Nicole Klein is not ordinarily a building hugger. But not long ago, in the middle of a tour she was leading of the old ASUW Shell House, Klein found herself overcome by emotion, temporarily unable to speak and compelled to wrap her arms around its walls of rough-hewn Douglas fir for a lingering moment. “I [...]

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Identifying the root cause of the climate crisis is simple enough. Finding solutions? Not so simple. It requires enormous creativity, commitment and collaboration, often among traditional antagonists in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. To foster these ad hoc collaborations, there is UW EarthLab, a transdisciplinary institute within the College of the Environment that is [...]

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As she leads a tour of the diverse vegetation proliferating inside the UW Biology Greenhouse, Katie Sadler compulsively collects dead leaves, desiccated flowers and spent branches, almost without noticing, the way a mother casually fusses with her child’s hair or straightens his collar. “I wish I had my pruning shears,” she says, with a knowing [...]

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“Study abroad changed my life.” This is a headline for many a blog post, tagline for many a study abroad program brochure, popular Tik Tok theme and a common refrain among students and alumni of overseas study. Indeed, a quick Google search of that phrase pulls up dozens of first-person accounts about how being an [...]

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Service to one’s community—in whatever form people choose to offer it—brings people together, bridging ideological, cultural, values-based, and economic differences for the common good. For LeAnne Wiles, Student Academic Services Executive Director for First Year Programs & Strategic Initiatives in Undergraduate Academic Affairs, serving her community has, from a young age, been a conscious choice [...]

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Meaningful recognition is a powerful motivator. People need to know that what they are doing matters. They need consistent acknowledgement of their value in an organization, and they need to be given recognition in a way that is significant to them. For nurses and other patient care providers, meaningful recognition might be the difference between [...]

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Working the night shift is not for everyone. There’s that perpetual jet-lagged feeling resulting from shift-work sleep disorder, the strain on one’s social life, the detrimental health effects and the disconnect with family members and friends who operate on a daytime schedule. But for those with night-owl tendencies, the night shift can have its benefits: [...]

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George Thomas Jr. first became interested in salmon when, as a student at Indiana University at Bloomington, he was recruited from an introductory stream ecology course to spend the summer on the Olympic Peninsula assisting a team of researchers studying coho salmon habitat. Working among tributaries feeding the Queets River the summer before his sophomore [...]

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When Val Schweigert meets with a student in a one-to-one advising session, they* seldom lead with their status as a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve. *Val uses the pronouns she/her and they/them interchangeably. This profile will emphasize this conscious choice by using them interchangeably as well.  Proudly genderqueer and fiercely progressive, Val does not [...]

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Sean Johnson moved to Seattle in 2010 with two goals in mind: he wanted to go to medical school at the UW School of Medicine, and he wanted to publicly come out as transgender and begin transitioning. He didn’t get into the UW School of Medicine. But he did pursue—and excel in—Master’s degree programs in [...]

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Like many higher education professionals in disability services, Ian Campbell was driven to the vocation because of his personal experience with disability. Ian struggled with academics for years before finally being diagnosed in high school with learning disabilities. He characterizes the struggles before his diagnosis as “aptitude without performance”—the frustrating inability to fully demonstrate his [...]

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Brooke Emrich is what you would call an extreme knitter. The educational seminars coordinator with the UW Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology spends a not insignificant amount time with needles in hand. In 2008, going through a period of creative stagnation, the self-described “knitting addict” picked up her first pair of needles, participating in [...]

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