The ceremonies at CenturyLink Field start at 2 p.m.  Graduates begin to line up in the CenturyLink Event Center at noon. The academic procession begins at 1:30. The ceremony takes 2½ hours and could be shortened in the event of inclement weather. Commencement exercises will be held this year and next year at CenturyLink Field, while Husky Stadium is under construction. The ceremony will return to Husky Stadium for 2014.

The ceremony will be broadcast live on UWTV starting at 1:30 p.m. on Comcast channel 27 throughout the Puget Sound region, and also online via simulcast at http://www.uwtv.org/simulcast/. UWTV will also archive highlights of the ceremony, including the keynote address, at uwtv.org. DVDs of the commencement ceremony can be pre-ordered at http://bit.ly/J7bUhK.

Commencement speaker is Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

An audience of about 40,000 family members and guests is expected. Degrees are awarded to those who have completed academic requirements some time during the 2011-2012 academic year. An estimated 12,320 degrees will be awarded – 7,900 bachelor's degrees, 3,180 master's degrees, 670 doctorates and 570 professional degrees.

Other recipients of special honors to be acknowledged at the Seattle commencement include: the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus Award winner, Distinguished Teaching Award winners and the President's Medal Award winners — presented to two graduating seniors (a four-year student and a transfer student) with the most distinguished academic records.

Members of the board of regents, deans and other representatives of the university's 16 colleges and schools will participate in the ceremony.

Many of the colleges and schools also have separate graduation programs and investiture ceremonies (http://www.washington.edu/graduation/other-ceremonies).  Complete information is available at http://www.washington.edu/graduation/.

UW Bothell will be celebrating its 21st commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 10, in Hec Edmundson Pavilion, Alaska Airlines Arena. Capt. Wendy Lawrence, a veteran astronaut, will be the speaker.

UW Tacoma will celebrate its 22^nd commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday, June 8 in the Tacoma Dome. Susan N. Dreyfus, the president and CEO of Families International, will be the speaker.

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Note to reporters:

Reporters and photographers should park in the lot at the south end of the stadium, off Royal Brougham Way. Permits are required for this lot and will be emailed to media in advance; please contact Bob Roseth with email addresses and other questions. The parking lot can be accessed from both the west (viaduct side) and east (I-5 side). From the west, take the ramp that leads up from intersection of Occidental and Royal Brougham. Turn left into garage. From the east, follow signs from 4^th Avenue S. and Royal Brougham. The signs lead the way up a curling ramp. Turn right into garage.

Pediatrician James Stout is an innovator in long-distance training of health professionals.

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are common medical problems, especially among low-income and minority populations. These groups have more severe cases of these lung diseases and a greater number of hospitalizations because of their illness.

“My view is that anyone with either of these diagnoses deserves the test as part of their overall assessment,” Stout said, who also is a pediatrician at the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, a satellite of Seattle Children’s Hospital located in the Central District.

He pointed to other studies revealing that up to 65 percent of general pediatricians do not use spirometry in routine asthma care. Even when spirometry is performed in primary-care doctor’s offices, many of the tests don’t meet American Thoracic Society quality standards, research has indicated.

Usually sprirometry is taught hands-on, with an experienced provider demonstrating how it’s done, letting trainees try it and interpret the results, and then coaching the trainees until they consistently perform it correctly.

However, in-person training is inconvenient for some providers to obtain. Practicing primary-care providers in rural areas have long travel distances to teaching sites, and those working in physician shortage areas or in safety-net practices for vulnerable populations are reluctant to spare time from their patients.

Stout and his group devised a multimedia online training that primary-care professionals in pediatrics, family medicine and internal medicine, as well as their support staff, typically nurses and medical assistants, can take in their offices. The Web-based training is followed by several weeks of ongoing coaching. Health care professionals can hook up one brand of spirometers to a secure system that transmits the results, without any information that identifies the patient, to experts who check for problems in the healthcare professional’s technique.

A spirometer for testing lung function in asthma and emphysema and before-and-after smoking cessation.

EasyOne

Spirometry training can be put to use in other ways in primary care practices. For example, it could be performed as part of a smoking cessation program. Patients may then be motivated to continue to abstain from tobacco as they watch their lung function get better over time.

A paper recently published in Academic Pediatrics evaluating the training for health professionals shows that it translates to better asthma care for patients.  Stout's team has since refined the approach and delivered it to more than 250 practices in a score of states. Ongoing technical improvements, he said, has made the training more user-friendly.

“The program we deliver now, Spirometry 360, is both shorter and better than the one we tested in the trial,” Stout said.

Does the online education in spirometry translate to better health for asthma patients? As part of Stout’s research team, Dr. Rita Mangione-Smith, professor of pediatrics, Division of General Pediatrics, has been leading a study to see if the online training improves health outcomes for children with asthma. The preliminary findings are positive; final results should be available later this year. Mangione-Smith is also a scientist at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

“Even though traditionally these types of hands-on skills are taught in person,” Stout said, “our team has proven that this procedure can be learned successfully over long distance and that this training improved asthma care in the pediatric practices we studied.”

This latest development in long-distance spirometry training may pave the way for teaching other sophisticated procedures over the miles through advances in learning technology and telecommunications. The University of Washington has licensed this particular approach to remote medical training as Spirometry 360.

