May is bike to campus month

Math at top speed: Exploding drag racing myths
Elementary mathematical frameworks for studying old and new drag racing beliefs – validating some and debunking others – is the subject of this quarter’s MathAcrossCampus lecture, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Friday, May 3, in 220 Kane Hall. Richard Tapia, mathematician at Rice University, will include a historical account of the development of drag racing with videos and pictures depicting his involvement in the early days of the sport. A reception follows the talk.

UW recognized for campus tree management
For the third year in a row, the UW is on the Tree Campus USA list in recognition of excellence in campus tree management by the Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit with more than a million members. The university achieved the title by maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures toward trees, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning projects.

UW Facilities Services

Draining the fountain gives workers a chance to patch the liner.

UW Facilities Services workers began erecting fencing Thursday (May 2) around Drumheller Fountain, half of the photogenic “the fountain and the mountain” view down Rainier Vista. Work is scheduled to be completed May 31 so Drumheller should be back in operation in plenty of time for graduation picture taking.

Every two years the UW drains away the algae-laden water revealing cell phones, sunglasses, cameras and other debris at the bottom. Once the pond has been fully drained and cleaned, the pond liner will be inspected to ensure its integrity and the mechanical parts of the fountain and lights will be examined, according to information from Facilities Services.

After the pond is refilled with fresh water the pumping systems will be tested and adjusted.

“Although this temporary situation may seem unsightly, this routine maintenance will ensure the longevity of this campus feature that so many enjoy visiting,” said Howard Nakase, manager of grounds operations.

Husky Green Awards announced

The award, now in its fourth year, recognizes students, faculty and staff who have demonstrated leadership, initiative and dedication to environmental stewardship and sustainability. A new award this year, the Husky Green Legacy Award, went to the UPass Advisory Board.

Other winners are:

• Duncan Clauson, graduate student, Evans School
• Sunni Wissmer, undergraduate student, College of Built Environment
• Victoria Rice Bean, operating room nurse, surgical department, UW Medical Center
• Brenda Nissley, Harborview Medical Center
• Green Wall, College of Built Environment
• Facilities Construction Shop 54, Facilities Services

Oceanbound on Earth Day
Oceanographers with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory leave on Earth Day aboard the UW’s Thomas G. Thompson to redeploy two ocean monitoring buoys in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Two teachers will join the cruise and share the experience via blogs and Skype chats with their classrooms in Lake Quinault and Bainbridge Island.

Chief scientist Matthew Alford will be collecting data on deep-ocean waves, while Jan Newton will be gathering real-time data on ocean acidification. Six UW graduate students are also onboard. Follow Alford’s blog for updates on the cruise that runs through April 26.

Annual ‘UW Trash-In’ Wednesday
April 24, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Red Square, volunteers will suit up and sort through one day’s worth of trash from around the UW campus. The annual UW Trash-In is a fun and insightful way to explore how much compostable and recyclable material is still being thrown away on campus.

After a brief introduction to the sorting process, volunteers are given cover-up suits, gloves and shoe covers, and sent to a sorting station. Bags of trash are emptied onto tables and volunteers sort materials by type into nearby bins for compost, mixed containers, mixed paper and garbage. There’ll be  music, sorting games and challenges.

“Even avid recyclers or composters can learn a lot at this event,” said Jennifer Perkins with the UW Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability office. “Plus, there is a lot of laughing and dancing. I never knew how fun sorting trash could be.”

 Don’t just save everything: Tips to spring-clean your inbox

We tend to keep nearly all email thinking it will be useful someday. But usually old emails are just obsolete clutter that slow our Outlook accounts and make it hard to find what we actually need.

For most UW employees, 70 to 80 percent of email messages can be deleted, according to email policies provided by UW’s Records Management.

Taking a closer look at how to comply with the university’s requirements for keeping records,  UW Human Resources staff have come up with some tips for downsizing inboxes:

• Click on “Rules/create rule” to automatically move mail into designated, organized folders.
• Create “Quick Steps” and apply them with one click to do things such as create a task with a start and end date, change a message’s status, or flag a message.
• Use the “Clean up” function to remove redundant emails whose content is included in other messages.
• Once an email has been read or acted on, file it or delete it immediately.
• On the File tab, periodically check the bar under “Mailbox Cleanup,” and if you don’t have much storage left do a more extensive purge of email folders and messages, especially those with attachments.

Read more tips on records management in an article by UWHR’s Human Resources Records Management Group.

While supplies last, there’s free coffee and doughnuts from Top Pot Doughnuts at 6 a.m., a HuskyFest T-shirt giveaway at 11:30 a.m. and free ice cream from Cupcake Royale at 12:30 p.m.

KEXP Radio will broadcast live starting at 6 a.m. and has lined up six bands from the Puget Sound area for performances throughout the day, starting at 7:30 a.m. with Jon Russell, Damien Jurado and Tomo Nakayama.

HuskyFest offers additional activities in Red Square and several venues across campus all day.

Highlights of the kick-off for Earth Day include talks by local people tackling major environmental challenges in the greater Seattle community and a “trashion show,” according to Max Sugarman, UW Earth Day coordinator and member of the UW Earth Club that collaboratin with the Office of Environmental Stewardship & Sustainability on this year’s events.

U of Washington

Participants in the 2012 trashion show parade their creations.

Anne Mosness, a fishing boat captain and adviser to the Go Wild Campaign, and James Rasmussen, a member of the Duwamish Tribe and coordinator of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, will speak in Red Square at noon following opening remarks by Julia Parrish, associate dean of the College of the Environment.

Outfits in the trashion show at 2:15 p.m. are made with materials from personal trash and commercial dumpsters, last year including such things as University Bookstore bags and aluminum cans. KING TV’s New Day Northwest previewed this year’s show.

Among other activities Friday there will be more than 35 booths from vendors and campus groups on Red Square, the awarding of the annual Husky Green Awards and a chance to volunteer to plant, weed and mulch at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture and remove invasive species from the nearby Union Bay Natural Area. Work party registration is at 12:30 p.m.

A week of Earth Day activities follow Friday’s kick-off. Sugarman said some highlights are:

• A restoration event at McCarty Hall with the Society for Ecological Restoration and the Campus Sustainability Fund on Monday, April 22, the traditional Earth Day.
• A trash-in with UW Recycling and UW Earth Club, Wednesday, April 24.
• A climate change speaker panel (Facebook RSVP) hosted by the Student Association for Green Environments, Thursday, April 25.

A decade ago, when the Capital Projects Office began keeping tabs on worker injuries, it was estimated that 12 of every 100 workers were injured and lost time on the job, a number deemed unacceptably high, said Ronald Fouty, safety director in capital projects.

Vince Stricherz

Construction workers make progress in building the new Lander Hall.

The first thing was to raise the safety issue with individual contractors, he said. When the contractors saw the university was interested in safety, they took a variety of steps to give it greater emphasis and that alone cut the injury rate in half.

But UW construction managers wanted to do better yet, aiming for “world class safety,” and set a goal of reducing injuries to a rate of less than two per 100 workers per year. In 2012 it happened: an injury rate of 1.41.

The efforts, Fouty estimates, prevented 370 injures in the last decade.

“That’s 370 people who went home in as good a shape or better as when they came to work,” he said.

Fouty also estimates there has been a savings of $11 million in direct costs avoided in the last decade, savings both for the contractors and for the taxpayer-supported state workers compensation system. The time lost per injury has declined as well.

“It’s scary what can happen in construction. That’s the reason we had so much emphasis on planning. The best way to eliminate hazards on the job site is to think about them ahead of time,” Fouty said.

In the last few years, a hard hat has been a far-from-unusual sight on campus. The Capital Projects Office has some 60 projects in active construction at any given time, and another 200 to 250 in other stages from planning to finishing paper work.

Vince Stricherz

Scaffolding is a routine sight on a construction project, particularly for tasks in hard-to-reach places such as this one in the new Lander Hall.

The recent decline in state funding has delayed construction on several projects that have completed the design phase. But with the Husky Union Building renovation, a UW Medical Center Tower project and various new student housing projects, the Capital Projects Office  recorded its busiest year in 2011 and second-busiest in 2012. Still, the focus on safety allowed the injury rate to continue to decline.

But there have been reminders of just how dangerous construction work can be. For example, in June 2012 the campus community held its collective breath as a seasoned demolition worker was severely hurt when a 10-by-30-foot concrete slab crushed the cab of the long-reach excavator he was operating. The man spent months in recuperation and has been able to return to work, Fouty said.

