No results found
A love of research – and design
For interaction design major Sarah Strickler, research is the most compelling aspect of design.
Sarah Strickler had every intention of pursuing a STEM degree when she arrived at the UW as a freshman. She’d done college-level microbiology research in high school through independent study, and earned top honors at an international high school science fair. But her second quarter on campus, out of curiosity, she took a course on color theory in the School of Art + Art History + Design (SoA+AH+D). By sophomore year she was an interaction design major.
“Interaction design combines art and research and is very human-centered, which appeals to me,” says Strickler, who quickly discovered that design courses are as challenging as those in the sciences. “I could take a chem lab and get a really high score, but in a design course you’re never satisfied with your work, never satisfied that you’ve pushed it as far as you can. I think I pulled more all-nighters in my first design course than in any of my UW science courses.”
Central to interaction design is an understanding of human behavior, with the goal of finding new ways to approach human-centered problems through design. Many class projects present a challenge — for example, how to improve sex education for parents and their children — with many potential solutions.
The starting point is always research. For the sex education assignment, Strickler and two classmates conducted two-hour interviews with more than a dozen parents from different backgrounds — 24 hours of interviews! — to understand what the parents felt was most important for their children to know about sex, and at what age. Based on those conversations, the students developed the idea of a personalized digital book for children, with content and illustrations tailored to the child’s age and gender and a place for parents to add notes that reflect their values.
Spending so much time on interviews might seem excessive for a class project, but Strickler tends to be thorough — some might say zealous — about her research. She recalls a data visualization class project in which students were asked to create a zine, or small magazine, featuring data shared in a visual form. For her zine on a sustainable and healthy diet, she researched the resources required to raise livestock and transport food to grocery stores, investigated healthy packaged food options, conducted in-depth “co-design” sessions with five adults and children about their eating habits, and more. (Co-design involves designing with the people you are designing for.) Students were expected to produce a 15-page zine based on their research; Strickler’s was a whopping 70 pages.
“It was kind of a joke among all of my classmates and our professor, because it just blew up into this huge book,” Strickler laughs. “The topic was just so big that I took it in a different direction. But that’s what’s fun about interaction design. The professors want you to be creative and go in a direction that is meaningful to you.”
Outside of class, Strickler has participated in a data visualization internship at NASA — working with computer science doctoral students and meeting with literal rocket scientists — and now volunteers on the research team of UW iSchool professor Jason Yip. For Yip’s project, Strickler meets with 7- to 11-year-olds twice a week to collaborate with them on small co-design projects. “The kids love it,” says Strickler. “They say it’s a place where everyone listens to them. They get to see adults take their ideas seriously and implement them.”
As Strickler nears graduation, she and two classmates are hoping to realize an interaction design idea they dreamed up last year. They developed BraveSpace, an online mental health resource, after talking frankly about their struggles with depression and finding that it strengthened their relationship. “We thought it would be cool if we could create some type of digital space where other people could share with each other about mental illness and mental wellness in a way that was raw and authentic, so people don’t feel like they’re alone,” says Strickler.
After analyzing existing mental health platforms and interviewing students, psychologists, suicide experts, and many others, the students created a BraveSpace prototype. They are now raising funds so they can hire software engineers to build the site.
Along with her work on BraveSpace, Strickler plans to pursue a graduate degree in art therapy, which she feels combines her interests in art, science, and mental health. Whatever comes next, she believes her interaction design major has prepared her well.
“One thing that distinguishes this major is that we know how to do research and think through how to solve a problem,” she says. “You get a little bit of instruction and then you have to learn how to make it all happen. It does a really good job of preparing us for real-world situations where we don’t know the answer. I think that’s my favorite thing about the major.”
Rebuilding peace after war
How can a nation heal from a civil war? UW doctoral student Francis Abugbilla traveled to Côte d’Ivoire for answers.
Growing up in northeastern Ghana, Francis Abugbilla witnessed regional conflict throughout his childhood. Two ethnic groups clashed repeatedly, dating back to pre-colonial times. Today, as a doctoral student in the UW’s Jackson School of International Studies, Abugbilla is working toward lasting solutions to such conflicts.
That may be a tall order, but Abugbilla is no stranger to seemingly insurmountable challenges. Raised in a small farming community with no electricity, schools, or clinics, he walked hours a day to attend school in another village. He didn’t encounter a computer until high school. But he excelled academically, and continued on to Ghana’s University of Cape Coast to study French with a minor in English.
It was during his undergraduate years that Abugbilla’s interest in conflict resolution intensified. In 2010, with thousands of refugees from war-torn Côte d’Ivoire pouring into Ghana seeking asylum, he and his university friends founded Friends of the United High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on campus. Abugbilla, fluent in French, was often enlisted to bridge communication between the Ghanaians and the Ivorian refugees. Through the experience, he became interested in the root causes of violence and mechanisms for reconciliation.
Almost a decade later, Abugbilla continues to study conflict resolution, with the Ivorian civil wars as his focus. He explains that tensions in Côte d’Ivoire escalated after the country transitioned from a one-party state to a multi-party state in 1990, with parties forming based on ethnic divides. The quest for political power has since led to two civil wars, complicated by political actors outside Côte d’Ivoire with strategic interests in the region.
With Côte d’Ivoire now recovering from those conflicts, Abugbilla is researching how the country is attempting to heal its deep societal wounds. “Post-conflict societies usually adopt principally two mechanisms — restorative justice and retributive justice — to rebuild peace and reconcile the people,” Abugbilla explains. “In restorative justice, partial or total amnesty is given for perpetrators to come forward and tell the world the crimes they committed. Victims, having heard the perpetrators acknowledge their crimes, will forgive and reconcile. Advocates of the other mechanism, retributive justice, argue that amnesty promotes a culture of impunity. They believe that perpetrators should be tried and sentenced if found guilty.”
Abugbilla is interested in post-conflict societies that adopt these seemingly incompatible mechanisms concurrently, and the impact that has on reconciliation. To that end, he visited Côte d’Ivoire last summer to interview religious leaders and others about their role in the conflicts and reconciliation. One surprising focus has been a small Jewish congregation whose leader has made strides in healing rifts among its members.
“The community is engaged in micro-level peacebuilding,” says Abugbilla. “The leader made known to his congregants that they should seek peace because it is one of the names of God — Shalom. He alluded to the Talmudic view of the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem as a result of the hatred among fellow Jews. Using this analogy, he admonished members to reject hatred among themselves, whatever the motive may be, and seek social cohesion. The message of peace changed the attitude of members toward each other and led to harmonious living among members, with a multiplicative effect as members have replicated the teachings in their families and communities.”
To pursue this research in Côte d’Ivoire, Abugbilla received a Stroum Center Opportunity Travel Grant from the Jackson School’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. Other support Abugbilla has received at the UW includes a Henry M. Jackson Doctoral Fellowship, a Jackson School Diversity Fellowship, the Ottenberg-Winans Fellowship from the Jackson School’s African Studies Program, a Center for Human Rights Graduate Fellowship, a Chester Fritz International Research and Study Fellowship, and a grant from the Marcy Migdal Fund for Educational Equality.
“These fellowships mean that the funders recognize potentials and are helping me unearth them,” says Abugbilla. “Without this support, my research would not have been possible. I am glad that the funders have seen the importance of my research and of supporting me to make an impact in the world.”
Abugbilla also has found mentorship to be invaluable, most notably the support of his dissertation chair, Nathalie Williams, associate professor of international studies and sociology. “While I’m in the field in Côte d’Ivoire, she calls to check on me, offering academic and moral support,” says Abugbilla. “She goes the extra mile to see me succeed.”
Abugbilla plans to dive into the policy world after receiving his doctoral degree, possibly with international organizations like the United Nations or the African Union. He has no illusions about the difficulty of his chosen field, having learned from his research and his childhood experiences that peace can be fragile and fleeting.
“What has surprised me the most is that the Ivorian political elites who engineered these armed conflicts haven’t learned their lessons yet,” says Abugbilla, who has observed politicians favoring acerbic discourse over acknowledgment of past mistakes. Given their tone, he believes another conflict is likely to erupt.
“Political leaders and perpetrators should be honest and not economical with the truth,” he says. “For a lasting peace, both sides must genuinely acknowledge the ills of the past, see the humanity in each other, forgive, and envision a collective future.”
Setting the pace
Last year, standout high school athlete Hallie Jensen had never rowed — but now she’s competing on the UW’s Division I crew team, thanks to the Hometown Huskies program.
On a bluebird Saturday in March, Hallie Jensen bobs in the University of Washington’s novice eight boat in Lake Washington’s Union Bay. The glassy waters lap gently against the hull, and a pair of cautious ducks paddle by. It would be the perfect morning for a contemplative canoe ride through the nearby Washington Park Arboretum.
It’s also the perfect morning for a race.
After months of training, the Husky Open marks the first official race of Jensen’s collegiate career. Just seconds away from the start, she turns her focus inward, running through the plan her coxswain laid out for the team an hour earlier.
Launch off the starting line with 15 strokes at 36, seven at 34, then drop to 32. Heads up, in sync. Boom — legs. Boom — legs. Boom — legs. Just crush it.
“Attention!” barks the megaphone, and Jensen shifts forward, gripping the oar and softening her gaze.
The starting flag drops, and Jensen’s boat erupts. Sixteen flexed legs and arms strain in perfect sync, digging in for the first of what will be hundreds of powerful, exhausting strokes.
Two thousand meters behind them, under Montlake Bridge and through the crowd-packed Montlake Cut, waits the finish line.
Last year, Jensen didn’t know how to row. She barely knew what crew was. But she did know — as did her family, friends and coaches — that she was a natural athlete who liked to push herself physically and mentally.
A cross-country, track and basketball star and senior class president at Lakeside High School, about 30 minutes west of Spokane, Jensen brought teams together with her innate kindness and leadership. It was her intense focus on conditioning that set her apart.
“Sometimes she would go on runs in the snow on her own before basketball practice,” says Jeff Pietz, Lakeside’s athletic director and women’s basketball coach. “She scored a ton of points just outrunning people.”
When it came time to think about college, the UW wasn’t on Jensen’s radar. “I just expected that I was going to play basketball or run track at a small school,” she says.
Then she discovered Hometown Huskies.
UW Women’s Rowing recruits top talent from around the world. But, says Josh Gautreau, assistant coach and lead recruiter, much of the team’s historic success stems from walk-ons from Washington state. Like Jensen, many have proven themselves in a range of other sports.
They have what Gautreau calls “engines,” and those engines have powered success: “At each of the last four Olympics, someone who walked on at the UW has medaled,” he says.
Gautreau helped launch Hometown Huskies to broaden the walk-on talent pipeline even more. The program offers a one-year, full-tuition scholarship to a promising student-athlete from Washington state who has never rowed before. If she excels, she may earn additional rowing scholarships. But first she has to prove herself.
When Jensen heard about the scholarship, she decided to apply — and when she visited the UW, she knew it was where she wanted to be. She loved the Seattle campus and the high academic standards, and she especially liked the challenge of competing at the Division I level.
“I remember the moment I walked into Conibear Shellhouse and saw everyone working out,” she says. “I heard someone say that rowing is like cross-country on steroids. It’s endurance and strength — everything about it just locked me in.”
Jensen was among several promising finalists for the inaugural Hometown Huskies scholarship, and Gautreau cites her physical ability, work ethic and resiliency as the factors that pushed her over the top.
These qualities have served Jensen well over the past year. She has thrived in her transition to a fulfilling student life, as well as Division I athletics.
“I really like the atmosphere of my classes and studying things I’m interested in,” Jensen says, citing her courses in English, women’s studies and the history of classical music. Though her schedule is packed, she has adjusted quickly to the independence of university life. “I’ve really enjoyed being in charge of my time so far,” she says.
Between two-a-day practices at Conibear Shellhouse, Jensen can usually be found studying at the nearby Ackerley Academic Center. With group and private study space, computers and tutors, the center has been crucial in helping her stay on top of her schoolwork.
“Excellence should be a habit in both the classroom and the boathouse,” says Jensen, who hopes to become a coach and a high school English teacher. “Ultimately, I know I’m here to get an education.”
Most mornings at 6:45, Jensen and her teammates arrive at Conibear for a workout on land, then hit Lake Union to test their mettle against each other before heading to class.
In the afternoon, they return to Conibear, often going back out on the water. Rain or shine, they push themselves as Gautreau, Assistant Coach Maggie Philipps and Head Coach Yasmin Farooq speed by on motorized boats, instructing the rowers on everything from mechanics to mindset.
Shoulders down, no rocking, stay strong through the core!
Watch your outside wrist!
Get your minds right. Demand more earlier!
Especially in the dark hours of fall and early winter, it can be tough. When race season is still far off, the qualities of patience, commitment and positivity can be as important as talent. Jensen has the added motivation — and pressure — of her Hometown Huskies scholarship.
“They put a lot of trust in me by selecting me,” she says. “It’s my duty to prove that they made the right choice.”
As race season grows closer, Jensen’s hard work begins to pay off. “All the hours I spent on the erg [ergonomic rowing machine] working on my form and core, sitting up straight and using my legs have really helped. Those things are becoming muscle memory,” she says.
Her coaches have noticed. Just a few days before the Husky Open, Jensen is bumped up to stroke oar in the novice eight boat. A key link between the coxswain and the rest of the boat, the stroke oar sets the pace for the rest of the team.
“Hallie has great rhythm,” says Farooq. “Her stroke is longer than everybody else’s in that boat. If she can carve a long arc through the water, it’s going to make everybody behind her row longer.”
On that sunny morning in March, the novice eight flies down the course. To an outsider, the rowers seem to glide in sync effortlessly. The only reminder of the intense physical demands of the race is the coxswain’s shout.
Boom! Legs! Boom! Legs! Boom! Legs!
Tailed closely by a boat of UW sophomores and juniors — and far ahead of boats from two other schools — Jensen and her teammates look calm and controlled.
As they race through the Montlake Cut, Jensen doesn’t hear the crowd. Her muscles are on fire, but months of pushing herself to her limits has prepared her for this. Only when her team crosses the finish line first does she relax.
“I could barely hold myself up, but I was very proud of our performance,” says Jensen later in the day. Then she turns quickly to the next hurdle. “Hopefully I’ll get to race at the San Diego Crew Classic next weekend,” she says. “After that, who knows?”
Jensen has a lot to look forward to in the next three years. She hopes to keep challenging herself and her teammates, contributing to the UW’s winning legacy along the way.
“I could have played it safe and pursued collegiate running or basketball,” she says. “But since the first day of training, I’ve felt that this is where I should be. I love this program and feel so blessed that I get to live out this dream.”
The Hometown Huskies program is open to athletes from across Washington state. Current and future UW students are invited to try out for the women’s crew team, and the scholarship is awarded annually to the most deserving walk-on athlete.
Fueled by floods
UW researchers are collaborating with Cambodian leaders across industries and disciplines to find new ways to manage the impacts of hydropower on the supplies of rice and fish in the region.
As the outside light fades on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the flame of a small cookstove grows brighter. With help from her daughters, Sen Mary is cooking rice and freshly caught fish for the Math family’s dinner. While local food is plentiful for now, drastic change may be on the horizon.
“When I was 12, I caught a lot of fish, but now there are not as many. There may be no more fish in the future, depending on the current situation,” says Sen Mary’s son-in-law, Nan Sab Yi, who works as a fisherman to support the family. “We depend on fish and the river. If we don’t have that, we have nothing.”