The Academic Pediatric paper evaluating the effectiveness of remote teaching of spirometry is “Learning from a Distance: Spirometry Training in Improving Asthma Care.”  In addition to Stout and Mangione-Smith, other UW and Seattle Children’s Research Institute investigators on the study were Drs. Karen Smith, Chuan Zhou, Cam Solomon and Michelle M. Garrison. Dr. Allen Dozer from New York Medical College in Valhalla was also part of the study team.

A federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant funded the study.

The Hiker Memorial statue in Woodland Park was erected in 1924 by veterans of the Spanish-American War.

Tim Wright

Historic monuments are stone-solid proof of the old adage that history is written by the victors. But time marches on, new wars and issues obscure the past in the public consciousness, and even markers of stone are forgotten and left untended.

Then too, there are monuments that glorify bloodshed now regretted in hindsight, while others celebrate individuals whose legacies may have tarnished with passing decades.

University of Washington doctoral candidate Tim Wright sets students off to explore such half-forgotten monuments, and others more well known, each year in his unique class, "Fact or Fiction: Historical Monuments of the Pacific Northwest."

The students will present their findings from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 5, in the Allen Auditorium of Suzzallo-Allen Library. The event is free and the public is invited.

Student Scott Feltrup studied the history of the statue of Christopher Columbus in Waterfront Park, dedicated in 1978 after initial refusal by the Seattle Arts Commission. Feltrup learned that the statue has been vandalized near Columbus Day in recent years, causing the city to cover it with a wooden box near that holiday (a scene depicted in 2009 by artist Gabriel Campanario, the Seattle Times "Seattle Sketcher").

This statue of Christopher Columbus in Waterfront Park was dedicated in 1978. The City of Seattle tends to cover it near Columbus Day to protect from vandalism.

Scott Feltrup

Eric Catlett explored the history of the 1856 Battle of Seattle monument in City Hall Park, which he writes "has all but vanished from the historical memory of the city." The monument was presented to the city in 1916 by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Adam McJunkin looked at the Hiker statue in Woodland Park, which remembers fallen soldiers from the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War. He details the history of what he calls this "all but forgotten" marker in plain sight, as well as a plaque later added remembering the U.S.S. Maine and made of scraps from its wreckage.

Niguel Quiroz studied the history of the Medicine Creek Treaty marker near Olympia. "The signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty is one of Washington state's most well-known events, and it has remained controversial since its ratification due to the resistance on the part of some Native Americans under the leadership of Chief Leschi," Quiroz wrote. "What then, would the Native Americans hope to memorialize if they had the opportunity to create a Medicine Creek Treaty marker?"

Wright said, "Historic monuments stand at the intersection of history and memory. Deliberately built into the landscape, they can shape our understandings of the past and influence the way we think about the present and the future."

He added, "But monuments seldom tell the whole story."

Beth Kolko had heard about the event from a former student. That evening led to an invitation to visit a hacker space in Seattle's Sodo district. Over time, she discovered a vibrant research community that existed completely outside the university where she'd spent the previous 20 years.

"It changed my world," said Kolko, a UW professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering. "I thought, it would be great if that energy could be in the university."

Beth Kolko with two 3-D printers built by past classes. She made the course sign herself, and came up with the class motto as she was programming the design.

Mary Levin, UW Photography

Now it is. Kolko's experimental research course, Hackademia, brings the hacker spirit to campus. Its mission: "Building functional engineers, one blinky LED at a time."

After two years developing the course, Kolko recently gave talks in Berlin and at Harvard University, and will present it next week at the International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems and at a summer participatory design conference. Seattle's Awesome Foundation just gave $1,000, and Microsoft gave $10,000.

Initially, Kolko's interest in hacking was extracurricular. She's no stranger to adventure – she studied technology adoption in central Asia and is developing low-cost ultrasound for midwives in Africa.  Kolko learned to solder, and about circuit boards and batteries. She went on to build a sensor that detects flooding in her basement and sends her a text message (and one to her neighbor, in case she's out of the country).

The class emerged more slowly. In 2009, Alexis Hope, then an undergraduate, described feeling a gap between more and less technical students in the College of Engineering.

Kolko wondered again, this time more seriously, if she could harness the hacker ethos – and use it to study how informal research communities develop.

Students in the Winter 2012 course.

In winter 2010 five students, including Hope, signed up to help build a 3-D printer from a kit. Thus was born Hackademia. Its goal is to guide students to become makers, builders, tinkerers. In other words, old-school hackers.

The lab is a small room on the third floor of Sieg Hall, filled with tools mostly scavenged at garage sales. Kolko's hoping to expand to accommodate the current 30-plus students.

"We need an interdisciplinary space where students can work on tangible things," Kolko said. "If you're doing soldering on a board, you don’t want to put it in your backpack."

This quarter, for the first time, the focus is on software rather than hardware. One student is making a visual tool for Wikipedia edits. A few art students are building online portfolios. A group is building a light for a campus dorm that changes color in response to posts from the UW Alert Twitter account.

At a recent class meeting, students huddle over laptops in small groups. Instructors circulate to offer advice.

"What's your biggest obstacle right now?" Kolko asks a group.

"Code," answers one student. "Code," agrees another member.

"Did you ask the Internet?" Kolko prods. Then she gets some specifics, and suggests a starting point where the group might find answers.

The atmosphere is non-hierarchical. In many cases, the students teach one another. In one case Kolko suggests that students look for a primer on YouTube then watch it together so they can ask each other questions.