The vast majority of injuries are far less severe, and capital projects personnel have tried to “lead by example” by wearing protective gear themselves whenever they are on a job site. That includes work gloves, Fouty said, an item many construction workers were not in the habit of using but now use more routinely.

“We have seen a significant reduction in cuts and lacerations to the hands and arms in recent years,” he said.

The most common injuries now are muscle pulls and strains, but contractors are encouraged to implement a stretching-and-flexing regimen for workers before they begin their daily routine and that has helped to cut down on injuries.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity not just to get warmed up for work but to talk about the work they’re going to be doing that day and how to perform it safely,” Fouty said.

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]]> http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/03/safety-emphasis-cuts-uws-major-construction-injuries-to-less-than-2-percent/feed/ 0 http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/03/news-digest-montlake-closures-environmental-excellence-finalist-paws-on-science-april-5-7-home-fair-april-11/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news-digest-montlake-closures-environmental-excellence-finalist-paws-on-science-april-5-7-home-fair-april-11 http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/03/news-digest-montlake-closures-environmental-excellence-finalist-paws-on-science-april-5-7-home-fair-april-11/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:27:35 +0000 News and Information http://www.washington.edu/news/?p=23795 Portion of Montlake closing Saturday, Sunday
A portion of Montlake Boulevard in front of Husky Stadium – where a pedestrian/bicycle bridge is being constructed – will be closed to pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicle traffic in both directions from 3 a.m. Saturday, April 6, through 5 a.m. Monday, April 8. The closure will be between Northeast Pacific Street and Northeast Pacific Place.

Northbound traffic will be routed around the Triangle Parking Garage area. Southbound traffic will be directed to Northeast Pacific Street, loop toward the waterfront via Brooklyn Avenue and back up Fifteenth Avenue Northeast, then back on Northeast Pacific heading back to Montlake Boulevard.

Pedestrians and bicyclists will be routed onto a temporary path at the Triangle Parking Garage area.

For more information, contact Sound Transit community outreach, Andrea Burnett, 206-398-5300 or andrea.burnett@soundtransit.org.

UW finalist in environmental excellence contest
The University of Washington is among four finalists in the “Environmental March Madness Tournament,” and in the running to be named the national environmental-excellence champion April 9.

“Our track record in researching and teaching about environmentally sound and sustainable practices and incorporating them into the lives and behaviors of our students is impeccable,” said UW President Michael K. Young. “We are very mindful and self-conscious about the importance of educating the generation that will be taking over from us and – we hope and trust – doing a better job of it. The planet demands it.”

For the challenge, the UW submitted images on Facebook, short essays and YouTube videos documenting environmental and sustainability efforts.

Family-friendly Paws-on Science April 5-7
Nearly 40 UW units will have exhibits and hands-on activities for Huskies of all ages at this year’s Paws-on Science: Husky Weekend at Pacific Science Center, April 5-7. Bring your Husky Card or UW Alumni Association member card to receive a 20 percent discount on general exhibit admission for you and your guests.

Home Improvement Fair April 11
The 16^th annual Home Improvement Fair will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the HUB Lyceum, Room 106.

This year’s theme focuses on appreciating and adapting your home at any stage. Experts will discuss renovating, remodeling, refinancing and buying a home. Exhibitors include LastingNest, Rivalee Design, GreenHomes America and WSU Master Gardeners. There will be refreshments and door prizes.

The event is sponsored by HomeStreet Bank, a partner of the UW Benefits Hometown Home Loan Program. For more information contact Kathleen Dwyer, 206-543-2812, kdwyer@uw.edu or Mary Parker-Hale at 206-616-4932 or mphale@uw.edu.

Linda Hanlon

This image taken March 27 shows trees at 75 percent of full bloom.

Follow the progress
Photos are being posted every few days by Linda Hanlon, manager of the UW Information and Visitors Center, on the center’s Facebook page. You can “like” the Facebook page to follow the progress.  Those images and others are also being compiled into a gallery at the top of the center’s website.

Enter a photo contest
The deadline is March 31 for entering your photos in the “You-W in Bloom,” a Facebook-only contest. Popular vote will determine winners in five categories: Landscape, Husky Spirit, Instagram, Abstract/Artistic and Vintage (photos take prior to 1999). The University Marketing team, which is sponsoring the contest, will also choose a grand prize winner. Cherry blossom-themed prizes will be awarded, according to Elise Daniel, who is spearheading the contest.

UW seeking links to YouTube videos
Harry Hayward with UW media relations and communications is seeking links to YouTube videos featuring the cherry trees in bloom. He’s building a special playlist on the “uwhuskies” YouTube channel. For example there’s “Spring in the Quad,” complete with cute kid and a dog. And a dizzying view of wedding photos being taken and a musician in the video “A dude playing the Harp at the UW in the QUAD.”

Quad not only location for blossoms
The UW’s online Brockman Memorial Tree Tour shows Kwansan cherry trees along Rainier Vista near Stevens Way and Hisakura cherry Trees just off Red Square among the 480-some varieties of trees on campus.

Leila Gray

Window washers scale the new UW Medicine South Lake Union research building on Dexter Avenue North and Republican Street.

The newest research building at UW Medicine South Lake Union is completed, and is now undergoing commissioning and certification. Several UW biomedical research laboratories will be moving in from April through June.

Occupying the seven-story facility will be lab groups involved in kidney research, vision sciences, immunology, rheumatology, and infectious disease investigations.  These scientists are advancing the understanding of multiple sclerosis, blindness, malaria, lupus, renal failure and many other conditions.

Leila Gray

IT equipment is carted into the new facility

The construction is the third stage of development of UW Medicine’s facilities between Dexter Avenue North and Ninth Avenue North and between Mercer and Republican streets.  The Jeffrey and Susan Brotman Building (converted from the former Washington Energy “Blue Flame” building), an administration building and another laboratory building comprise the rest of the present complex.  A companion building, South Lake Union, 3.2, will be built west of South Lake Union 3.1 along the Dexter Avenue North.

The faculty, staff and students relocating to South Lake Union 3.1 will join a dynamic community of scholars. Already at UW Medicine South Lake Union are well-established programs in regenerative medicine and stem cell research, lung inflammation, cancer vaccine development, diabetes and obesity, mitochondrial medicine and several other fields. The move adds 300 to 325 more people to the workday population at UW Medicine South Lake Union, and raises the total to between 1,000 and 1,200.

Leila Gray

The west side of UW Medicine South Lake Union 3.1, seen from the corner of Dexter Avenue North and Republican Street.

“The people who will conduct their research in this building have been deeply involved in its design,” said Dr. John Slattery vice dean for research and graduate education in the UW School of Medicine and professor of pharmacology and of medicine. “As we get to the end of construction they have streamed to visit their new home.

“It is very rewarding to all of us,” he added, “to see how excited they are to move in and put the building to work. Through the process the researchers have come to know one another better, plan their community and interactions and initiate new projects made possible by this facility.  It is wonderful to see – just what we had hoped for.”

Jill K. Morelli, director of facilities for the Office of the Dean of Medicine, defined the purpose of the new building as “100 percent research.” She explained that the move will bring together scientists from different but related fields.

“The new building was designed to facilitate collaboration,” she said. The building has several gathering places for cross-disciplinary conversations. It also has a casual conference room with comfortable furnishings. Morelli called it “the living room of the building.” The building contains two large seminar rooms with videoconferencing capabilities, as well as a lobby and reception desk.“

Leila Gray

The reception area in the lobby of the new building awaits finishing touches.

Morelli described the design of the laboratories and their support areas as innovative and creative.

“They are models for the future and a great addition to the School of Medicine’s research portfolio,” she said.

The grounds for the new building will complement the existing inner plaza at UW Medicine South Lake Union.

“The landscaping,”  Morelli said, “will suggest the same sense of calm and quiet in the midst of busy city as does the plaza outside of South Lake Union I and II. “A water feature, crossed by a footbridge, will create the illusion of a stream flowing through the plaza and around a corner of the building . The setting will create an oasis from the intensity of the research endeavors occurring inside the building.”

Leila Gray

A construction worker at the front entrance to UW Medicine South Lake Union 3.1 on Eighth Avenue North.

There also are plans for a convenience store staffed by UW Housing and Food Services near the new building. Results of a contest to name the compact-size shop dubbed it Micro[scopic] Market.

