Vince Stricherz

After washing out of my first freshman year at USD, I spent a couple years knocking around -- making snow at Great Bear, working construction, driving a taxi -- before returning to school. I graduated 1997 with degrees in political science and broadcast journalism, and even managed to do play-by-play for a few USD football and basketball games.

My career started as news director at KORN Radio in Mitchell. A year later I got my first newspaper job at the Daily Republic in Mitchell; my boss was a cousin I didn't know I had, David Kranz, later of Argus-Leader fame. A couple of years later I joined United Press International in Lincoln, Neb.; my boss was Gina Hills, who a few years later became my wife (and is still my boss). A number of career moves took me to Omaha, New Orleans and Indianapolis, where I covered state government, among other issues, and even helped out on two Indy 500 races!

Three years later we headed cross-country to our current home, Seattle, where Gina worked at one of the city's newspapers and I worked at the other. I later was a reporter/editor at a suburban daily before landing the plum job of my life as a science writer in the news office at the University of Washington, one of the premier research institutions in the country.

For 17 years I covered physical sciences such as geology, astronomy, physics, atmospheric sciences and biology, working with reporters locally, nationally and internationally on stories about ground-breaking research. This afforded some amazing opportunities, including a trip to Cape Canaveral to see the launch of a space mission headed by a UW astronomer, and later to Utah to see the return capsule make a soft landing.

Since retiring in 2015, I have spent time volunteering on what I consider some important issues: affordable housing; environmental protection and climate change; and racial justice. We've also taken some interesting trips that included brief stops in Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, and several cities in Europe. I am a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and, though I missed out on Knight Singers, I've spent the last 20 years singing bass in our church choir and look forward to singing again post-pandemic.