Colleen J. McElroy, a nationally known poet and the first Black woman to serve as a full-time faculty member at the University of Washington, died of natural causes Dec. 12. She was 88. McElroy was a prolific writer and dominant force in the American poetry world. As a professor, she helped hundreds of students hone their voice, shepherding future generations of writers and artists.
Reddy specializes in challenging colonial systems, with a focus on migration, and racialized genders and sexualities. Reddy plans to use the award to continue to work with local groups in the region, like the Massage Parlor Outreach Project (MPOP) in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District and to complete a co-authored book with Jodi Melamed at Marquette University, “Operationalizing Colonial Racial Capitalism: On Liberalism’s Command Powers,” which is under contract with Verso Press.
The University of Washington’s newest freshman class is one of the most diverse in the school’s 162-year history. Of the 8,559 new undergraduates at the Seattle campus, a record 1,509 or 17.6%, a record high percentage, are historically underserved students of color.
Karen Thomas-Brown leads the College of Engineering’s Office of Inclusive Excellence (OIE). For the OIE team, inclusive excellence means centering inclusion and equity practices in an educational environment in ways that ensure all students, faculty and staff feel they have the opportunity to be successful and to advance.
How Polly (Rigdon) Olsen, 94, and other Yakama tribal members helped teach Tom Hinckley, ’71, to broaden his understanding of natural resource leadership. By listening to the original stewards of the land, adding their voices to the course and eventually handing over the reins, he became a true part of the forest ecosystem.
For months, the students have come to the Burke Museum classroom at least once a week to carve canoe paddles from yellow cedar.
With only hand tools to shape the wood, the students – mostly University of Washington undergraduates, as well as a few alumni, faculty and staff – carve the traditional Coast Salish paddles not for themselves, but for a canoe, the Willapa Spirit.
The impact that our program has is building that community, number one, so students can actually feel like they belong somewhere with other people like them,” said Kayla Brown, a DO-IT program coordinator who was a DO-IT Scholar in 2005.
To provide more resources for educators, the Muckleshoot Tribal College and the University of Washington Tacoma began offering an educational doctoral program centered on Indigenous curriculum and taught by Indigenous instructors. On June 9, with an in-person ceremony, 10 members of the Muckleshoot cohort received their doctoral degrees.
The book is incredibly in-depth and traverses disciplines such as literary studies and archaeology with a critical eye that counters the white supremacist notion of Native earth art forms as bygone or archaic.
The creation of the Family Room and a registered student organization offer new resources to the Native and Indigenous community at UW Tacoma.