The cavalcade of events and celebrations held at UW Medicine South Lake Union, and the free bus shuttles that carry people back and forth from Campus Parkway,  UW Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center a few times an hour, are dispelling the notion that UW Medicine South Lake Union is an island apart from the university. Many lectures take place in the large Orin Smith Auditorium, and several local researchers and national figures have attracted large audiences. Even an enterprising boat company has been ferrying people to and from South Lake Union to a Portage Bay dock on the UW west campus for a small fee.

“The additional videoconferencing in three rooms in the new building,” Morelli said, “will complement those elsewhere on the site and further UW Medicine South Lake Union’s connection to the UW Health Sciences and to the world.

A few building facts:

• Board of Regents approval April 2010
• Construction started July 2011
• Architect:  Perkins+Will
• Contractor: Sellen Construction
• Research and research support space:  188,000 gross square feel
• Total space: 330,000 gross square feet
• Parking: 266 spaces plus 2 bays in loading dock
• Cost of construction: $113 million
• Total project cost: $164 million
• Project is on time and on budget

Tracy Mehlin

Riz Reyes said he took inspiration from movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark for his garden featuring rare, wild and little-seen plant species.

Part-time UW gardener designs winning display
Riz Reyes, who works part time as a gardener with the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, claimed the top prize at the Pacific Northwest Flower & Garden Show this week. Reyes, who earned his bachelor’s in environmental horticulture and urban forestry from the UW, owns RHR Horticulture in Shoreline.

The flower and garden show proposed movies as the theme for gardens and Reyes said he took inspiration from Jurassic Park, King Kong and Raiders of the Lost Ark for his garden titled “The Lost Gardener – A Journey from the Wild to the Cultivated.”

Seattle garden writer Valerie Easton blogged, “The cool plant garden that took the Founder’s Cup – “The Lost Gardener” – is by Riz Reyes, a F&G Show first-timer. . . How many years has it been since there’s been a real plant collector’s garden? This one is all about unusual and rare plants, used extravagantly to create a jungle of a garden. How good Riz was rewarded with the big prize for being daring with his plant choices.”

Included in the display are more than 75 different kinds of plants.

At the UW, Reyes works at the Center for Urban Horticulture and is responsible for maintaining the Soest Herbaceous Display Garden.

The flower and garden show continues this weekend.

RecycleMania a chance to increase recycling, composting on campus
You can help the UW’s standings in this year’s RecycleMania by increasing your efforts to recycle and compost between now and March 30.

The RecycleMania competition pits the UW against universities nationwide – including the Pac-12 rivals such as ASU, Stanford and WSU – to determine the top recycler.

Since Feb. 3, UW Recycling has been tracking the amount of recycling, food waste and garbage collected on campus each week. UW is competing in four categories: the highest waste diversion rate (recycling compared to what is thrown away); the highest recycling rate per person on campus; the highest gross tonnage of recycling generated on campus; and the highest percentage of food waste composted per person.

UW Recycling is sharing weekly results on its website, where you can also see results of a competition between UW residence halls sponsored by Housing and Food Services.

The competitions provides incentives to take waste diversion at the UW further, according Jessica Lisiewski, UW Recycling & Solid Waste program coordinator. The more participation across campus, the closer the UW can get to reaching its waste diversion goal of 70 percent by 2020, she said.

Newborn screening test brings chemical society honor to Gelb, Tureček
Michael Gelb and František Tureček, UW chemistry professors, will be presented the Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest for their work in devising methods to detect rare genetic diseases in newborns.

The diseases – which include Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Krabbe, Pompe, Nieman-Pick, Fabry, and Hurler syndromes – affect about one in every 5,000 people and cause serious abnormalities in children, often resulting in premature death. Early detection is important for the best chances of effective treatment.

The procedures for newborn screening developed by Gelb and Tureček have proven so reliable and inexpensive that several states now require that every newborn be tested.

The award will be presented by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society April 4 at Harvard University.

The University of Washington Botanic Gardens started work last August on a two-year project to  digitize those records and create an interactive geographic information systems map for the entire park. Eventually planners and visitors will be able to go online and pinpoint specific plants and collections within the arboretum, and access all sorts of historical details.

UW Botanic Gardens/U of Washington

Handwritten notes and updates for one of the 100-foot by 100-foot parcels in the 230-acre Washington Park Arboretum.

“People will be able to find an area in the arboretum, then zoom down and see which plants are there,” says Tracy Mehlin, project manager and information technology librarian at the UW’s Center for Urban Horticulture. “It will be really fascinating and educational to have all of that history linked to the plant records, and accessible online to everyone.”

One of the first tasks of the project was to begin surveying and verifying the geospatial coordinates of the 230-acre park, which decades ago was divided into 595 grid squares, each 100 feet by 100 feet. When those grid markers and coordinates are confirmed, they will be used to create a map that supports the geo-referenced database. Two- and three-person teams of students and staff have already been out surveying for the past couple months.

It’s a multitiered project, and Mehlin has been working closely with other partners at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

Sarah Reichard, director of UW Botanic Gardens, is the principal investigator on the grant along with Soo-Hyung Kim, a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences. Jim Lutz, a research scientist and engineer with the College of the Environment, has been helping coordinate the student survey crews and GIS mapping. UW information systems engineer David Campbell is working on the searchable database and Web interface.

UW Botanic Gardens/U of Washington

The same grid with digitized information and incorporating GIS mapping.

Others involved are helping with various projects, including digitizing the existing maps, as well as handwritten notes and histories attached to each of the park’s 10,000 “accessions,” plants that are part of the formal collection.  The UW Botanic Gardens owns and manages the collection in the arboretum which is a City of Seattle park.

When completed, the searchable database will be a boon for environmental research, park management and visitors, Reichard said.

“The idea is that eventually you’d be able to get the coordinates of a particular collection, like our magnolias, and locate them on your cell phone or GPS unit,” she said. “We can start putting together virtual tours, and visitors can go from plant to plant.”

Awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the grant is expected to run through August 2014.

Emile Pitre, UW

The Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center at the corner of Brooklyn Avenue NE and NE 40th Street reopens after an extensive 1.5-year renovation.

The University of Washington’s Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity will celebrate the grand opening of the newly renovated Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center with a pair of events Jan. 10-11.

The building, originally built in 1972 at the corner of Brooklyn Avenue NE and NE 40^th Street, underwent an extensive 1.5-year renovation. It is named in honor of the late Samuel E. Kelly, the founding vice president for minority affairs at the UW and the university’s first African American senior administrator.

“We now become the largest and oldest college cultural center in the United States, as well as a significant point of pride for the Pacific Northwest,” said Marisa Herrera, director of the center. “We think it’s truly a unique space and there is nothing like it on another college campus. We are incredibly proud to call this space our new home.”

Emile Pitre, UW

The interior atrium of the newly renovated Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center with one of the 22 murals saved from the original building.

An invitation-only reception will be held Thursday to commemorate the naming of the new center with Kelly’s family.

On Friday, the campus and local community is invited to the “Light Up the Night” event beginning at 5 p.m. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Activities will also include building tours, student performances and historical video viewings. UW President Michael K. Young and Sheila Edwards Lange, vice president for minority affairs and vice provost for diversity, will speak. The event is free, but R.S.V.P.s are requested.

The new center:

• Is the first UW building to be named for an African-American.
• Contains 25,000 square feet and is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certified.
• Was architecturally designed by former UW students Alex Rolluda, ’89, and Sam Cameron, ’75, of Rolluda and Associates.
• Has 22 of the historical murals from the original building.
• Naming the new center in Kelly’s honor pays tribute to his legacy as a pioneer for diversity at the UW.

“He opened doors for hundreds of underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students here at the UW,” Edwards Lange said. “Dr. Kelly set the standard for, and established a commitment to diversity before it was popular among American colleges and universities.”

The Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center serves nearly 90 student organizations and has been known as a home away from home for students of color at the UW since its inception.

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For more information, contact Herrera at mherrer@uw.edu or 206-543-4635.

Going green at holiday parties

Think green and plan ahead, urge the folks with UW Recycling.

Just before the holidays, they updated the request form to reserve recycling, compost and garbage bins for parties, and launched an ad campaign in the Daily, online and on Facebook reminding people to reserve extra bins.

There’s also an Event Coordinator’s Guide with useful tips on planning your on-campus event.

