Western Washington University (WWU), established in 1893, is a medium-sized university with nearly 12,500 students enrolled during the academic year (September through June) and about 3200 students enrolled during the summer. About 92 percent of Western students come from Washington State. The seven colleges within the university are known for academic excellence and innovative programs. They include the College of Business and Economics, the College of Science and Technology, the College of Humanities and Social Science, Huxley College of the Environment, Woodring College of Education, the College of Fine and Performing Arts, Fairhaven College, and the Graduate School.

 

The facilities at Western are very modern and include 18 general purpose computer labs and over 50 departmental computer labs; a new classroom building, just opened in Fall of 2004, for the departments of communications, journalism, computer science and physics; a 60,000 volume library and a music library; the Performing Arts Center. Off-campus academic facilities include the Shannon Point Marine Center in Anacortes, Washington, and Whatcom County property used for environmental and aquatic analyses.

 

For the eighth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Western No. 2 among public master's-granting universities in the West. Yahoo has named Western among the 100 “most wired” universities in the country. Western has been hailed for its national reputation, its high level of individual academic attention given to students from faculty, and for being “academically competitive” by Kaplan/Newsweek’s College Catalog. In 2003, the American Association for Higher Education and the Carnegie Academy selected Western as one of 12 North American leaders in the scholarship of undergraduate teaching and learning.