June 2, 2000
UW professors to explore Wenatchee orchard industry June 12 during Faculty Field Tour
A busload of University of Washington professors will visit Wenatchee’s Stemilt packing plant and Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center June 12 as part of the third annual UW Faculty Field Tour.
The orchard-industry tours will highlight Day 1 of a five-day, 1,000-mile tour designed to give incoming UW faculty an understanding of and appreciation for the state, and a chance to make teaching, research and public-service connections.
“This is becoming a UW tradition,” said President Richard L. McCormick. “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.”
The 30 new faculty members and librarians are scheduled to arrive at 3 p.m. at the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center, 1100 N. Western Ave.,Wenatchee, where they will tour a test orchard and learn about the latest tree-fruit research.
The group then will reboard the bus for an hour-long tour of the Stemilt Growers Inc. packing plant, 123 Ohme Garden Road, that is expected to begin about 4:30 p.m. Stemilt is one of the largest tree-fruit suppliers on the West Coast, its 700 employees shipping last year more than 8 million boxes of pears, apples and cherries.
The group later will hear a 7:30 p.m. dinner lecture on Washington state history and economics by William Beyers, UW professor of geography, at its stop for the night: the West Coast Wenatchee Center Hotel.
The bus moves out the next day to Grand Coulee Dam for a 1 p.m. tour and presentation on business development at the Colville Reservation. The rest of the week includes a visit to Fairchild Air Force Base; a roundtable discussion on high-tech industries in Spokane; a tour of the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, a panel discussion in the Tri-Cities on salmon restoration; a visit to a UW family-practice clinic in Yakima; a discussion of educational-outreach partnerships in the Yakima Valley; a lecture on UW-student community-revitalization projects in Wapato; a tour of Goldendale Aluminum; an inspection of Mount St. Helens reforestation efforts; a trip to a Boeing plant in Puyallup; and a tour of the Technology Access Foundation in Seattle.
In addition to hearing presentations about Washington’s economy, geography, history, politics and society, some participants can expect to develop ideas for relating research and teaching initiatives to state needs. And they are likely to form connections that may lead to collaborative research projects with organizations around the state.
The tour is open to faculty members who have been at the UW for three years or less. They were selected to represent the Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma campuses and a wide variety of academic disciplines, ranging from architecture to zoology.
Among the newcomers are Jack Faris, vice president for university relations, and Yash Gupta, dean of the Business School. McCormick also will participate, though another commitment will keep him from joining the tour until Monday’s dinner event in Wenatchee. The university covers meals, lodging and transportation for the tour using non-state-appropriated funds. The total cost 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 the WSU research center, contact Jay Brunner at (509) 663-8181 x 238. For more information on Stemilt, contact Nate Reed at (509) 663-1451.