UW Dream Project named in $40 million federal Race to the Top grant
Part of a four-year, $40 million grant awarded to seven school districts in King County will go toward the UW Dream Project, a mentoring program that serves the school districts in the grant.

The award was announced Tuesday (Dec. 11) by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Race to the Top program.

The new funds will support counselor assistants in middle and high schools across the region as well as training and program support for college and career readiness.

The Auburn, Federal Way, Highline, Kent, Renton, Seattle and Tukwila school districts competed for the grant this fall as “The Road Map District Consortium,” a reference to their participation in the Road Map Project – an effort to improve education in South Seattle and South King County.

Anna Karlin new Association for Computing Machinery fellow
Anna Karlin, professor of computer science and engineering, is among 52 newly named fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery. The international designation recognizes fundamental computing advances that drive economic growth. Karlin’s research interests include game theory, online algorithms and economics. The association recognized her “contributions to algorithms and to the boundary with systems, networking, data mining, and microeconomics.” UW’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering now has 12 active faculty members who are fellows of the association.

Early Entrance Program information session Jan. 10
Students, parents and middle-school teachers are invited to learn more about the Transition School/Early Entrance Program at the UW at an information session Jan. 10. The program facilitates early entry to the UW for a carefully selected group of 16 highly-capable students younger than 15 years old. RSVPs are being accepted for the information session, which will be conducted 6:30 – 8 p.m. in the Foege Genome Sciences Building’s auditorium, Room 060.

Robinson Center offers Saturday classes for K-8 students, teachers
From star-gazing to math equations to finding the perfect word for the last line of a poem, the Robinson Center’s Saturday Program has a full slate of math and writing classes. Two new science classes are being offered, one on Latin and the classical world and the other for elementary school teachers. Registration begins Jan. 7.

Marc Struder/UW Bothell

Kevin King, president of the Associated Students of the University of Washington Bothell, throws out the first pitch at the home run derby.

With a shared soccer and softball field, tennis courts, a sand volleyball court and a basketball court that will briefly double as an ice skating rink in February, the student-funded complex will meet the needs of a multitude of intramural sports and activities.

Kevin King, president of the Associated Students of the University of Washington Bothell and avid soccer player, says the complex is not just a sports field, but part of the UW Bothell community experience.

“Community is huge on this campus. So we’ve been able to come together, play sports, build new friendships. That’s what we’re all about here at UW Bothell.” King threw out the first pitch of the home run derby.

UW Bothell alumnus Eric Chan said he is thrilled that students will finally have a place where all sports and activities will be supported. He was among the group of Ultimate Frisbee enthusiasts who, in 2008, had trouble finding a place to practice due to a lack of funding.

“Oftentimes, we would get kicked off the field or the lights would shut off because we never had the funding to reserve fields. So our captain Ali Bulzomi recognized this and brought it to the administration,” Chan said. Bulzomi, a sophomore at the time, took the idea of an on campus sports field to vice chancellor of administration and planning, Marilyn Cox, who helped put the wheels in motion.

Chancellor Kenyon Chan commended all of the students who made the complex a reality and said their legacy will help develop the whole student. “A center like this will allow students to blend both their physical fitness and their intellectual work so that they are well rounded and well developed throughout their college career.”

Alumnus Chan says that even though he has already graduated he is happy to see the sports complex.

“It means that students will have an opportunity to meet other people, to learn and also get involved,” he said. “I would never have gotten involved so much in school if it wasn’t for the Ultimate Frisbee club. That led me to join student government, join different clubs and be captain of multiple different sports.”

The sports and recreation complex is the first of three major construction projects to be completed over the next two years on the Bothell campus. The $68 million science and academic building is expected to open in late 2014. Also, the 4,500 square-foot Sarah Simonds Green Conservatory, complete with a greenhouse, education and exhibit space, is scheduled for summer 2013 completion.

After conducting surveys and focus groups, the researchers discovered that students didn’t know about the spaces available to them and couldn’t easily find a space that had what they were looking for. UW-IT decided to create a solution that would connect people to various study spaces and resources across campus.

The result is SpaceScout, a mobile app developed over the past nine months. The mobile web version launched this week, while an iPhone app has been out since August and an Android app is slated for later this year.

“Where on campus can a group of six people meet with a whiteboard, nearby printing, and food and coffee?” asked project lead Janice Fournier, a research scientist at UW-IT.

SpaceScout was designed to provide an easy answer to those types of questions. Fournier imagines that after a class, students working on a group project might get together to compare schedules and then pull out a smartphone to find a place to meet.

“We’re really hoping to hear from students about how and when they use it,” said Fournier. She encourages faculty and student advisers to tell students about the new tool. “Hopefully the word will be getting out.”

With Odegaard Library’s first floor closed this year due to renovations, the team launched the project on a fast track to have it ready for the beginning of the fall quarter.

A major part of the effort was working with housing and conference services staff, librarians, computing directors and others to document every study space on campus. The UW-IT team took photos of each space and noted its attributes.

The current tool includes about 200 spaces in 26 buildings, though that number will change as they add spaces in the renovated HUB and other buildings.

Rooms can be searched by capacity or open hours, of course. But the tool goes far beyond that — it also lists noise levels, including “quiet,” “low hum” and “chatter.” Users can specify that they want food or coffee available in the building or neighboring buildings. They can also select for spaces with natural light, or that have scanners, printers, digital displays, power outlets and overhead projectors.

Once students find the perfect space, the app links to a map and, if applicable, information on how to reserve it.

While primarily aimed at students, the tool might be useful for staff or faculty looking for a meeting space on campus. In the future the team also hopes to add ways for users to include ratings, comments and to add their own study spaces.

“I really hope that students will find new places that they fall in love with on campus for studying,” Fournier said.

UW Tacoma and UW Bothell are working with the team to include their campuses in the app. The tool is unique, Fournier said, and the code is open-source so other institutions can create their own versions.

Funding came from the UW’s Student Technology Fee and from UW-IT.

Also this week, UW-IT launched a mobile version of MyUW for students. The new site automatically detects when students are accessing the site from a mobile device and provides them with easy-to-scan lists of their classes, classroom locations, book lists and instructors’ e-mail addresses. The tool was developed by UW-IT over the past year as part of the provost’s Two Years to Two Decades initiative to improve the student experience on campus.

Students told developers of the tool that they didn’t want all the features of MyUW, said project manager Greg Koester, just the features they most needed while on the go.

Only registered students are directed to the mobile version; others will see the full MyUW site. The next installment, planned in the next two months, will show students’ Husky card account balances and allow them to buy books.

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For more information on SpaceScout, contact Fournier at 206-685-3571 or fournier@uw.edu. For more information on mobile MyUW, contact Koester at 206-543-5785 or koester@uw.edu.

LEED gold rating for student residence Poplar Hall

The LEED rating notes the design, construction and operation of modern, green buildings. Rating categories include sustainability, water and energy efficiency, materials used, indoor environmental quality and the design process.

Seven floors tall, Poplar Hall hosts about 270 students in studio apartments and double rooms. Its third floor is home to a sustainability community dedicated to social equity and minimal environmental impact.

Molecular engineering and science focus of new UWTV-produced documentary

A half-hour documentary titled “The Rise of Molecular Engineering and Science” airs on UWTV, which produced it, Saturday, Sept. 29 at 5:30 p.m. The film focuses on research happening in the UW’s newly opened Molecular Engineering & Sciences Building.

The film takes viewers on a tour of the building and interviews UW faculty working in two focus areas: clean tech and biotech. Dean Matt O’Donnell describes the emerging field of molecular engineering, and Patrick Stayton talks about the role of the UW’s Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute. Other UW faculty who appear in the program include Hugh Hillhouse on nanotechnology to make paintable solar cells, Christine Luscombe on inexpensive, plastic solar cells, Daniel Gamelin on new solar-powered batteries, David Ginger on emerging tools and trends in solar technology, François Baneyx on nanotechnology manufacturing, Suzie Pun on drug delivery, and David Baker on designing new proteins to solve 21^st-century challenges. Steve Pool, a UW alumnus and KOMO television weather anchor, is the host.

The documentary will air regularly through fall and winter on UWTV, and can be seen anytime online.

President Michael Young at Sept. 20 flu shot clinic.

Next flu shot clinic Oct. 15 at UW Tower
UW Benefits conducted its first flu shot clinic last week and has several more scheduled through Nov. 1.

