Richard (Dick) Sleight

WSHS Alumni Association class of '73 representative  email me

My three summers after WSHS were spent at Camp Parsons B.S.A. on Hood Canal.  I was voted "Staff Man of the Year" in 1975.

I attended the University of Washington, and although I changed majors from Electrical Engineering to Economics in my junior year, I kept my T.A. job in Engineering.  So, even though I obtained a B.A. in Economics and a teaching certificate in secondary social studies, doing my student teaching at Lincoln and Roosevelt, I was hired in January 1978, at the age of 22, as a Lecturer in the University of Washington College of Engineering.  I taught Engineering Graphics, and FORTRAN programming which I first taught as a senior at West Seattle at the request of Mr. Culver!  In 1980, I completed an M.Ed. in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in measurement and statistics. 

In September 1980, I looked up WSHS friend Nancy Rutherford and we were engaged three weeks later. 
(It happens.)  We moved to west Bellevue in 1981, and rebuilt that first house in 1992-93.  Nancy designed the new house and was the General Contractor for the whole project.

By 1988-89, I was the undergraduate chair of the Industrial Engineering program at the UW, when I left there and moved three miles down the Lake Washington Ship Canal to Seattle Pacific University. 
That year, I completed my Ph.D. from the UW College of Education, receiving the Gordon C. Lee Award for the best doctoral dissertation, thanks in great part to Nancy's editorial skill.

I was Captain of the WSHS Cross Country and Track & Field teams our senior year.  I finished 2nd in the Metro League Southern Division championship race in Cross Country, and 4th in the Metro League championships in Track with a 9:52 two-mile time.  But my running days ended in 1998 when I broke my leg in a bicycle accident.

I retired from SPU in June 2021, and was granted Faculty Emeritus status.  I'd held a hybrid faculty/staff position in the SPU School of Business, Government, and Economics and was the school's information and technology manager.  I regularly taught Microsoft Excel, web design, and Business Statistics.  I continue as the editor of the EmeriTimes, the newsletter for SPU's Emeriti faculty.

Nancy and I have three children, all of whom graduated from Bellevue Christian School and Seattle Pacific University.  We welcomed our 10th grandchild in January 2023 and #11 is due in October 2024.  They are all under seven years old.  Three of them are not actually biologically ours.  Their mom was a foster kid so she had nobody to serve as grandparents to her children.  So, her kids call me "Grandpa" too!

My interests include Northwest Coast Native Art, photography (especially photographing our grandchildren now), British Naval fiction, and freshwater tropical fish keeping.  I added vegetable gardening to that list in a big way beginning in the "stay home, stay healthy" year of 2020. 

Since 2012, I've taught Bible classes at the Emerald Heights Retirement Community in Redmond. (God got my attention the day Mount St. Helens blew.)

Since 2018, I have been our class representative with the West Seattle
High School Alumni Association and was a co-chair of our very succesful 50th high school reunion committee.  I am also a member of the West Seattle High School Monogram Club, an association of former varsity athletes.

Feel free to email me at SL8@spu.edu
or dr.sleight@gmail.com.

Additional information about me is available at SL8.com and LinkedIn.