The Tonle Sap, where Nan Sab Yi catches roughly 110 pounds of fish per day, is on the brink of radical transformation. A freshwater lake with an attached river, the Tonle Sap winds through the eastern part of Phnom Penh. The largest lake in Southeast Asia, it boasts a large volume of fish and is a tributary of the mighty Mekong River, which crosses five countries before reaching Cambodia.
With a handful of new hydropower dams completed — and more than 135 either under construction or forthcoming — the Mekong’s waterways will soon be altered dramatically. For Cambodians, who consume the most freshwater fish in the world and get up to 70 percent of their daily calorie intake from rice, this change may be devastating.
“Since the dams have been built, the amount of fish is decreasing,” says Nan Sab Yi. “Normally the river starts to rise up between June and July, and the fishing is good. Now the water is not high enough.”
With its location downstream from countries that are stakeholders in the hydropower business, Cambodia is especially vulnerable. Although hydropower development will bring low-cost, renewable electricity to its villages, the majority will be sold to countries up north. While receiving few of the benefits, the rural people of Cambodia will be among the most impacted by dam development.
With support from a National Science Foundation grant, UW researchers from the College of the Environment, College of Engineering and School of Public Health are racing to discover how changes to the Mekong will impact the future of fish and rice— and, ultimately, the Cambodian people.
At the bustling Prek Phnov Market in Phnom Penh, fresh fish arrive in the early morning. As locals fill their baskets and busily transport fish by scooter to restaurants, 18-year-old Pich Thann sells fish.
Pich learned the trade from her parents, who now stay home. Though their business — plying an expensive variety called krav fish — has been brisk, Pich is witnessing changes in the market firsthand.
“There are not as many fish from the river. I don’t know what the reason is,” she says. “I sold river fish before, but now I sell farmed fish.”
Although those who work in the industry have started to notice a decline from overfishing and the few completed dams, the average consumer still sees what appears to be an endless supply of fish.
The lower Mekong River Basin produces more than 2 million tons of fish annually, making it the largest freshwater fishery — and one of the most productive ecosystems — in the world, says Gordon Holtgrieve, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the UW. The Tonle Sap provides unusually fertile conditions for fish to grow and spawn.
“Per square kilometer of lake, it produces a ridiculous amount of fish — more than the most productive ocean,” Holtgrieve says.
These conditions are the result of annual monsoon floods that cause a reversal of water flow in the Tonle Sap. When the Mekong floods, the water travels up the Tonle Sap River, increasing the footprint of the lake by up to six times. This swelling provides not only more space for fish, but also additional nutrients and minerals from the merging of the habitats.
“We call it a bonus source of energy for the whole system,” Holtgrieve says. “It makes the food web more productive, as it is getting energy from two places. This means more plants, more insects and ultimately more fish.”
With hydropower dams expected to disrupt the natural water flow, Holtgrieve is working to uncover how the nutritional quality and quantity of fish will be affected by different flooding cycles. To assess the first factor, he is analyzing tissue samples from more than 50 species, looking at both harmful elements, such as mercury, and beneficial nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin A.
Because current data are sparse and collected using imprecise sampling methods, gathering information about quantity is not as simple. As a remedy, UW researchers are working with the local fisheries administration to introduce echosounders, an acoustic fish monitoring system. To demonstrate feasibility, aquatic and fishery sciences professor John Horne visited the region to oversee the installation of an echosounder at a fishery in January 2019. The researchers are now working to secure funding to support a network of sensors, which would be the first acoustic monitoring on the Tonle Sap.
“The overall goal is to monitor fish migration and fishing mortality along the Tonle Sap,” Horne says. “An acoustic network can provide near real-time fishery monitoring for management and be used for biological investigations.”
In the late afternoon, the rice fields of Kampong Thom province glow a bright green. Stretching for great distances, they make up one of several rice production powerhouses in Cambodia. On the eastern edge of Tonle Sap Lake, farmers grow rice primarily for export — because the same floods that create an ideal breeding ground for fish also fuel rice production.
“What is often not fully appreciated in the United States is how important rice is in Cambodia,” says Yasmine Farhat, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineeringat the UW. “Most Cambodians eat rice three times per day.”
Rice requires not only a lot of water to grow, but a lot of water at just the right time. To determine how Cambodia’s most important crop will be impacted by the introduction of hydropower dams, Farhat and civil and environmental engineering associate professor Rebecca Neumann are investigating the nutritional quality and yield of rice in two of Cambodia’s top growing areas, including Kampong Thom province.
Although they’re interested in the research underway in their fields, the farmers are not yet vocally concerned about the dams — they care more about how the researchers’ findings can inform their day-to-day work.
“I want to know about the fertility of the soil: if it’s good or bad, and how to fix it,” says Lam Heang, who has been growing rice for more than 10 years.
In collecting rice and soil samples from the fields, Farhat is measuring both contaminants and beneficial nutrients. To help evaluate rice yield, UW environmental and forest sciences professor Soo-Hyung Kim and UW graduate student Manuel Marcaida are using data gathered from 19 rice fields to estimate productivity and determine optimal planting dates. They are also working to predict possible location shifts for rice farmers in response to lower lake levels.
“Once we figure out what key variables are important, we can assess whether those will be impacted by the flood duration and timing and make predictions,” Farhat says. “Now is a good time to start studying, before all the dams are built.”
As soon as they are weaned, Cambodian children are given rice mixed with fermented fish paste, called prahok, which is a signature ingredient in much of the local cuisine.
Yet because of insufficient intake of essential vitamins and minerals in what is still one of the world’s poorest countries, about a third of Cambodian children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition. Any disruption to the food system could have devastating consequences.
In rice-centric countries, pairing this diet staple with a quality protein can help prevent nutritional deficiencies. To determine which varieties of fish and rice can best sustain the country if the local food system is compromised, UW epidemiologyprofessor Adam Drewnowski is evaluating the nutrient profile of staple foods.
The nutritional value of fish varies, depending on factors such as species, habitat and food. Changes to the natural river flow from hydropower dams may cause some fish to become more dominant and easy to catch, which will in turn affect what nutrients are available to people.
“Tonle Sap Lake is the major source of freshwater fish and high-quality protein for that area of southeast Asia,” Drewnowski says. “If the upper stem of the Mekong River is dammed, there may be nutritional consequences downstream.”
Dams are nothing new to the Mekong River Basin — it hosts 315 of them across six countries. But many of the planned new dams, in addition to being larger, will have prominent downstream locations along the main river, rather than in tributaries.
One dam alone — the Lower Sesan 2 dam in northeastern Cambodia, which opened in 2017 — is predicted to lead to the extinction of more than 50 species of fish and cause a 9 percent decline in fish supply.
“Can you manage the dams in a way that makes it more favorable for fish downstream?” asks Matthew Bonnema, a civil and environmental engineering graduate student at the UW. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
Existing dams in the Mekong River Basin provide clues about how future dams may impact the region. To leverage this insight, Bonnema, along with UW civil and environmental engineering faculty Faisal Hossain and Bart Nijssen, are using satellite data to study 20 existing dams, some of which have been operating since the late 1960s. The researchers have identified a distinct change in water temperature downstream from hydropower dams that may result in less productive fisheries.
Evaluating existing dam management strategies, such as water release and holding patterns, will provide further insight that the researchers will use to develop recommendations for optimal dam operations, with the intent of supporting nutrient-rich and high-yielding fish and rice crops.
New dam construction is largely uncoordinated, placing Cambodia in a precarious position. To complicate matters, the region is also still recovering from the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime and the subsequent civil war.
In lieu of a concerted basin-wide dam management effort among the countries involved, UW researchers anticipate providing recommendations to individual countries to inform the collective operation of hydropower dams.
To encourage the region to focus on shared goals, researchers at Arizona State University, working in conjunction with the UW team, are developing a modeling tool to help government officials understand competing needs, manage tradeoffs and see how cooperation may enable improved access to food and livelihoods for their citizens. This kind of collaboration with decisionmakers in order to advance the health of people aligns with UW’s Population Health Initiative and EarthLab. The researchers are optimistic that hydropower operations can be programmed to meet power-generation objectives while satisfying food production.
“This is something we have leverage over,” Holtgrieve says. “It may be possible to change how we release water to produce more fish and rice with only slightly less power.”
In the coming years, the impact of the researchers’ work will be most apparent in the daily ritual of preparing dinner. It remains to be seen whether the Cambodian people — including Sen Mary, Nan Sab Yi and the rest of the Math family — can continue to rely on the same foods that have sustained them for generations.
A natural cure for cavities
Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a new cure for cavities, transforming dental care and tackling this growing health concern.
It’s possible thanks to the support of the Washington State Life Sciences Discovery Fund, the Dean and Margaret Spencer Endowed Clinical Research Fund (created in 1982 to provide visionary funding for future clinical research in restorative dentistry), and other federal and private funds.
Led by Dr. Mehmet Sarikaya, professor of materials science and engineering, chemical engineering and oral health sciences, a UW research team has developed a way to rebuild tooth enamel, with the potential to cure cavities in their early stages. Taking inspiration from the body’s natural tooth-forming proteins, the UW team created a product that remineralizes teeth: It adds new layers of enamel.
Sami Dogan, associate professor of restorative dentistry and co-author of the research findings, explains that oral bacteria eat sugars and excrete lactic acid — “and acid, as a byproduct, will demineralize the dental enamel.” In fact, demineralization is the origin of many dental ailments.
By capturing the essence of amelogenin — a protein crucial to forming the hard crown enamel — the researchers were able to design a new product using peptides, chains of amino acids that will bind onto tooth surfaces, recruit calcium and phosphate ions, and restore the mineral structure found in native tooth enamel.
More effective than fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash in rebuilding and strengthening enamel, this new technology can be used in both over-the-counter and clinical products — toothpastes, gels, solutions and composites — as a safe, cost-effective alternative to existing dental procedures and treatments, particularly for repairing early-stage cavities. It’s anticipated to be recommended for daily use by adults and children as part of a preventive dental care routine.
What’s more, the newly formed mineral layer also whitens the teeth. The team, in partnership with some of the biggest players in the oral care consumer products market, is working on prototypes for preventive, restorative, therapeutic and cosmetic dental products.
Over the past half-century, brushing and flossing have significantly reduced the impact of cavities for many Americans; good oral hygiene is the best prevention. But cavities still affect people of all ages, and some socioeconomic groups suffer disproportionately from this disease. And, according to recent reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall prevalence of dental cavities is on the rise.
While tooth decay is relatively harmless in its earliest stages, once the cavity progresses through the tooth’s enamel, it can cause serious health concerns. Left untreated, decay can lead to an infected tooth, tooth loss and even a systemic, life-threatening infection. The direct and indirect costs of treating cavities and related diseases are a huge economic burden for individuals and health-care systems.
“As a dental faculty member, I’m not satisfied with the old drill-and-fill model,” says Dogan. “Here, we’re using natural materials to address a global oral health issue.”
The Burke, unwrapped
Washington’s oldest museum gets a new home and a bold new approach — an open design that puts both artifacts and researchers on display.
On the second floor in a sunny southwest corner of the new Burke Museum, the disarticulated wings of several Sand Hill Cranes fill the drawers of a drying rack. The rack sits on one side of a processing laboratory where animal specimens—from tiny mice to a full-grown jaguar—are prepared and preserved for future study. The ample space features a sink, long prep tables, a refrigerator and, on an inside wall, a massive picture window that makes every corner of the room visible from the visitors’ gallery just outside.
Down the hallway, bones and fossils fill the shelves behind more big windows. Past the bones is a view of collection manager Jeff Bradley clambering atop a bank of white storage cabinets to arrange and store sets of antlers. Furry mounted heads of moose, deer, goats and other cervidae and bovidae look on from the walls.
One floor up, paleontologists and volunteers behind three big windows clean the massive 60 million-year-old head of the Tufts-Love T-rex and piece together a 20,000-year-old mammoth tusk discovered in a 2014 excavation at South Lake Union. One floor down, yet another set of windows open the view into the accessions room where first-year museology student Sarah Dickinson patiently builds a paper mount for a hand-woven hat. A newly arrived, but very old, bentwood cedar box from the Bella Bella tribe awaits the attention of the ethnology collection’s manager. But first Rebecca Andrews is busy making notes on another artifact. “No two days here are the same,” Andrews says as she types a description into her computer, new items all around. “Yesterday, we went to a potential donor’s house, and I came back to find eight new objects waiting.”
In most natural history museums, this work of collection, curation, preservation and study takes place in the back rooms, far from public view. And for most of its 120-year history, that has been the case at the Burke Museum. But now, in an exciting new building designed by renowned architect Tom Kundig, it all comes out into the open.
And that has everyone a little bit nervous.
Since 1964, the Burke Museum has lived in the northwest corner of campus. It is an active research museum. And as the state’s oldest public museum, it serves as a place for preservation and exhibition of historical documents and objects. It’s also home for collections of flora, fauna, rocks and fossils. Scientists and scholars from around the world rely on the Burke’s collections to broaden their understanding of critical issues facing humanity—the global climate crisis, evolution, biodiversity, cultural awareness and protecting ecosystems. So why hide it?
That’s why the new state museum, scheduled to open in October, sits proudly on the corner where 15th Avenue Northeast meets Northeast 45th Street—perhaps the busiest corner of the U District. Home to more than 16 million objects, the Burke houses relics of our Pacific Northwest cultural history and serves as a collections center for animal DNA. And it maintains important specimens to help scientists answer key questions and recognize how populations change over time, study the impacts of pesticide use, and identify and help threatened species.
The galleries, with their displays and descriptions, are only the first step in delivering those lessons, says Julie Stein, an anthropologist who has served as the Burke’s director since 2005. Seeing a scientist collect tissue from a bat, watching a graduate student prepare a basket for storage, or witnessing a dinosaur fossil emerge from its earthen shroud, you gain a deeper understanding than any lesson found in a textbook or online.
“I have heard repeated over and over: I had no idea that this was going on behind the walls of the galleries,” Stein says of her tours through the laboratories and collections. “That really was the inspiration behind our inside-out concept. Can we give every visitor the experience that only the students and special visitors used to get?”
In 1879, when Washington was still a territory and Seattle a fledgling city of about 3,500 people, a group of teenagers formed around a common cause: natural history. Charles L. Denny, the son of Seattle founders Arthur and Mary Ann Denny, hosted the club meetings at his family home. Edmond S. Meany, who would become a UW graduate, journalist and later a professor of botany and history, served as the first secretary.
Calling themselves the Young Naturalists, they combed area beaches, fields and woods collecting insects, shells, rocks, plants and mammals, preserving and storing them at the Denny family house. Inexpert as they were, they managed to develop and maintain a substantial cabinet of wonderful things.
Their work turned scientific and the membership grew with the 1882 arrival of Orson “Bug” Bennett Johnson, a professor of natural science at the Territorial University of Washington. In 1885 the group had outgrown its meeting space in the Denny house and in just a month raised $1,400 for a building all their own. They quickly built the Hall of the Young Naturalists right next door to the Territorial University building.
This busy group organized summer expeditions to retrieve specimens from around Puget Sound, offered lecture programs in the cooler months and, by 1894, expanded their membership to include women, many of whom were teachers. These teachers, according to a history of the society by professor Keith R. Benson, linked the Young Naturalists with secondary schools, enhancing local science education for the city’s children. But for all the good it did, the society’s days were numbered—because of the UW’s emergence.
