The latest news from the UW

While the Shell drilling platform sits in a Seattle port and its future is hotly debated, a conference on changing Northern waters – including the Chukchi Sea where the oil company plans to use the rig to search for oil – will be held June 15-17 on the UW campus. The symposium is the 10th annual meeting of the international Ecosystem Studies of Sub-Arctic Seas Program, or ESSAS, which includes members from the U.S., Canada, Iceland, Norway, Japan and other…

The prolific David Shields, New York Times best-selling author and University of Washington professor of English, has a new book out, titled “That Thing You Do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha Matthews as Told to David Shields.” The book is an extended monologue by Matthews — who is Shields’ cousin once removed — examining her sexual history “from her abuse at the hands of a family member to her present-day life in Barcelona, where she once moonlighted…

Country musician Billy Mize worked with great people in his long career — Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, Glen Campbell and many more. He also worked in a different way with Diane Kendall, now a University of Washington professor of speech and hearing sciences and director of the UW’s Aphasia Research Laboratory. Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person’s ability to process language but does not affect intelligence or cognition. Kendall’s work helping Mize regain his…

Elena I. Campbell, a University of Washington associate professor of history, has published her first book, which studies Russia’s policies toward Muslims in the 19th and 20th centuries and the impact of the “Muslim Question” on the modernizing path the country would follow. “The Muslim Question and Russian Imperial Governance” was published early this spring by Indiana University Press. “From the time of the Crimean War through the fall of the Tsar, the question of what to do about the…

One of the best ways children learn is by copying what they see others do. Now new research shows that this learning strategy can be used even with things that cannot be seen, including invisible scientific concepts. Weight, for example, is a concept that cannot be seen directly, and it puzzles most preschool-aged children. While they can figure out other more obvious properties about objects, such as their shape, color, or the sound they make, weight trips them up. Researchers…

As a graduate student and food justice activist in Santa Barbara, California, Megan Carney became aware that many migrant women in the area struggled to feed their families. Her recently published book “The Unending Hunger: Tracing Women and Food Insecurity Across Borders,” examines the personal and political aspects of hunger and tells the stories of the women she met through her research. Carney, now a lecturer in the University of Washington’s anthropology department and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies…

Sylvie Troxel didn’t own a driver’s license when she joined the University of Washington’s EcoCAR team as a freshman four years ago. A lifelong bus rider, she knew virtually nothing about cars. She had never manufactured anything before she started working in the UW machine shop where students fabricate the components to turn an iconic muscle car into a high-performance electric hybrid. “I joined the team with no skills and sort of no confidence in my engineering ability,” said Troxel,…

How can a sushi bar eliminate some of its most popular fish from the menu and still be profitable? One local establishment accomplished this, claiming that sustainable seafood is more important than profits in the long term. Hajime Sato, owner of Mashiko Japanese restaurant in West Seattle, will speak about his experience converting his sushi bar into the first (and likely still the only) fully sustainable sushi restaurant in the city as part of a UW School of Marine and…

The University of Washington communication department will open its new Center for Communication, Difference and Equity with public events May 27 to 29, on campus and off. “The CCDE is a space — a physical space, intellectual space and community space — where we as a department and as a university are going to be able to center these issues of power, privilege and difference,” said Ralina Joseph, professor of communication and the center’s director. “And to think of how…

The National Center for Women & Information Technology awarded its inaugural grand prize for excellence in recruiting, engaging and supporting women undergraduates in computer science to the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CSE). The national nonprofit that works to increase women’s participation in computing and technology selected UW CSE as the recipient of its top prize, which comes with $100,000, as part of its NCWIT Extension Services Transformation (NEXT) Awards recognizing academic departments that have shown…

More than two hundred high school students from four area high schools will visit the campus for a daylong seminar in the HUB May 27 as part of Teachers and Texts, which in turn is part of the UW in the High School program, sponsored by Professional and Continuing Education. The event is called the Northwest Collaborative Regional Symposium, with the subtitle “Student Voices Making Change.” About 240 students of a class called Margins and Centers at Eastlake, Roosevelt, Franklin…