Category: Featured

Dear University of Washington Community,

As I approach my first anniversary as UW’s Vice Provost for Global Affairs, I want to reflect on the remarkable progress we’ve made together and share our vision for the year ahead. In a time of global uncertainty, the University of Washington has not only maintained a strong international focus, but continued to strengthen its impact, affirming that global engagement is more essential than ever.

Our achievements this year are the result of the visionary leadership of our faculty and staff and the dedication of the UW Global team. Together, we advanced our strategic priorities:

Advancing global research and innovation: Through the Global Innovation Fund (GIF), we awarded more than $360,000 to 40 interdisciplinary projects, fostering new collaborations and innovative approaches to global learning. The GIF deadline for the 2026 cycle is January 31. I encourage faculty to apply and help us continue driving innovation across our campuses.

Expanding global learning opportunities: Nearly 3,000 UW students studied abroad in more than 80 locations worldwide, supported by more than $1 million in need-based scholarships. Hundreds of students engaged at our UW Rome and León Centers, and nearly 1,000 attended our Study Abroad Fair to explore global experiences. Beyond mobility, we are facilitating local global-learning opportunities and are investing in infrastructure for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) to broaden student access to global experiences.

Building and deepening partnerships: From new collaborations with institutions like Tohoku University and the University of Sheffield to hosting international delegations and sending UW faculty and students abroad, we continue to strengthen our global network.

Ensuring health, safety, and compliance: Our Global Travel Health and Safety team supported thousands of UW travelers and launched new policies to ensure safe and compliant international engagement.

Looking ahead, our priorities remain clear: serving as the University’s global hub for engagement; supporting faculty in research, teaching, and developing and sustaining institutional international partnerships; expanding global learning opportunities for every UW student — locally, virtually, or abroad; providing robust global support for health, safety, and compliance; and building resources to fund faculty and student global experiences.

To reflect our evolving scope and vision, we are transitioning our name from the Office of Global Affairs to UW Global. This name underscores our role as the University’s gateway to international engagement, connecting faculty, students, and staff with global opportunities and fostering the cross-cultural innovation that defines us as a leading global university.

Ultimately, our mission is to serve you. Whether building financial resources for research or managing the complexities of international operations, our goal is to ensure UW remains at the forefront of global education.

It has been an honor to serve as your Vice Provost over the past year. I am proud of what we have accomplished together and am excited for the momentum we will build together in 2026.

With gratitude,

Ahmad Ezzeddine, UW Vice Provost for Global Affairs

University of Washington senior Parker Ritzmann, has been selected as a Schwarzman Scholar, one of the world’s most competitive graduate and fellowship programs. Schwarzman Scholars will pursue a one-year, fully-funded master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

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Read More about Schwarzman Scholar

Study abroad program in Rwanda pairs UW and pan-African students for an up-close look at a nation on the rise.

A new study abroad program in Rwanda led by two University of Washington Bothell faculty members takes international and interdisciplinary collaboration to the next level.

Instead of visiting the country of 14 million people as a cohort just from UW Bothell, 17 UW students recently spent four weeks studying, traveling and researching alongside 16 counterparts from across Africa.

Their focus: leadership and nation building.

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Read More about study abroad program in Rwanda

The University of Washington has again earned a prestigious recognition for the impact and importance of the connections faculty, students and staff have with local, regional and global communities.

All three UW campuses were recognized with the Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement reclassification, placing the university among 277 peer institutions nationwide. Officials with the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who award the designation, noted that these universities are deepening partnerships, centering community assets and addressing urgent societal challenges with clarity and distinction.

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Read More about Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement

Students immerse themselves in biodiversity, conservation and sustainability experiences while studying in Peru.

For Dr. Ursula Valdez, Peru holds a special place in her heart as not only her home country but also as a point of fascination for her research as a tropical ecologist. Valdez is a lecturer in the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and has shared her passion for Peru with her students, even leading study abroad experiences for them to immerse themselves in the country’s natural wonders right alongside her.

