ARCS Set for Banner Year in 2008
After launching hundreds of careers and awarding millions of dollars to outstanding graduate students, the Seattle Chapter of the ARCS Foundation (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) is poised for a banner year as it celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2008. The ARCS Foundation is one of the largest foundation donors to the University of Washington and among its most steadfast long-term partners.
Volunteers of the Seattle Chapter, a group of more than 110 women in the Puget Sound area, are dedicated to helping graduate students in science, engineering and medicine earn advanced degrees (PhDs) and become leaders of world-wide scientific discovery. Since 1978, they have provided merit-based fellowships totaling approximately $10 million. As a result, the ARCS Foundation has greatly helped the University of Washington and Washington State University recruit highly gifted graduate students.
Currently on the UW campus 116 ARCS Fellows in many disciplines pursue research, ranging from Tsunami prediction to vaccine development, plus much more. One third-year ARCS Fellow, doctoral student Jevin West (in photo), presented his research to an enthusiastic audience of about 400 at the ARCS Annual Foundation Luncheon in November 2007. His work presents biology as a science of interactions and how living networks can inform and illuminate many aspects of society—that “the whole is the sum of its parts—plus the interactions between the parts.” Dozens of other ARCS Fellows like West are making major contributions to new knowledge in laboratories throughout Washington.
A series of celebratory anniversary events throughout 2008 will highlight many success stories like West’s, as well as those among 700+ ARCS Fellows alumni. A special edition of the UW Graduate School Alumni e-newsletter in Spring 2008 will focus exclusively on the ARCS Foundation and its amazing, wide-ranging impact on the UW, throughout the State of Washington, and far beyond. For more information about the ARCS Seattle chapter, visit http://www.arcsfoundation.org/Seattle/ARCS_1.asp