campus

Best Places to Walk on Campus

07/23/2014 by eschroeder Leave a Comment

It's time to explore some beautiful parts of my university, and this is my list of paths and walkways you definitely need to check out on your tour.

1. The path behind Tawanka. I usually never walk this way, but once in a while I take the long way to class. The trees overhang the pathway in this area which gives it a nice and cozy view. Plus there’s a secret garden just to the left of the path.

2. The grassy area between Senior and Showalter. I personally forget how awesome this area looks because I always stay on the opposite side of campus. This location, however, puts the rest of campus to shame with this historical and very beautiful landscaping. The open lawn jumbled with trees creates a beautiful pathway to walk through or have a picnic!

3. In front of the president’s house. The president’s house and the landscaping surrounding it really highlights our amazing campus. It’s also pretty cool to think that the president lives just a few feet from some of your classes.

4. The main path in front of the school house. The one-room school house is something many students, including myself, pass every day, but we rarely give it a second thought. The historic building is sometimes open for tours, and it reminds us of EWU’s roots as a teaching college.

A Springtime Photo Tour of Campus

06/01/2014 by eschroeder Leave a Comment

When I visited EWU's campus, it was windy and rainy and the middle of winter. I wan't even certain students went outside if they didn't have to. I should have visited in the spring.

@alexa3723

After being cooped up indoors during the winter, campus comes alive once the snow melts. Students take advantage of the awesome weather to get some fresh air and enjoy the fact that EWU has four real seasons.

@jslemm11

Students work on homework between classes or sit in the sun to energize themselves for the rest of their day. Taking a break and getting some good Vitamin D helps refresh and rejuvenate the mind and body.

@vitorolsouto

Some students participate in slack lining. A slack line is tied a foot or so above the ground between two trees and students tight rope over the grass. Plus jumping. And turning. And laughing a lot. No one has to worry about feeling ridiculous if they want to give it a try. It’s like being Tigger: no one judges you for being bouncy.

After classes, some students throw a Frisbee in the large grassy areas around campus. If you’re not into Frisbee, you can try whiffle ball instead. Groups of students get into teams and have a blast outdoors pretty much any time the sun shines.

@vincehamilton1

College campus radiates inspiration. Especially after winter, students want to get outside and change things up a bit. Seeing other students enjoying their college experience definitely helps enhance mine.

The Olive Garden reviewer

03/09/2012 by jlittleton1 Leave a Comment

Marilyn Hagerty catapulted to Internet fame for her review of the Olive Garden, and my middle-of-nowhere, small-town heart loves it.

The story, that is, not the Olive Garden. The Olive Garden is sometimes hard to love … but Marilyn—she’s something special. If you haven’t followed her story, here’s the gist of it.

For several decades, Marilyn has reviewed restaurants in Grand Forks, ND, population 66,991. With only 100 or so active restaurants in the whole town, necessity has forced her to review places like Taco Bell and Dippin’ Dots. Desperate times, desperate measures.

When her review of the Olive Garden went viral, people didn’t know what to make of it. Was it irony? Was she totally honest? Was she crazy?

Now that the full story is out, it’s clear that the snarky, hard-working 85-year-old and her friendly reviews embody the absolute best of small-town life.

Some might call it niceness. Some might call it sincerity. We might even describe it as grace or honesty or perseverance or a warm acceptance of small-town reality. Because let’s face it: small towns don’t have the same night-life that big cities do.

If you live in a small town, you know this. Having grown up in a community of less than 5,000 people, it felt like we had survived a nuclear apocalypse and all we got in exchange was a Pizza Ranch with really bad hours. But we still went, because that’s what we had … and we had fun.

Marilyn doesn’t impersonate critics in New York or Paris or someplace else, and she doesn’t come across as cynical or jaded like the food critics in those cities. That’s how her homey review of the Olive Garden captured the attention of so many people: it made people realize you can still enjoy life without living in one of the world’s top cities or pretending that you’re in some posh glamor ad.

That realization makes Eastern great, too. We get the small-town sincerity of Cheney, but we also get the large-city culture of Spokane. You actually get to choose which world you call home. You can even choose both, if you want. Few schools that can say that.

Cheney is the best of small towns, of course. It has a major university and businesses that cater to students. It’s safe. There’s free transportation for students. It has a handful of unique restaurants coupled with all the dives and fast food joints that college students love. (Speaking from experience, Taco Bell at 2 a.m. sounds way better than it turns out to be.) It’s surrounded by adventure including hiking, cycling, skiing, swimming, rafting and rock climbing.

But it’s still a small town, and it feels that way when you step into a café or stop by the grocery store. It’s kind of nice, really.

If small town friendliness isn’t for you, you can choose Spokane and the half million people in the metro area. You can have your arena shows, dozens of coffee shops, nightlife and genuinely amazing restaurants. (The best Italian in Spokane is clearly Italia Trattoria, FYI.)

But that’s the essence of Eastern: having choices. City mouse, country mouse. Small town quiet, big city hustle. It’s entirely up to you, and we love that freedom.

The impartial college

03/02/2012 by jlittleton1 Leave a Comment

How do you know you’re seeing the “college” and not just the “marketing”? How do you get to the true heart of a college experience?

This week, NPR released new standards for its journalists. For an organization as big and respected as NPR, this is a pretty big deal. It’s like the Seattle Seahawks writing a new playbook, or Daft Punk deciding they’re going to start playing the type of music Nickelback plays. (Scary, right?) In the just-published standards, NPR introduces an entirely new concept: “being fair to the truth.” It definitely has a nice ring to it, and it marks a major departure for journalism in contemporary America. Right now, most news organizations adopt a “balanced reporting norm” approach: both sides get the same amount of air time to create a sense of fairness. Anybody who’s ever been in trouble knows how the balanced approach works in real life: you get called into the principal’s office and tell your side of the story, the other guy gets called into the principal’s office and tells their side, and in the end the principal decides who’s right. In the news world, the audience is supposed to play the role of the principal. Sometimes called the “he said, she said” approach, this approach forces the reader to figure out what’s actually true and accurate. It works great in theory … except there’s always “spin” on the story. If you’ve followed politics at all this election year, you know that someone is always trying to “spin” the story … and sometimes the facts, too. That makes it much, much harder to decide what’s actually true. Something similar happens with colleges. You can read their viewbooks, go online to their websites and open all their emails, but you might never get to heart of the matter. So what can you do?

Turn to students already on campus. If you know somebody at Eastern, you should reach out and see what they say.
Read the common data set. This is a loooooooooooong list of numbers and checkboxes, but nearly every school has one.. That makes it easy for you to compare schools on things such as cost, average debt load, and financial aid packages. Fair warning, though: some schools don’t give you all the information. You can find Eastern’s common data sets via this page.
Visit campus. While many visit activities are planned, you get a chance to see the university without editing, photoshopping or someone’s “spin.” Students are doing what students do on campus. You get to try the food. You can explore the neighborhood or nearby city.A full 71 percent of students say that a visit to campus is the absolute best way to get a feel for the college without the “spin.”

We agree, which is why a college visit, either as part of a tour or as part of an event like goEastern, is such an important part of finding the college that’s the right fit for you. We know that Eastern is the state’s best value and a phenomenal school … but we want you to discover it for yourself without the spin.