In 1895, the University moved 4 1/2 miles north to the Montlake neighborhood, taking with it the faculty experts and parts of the collection vital to the Young Naturalists and their hall. Then the Legislature passed a bill to establish a state museum on the University’s new campus. In 1905, the society members decided to simply end their organization, but their legacy continues through the University’s natural history and zoology programs and through the Burke Museum. Over 50,000 objects—specimens, Native American artifacts and art—from the society became the property of the state museum and were moved to the new UW campus.
And the collections grew. Several major American expositions around the turn of the century brought in cultural objects and artworks collected from Salish tribes and the Columbia River Basin. And finally, in the wake of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, more than 1,900 Northwest coast artifacts—primarily from Alaska—and 20,000 artifacts from the Columbia Basin were added.
For a number of years after AYP Expo, the colorful structures that it left behind on the new UW campus served as homes for the museum. Most notable was the fair’s forestry building. Crafted with massive, unstripped logs of Douglas fir and filled with leftover exhibit cases and displays, it was an intriguing venue. But by the 1930s it had succumbed to dry rot and bark beetles and was demolished. The collections then were scattered around campus. The museum moved to a third AYP structure—the Washington State Building. That building, because of its construction flaws, had to be closed in 1957.
For a few years, the museum had no home at all.
In 1964, with financial support from the family of Judge Thomas Burke, a new museum opened on the northwest corner of campus. The brutalist-style building was a quirky character. It held a handful of galleries and meeting rooms in about 70,000 square feet of space. Even at the start, it was a tight fit for the collections and work it needed to house. Students scraped bear guts in the parking lot, and a curatorial team bleached a fresh whale skeleton on the roof. And the research teams were packed into little rooms. The DNA lab conducted work in the hallway, and some of the collections had to be housed off site. Finally, what was stored there was vulnerable to an ancient and inefficient climate control system.
The time had come for the museum to improve and expand.
Architect Tom Kundig remembers the museum from his time as a student. “It was in a prominent spot, but it wasn’t,” he says, of the 1964 building. “It was in a weird spot, buried in a bunch of weedy plants with parking lots around it.”
As an undergraduate with an interest in science, he visited a few times. When he was tapped to work on the new museum, he already knew the challenges. “I came in saying, the big problem of museums is that it’s really hard to get people across the threshold,” he says. Visitors were describing the old Burke as dark and disorienting. “How do you make a museum welcoming and porous?”
Kundig also knew the building needed to connect to the city street to be more welcoming to the public. The new structure, a 110,000-square-foot modernist-style museum clad in eco-friendly wood, faces the neighborhood. Instead of a mysterious structure in the trees, it is a massive cabinet of wonders.
Architectural Digest describes the work of his firm, Olson Kundig, as a “rugged-meets-refined aesthetic with a laid-back Pacific Northwest spirit.” That’s exactly what museum leaders were looking for. A few of Kundig’s hallmarks—the elegant use of simple materials like concrete and steel, the fine details, and the “gizmo,” a human-powered pivoting window wall—are there, but they don’t really call attention to themselves. “The architecture is supposed to be kind of silent in a way,” Kundig says.
As would any eager museum visitor, Kundig took the time to visit and learn from faculty and staff. One of the curators described the Burke as a library for visitors interested in natural resources. They come in, find the source, pull the data and then study it. It’s a DNA repository—one of the largest in the world for bird DNA, a collection museum—and home to more than 50,000 artifacts from indigenous communities around the world. And among it all, a river of schoolchildren and visitors pours through each day. “It’s moving all the time,” Kundig says. “It’s a building about big bones and small shells. All of the ‘ologies’ are in there,” he says. “Ultimately life is about understanding. People come here because they’re trying to figure out what the real story is.”
What the Burke does—bringing forward both science and art—made the project especially poignant for the architect, whose projects range from big public spaces like the new Tillamook Creamery to low-impact rolling huts in the Methow Valley. “This is actually a really sweet spot for me. It intersects the rational and the poetic,” he says. “You can see what Native Americans thought about a raven, and then you can go to ornithology and look up a raven,” he says. “It’s almost a physical manifestation of a Google search.”
Natural resource managers use the herbarium collections to make land stewardship recommendations, the commercial fishing industry looks to the Burke for data to develop quotas for fishing. The paleontology team makes casts of its fossils and sends them out to other museums for display and study. Tribal land resource managers, artists both Indigenous and not, and natural history illustrators all use the collection. So do students, researchers from around the world, and notebook sketch artists.
A zoo recently borrowed a gorilla skull for a surgeon to use as a skeletal reference for a surgery on a live animal. Gertie the hippo, once the oldest resident at the Woodland Park Zoo, died in 2010 at age 47. Her bones, now at the Burke, are helping zookeepers understand osteoarthritis in other zoo mammals.
But now, more than ever, the museum will be a place where campus meets community, where members of the public can visit real, active laboratories. “The front doors face the University District and 35-foot-high windows say to the visitor, ‘This is a museum for you. ‘Come in!’” says director Stein. Her office has its own big window providing visitors to the third floor a view of her working at her desk.
Upon entry, they will pass under the massive bones of a beaked whale, and then up to the first floor, where boats from indigenous communities in Asia and the Northwest float from the ceiling and sail across the concrete in one of the most stunning new gallery spaces. “This is very much a space where people from indigenous cultures can take the lead in what visitors may see,” says Sven Haakanson, anthropologist and member of the Sugpiat community in Southern Alaska. “They will share the stories they want to share, not what we think they want shared.”
Signs will first be in the language of the community to whom the cultural items belong, and their content will be about what each piece on display means to the community now. “These things are the past and the present,” Haakanson says.
The Federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, enacted in 1990, prompted the museum to deepen its ties with Native American communities, furthering the assistance to tribes in their cultural heritage efforts and inviting Native people in to contribute to the research and explorations of their culture taking place at the Burke. Too many museums treat native ethnographic collections as items of the past, says Polly Olsen, ’94, the museum’s tribal liaison. But the tribal members know these are living cultures. The museum has opened its doors and drawers to tribal members, artists and researchers. “These collections are made for everybody, especially the descendant communities,” Stein says. “They are the most important group to bring to the museum.”
Most museums are experienced through galleries and cases. And even as recently as 20 years ago, natural history and cultural museums were guarded by the curators and collections folk. “They got to say who could see the objects and who couldn’t,” Stein says. “That was less true for the Burke museum because of our curators. They brought people in.”
Now they are going further. Where in the old museum, only 30 percent was visible to the public, in the new Burke it’s more than 60 percent. “Everybody should be able to come in here and see the research and see these objects,” Stein says. The Burke now realizes that the galleries are just the first of many steps in engaging and informing visitors, she adds. “The concept of ‘inside out’ is going to give the visitor a path to follow to incredible knowledge and a path to our experts for learning about things like climate change and culture.”
The students and staff practiced this concept in one of the galleries of the old museum. They moved into workspaces and set up printed signs describing their projects, but the visitors much more appreciated the small handwritten white boards. They loved the content like “Oh, what big teeth you have” on one of the dinosaur projects. They even loved watching curators painstakingly examine an object and enter data into a computer. They lingered longer in the work areas than the exhibit galleries, Stein says. “Kids had to be dragged away from the animal preservation work.”
Tech takes a back seat in this museum. Instead of theaters and computer screens, visitors get to see real things. But that also means the curators and collection managers have to think about the experience on the other side of the windows. What objects could be moved, what projects could change from day to day? What will engage, excite and possibly—say in the case of dissecting a 15-foot anaconda—offend?
“We’re all a little bit nervous,” Stein says. “We’re not the first museum to have opened up views into the work we do. But we are the first to have done it to this extent.”
Changing oceans, innovative solutions
Driven by rising carbon dioxide emissions, ocean acidification is already affecting our food web — from salmon to shellfish and beyond. UW researchers are helping business and community partners find solutions to a growing problem.
(EarthLab, July 2019)
At the helm of EarthLab’s Washington Ocean Acidification Center are two experienced ocean scientists, but what they are trying to do is something entirely new. Terrie Klinger and Jan Newton are Salish Sea experts – one an ecologist, one an oceanographer – and they are addressing one of the biggest emerging threats to our environment today, ocean acidification.
“When we first were funded by the legislature to stand up the Washington Ocean Acidification Center, there was no precedent. We were starting from zero,” says Klinger. Born from a Washington State Blue Ribbon Panel, the Center was established by the legislature at the University of Washington to make sure actions to combat ocean acidification have a strong backbone in science. Along with colleagues and collaborators, it was up to Klinger and Newton to bring the new Center to life, making sure it serves the needs of Washington citizens.
Ocean acidification is a global phenomenon. Worldwide, the ocean plays an invaluable service to the planet by absorbing nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity. Yet this also drives a series of reactions that change seawater chemistry, and as a result the oceans are becoming more acidified, which poses a suite of problems to some marine organisms.
Ocean acidification is a global phenomenon. Worldwide, the ocean plays an invaluable service to the planet by absorbing nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity. Yet this also drives a series of reactions that change seawater chemistry, and as a result the oceans are becoming more acidified, which poses a suite of problems to some marine organisms.
In Washington, ocean acidification’s threat became visible in the state’s extensive shellfish industry. Corrosive seawater compromises the ability of shellfish to form their shells, especially in the animal’s early days. In years where seawater conditions are persistently harsh, shellfish farmers failed to raise any new oysters to marketable size, and livelihoods were at stake.
Answers began surfacing when the Washington Ocean Acidification Center connected with shellfish growers and other partners, helping solve what initially seemed like an intractable problem. Now the industry has new tools to manage corrosive water – like monitoring water conditions at the hatcheries, adding buffering agents to incoming seawater, or tracking forecasts of unfavorable water conditions through LiveOcean. In many cases, these tools have allowed shellfish – and business – to continue thriving.
Over the years, the Center’s approach to research has become even more sophisticated, all while remaining “grounded on the Blue Ribbon Panel recommendations to sustain observations, modeling, and biological experiments relevant to ocean acidification,” says Newton. They now can start telling the much deeper story of how ocean acidification threatens ocean food webs, which underpins the eye-popping amount of wildlife and productivity in Puget Sound.
“We’re trying to use the lens of ocean acidification to help solve bigger problems,” says Klinger. “We’ve really grown over our six years and are moving from just a focus on, let’s say shellfish, to include salmon, forage fish and other parts of our ecosystem that are really important to the region.” Expanding focus matters because it can answer questions at a larger scale, helping decision-makers create conservation strategies that support the tiniest creatures all the way up to the big ones, like the southern resident orca whales.
Asking challenging, big-picture questions has always been a part of the Center’s vision and mission. On the research docket now is an investigation into how ocean acidification affects small schooling fish that feed and fuel so many of the Salish Sea’s iconic residents, like salmon, rockfish and marine mammals. Acidifying waters have already been shown to have adverse effects on a fish called the sandlance on the east coast – a species that is also present in the Salish Sea. There is new evidence that shows how increasingly acidified waters affect the ability of young salmon to detect predators, and concern that it may also affect their ability to make their way back to their natal streams where they eventually reproduce.
The Washington Ocean Acidification Center stands as a prime example for how EarthLab and its member organizations approach science’s role in society. Placing people at the center, EarthLab is designed to leverage the intellectual resources at the University of Washington and from community partners to co-produce and deliver science-based solutions to the greatest environmental challenges we face as a society.
New questions to ask, and new capabilities to answer them, emerge as the Center continues to grow, build more partnerships and make inroads with new communities. By listening to people’s needs and leveraging work from other partner institutions – like crab research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, salmon research coming from Washington Sea Grant, and real-time data serving from the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems – the Center is better able to address various needs stemming from many communities.
“I think what’s really lovely about the Center is that it really did originate in the Blue Ribbon Panel, which was comprised of a large and diverse group of people,” says Klinger. “That set the tone for us to build a broad bench of partnerships to work on these projects. When you are trying to do something big, it’s nice to have a lot of minds contributing. And that way, more people feel a better ownership to it as well.”
A local community of practice has developed, with federal, tribal, state, industry and private partners. “We simply could not do this work without this diverse input and expertise,” adds Newton. “And our work here in Washington is well-linked to national and global efforts too.”
Employing cruises and buoys, and working in collaboration with partners, the Center obtains data from Washington waters on water chemistry and plankton, and is investigating new approaches to observing biology in the field. “When we have a multi-year record of what we’re seeing in the environment, we can understand the food web effects much more broadly. We can use the observing data to continue to refine the model and give people information that’s useful for many purposes,” says Newton.
The Center’s history with this region is an asset for decision-makers. Long-term datasets allow scientists to look back in time and discover important environmental trends, which in turn supports policymakers, managers, businesses and NGOs to develop smarter strategies towards sustainability. But if the data don’t exist, then decision-makers are left in the dark.
“The value of the Center just increases over time. Staying the course is really important to get the greatest benefit, and that allows us to build relationships with people, which is really important,” adds Klinger.
Washington’s marine environment connects to people and community in many ways – culturally, economically and scientifically. Having roots in this region, Newton and Klinger want to make sure the Salish Sea continues to be vibrant. “I do this work because I care,” says Newton. “The ocean changes that are happening are large and have potentially big consequences. As I have gained knowledge over my career that can be put towards understanding this better, I think that’s a responsible and important thing to do.”
Deep submersible dives shed light on rarely explored coral reefs
Some coral reefs thrive at the darkest depths of the ocean. To understand how, Assistant Professor Jacqueline Padilla-Gamino is going beyond where most divers can go.
(College of the Environment, June 2019)
Just beyond where conventional scuba divers can go is an area of the ocean that still is largely unexplored. In waters this deep — about 100 to at least 500 feet below the surface — little to no light breaks through.
Researchers must rely on submersible watercraft or sophisticated diving equipment to be able to study ocean life at these depths, known as the mesophotic zone. These deep areas span the world’s oceans and are home to extensive coral reef communities, though little is known about them because it is so hard to get there.
collaborative research team from the University of Washington, College of Charleston, University of California Berkeley, University of Hawaii and other institutions has explored the largest known coral reef in the mesophotic zone, located in the Hawaiian Archipelago, through a series of submersible dives. There, they documented life along the coral reef, finding a surprising amount of coral living in areas where light levels are less than 1% of the light available at the surface.
Their findings were published this spring in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
“Because mesophotic corals live close to the limits of what is possible, understanding their physiology will give us clues of the extraordinary strategies corals use to adapt to low-light environments,” said lead author Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño, an assistant professor in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
Knowing how these deep coral reefs function is important because they appear to be hotspots for biodiversity, and home to many species found only in those locations, Padilla-Gamiño explained. Additionally, close to half of all corals in the ocean have died in the past 30 years, mostly due to warm water temperatures that stress their bodies, causing them to bleach and eventually die. This has been documented mostly in shallower reefs where more research has occurred. Scientists say that more information about deeper reefs in the mesophotic zone is critical for preserving that habitat.
“Mesophotic reefs in Hawaii are stunning in their sheer size and abundance,” said co-author Heather Spalding at College of Charleston. “Although mesophotic environments are not easily seen, they are still potentially impacted by underwater development, such as cabling and anchoring, and need to be protected for future generations. We are on the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding what makes these astounding reefs tick.”
Padilla-Gamiño was on board during two of the team’s eight submersible dives off the coast of Maui that took place from 2010 to 2011. Each dive was a harrowing adventure: Researchers spent up to eight hours in cramped quarters in the submersible that was tossed from the back of a larger boat, then disconnected once the submersible reached the water.
Once in the mesophotic zone, they collected specimens using a robot arm, and captured video footage and photos of life that has rarely been seen by humans.
“It’s a really unbelievable place,” Padilla-Gamiño said. “What is surprising is that, in theory, these corals should not be there because there’s so little light. Now we’re finally understanding how they function to be able to live there.”
