OCTOBER, VOL. 32 ISSUE 3
RISING TUITION Students, where is your money going? Pg. 8
CARRIE WELCH
E NT R E PR E NE U R AND NEW
P R O F E S S O R AT WS U V Pg. 4
r a g u o C Van TEAM
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Emily Baumann
REPORTER Arabelle May
MANAGING EDITOR Olivia Eldredge
REPORTER Andrew Ripley-Suiter
LAYOUT EDITOR Megan Tuthill
REPORTER Bethanie Collette
COPY EDITOR Gracie Newberry ADVERTISING MANAGER Jagger Norris WEB MANAGER Ethan Pongon SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Sydney Brower
s r e t t Le
to the editor
The VanCougar welcomes letters and commentary from members of the WSU Vancouver community on current issues. Letters must include the author’s full name, contact information and WSU affiliation: year and major for students, department for faculty and staff, degree and year graduated for alumni. The VanCougar does not publish anonymous letters. Send letters and commentary to van.vc.editor@wsu.edu. Once received, letters become property of The VanCougar and are subject to editing for length, clarity and style.
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Cover
on the
Carrie Welch, integrated strategic communication professor, shares how she climbed the ladder to starting her own business, Little Green Pickle. (Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
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In
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Carrie Welch: Professor and entrepreneur
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micro-market
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RISING TUITION
Replacing the CAFETERIA
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14 Diane Xiong, WSU Vancouver’s director of budgeting and accounting, talks about tuition dollars, and why WSU’s rates have increased. (Emily Baumann/ The VanCougar)
The Yard’s Neapolitan Sundae. (Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
WHERE IS your MONEY GOING?
Felix Braffith’s new dance class
cougar bites:
t h e ya r d r e v i e w
Professor Carrie Welch reveals the trials of starting her own company, Little Green Pickle, while pursuing her dreams of teaching at WSU Vancouver.
Emily Baumann| Editor-in-Chief Success and ambition are the two adjectives that describe go-getter, Carrie Welch. After starting her own public relations company, Little Green Pickle, WSU Vancouver’s new integrated strategic communication professor is a prime example of how overcoming obstacles and taking leaps of faith can manifest incredible opportunities. Founded in 2011, Little Green Pickle is a PR company based in Portland, Oregon. Welch’s company provides services such as branding and marketing to food-related brands, which helps grow their presence and influence within the public eye. Before launching her company, Welch previously worked in the food sector of PR for over 10 years. Once she finished her degree, she originally wanted to become a journalist, but her admiration for PR and media skewed her in a different direction. With talent, a bit of luck and fingers crossed, Welch landed a position as a PR assistant at the world-renowned cable channel, Food Network. “I loved media and went to New York University for my undergrad and got my communications degree there. Originally, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. However, my student loans prevented that from happening,” Welch said. “When I landed at Food Network on a wing and a prayer, it felt like I just won the graduate lottery.”
Trekking up the ladder, Welch established groundbreaking shows such as “Iron Chef ” and “30-minute meals”, and media counseled several celebrities including Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri. Being promoted to vice president of PR at the age of 29, Welch had a thirst for knowledge and took it upon herself to learn everything she could about the industry. “I didn’t leave a stone unturned there. I read all the mail that came in, I read all the magazines that we were subscribed to. I took it upon myself to take on new projects and organize things, prove myself in ways that are great when you’re young,” Welch explained. After co-starting a charitable program called Good Food Garden, which partnered with Food Network to establish teaching gardens in underserved communities, ratings began to decrease, and the project was defunded. However, soon after, Welch left on a high note and moved across the country with her wife and two children. She then set out to discover the “promised land of Portland” with her passionate dreams to gain experience in the food industry, and one day, to open her own restaurant. “I [was serving] a private dining room at the restaurant [Wildwood] that I worked at in Portland. I wasn’t a good server. I had tables fall over during service with full glassware, plates, silverware just on the ground. I had never failed at anything before. I had never had something go that wrong. I was showing up to work every day hating it and saying, ‘this isn’t for me,’” Welch stated. “I wanted to learn from the inside out and make sure that I was on the right path. Very quickly, I realized I was not.”
