Category: News

The UW is continuing its partnership with KinderCare® Learning Centers and Bright Horizons to provide trusted, quality child care services to faculty, staff and students on all our campuses.

Those who register now can receive access to multiple backup child care options as well as savings and discounts through these two nationally recognized leaders in early childhood education.

Backup and sick child care can be especially beneficial when:

• Your child is mildly ill and can’t go back to their care center yet
• Your regular caregiver is unavailable
• Your child’s school is closed
• You are between care arrangements
• You are transitioning back to work after leave

Openings are not guaranteed — advanced registration with both companies prior to needing care is highly recommended.

KinderCare Learning Centers backup child care
Backup care is available in KinderCare Learning Centers everywhere. UW faculty, staff and student families can use 10 days per year, with a co-pay of $20 per child per day.

Plus, save 10% weekly on full-time and part-time tuition when you enroll at a KinderCare Learning Center including select UW priority access Centers.

Simply register online, and you’ll be ready to request care when and where you need it. Please note that space is limited.

Bright Horizons backup and sick child care
When your regular child care is temporarily unavailable, you can take your child to one of the many Bright Horizons centers or affiliates.

Bright Horizons provides in-home care for your children when they are too sick to attend their normal arrangements, and you need to be at work. And, if Bright Horizons is not able to find a placement for your child, they will reimburse you for a percentage of your own personal child care.

Backup care costs $20 per child and $35 per family. In-home care for a sick child costs $32 for up to four hours of care (for up to three of your children). Each additional hour costs $8.

Register now so it is only a phone call or a few clicks on the computer when the coughs and fevers begin.

Learn more about all child care programs offered to our UW community at hr.uw.edu/worklife/child-care/backup-and-sick-child-care/

The University of Washington community is invited to attend this year’s Distinguished Staff Award Reception on Thursday, Feb. 23 from 2-3:30 p.m. in the HUB Ballroom.

Come celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of our inspirational staff, including incredible efforts from individuals and teams. President Ana Mari Cauce will be speaking at this year’s reception alongside the award’s executive sponsor and Vice President for Human Resources Mindy Kornberg, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Jeff Scott, and Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity Rickey Hall.

Don’t miss this opportunity to enjoy refreshment with your colleagues while cheering on this year’s nominees. All nominees will receive a certificate along with a copy of their nomination.

Learn more on the Distinguished Staff Award website.

Proud Husky partners Starbucks and the United Way joined with the Carlson Leadership & Public Service Center to celebrate the MLK Week of Service last month.

University of Washington faculty, staff and students linked arms with more than 800 Starbucks employees to volunteer their time and talents at projects across town including the UW Farm, Capitol Hill Tool Library and 35^th Annual Community March and Rally. Thank you for honoring Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy through service and solidarity!

Faculty can include a service component to their courses through service-learning with guidance from the Carlson Center. Service-learning is an opportunity for faculty members to pair academic instruction with community engagement. The model aims to build reciprocal relationship between community partner organizations and the university, while also fostering rich learning experiences for students.

Learn more by visiting the Carlson Leadership & Public Service Center.

Welcome to the first edition of UW Insider — a weekly e-newsletter designed to help you find the information you need to make the most of your UW employment experience. ­

Through UW Insider, you’ll receive faculty and staff news, events and information in your inbox every Wednesday, along with a monthly calendar email featuring events from UW Human Resources (UWHR), UW Information Technology (UW-IT), The Whole U, Finance & Facilities (F2) and more.

UWHR, UW-IT, F2 and University Marketing & Communications designed UW Insider with faculty and staff in mind. We used input from reader surveys and user experience studies to create a publication that will reduce email overload and combine crucial employee information into one centrally managed vehicle.

UW Insider replaces information previously shared in IT Connect News, The Resource, The Whole U email, Disaster Digest, UW Recycling newsletter and the UW Combined Fund Drive newsletter. It will also contain updates and information about key UW efforts such as Transforming Administration Program (TAP), Culture of Service, Population Health Initiative, Race & Equity Initiative and the Human Resources/Payroll (HR/P) Modernization Program. UW Insider works with, but does not replace, UW Today, which primarily focuses on external-facing news about the University of Washington.

