Quality Time
When Dean Headley speaks, everyone listens — at least when the topic is airline service.
Headley, WSU professor of marketing, and colleague Brent Bowen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha presented their annual national Airline Quality Rating, a performance study of the 10 major U.S. airlines, this April at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. After releasing the 1999 business-year findings, Headley spread the news on CNN, ABC’s “20/20” and NBC’s “Today” shows. The AQR also received press in newspapers across the country, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
So, what are the findings that provoked such media coverage? The highest rating went to Southwest Airlines, followed by Continental, Delta, Northwest, Alaska Airlines, US Airways, American Airlines, America West and TWA. Flying in the rear at No. 10 is United.
Recipe for Success
You’ve heard this one: “So, how’d you like them cookies?”
Quaker Oats liked Julie (Robertson) Veith’s ’79 cookies a great deal. They paid $10,000 for her “Millennium Mocha Rocky Road Oatmeal Cookies” recipe. Move over, Emeril Lagasse and Sara Moulton. Veith, a full-time nurse, wife and mother, learned about the contest on the Internet and asked her husband and their two sons what would make the best oatmeal cookies. They came up with altering Quaker Oats’ basic recipe to accommodate for extra sweetness from such ingredients as marshmallows and chocolate.
While she’s thrilled with the win and the money, Veith says with a laugh, “These days, $10,000 doesn’t go as far as it used to.” Perhaps not, but oh, how sweet it is!
Crocsidental Tourist
George Robbins ’48, of Lacey, Wash., is spending six weeks this summer adventuring in the Land Down Under.
The retired elementary school teacher, now on his third trip to Australia, reminds us it’s fall on the continent of Vegemite and Fosters. The coolness of the season, though, isn’t chilling his enthusiasm.
His first trip, back in 1997, was inspired by a passion for the books of Arthur Upfield. “His 31 mystery stories — I have them all — cover nearly every part of Australia,” Robbins relates.
And the few things Australian that Upfield’s books don’t include, well, Robbins is discovering them for himself. Last year, on his second trip, he was excited to meet Steve Irwin, a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter, known for his dangerous love of strange and deadly animals. Robbins says he feels an affinity for Australia. As he wrote in a recent issue of Outback Magazine, “I feel pretty much at home in your Outback.”
He’s Got Mail
Ken Pitetti, WSU public health sciences professor, was working on a manuscript one day this spring when the e-mail icon blinked on his screen and he saw “You’re a Winner!” in the subject header. Thinking someone was just trying to sell something, he nearly deleted the message. But some inkling of curiosity stayed his hand, and he discovered he'd been chosen Best Teacher in Wichita as part of KWCH TV 12’s annual Wichita’s Best contest.
Toxic Soup
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has strung signs along the Arkansas River as it wends its way through and out of Wichita: No Boating! No Swimming! No Water Skiing!
While the signs aren’t posted literally, the KDHE has issued a warning that the river is unsafe for recreational activities and is under a court order to clean it up. Diving in to help is Mike Lydy, WSU associate professor in biological sciences. “I feel out of place if I’m not near water,” says Lydy, who in the 1980s did research on Ohio’s Cuyahoga River, which was so polluted it actually caught on fire. “But,” he adds, “I’d like to have water I can actually get in.”
Since 1995, he and a number of graduate students have been researching water quality in the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers, working on various state and federal grants. The goal is a better understanding of not only single pollutants, but also how certain chemicals combine and what the long-term effects of such mixtures are. “We don’t have a very good handle on individual compounds,” Lydy warns, “but when you put them in a soup, that makes it even more difficult to determine what’s going on.”
Periodic Tables
Ruth and Lloyd McKinley — he, the namesake of WSU’s McKinley Hall — hung the Periodic Chart of the Elements above their daughter’s crib. Harriet JoAnn McKinley ’50 never forgot how much the discipline of chemistry meant to her parents. As a result, she is one of the most dedicated supporters of the McKinley Hall renovation project.
Now retired from a 40-year career as a physical therapist, she had to smile when she discovered that in recognition of her recent gift to the project her name will be engraved on another Periodic Chart, this one to be hung in McKinley Hall after construction is complete.