Beth Kolko and master's student Alexis Hope together conceived of Hackademia. They hold a student-built 3-D printer and an octopus that was created with it.

Mary Levin, UW Photography

Hope has helped to develop the course. She is coordinating this quarter's offering with fellow Human Centered Design and Engineering master's students Behzod Sirjani and Nikki Lee.

Each quarter begins by teaching the students basic skills, technical terms and standard processes for building things.

"People talk about science literacy as being really important," Kolko said. "I would say that engineering literacy is the same way."

Kolko is careful to distinguish Hackademia from other programs that encourage students to major in science, math and engineering.

"There's a huge cohort of people doing fabulous work in that area," Kolko said. "The unserved population that I see is people who are a little bit older, don't necessarily want to make engineering into their career, but still want to have some skills to be able to participate in what the knowledge economy has become – which is, you know, messing around with hardware and software. And you shouldn't have to be an accredited expert to do that."

Kolko envisions the course as a place where a student of any major can get a taste of electrical engineering or computer programming, and leave feeling empowered and connected to resources to learn more.

Former participant Jarman Hauser, a professional master's student and assistant program director at Washington Mesa, testifies to its success.

"I went into the class thinking that I wasn’t very technical because I wasn’t into computer programming, so I’d probably be taking a back seat or be more of a passive learner," he said. "But the way that the class was structured, everybody brought something different, and we combined all of our thoughts and ideas and tools to make a project."

Hauser's still working on a couple of things he started in the class, and has borrowed techniques for his outreach work with local schools.

Hackademia is now recruiting students for an autumn quarter offering focused on 3-D printing and computer-aided design.

With the new grants, Kolko also hopes to bring her hacker evangelism outside the university, to senior centers and immigrant community groups.

"This is the most fun thing I've done as a professor," Kolko said.

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For more information, contact Kolko at 206-685-3809 or bkolko@uw.edu.

The certificates, available to undergraduates, cover business essentials, database management and business localization for the international marketplace. Students can use the programs to explore new types of work they want to pursue after graduating, or learn more about how to apply the skills they acquire from their current degree programs to real careers.

“The certificates can help students test out or delve into a topic,” said Mary Larson, program management director for UW Educational Outreach.

The courses are taught by industry professionals who offer real-world perspectives on targeted careers. For instance, each of the three instructors who will teach the Certificate in Localization has over a decade of experience doing localization and project management for global companies including Microsoft and Siemens.

The Certificate in Business Essentials prepares students for work at most any kind of organization by teaching them practical skills in marketing, management and finance. As part of the program, students will write a business plan for a startup, product or existing organization.

“Don’t be afraid of the word ‘business’ in the title,” Larson said. Even students who have never had an interest in taking business classes will find it valuable, she said. That’s because any kind of employer—a nonprofit, a business or a government—will have marketing, management and finance functions. The courses teach students the concepts behind those functions as well as practical skills.

Students who enroll in the Certificate in Database Management program will learn the fundamentals of database management technology, design, development and administration. The certificate is applicable to students in a wide range of degree programs since so many different kinds of businesses collect vast amounts of data. “Banks, airlines, Internet companies—they’re all about data and it has to be managed,” Larson said.

Instructors of regular degree classes might know students who can benefit from the certificate courses.

“A German language professor might tell a student: ‘Don’t take my word that your language is valuable. Hear from the professionals teaching the localization certificate about how vital it is to multinational companies that are making giant investments in global markets,’” said Larson.

In addition to learning valuable skills, students will be more marketable to prospective employees. A student with a resume that includes a degree as well as a specialized certificate will be more attractive to an employer, Larson said.

“A certificate from UW is always valuable in this region,” Larson said. “We know that from many years of offering certificates.”

Participants earn nine or more credits over the nine week summer period and pay regular summer tuition.

Interested students are welcome to attend information sessions with the instructors. The business essentials information session is May 23 at 6 p.m. at Savery Hall, room 137. The database management instructor will meet prospective students May 23 at 4 p.m. and May 29 at 6 p.m.  in MGH 420. Students are invited to hear more about the localization program May 30 at 6 p.m. in Denny Hall, room 308.

Students will present their projects at 4 p.m. and a brief program of student stories will begin at 5 p.m. in 210 Kane.

UW undergraduates are involved in numerous civic engagement projects.

“As the Carlson Center celebrates its 20^th anniversary and the Mary Gates Endowment for Students celebrates its 15^th anniversary, we want to take a moment to remember the stories of student and community transformation that all of our community-engaged programs are built on,” says Rachel Vaughn, the new director of the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center.

Undergraduates are involved in numerous community issues ranging from early literacy to mentorship, agriculture to women’s health awareness, youth identity and leadership to global climate change.

More than 50 projects that illustrate the breadth of undergraduate service and leadership will be presented in the Gallery of Student Projects including:

• The Neah Bay Project: Telling Your Story
• Establishing a Disability and Deaf Cultural Center
• Outreach Coordination at People for Puget Sound
• Manic Mouth Congress: Envisioning an Arts Activism Community
• Lambda Phi Epsilon: Saving Lives through Bone Marrow Transplant

Last year more than 5,000 UW students participated in university-sponsored public service, including service learning, public service internships and volunteer work, devoting 523,020 hours to public service.