Share your feedback: Take a quick survey to let us know what you think of this new publication. We’ll make continuous improvements based on your input!

Visit the Faculty & Staff Insider page for more information.

Questions? Send an email to uinsider@uw.edu.

The UW Department of Accounting and United Way King County are hosting a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site during this year’s tax season.

Located at Paccar Hall, room 297, the site will feature free tax returns, three days a week through the tax deadline in April. UW graduate accounting students — all certified by the IRS — will offer assistance on:

• Mondays and Wednesdays, 6–9 p.m.
• Saturdays, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

Anyone who earns less than $64,000 per year is eligible; however, individuals with unusual or especially complex tax issues may require assistance beyond this free service.

Learn more at uwkc.org/need-help/tax-help/

Navigating the University of Washington’s Seattle campus just got easier, thanks to 23 new wayfinding signs — and a major cross-campus collaborative effort.

The installation of the signs earlier this fall marked the culmination of a five-year-long project led by University Landscape Architect Kristine Kenney and Associate Vice President of Facilities Services Charles Kennedy — the original visionary and sponsor of the program — who recognized the need for a strong wayfinding system on a campus as large and highly trafficked as the UW’s.

With the help of a long list of collaborators and stakeholders, including Studio Matthews, UW’s Division of Design within the School of Art, the Welcome Campus Experience Committee and several working groups comprised of faculty, staff, students, alumni and others, the new signs were created.

The signs, which are map-based and therefore widely accessible, were strategically placed throughout the UW’s 700-acre Seattle campus, not only benefiting the University by helping visitors find a destination, but also guiding people to discover parts of the campus they may not otherwise explore. This is especially important for student, faculty and staff recruitment efforts since ease of navigating a place and discovering all that it has to offer can ultimately influence a visitor’s desire to come back for a second visit — or to stay.

Built to last and easy to update, the signs are intended to become an integral part of the campus landscape. Along with the physical sign structures, UW’s campus map will also be updated to make wayfinding easier and more convenient and will include icons that direct visitors to viewpoints, dining options, lecture halls and other locations — good news for the nearly 8,000 visitors that come through the UW Visitors Center each year, upwards of 70,000 fans that arrive for each Husky football game, and thousands of UW students and employees who are on campus daily.

Learn more about the project and see additional pictures.

 

The University of Washington Children’s Center at Portage Bay is set to open on campus in early January 2017, providing child care services to 140 children and their families.

Earlier this week, UW employees, local children and government officials celebrated this new resource for faculty, staff and students with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and remarks from UW Provost Jerry Baldasty.

The UW Children’s Center at Portage Bay is part of the University’s child care access initiative, which seeks to double child care capacity on or near campus over the next five to eight years.

“Through this initiative, we’re growing the UW’s capacity for child care, making campus more family-friendly, increasing the choices for parents and caregivers, and establishing donor funds in support of best-in-class care,” said Amy Hawkins, director of WorkLife and Childcare Development at the UW.

The center is located in a newly remodeled campus building on 3745 15th Ave. N.E. It’s the first child care facility to open at the University in more than 17 years and will add to the UW’s four existing centers, which serve 267 children.

Each day, you contribute to the learning and growth that are integral to every UW student’s Husky Experience, and you see firsthand how transformational that experience really is. Your work as teachers, mentors, supporters and advocates is inspiring. In fact, it inspired the creation of the Faculty Staff Retiree Endowment Matching Program.

Tuesday is National Philanthropy Day, which offers a chance to highlight this matching program, launched in celebration of the University’s most ambitious philanthropic campaign. It was created to honor our wonderful faculty, staff and retirees for their commitment to students. The program commits $5 million to matching any gift by current and former University employees to endowed scholarships and graduate fellowships at a 50 percent rate on gifts up to $250,000.

Many of you are already generous supporters of student scholarships and this matching program is our opportunity to amplify and honor your generous contributions. Your support makes a real difference in the lives of individual students and far beyond, creating opportunities for study abroad, public service internships, leadership opportunities, and educational and cultural experiences that open doors and broaden horizons for thousands of UW students. With this matching program, we aim to make your giving even more powerful.