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Read More about UW Study Abroad in Peru

When the historic tall ship Stratsraad Lemkhuhl sailed into Puget Sound in late October, it kicked off a week-long set of events to highlight the numerous ways the ocean impacts our lives. What followed was One Ocean Week Seattle, overseen and hosted by Washington Maritime Blue, bringing together international ocean leaders, innovators, researchers, startups, policymakers, artists, educators and communities to showcase the ocean’s immeasurable value and accelerate solutions for a sustainable future.

The UW played a significant role in the week’s events, culminating in an expo that took place on the ship while dockside in downtown Seattle. Jan Newton, oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics Lab and the College of the Environment School of Oceanography, served on the event’s steering committee and played a pivotal role in making sure UW ocean sciences were well represented at the city’s inaugural One Ocean Week celebration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Read More about One Ocean Week

By Dr. Ahmad Ezzeddine, UW Vice Provost for Global Affairs

At the University of Washington, global engagement is not just an aspiration, it is a cornerstone of our mission. Whether it is solving climate issues across continents or bringing diverse international perspectives into our classrooms, our impact is defined by our connections.

UW Global is proud to serve as the university’s central hub for these connections, acting as the gateway that links UW innovation to the world, and as the front door for our international partners to connect with us.

To fuel this exchange, we are thrilled to launch the 2025-2026 Global Innovation Fund (GIF).

The GIF is more than just funding. It is a strategic investment in faculty-led innovation. While financial support is the mechanism, our goal is to act as a resource and catalyst for your work. By providing seed funding for early-stage ideas and support for established collaborations, UW Global aims to:

• Lower barriers for faculty entering the global arena.
• Facilitate reciprocity, ensuring we are not just exporting knowledge, but integrating global wisdom into our campus.
• Bridge disciplines, connecting researchers from different fields to address complex global challenges.

Application Window: December 1, 2025 – January 31, 2026

We have structured this year’s GIF to support a wide spectrum of global engagement through two categories:

I. Global Research Awards

• Tier 1: Seed funding for emerging cross-disciplinary, cross-continent initiatives. Early-career faculty are encouraged to apply for these awards.
• Tier 2: Support to scale established partnerships toward major external funding.
• Strategic Partnership Awards: Dedicated funding for collaborative projects with our premier partners, including Aalto University, University of Helsinki, Tohoku University, The University of Manchester, and the University of Sheffield.

II. Global Learning Awards

• Study Abroad: Developing transformative field experiences.
• COIL & Virtual Exchange: Connecting classrooms digitally to expand access to global learning.
• Teaching & Curriculum: Integrating international perspectives directly into course design.
  

  

The Global Innovation Fund represents a strategic investment in the future of global education and research at UW, supporting faculty to innovate, collaborate, and inspire.  We invite you to partner with us and leverage the resources of UW Global. Let us help you expand your reach, deepen your scholarship, and prepare our students for a borderless future.

For full details and application guidelines, visit  UW Global Innovation Fund.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Hannah Wild came to the UW Department of Surgery with decades of experience in the riskiest areas around the world, and when her residency took her to Burkina Faso, the UW Office of Global Affairs (OGA) was there. OGA supports UW international travel abroad by maintaining the global travel registry and providing guidance around health and safety abroad. The new Administrative Policy Statement (APS) 75.1 that requires UW employees to register all official UW international travel went into effect in July.

The Global Travel Health and Safety team are no strangers to intrepid itineraries — from conferences in Geneva to surgery for victims of explosive violence in the Sahel.

Registering travel to Switzerland takes an average of two minutes and travel to Kenya, an average of five minutes. But travel to a Department of State Level 4: Do Not Travel region in West Africa? That’s a different conversation entirely and one required for Dr. Wild’s itinerary. It’s also a conversation that is a privilege to be part of; it’s not everyday that someone has an opportunity to support doctors who are working with local partners to provide life-saving surgical care in austere settings.