“Service-learning is a wonderful component to my social problems class,” says Alexes Harris, assistant professor of sociology. “Every quarter the student service-learners tell me what a great eye-opening experience they have had at their sites, that they would have never understood the issues in such depth had they not participated as a service-learner, and how they learned how much more complex society is from a sociological viewpoint. I couldn’t ask for a better learning experience for my students.”

The Spring Celebration of Service and Leadership is co-hosted by the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center, Jumpstart, the Pipeline Project, and the Mary Gates Endowment for Students, all programs housed within Undergraduate Academic Affairs’ Center for Experiential Learning and Diversity.

"Attack! of the S. Mutans" a 3-D interactive video game developed by Seattle's Firsthand Technology with the help of the School of Dentistry will be featured at the USA Science & Engineering Expo on April 28-29 in Washington, D.C.

Dentistry faculty and researchers worked with Firsthand Technology to create the game, which made its public debut in an exhibit at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center in 2010.

The 15-minute game, aimed at children ages 8 and up, takes players into a virtual environment inside the human mouth. Players can watch colorful simulations of Streptococcus mutans as the bacteria devour sugars and carbohydrates and produce the lactic acid that attacks teeth and causes decay. Using a Wii-type controller, players fire away at the acid and bacteria. They also learn a little science in the process with the help of Dentisha, a virtual guide.

"The vehicle of a high-quality 3-D game enables us to engage kids with science and an important health message through the medium of play," said Howard Rose, Firsthand Technology president and creative director, when the game was introduced.

"Our goal is to have kids visualize wiping out our oozing plaque biofilms the next time they brush their teeth." Dr. Peter Milgrom of Dentistry’s Department of Oral Health Sciences helped Firsthand Technology flesh out the game’s scientific foundations.

Dr. Jacqueline Pickrell of Oral Health Sciences also worked with Firsthand Technology to develop the Pacific Science Center exhibit. In addition, she used the exhibit to conduct research on how effectively game-playing changes children's behavior.

The research and the exhibit were supported by a grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Firsthand Technology is also the creator of SnowWorld, a virtual arctic environment developed for the UW’s Harborview Burn Center. In that game, coasting through icy canyons and tossing snowballs at penguins distracts patients from their pain.

The forum is designed to enable women to be proactive in their health and healthcare. Five UW Medicine gynecology cancer specialists will discuss cancer prevention, detection and treatment, HPV (a virus associated with cervical cancer), genetic testing for cancer risk, fertility preservation for cancer patients, robotic-assisted surgery and other timely subjects.

The May 16 forum will cover health at all stages of a woman's life.

In addition, screenings and educational materials will be provided, and healthcare professionals will be on hand to answer questions on a variety of women’s health topics. Enjoy refreshments, opportunities to pamper yourself, giveaways and more.

The talks and speakers are:

“Screening and early detection of gynecological cancers,” by Dr. Barbara Goff, UW professor of obstetrics and gynecology, director of the Division of Gynecological Oncology, and an affiliate investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She is a frequent guest on the Dr. Oz show.

“Advances in the care of the surgical patient: robotic assisted surgery,” by Dr. Heidi Gray, UW associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and associate director, Division of Gynecological Oncology.

“Fertility preservation options for cancer patients,” by Dr. Kathleen Lin, UW assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology.

“Cancer risk assessment, prevention and genetic testing,” by Dr. Elizabeth Swisher, UW professor of obstetrics and gynecology, director of Gynecologic Oncology and director or the Breast and Ovarian Cancer Prevention Program.

“HPV (Human Papilloma Virus): Vaccine and associated gynecologic diseases,” by Dr. Renata Urban, UW assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and director of Gynecologic Oncology Education.

The forum also plans to feature education about high-risk pregnancies, including preconception counseling and diabetes in pregnancy; human egg preservation, heart disease in women, breast cancer screening, and information on vaccine updates. Blood pressure checks and other screenings will also be offered.

Pampering will include mini-massages for the shoulders, neck, and foot, facials, and skin care and esthetic evaluations.

Join us for an evening of education and fun. Please register beforehand by calling 206.598.1490 or sign up online.

Catharine Killien, a student in Furniture Studio class, presents her project at final review in spring of 2010.

When Megan Schoch entered the fabrication shop in the UW's Gould Hall on a Monday afternoon in early February 2009, she was shocked. The Honduras mahogany she’d cut the previous Friday, part of the initial work on her final project in a graduate course on furniture design and construction, had warped and twisted.

It wasn’t clear whether Schoch could still use the wood, which had been expensive. What’s more, she would lose precious time on an elegant table she had designed. But that day initiated lessons that took Schoch beyond the world of fine furniture.

Her experience and those of students like her — plus extraordinary furniture that has come out of 23 years of the furniture studio course in the Department of Architecture — are subject of a new book, “Furniture Studio: Materials, Craft, and Architecture.” Written by Jeffrey Ochsner, a UW professor of architecture, the book was published this month by the University of Washington Press (304 pages, $45 hardcover).

Ochsner will speak about the book and sign copies at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, April 30, in Architecture Hall 147.

In the book, Ochsner tells stories of the furniture through its creators, people like Andris (Andy) Vanags, a senior lecturer who taught the course from 1989 until his retirement in 2009.

The first day of the winter 2009 class, precisely at 12:30 p.m., 66-year-old Vanags strode to the front of the shop classroom and began speaking. “He did not raise his voice,” Ochsner writes, “he simply expected quiet.”  With a full, graying beard and steady blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, Vanags projected the focus he expected of his students.