The 50 percent match applies to gifts through June 2020 that support either pre-existing or newly created endowments to support student scholarships and fellowships. To learn more visit https://www.washington.edu/giving/fsrmatch/

The University of Washington has announced this year’s Awards of Excellence recipients being recognized for achievements in teaching, mentoring, public service and staff support.

The winners will be honored at 3:30 p.m. June 9 at a ceremony in Meany Hall for the campus and general public.

Distinguished Staff Award
Sabine Aboltina, hospital assistant, Harborview Medical Center
Magdalena Fonseca, associate director, Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity
David Peterson, engineering technician, Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics
Barbara Purington, administrator, applied physics

ICD-10 Program Team, UW Medicine:

• Sally Beahan, director, health information management
• Carol Garsi, coding manager
• Sarah Lucas, program director
• Rebecca Revand, project manager

David B. Thorud Leadership Award
Faculty award: Dr. Norman Beauchamp, professor and chair, radiology, School of Medicine
Staff award: Steven Hiller, director of planning and assessment, University Libraries

Distinguished Librarian Award
Cassandra Hartnett, U.S. documents librarian and gender, women & sexuality studies librarian, University Libraries

Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award
Greg Sheridan, senior associate vice president, University Advancement

Distinguished Retiree Excellence in Community Service Award
Sandra Adams Motzer, associate professor emeritus, School of Nursing

Distinguished Teaching Award
Nyan-Ping Bi, senior lecturer, Asian languages and literature
Cole DeForest, assistant professor, chemical engineering
Wendy Thomas, associate professor, bioengineering
Catherine Connors, professor and chair, classics
Linda Martin-Morris, principal lecturer, biology
Janelle Silva, assistant professor, interdisciplinary arts & sciences, UW Bothell
Yan Bai, associate professor, Institute of Technology, UW Tacoma

Distinguished Teaching Award for Innovation with Technology
David Masuda, lecturer, biomedical informatics and medical education

Excellence in Teaching Award
Jonathan Rosenberg, teaching assistant, philosophy
Jorge Tomasevic, teaching assistant, environmental and forest sciences

Distinguished Contributions to Lifelong Learning Award
Joe P. Mahoney, professor, civil and environmental engineering

University Faculty Lecture Award
Ray Hilborn, professor, aquatic and fishery sciences

Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award
Sandra Silberstein, professor, English

Distinguished Alumni Veteran Award
Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer

Outstanding Public Service
Augustine McCaffery, senior academic program specialist, academic affairs and planning

Alumna Summa Laude Dignata
The Honorable Sally Jewell

We are all deeply saddened and alarmed by the recent active shooter incidents in San Bernardino, CA, Colorado Springs, CO and Roseburg, OR, among many others across the country. While we believe the chances of serious violence at UW can be reduced through use of UW SafeCampus resources, we know that prevention efforts can never be 100% effective and that it is worthwhile to prepare for the unlikely, but dangerous, situation of an active shooter event here. There are a number of resources available to help you prepare, both individually and as a workgroup.

• In-person training: “Response to Active Shooter” training conducted by UWPD and SafeCampus (general session schedule to be announced in January, 2016).
• Email SafeCampus to join a list to learn about when active shooter training sessions are occurring or to discuss having a session scheduled for your department.
• Online training videos: Three “Shots Fired” streaming videos oriented to the work, academic and health care environments are available via a UWNetID on the SafeCampus training resources
• Workplace security plan consultation and physical security assessment: For an assessment of your workplace environment or security consultation, contact UWPD’s Mike Sletten slettm@uw.edu.
• Guides: The UWPD’s Active Shooter-Campus Emergency Procedures and Workplace Security Plan
• Additional resources: Department of Homeland Security resources, including
  • Run, Hide, Fight video
  • Active Shooter pocket card
  • Federal Emergency Management online training IS-907: Active Shooter: What You Can Do.

While preparing yourself and your workplace to respond to such a situation can be confidence-building, it’s stressful to think about such an event happening to you. UW CareLink, our faculty and staff assistance program, is available to help you manage this and other types of work or personal stress you may be experiencing.