Flu shots are free for faculty, staff and retirees covered by a Public Employee Benefits Board health plan and for students covered through the Graduate Appointee Insurance Program or the Student Health Insurance Plan. Be sure to bring your health insurance card – otherwise you must pay $30 and seek reimbursement from your health plan – plus a photo ID and a completed copy of the claim form.

The UWellness webpage about flu season says everyone is encouraged to get a flu shot because it’s the single best way to keep from getting and spreading the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

UW employees and students also can get flu shots through the Hall Health Immunization Clinic.

Closure and detour between 7 p.m., Friday until 2 p.m., Saturday.

Part of Montlake Boulevard, near Husky stadium, will be down to one lane and one sidewalk starting Friday evening at 7 and will be completely closed from Saturday afternoon at 2 until the early morning hours of Monday.

The road and sidewalk are being closed to work on a new pedestrian bike bridge.

The closure affects the boulevard for about a block between Northeast Pacific Street and Northeast Pacific Place. Sound Transit has issued a construction alert about the work.

Closure and detours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. Monday.

Drivers heading north will need to follow a detour the whole weekend starting at 7 p.m. Friday. Drivers heading southbound – and all pedestrians – will need to follow detours starting at 2 p.m. Saturday. The detour, several blocks long, circles around the site where the UW’s triangle parking garage is located.

Clare McLean

Window placement at the Montlake Tower offers natural lighting and scenic views.

The UW community is invited to celebrate the completion of the 273,000-square-foot Montlake Tower expansion at UW Medical Center on Friday, Oct. 5, and Saturday, Oct. 6. Staff and faculty can tour the new facility from 7-9 a.m., 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 5-7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5.  An open house and tour for the broader community is scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Oct. 6.

The Montlake Tower, on the south side of UW Medical Center, incorporates state-of-the-art architectural, technological and environmental design elements to enhance patient and staff experience. The $210 million project offers spacious patient rooms and work areas, scenic views, natural and custom lighting, and energy efficiency.

Construction of the new eight-story building was begun in April 2009. This phase of the project includes increased capacity for oncology and neonatal intensive care unit patients, as well as more space for leading-edge digital imaging technology. Two floors will house administration and three floors are shelled for future expansion.

Clare McLean

The Montlake Tower garden.

Here are some of the features of the new building:

Oncology Services expansion on the eighth floor includes 30 single rooms for patients with blood diseases; two isolation rooms for greater infection control; and a comfortable family lounge with household amenities, including bath and shower, comfortable sitting spaces, washer/dryer and kitchenette. Staff conference room has interactive white boards and videoconferencing capability to promote medical education among staff and distance learners.

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit expansion on the fourth floor can accommodate 47 infants in 39 single rooms and four rooms for twins, making it one of the largest neonatal ICUs in the Pacific Northwest. The new neonatal ICU includes an infant operating room, a pediatric pharmacy, a family lounge with household amenities, and an advanced security system. The floor also provides “front porch” benches along the corridor to foster conversation and community among family members. Centrally located rounds area offers a shared work space for multidisciplinary team.

Clare McLean

A CT imaging machine in the radiology facility at the Montlake Tower is in a room with a ceiling image of sky and trees.

Radiology expansion on the second floor includes leading-edge digital imaging technology for diagnosing and treating brain tumors and neurovascular and vascular diseases. The new space includes four CT scanners, two magnetic resonance scanners and four angiography suites. The interventional radiology suite is custom-designed by Philips so that, if necessary, patients can have all three types of treatment in one session.

The Montlake Tower was designed by NBBJ architects and designers. Skanska was the general contractor and construction manager.

On Twitter @UWMedicineNews:  Follow #MontlakeTower now and all through next week for sneak peeks and facts about UWMC’s brand new medical facility

As a new school year begins, so do the university’s efforts to collect and donate reusable items that might otherwise go to the landfill including books that raise money to fight illiteracy  and backpacks donated to Real Change newspaper sellers.

A. Credgington/UW Recycling

A student donates clothing at a collection site outside Terry Hall, part of more than 8,000 pounds of clothing donated this year.

“With the help of partners like UW Recycling, we’ve raised more than $11 million for literacy,” said Tracy Kolar, campus account representative for Better World Books—an organization that raises funds for literacy by selling used books online. “The books UW Recycling collected and sent us will produce funding for the National Center for Family Literacy and PlanUSA, providing disaster relief in Haiti.We’re also the single largest donor of Books for Africa, so some of the books will probably end up being shipped to Africa.”

Last spring, for example, UW Recycling collected about 30 boxes of books through the UW’s SCRAM program. SCRAM, which stands for Student Cleanup, Recycle and Moveout, is a charity drive that collects unwanted reusable items from students leaving the residence halls at the end of each school year.

Husky Neighborhood Cleanup is a bi-annual donation event in the North Campus neighborhood that also provides drop-off locations for reusable items when students who live in the area are moving in or out.

“We used to see a lot perfectly good, still usable items being discarded outside the properties and in nearby dumpsters,” said Kristin Elko, program coordinator at UW Recycling. “We wanted to give people a convenient way to donate these items to help others and keep them out of the landfill.”

Combined, these events collect an average of nearly 15 tons of reusable items per year. Earlier this year, UW Recycling donated 1,540 pounds of food to the University District Food Bank; over 8,000 pounds of clothing to Northwest Center; 2,000 pounds of electronics to InterConnection; 980 pounds of toiletries and emergency kit backpacks to Real Change; and much more.

“Toiletries are not covered by food stamps and other government aid,” said Jenn Pearson, volunteer manager for Real Change. “Having access to a large, free supply is a great gift to our vendors.”

Real Change publishes the only “street newspaper” in Washington state, focusing on poverty and social justice stories. The newspaper is sold by more than 350 low-income and homeless adults who act as independent vendors—paying Real Change 35 cents for each newspaper and reselling the paper on the street for the dollar cover price plus tips.

A. Credgington/UW Recycling

Students are welcome to keep the emergency supplies and backpack when they depart, but many donate them, as shown by UW staff member Chris Wren and a Real Change volunteer. Real Change offers them to their newspaper sellers.

These independent vendors position themselves on corners and by stores. They often must carry their belongings to the selling sites.

Each school year, UW residence halls issue a bright-red emergency backpack to each new resident. The backpacks include a three-day supply of food bars and water, a blanket, a whistle and a glow stick. When students leave the dorms, many of them donate their backpack during the SCRAM clean up, recycle and move-out event.

“We were seeing an increasing number of red backpacks at our collection sites in recent years,” said Elko, who sought a community partner who might benefit specifically from the backpacks.

Real Change was a perfect fit.

“We received 177 red backpacks from SCRAM this past year for our gear giveaway,” said Pearson. “They are very sought-after by our vendors, both for the emergency supplies within them and for the backpack itself. The UW Recycling staff seems genuinely pleased to see items being put to good use.”

Join hundreds of volunteers Saturday putting a shine on Center for Urban Horticulture

The event is the major service project this year of the state chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. The estimated value of the volunteer labor, equipment time and materials donated or provided at cost amounts to $90,000 to $100,000, according to Kathleen Garrity, a volunteer from the local construction community who is on the organizing committee.

UW students and staff, neighbors and other supporters of the UW Botanic Gardens – of which the Center for Urban Horticulture is a part – are welcome to join in.

Volunteers don’t need to sign up in advance and will be assigned to one of 17 projects as they arrive, any time after 7:30 a.m. Work concludes at 4 p.m., but volunteers may work just as long as their schedules allow. Tasks will range from carpentry to pulling invasive plants to helping gravel three-quarters of a mile of trails in the natural area. The association is providing lunch, work gloves and T-shirts. Volunteers can bring their children to work beside them or, if too young, to be entertained in a child-care area.

For the biggest project, association members will create stairs to connect the center’s main courtyard with the expansive lawn below. The two are often used in conjunction and the stairs will create an easy flow between them.

The Center for Urban Horticulture, a part of the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, has 70,000 visitors a year and serves as the meeting place for more than 200 organizations. One reason it was selected was because it provides such a wonderful community facility, said Garrity, who is president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington. That group is among the developers, contractors, service providers, owners and investors of office, industrial and retail real estate in the state chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun and we are going to be sparkling after all the work,” said Sarah Reichard, director of the center and UW Botanic Gardens.