“When I landed at Food Network on a wing and a prayer, it felt like I just won the graduate lottery.” -Carrie Welch
OCTOBER 2021
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CARRIE WELCH
P r o fe s s o r a n d e n t r e p r e n e u r
Starting Little Green Pickle in 2011, Carrie Welch had her business sky rocket, partnering with several food and beverage companies around Portland, Oregon. (Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
After quitting her job as a server, Welch pivoted back to her original roots, offering to do PR for Wildwood. Creating a limited liability company that worked with the restaurant, Welch chose the title “Little Green Pickle” as a joke, but the name stuck and the floodgates for founding her own PR business opened. Welch continued to run Little Green Pickle for several years, but once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., she encountered a paradigm shift. Traveling back in time, she read through her old journal entries that date back to 2005, and in those moments, Welch truly discovered the career path she wanted to pursue next: teaching at WSU Vancouver. “I went back through all my journals when the pandemic hit, and I decided to read through what young Carrie had to say to me. It turns out she wanted to be a college professor. [There] were journals from 2005, 2007, 2012. I hadn’t seen that. That was a real dream that I really wanted to do,” Welch said. “It took the pandemic to really slow my life down and stop
running at 100 miles an hour to see that there was something else for me, and it was teaching.” Now, bringing her expertise and personal experiences to the classroom, Welch hopes to teach students the foundations, models and theories of PR. When asked what advice she would give to VanCougs wanting to try something new, Welch says to aim high and keep your options open. “We hold ourselves back by thinking that we can’t afford to be [in the profession we want to be in]. … Granted, there’s a whole lot of privilege that comes with this kind of talk. But if you have the means to do it, you should do it, and try,” Welch stated. “I got lucky and landed [at Food Network] right out of school, but who knows where you’ll get lucky and land if you open up your possibilities. The possibilities are kind of infinite. If you narrow down to one thing right away, you’re pigeonholing yourself.” As Welch flourishes in her new career, and teaches on campus, she aspires to become an asset to students and graduates as they pave their own paths in the world of communication.
MICRO-MARKET REPLACES ORIGINAL CAFETERIA Replacing the cafeteria to abide by COVID-19 safety precautions, WSU Vancouver opens the new Crave Fresh Market Arabelle May | Reporter After permanently closing down operations last year when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak, WSU Vancouver’s cafeteria has a new and improved micro-market, commemorating a fresh start to the year’s fall semester. Collaborating with Crave Fresh Market to open the kiosk in the cafeteria building, campus facilities intend to successfully replace the traditional cafe with a self-served meal system. Serving the Southeast Washington community for over eight years, Crave Fresh Market is a family-owned business operated by Corwin Beverage Company, providing unique food services to local businesses. Being a fourth-generation company, founders Laura and Kyle Kendall moved to Vancouver, Washington, and started their business in 1941. Supporting local establishments around the Pacific Northwest, the company’s nearly 70 years of experience lends itself to partnerships with organizations like WSU Vancouver that need food options for students and staff.
Brian Bortvedt, chief financial officer at Corwin, says that during the pandemic, many businesses and universities have started trending towards micro-markets, which work as selfserve kiosks to provide a variety of meal options to students, staff and faculty. The new area on campus offers snacks, soft drinks, hot coffee and packaged foods like sandwiches and veggie trays. Although there are decreases in jobs for student servers and cashiers in the cafeteria, the option deems safer in light of health precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within the WSU Vancouver community. Now that classes are being held in person for the first time in over a year, the campus atmosphere is bound to be geared more towards safety, rather than socializing. “The thing that sets [the micro-market] apart is the ability to adapt and adjust. …We want this to be the students’ market, and we are going to work to make it the best experience for students,” Bortvedt said. Some students, however, are apprehensive of the micro-market’s accessibility. Tessa Hensley, senior majoring in psychology, shares concerns about the food options available to students who have food restrictions or allergies. Additionally, she says Crave Fresh Market takes away from the experience of having a quality cafeteria on campus with faculty and students preparing meals. “I’m glad they still have something to offer students during these crazy uncertain times. Once we find out whether we can stay in person for classes [indefinitely], I think they should invest in a better cafeteria. We have such a nice campus, and the cafeteria is the only thing lacking,” Hensley said.