By collecting coral samples and analyzing their physiology, the researchers found that different corals in the mesophotic zone use different strategies to deal with low amounts of light. For example, some species of corals change the amount of pigments at deeper depths, while other species change the type and size of symbionts, which are microscopic seaweeds living inside the tissue of corals, Padilla-Gamiño explained. These changes allow corals to acquire and maximize the light available to perform photosynthesis and obtain energy.
Additionally, the corals at deeper depths are likely eating other organisms like zooplankton to increase their energy intake and survive under very low light levels. They probably do this by filter feeding, Padilla-Gamiño said, but more research is needed to know for sure.
The researchers hope to collect more live coral samples from the mesophotic zone to be able to study in the lab how the symbionts, and the corals they live inside, function.
“The more we can study this, the more information we can have about how life works. This is a remarkable system with enormous potential for discovery,” Padilla-Gamiño said. “Our studies provide the foundation to explore physiological flexibility, identify novel mechanisms to acquire light and challenge current paradigms on the limitations of photosynthetic organisms like corals living in deeper water.”
Other co-authors are Celia Smith at University of Hawaii at Mānoa; Melissa Roth at UC Berkeley; Lisa Rodrigues at Villanova University; Christina Bradley at Salisbury University; and Robert Bidigare and Ruth Gates at Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
The study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.
The surprising history of musical theater
At the UW School of Drama, Seattle theater legend David Armstrong teaches the history of Broadway musicals — and of the immigrant, LGBTQ, Jewish and African American creatives who shaped this American institution.
When American leaders discuss how immigration has shaped the United States, they never mention musical theater. Perhaps they should.
“There would be no Broadway musicals if America’s doors had not been opened wide to immigrants,” says David Armstrong, affiliate instructor in the UW School of Drama, who views the rise of the Broadway musical as largely an immigration story. Armstrong shares that history in a new course, The Broadway Musical: How Immigrants, Queers, Jews, and African Americans Created America’s Signature Art Form.
Armstrong’s lifelong passion for musical theater began when he was just seven years old. His mother, intending to take him and his sister to see the film Dumbo, mistakenly took them to the film musical Gypsy instead, about a stripper. He was mesmerized.
“Fortunately my mother was not uptight, so she didn’t make us leave the theater,” laughs Armstrong, whose career in theater has included 18 years as executive producer and artistic director of Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater. “I’m interested in all kinds of theater, but I think musical theater is the most impactful because it affects us on all levels — intellectual, physical, and emotional.”
Armstrong explains that musical theater got its start following a huge wave of Irish immigration in the late 1800s. Of particular importance was Irish immigrant George M. Cohan, a writer, director, producer, and performer who launched musical theater as a distinct genre in the early 1900s. “This was the era of ‘Irish need not apply,’” says Armstrong. “Discrimination against Irish immigrants was rampant. When George M. Cohan stood on stage and sang ‘I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,’ that was a huge political statement.”
Around the same time, Jewish immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe and African Americans moved to New York from the South, further developing the art form. Like the Irish, these groups faced discrimination and had few opportunities for advancement. But the middle- and upper-class audiences that attended theater performances looked down on performing as a profession, leaving that field wide open for the lower classes. For those who had talent, musical theater was a way out of poverty.
That was the case for Irving Berlin, who came to the U.S. from Russia at age five and grew up dancing for pennies on the Lower East Side. With little education and no formal musical training, Berlin became America’s songwriter laureate, writing thousands of songs including God Bless America, White Christmas, and Easter Parade, as well as 17 complete scores for Broadway musicals and revues, including Annie Get Your Gun.
Renowned songwriter Cole Porter and other members of the queer community were also among those working at the highest levels of musical theater from the start. “For the queer community, the early 20th century was a very open period,” says Armstrong. “People were not quite openly gay, but almost. They were valued and largely accepted in that world.”
Armstrong features all of these musical theater pioneers in his course, weaving in the huge influence of African American writers and performers, and the less visible but significant contribution of women working as songwriters, lighting designers, and choreographers. He then traces the bumpy road of musical theater, which has included periods of great popularity followed by decline and evolution.
The genre’s first decline came during the Great Depression, when only the sophisticated elite could afford tickets. The number of productions dropped by half, and shows became more urbane and sophisticated to attract an audience. Hollywood began producing film musicals during this period, broadening the audience. Then in 1943, Roger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma came to Broadway. It integrated its story, song, and dance more cohesively than any show before, ushering a Golden Age for musicals that would last nearly 30 years.
“All of the classics come from that period,” says Armstrong, who explains that before Oklahoma, operettas, revues, and musical comedies were entertaining but very loosely constructed. Oklahoma’s new form and phenomenal success led to other shows built around story and characters. “It was an evolution, but it felt more like a transformation,” says Armstrong. “It became a much more impactful art form.”
Another shakeup came with the Vietnam War, when a growing cynicism led to shows like Cabaret and Sweeney Todd that featured darker themes and antiheroes. Broadway composers initially chafed at the popularity of rock and roll music, but eventually incorporated rock and other pop styles, a trend that has continued. Today’s widely successful Hamilton, featuring hip hop music, has ushered in another Renaissance and introduced a new generation to Broadway.
Most students are familiar with Hamilton, but homework assignments introduce them to shows that came before. Armstrong assigns film versions of selected musicals, often pairing shows from different eras to explore thematic similarities. (Both Gypsy and Hairspray, for example, feature transgressive women who refuse to follow the rules.) He also presents clips in class, and has students attend a UW production and two musicals at the 5th Avenue Theater during the quarter — the latter at a fraction of the usual price thanks to his connections.
Through this immersion, students discover common themes in musicals. The most ubiquitous is race, from Showboat in the 1920s to West Side Story in the 1950s to Hamilton today. “Over the 120-year history of musical theater, about 37 musicals have dealt with race as principal subject matter,” says Armstrong, who spends a full class session exploring the theme.
Toward the end of the quarter, students will dream up their own ideas for a new musical, which they will pitch to a panel of industry professionals, hoping to demonstrate how their story would benefit from this unique form of storytelling. The students are unlikely to come up with the next Hamilton, but Armstrong hopes the class project — and the course — will forever change the way they look at musicals.
“After this class, these students will never see musicals the same way again,” says Armstrong. “They will have an appreciation for the form, and see it as an important cultural touchstone. It is our great American art form, and I’m thrilled to share it.”
Costumes with a story to tell
School of Drama graduate student in costume design, Chanté Hamann, tells the stories of vintage costumes.
(School of Drama, March 2019)
Chanté Hamann is obsessed with costumes. A School of Drama (SoD) graduate student in costume design, Hamann is particularly intrigued by vintage costumes that reference the past. So when four large boxes of costumes donated in the 1960s were discovered in SoD storage, she was eager to learn what was inside.
What she found was the best present she could imagine.
The boxes held a trove of costumes worn by famed actor Sarah Bernhardt and others more than a century ago, including hats, handmade silk shoes, beaded and sequined sashes, undergarments, wigs, and nearly 20 gowns. “Many of them are ball gowns with a capital G,” says Hamann. “They have big sleeves, trains, everything.”
Immediately realizing the significance of the collection, Hamann invited fellow graduate students and SoD design faculty to help with the initial unpacking of the boxes. Skip Mercier, senior lecturer for set and costume design, recalls a memorable evening of discovery. “That night there was a lot of oooh-ing and ahhh-ing,” Mercier says. “As we uncovered each layer, it was like an archaeological dig. It almost felt like we were going through civilizations of things.” The conversation quickly turned to next steps, including how to research and preserve the collection.
Some information was already available, including the source of the donation — a costume house in Portland. When the School of Drama received the boxes in the mid-1960s, information tags were added to many of the pieces, but most offered just a basic description. “It seems the collection had been sorted through at the time and then neatly tucked away,” says Hamann.
Hamann was immediately drawn to a box that had “Costumes owned by Sarah Bernhardt,” jotted on its side. Bernhardt, a French stage actress who performed internationally in the late 1800s, was known for the outrageous volume of clothing she owned and for acting in male lead roles — which explains why some of the suede breeches, vests, and other male clothing in the box have nips and tucks to better fit a female body. Bernhardt was also memorable for her a larger-than-life personality. “Later in life she had one of her legs amputated to the hip,” says Hamann, “and like the proper little diva she was, she opted for being carried around in her ornately decorated chair by two men.”
The boxes also revealed costumes worn by Sarah Truax, an American stage actress who toured and performed on Broadway. Through her research, Hamann uncovered a 1904 photo of Truax performing in Seattle, in which she appears to be wearing a costume from the collection. “Both of these Sarahs were known to have performed in Seattle,” says Hamann. “Sarah Bernhardt performed at the Cordray’s in 1891 and Sarah Truax performed at the Grand Opera House in 1904.”
Truax later settled down in Seattle and — in an odd coincidence — was buried in a Lake Forest Park cemetery across the street from Hamann’s apartment. “I haven’t gone to find her yet, but I feel like I need to,” Hamann says.
Learning who wore various costumes has been intriguing, but understanding how the garments were constructed is even more valuable. Unlike regular clothing, costumes often have unusual features to make a greater impact on stage or to facilitate a quick change of clothing. “There are often weird things on the insides of them that wouldn’t be put together that way just to walk down the street,” says Hamann. “There’s lots of magic in there. I wish I could pick the brain of the person who actually made some of these.”
Hamann would also like to put dates to each garment, but that has been challenging since many of the costumes were created using street clothing from an earlier period, or by repurposing an existing costume. The same is true today. Students designing costumes for SoD productions often peruse local thrift shops or the School’s costume collection for items they can modify to reflect the goals of a production.
These vintage costumes won’t be repurposed, and are unlikely to be worn on stage ever again. The fabrics, particularly the silks, are far too fragile for that. But Hamann hopes they can be shared with the public in some other way. “I would love to show them off,” says Hamann. “Eventually it would be great if we could do some sort of gallery so the public can see some of this.”
But first Hamann has more research to do — on the garments themselves, and the actors who wore them.
“Now more than ever, I wish these items could speak,” she says. “I wish they could tell us about their tour of Seattle and other places. These garments still have a story to tell, and we are in the business of storytelling.”
Solar-powered passion
UW Solar helps civil and environmental engineering students like Alex Ratcliff, ’19, get hands-on experience with increasing sustainability on our campuses and beyond.
(College of Engineering, February 2019)
When talking about his work to bring solar power to the University of Washington, Civil & Environmental Engineering senior Alex Ratcliff lights up.
“UW is ranked the fifth most sustainable college in the U.S.,” said Ratcliff, who is vice president and a project manager for UW Solar. “I’d like to make it number one or two.”
Through his involvement in UW Solar, a student-run organization, Ratcliff has helped bring solar power to three residence halls on campus and has plans to increase the sustainability of even more campus buildings. Overall, UW Solar estimates they have saved the university from producing roughly 270 metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 30,372 gallons of gasoline, 625 barrels of oil, or 295,000 pounds of coal.
When Ratcliff arrived on campus as a freshman, he wasn’t an expert on solar power. His involvement in UW Solar was serendipitous, thanks to a flyer he picked up at a career fair during his first quarter on campus. Since then, his passion for a more sustainable campus, and world, has continued to grow.
“I think it’s the most beneficial thing that could have happened to me,” Ratcliff said about his involvement in UW Solar. “Climate change is the greatest threat to human security and health, and I have always wanted to pursue a career that allows me to mitigate or even reverse the effects.”
Two evenings per week, Ratcliff joins other members of UW Solar to discuss current and future projects. With about 40 members, students are from various disciplines, from engineering to business to urban planning. Since forming in 2013, members have worked toward sustainable power production on campus in order to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the university.
“Alex has always been an enthusiastic participant and a fast learner, so right away he got involved and he’s participated in almost every project since then,” said faculty adviser and associate professor Jan Whittington, from the Department of Urban Design and Planning.
When Ratcliff joined UW Solar, he didn’t have any solar power expertise other than writing a report on solar power while in high school. Acting as consultants, students learn various skills on the job by working on feasibility studies, reviewing designs, submitting projects for bid, and eventually collaborating with contractors to install solar arrays. To secure funding for new projects, members also spend a considerable amount of time writing grant proposals. With a lead role, Ratcliff spends several hours each week searching for and securing new projects and opportunities for the group, which entails giving presentations and meeting with stakeholders.
“I have a good work ethic because of my work with UW Solar. I’ve learned countless skills,” Ratcliff said. “I am more diligent with my time and rather than watch TV, I work on projects that have real meaning and demonstrated effect.”
Shortly after joining UW Solar, Ratcliff was tasked with overseeing solar installations on three west campus residence halls: Maple, Alder and Elm halls. For Ratcliff, the project was truly close to home.
“I was living in Maple Hall at the time,” Ratcliff recalled. “During my second week with UW Solar, I was labeled as a senior designer. I got to go up on the roof, see the solar arrays installed and monitor them while I was a freshman.”
With other UW Solar members, Ratcliff was involved in every aspect of the project, from completing a feasibility study to securing funding, including $340,000 from the Washington State Department of Commerce and $225,000 from Seattle City Light.
Completed in partnership with the Clean Energy Institute and UW Housing & Food Services in January 2017, the 100 kW photovoltaic system generates approximately 107,537 kWh per year. The system is also being used as a testbed, providing data to UW researchers who are working to develop more efficient solar energy systems.
“It has a massive impact on industry as a whole if we can use our infrastructure here for research,” Ratcliff said.
As UW’s Seattle campus continues to grow, Ratcliff has also been involved in advocating for sustainable features in new buildings. The new Life Sciences Building, which opened in September 2018, features Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) panels on the southern façade, which provide shade to the building and also generate enough electricity to power the lights on the main floor. This is the second installation of a BIPV system in the state of Washington.
“The shade gain is really monumental and has a huge impact on cooling of the building, so costs go down tremendously,” Ratcliff said. “We hope this will be a pioneer for all educational institutions in the country.”
Ratcliff also helped design a rooftop solar array for the building, for which funding was recently secured for a full build-out of the system. Construction is anticipated to start this coming summer.
Two campus master plans will also benefit from Ratcliff’s expertise. To maximize solar photovoltaic capacity on all buildings across campus, he’s helping to develop a 30-year solar energy plan. He is also involved in coordinating sustainable features, such as solar battery storage systems and electric car charging stations, for a second master plan, the Campus Sustainability Plan, which is being developed by UW Sustainability and UW Transportation Services.
His efforts don’t stop there. Ratcliff is also working on a feasibility study for solar installations in the UW Greek system, and schematic designs for solar array installations on the new Population Health Building, which is currently under construction, and the new Burke Museum, which opens in fall 2019.
“In his four years with UW Solar, Alex has gone from being one of the students in learning mode to someone who can now tutor other students,” Whittington said. “Now in his senior year, he is in complete project management mode.”
As he nears graduation, Ratcliff is considering his career options. He will be part of the first cohort of students to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering degree, a new program that launched in 2017. Not surprisingly, he plans to pursue a career in the sustainable building industry, where he hopes to utilize his skillset to produce net positive buildings that clean and produce more water and energy than they use.
“With solar projects, I can measure and see how many barrels of oil we are offsetting and how much carbon dioxide is not being emitted,” Ratcliff said. “I’ve always wanted to work on something that I can see fulfilled and have a positive impact.”
If you are interested in getting involved in UW Solar, contact Alex Ratcliff at alexr529@uw.edu or Stefanie Young at sy10@uw.edu. Students can earn credit through participation.