Thursday webcast:  UW oceanographer links Mars rover to undersea research
You’ve seen the Curiosity rover creep along the surface of Mars, snapping spectacular photos of the mysterious surface of the planet. So what does that have in common with the bottom of the ocean? Hear UW oceanographer John Delaney discuss the similarities between the robot on Mars and equipment his team is deploying nearly two miles under water in the Pacific Ocean.

He’s participating in a webcast that is part of a series centered on Mars research hosted at the Exploratorium, a science and art museum in San Francisco. Delaney will answer questions about how scientists conceptualize and explore remote environments like the ocean floor and the surface of Mars that are difficult to access.

He’ll also describe what scientists can learn from a long-term presence in the oceans that will be established by the Ocean Observatories Initiative, an NSF-funded project to collect ocean data from locations that span the Western Hemisphere. The UW is designing and constructing OOI infrastructure in the Pacific Ocean that will send data to shore in real time via underwater fiber-optic cable.

Watch Delaney talk about the project from the Exploratorium in San Francisco Thursday at 1 p.m. A live stream is available online: http://www.exploratorium.edu/mars/ .

Architecture graduate student pens book on Seattle’s floating homes
Erin Feeney says her book “Seattle’s Floating Homes” came from a research paper for a UW architecture course and will lead to an exhibit in 2013 at the Museum of History and Industry.

A graduate student in architecture, Feeney chose to research floating homes under the topic of “vernacular communities”— or those whose architecture reflects their people and lifestyle. The paper brought praise from the area Floating Home Association and the museum accepted Feeney’s proposal for an exhibit in its new space next June. Meanwhile, Feeney turned her paper into a book for Arcadia Press’s Images of America series.

Feeney said the book tells the history of the floating home community, while the planned exhibit will focus on the community today and how it’s changing. The community’s working class roots are “getting lost rather rapidly,” she said.

“Historically, it’s been a very strong community, with people looking out for each other. Now there are large issues with absentee owners and people who rent or just stay for the summer. There’s a loss of community,” she said.

• Free all-day Opening Celebration and Symposium Tuesday, Sept. 18
• A new half-hour documentary, “The Rise of Molecular Engineering and Science,” airs this month on UWTV.
• The College of Engineering’s free Fall Lecture Series features talks by UW faculty who work in molecular engineering.
• Read more about molecular engineering research

After five years in the planning and construction, the University of Washington this fall opens its new Molecular Engineering & Sciences Building, one of the first facilities in the country dedicated to an emerging area of research.

“We are thrilled to make the UW and Pacific Northwest region a leader in molecular engineering and science,” said Matt O’Donnell, dean of the College of Engineering. “This facility is a major step forward that will encourage collaborative, cutting-edge research in biotech and clean tech.”

The Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute will oversee activities in the building and work with affiliated researchers on and off campus.

“We will bring together faculty and provide a common, interdisciplinary space for research to address major societal challenges,” said director Patrick Stayton, a UW professor of bioengineering.

The institute will hold an all-day symposium next Tuesday (Sept. 18) followed by a building tour and opening celebration. Admission for the talks is free but registration is required.

The institute’s major themes will be clean energy and biotechnology. It will work with research partners, private companies and the UW’s Center for Commercialization to transition research findings into applications.

Ben Benschneider / ZGF Architects

The UW’s new Molecular Engineering & Sciences Building.

The five-story, 90,300-square-foot structure is near the west entrance to campus, at the corner of Grant Lane and Stevens Way. The $77 million building was completed this summer after about three years of construction. (See slide shows of the building’s construction by John Stamets, a UW lecturer in architecture.)

Each of the four above-ground floors is divided into a laboratory half, facing Stevens Way, and an office half, facing the center of campus. A glass partition separates the two to provide a safety feature while connecting the two spaces.

“Scientists spend a lot of time in the lab. The UW faculty wanted to look at how we could make that a nicer place to be,” said Tim Williams, project architect at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects.

Ben Benschneider / ZGF Architects

The new building’s west-facing entrance on Stevens Way.

The building’s basement is a 28,000-square-foot low-vibration lab space, providing a “machine shop for molecular engineering.” It holds equipment to study molecules and molecular assemblies being designed on the upper floors. Basement labs house a mix of existing and new equipment that will be available to researchers inside and outside the UW. The university’s Nanotech User Facility, Center for Nanotechnology, the Analytical Biopharmacy Core and the NESAC/BIO center for biomedical surface analysis are all now located in the basement of the new building.

The site was chosen partly because the natural vibration and electromagnetic interference are low. The building features aluminum-plate shielding to guard against electromagnetic waves, allowing very sensitive measurements using electron beams and high-powered laser light.

The new building focuses on emerging engineering techniques. In the past, engineers mainly designed larger-scale objects, such as bridges, airplanes and microchips. Now fields like materials science, chemistry and drug development are moving from a process of discovery to a process of design. Advances in nanotechnology, synthetic biology and self-assembly are letting researchers design and build proteins and other molecules to do specific tasks, such as travel to particular areas of the body, or capture and store energy from the sun.

The building architects are pursuing a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, Gold certification for sustainable features that include:

• Natural ventilation in office spaces provided by windows that open, electronically controlled ceiling fans and two chimneys on each floor that draw hot air up and out. This is the first UW lab building with offices that use natural ventilation instead of mechanical air conditioning.
• Walls and ceilings containing packets of vegetable-oil based gel that melts at 73 degrees F, absorbing heat on hot days and releasing that heat at night as they solidify. The architectural firm used this gel for the first time and is measuring its performance.
• Two rain gardens to control storm water, a first on the UW campus, and three rooftop gardens that absorb and filter storm water and moderate building temperatures.
• Optimized ventilation in the lab spaces, replacing air six times per hour rather than 10 times an hour.

The layout is designed to be flexible, with modular desks and lab spaces. Inaugural occupants include the research groups of Stayton and Suzie Pun, a bioengineering associate professor, on the third floor; David Baker, a biochemistry professor, on the fourth floor; and Daniel Gamelin, a chemistry professor, Hugh Hillhouse, a chemical engineering professor, and Christine Luscombe, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, in a shared energy research lab on the first floor.

The building was paid for with $5 million in state funding for the initial design and planning phases. The remainder was funded through a bond that will be repaid through a combination of tuition building fees and research grant money.

René Overney, professor of chemical engineering, is the education director for the institute. The institute currently offers an undergraduate track in nanoscience and molecular engineering and a joint nanotechnology doctorate, and is establishing a new graduate degree program focused on molecular engineering.

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For more information, contact Stayton at 206-685-8148 or stayton@uw.edu. Contact ZGF Architects through Erin Zangari, 206-521-3503, erin.zangari@zgf.com. For building information or tours, contact building coordinator Christopher Adams at 206-616-6627 or adamscm@uw.edu.

Previous articles:

• “UW breaks ground on nation’s largest molecular engineering building,” Oct. 9, 2009
• “Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute to address energy and medicine; UW bioengineer named director,” Oct. 19, 2010

Vince Stricherz

The HUB interior, looking north on the second floor.

After a makeover lasting nearly 2½ years, the Husky Union Building opened on Monday, though it will continue in transition for the next couple of weeks.

Some final touches are being completed and many offices are unpacking in the transition back to the center of campus from Condon Hall, where the HUB moved in May 2010.

While visitors are welcome to explore the refurbished building, the staff advises that not all services may be available, and many will be open on limited basis. Some food vendors in the Husky Den are open, and the University Book Store HUB branch and the Scissors Edge are operating in new quarters.

The building features new meeting rooms and offices for student organizations. Two large ballrooms on the second floor can function as one huge room with an expansive tree-lined view of Lake Washington. The central core of the building is open, with views from one floor to another. Some renovation work also was done in the  gaming area on the lower level.

Vince Stricherz

A new main reception desk is in the vicinity of the desk in the old HUB.

The building is expected to be fully operational on Sept. 24, and grand opening ceremonies will be held with a series of events in conjunction with Dawg Daze Sept. 20-29.

HUB Crawl, an event last held in 2009 before the renovation began, begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 22, following the Fall Fling concert on Red Square.

An open house for the campus community will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 25. It will include building tours, visits to new offices, a Student Activities Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and grand opening ceremonies at noon. On that day special prices will be offered at HUB Games, Husky Den food vendors and the University Book Store.

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“Our program has come a long way since its early beginnings,” said Micheal Meyering, manager of Housing & Food Services.

“We started our first front-of-the-house compost pilot at the Eleven 01 Café in February 2007. The 70,000-plus members of our campus community are the real winners. They make it happen every day by participating as environmental stewards.”

