Category: UW News

Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large writes in a recent article about the efforts of UW’s Foster School and other business schools around the country to improve their local communities:

Business schools teach people how to run businesses and make money, and their focus has usually been high on big business and finance. But partly in response to changing values among their students, and striking economic disparities, more schools are working in low-income communities to improve and grow existing businesses and to encourage more people to start their own.

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Last year the center helped 230 businesses around the state, either by having teams of students work with them, or by having the owners attend business short courses taught by UW professors.

Lewis Rudd, one of the founders of Ezell’s Famous Chicken, said he’d been wanting to grow his business about 10 years ago, when a friend suggested he contact Verchot.

Over the next several years, several student teams worked with him. “We had students in the kitchen taking pictures of bread being baked,” he said. They ran time studies and efficiency studies. He held up a thick operating manual the students helped write. The UW also connected Rudd with alumni who had expertise he needed. “We had close to a 50 percent increase in sales over the next year as a result of some minor changes,” Rudd said. The business moved from a family operation to a more corporate structure, and there is more expansion on the horizon.

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Universities can help make those connections between the financial world and small businesses and teach business owners the skills they need to grow.

Read the entire column.

The UW on Monday (July 15) welcomed Michael B. Bragg as dean of the College of Engineering.

Bragg most recently was professor and interim dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

An aeronautical engineer by training, Bragg has held numerous leadership positions at Illinois, including head of the aerospace engineering department, associate dean for research and administrative affairs, executive associate dean for academic affairs, and interim dean in the College of Engineering.

Read more at UW Today.

Katherine Long of the Seattle Times reports on the New York technology leader selected to head UW Bothell as its next Chancellor:

Bjong Wolf Yeigh, professor and president of the State University of New York Institute of Technology (SUNYIT), will be the next UW-Bothell chancellor if approved by the Board of Regents. He will replace Kenyon Chan, who is stepping down to pursue his own scholarly work.

Yeigh has been president of SUNYIT, the only institute of technology at SUNY, since 2008. During his tenure, the campus received $15.5 million in capital grants for cybertechnology and nanotechnology, and led the effort to gain two rounds of funding for regional economic development projects totaling $119 million, according to the UW.

In a statement announcing Dr. Yeigh’s selection as the next Chancellor of UW Bothell, UW President Michael K. Young said:

“Dr. Yeigh has been a force of innovation and change throughout his career, particularly in positions of academic leadership. He has left a trail of success everywhere he has been, and we are very excited to have him join the University of Washington and lead our dynamic campus at Bothell as it continues to grow and develop.”

In terms of Dr. Yeigh’s academic background, he holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering science from Dartmouth, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a master’s and doctorate in civil engineering and operations research from Princeton.

Read more about Dr. Bjong Wolf Yeigh in UW Today.

What’s the UW done for you lately?

The University of Washington is first and foremost a place that educates the citizens of Washington State.  But as a public university, we’re so much more than an institution on Montlake.  UW students, faculty, staff and alumni are making an impact everyday in communities throughout the state.  They are your teachers, your doctors, your problem-solvers and even your next-door neighbors.

Today, we’re excited to launch a initiative called “UW in Your Community”– a dynamic, interactive web map showing the many ways the UW is making a difference in each of the state’s 49 legislative districts.  Did you know that UW students have designed and built greenhouses as part of redevelopment in Twisp? Or that 18,000 UW alumni live in the 5th district near Issaquah?  Or that UW faculty are helping kids get ready for for college in high schools throughout the state?

Click the icon to your right to find out more about the UW in Your Community!