transition into a research mecca, Cochran argues that you have to look farther back.

“1947 is where things began — and that’s a long time ago,” he told the Herald in a phone interview.

That’s when the campus opened up for the first time as the General Electric School of Nuclear Engineering.

It served as a partnership between WSU, University of Washington and Oregon State University to offer graduate-level programs that would benefit workers at the Hanford site in the years following World War II and the end of the country’s top-secret research project to build the atomic bomb, Manhattan Project.

In 1958, the school was renamed the Joint Center for Graduate Studies.

“There were no facilities out where there are now, and the first building didn’t come along until 10 years later, 1968,” Cochran recalled.

UW had fiscal authority over the fledgling college campus.

The Joint Center for Graduate Studies even had an unofficial mascot that many called their own: The Huscoubea , a mixed-up animal with the head of a cougar, the body of a husky and the tail of a beaver. The creature is featured in a 1983 sketch by Dennis Brunson.

Two more universities joined the university pact in 1985: Eastern Washington University and Central Washington University. According to Cochran, EWU brought with it courses on education studies, while CWU contributed undergraduate business courses.

“They were trying to diversify from science and engineering,” he said.

Most faculty by that point were part-time adjunct, who worked by day at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory or Westinghouse Hanford Co. and taught for a modest stipend.

WSU branch campus born

Cochran served a decade as the first dean of WSU Tri-Cities, from 1989 to 1998. During his tenure, research and instruction spaces grew five fold.

The Legislature established WSU Tri-Cities as a branch campus out of joint center as a means to provide baccalaureate programs to the state’s major metropolitan areas.

In addition to the Tri-Cities, WSU branches formed in Spokane and Vancouver, as well as UW branches in Bothell and Tacoma.

Enter Cochran, the Standford-educated PhD and chair of WSU Pullman’s mathematics program, with previous stays at Virginia Tech and Bell Telephone Laboratories. A colleague at the university had “essentially dared” him to apply for the dean position after the formation of WSU Tri-Cities.

“There were probably a dozen candidates or so, and they finally selected me not only because of my background in physics and mathematics, but the fact that I had applied, I had a lot of interaction with the engineers,” he said. “I was selected, and when I joined the faculty down here, I became permanent faculty member No. 7.”

One of his first jobs as dean was to ween the five universities off the campus and establish WSU Tri-Cities as an entity in the community.

“My job was to do a half dozen things,” Cochran said.

“One was to secure more funding, because the Legislature thought they don’t need much funding in the Tri-Cities because they only use adjuncts. I had to build the faculty. In order to build the faculty, we needed the funding. When I stepped down we had 54 permanent faculty... I did a lot of recruiting,” he continued.

The job turned Cochran into a lobbyist overnight — both in Pullman and in Olympia. The flagship campus pulled the strings, and many back then believed the branch campuses weren’t necessary. For years, Cochran kept an apartment in Pullman.

“Washington State University Pullman tried consistently to maintain an iron fist,” he said. “A new faculty member would join us here, but a faculty member joining in a new discipline? Well, that decision was made in Pullman.”

“Every community needs to have educational opportunities that go beyond high school into higher education,” Cochran said. “WSU Tri-Cities was filling a void.”

East Building is the university’s oldest, having been there since 1968. In 1991, they opened the West Building and in 1997 opened the Consolidated Information Center.

“That was a pride and joy, and the only way it came to pass was in confidence the Department of Energy they wanted to move the Hanford Tech Library and the Department of Energy reading room to Washington State University Tri-Cities. They needed more room and they needed a place where there would be easier access,” he said.

“We convinced them it would be a happy home, and we convinced them to pay us for this happy home,” he said.

Wine, sustainable aviation fuel research

Haynes was named WSU Tri-Cities’ fourth chancellor in 2018.

Since then, the campus has undergone a big pivot to energy and environmental sciences. That includes the opening in 2021 for the Institute for Northwest Energy Futures (INEF), across the street.

“We wanted to build upon that strength. So, we’ve become really the leaders in the region for clean energy, education and supplying the clean energy workforce,” Haynes said.

WSU’s INEF has been heralded by Gov. Jay Inslee as a possible future leader in international fossil-free energy research. Haynes says the institute will play a big role in looking at the bigger picture of the region’s energy needs and production.

“We’re trying to tackle the problems of how do we marry these things together and still come up with a reliable and affordable and efficient electric system,” Haynes said.

Groundbreaking work also is coming out of the campus’ Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory, known as BSEL, which plays host to one of the only open labs for sustainable aviation fuel testing in the world and recently patented new biodegradable Styrofoam.

WSU’s Wine Science Center, which hosts a state-of-the-art wine library curated by the Washington State Wine Commission, recently turned 10.

Much of the headline-grabbing research in recent years has centered around the impacts of wildfire smoke on vineyards and wine grapes, but Haynes says the future may focus on the business and marketing side.

“Younger people tend to not have the loyalty to an alcoholic beverage that older people do,” she said. “Some of what we need to work on is consumer behavior, and also the sales and marketing of wine.”

The Tri-Cities region is home to one-third of the state’s acreage of wine grape vineyards. Haynes says the campus might consider expanding into distilling and brewing in the future.

First-generation students

What might WSU Tri-Cities look like in the next 35 years, in the year 2059? Haynes has an idea.

“I think the whole face of the Tri-Cities is going to change immensely,” she said.

Cleanup at the Hanford site could enter its final stages, industries will likely shift to focus on agriculture and energy, and clean energy manufacturing and research could play a larger role in the economy.

Retraining workers for emerging industries, or to obtain additional degrees or certifications, will also become a priority for the campus. The university also has acreage to build new buildings, facilities, labs and research centers.

“As we look at the workforce, we’re going to need to reskill and upskill a lot of people,” she said. “AI is coming in, the Hanford workers are going to need to go from construction to production, we’re going to need people to operate the clean energy programs that are coming. As we phase out some technologies, we’re going to need people to pick up skills in new technologies,” she said.

But Cochran says the next 35 years might be a lot like the last 35 years.

“I see that WSU Tri-Cities will continue to be a ‘people’s university,’ meeting the needs of the people, a lot of them first-generation students. And helping this community grow and thrive, in some ways that you and I probably won’t imagine,” Cochran said.