Dr. Wild approached her international travel registration process with valid skepticism: “While I came in with the belief [of the value] in working effectively with University risk management, I think there was a degree of apprehension that the main incentive would be to shut down any work that wasn’t risk free.” Year-long travel to some of the most insecure places on earth constituted a longer travel waiver review process, including approvals from the International Travel Risk Assessment and Safety Committee and Provost Tricia Serio.

As an R1 research University at the forefront of global initiatives, the goal is to simplify and support travel, including registration and approving meaningful projects. We, of course, understand the value of improving access to surgical trauma in low resource settings. In fact, it was one of the driving factors for Dr. Wild’s choice of a residency at Harborview, with its significant exposure to high acuity trauma.

Unsurprisingly, at the start of the review process, our exposure to the specific needs of emergency care related to explosive violence was limited. Working with Dr. Wild, harsh realities and the bridge that UW is building unfolded:

“In modern conflict, explosive mechanisms are increasingly common.” Think improvised explosive devices, air-launched explosives in populated areas, and highly lethal modern weapons like thermobarics, often called aerosol bombs or fuel-air explosives. 

Unlike small arms (e.g., gunshot wounds), explosives have a highly indiscriminate nature. When they fall in areas of conflict, they have a disproportionate impact on civilians, including women and children. Imagine civilians, ten-year-olds or expectant mothers, injured in regions without access to organized trauma systems. Further work is also needed to adapt trauma care guidance from high-resource settings to low-resource environments; for example, bleeding control strategies that do not rely solely on tourniquets, which can cause unnecessary limb loss in settings with prolonged evacuation times.  

As a child, Dr. Wild was “captivated in the worst possible way” during the Rwandan genocide, leading her down a path to medical school at Stanford, and years with nomadic pastoralists in the disputed Ilemi Triangle, a place affected by intertribal warfare and cattle raiding. She continued to work in Ethiopia and South Sudan, including a Gates Grand Challenges grant piloting novel methods to include neglected nomadic populations in demographic and health surveys.

Eventually, her focus on casualty care in low-resource settings would lead her to the doorstep of UW Global Travel Health and Safety, the last hurdle before the work that would “totally change [her] life and future plans.” That work will involve splitting time between the U.S. and the Sahel. The goal is to adapt and pilot trauma care interventions to improve casualty care in the region, then use this model to implement and scale in low-resource conflict settings globally, all while maintaining standards of care and best practices that the UW implements.

“For better or worse, knowing that such things are going on in the world … it’s meaningful to feel a sense of purpose and try to fulfill it.” 

At the end of the day, this is at the heart of why the Office of Global Affairs exists. Whether it’s developing digital systems to improve the quality of HIV/AIDS services in Jamaica (during a hurricane!) or studying the rapid retreat of Antarctic sea ice due to climate change, the work of UW employees spans the globe. Being boundless means encouraging the expertise of every department to spill over into the creation of a more equitable world. 

UW Global Health and Safety has the honor of working with UW employees around the world and for Dr. Wild, it involved support before, during and after her travel. She described the high-risk travel review process as being “very easy, self-explanatory, clear, and not overly burdensome.” 

While abroad, Dr. Wild received regular health and safety check-ins via WhatsApp, the most accessible means of communication in her location. She was sent alerts regarding security incidents in the region because, “when you’re in the field and away from central news cycles, you’re not always the first to know when something is going on. [The UW team] was so on top of it.”

When asked about the APS policy change moving from a recommendation to a requirement to register travel, Hannah shared:

“I think the new requirement to register is a good thing. It’s the opposite of obstructionism and it can only benefit the University to understand where employees are at any given time. I would encourage everyone to see that UW Global Health and Safety is very experienced and willing to hear people out based on the specifics of each situation and proposed work.” 

Help us help you, no matter where in the world your time at the UW takes you. Register your travel for all official (sponsored, affiliated, or funded by UW) international travel. 

Any questions? Please contact us at travelemergency@uw.edu

By Maddie Macmath, UW Global Travel Health & Safety / Quotes provided through interview with Dr. Hannah Wild