Igniting a passion
For the UW SARP team, it really is rocket science.
(College of Engineering, December 2018)
It’s 109 degrees in the New Mexican desert at Spaceport America, where more than 110 college teams from across the globe have convened and are ready to compete. In addition to sunblock, tools and plenty of water, they have brought the high-powered rockets they’ve built over the last year. Ranging from eight to 20 feet in length, the rockets are designed to reach heights of 10,000 to 30,000 feet.
The challenge — Spaceport America Cup — is an incredible, if not unusual, opportunity. Designed around the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, the challenge hosts student-built rockets of all chemical propulsion types— solid, liquid and hybrid. To win, the teams’ rockets must launch successfully, achieve maximum altitude and be recovered after landing, hopefully in one piece.
“For students interested in rocket science and aerospace engineering, it’s the best,” says aeronautics and astronautics (A&A) senior Clifford Jess Grant. He’s the chief engineer for the UW’s student-run rocketry organization, the Society for Advanced Rocket Propulsion (SARP).
Grant joined SARP as soon as he stepped on campus his freshman year. “The team is one of the main reasons I decided to attend the UW,” he says. He’s eager to spend his final year leading SARP to success at next June’s Spaceport America Cup.
It’s not rocket science (wait, yes it is)
Nearly 200 students are involved with SARP; most are A&A majors but some come from other areas, such as mechanical engineering (ME) and computer science and engineering (CSE). The team focuses a full-year’s efforts on designing and building a single rocket for competition.
“We start each year with a new rocket,” says Grant. “But we are continually iterating on previous years, so you could say that this has been a multi-year process, extending back to the team’s inception in 2009.”
SARP primarily builds hybrid rockets — rockets that use a combination of solid and liquid fuel. These types tend to be safer than their solid or liquid counterparts but are more complicated to design and construct.
“There’s so much involved in building rockets,” says CSE senior and SARP’s Avionics lead Sabrina Tong. She joined the team a few years ago; SARP needed students with programming and circuitry skills, and she was excited for the opportunity to apply hers to an aerospace-related project.
“In addition to technical skills such as programming, system design and analysis, we learn project management and leadership skills,” she says.
At competition, each team usually launches just one rocket, so they hone their efforts into precision design and construction. Successful rockets must launch a payload — the equipment being transported by the rocket — and be recovered after flight.
SARP designs its rockets to reach 30,000 feet at a speed of Mach 1.3. Last year, the team’s rocket measured about 14 feet from the tip of the nose cone to the bottom of the fin can.
Building a successful — and safe — rocket is no easy feat. To get the job done, the team divides into several subteams. The Avionics team focuses on remote fill and launch sequence control, in-flight data and tracking. Structures is concerned with the airframe and other structural components. The Propulsion team develops the motor. Payload designs and creates the item that will be transported inside the rocket (last year’s was an autonomous rover and this year’s is a plasma actuator). The Recovery team determines how to safely recover the rocket, and the Business team is responsible for administration, publicity and sponsorship.
SARP’s rocket is single-use, and competition marks the first — and only —time it will fly, so everything has to run smoothly.
“We test components, subsystems and small-scale versions on campus and at remote sites in Oregon and Washington, but usually the only time we get to see the whole rocket fly is at competition,” says Tong.
“As you might imagine, we all get a little anxious on Launch Day,” Grant adds.
Three, two, one…lift off!
“Even though we’re competing, we all have similar anticipation at the moment of lift off,” says Grant.
The teams spend three days in the desert preparing for launch. On day one, they set up their base camps, launch pads and guide rails. They also start assembling their rockets, installing payloads and testing subsystems. On day two, they set up remote control stations. Judges review and assess the rockets; those that pass inspection are moved to their respective launch sites.
On the third day, the rockets are ignited, and teams and judges watch from a safe distance as each soars into the air. Environmental elements — rising temperatures, wind and dust — can make a launch even more challenging, and sometimes dangerous.
Last June, SARP’s was one of 94 rockets that took off during the competition’s launch window.
“We were so nervous; our rocket flew straight for about three seconds but then experienced some instability on its ascent to 30,000 feet,” Grant remembers. “On the descent there was a glitch with parachute deployment. Fortunately we were able to recover the rocket mostly in one piece.”
Teams are assessed on everything from written technical reports to design implementation to overall flight performance, recovery and successful payload functionality and landing.
Despite the abnormal flight, SARP’s rocket met its altitude goals, and its construction and engineering impressed the judges. The team took first place in their division.
Team members are now focused on refining last year’s rocket design for next June’s competition.
“The lessons we learn in our engineering classes are super important, but they’re only part of engineering education,” says Grant. “Getting to build a rocket from scratch with other students who share a passion for rocketry is such a cool project to apply our skills to. It’s amazing to have this opportunity at the UW.”
Help SARP build and launch their rocket at next summer’s competition by making a gift to the team’s crowdfunding campaign.
The trouble with sympathy
A Germanics course explores how sympathy can be used for good but can also serve a darker purpose.
(College of Arts & Sciences, November 2018)
During her first quarter at the University of Washington, undergraduate Cheyenne Jobe spent time with a widow who habitually murdered her husbands. “Her troubled childhood landed her in a terrible place beyond her control,” Jobe explains. Classmates were equally understanding when they spent time with terrorists, serial killers, Nazis, drug lords, and other nefarious characters.
Fortunately none of the characters were real. They were villainous “types” that the students brought to life in Sympathy for the Devil, a 300-level Germanics course. The course explores how sympathy can be used for good but can also have a darker purpose.
Ellwood Wiggins, assistant professor of Germanics, created the course to dig into literature’s ability to elicit sympathy. “What drew me to literature in the first place was the belief that it can make us better by helping us identify with people from different backgrounds,” says Wiggins. “But the more I looked into it, the more problematic I realized that was. That’s the engine behind the course.”
Wiggins explains that sympathy is a term with several meanings. It can mean compassion for others and their suffering, but it can also mean empathy — feeling what another person feels. Both forms of sympathy are explored in the course, through philosophical treatises, speeches, plays, novels, and films. With each assigned reading, the class looks closely at the language used to persuade readers. In group assignments, the students then use those same techniques to elicit sympathy for less-than-sympathetic characters.
Writers have been doing the same for thousands of years. Compassion was an essential ingredient in Greek tragedy, which is where the course begins. Wiggins has students read The Persians by Aeschylus, first performed in 472 BC. The play, produced just twelve years after Persia invaded Greece, imagines how the Persians experienced the devastating news of their defeat. “The existential threat to Greek civilization was put on the stage and imagined from the perspective of the enemy,” says Wiggins. “Imagine soon after 9/11 having a blockbuster film from the point of view of al Qaeda.”
The remaining examples in the course, from a Shakespearean play to a Victorian novel to a 1930s German film, focus on depictions of Jews, a group that has been demonized as “other” through many centuries and societies. “Jews were the ‘bad guys’ in popular culture for so long,” says Wiggins, “so we look at artistic depictions that try to humanize them, creating admiration or sympathy for them. We look at how the dynamics of that works.” The course then flips that idea, ending with a contemporary Israeli film that features a sympathetic portrayal of a Palestinian terrorist.
Current events, including the recent attack on Jewish congregants inside a Pittsburgh synagogue, have reinforced the continuing relevance of the assigned texts. “The students have been reading Nathan the Wise this weekend,” Ellwood said right after the attack, referring to an 18th-century drama by German author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing about a generous and wise Jew. “I can’t think of any better answer to hatred than Lessing’s play about the need not for tolerance but for respect and friendship between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”
Throughout the quarter, students work in small groups to analyze readings and use what they’ve learned to portray a demonized character sympathetically. Each group plucks a “bad-guy” character from a hat, ranging from a pimp to an abusive mother, and then brainstorms a name, backstory, and motivation for their character. Over the following ten weeks they prepare a speech, a dramatic scene, a first-person story, and a visual project to elicit sympathy for their character.
Along the way, ethical questions abound. The class reads Aristotle, for whom compassion is an emotion involving cognitive judgments. They learn that compassion is manipulative and can persuade us of bad things as easily as good. The students also read Adam Smith, who describes all behavior through sympathy, with people acting and reacting to maximize the sympathy they receive. For junior Khoi Nil, who took the course during his freshman year, those reading assignments were his first exposure to philosophy. “I only realized later that this class was my first contact with ethics,” says Nil, now a philosophy major.
Sympathy might sometimes be morally wrong, but the students nevertheless try to inject humanity into their assigned characters. They present their first project — a five-minute speech — to the class, with their classmates playing the role of jurors at a sentencing hearing for the character. “The students who give the speech really ham it up, using humor and sob stories to try to get their fellow students to feel sympathy,” says Wiggins. Based on the speech, the classmates vote on whether there should be leniency in the character’s sentencing.
To argue for the black widow who kills her spouse, Jobe’s group gave the widow valiant motives and blurred the lines between right and wrong. Jobe, now a junior majoring in landscape architecture and comparative history of ideas, says the class has made her more discerning when she reads the news. “I definitely have a more critical lens and a better understanding of the ways that sympathy and empathy can be used to manipulate people,” she says. “But I also think empathy is extremely important for making more ethical, equitable systems. It’s a constant battle. You have to monitor yourself.”
Wiggins agrees. Since the contentious 2016 election, he has added a mini-assignment in which students take on the role of various political types — die-hard Trump supporters, liberal feminists, non-voters — and write flash fiction to present their character in a sympathetic light. This, he says, may be the most important assignment of all.
“In our society, on both sides of the political spectrum, we tend to see each other as these unsympathetic demons,” says Wiggins. “There’s this inability to put yourself in the other side’s shoes. Hopefully, after this experience, students don’t immediately pigeonhole people who come to opinions that they think are untenable. The more we practice doing this, the better.”
. . .
Sympathy for the Devil, offered by the Department of Germanics, is cross-listed with Philosophy and Comparative Literature. For more information, visit the Sympathy for the Devil website.
Waging war in cyberspace
A doctoral student explains how one online hacker can be more powerful than 10,000 soldiers.
(College of Arts & Sciences, November 2018)
The arsenal of weapons used in modern warfare is vast, including assault rifles, missiles, and bombs. But the most powerful weapon may be in your pocket: your cellphone. In cyberwarfare, hackers can potentially control nuclear or defense facilities in enemy nations by finding a back door into their computer networks. And that invasion can begin with malware you unknowingly open on your phone.
If that alarms you, don’t expect UW doctoral student Donghui Park, a cybersecurity fellow in the Jackson School of International Studies, to ease your mind. “In the information age, one teenage hacker can be more powerful than 10,000 soldiers,” says Park, part of the Jackson School’s Cybersecurity Initiative team. “One hacker can control many, many computers.”
Park knows a thing or two about warfare. After serving in the military in South Korea, he received his master’s degree in history at Yonsei University and became a professor of military history at the Korean Army Academy. At the UW, Park studies cyberwarfare as the latest dramatic development in the history of weaponry. He believes we are experiencing a paradigm shift, comparable to the introduction of black powder to the West, which led to arrows and swords being replaced by far more destructive canons and rifles.
“Cyberwarfare is so different from conventional warfare,” Park says. “My primary question is how nation-states aggressively use cyberspace to maximize their national interests. I’m also interested in cyberwarriors. Who are they? They aren’t trained in the regular army system. Hackers don’t go to military boot camp.”
To better understand cyber threats, Park learned coding and studies information technologies with guidance from the Cybersecurity Initiative team, led by Jackson School faculty Jessica Beyer and Sara Curran. Both Beyer and Curran are on Park’s PhD committee, along with Professor Donald Hellmann.
In addition to reviewing reams of technical reports and official U.S. government warnings related to hacking, Park has interviewed cybersecurity experts in the U.S. and South Korea. Some of the South Korean experts are hackers themselves. “Some of them are monitoring North Korean illegal activity in cyberspace at night, as a hobby,” Park says. “Sometimes they post what they have found, or send data to their government.” Park describes these individuals as patriotic hackers because they volunteer information to help their government.
Other hackers, who Park calls contract hackers, are paid through secret contracts to serve as government-funded cyberwarriors, particularly in authoritarian countries. In North Korea, where citizens and most government officials have no access to the Internet, the military provides Internet access for contract hackers to serve the country’s military mission.
Park has identified a third type of hacker that he has dubbed sheltering hackers. They are not connected to the government like contract hackers, but their illegal activities may extend to attacking another country’s critical networks. The hacker’s own government will nevertheless look the other way because the hacking benefits the nation.
“In my opinion, every country has all three categories of hackers,” says Park. “These things are unspoken but are happening everywhere.”
Because these cyberwarriors blow up computer networks rather than people, their attacks may seem less brutal. But with the potential to control an enemy’s critical services — Israeli hackers famously infected Iran’s nuclear facilities with a destructive computer virus in 2010 — they can inflict tremendous damage.
Park says citizens can do their part to protect against cyberattacks by promptly installing recommended updates to their computer programs and apps. Those updates often correct software errors that hackers exploit to invade networks. If cyberwarriors do get into your phone or computer — by sending you an email that unleashes a virus, for example — they can follow a path of connected networks that may lead to sensitive information. But even with security updates, hackers sometimes find and exploit a glitch before programmers can fix it. Once they’re inside a system, they have the potential to wreak havoc.
“There is no blood in cyberspace but there is incredible danger,” says Park, “which is why the U.S. military’s new head of cybercommand is a four-star general. Cyberspace is the new battlefield along with air, sea, land, and space. It’s the new domain. As a military historian, I anticipate I will be studying cyberwarfare for years to come.”
. . .
Learn more about the Jackson School’s International Policy Institute and its Cybersecurity Initiative, which are supported through funding by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Playing with fire
With ingenuity and perseverance, faculty and staff built the UW glass program one kiln at a time.
(College of Arts & Sciences, November 2018)
“It’s like being in the middle of a volcano. In molten states, there’s this primeval Promethean quality to it. The way it moves between liquid states and solid states is a beautiful thing.”
Mark Zirpel is talking about glass, a material he finds endlessly fascinating. That makes sense given that Zirpel heads the glass program in the UW School of Art + Art History + Design (SoA+AH+D) — a program he built from the ground up after joining the faculty in 2008 as the Dale Chihuly Endowed Chair of Glass.
It hasn’t been easy.
When Zirpel arrived, the Pacific Northwest was already a hub for glass. Since the 1970s, many glass artists have located in the Northwest thanks to the esteemed Pilchuck Glass School, established by UW alumnus Dale Chihuly (BA, 1965). But the University of Washington had no glass program. A group of philanthropic art collectors recognized the need and created the Chihuly Endowed Chair of Glass to support a faculty position and fund a new building with glass studios, faculty offices, and a gallery.
“A graduate architecture class designed three absolutely spectacular studios and created models,” Zirpel recalls. “And then the economy tanked and things unraveled from there.”
With the recession, the new building was no longer a possibility. The School began offering glass classes at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle’s Central District, and then in the UW’s Ceramic and Metal Arts (CMA) Building. With limited resources but an abundance of determination, Zirpel set out to acquire glass-working equipment on a shoestring budget.
Zirpel had to prioritize since the four main techniques for working with glass require different equipment. Kilnforming, including techniques like fused and molded glass, uses kilns that reach 1500 degrees. Cold glass, usually a finishing technique for other processes, requires specialized saws, drills, and sanders for grinding and polishing. Flameworking involves heating and manipulating glass using an oxy-propane torch. Hot glass or blown glass requires a furnace that can melt glass into molten liquid and kilns that serve as annealers to slowly cool the material.
