Hannelore Sudermann

Things are cooking on the parklike campus nestled on the north bank of the Spokane River. With a record number of students, a fund-raising campaign that exceeded expectations, and a seven-year development goal that has been reached three years early, Gonzaga University is going strong, school officials say.

Things are cooking on the parklike campus nestled on the north bank of the Spokane River. With a record number of students, a fund-raising campaign that exceeded expectations, and a seven-year development goal that has been reached three years early, Spokane's Gonzaga University is going strong, school officials say.

PULLMAN – Washington's 9th Legislative District is a study of contrasts. The district, which one veteran legislator describes as the size of a Connecticut and a half, reaches from south Spokane to the Oregon border and west toward the Tri-Cities. It has a little of everything: city, suburbia, tiny towns and vast swaths of range and farmland. The rural areas hold a fairly conservative voting base, but the district also contains the large, sometimes liberal education centers of Eastern Washington University and Washington State University, which are packed with thousands of state employees.

What was once a wasteland of railroad yards and old warehouses is fast becoming Spokane's hope for a strong economic future. At an early morning celebration Wednesday, Washington State University President V. Lane Rawlins opened the door wider to plans for a University District on the east end of downtown Spokane. At the 53-acre site along the Spokane River where WSU and the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute already have buildings, construction crews are breaking ground on a new Academic Center.

Some come with lists and some leave with tears. It's that time of year when thousands of parents bring their freshmen to school at Washington State University and the University of Idaho, following a tradition more than a century long. Hundreds more will hit Gonzaga University on Friday.

MAYVIEW, Wash. – If you stand on the rim of the gorge with your back to the Snake River, it's easy to see the russet coats of Roger Koller's cattle as they graze through the crispy remains of a wheat field. Koller is a third-generation Washington wheat farmer who started raising cattle for his family and to provide his sons with livestock for 4-H and junior livestock competitions. But what started as an educational effort for his boys has turned into a small business called Cabernet Beef.

PULLMAN – A Federal Express carrier dropped off 15 samples of cow brain at a Washington State University lab last Wednesday. It was a slow day for the lab, which was established in June to test hundreds of brain tissue specimens from herds around the region for mad cow disease.

LEWISTON – An aging state park with a plain parking lot has been transformed into a state-of-the-art tourism center complete with a babbling brook, bronze wildlife sculptures, natural landscaping and spectacular view of the Snake River. More than a hundred people spread across its outdoor plaza Thursday morning as local leaders and officials congratulated Idaho on its new Lewis and Clark Discovery Center at Hells Gate State Park.

PULLMAN – The new contract to let Barnes & Noble manage Washington State University's student bookstore, the Bookie, has brought the nonprofit WSU Student Book Corp. the payoff it bargained for and some competition it didn't. The recent agreement with Barnes & Noble College Booksellers took effect on July 1. It has left many on campus and in Pullman wondering why, after 90 years of operating independently, the private nonprofit student bookstore would enter into a 10-year management agreement with a major corporation.

PORT OF WILMA – This is one crazy mixed-up love story. The damsel in distress is a 66-year-old paddlewheel steamboat named Jean.