To those lucky enough to get in the class — it was invariably oversubscribed — he’d already sent a memo: “Attendance at all studio meetings for the entire time is a requirement.” Too bad if that didn’t fit the student’s schedule; Vanags allowed no exceptions. He also warned that the work would require considerably more time each week than the 15 hours of class. Materials would cost at least $500, maybe considerably more.

Vanags had told students to bring scale drawings of three project ideas to the first class. About 95 percent of students arrive with little experience, but among the 11 students that quarter there were outliers such as Ernie Pulford, who had a few years of experience as a furniture maker both in the United States and Europe.

Several times during the studio and at the end, a panel of furniture designers and craftspeople would critique each student’s work. The Pacific Northwest has become a center of the studio furniture movement, Vanags had told the class, and members would benefit from knowledge of key people.

For Schoch, the class was her last before her master’s thesis, and while she’d completed some small projects as an undergraduate, she had had no experience with fine furniture.  The 10 weeks would pose a steep learning curve, but by the end, Schoch had not only salvaged her mahogany, making a veneered top and undershelf, but learned a bit about welding and a lot about design.

Eventually, four students in the class would win regional awards. Over the years, some 450 students have taken Furniture Studio, and more than 50 projects have won awards in regional and national competitions.

But awards aren’t the key thing, Ochsner says early in the book. As students work with materials and tools, improvising as challenges arise, they acquire competence and confidence no paper exercise can offer. And as these students go on to careers in architecture, Ochsner writes, their hands-on experience informs their work.

To gather material for the book, Ochsner sat in the back of every class in winter quarter 2009, eventually winding up with more than 100 pages of notes. Along with chapters on the furniture and its people, Ochsner includes historical background of shop-based courses, profiles of four representative graduates of the program and implications for architectural education. Additionally, he includes an illustrated catalog of the best student projects, including a selection from the winter quarter 2010 studio, the first of the furniture studios taught by Associate Professor Kimo Griggs, who was appointed in 2008 to the position previously held by Vanags.

Rockets built by students of Robert Winglee, professor and chair of Earth and space sciences, pierced the Nevada sky once again in March, flying faster and higher than in any previous year.

"We’re getting farther up," said Winglee. "We set some records for our efforts at the University of Washington."

Thirty students traveled with Winglee to Black Rock, Nev., in mid-March — "a logistical nightmare," he said — for the fourth year of testing their creations.

"We take all our own electronics; we have an RV from a volunteer who provides us power and we break out our own base camp, our electronics ground station and antennas. We have to take all the gear from here to Nevada — we even stop and pick up Porta-Potties in California," he said.

This year, the student-built rockets reached an altitude of 25,000 feet — besting last year by 5,000 feet — and a speed of Mach 2.2, or more than twice the speed of sound. A commercial airliner, by comparison, cruises at about 35,000 feet and at 450 to 500 miles per hour, substantially lower than Mach 1, the speed of sound.

The class, called Rockets and Instrumentation, has a section in fall and again in winter, when the students head to Nevada.

"In previous years we’ve had some issues trying to get past Mach 1. Our rockets would always break up at Mach 1, and we’ve partially solved some of those," Winglee said. "Basically, you would cross Husky Stadium in one-tenth of a second."

Among successes this year was the launch of a two-stage rocket and a cluster rocket. One aspect was less successful: Winglee said the group had hoped to try a balloon-launching system for their rockets but high winds prevented that.

But even the failures are educational, he said.

"The great thing about working with the students was that despite that setback they came up with a solution ... so we still did a tube launch, but we improved the technology."

With Winglee’s "full-system engineering approach," students are responsible for all aspects of the flights from launch to recovery, including on-board electronics.

"Students are given a basic board, but they have to wire it up and put antennas in. ... The life and death of the rocket depends solely on the flight computer," he said.

The 30 student rocketeers aren't all Earth and space sciences majors – they represent a number of academic areas and skill levels.

"We’ve set it up so that it’s interdisciplinary," Winglee said. "They’re all mixed. We’ve got physics and we’ve got Earth and space sciences, computer science, mechanical engineers, aeronautics and astronautics engineers.

"Of course you do need the rocket guys for the rocket motors but you need structural engineers to ensure integrity and you need computer scientists and electrical engineers to do the flight computers."

He added that the way most technology is developed, "it’s not a single component that's important, it's the whole system, so were trying to put that into context for the students."

The interdisciplinary nature is important, he said. "Some of the great system failures have been scientists not talking to engineers, and so we’re really trying to encourage that environment."

He added that failures are acceptable in the students' rocketry, "as opposed to NASA."

The students did not disappoint. A presenter sporting a tie and dress shoes rolled a solar-powered electric bike on stage. Another carried a hunk of rubber and mustered the enthusiasm of a used-car salesman to pitch an idea for rubber lane dividers. One maker of a smartphone-controlled LED promised office workers everywhere could use it as “a direct replacement for the buzzing, flickering, hated fluorescent tube.”

Members of the team Green Innovative Safety Technologies (GIST), won first prize and $10,000 for developing a recycled alternative to concrete highway jersey barriers.

University of Washington

“The students are tackling bigger problems, and I think they’re being fearless about it,” said Connie Bourassa-Shaw, director of the UW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “When you actually have to build a prototype, it’s an incredibly difficult process.”

This year’s competition, put on by the Foster School of Business in partnership with the College of Engineering and the College of the Environment, was the largest ever, with 32 applicants. For the first time the organizers held a screening round to winnow the field to the final 23 presenters.

