UW News

September 24, 2012

News Digest: Discount Stanford tickets for faculty/staff, checklist for smart computing, scorecard for St. Helens, Honor: D. Boersma, environmental-humanities confab

UW offers discount Stanford football game tickets for faculty/staff
The Husky football team plays its Pac-12 opening game against Stanford 6 p.m.,  Thursday at CenturyLink Field. Athletics is offering a special ticket discount to UW faculty and staff for that game: $74 reserved seats will be $52. Order tickets and enter the special offer code UWSTAFF. Questions? Contact the Husky ticket office at 206-543-2200 or tickets@uw.edu.

It’s a new year: UW offers checklist for secure/smart computing
Your UW NetID and password – along with other login credentials – are valuable, especially to cyber thieves, who would use them to generate spam or to gain access to personal data, UW information systems and the wealth of resources available to the university community.

The UW suggests quick tips for smart computing such as not sharing your password with anyone, not using the same password for more than one account and avoiding passwords that are easy to guess.

Prepare for the new academic year by reviewing basic security practices to safeguard personal and UW institutional information. The UW Chief Information Security Officer has helpful tools such the Whole Disk Encryption Guideline, Passwords and Passphrases and other information security and privacy online training modules.

Mount St. Helens eruptsEvans School students issue scorecard on St. Helens management
The work of three Evans School of Public Affairs students who interned with the National Parks Conservation Association is being highlighted by the association as it calls for new management of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

In 2009, an advisory committee of citizens, business leaders and elected officials released a report making 35 recommendations for improving U.S. Forest Service management of the monument.

As interns with the National Parks Conservation Association in 2011, students Kiyana Allen Glass, Kyle Butler and Katherine Gibbons studied the progress made toward satisfying those recommendations. Each master of public administration student at the Evans School completes 400 hours in such a public service-focused internship.

After lengthy research including site visits and interviews, the students issued a report finding that 11 of the 35 recommendations had been achieved, some progress had been made on seven, one could not be evaluated and “little or no progress” had been made on 16 others. The students also wrote that many of the committee’s recommendations were “vague and difficult to quantify.”

In a Sept. 18 news release, National Parks Conservation Association’s Northwest policy director Sean Smith cited the work, saying, “a 33 percent success rate by the U.S. Forest Service is a far cry from a win in my book. We can and must do better . . . it is time for Mount St. Helens to become a national park.”

Dee BoersmaDee Boersma receives Motar Board alumni award
The Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society has named Dee Boersma, UW professor of biology as the winner of its annual Alumni Achievement Award. Described by the New York Times as the “Jane Goodall of penguins,” Boersma has dedicated decades to extensive research on penguins and other sea birds. Mortar Board is a national honor society that recognizes college seniors for outstanding achievement in scholarship, leadership and service.

The society has 229 chapters with nearly a quarter-million members. The organization’s alumni award goes to someone who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in his or her professional life.

UW holds first transatlantic conference on environmental humanities
The Transatlantic Research Network in the Environmental Humanities conducts its first conference Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28 and 29, at the UW.

The symposium, which is free,  brings together scholars to address humanistic environmental issues in a global and collaborative cross-disciplinary framework. Speakers will share their research projects, meet with local and regional clusters of scholars in the environmental humanities, develop agendas for collaborative publishing projects and plan future gatherings.

The transatlantic network was made possible by the Alexander von Humboldt Alumni-Prize awarded in 2011 to Sabine Wilke, professor and chair of Germanics.  The conference is sponsored by Simpson Center for the Humanities, the UW departments of English and Germanics and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.