Category: Featured

The University of Washington produced the most Peace Corps volunteers for 2015, reclaiming the top spot with 72 alumni currently in service. The UW, Western Washington University and Gonzaga University combined to lead all three categories – large, medium and small schools – marking the second time in three years that institutions in the state of Washington produced the most Peace Corps volunteers in each category. Washington is the only state to top all three of Peace Corps’ undergraduate school ranking categories.

“We try to instill in students a sense of their place in the world and how one person can make a difference,” said Ana Mari Cauce, UW provost and executive vice president. “We are very proud of those students who actually make the commitment to test this by volunteering for the Peace Corps. It is very gratifying to think of our students in places all around the globe helping to make someone’s life a little better.”

Since the first days of the Peace Corps, 2,888 alumni from UW have traveled abroad to serve as volunteers, placing it third on the list of all-time volunteer producing schools. This is the second time UW has held the No.1 spot in the last three years.

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The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies will hold a roundtable discussion on questions of radical Islam, European unity and conflicts in the Middle East, 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Room 101 of Thomson Hall. The event — which is free and open to the public — is titled “Paris and Beyond: Making Sense of the World with Jackson School Faculty.”

“The attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the supermarket in Paris reverberated across Europe, the Middle East and North America,” said Jackson School Director Reşat Kasaba. “In the Jackson School, we are grappling with the whys and hows of these events.”

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University of Washington scientists recently published the first large-scale survey of impurities in North American snow, to see whether they might absorb enough sunlight to speed melt rates and influence climate. The project involved collecting hundreds of snow samples from 67 sites away from any cities or major roads. The trip took the researchers from Seattle to North Dakota to Churchill, Manitoba. Every few days they melted and filtered the snow in their motel rooms, then back at their UW lab they shone light through a filter to see how much light was blocked, and did chemical analyses to determine what particles were responsible.

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When Volha Hrechka, ’13, left her home country of Belarus on an exchange program in 2004, she had no idea she’d one day be revolutionizing the plastics industry. Today her startup PolyDrop is responsible for creating an innovative additive that dissipates electrostatic charge on airplanes one drop at a time — and it all started in the halls of the UW.

None of this would have been possible without the help of the UW, says Volha. “Countless times I’ve asked for help and it was always provided to me. I’m so thankful.”

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With a humanitarian crisis leaving a trail of destruction in Syria, UW alumna Rita Zawaideh is building a path toward healing for children facing the traumas of war. Funded entirely by donations, the Maliki-SCM Children’s Center is dedicated to helping the youngest victims of the wars in neighboring Syria and Iraq.

Opened in January of this year, the center serves about 25-30 children every quarter, year-round. The children often arrive displaying one or more symptoms of trauma: aggression, bed wetting, a refusal to interact with others. With a staff including social workers, teachers, and a psychologist, the nondescript white building in this quiet neighborhood in Jordan’s capital is the first of 10 Zawaideh plans to open. A second center is scheduled to open in March, Zawaideh says, and funding is lined up for eight more to open around the country, one-to-two months apart. When all 10 centers are operating they will be able to serve more than 1,000 children every year.

The centers, according to Zawaideh, will focus on the behavioral and emotional needs of traumatized children. They are treatment programs, not schools. Instead of working on math or reading, children play, receive behavioral therapy and one-on-one sessions with psychologists, and have structured free time.

Zawaideh is a 1975 alumna of the University of Washington and is widely recognized for her knowledge of and work in the Middle East.

Read more from Crosscut.com …

A new study of the worldwide migration of professionals to the U.S. shows a sharp drop-off in its proportional share of those workers – raising the question of whether the nation will remain competitive in attracting top talent in an increasingly globalized economy.

The study, which used a novel method of tracking people through data from the social media site LinkedIn, is believed to be the first to monitor global migrations of professionals to the U.S., said co-author Emilio Zagheni, a University of Washington assistant professor of sociology and fellow of the UW eScience Institute.

“This is the first time a worldwide data set has been used to answer this question,” he said. “That hasn’t been done before.”

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University of Washington fisheries ecologist Daniel Schindler was awarded the highest honor given by the Society of Canadian Limnologists for his work in freshwater science. Schindler is the second in his family to receive the Frank Rigler Award. In 1964 — the first year the honor was awarded — it was presented to Schindler’s father, David.

Daniel Schindler studies climate impacts, fisheries as large-scale drivers of ecosystem organization and the interdependence of terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems. As one of the lead investigators of the UW Alaska Salmon Program, much of his research focuses on salmon-producing watersheds in Alaska.

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Jason Young and Walter O’Toole had been stranded on Arctic ice for nearly an hour, unable to find a safe path back to shore, when an Inuit woman observing from her kitchen dispatched her 13-year-old son to guide them to safety. It was one of many humbling moments for the UW students during a visit to the Canadian Arctic through a Canadian Studies Foreign Language Area and Studies (FLAS) Fellowship.

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