Ramping up facilities for kilnforming, cold glass, and flameworking took nearly four years and ingenuity, including building several kilns from scratch and negotiating an affordable supply of raw material. Adding a hot glass studio took another four years. Sean O’Neill, instructional technician for the program and an experienced glassblower, was able to secure two electric furnaces donated by Glassybaby, and a bounty of used equipment from a glass studio that was closing. “The furnaces were very well used, so I took them down to the bones and reassembled them into one that would work well,” says O’Neill.
Zirpel identified a covered area outside the CMA Building that could function as an area for hot glass, but there was still the matter of bringing electricity to the site. Hot glass requires enough power to run a furnace at sustained temperatures of 2000 degrees or more, while also powering pick-up ovens, kilns and other equipment. “To run electricity to the site was really costly,” says Zirpel. “It would have taken years of my budget just to get the power there.” To help the program over this final hurdle, College of Arts & Sciences Dean Robert Stacey dedicated College funds for the electrical work.
With the glass program fully operational, students now have enviable opportunities to explore. But first they must overcome fears about working with furnaces and molten material. “People’s instinct is to want to stay away from the heat, which is the opposite of what needs to happen,” says O’Neill. “You have to get them to move forward into a zone of discomfort so they can be more efficient. As soon as you get glass out of the furnace it starts cooling off and becoming harder to work with, so you can’t be tentative.”
Some students, like junior Candise Salinas, are drawn to the medium. Salinas came to the UW with glassblowing experience and has relished opportunities to explore all the glass program offerings. (Her favorites are kilnforming and flameworking.) “I’m excited to have access to so many tools and the space to use them,” says Salinas. “I’ve never found any other place that has all the resources, people, and great connections to the local glass community that I have here at the University of Washington.”
Thanks to those connections, Zirpel has invited guest artists — as many as four during an academic quarter — to contribute in a variety of ways. Some teach a class session, others share their work and artistic process. “Sometimes we just turn them loose in the hot shop to work alongside our students for a couple of days,” says Zirpel. “We want to show students what an artist working in glass looks like.”
With support from the Chihuly Endowment, Zirpel also hires visiting artists to teach for a quarter. This year he plans to have a glassblower and possibly a flameworker teach courses. “There are literally dozens if not hundreds of qualified artists to tap into around here,” he says.
Some of those artists are alumni who first discovered glass as UW students. But even those who pursue unrelated careers are changed by working with glass.
“We strongly encourage the pursuit of research and curiosity,” says Zirpel. “We want students to have exposure to glass as a fascinating material, with opportunities for experimentation and failure. Hopefully the experience will stay with them when they leave here and be something they always carry with them.”
. . .
To learn how you can support the glass program, contact Merith Bennett at mab4@uw.edu or contribute online to the Dale Chihuly Endowed Chair of Glass.
Dedicated to the UW’s top dawg
Dubs II has big paws to fill as successor to UW mascot Dubs. Anne-Lise Nilsen, '14, is making sure he's prepared.
(College of Arts & Sciences, January 2019)
Anne-Lise Nilsen’s career has gone to the dogs. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
Nilsen (BS, Psychology, 2014) is the trainer for Dubs II, the successor to the UW’s newly retired canine mascot Dubs. As trainer, she chose the puppy who will be the new furry face of the Huskies and is preparing Dubs II for his very public role.
“Dubs paved the way for Dubs II,” Nilsen says. “When Dubs started, he did a handful of events throughout the year. He’s now at upwards of 40 events a year, and he leads the team out at football games. There’s so much he’s been able to do as the University’s mascot.”
Nilsen has nearly two decades of experience working with dogs, starting with her first bichon frisé puppy at age 7. She discovered a love for dog training through Dog 4H in Seattle. As a teen she competed in youth events with the American Kennel Club, once making it to the Bichon Frisé Nationals. Around the same time, she developed a dog training lesson plan to help pet owners in her bichon frisé play group.
As a student at Seattle’s Ballard High School, Nilsen completed a research project on social hierarchy in dogs. For advice on research methods, she reached out to animal behavior specialist James Ha, UW professor of psychology (now emeritus). “He was extremely welcoming,” Nilsen recalls of Ha, who continues to be a mentor. “He helped me with all the stats, and later got me to present my research at an Animal Behavior Society meeting.”
Through Ha, Nilsen learned that the UW Department of Psychology offers an emphasis in animal behavior. She loved the idea of a psychology degree, which she felt would inform her work with dog owners as well as their four-legged companions. For her psychology honors thesis, Nilsen once again worked with Ha, studying how different dog breeds relearn a task when some aspect of the task changes. She liked that the research, an exploration of animal cognition, had direct application to her dog-training work.
Dubs was among the 25 dogs in Nilsen’s honor thesis study. She had begun working with him sophomore year, as one of four or five student handlers overseeing Dubs’ event appearances. Student handlers serve as Dubs’ advocates at events and report any concerns, from unusual behavior to challenging conditions that might require further training. “There are always things that change,” says Nilsen. “Athletics may add fireworks during game day, or change the order of things Dubs is expected to do. All of that requires extra learning.”
Nilsen continued as a student handler until graduation, and later was hired to train the handlers in addition to her day job as manager of a doggy day care in Mukilteo, Washington. Given her history with Dubs, it’s no surprise that UW Athletics asked her to lead the search for, and training of, his canine successor.
Nilsen’s dogged (ahem) search led to a puppy from a local breeder, with classic markings and an even temperament. “Something would change in his environment and he wouldn’t spook,” Nilsen recalls. “He would just sit back and let whatever it was happen, and then investigate, which is exactly the type of temperament that can succeed in a stadium full of Husky fans.” Nilsen also helped choose Dubs II’s family, to ensure a happy home life when he is off the clock. (Yes, it’s a family of Husky alums.)
Despite being the Husky mascot, Dubs and Dubs II are not huskies. They are malamutes, a closely related breed that tends to be larger and more opinionated. “I like malamutes for this type of role because chaos is less likely to rattle a malamute than the Siberian husky,” Nilsen explains. “Being a Nordic breed, they are one of the breeds genetically closest to wolves, and because of that they tend to be independent thinkers. But if you set them up to succeed by giving them the right tools and rewards, they are typically very intelligent in addition to being good with people, including children.”
Following Dubs long reign as UW’s top dog, Dubs II has big paws to fill. To ensure his success, Nilsen began training him at eight weeks, slowly acclimating him to the massive stadium and camera flashes and overeager fans that will be part of his life. Once he is fully matured, he will attend 40 or more events a year, with Nilsen reviewing every event request to ensure his well-being.
Though Dubs II will not reach adulthood for another year, he was officially anointed as the UW’s new canine mascot in November, at a passing-of-the-collar ceremony in Husky Stadium during the last home game. “It’s one of those bittersweet things,” says Nilsen. “I didn’t want to see Dubs retire because that was my college experience. He was my first love when it comes to malamutes. But now having Dubs II as this all-encompassing project, it is so much fun to see all that he is becoming and all that he can do. There are so many things I learned from Dubs that I’m now applying to Dubs II.”
With Dubs II’s “red shirt season” complete, Nilsen will ramp up the training of his student handlers, who will eventually accompany Dubs II on his mascot duties without Nilsen present. But Nilsen will continue to prepare Dubs II for new challenges and opportunities as they arise.
“The University’s live mascot program has so much growth potential,” says Nilsen. “I hope to be a part of the program for years to come. It’s such a cool way to stay involved with the University.”
Destined to dance
Through dance, Cheryl Delostrinos, '13, promotes equity and social justice — and the joy of movement.
(College of Arts & Sciences, January 2019)
Dancers spend years training to be choreographers. Cheryl Delostrinos (BA, Dance, 2013) got a head start — at age two.
Family videos capture Delostrinos choreographing a dance routine for her four older sisters in the family living room in West Seattle. “The best part is that my sisters were going along with it,” she laughs.
Today Delostrinos is a respected dancer, choreographer, and co-founder of Au Collective, a dance collective dedicated to building a foundation of racial and social justice through dance. All collective members identify as artists of color, queer artists, trans artists, or femme artists. They created the collective as “a space where we can show up as ourselves,” Delostrinos says.
Delostrino’s first introduction to concert-based dance was another company known for its diverse voices: Alvin Ailey Dance Company. She was captivated by an Ailey performance in UW’s Meany Hall, which she attended with her first grade class through Meany’s Student Matinee Series. Soon after, dancers from Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) visited her school and chose a handful of students to attend a weekly dance class through the PNB DanceChance program.
“I was in love with dance and I wasn’t chosen,” Delostrinos recalls. “I was really bummed out, watching my friends take their leotards and tights and leave early on Fridays.” After months of pining, she convinced her parents to sign her up for classes at a neighborhood dance studio. In an ironic twist, a year later she auditioned and was chosen for the PNB School — far more selective than the DanceChance program she’d missed out on previously.
“From eight years old, I was spending every day after school dancing or in rehearsal or performing,” says Delostrinos, who also continued studying at her neighborhood studio. “That was my life for most of my K-12 years.”
As she headed for college, Delostrinos envisioned a career as a professional dancer. Her parents had other ideas. They hoped her aptitude for science would lead to a medical degree. “I’m Filipinx, from a family of immigrants,” Delostrinos explains. “My family did not understand what a career in the art world could look like, especially since there’s not much representation of Filipino women in that world in Seattle.”
As a compromise, Delostrinos planned to double major in dance and a science discipline at the UW. Her freshman year she focused on science, but dance kept calling her back. A summer internship with Alvin Ailey Dance Company solidified her commitment to dance.
“I came back to the UW sophomore year really hungry to create,” Delostrinos recalls. “I had a curiosity about what it looks like for dance to evolve, and to explore how dance relates to who I am. The faculty in the Dance Program [now the Department of Dance] just opened their doors to all of it. I would come in asking, ‘What if I tried this?’ And they would say, ‘Yes! Do that — and more!’ The program fosters a space that is inclusive, open, and willing to change based on the artists who are in that space. That is unique in the dance world. I felt really supported in exploring new ideas.”After graduating, Delostrinos toured with Seattle-based Pat Graney Dance Company, danced on other local projects, and taught dance at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences. She enjoyed her jobs, but she missed creating work that fully represented who she is as a dancer of color. Three UW friends shared similar frustrations, and together they dreamed up Au Collective. (Delostrinos explains that Au is the periodic symbol for gold, a cultural symbol for celebration.)
Au Collective began with performances at pop-up events at breweries and art festivals. The group quickly grew to a dozen dancers — all UW alumni — and made a splash with sold-out performances at 12th Avenue Arts in Seattle. By late 2015, they had raised $15,000 through a crowdfunding campaign, and the co-founders — Delostrinos, Hallie Scott, Austin Nguyen, and Fausto Rivera — took on administrative roles while holding down day jobs. “Things started happening really fast,” recalls Delostrinos, who served as artistic and executive director. “We received a lot of requests to perform. We spent a solid six months performing every weekend.”
Overwhelmed by their unexpected success, the collective paused to regroup. They changed the leadership structure to ensure greater equity, and pared the membership to eight dancers, all with equal say. They also established bylaws and a board. Au Collective continues to perform — including recent projects for the Seattle Art Museum, PNB, and Wing Luke Museum — but also partners with Coyote Central on programs for youth interested in dance.
Today Delostrinos balances her Au Collective work with a full-time job as arts manager for Arts Corps, an organization that promotes access to youth arts education. As she coordinates Arts Corps programs at 30 sites in King County, her dance background informs her work. “I’ve been able to incorporate a strong dance foundation rooted in the idea of having agency over your body, having a voice, and telling your story,” she says. Meanwhile, as a choreographer, she has received local and national commissions for new work, and recently accepted a 2018 Dance Crush Award for her accomplishments.
Has all this success convinced Delostrinos’ parents that dance is the right path for their daughter?
“They are able to hear what I have to say now, but they still want me to be a doctor,” Delostrinos laughs. “Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
A mentoring mastermind
With Hey Mentor, an online mentoring program, Kevin Truong, '16, is helping students prepare for college.
(College of Arts & Sciences, January 2019)
Kevin Truong (BA, Law, Societies & Justice, 2016) was determined to become the first in his extended family to attend college. He achieved his goal, earning a UW bachelor’s degree in 2016. But he’s never forgotten the stress of navigating the college application and financial aid process.
That experience inspired Truong to create Hey Mentor, an online mentor program for high school students. Since its launch in fall 2017, Hey Mentor has served students from more than 20 high schools in King County, and has earned the attention and support of the Gates Foundation.
Truong had years of experience with college readiness programs before launching his own. As a UW undergraduate, he spent four years volunteering for The Dream Project, which supports college access and post-secondary planning for middle and high school students. His junior and senior years, he also held a staff position with The Dream Project. After graduating, Truong became a full-time college access coach at Seattle’s Chief Sealth High School — his alma mater — through AmeriCorps’ College Access Now program. He wanted to continue exploring college readiness as a career path but noticed shortcomings in existing programs, particularly their struggles to retain mentors and high school participants.
“I started thinking critically about why that was happening and realized that the traditional access model of sending mentors out to high schools wasn’t working very well,” Truong explains. “The Dream Project would send college mentors to high schools up to 45 minutes away, and sometimes only a handful of high school students would show up. That wasn’t the fault of the volunteers or the students. High school seniors are just very busy with sports and clubs and all the things going on after school, so it’s hard to meet with the college mentors. I thought there had to be a better way to reach students where they’re at. I decided to create Hey Mentor as an online model, using my experience to do something innovative and different than what was currently being offered.”
Through Hey Mentor, students are assigned an online mentor whom they can contact with questions or concerns at their convenience. The mentors are college students or recent college graduates trained in college access issues — the admissions process, financial aid — as well as social and emotional aspects of mentor relationships. When possible, mentors are paired with high school students with similar career interests.
Truong began planning Hey Mentor while wrapping up his year-long AmeriCorps stint at Chief Sealth High School. He invited Chief Sealth students to brainstorm with him, meeting with them weekly during the spring and summer. Together they developed a plan for recruiting high school students, a curriculum for training mentors, a name for the program, and a logo. By fall 2017 — when Truong returned to the UW to begin a master’s program in public administration— he had filed for nonprofit status and created a Hey Mentor board.
Thanks to Truong’s many connections at local high schools and with former college readiness mentors, he was able to launch Hey Mentor that fall. He formed a technology team to develop a mobile app, and a new Hey Mentor student club at the UW recruited and trained more than 30 additional volunteers. Student ambassadors from a dozen Seattle-area high schools spread the word about the program, and a $15,000 grant from the Gates Foundation led to more program refinements.
As if juggling graduate school and Hey Mentor wasn’t enough, Truong also worked as an admissions reader for the UW Office of Admissions in autumn 2017, which meant reading upwards of 1000 college applications over three months. The experience gave him a greater understanding of what admissions staff look for in applicants, and became one more way to help high school students. “I’ve never shared any trade secrets with applicants,” Truong assures. “I was very transparent with Admissions about my dual role.” Hey Mentor is now an affiliated program with UW Admissions.
Beyond online mentoring, Hey Mentor now offers hands-on workshops, including a college application workshop for high school seniors and a mock admissions day for juniors. For the latter — Hey Mentors’ most popular event — high school juniors complete an abbreviated college application, then learn from mentors what they can do to improve their chances of acceptance at selective schools.
“Hey Mentor’s online program makes mentors more accessible to students, and the in-person activities complement the online experience,” says Truong. “They are another way to engage students. I tried to identify what other organizations were not doing — things I could introduce to make Hey Mentor more fun and increase retention.”
