To Ephrata and Beyond In 2011, when WGU Washington was founded, the university launched a series of television commercials featuring a billboard. “The commercials explained that WGU Washington was new, and that we didn’t have a lot of money for marketing, so we bought one billboard in Ephrata, which is a teeny little truck stop drive-through town in the center of the state,” said Jean Floten, Chancellor, WGU Washington. “We put a webcam on the billboard, but of course, it registered absolutely nothing. It was hysterical. It was the sleepiest webcam you’ve ever seen,
but it captured people’s fancy, and they couldn’t stop talking about it. Even when a spider took up residence in the lens, people commented on the fly that it caught.” Eventually, the billboard was placed on the back of a truck and driven around the state of Washington, with students and graduates clamoring to pose in front of the billboard for pictures. 95