Ken Casavant's MOTTO: DON’T DO ANYTHING UNLESS IT’S FUN

By Pat Caraher, retired editor of Washington State Magazine and WSU HillTopics

Winter 2017 issue of WSURA (WSU Retirees Association) News newsletter

Ken Casavant provided to PULLMAN :: Cup of the Palouse caption information about the photos in the Winter 2017 issue of WSURA News:

--“After retiring in June (2017), Dorothy and I spent two months in Ireland, separating from the busy life of Pullman and traditional time demands. The picture of us on the bench is of Kylemore Abbey which also has a massive Victorian walled garden—took four hours to see it and all its history.  It includes a Gothic Church and a lot of very green countryside. We had toured the Abbey and were relaxing out on the sun while contemplating our next Guinness. “

--Taken on “Aran Islands, specifically the island of Inishmore; note all the rock wall fences, which were richly attractive.  As the Irish cleared the ground, they had to have some place to put the rocks while delineating ownership; hence, a multi-tasking use of all that stone.  We, along with my hiking sticks, hiked all over the island.”

Casavant’s Motto: 

Don’t Do Anything Unless it’s Fun

By Pat Caraher, retired editor of Washington State Magazine and WSU HillTopics
Winter 2017 issue of WSURA (WSU Retirees Association) News newsletter

Growing up on in rural North Dakota, eight miles from Rolette (pop. 120), Ken Casavant learned a thing or two about farming from his father.  “We raised wheat, cattle, pigs, chickens – anything we hoped to make a dollar from,” he said.

But Casavant was drawn to business side of agriculture, rather than production. He went on to earn B.A. and M.S. degrees in agricultural economics at North Dakota State. He completed his Ph.D. in 1971 at Washington State University, focusing on transportation economics. That specialty would drive a 50-year career in teaching and research at WSU. Professor James C. Nelson, considered by many in the field as the “Father of Transportation  Economics,” became his valued mentor.

Early on Casavant addressed, among other things, the operating cost of moving farm crops to market by truck. For example farmers in areas of his home state were paying $1.60 per mile to move grain to market, while farmers in eastern Washington were trucking wheat at 50 cents a mile.  “I wanted to know why?” Casavant said.

Nelson proved to be a national leader in the free market economics. He didn’t like regulations.  “He was a good technician,” Casavant said.” He showed us what the real costs were and how they compared to rates being charged. Then we could evaluate equity and efficiency.”

At WSU Casavant  divided  his time equally  between teaching and research, plus advising students and outreach activities. 

“The university is a great learning environment.  It is a joy to work with students and see the light go on,” he said. “I believe in economics and they came to believe in economics, too.”

Eric Jessup, one of his former  Ph.D. students, now is co-director (with a retired Casavant) of the Freight Policy Transportation Institute at WSU.  Over the years, the two spent considerable time seeking ways to lower transportation costs.  Every dollar saved in transportation goes into the farmer’s pocket.

For example, he looked at transporting Palouse wheat by truck and rail to Kalama, a major exporter on the Columbia River. Their research showed barging grain out of Almota on the Snake River and Columbia was more economical than the other options. They also investigated the wear and tear on roads resulting from freight movement by trucks, particularly with the declining number of rural railroad lines.

In one study students were hired to track trucks at 40 different sites statewide over a 24-hour period. 

That study was repeated three more times during the changing seasons.  “We stopped a total of 30,000 trucks that year,” Casavant said. Prior to the study, he said , “we’d see a truck go by and we didn’t know what was in it, where it came from, or where it was going?  Were the trucks just “passing through” from Canada, Idaho or Oregon, or were they strictly in-state pickups and deliveries?  Who was “consuming the pavement. And who was paying state highway taxes?   

The methods Casavant and his colleagues used to collect data were accepted nationally.  Over the years WSU has received more than $11 million in federal and state grants for transportation economics.   

Additionally, his research and consulting work has taken him to 51 countries. He designed a physical distribution system for limestone in Portugal. His involvement in a wheat transportation project took him to Timbuktu, Africa.

His teaching efforts have not been without personal recognition at the university, state and national levels. He’s received teaching awards from the College of Agriculture, Human and Natural Resource Sciences, from the Western Agricultural Economics Association and from the National Association of Teachers of Agriculture. In 1982 his WSU peers chose him to deliver the prestigious all-University Distinguished Faculty Address.

When he retired this summer, Casavant ended an 18-year run as WSU’s Faculty Athletic Representative for the Pac-12 Conference. In that capacity, he said he was privledged to work under three athletic directors (Rick Dickson, Jim Sterk and Bill Moos) and four presidents ( Sam Smith, Lane Rawlins, Elson Floyd and Kirk Schulz). He found the opportunity to “work with and protect the student-athlete rewarding.” He salutes retired Associate Athletic Director Marcia Saneholtz’s efforts to significantly increase funding for women athletes.

Through his ties with athletics, Casavant visited approximately 35 college campuses, many for athletic events. “There’s a lot of respect out there for WSU,” he said, “even though we sometimes had the smallest budget and fewer wins.”

Casavant’s far-reaching contributions and service to WSU include serving as interim vice provost for academic affairs and interim vice provost for research. He also chaired university wide committees and task forces, and served as president of the WSU Faculty Senate in the late 80s. He also is a past president of the Pullman Chamber of Commerce and served a four-year term on the Pullman City Council.

His wife of 51 years, Dorothy,  spent 25 years at WSU, retiring as fiscal specialist in the Department of Sociology. 

They have two daughters.  Collette, (Ed.D., Seattle University) is academic coordinator in WSU’s College of Agriculture, Human and Natural Sciences. Michelle (Ph.D., American Studies, University of Kansas), now directs the College of Education’s Multicultural Center at KU. They also have two grandsons.

Casavant attributes his success, in part, to usually being able to get things done that people ask him to do. He finds that a sense of humor makes life easier. When he was younger, he said, he had a motto: “Don’t do anything unless it’s fun” and the second part of that is “Make it fun.”

“That saved me some long days and long nights.” 

His hobbies? For 20 years he was a winemaker. He no longer is. He remains active in partisan politics and reads. He’s completed a couple of chapters on the history of Notre Dame Academy (1906-1968), a French speaking boarding school, where he and Dorothy once were classmates.

“Retirement doesn’t mean you’re not busy,” he says. “You still have to order your activities. We’re working on it.”

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Ken Casavant provided to PULLMAN :: Cup of the Palouse caption information about the photos in the Winter 2017 issue of WSURA News:

--“After retiring in June (2017), Dorothy and I spent two months in Ireland, separating from the busy life of Pullman and traditional time demands. The picture of us on the bench is of Kylemore Abbey which also has a massive Victorian walled garden—took four hours to see it and all its history.  It includes a Gothic Church and a lot of very green countryside. We had toured the Abbey and were relaxing out on the sun while contemplating our next Guinness. “

--Taken on “Aran Islands, specifically the island of Inishmore; note all the rock wall fences, which were richly attractive.  As the Irish cleared the ground, they had to have some place to put the rocks while delineating ownership; hence, a multi-tasking use of all that stone.  We, along with my hiking sticks, hiked all over the island.”