Truong hopes Hey Mentor can continue to broaden its reach, with Hey Mentor clubs at other universities in Washington state and beyond. Given his own background, he understands what a difference a little help can make.
“I grew up in a low-income community, with parents who came to the U.S. from Vietnam,” says Truong. “My mom had to drop out in second grade to take care of younger siblings, and my dad dropped out in fifth grade. I never imagined going as far as graduate school! If Hey Mentor can motivate students from similar backgrounds to pursue higher education, that’s a great thing.”
The path to healing
Srinya Julie Sukrachan overcame many hurdles on her way to becoming a nurse. Now she's using her UW degree to serve others.
(UW homepage, fall 2018)
Srinya Julie Sukrachan, ’14, ’18, spent way too much time in the hospital as a child. But when she donned her scrubs and walked into Swedish Hospital as a registered nurse this past August, she was overjoyed. The intervening years had changed her life — and her perspective.
After being diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at age 10, Sukrachan began a rigorous course of treatment that required regular hospital visits. Following years of medication adjustments, she finally went into remission. But by then, she was visiting another hospital for a different reason: Her father had been diagnosed with colon cancer. He passed away when she was just 15.
Sukrachan knew she wanted to pursue a career in health care so she could make a difference in the lives of other patients and their families, but she didn’t know where to begin.
Charting a course
The summer before her senior year at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Sukrachan spent a week at UW Nurse Camp. A free program supported by philanthropy and run by the UW School of Nursing, the camp introduces the possibility of a career in nursing to a small cohort of high school students from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds.
“It was inspiring to be around students who looked like me and had ambitious goals,” Sukrachan says. “We got certified in CPR. We listened to heart and lung sounds on high-tech simulation mannequins. We got to shadow nurses at UW Medical Center. At the end of the week, I knew I wanted to be a nurse.”
With her goal firmly in mind, Sukrachan set off to attend the UW. She took prerequisites for the major. She started working in the office of a chronic pain management clinic to bolster her résumé and gain experience in the field — and every year, she returned to Nurse Camp as a volunteer and mentor.
But when she applied to the School of Nursing as a junior, she wasn’t accepted. The following year, she applied again and got the same result.
“I was really confused and frustrated,” says Sukrachan. “But in the back of my mind, I thought, ‘I’m not getting in for a reason. They’re not going to admit me if I’m not ready for it.’”
Third time’s a charm
Sukrachan went on to graduate from the UW with a degree in medical anthropology and global health in 2014, but she continued to seek out the mentorship of Carolyn Chow, co-founder of UW Nurse Camp and then the director of admissions and student diversity at the School of Nursing.
“She helped me reflect on why I didn’t get in and what I could work on,” says Sukrachan. “With her encouragement, I became a CNA [certified nursing assistant] and started working in an assisted living home. It really helped me figure out patient care from the nurse’s perspective.”
After spending a year working and attending workshops at the UW to sharpen her application essay, Sukrachan applied to the School of Nursing a third time — and got in.
“Getting patient experience alongside a nurse practitioner made all the difference for Srinya,” says Chow. “She fully understood what kind of relationships she wanted to have with her patients, and she was one of the strongest applicants.”
Serving others
With the help of several scholarships, Sukrachan could fully embrace her student experience the second time around. “That support definitely took a huge burden off. I didn’t have to work my first year, so I could focus on my studies,” she says.
Sukrachan also took on the role of volunteer coordinator for Nurse Camp for two years and co-founded Future Nurses Club, a registered student organization that provides pre- and current nursing students — especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities — with advice, networking opportunities and tips on the application process.
“It felt so right,” says Sukrachan. “We had just finished volunteering at Nurse Camp, which provides amazing opportunities for high schoolers. We thought, ‘Why can’t we do the same for minority, low-income students at the UW who want to get into our program?’”
Says Chow, “Starting a student organization like Future Nurses Club takes considerable work and commitment, but Srinya was focused on giving back. She’s a true role model.”
Today, Sukrachan is an antepartum nurse at Swedish Hospital’s First Hill campus, caring for women with high-risk pregnancies. She spends even more time in hospitals than she did as a girl, but now there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.
—
|
Support the nurses of tomorrow UW Nurse Camp is a free weeklong day camp that increases access to the field for underrepresented and low-income high school students. By supporting the camp, you can help students like Srinya Julie Sukrachan explore a nursing career. |
Strength in community
Hayden Campbell, a graduate student in urban planning, is building on his UW education to help create more equitable spaces on campus — and in the city.
(UW homepage, November 2018)
The son of artists from Vashon Island, Hayden Campbell majored in art history and marketing in college, thinking he would apply his talents in the advertising world.
But after several years in nonprofit marketing, Campbell says, he felt like something was still missing: “I figured out that my interests were more in the realm of urban design and planning — improving space and the built environment, and in essence creating a third place for people to come together.”
While Campbell was reevaluating his career path, he was also reflecting on Seattle’s uneven economic recovery. During the post-recession housing boom, he saw homelessness climb and noticed that some parts of the city were flourishing as others lagged behind.
“I wanted to find the best way to leverage the privilege I was born with for positive good,” he says. “Focusing on equity and social justice in the city is really important to me.”
Laying the foundation for a new career
Campbell decided to apply to master’s programs in urban planning, ultimately landing on the University of Washington. “The UW has a great program, and it’s an exciting time to get this degree in this city,” he says. “But it was the character and quality of my cohort that were especially inspiring.”
Campbell wanted to make the most of his time at the UW, and with the help of two scholarships, he has. The merit-based Urban Design and Planning Scholarship and a scholarship from the Myer R. Wolfe Endowed Fund have been “an enormous relief,” he says. “Pursuing a graduate degree is an enormous financial burden, and I am grateful to have been awarded these scholarships. This support is huge.”
Turning motivation into action
Campbell hit the ground running when he arrived at the UW’s College of Built Environments. He joined his department’s diversity committee, which brings students and faculty together to make the college more welcoming, inclusive and equitable for all students, from what they read to who they hear from.
Last year, the committee audited reading lists for all of the urban planning program’s core classes, noting the gender and ethnicity of authors, and shared the results with program faculty. “They may not make wholesale changes to their curriculum,” says Campbell, “but it’s enough to have them say, ‘Maybe we need to take a look at that and update it.’”
The committee also brings to campus underrepresented voices in the urban design and planning field, broadening students’ perspectives and identifying challenges they may someday face. “We invite planners and community engagers of color to come talk about projects they’re working on and the ways it may have been difficult for them to work in Seattle,” says Campbell.
Beyond the classroom
In order to apply his education to helping local communities, Campbell began serving on his neighborhood’s land-use committee. “So far I’ve learned how the community engagement process works and how neighborhood associations can communicate with the city from a very grassroots level,” he says.
With the goal of deepening the connection between his studies and the real world, Campbell began a yearlong graduate internship with the Seattle Department of Transportation over the summer. Working in the department’s street-use division, he reviews new building projects to make sure they’re safe and legal and don’t interfere with public use of city streets. It’s been a crash course in the nuances of Seattle’s municipal code, and it has also given him insight into his own career path.
“I’ve seen how good urbanism gets fought for at the city level: We’re trying to create larger, safer and more comfortable pedestrian spaces, a more connected and complete bike network, and affordable and reliable public transportation,” Campbell says. “I’ve come to understand the push and pull between academia and professional practice.”
With graduation on the horizon in June 2019, Campbell looks forward to making a difference through his work. “I hope to build a career promoting and implementing good urbanism,” he says, “leveraging urban planning as a means to improve the health and livability for communities.”
—
Husky 100
In recognition of his contributions to the UW and the community, Hayden Campbell has been selected as a member of this year’s Husky 100, an honor that recognizes exceptional UW undergraduate and graduate students from all areas of study.
—
|
Building stronger communities When you support the Urban Design and Planning Scholarship Fund, you can help students like Hayden Campbell shape the communities of the future. |
Curating the future
At the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, curatorial interns get hands-on preparation for careers in the art world — and roles in the community.
(UW homepage, February 2019)
It’s the day before the opening of Danny Giles’ exhibition at the University of Washington’s Jacob Lawrence Gallery, and everything is running on schedule. For the past three weeks, Giles has been working here in residency, creating a new series of works on paper. Now the Chicago-based artist is showing UW sophomore Serena Lantz how to hang his unframed work at eye level using a self-designed system of pins and carefully crafted paper hinges.
Behind every exhibition’s public face is a team of professionals who work long hours to put it all together. At the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, this team includes undergraduate and graduate students who are gaining valuable hands-on experience through the School of Art + Art History + Design’s curatorial internship program.
Learning by doing
Lantz is earning a B.A. in studio art with a concentration in 3D4M, the University’s interdisciplinary designation for three-dimensional art. This quarter, after spending a year as a curatorial intern, they are moving into a paid position as the gallery lead, working closely with gallery director Emily Zimmerman on several aspects of day-to-day operations.
“We generally have around 15 interns,” says Lantz, who grew up on Seattle’s Eastside. “We have positions in social media, graphic design — I like to think it’s a system where you choose what you want to learn.”
One of Lantz’s favorite aspects of gallery work is the way it encourages conversations with visitors. “If you’re a studio artist, it’s important to be able to communicate with other creative people about art,” they say. “It’s also given me a lot of opportunities to reflect about the gallery not only as a physical space, but also as a social space in the context of artists and representation.”
Other responsibilities involve handling the art itself. “We encourage interns to be part of the install and deinstall process,” says Lantz. “This is a core part of the experience, because you’re able to interact with the work on a personal level — meet the artist and have discussions with them.”
Art handling is also an opportunity to gain practical skills, Lantz adds: “‘How do I patch a hole in a wall? How do I paint?’ Even if they don’t decide to go into curatorial work, the experience of working in a gallery is invaluable to people who are considering art as a profession.”
Knowledge into practice
“To me, the legacy of Jacob Lawrence is at the intersection of arts and social justice,” says assistant curator Juan Franco.
The Jacob Lawrence Gallery’s assistant curator, art history master’s candidate Juan Franco, will have the chance to put this functional knowledge to use over the summer by curating “Lugar del Trabajo,” an exhibition at the gallery by New York–based artists Angélica Maria Millán Lozano and Camilo Godoy that will serve as Franco’s thesis practicum project.
In the meantime, Franco has been assisting Zimmerman with “The Practice and Science of Drawing a Sharp White Background,” the current exhibition by Giles, whose work interrogates currents of white supremacy running through Eurocentric art history curricula. Giles is this year’s recipient of the Jacob Lawrence Legacy Residency, a program established in 2015 to help carry forward the values of the former UW professor for whom the gallery is named.
“In honoring Jacob Lawrence’s legacy, the gallery has a mission to support those things that were important to Lawrence: education, social justice and experimentation,” says Zimmerman, who became the gallery’s director in 2017. “Supporting the creation of new artwork that is in dialogue with the inequities embedded in our social, political and economic realities is crucial as a tool for seeing our world anew.”
Living a legacy
This mission resonates strongly with both Lantz and Franco, who share an interest in issues of identity and tradition in the context of cultural production. “To me, the legacy of Jacob Lawrence is at the intersection of arts and social justice,” says Franco. “Talking about history from a particular viewpoint and also advocating for it, making it visual to experience — the gallery is a place where all these histories come together.”
Zimmerman says that she would like the students who work for the gallery to take away an understanding of the care at the core of curatorial practice. “This means not only looking after the physical safety of artworks, but also one’s responsibility to the artist, the audience, colleagues and community,” she says.
These are far-reaching lessons that students will carry with them into the future. “Working at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery encourages me to consider artistic work and practice as both personal expression and political, societal act,” says Lantz. “I’m proud of everything we do to establish and solidify the connection between arts and social justice.”
—
Advocating for the arts
When you support the Friends of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery fund, you can help students like Serena Lantz and Juan Franco gain the experience they need to pursue careers in the arts.
Building bridges
From a small Washington town to one of the world's largest cities, Caleb Huffman is on a quest to connect with others — and expand his own perspective in the process.
(UW homepage, 2018)
Caleb Huffman, ’18, admits that his transition to the University of Washington was daunting. The number of undergraduates alone is 30 times larger than the population of his rural Washington hometown, Onalaska.
But four years later, the UW senior is again on the cusp of uprooting himself to a much larger city. This fall, he’ll move to Beijing to spend two years studying Chinese law and society at Peking University.
Why does Huffman embrace such drastic changes of scenery? It’s part of his quest to connect with others despite — and because of — their many differences.
Urban-rural roots
In third grade, Huffman moved from Renton, an economically and racially diverse city south of Seattle, to Onalaska. “It was the complete opposite,” he says. “But I consider myself someone who’s been able to bridge the urban-rural divide, and it’s something I’ve remained very interested in.”
When he was accepted to the UW, Huffman knew he wanted to major in both political science and communication. But first he had to find a way to pay for it.
Federal loans, financial aid and the State Need Grant went a long way, but they still left a significant gap. Then the philanthropically supported Husky Promise, which covers tuition and fees for Washington state students from low-income families, brought him over the finish line. “The support I received made all the difference,” he says.
Exploring differences
Without a financial burden to worry about, Huffman hit the ground running at the UW, participating in several campus groups and exploring his interest in building bridges between communities.
The UW chapter of the Veritas Forum, where Huffman would eventually serve as student director, had a strong impact on him. The faith-based organization’s tagline is “Pursuing Truth Together,” and as a Christian, Huffman enjoyed engaging with people from different belief systems to discuss some of life’s most difficult questions.
“We’re not omniscient as humans,” he says. “The information we’ve processed only gives us a certain slice of the world, which is inherently going to be limited.”
After his first year at the UW, Huffman pushed himself even further by traveling outside the U.S. for the first time. He went to Rome with the support of a grant from the U.S. Department of State, which he learned about through the UW Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards (OMSFA). In addition to studying global cities and human migrations, he volunteered at a refugee center.
“I met a lot of political refugees, and their stories were just heartbreaking,” he says. “I got really interested in international relations after that.”
A global community
In his sophomore year, Huffman was accepted into the Husky Presidential Ambassadors Leadership Institute, which matches current UW students with incoming first-year students from China to develop cross-cultural communication and leadership skills. After a week of leadership prep on campus, Huffman spent two weeks with his cohort at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where they studied alongside newly admitted UW international students who would be moving to Seattle in the fall.
“It’s really easy for international students to remain in their communities at the UW,” says Huffman. “Some study abroad in the United States, but they never truly ‘leave’ their country. This program is trying to bridge that divide.”
Huffman’s growing interest in U.S.–China relations made him want to return and keep learning. With more help from OMSFA, he was selected to participate in two international bridge-building programs with conferences in the U.S. and China. He spent part of last summer in Chengdu, improving his Mandarin and learning more about China’s culture. And he’s involved in the Gorton Center Global Leaders Program through the National Bureau of Asian Research, focusing on policy and business leadership.
“Humans are similar in a lot of ways, but our differences are there — and sometimes you can’t see them,” Huffman says. “That matters because when you’re making policy, if you don’t know about those differences, you might hurt people.”
The next stage of the journey
Ultimately, Huffman hopes to become a lawyer, working in the U.S. legal system to help strengthen our country’s relationship with China and contribute to a more peaceful world. But first he’s heading back to China for graduate school to deepen his understanding of its legal system.
“The U.S.–China relationship will be the most critical bilateral relationship of my lifetime. How we will shape each other’s, and the world’s, international norms is a question of utmost importance,” says Huffman.