“This is about the right size,” Bourassa-Shaw said. “You want the judges to see the prototypes, to engage with the students and to provide some feedback.”

The College of Engineering provided $25,000 in prototype funding for UW teams, and Washington Research Foundation donated $5,000 to fund prototypes for non-UW entrants. The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship held a fall quarter course and optional winter-quarter resource nights.

The teams included 98 students split about evenly between undergraduates and graduates, from five colleges and universities. Each team had to be led by students from a Pacific Northwest institution.  This year's field included the first out-of-state team, from the Oregon Institute of Technology.

The grand prize of $10,000, from the UW’s Center for Commercialization, went to Green Innovative Safety Technologies (GIST), the highway lane dividers made of recycled rubber tires. Team members are UW undergraduates Hin Kei Wong in mechanical engineering, Lloyd Pasion in civil and environmental engineering and Ricky Holm in business; and civil and environmental engineering graduate student Jessica Tanumihardja.

Second prize went to Barrels of Hope, billed as a safe, affordable and environmentally friendly house built from parts that fit inside a rain barrel, to be used in emergency situations. The four UW business graduate students and one civil and environmental engineering undergraduate claimed the $5,000 prize from Puget Sound Energy.

Many other teams will pursue their ideas, even if they didn't win. EcoSel, an eBay for land management and conservation, is conducting a pilot project on the UW campus. The team for Scout Aviation’s unmanned drone aircraft, designed to perform inspections on wind-energy turbines, is talking to a major wind turbine supplier who is a former employer of one of the members. Vampp has submitted an app to the Apple store that consumers could buy to tame the so-called “vampire appliances” that consume power even while in sleep mode.

Last year, Schwartz advised a graduate student team, Carbon Cultures, that turns forestry waste into fertilizer; this year he advised an undergraduate team, OmniOff, which developed a nontoxic alternative to Teflon nonstick coatings.

This year was an experiment, Schwartz said, on how to offer this experience to more students.

“I need to figure out how to make it scalable, to offer it to maybe a quarter to a half of our students as an alternative to our traditional design coursework,” he said.  To do that, Schwartz is considering establishing an alumni innovation fund, or providing graduate students with time to advise undergraduate student teams.

Schwartz's team, OmniOff, won an honorable mention and a $2,500 prize. The other two honorable mentions went to UrbanHarvest, which proposes to grow hydroponic vegetables on commercial buildings’ rooftops; and LumiSands, which developed a nanoparticle-based coating to improve the quality of LED light.

More than 100 judges volunteered their time. Teams are judged on the quality of their prototype and pitch, as well as their potential environmental impact.

“It’s a great opportunity for the students to showcase their ideas, and it’s wonderful for the investor and the business community to learn about them,” said judge Susannah Malarkey, executive director of the Technology Alliance. “The fact that they’re required to have a prototype is fabulous."

For many teams, this is just one venue to pitch their idea. LionTail Cycles founder Henry Kellogg, a senior in mechanical engineering, has already sold a few of his solar-powered electric bike conversion kits. His team plans to travel to California in April for CalTech’s First Look West competition, and to enter the UW’s Business Plan Competition in May.

“I love this competition,” said UW alumnus Daniel Rossi, executive director of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, whose team placed second the 2009 competition. “It forces us to find a hole in the clean-tech market, and plug it with a solution.”

Patient safety expert Dr. Tom Gallagher addresses an auditorium filled with UW nursing, medicine and pharmacy students.

A slide showing an X-ray of a surgical instrument inadvertently left in a patient’s abdomen after an operation brought a collective groan to the audience. Gallagher explained the importance of conducting disclosures openly and honestly, of helping patients and their families to understand the repercussions of errors, and of discussing how similar errors will be prevented in the future.

“I have a lot of experience talking with patients about what has gone wrong,” said Gallagher, “and better interprofessional education about how to do this holds the key to better patient communication.”

That’s exactly what the All Health Professions Error Disclosure Day was designed to do.  Originally developed by an interprofessional group of faculty members funded by grants from the Josiah Macy Jr. and Hearst Foundations, the training brings together students from across the health sciences schools to practice disclosing errors as healthcare teams to patients and their families. When Brenda Zierler, professor of biobehavioral nursing and health systems in the UW School of Nursing, and Brian Ross, professor of anesthesiology, in the UW School of Medicine received the grants in 2008, opportunities were few for interactive, interprofessional learning for health sciences students.

Students review the hospital error scenario. The various colors show the professional role each will play in talking with the patient's daughter.

Zierler, Ross and their team wanted to change that. Sarah Shannon, associate professor of biobehavioral nursing and health systems in the UW School of Nursing and Karen McDonough, associate professor of medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, at the UW School of Medicine  collaborated with others on the Josiah Macy Jr. grant team to develop  interactive training for health sciences students. Error disclosure was chosen as a topic for learning team communication skills.

“The All Professions Error Disclosure Day has been a huge success,” said Zierler. “Staff and faculty work hard for many months scheduling this large event. The students enjoy the chance to work together as a team. They are inspirational to observe.”

The room buzzed with conversation when Gallagher asked participants to turn to the classmate next to them and pretend to disclose that they had just spilled their latte on the classmate’s laptop. Students found the conversation difficult and were sometimes surprised by the reactions, which ranged from anger to requests for financial compensation for the damage.