Tessa Hensley, senior majoring in psychology, discusses potential dietary concerns for students using the cafeteria’s new micro-market. (Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
For those who find the kiosk lacking in choices, Crave Fresh Market presents QR codes, displayed on their machines, for students to scan and input a survey about their experience. As some might think the options are somewhat limited, students, nevertheless, have opportunities available at the micro-market to grab a quick bite. With an effort to replace WSU Vancouver’s cafeteria culture, the campus anticipates replenishing quality food service offered by Crave Fresh Market.
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OCTOBER 2021
RISING COST OF STUDENT ATTENDANCE
Olivia Eldredge | Managing Editor
Why is your tuition rising? WSU Vancouver elaborates on its increase in student tuition costs. For many, it is shocking to receive a tuition statement with one sum that says, “outstanding charges due.” With deadlines for late payment fees soon approaching, and a recent 2.5% increase in WSU Vancouver’s overall tuition rate, students might wonder where their money is going. According to the WSU tuition and fees website, last May the Board of Regents had approved a 2.5% increase in resident and non-resident tuition systemwide for the 2021-2022 academic year. At WSU Vancouver, for resident undergraduate students, the grand total for tuition now runs at around $5,508 per semester, when last year, the semester total was $5,380, raising over $100 this semester. According to Diane Xiong, WSU Vancouver’s director of budgeting and accounting, many factors added to the Board of Regents’ decision on the amount of money raised, including their legal requirement to abide by certain parameters in place, which limit sharp increases in tuition rates. “For resident undergrads, the tuition rate cannot be increased more than the average of how much minimum wages have increased over the last 14 years. There is a guideline around what can and can’t happen with undergrad tuition, defined by the state,” Xiong said.
When trying to grasp an itemized list of fees, Xiong states it is hard to split tuition costs up by specific dollars and cents, due to the grouped allocation of money provided by WSU Pullman. As a system, money is gathered in the university’s spending pool, where different portions of funding are first held at the main campus, then individually allocated to WSU Vancouver. With the funds available, tuition is removed partly for tuition waivers, and to support system operations such as Okta or Microsoft, and other overarching costs. Then, after whole system costs are established, the remaining tuition money is partly distributed at WSU Vancouver’s campus. These funds are mainly covering support for staff and faculty positions. “Of our campus spending, 90% of our spending is on personnel. Very little of it is spent [directly] on supplies or technology or maintenance, a lot of it is on people,” Xiong said. With the tuition increase in mind, the Associated Students of WSU Vancouver made an effort to appeal against the Board of Regents’ decision to up the cost of tuition this year. Evans Kaame, vice president of ASWSUV, says he was uncertain at first to support the decision of raising tuition fees, particularly after many students have suffered from financial instability during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I was hesitant to be in support of increasing the fee. However, there was a legitimate reason as to why the fee was supposed to be increased. The reason was to [satisfy] students’ basic needs in demand because of COVID-19, and the alternative revenue to cover those basic needs was to increase student tuition and fees. That was the argument submitted by the administration,” Kaame stated. “The student government from all our six campuses met together to discuss the percentage of increase and see what major ways we can compromise and come to an understanding that we will increase the fees, but not to a point that will jeopardize the students’ ability to continue their education. Unfortunately, our efforts were in vain.” Although the tuition increase is unable to be reversed, Kaame says ASWSUV has a few plans to help cover the deficit. With three main goals, they hope to expand emergency grant access, ask the state legislature for an expansion of students’ eligibility for the Washington College Grant and to establish a federal legislative agenda that advocates for doubling funds associated with the Pell Grant.
