June 2, 2000
UW president, professors arrive in Yakima Valley June 15 to tour clinic, visit Heritage College and review GEAR UP partnerships
A busload of University of Washington professors will visit the Yakima Valley June 15 for a busy day that includes touring a family-medicine clinic, seeing Heritage College, reviewing educational-outreach efforts in the Yakima Valley and hearing about community-revitalization projects in the town of Wapato.
It’s all part of the UW’s third annual Faculty Field Tour. From June 12-16, UW President Richard L. McCormick will lead 30 new faculty members and librarians on a 1,000-mile, five-day bus trip to give them an understanding of and appreciation for the state, and a chance to make teaching, research and public-service connections.
Arriving in Yakima June 15 from an overnight stay in the Tri-Cities, the group will visit Central Washington Family Medicine, a three-year graduate medical education program, at 9:15 a.m. The family practice center, at 1806 W. Lincoln, serves as a site for the UW Medical School’s required clerkship in family medicine, giving physicians-in-training experience in treating rural and underserved populations.
At 10:30 a.m., the bus leaves the clinic for Heritage College in Toppenish, where, beginning at 11:15, the professors will hear two presentations.
The first is about GEAR UP, an ambitious partnership between the UW, Yakima Valley Community College, community groups, the federal government and Microsoft to provide tutoring and other support to thousands of students in eight Yakima Valley school districts to help prepare them for college.
Next is a presentation by 12 UW students who spent the spring quarter aiding several community projects in Wapato, including downtown revitalization, tourism and teen mentoring. The students come from the UW’s Comparative History of Ideas and Environmental Planning programs, and draw financial support from the UW Office of Minority Affairs.
Heritage College and the University of Washington are longtime collaborators. Current partnerships include “UW @ Heritage College,” which is based in a high-tech Heritage classroom connected to the university campus network in Seattle. The center provides technology education for Heritage faculty and students, with teaching and research residencies for UW graduate students and professors.
At 1:30 p.m., the UW bus heads out for Goldendale, where the professors will tour the Goldendale Aluminum plant before stopping for the night in Vancouver, Wash.
On the way back to Seattle the next day, the group will inspect Mount St. Helens reforestation efforts; visit a Boeing manufacturing plant in Puyallup and tour the Technology Access Foundation in Seattle.
Faculty members on the tour were selected to represent a range of fields, from architecture to zoology, and the Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma campuses.
“This is becoming a UW tradition,” McCormick said. “We want our new professors to get a feel for all of Washington, and to discover how they can work with citizens around the state to address some of their challenges, opportunities and problems.”
This year’s tour also includes Jack Faris, the incoming vice president for university relations, and Yash Gupta, in his first year as dean of the Business School.
The university covers meals, lodging and transportation for the tour using non-state-appropriated funds. The total cost for the week is estimated to be $50,000.
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For more information about the tour, contact Harry Hayward, UW communications and special projects manager, (206) 543-2560 or hhayward@u.washington.edu before the tour, or on the road at cell phone number (206) 484-6796. The full itinerary is on the Faculty Field Tour 2000 Web site at http://www.washington.edu/univrel/facultytour/
For more information on Central Washington Family Medicine, contact Dr. Mike Maples at (509) 452-4520. For more information on Heritage College, contact Robert Ozuna at (509) 865-8672. For more information on GEAR UP, contact Bill Baker, UW associate vice president for minority affairs, at (206) 543-6470 or bbaker@u.washington.edu, or Loueta Johnson, GEAR UP Lower Yakima Valley director, at (509) 574-6810.