“Learning to disclose errors as a team is a terrific way to learn how to work together effectively,” said Shannon. “Errors raise the ante for the healthcare team by bringing up reactions of guilt and blame, grief and anger among the team members, as well as between the team and the patient and family.  Acquiring the skills to approach error disclosure effectively can carry over to other team communication.  We make errors as a team; we need to disclosure errors as a team.”

Students plan to explain a medication error openly and honestly to the patient's family.

After Gallagher’s presentation, students headed to breakout groups of 10 to 12 medical, pharmacy and nursing students.  A faculty member greeted each group and explained they would have a chance to disclose an error. The students were given the case of an elderly patient whose healthcare team missed his allergy alert and gave him an antibiotic that caused a bad reaction.  Luckily, the patient was recovering from the mistake. The small groups discussed the error, then divided into three interprofessional teams to plan how to disclose it to the patient’s family member, who was played by another faculty member waiting outside of the classroom.

In one of the classrooms, School of Nursing lecturer Anne Kalkbrenner played the role of the patient’s daughter. She reacted to the situation with a variety of emotions, from upset and unresponsive, to angry and frustrated.

In one scenario, the daughter entered the room demanding immediate answers from the patient-care team.

“I felt put on the spot,” said one medical student, who agreed to be the first to talk with the daughter. With little time to respond, the student recalled that the group didn’t incorporate the rest of the patient care team into the initial conversation.

Students respond to the distress felt by the patient's daughter, played by nursing faculty member Anne Kalhbreener (right).

The team eventually was able to help the daughter understand her father’s condition and how the error arose. They then told her how they would prevent such an error from happening again.

“It was interesting to see her reaction to us,” said another student at the end of the interaction. “We didn’t know what to expect when she walked in.”

Lisa Erlanger, a family physician at Hall Health who led the breakout group, said that interprofessional education is a new and necessary way of training health sciences students.

“When I went to medical school, we didn’t have any training like this,” she said. “I think this is a great chance for students to learn how to work together, because this is how we work together at the bedside.”

Error disclosure training isn’t just for students. New funding this year allowed for faculty from health sciences schools across the United States to come to the UW to learn how to implement interprofessional education, such as error disclosure training, at their own institution. More than 35 faculty members spent four days at the UW and at the Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies at Harborview Medical Center. There they explored ways to teach their faculty colleagues to be facilitators of interprofessional education and practice.

Leslie Hall of the University of Missouri-Columbia and UW's Brenda Zierler received a Macy Foundation grant to teach faculty from across the country how to conduct interprofessional training programs.

Leslie Hall, senior associate dean for clinical affairs at the University of Missouri-Columbia and UW’s Brenda Zierler were awarded a second Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation grant to train faculty to lead interprofessional education and practice. Twenty-two faculty members from the Universities of Virginia, North Dakota, Kentucky, Missouri School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Indiana University School of Medicine, Columbia University School of Nursing, and the Medical School of South Carolina joined five UW faculty members from the Veteran’s Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System and eight UW Health Sciences faculty members for the training last week.

“There is a national focus on training students to work together collaboratively to improve communication, but the training needs to start with faculty first,” said Zierler. “Faculty can model teamwork behaviors for students and they can create the opportunities to train health professional students together by emphasizing communication, teamwork, collaborative care, values and ethics, and role clarity.”

UW Information Technology recently completed its survey of technology use and attitudes among faculty and students. The results provide a snapshot of where the UW is going in its use of technology and has proven helpful in identifying both opportunities and obstacles. Similar surveys are conducted every three years to spot trends and identify ongoing issues.

“We’re seeing greater variety in the use of technology in classes of different sizes,” says Cara Giacomini, research manager with UW-IT. “We see students using more technology-based tools with their classmates – well beyond those assigned by their teacher.”

The survey revealed very few obstacles to access for obtaining technology. But students would like to see more places where they can plug in laptops, more consistent wireless access, and more choices among places to use mobile technology. “This is especially true of informal places on campus,” Giacomini says. “”Students want more convenient electrical outlets and more places that don’t become oversaturated when a bunch of students are using wireless devices.”

Faculty and TAs, for their part, would like to see more consistent classroom technology, so that as classes move from one room to another over the course of a year the teacher can use one design for the classroom experience that works in different settings. ”They’d like more classrooms that are not only adequately equipped but also support more flexible uses of facilities,” she says. “Many classrooms are configured for one model of teaching, and using another model can require moving heavy tables, for example, to allow students to work in small groups or plug in laptops.”

Students were somewhat critical of the way faculty use technology when it comes to the availability of online information: they’d like to see all material related to a single course online in one area, preferably MyUW. “We find that standards for posting information online vary a lot from department to department,” Giacomini says.

This year, for the first time, the survey included a substantial group of researchers. The survey showed that the key issue for faculty across a broad range of disciplines is data management. As datasets grow – whether in science, engineering or in humanities fields such as art history – the increasing need for storage is creating challenges. Most researchers are still addressing these needs by adding storage on their own personal computer. Faculty typically rely on local support – from a departmental expert or from colleagues – when they have questions.

The study also reconfirms a fact, that faculty frequently bring their research into the classroom. “Today’s technology raises some intriguing possibilities for using the same technology that faculty are using for collaboration among their peers and incorporating into classroom instruction,” Giacomini says.

