University Overview

Recent Accomplishments: Poised for Unprecedented Opportunities

Under the leadership of the late President Elson S. Floyd, Washington State University made significant progress toward its vision of becoming one of the nation’s leading land-grant institutions. In fact, due to a series of watershed accomplishments in recent years, the University is poised to enter an era of unprecedented opportunities. Among the most notable milestones:

• In September, the WSU community celebrated the completion of a $1 billion fundraising campaign that was supported by 206,000 donors.
• The 2015 fall semester statewide enrollment of nearly 30,000 students was a record. Students of color represented nearly 28 percent of the enrollment.
• The University is in the early phases of establishing the second publicly funded medical school in Washington at its health sciences campus in Spokane. Creation of the new school, recently named the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, was approved by the legislature during its 2015 session. All of WSU’s health sciences programs are now consolidated at the Spokane campus, including the colleges of nursing and pharmacy.
• Annual research expenditures grew to more than $335.9 million in 2015, placing WSU in the top 11 percent of public universities nationally for research funding.
• The University completed 30 major construction projects from 2007 to 2015, including one of the world’s most technologically advanced wine science centers at WSU Tri-Cities, the PACCAR Environmental Technology Building on the Pullman campus, and the Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Building at WSU Spokane.
•  WSU and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were selected by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2013 to co-lead a new national Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and the Environment.
• The Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health opened in 2012 with anchor gifts from Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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