In addition to waste management, the association also recognized sustainable dining practices in four other operational categories: procurement practices, energy and water conservation, materials and resources, and outreach and education.

The Percussion Ensemble will perform May 29 in Meany Studio Theater.

New book explores creating, supporting livable communities
What is a livable community? How do you design and develop one? How can government support and nurture the cause of livable communities? A new book co-edited by Fritz Wagner, UW research professor in urban design and planning, studies such questions using case studies from North America, Brazil and the United Kingdom.

“Community Livability: Issues and Approaches to Sustaining the Well-Being of People and Communities,” co-edited by Wagner and Roger Caves of San Diego State University, is published by Routledge Press. Wagner, who also has an adjunct appointment in landscape architecture, manages the UW’s Northwest Center for Livable Communities.

Using a blend of theory and practice, experts in the field look at evidence from international, state and local perspectives to explore what is meant by the term “livable communities.”

Chapters examine the effect and importance of transportation alternatives to the elderly, the significance of walkability as a factor in developing a livable and healthy community, the importance of good open space providing for human activity and health, the importance of coordinated land use and transportation planning, and the relationship between livability and quality of life.

‘New Directions’ award to UW anthropologist
Danny Hoffman, a UW associate professor of anthropology, is one of 15 faculty members around the country to receive a New Directions Fellowship from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation this year.

The Percussion Ensemble will perform May 29 in Meany Studio Theater.

An expert on African warzones and militarization, Hoffman will use the fellowship to study architecture and urban planning through the UW College of Built Environments and in South Africa with scholars of postcolonial cities.

“The U.S. and allied militaries always came at the idea that fighting in cities was the last resort,” Hoffman said. “There was little specific thinking of how one would do security in urban environments or what it would mean to fight in an urban environment. That has changed in the last few years.”

How cities are put together and how people move through them are now being considered by military thinkers. It has implications for urban military operations, including how a military could isolate parts of a city if a mass pandemic broke out.

In addition to supporting advanced interdisciplinary training for individual scholars, the Mellon Foundation hopes the New Directions program will contribute to the development of interdisciplinary courses and cross-disciplinary teaching collaborations.

Disability, Law, Policy and the Community poster session May 24
Students from the class Disability Law, Policy and the Community will present their research on the effects of various policies on individuals with disabilities in a poster session from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., Thursday, May 24, in the Allen Library Research Commons.

Students from this class in the Law, Societies and Justice Program will present on topics such as the Involuntary Treatment Act, the Community First Choice Act, Shaynan’s Law, the Seattle Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team Program, elimination of the death penalty, acquiring accommodations in postsecondary education, standards for Washington state educational interpreters and more. The event is free and open to the public.

Minority Affairs and Diversity hosts undergraduate research conference
More than 70 undergraduate McNair scholars and colleagues representing 14 universities will converge at the UW for a research conference, May 17-19.

Students will present year-long collaborative research in the social science, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and humanities fields at the 20^thannual Pacific Northwest McNair/EIP/GO-MAP Research Conference, held in conjunction with UW’s Undergraduate Research Symposium.

The event will feature the work of 32 UW students who are affiliated with the McNair Scholars Program, the Presidential Scholars Program and the Early Identification Program.

Clay Schwenn, adviser in Undergraduate Academic Affairs, wins national award
Clay Schwenn, lead academic counselor for undergraduates, has won an Outstanding Advising Award from the National Academic Advising Association.

According to the nominating letter from Undergraduate Academic Affairs Advising, Schwenn is best known for innovative use of technology in academic advising. In 2007, he won an award from the association for his advising podcasts.

Schwenn also spends significant time supervising peer advisors, 10 undergraduates who help fellow students with quick questions on matters such as registration and course scheduling.

The National Academic Advising Association has approximately 10,000 members in the U.S.

Tower Green Fair May 15 with campus, off-campus groups
The second annual Tower Green Fair, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 15, will bring UW people and units involved in green initiatives – such as Professional and Continuing Education, Commuter Services and Recycling & Solid Waste – together with local nonprofit groups and businesses that also think green.

The fair, conducted at the UW Tower, is open to the entire campus. Visitors should be sure to bring their UW Husky cards for entrance to the tower.

UW Housing and Food Services and four private vendors will be providing treats to sample. Nonprofit groups that will be represented at the fair are Washington Trails Association, EarthCorps, Seattle Tilth and the Washington Toxics Coalition.

Visitors to the fair can have a Sustainability Passport stamped as they move from table to table to enter a drawing for  green gift baskets and other prizes to be given away.

Visitors? Relatives here for commencement? Check Campus Tours Central
The UW Information and Visitors Center recently launched a new online resource called Campus Tours Central that offers downloadable self-guided tour publications, online tours and tour-guide tips.

“Campus Tours Central provides tools and information so that everyone will have a better campus experience whether they are visiting us online or in-person.  Since groups sometimes need a tour leader, and you may know your area of campus best, were providing tips so that you can be better trained to lead a group. We encourage everyone to be a tour leader,” said Linda Hanlon, Information and Visitors Center manager.

The UW Office of Admissions Visit Program offers guided campus tours twice a day on weekdays and once on most Saturdays, but throughout the year many campus departments and units may need to lead their own tours, and groups coming to campus are sometimes not able to be matched with a guide through the Admissions Visit Program, Hanlon said.

“With these tools, anyone can be a well-prepared guide. You – yes you – might make an excellent campus tour guide,” says Linda Hanlon.

Seth Cooper, chief architect of Foldit, wins national doctoral dissertation award
The Association for Computing Machinery has given recent UW doctoral graduate Seth Cooper its Doctoral Dissertation Award, recognizing the best thesis published in 2011 in the field of computer science.

Cooper’s thesis, “A Framework for Scientific Discovery through Video Games,” explored how computer games could be used to solve difficult scientific problems. He was advised by Zoran Popović, professor of computer science and engineering. Cooper was chief architect of Foldit, a computer game in which players help to solve the structure of proteins that play a role in HIV and other diseases. He is now creative director at the UW’s Center for Game Science.

The association will honor Cooper on June 16 in San Francisco.

The film is a finalist in a contest where the top 10 vote getters each receive $10,000 for tree-planting projects from Odwalla Inc.

The Restore the Montlake Cut project would use trees to shade out invasive plants, according to Hillary Burgess, UW graduate student in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and a staff member for UW Grounds Management.

The video is among the 20 posted on the Plant a Tree website. Voting ends May 31.

The video stars Burgess, Teos Bisbee, a UW undergraduate and chair of the outdoor committee for Students Expressing Environmental Dedication, or SEED; Steve Kryszko, a gardener for UW Grounds Management; Lee Harrison-Smith, a local arborist; and Noca, the dog.

It was produced by Jennifer Leach, a UW alumnus of environmental and forest sciences.

Two other Seattle-area projects are also among the finalists.

Students
Justin Hellier, graduate student, public affairs and environmental and forest sciences
Katie Stultz, senior, community, environment and planning

Staff
Dean Pearson, gardener lead, intercollegiate athletics
Storm Hodge, assistant director, housing and food services

Groups
Washington Student Athlete Advisory Council
Patio Display Garden Team, UW Tower Green Team

As part of a just-launched pilot, a number of the existing outdoor garbage and recycling cans on Red Square have been replaced with high-tech, automated kiosks that collect more types of materials. The kiosks will be officially launched during a small ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10:30 a.m., Friday, April 20, during Earth Day festivities.

News and Information

High-tech kiosks are monitored remotely and compact contents, meaning fewer trips to check and empty them.

The new kiosks consist of three containers for sorting waste – composting, recycling and garbage – each of which is equipped with a sensor that regularly measures the mass of material inside. This information is reported wirelessly to UW Recycling & Solid Waste staff. When any of the three containers in a kiosk reaches a preset capacity, the device sends a text message notifying staff that the container is ready to be serviced.

Staff also can run reports based on historic collection information.

“The software records whats going on with the hardware,” said Jonathan Hempton of BigBelly Solar, the company that supplies this waste collection system. “By logging into the online dashboard, staff are able to see whats happening on the ground in real-time rather than having to regularly check containers by hand.”

The garbage container also has an automated compactor that increases the amount of garbage space by roughly 500 percent over the previous cans, and will eliminate four out of every five collection trips, according to Hempton. Whats more, the kiosks are completely solar powered.