The survey revealed no major obstacles for faculty and students acquiring knowledge about how to use technology: Both groups rated themselves relatively high in mastery. Most feel very comfortable with their ability to understand the “how to” of technology, but the survey suggests much less confidence in addressing the issue of “when and why,” Giacomini says.

The entire survey is available at http://www.washington.edu/lst/research/research_projects/2011techsurveys.

UW graduating medical students Tiffany Irwin (left) and Madeline Turner show their official residency match letters and give "thumbs up" to their placements.

Clare McLean

Soon-to-be UW doctor of medicine graduates began gathering in the lobby, along with their families, friends and faculty mentors.  Many glanced hopefully at the boxes, which stood in alphabetical groupings.

Every year in March, on Residency Program Matching Day, graduating students at medical schools across the country learn their residency placements at the same time, noon EDT.  After medical school, newly minted medical doctors go on to three to seven years or more of graduate medical education, the formal term for residency training, in a selected primary care or specialty field.  They will be intensely involved in caring for patients and in learning and honing clinical skills, under the supervision of attending physicians, throughout this training.

The UW celebration of this significant day in the lives of physicians-to-be was under the direction of Dr. Ellen Cosgrove, vice dean for academic affairs for the UW School of Medicine, with the support of many others in her office, at the medical school, and in the school’s WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) regional medical education program.

The husband of graduating medical student Nicole Fox snaps a photo with his phone of the take-out box holding her residency match results.

Clare McLean

At 9 a.m. Seattle time, and simultaneously in Boise, Anchorage, Spokane and Billings -- locations of the UW School of Medicine’s five-state M.D. program’s main clinical education offices -- students opened their boxes.

“Congratulations, you have been matched!”  the official note inside proclaimed. Beneath was the program and location.  Couples kissed. Friends hugged.  News of places classmates would be going after graduation spread in waves.

This year 211 UW School of Medicine graduates participated in the National Residency Matching Program. The program takes students choices of residency programs, and residency programs choices of students, and compares the lists to try to make a match.

This year 99 percent of the UW students participating were matched to a residency program on their list.  A few of the UW students, such as those entering military residency programs, already knew their match information, but came to the celebration to receive their official Match letters and to congratulate their classmates.

The 9^th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference,  “At a Crossroads: Choosing Hidden Paths in Global Health” will take place at the UW April 27-29.

The conference will focus on marginalized, underserved populations around the world and will include topics on health care as a right, global mental health and economic inequality.

Nilesh Singit/Disability News WorldWide

“We are trying to identify topics in global health that get marginalized and elevate them at our event,” said Colleen Fulp, the graduate student lead organizer of the event.

The keynote speaker is acclaimed human rights advocate and thought leader Kavita Ramdas, the executive director of a newly launched program on social entrepreneurship at Stanford University.  Her talk is titled, "Nothing Less than a Revolution: Why I'm Preoccupied with Inequality, Social Justice and Health."

“Kavita was chosen by students because she is a visionary who believes in grassroots organizing as a way of changing the world,” said Daren Wade, director of the Global Health Resource Center, the networking unit within the Department of Global Health. “She addresses topics of women as agents of social change, peace building, and human rights and her work is such a match for the areas in global health our students want to showcase in this conference.”

The keynote speaker will be human rights advocate Kavita Ramdas, the social entrepreneurship program director at Stanford University.

The conference, co-sponsored by more than two dozen universities and colleges along the West Coast and Canada, is organized around six tracks – global mental health, marginalized populations, organizing and funding of global health, clinical issues in global health, communications and technology in global health, and the environment and global health.  Within these tracks are 18 breakout sessions with some of the top leaders in global health in this region.

More than 25 UW undergraduate and graduate/professional students across disciplines have been organizing this conference.

Wade said students are interested in challenging speakers on the direction of global health and will be encouraging attendees to ask the presenters tough questions.

“Our students really are the driving force in global health and it’s so exciting to see them shaping the agenda and sharing their priorities in the field of global health,” he said.

Three evocative plenary panels covering global health diplomacy, funding and the future of global health; global mental health; and global health and the environment will also be presented.

Speakers include Jaime Sepulveda (UC-San Francisco), Timothy Brewer (McGill University), Guy Palmer (Washington State University), Judith Wasserheit (University of Washington), Jurgen Unutzer (University of Washington), Deepa Rao (University of Washington), Paul Bolton (Johns Hopkins University), Benita Beamon (University of Washington), and Lori Hunter (University of Colorado at Boulder).

Sixty abstracts touching on a wide  variety of topics were accepted as posters. Thirty will be displayed per day on Saturday and Sunday.

Among the many breakout sessions, topics include “The Understudy’s Role: Global Health’s Next Challenge;”  “Non-communicable/Chronic Diseases;” “Super Powers in Global Health;” “Trauma and Conflict in Global Health;” “Health Care, A Human Right?” “Utilizing Storytelling and Multi-Media Tools in Global Health;” “The Environment and Food and Water Security;” and “Improving Global Health with New Technology.”

Poster for the Saturday event on how occupy movements might improve lives on a global scale.

Saturday evening, the event, “Testify, Demystify, Electrify, Occupy!” will be presented in conjunction with the Global 99 group on campus to address the ways occupy movements have the potential to improve the lives of people on a global scale. A closing session will address how we can move “Beyond Good Intentions” in global health and showcase ways participants can take action in ways that make a difference and consider important ethical concerns.

Registration is $50 for students and medical residents and $100 for community members. For more information and to register, please go to www.wrihc.org