OCTOBER 2021 “With all three of these inputs, emergency grants, the Washington College Grant and the Pell Grant, I believe, would help us to cover the deficit of increasing tuition in the long run. It’s going to take some time, but we are committed to seeing it through,” Kaame said.
dollars from private donations and individual initiatives on campus, including allocation of funds toward the Cougar Food Pantry or other independent emergency grants at WSU Vancouver alone.
Additionally, as a voice on behalf of WSU VancouAfter seeing what ASWSUV is working ver, Chancellor Mel Netzhammer says setting tuition on when supporting students, the next growth in small increments now is generally a better alarea of focus is answering how the univerternative than having a significant percentage jump in sity helps students with tuition increases. tuition all at once. Although increasing student tuition is a dif“I don’t want to ficult decision to make, minimize the imXiong cites several inipact of any tuition Evans Kaame, vice president of the Associated Students tiatives that are set in increase on stuof WSU Vancouver, discusses the ways in which stuplace to financially supdents, but I think a dent government tried to push back on the 2.5% tuition port students in need rational tuition polincrease. of additional funding. icy says expenses (Emily Baumann/ The VanCougar) are always going “I’ve worked in highto go up. The state er ed for over seven appropriation [to years, and every time fund the university] we talk about tuition is always going to increase, that’s one be in flux, and havof the first things to ing a tuition policy think about, because that says every year you do have the prowe are going to do portion of students something small, rewhose financial need is ally serves students different,” Xiong said. much better than “The big initiatives suddenly being hit we’ve done this year with a double-dighave a lot to do with it tuition increase,” federal funding, HighNetzhammer said. er Education Emergency Relief Funds at While the univerWSU Vancouver. But sity system has to my understanding is keep a balanced budthat, just on our camget in mind, numerpus alone, we have ous factors are conawarded [over] 8 miltributing to WSU’s lion in about 5,400 establishment of tuiawards this past year.” tion dollars. Finding the balance between Therefore, when the the settlement to inpandemic began to crease rates for the impact students, degreater good, and velopment initiatives not hindering stuwere then created to dents’ ability to afsustain major student ford their education, relief efforts. This inwill surely exist cludes federal HEERF as an ongoing funds, gift topic within the campus community.
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Commit to
community:
Felix Braffith’s new dance class Arabelle May | Reporter On top of being a lively cardio exercise, dance is also a form of expression. Aspiring to build a community promoting values of equity, diversity and inclusion, WSU Vancouver faculty member, Felix Braffith, invites other VanCougs to move with him in his new class, Commit Dance Fitness.
“I don’t consider myself a dancer. I like music, and I like to move and have fun. It’s about being comfortable and participating in a larger community and building confidence. If you develop the confidence to dance in front of people, then that translates to the classroom, and into your Braffith is the university’s director of student equity, sucpersonal life and professional goals,” Braffith cess and inclusive excellence, teaching dance classes using choexplained. “A lot of people think public speakreography videos from Commit Dance Fitness, a program deing is the scariest thing, but dancing is on a whole other level. I signed for enhancing inclusivity and dynamic movement. Started use [dancing] as a way to help students build body confidence.” by Donna Black, a trainer in the dance fitness comAngel Figueroa, senior majoring in elementary ed“A lot of people think public munity in Tacoma, ucation and attendee of the class, says its accessibilWashington, ity is a key driver in encouraging students to exerspeaking is the scariest thing, but Commit Dance cise while still having fun in an inviting space. dancing is on a whole other level. Fitness aims I use [dancing] as a way to help towards bring“The benefit is that you get to know people from diing together verse groups, and come together to enjoy an activity students build body confidence.” communities and build healthy habits. That’s important for people - Felix Braffith across the U.S. who may have impediments with other forms of workBringing their own outs, like heavy lifting. It’s a fun way to keep moving experience to and stay in shape with other people” Figueroa said. the dance floor, each instructor combines dance and workout movments from their own cultures, incorporatBraffith’s class is held in the Fitness Center and ocing them into Commit Dance Fitness’ choreography. curs every Friday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Spreading positivity through movement and music, “[The class] was created by a diverse group. It’s meant he hopes to motivate VanCougs by inspirto be inclusive, empowering, queer-friendly and everying them to be self-assured and uplifted withbody who’s an instructor gets to bring their own culin the community of Commit Dance Fitness. ture and identity into the dynamic,” Braffith said. Commit Dance Fitness utilizes dance movements and exercises from different cultures, such as Zumba to jazzercise, making it accessible for students of all backgrounds and experience levels. By creating a space of diverse bodies, Braffith’s goal is to offer a safe outlet to improve personal health and community care for the campus.