“Its changing the way we think about waste,” said UW Recycling & Solid Waste Manager Emily Newcomer. “We expect the increased capacity and the as-needed servicing to dramatically reduce our fuel use and disposal costs while using a sustainable energy source to create these efficiencies.”

The kiosks also include built-in billboards that will be used for educating the public about the benefits of composting and recycling, as well as how to appropriately sort waste materials into the containers.

The UW will be the first university in the country to use this system to capture all three waste types, composting, recycling and garbage, in an outdoor public area.

UW Recycling & Solid Waste sought the kiosks in response to results from the 2011 annual Trash-In event during which volunteers sifted through a sample of campus garbage and found that 61 percent of garbage from Red Square was actually compostable.

In the clip below from Sunday’s episode of UW|360, campus arborist Sara Shores talks about the Quad’s cherry trees and how they were rescued in the mid-60s from the arboretum, where they were in the path of the 520 bridge, then under construction.

The segment on the cherry trees, as well as news stories on such things as advances in surgical robots and the UW “Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal” project, airs at 9 p.m., Sunday, April 8, on UWTV, Comcast channel 27.

Just last month it was announced that KOMO 4 will be broadcasting past episodes of UW|360 at 4:30 p.m., before the evening news, each Saturday.

]]> http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/04/06/video-friday-april-edition-of-uw360-just-out-includes-cherry-tree-feature/feed/ 0 http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/03/30/photo-friday-open-window-to-campus-wild-areas/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=photo-friday-open-window-to-campus-wild-areas http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/03/30/photo-friday-open-window-to-campus-wild-areas/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0000 Sandra Hines http://www.washington.edu/news/?p=3783 Enjoy plants and animals of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens as captured by UW alumnus Art Wolfe in a slideshow for the current edition of Columns magazine.

Wolfe, the West Seattle photographer who has traveled the world to capture landscape and animals on film, set his sights on some of the places he knows best in the Washington Park Arboretum and the UW’s Union Bay Natural Area. Both are under the umbrella of the botanic gardens, a part of the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

“You can find quieter shots here that challenge you, and are true beauty,” Wolfe said in the magazine of his campus wanderings.

ArtWolfe

Moss-covered tree trunks and blossoms in the UW Botanic Gardens are among the images by Art Wolfe featured in this month’s Columns magazine.

“Predicting the Timing of Cherry Blossoms in Washington, D.C. and Mid-Atlantic States in Response to Climate Change”

Access the paper published on the Public Library of Sciences’ PLoS One, an open-access peer-reviewed journal.

Cherry trees in full bloom in our nation’s capital – as well as the festival surrounding that  event – could be as much as four weeks earlier by 2080 depending on how much warming occurs.

So says an analysis conducted at the University of Washington that relied on the UW’s own cherry trees as one test of a computer model used in the project.

Plant phenology models that consider when plants bloom and bear fruit in response to temperature are used for agricultural crops such as apples and grapes as well as ornamental and forest trees. This appears to be the first time such a calculation has been made for the cherries in the Tidal Basin of Washington, D.C., according to Soo-Hyung Kim, UW assistant professor of environmental and forest sciences. Kim is co-author on a paper about the findings published in the Public Library of Sciences’ online journal  PLoS One.

Mary Levin/U of Washington

Early-March bloom times in pale blue ranging to late-April times in hot pink are used to contrast the historical record of peak blooms of Yoshino cherry trees 1950 to 2000 (top) with predictions for the 2050s under moderate temperature increases (middle) and more drastic temperature increases (bottom).

Every spring tens of thousands of visitors flock to see the cherry trees in Washington, D.C. This year’s celebration has been extended from two to five weeks to mark the 100^th anniversary of the first planting of 3,020 trees that were a gift from Japan.

To make the estimates, researchers at the UW used an existing computer model and adapted it using the last two decades of National Park Service peak bloom records – peak bloom being when 70 percent of the blossoms are open – and temperature records from Reagan National Airport.

Before using the model for future predictions, they tested it using data from additional locations including the UW campus and older peak-bloom records in the Tidal Basin. The UW has the same varieties that are most common in the Tidal Basins: Yoshino, in the UW Quad, and Kwanzan, along Rainier Vista. The scientists gathered general information about when the UW trees bloomed based on news reports.

Projections were then made based on two of the various climate change scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A scenario with moderate warming suggests that by the 2050s the peak bloom could be five days earlier and by the 2080s about 10 days earlier. Researchers have already established that cherry trees and other plants in Washington, D.C. have been blooming earlier during the last 60 years because temperatures warm earlier. The trajectory of warming that’s already been detected essentially mirror the UW’s findings using the moderate scenario.

U of Washington

Early-March bloom times in pale blue ranging to late-April times in hot pink are used to contrast the historical record of peak blooms of Yoshino cherry trees 1950 to 2000 (top) with predictions for the 2050s under moderate temperature increases (middle) and more drastic temperature increases (bottom).

If the other – more drastic – scenario of warming should occur, then peak bloom could be about two weeks earlier by the 2050s and four weeks earlier by the 2080s.

The researchers did not attempt to make predictions for the UW trees because they couldn’t find long-term, historical records of “peak” blooms for these trees to test the model before applying it to the future, Kim said.

One day Kim hopes to organize students, staff, faculty and visitors as citizen scientists to record peak blooms on campus. Scientists like Kim who study plant phenology  – when plants bud, flower, bear fruit and lose their leaves – already rely on citizens to document what they see where they live through Project Budburst and other organized efforts.

The models like the one used at the UW for the capital’s flowering cherry trees can also be used, “perhaps more importantly, for assessing the agricultural and ecological impacts of climate change,” wrote the co-authors. Co-authors with Kim are Uran Chung, who was a visiting scientist in Kim’s lab and is now with the United Nations in Mexico doing research on maize and wheat, UW graduate student Liz Mack and Jin Yun of Kyung Hee University, Korea. Kim’s lab is part of the UW’s Center for Urban Horticulture and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

The work was done as part of a grant to Kim from Korea’s Cooperative Research Program for Agricultural Science and Technology, which is interested in models that can be applied to specialty crops such as vegetables, ornamental crops and fruit trees.

“This type of predictive model will become increasingly useful when it is capable of making real-time forecasts,” the authors wrote. For fruit crop production, for example, plant-growth models might someday help predict flowering dates so farmers know when to arrange with bee handlers to have their apple, pear, peach trees and other deciduous fruit trees pollinated as well as optimize the use of resources with minimal environmental impacts, Kim said.

“The 60-foot-tall canyon live oak and a smaller huckleberry oak are among the best specimens in the city according to Arthur Lee Jacobsons ‘Trees of Seattle,” said Chris Watson, arborist with the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, which oversees the plant collection in the arboretum.

UW Botanic Gardens

The two curving, smooth trunks to the right, one of which is being crushed by the oak, belong to another prime arboretum specimen, a huckleberry oak. Both trees represent the best of their kind in the city.

After careful inspection, it turned out that the root balls of each tree had not pulled out of the ground, avoiding death sentences. Watson and assistant arborist Darrin Hedberg embarked on an effort to pull the 60-foot oak, estimated to weigh more than 8,000 pounds, back into the upright position. The effort could save both specimens plus a third tree, a smaller canyon live oak that was being crushed.

“The structure and foliage of these evergreen oaks provide a unique feel to this area of the arboretum,” Watson said. “Preserving these trees was a high priority as losing them would be a dramatic loss.”

Righting a tree in the arboretum is not undertaken unless it is especially valuable to the collection and there is a good chance it can be saved, according to David Zuckerman, manager of horticulture and plant records for UW Botanic Gardens, which is part of the UWs School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Such rescues have only been attempted a handful of times before, he said.

Using UW Botanic Gardens employees and equipment – and with the help from a number of volunteers – the four-day rescue cost $2,000 to $2,500, Watson estimated. The same operation done commercially might run $1,500 a day or $6,000 total.

Ropes, pulleys and a tractor were used to pull the canyon live oak upright so it could be supported by steel cables connected to a western red cedar, more than 60 feet tall, that was 25 feet away. As for the huckleberry oak, a minor crack in the main stem is being supported with a cable in the tree itself.

What are the chances for survival?

Watson says its a bit of a guessing game but the crew will baby the trees with mulch over their roots and enough water in the summer. It will take five years to really know if the rescue was a success.

“Rhododendron Glen where these trees are located was a place I was immediately drawn to when I first started at the UW,” Watson said.

“Its a really special place.”