As he prepares to move to a place that differs dramatically from Seattle in size and culture, Huffman recalls a time when he was nervous about coming to the UW. “Now that seems kind of silly to me, because you can find your community anywhere. There are seven billion people in the world. What community are you going to find? Where are you going to go?”
—
What makes Caleb tick
When he’s not planning his next trip to China, Caleb Huffman is extremely active on the UW campus. What else is he up to?
He lives in the International Friendship House, owned by University Presbyterian Church. “The IFH houses students from all over the world. We host a dinner every Tuesday for international students and go on service learning trips together.”
He played trombone in the UW Philharmonic Orchestra for three years. “In high school, I was in marching band and concert band, so I wanted something different when I got to the UW: orchestra with all the strings. It was fun!”
He’s in departmental honors for both his majors and for interdisciplinary honors, and he completed three theses in one year.“It was crazy,” he says. “But I worked hard at it and did fine.”
He’s on the UW College of Arts & Sciences Advisory Committee for Students. “Dean [Robert] Stacey will tell us what’s happening in the college and ask us what we think. We give him suggestions that have a real impact on people in the College of Arts & Sciences.”
—
Help Washington students thrive
The Husky Promise is funded in part by private donations. When you support the Husky Promise Scholarship Fund or other student scholarships, you can help students like Caleb Huffman pursue their goals — and make an impact on the world.
Informatics team elevates Airlift Northwest’s use of technology
With an innovative new app, iSchool students are helping connect emergency responders to mission-critical data in the field.
(iSchool, May 2018)
The list of Airlift Northwest missions is long: wilderness rescues, plane crashes, car accidents, strokes, heart attacks, neonatal emergencies. Since its founding in 1982, the nonprofit air ambulance service has transported more than 100,000 critically ill and injured patients to medical centers throughout Washington, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.
Speed and efficiency are critical to patient outcomes. That girl who slipped off a cliff may have only an hour to live without life-saving rescue and medical treatment. Time is of the essence. So the air ambulance service was game when a team of Information School Informatics students proposed developing a new communications tool with the potential to streamline airlift operations.
“We thought we could help them move forward in the technology space. Health care is behind in that sense,” says Tiffany Chen, user experience and software engineer for the four-member team.
The tool, called Elevate, is a mobile-friendly web application that acts as a connective communication hub, allowing Airlift Northwest crews to instantly view mission-critical data as it is entered and updated by dispatch after an emergency call comes in.
A touch of the finger shows a wealth of mission data: the status of the aircraft, where it’s based, whether it’s a fixed wing plane or helicopter; the estimated time of takeoff, pickup, and arrival at destination; the names of pilots and flight nurses onboard; important contact information; what extra medical equipment is needed; and more. The app provides the highly skilled Airlift Northwest nurses – each with at least five years of critical care experience – mission data on patients (minus identifying information, for privacy reasons). That data includes vital statistics, patient condition (Is the man intubated? The pregnant woman dilated?), and their medical requirements in flight (IVs? Respirator? Plasma? Blood?).
The app is a big tech step forward for Airlift Northwest, a nonprofit entity of University of Washington Medicine.
“Right now, crews are using three or four different modes of communication: pagers, SMS text messages, radio, and phone. Our project reduces reliance on them and adds rich contextual notifications about a new mission request,” says Chen, whose team members include product owner and developer J. Benjamin Leeds, developer Jessica Basa, and product designer and developer Vincent van der Meulen.
They took on the challenge for their 2018 iSchool Capstone project. The iSchool projects put students’ academics into action in the real world, culminating their learning at the school. Their project began with a four-way brainstorm. What were the team’s common interests? Chen and Basa had a special interest in health care; Leeds, a certified pilot, was interested in aviation. All wanted to make an impact – an impact that would last long after the May 30 Capstone presentation night.
“We looked for an organization that matched our interests, and reached out to Airlift Northwest,” says Leeds, who initially made contact with the company’s personnel through Facebook. “Then began the dialogue on what we’d be able to do in our timeframe that would add the most value to the organization.”
To optimize user input, team members spent one day each week interviewing employees in various roles throughout Airlift Northwest headquarters in Seattle. “We sat down with them, watched them do their work, and asked them about the problems they encountered, possible things we could solve,” says Van der Meulen.
The students regularly returned with new design possibilities for more rounds of questions and feedback. “We made so many changes to get it to where it is,” says Leeds.
A key problem that emerged was the difficulty of dispatch and flight crews exchanging information in real, or near-real time. “During a mission, there is a need to communicate accurately, early, and often,” says Airlift Northwest’s Technology Manager Chris Carlton-Bishop, who describes the iSchool students as “professionals” who stirred up ideas and delivered on all their commitments.
“Working with a team of young developers brings energy and excitement to the business far beyond the applications,” he says. “The nurses who had a chance to interact with the team are excited about what they were developing, the IT team was energized by working in relevant technologies, and the leadership was challenged, in a good way, to think about how those outside the day-to-day operations see things in a different light and offer innovative solutions.”
Designing a high-functioning app in a complicated scenario where lives are at stake was a huge challenge for team members. Their product had to be compliant with both HIPAA regulations (patient confidentiality and information security) and FAA guidelines, and it had to address a myriad of concerns.
“This is a very complex space. We are working in aviation and health care, fields that you can spend your whole life studying and still not know everything about,” says Leeds. “We had to leverage what we knew from informatics courses about design thinking and contextual inquiry and determine how to proceed: How is this communication flowing and how do we build technology to address it? It was like drinking from a firehose.”
One challenge was data delivery. Different users of the Elevate app see different data, depending on their role. Pilots, for instance, do not see patient information – information that could influence their risk assessments. “It’s so they can make rational decisions regardless of what is happening with the patient in the back of the aircraft,” says Leeds.
To ensure app reliability, flight nurses, pilots, and dispatchers are all connected to the application on the Google Cloud platform. There, modern technologies like Kubernetes and a team of Google Reliability Engineers are constantly ensuring the application stays up and running. “Airlift Northwest has never had a custom application, nothing built for them from scratch. And they had not embraced the use of the cloud before this project,” says Leeds. “So our team guided them through elevating their technology to be fully deployed in the cloud.”
Airlift Northwest launched the Elevate app in late May after training. Carlton-Bishop says the company will begin measuring whether its response times are reduced after app implementation.
He is looking forward to working with more Capstone teams in years to come. To maintain and improve on the app, Team Elevate has set up an infrastructure that allows Capstone teams working with the nonprofit to add functionality going forward. “Our goal was to set them up for the future,” says Van der Meulen.
After months of all-consuming work – members say their families wonder why they don’t return calls – the team is finally satisfied that they have met their goal: to use the knowledge learned at the iSchool to make a lasting impact in the world.
“We know we are delivering something that will work for their users, because we’ve kept them involved every step of the way,” says Leeds. “We’ve really considered what it is like to live and work in their shoes.”
Meal Matchup
Human Centered Design & Engineering students are reducing food waste and serving the community with a website that connects UW dining halls to local homeless shelters.
(College of Engineering, August 2018)
“If you had a million dollars, what kind of tech project would you create for social good?”
When this question was posed to Madison Holbrook, ’18, in a human centered design and engineering (HCDE) class taught by lecturer Irini Spyridakis, she knew exactly what she’d do: use technology to reduce hunger and food waste.
“I was raised in a food-minded community in eastern Washington — my mother runs our family ranch, and my dad and brother manage a mobile catering service that provides food to emergency responders during disaster events,” the former HCDE major and STARS student explains. “Through community and family I learned the importance of not wasting food.”
Food waste contributes to several social problems, ranging from hunger and malnutrition to environmental and economic concerns. In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that 30-40% of food goes uneaten.
Holbrook noticed a major disconnect between food going to waste on campus and people in need.
“I thought, ‘There has to be a way to use engineering to help,’” she says.
For her class project she proposed a website that would pair UW dining halls with local shelters to coordinate food donations.
“When she presented her idea, we all agreed it made so much sense,” says Spyridakis. “She’d come up with a way to make an impact starting right here on campus.”
Spyridakis encouraged Holbrook to take the concept further, and together they wrote a proposal to the UW Campus Sustainability Fund. Their project was awarded $21,000 to support the creation of a website to connect excess dining hall food with local non-profit agencies that could distribute it to people in need.
From classroom to kitchens
Over the past year, Holbrook and Spyridakis have led an interdisciplinary research group to develop the concept into a fully-functional web platform.
Their team — which has grown to include 33 students from HCDE, the Information School, and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering — designed the interface for and with the help of three stakeholder groups: UW dining halls, local shelters and student volunteers.
Their web platform, mealmatchup.org, works like this: Food providers log food donations and request pickups online. Food transporters then schedule drivers for pickup and deliveries. Since it’s important to ensure that food donations meets required state guidelines, the transporters are trained in food handling and safety and use the website to document proof-of-pickup and delivery, track food temperatures and navigate pickup and drop-off locations. Receiving agencies use the interface to understand what will be arriving, when, how much and who will be delivering it.
To launch the project, team members invested time building relationships and deepening their understanding of stakeholder needs and concerns. On campus they worked closely with UW Housing & Food Services administrators and dining hall managers. They also interviewed managers at more than 50 local homeless shelters, food banks and soup kitchens.
Through that assessment, key priorities emerged.
“We learned that we needed to create a logistics-focused platform that was clear and easy-to-use so all parties could understand each other’s needs and roles,” Holbrook explains. “Some campus dining halls already had donation systems in place, so rather than replace them we focused on how we could enhance them.”
Timing, storage and transportation presented the biggest challenges for both the providers and receivers.“Dining halls can’t necessarily send their staff to deliver food, and shelters can’t always rely on volunteers to regularly pick up food,” Holbrook says.
For help with food transportation, Holbrook and Spyridakis reached out to UW Carlson Leadership & Public Service Center staff and Green Greeks, a student group committed to sustainability.
“Through Green Greeks and the Carlson Center’s Service Learning program — in which students can earn course credit for participating in service activities — students agreed to organize and deliver food to area shelters from campus,” says Spyridakis. “This arrangement has given the project a much-needed framework for managing and communicating transportation and has introduced our team to some wonderful new partners.”
Piloting and next steps
The team piloted Meal Matchup in May 2018 with UW dining halls Local Point, The 8 and District Market and shelters Union Gospel Mission and Compass Housing Alliance.
“That experience was so valuable,” Holbrook says. “We accomplished all of the goals we set for the pilot and successfully problem-solved a few unexpected hurdles, such as how to adapt when a partner organization experiences management or staff turnover.”
Team members are continuing their outreach efforts and have recently presented their work at international conferences. This fall they will fine-tune their web platform, which they’ve designed to be open-source so that other institutions can use it to create their own food recovery systems.
“Our goal is that the program will be adaptable, self-sustaining and fully student-run,” says Spyridakis, who will continue to supervise the project.
Holbrook is now working as a user experience designer for Hewlett-Packard, and she plans to stay involved with the project as a consultant. She is excited to see campus interest in Meal Matchup grow and to help new students step into leadership roles.
“The best part of this project is knowing you can dream up an idea, communicate it, find interested people, and develop something that will actually make a difference,” she says. “For a long time, it was just pen and paper, meetings and designing, but now that Meal Matchup exists, we are able to connect food that would otherwise be wasted with people who can use it. It feels great.”
Visit Meal Matchup to learn more and get involved.
The paper protector
At the Henry Art Gallery and University Libraries, Claire Kenny helps preserve the legacies of master artists past and present.
(College of Arts & Sciences, July 2018)
Claire Kenny spends her days with Albecht Dürer and Francisco Goya. Not the artists, who died centuries ago, but their master prints.
As a conservator who specializes in works on paper, Kenny works with the Henry Art Gallery and University Libraries to conserve their significant collections of photographs and works on paper, including works by European masters. Her position is funded through a four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
For the Libraries, Kenny is currently focusing on regional photographs and works on paper, including photographs by the Seattle Camera Club and drawings by Eddie Sato, as well as rare Chinese stele rubbings. For the Henry, her focus is a collection of modern American photographs and two collections of European prints gifted to the museum: the Stimson-Bullitt Collection of nineteenth-century prints and the Albert Feldmann collection of fifteenth- to eighteenth-century master prints. Kenny met Feldmann, a former Boeing engineer fascinated by printmaking, before he passed away in May.
“It was Mr. Feldmann’s wish that these prints would inspire our community, and it is a privilege to be entrusted with their care and to help facilitate that vision,” Kenny says.
Though she divides her time between the Henry and the Libraries, Kenny does most of her conservation work at the recently completed Conservation Center in Suzzallo Library, which has a “wet lab” equipped with a large sink, a water filtration system, a humidification dome, a fume hood, and a microscope. It resembles a chemistry lab, and for good reason: chemistry is an important part of conservation work.
“Conservators do lots of testing of materials,” says Kenny. “For a work on paper, we test the paper, the ink, and all the things that will eventually come into contact with it during treatment and storage, such as a mat board. Testing, analyzing, and studying the object to develop a treatment plan probably takes twice as much time as the actual treatment.”
Kenny had no chemistry background when she became interested in conservation work. She had studied art and art history in college, and worked as a museum assistant after graduating. It was a paper conservator on that museum’s staff who introduced her to art conservation. Kenny was so intrigued that she signed up for the chemistry courses and internships required for graduate study in the field, and then completed a master’s in the conservation of fine art with a concentration in works on paper. “I had done a fair amount of printmaking and papermaking,” Kenny says, “so something about paper really spoke to me.”
Kenny explains that the materials and technology involved in Western papermaking have changed over time, affecting the way a paper ages and influencing her treatment decisions. She offers the example of two prints from the Henry’s collection, one from the fifteenth century, the other from the nineteenth century. Despite being hundreds of years older, the fifteenth-century print is in better condition because the paper was made with cotton rags, while the nineteenth-century print was made using less stable wood pulp that can degrade and discolor over time.
To reduce that discoloration, Kenny might choose to place artworks in a water bath. “When you bathe an object, discoloration and acidity can be mitigated,” she says. “It simultaneously re-establishes hydrogen bonds between the fibers, helping to extend the life of the paper.” Of course the composition of a print’s ink, and its sensitivity to moisture, must also be considered. “The relationship between paper and water is fundamental,” says Kenny. “A lot of what I do is thinking carefully about how to introduce moisture into objects, and then how to remove the moisture.”
Though moisture is critical to treating works on paper, it also causes many of the problems that conservators encounter. Collectors beware: storing artworks in damp spaces can cause damage and accelerate deterioration. Direct sunlight can also be damaging. But what makes Kenny shudder the most is seeing tape used to repair or attach artworks to their mats. It’s such a problem that whole art conservation workshops have been devoted to tape removal.
“As tape ages, the components of the adhesive break down and can stain the object, sometimes irreparably,” says Kenny. “They can make the paper brittle and cause all kinds of damage. Removing tape is a complicated process that requires a lot of patience and chemistry. Do not use tape on things you want to keep!”
Kenny is happy to share her expertise with the campus community, particularly with iSchool and Museology Program students. She plans to meet with high school students as part of the Henry Teen Collective program, and has been a resource for UW archaeology students, testing paper scraps they unearthed during an excavation. But mostly she relishes working with the Henry and Libraries collections, especially the problem-solving required.
“I rely on my knowledge of art history, chemistry, and making art, as well as conversations with curators, which help me understand the context within which objects were made,” Kenny says. “Each project is unique and the solution is different, but over time I’ve gotten better at diagnosing things quickly and building on my previous experience and understanding.”
Asked if there’s enough work to keep her busy for the next few years, Kenny laughs.
“The collections are vast,” she says. “I could keep working with them for a very long time.”