Institutional Support

Washington State University Vancouver is a Tier One Research institution founded in 1983 as part of the Southwest Washington Joint Center for Education. In 1989, the University formally established Washington State University Vancouver as an extension of the state's land-grant institution. The Salmon Creek campus, located on 350 acres near the Columbia River with views of Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood, opened in 1996. WSU Vancouver offers 14 Bachelor's degrees, 9 Master's degrees, 1 Doctorate degree and more than 35 fields of study. In Fall 2006, WSU Vancouver admitted freshmen and sophomores for the first time and began offering lower-division courses.

In the fall 2006 completed construction on a motion tracking lab, called the MOVE Lab (Motion Tracking Virtual Environments lab), for Dr. Dene Grigar, intended to facilitate the study of live, interactive "serious" games involving the entire body of the user; networked and live multimedia performances; and narrative installations and exhibits. The motion tracking technology driving the MOVE Lab is called the Gesture and Media System, proprietary hardware and software devised by Will Bauer (APR, Inc., Canada) and provided by Dr. Steve Gibson (University of Victoria, Canada) through a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is an independent corporation created by the Government of Canada to fund research infrastructure which consists of the state-of-the-art equipment, buildings, laboratories, and databases required to conduct research. The CFI's mandate is to strengthen the capacity of Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions to carry out world-class research and technology development that benefits Canadians."

It has supported innovated projects undertaken in areas such as health, education, and technology, including, $27M to the British Columbia Cancer Agendy, $1.5M to the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, $64M to the University of Victoria, and $257M to The University of British Columbia.

To see the video clip of Grigar and Gibson's November 2006 performance of Virtual DJ held in the MOVE Lab, go to:

http://www.telebody.ws/VirtualDJ/video%20gallery/VDJ_WSU/VDJ_WSU_Duet.html