Felix Braffith at his Commit Dance Fitness class. (Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
Emily Baumann| Editor-in-Chief Greeted with vibrant colors and white chocolate mermaid tails, there’s no question Vancouver waterfront’s new milkshake bar, The Yard, will draw in tourists with their overthe-top indulgent treats. As the shop has certainly gained popularity over the past month since its grand opening, you might be asking yourself one question, is it worth the hype? Created by Logan and Chelsea Green, The Yard officially came into fruition in 2019 when the company appeared on ABC’s hit TV series “Shark Tank”. Soon after, they launched 19 locations across the country. Being the only shop in the Pacific Northwest, The Yard opened on Aug. 21 in the heartland of downtown Vancouver on 656 Waterfront Way. With 24 ice cream flavors, 18 specialty shakes and 60 topping options, the shop allows room for versatility, but offers limited options for gluten-free and vegan customers. While The Yard’s specialty shakes are its best-sellers, the milkshake shop also serves sundaes, ice cream pints, bowls and edible cookie dough. If you’re searching for a rich brownie batter shake, one may consider trying the Peanut Butter Brownie Bliss shake. Coated in peanut butter drizzle, whipped cream and a whole brownie placed on top, the shake doesn’t fail to deliver an overloaded chocolate sensation. Another option is the classic Neapolitan Sundae. This shake includes a trio of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream rolled in rainbow sprinkles, garnished with a waffle, whipped cream and a cherry on top. Although the shop encapsulates everyone’s childhood dream, these novelty toppings come with a price, and leads to a brutal awakening. Each shake costs $18.63 a pint, with the souvenir jar included. In my opinion, because The Yard oversaturates some of their milkshakes with underwhelming ingredients, such as bland cupcakes or stale Cookie Crisp cereal, what the customer is really paying for is the experience rather than top-notch ice cream. Overall, The Yard achieves an eccentric ambiance for visitors and Vancouver residents alike. However, if you’re wanting to splurge on desserts outside the realm of a typical ice cream parlor, make sure to leave all your high milkshake expectations at the door.
The Yard’s Peanut Butter Brownie Bliss milkshake. (Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
October m a r k yo u r c a l e n da r . . .
FRI.
1
MON.
Commit Dance Fitness with Felix 2:00 - 2:50 p.m. Fitness Center
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WSU Career Expo 12:00 - 4:00 p.m. Via Zoom
WED.
The Privilege of Passing: Always Proud but Tired of Being Loud 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. Via Zoom
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SUN.
10
Rock Climbing and Belaying at The Source 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
FRI.
15
Dance Workshop and BBQ 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Fitness Center
MON.
18 WED.
20 WED.
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Floats for Votes 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. VFSC Patio
Disability Representation in Film 10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Disability in Relationships 12:00 - 1:30 p.m. Via Zoom
BaCE: Confronting Free and “Hate” Speech on Campus and in the Classroom 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. Via Zoom
Next issue of The VanCougar on stands Nov. 1