Impact. > 2019 top ten > Austin Anderson

Austin Anderson

Campus Involvement

  • Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, Honors College
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Spokane, Washington

Involvement

Captain of WSU Cheerleading team (three-time national finalist, including the best showing ever by the Cougar cheerleaders), resident adviser at Global Scholars Hall, studied abroad in Ecuador and Ireland, team member in the Innovation for Sustainability Energy Research Group that develops methods for hydrogen fuel cell storage (recipients of an Amazon Catalyst award), environmental health and safety intern with Collins Aerospace, Coug Pals letter exchange between student athletes and elementary school students. Appeared on ESPN, Fox Sports, and beyond for his rapid-fire dabbing on Dad’s Weekend.

Favorite WSU experience

An easy one is College GameDay. In the years I’ve been here, we’d been close a few times. In the weeks leading up to it, it was either us or another game—it was always the other game. So when I found out it was coming here, to get to have that my senior year, meant a lot to me. When we actually got to the day, it was ridiculous. We were getting up at 3 a.m. to do some news interviews. At 4 a.m., everyone was freezing and we were shivering in our uniforms, but there were students as far as you could see behind you. There’s hundreds of Cougar flags in the air and Ol’ Crimson in the background. The student signs were hilarious, so we handed them to the girls and lifted them up to get the signs on television. It was so much fun.

Future plans

I haven’t locked down the exact industry I want to go into. That’s a big part of why I went into chemical engineering, because it’s very diverse. I’d like a job where I can go to many different sites. My senior project was building distillation equipment for a Tri-Cities company, Solar Spirits. I want to do something like that, where it makes peoples’ lives better, then balancing that with something I enjoy doing and I wake up in the morning excited to go to work. I also want to combine my passion for engineering with my passion for business.