October 7, 2004
Campus news & notes
TWO-WHEEL TOURISM: For a couple of UW professors, the life of the mind during the academic year is nicely balanced by a little bodily exertion over the summer. Pete Dukes, associate dean for undergraduate programs in the business school, and Jim Morrow, professor of mathematics, took a long trip by bicycle. The men, along with two other friends, were doing the second leg of a trip across the United States. Last year they went from the Pacific Ocean to the North Dakota border; this year they started at the Wyoming/South Dakota border and finished at the Indiana border, averaging 80 miles a day. Along the way they stopped off in Dukes’ hometown, Amboy, Illinois, where they got their picture taken for the front page of the local paper. They plan to finish the trip next year.
MAKING IT HAPPEN: Talk about class work that means something in the real world. Six students from Janice Laakso’s Contemporary Social Policy class at the UW Tacoma won a national award for influencing state policy. The class successfully advocated for passage of House Bill 2769 and Senate Bill 6411, known collectively as the Family Stabilization and Emergency Hunger Act in the 2004 session of the Washington State Legislature. The award — given by Influencing State Policy, an affiliation of social work educators — was given to Laakso and students Julie Nygaard, Catherine Wilson, Malinda Brown, Pat Cripe, and Robert Nowak, and recent graduate Jeannie Jackson.
RESTORATION HONOR: A UW program that brings together students from all three campuses to restore damaged landscapes has received the John Rieger Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration International. The award recognizes major contributions to the theory, practice or public awareness of restoration. UW Bothell Associate Professor Warren Gold and UW Seattle Professor Kern Ewing helped establish the University’s Restoration Ecology Network in 1998 as a three-campus program. A number of faculty from all three campuses have been involved since then.
LITTER PATROL: Kudos to the staff at the Center for Sustainable Forestry at Pack Forest, who completed another successful Adopt-A-Highway road cleanup along SR-7, which borders the forest (see photo). The staff collected over 30 bags of trash, five bags of recyclable bottles and cans, eight tires, a microwave oven and a boat trailer.
MANAGING TO EXCEL: Three members of the Management & Organization department at the UW’s Business School won awards at the Academy of Management conference held recently in New Orleans. Assistant Professor Corey Phelps received the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management. Assistant Professor Mina Yoo received the Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Entrepreneurship Division of the academy. And Assistant Professor Christina Fong won the Academy of Management Learning and Education’s Best Paper Award. This award recognizes the article published in the journal in the past two years that is judged by a panel of scholars to have made an important impact on the field of management education.
RANKING RESEARCHER: Gene Sackett, professor emeritus of psychology and core staff member at the Primate Research Center, received the Edgar A. Doll award from the American Psychological Association. The award is given by APA Division 33, Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, for “outstanding research and sustained contributions to the understanding of mental retardation and developmental disabilities.” Sackett was associate director for behavior research at the UW Center on Human Development and Disabilities from 1972 until 2001.
NOTEWORTHY RECOGNITION: Music Professors and composers Richard Karpen and Tom Collier have been chosen as ASCAP Award winners. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers gives the awards based upon the “unique prestige value” of each writer’s catalog of original compositions, as well as recent performances.
KINGLY AWARD: King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon by Earth & Space Sciences Professor David Montgomery is one of 10 books to win a Washington State Book Award (formerly known as the Governor’s Writers Award). The award honors books published by Washington authors during the previous calendar year. The panel selects books based on three criteria: literary merit, lasting importance, and overall quality of the publication.
COOL, CLEAR WATER: Sally Brown, Assistant Research Professor in the College of Forest Resources, has been selected to receive the Environmental Protection Association’s National Clean Water Act Recognition Award for outstanding biosolids research efforts. This award is being made for first place in the Biosolids Exemplary Management Awards Program category for Research Activities. EPA based the selection on Brown’s laboratory and field-scale research demonstrating the effective use of biosolids to reduce metal toxicity on severely contaminated soils.
EXCELLENCE IN DIVERSITY: Sandra Madrid, assistant dean for student affairs and administration at the UW School of Law, recently received the Washington State Bar Association’s Excellence in Diversity Award. She was selected for her efforts to improve diversity awareness and her objective that Washington’s legal profession should more accurately reflect today’s ethnically varied society. Madrid has implemented several outreach programs at the law school, including a project funded by the Law School Admissions Council to attract more Native American students.
Do you know someone who deserves kudos for an outstanding achievement, award, appointment or book publication? If so, send that person’s name, title and achievement to uweek@u.wash ington.edu.
