UWFA Blog

Welcome UWFA and UWRA members, guests and friends to the Scholarship Celebration Dinner

What: Dinner, followed by a Lecture by Mary Branom “Adventures in Azerbaijan: experiences of a later-in-life Peace Corps Volunteer”
When: Wednesday, November 6, 2024, 5:30 pm
Where:  Piatti Italian Restaurant  in University Village
Cost: $55 per person

We hope you will join us for our Annual Scholarship Celebration and Lecture. We will introduce and award scholarships of to 3 deserving UW undergraduates and hear their inspirational stories.

Our speaker will be UWFA member Mary Branom. As she was approaching retirement, she discovered that the Peace Corps was looking for older volunteers. She was selected to be an English Teacher Trainer in Azerbaijan and will tell us about her experience.

To join UWFA, please send an email to joinuwfa@gmail.com. Open to all UWFA and UWRA members.

This is a time of rapid, positive change in the field of Alzheimer’s disease. There has been enormous progress in developing biomarker tests that can detect Alzheimer’s disease reliably in living patients, at the earliest symptoms, and even before that. And there are finally new medicines being approved that slow down the processes underlying Alzheimer’s disease. These developments will be a focus of Dr. Grabowski’s talk today. Dr. Thomas Grabowski is a neurologist and Washington, where he currently leads the Alzheimer’s disease clinical and research programs.  Dr. Grabowski holds the Tim B. Engle Endowed Professorship for Brain Health Innovations.

He took his Neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital.   He went on to a research-oriented fellowship in behavioral neurology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of
Iowa.   He was recruited to University of Washington in 2009, as the Director of the UW Integrated Brain Imaging Center.  In 2012 he also became the Director of the new UW Medicine Memory and Brain Wellness Center, which established the leading Center of Excellence in Alzheimer’s disease in the state of Washington and the greater region including Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.  This clinic currently sees more than 1000 new patients and 4000 total visits annually, and involves doctors from Neurology, Psychiatry, and Geriatric Medicine.

A special feature of the Memory and Brain Wellness Center is the nationally unique Memory Hub, a memory and dementia-focused community center that includes not only the UW Memory and Brain Wellness programs, but also important community partners like the Alzheimer’s Association and important state-funded programs that reach doctors, and communities statewide.  The Memory Hub is a nationally unique program that has developed and flourished under Dr. Grabowski’s leadership.

And since 2016 Dr. Grabowski has also been the Director of the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, one of the longest established NIH ADRCs in the nation.

Decolonoscopy: Exploring My Role as a Tribal Ambassador Bridging Two Cultures” By Don Motanic, Board President for the Wisdom of the Elders, Inc.

Don is a 1978 UW graduate with a degree in Forestry Engineering.  He had a 42 year long career as a Forest Engineer and Forest Manager with the Bureau of Indian Affairs that included living and working with the Yakama Nation, and the Umatilla and Spokane Tribes.

He will talk about fostering successful collaborations between two cultures, each with contrasting economic and linguistic values.  He will also discuss the challenges and successes in bridging cultural differences facing his family and connections between tribes through the years.

You can read more about our speaker in the UWFA January 2024 newsletter. The newsletter can be found on our website, https://www.washington.edu/uwfa/uwfa-newsletters.

Margaret O’Mara: “The History of Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America” Wednesday, February 8th, 1pm

Please join us as Margaret O’Mara presents a Zoom lecture on the history of Silicon Valley and how it spilled over into the Pacific NW as described in her latest book The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. This is the true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America. Long before Margaret O’Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government–and always had been–and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley’s success actually was.

Now, after almost five years of pioneering research, O’Mara has produced the definitive history of Silicon Valley for our time, the story of mavericks and visionaries, but also of powerful institutions creating the framework for innovation, from the Pentagon to Stanford University.

Margaret O’Mara, who received her B.A. from Northwestern University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, is the Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at University of Washington and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She writes and teaches about the history of U.S. politics, the growth of the high-tech economy, and the connections between the two, and is the author of two previous books Cities of Knowledge and Pivotal Tuesdays.

UWFA Lecture: Judy Bentley “Walking Washington’s History”
Monday, April 11, 1pm, 2022

Judy Bentley “Walking Washington’s History” Part One

Judy Bentley “Walking Washington’s History” Part Two

Our speaker today is historian and hiker Judy Bentley.  She has teamed up with veteran guidebook author Craig Romano to describe hikes for adventurers of all abilities along trails on the coast, over mountains, through national forests, across plateaus, and on the banks of the Columbia River in the second edition of Hiking Washington’s History.

For thousands of years people have traveled across Washington’s spectacular terrain, establishing footpaths and roads to reach hunting grounds and coal mines high in the mountains, fishing sites and trade emporiums on the rivers, forests of old growth, and homesteads and towns on prairies. These traditional routes have been preserved in national parks, restored by cities and towns, salvaged from old railroad tracks, and opened to hikers by Indigenous communities.  Her talk today about her book will offer a look at some of our state’s most fascinating historical trails.

The new second edition of Hiking Washington’s History is available at independent bookstores such as University Bookstore, the Elliott Bay Book Company, Island Books, Brick and Mortar Books, and online at Amazon..

UWFA Lecture: Dagmar Shannon, “Antarctica”
Wednesday March 9, 1 pm, 2022

Dagmar Shannon, “Antarctica” Wednesday March 9, 1 pm

Ultimate Antarctica and Patagonia

“Come travel and discover Antarctica with me. I am Dagmar Shannon, former UWFA President and co- Program chair with Nancy Kenagy. Born in Germany, I came to Seattle as an exchange student and later married the son of my host family. Even though I have been in the US for 50 years you might still hear a slight accent.

My husband Bill and I are avid travelers and on March 9th I’d like to share with you what I learned during our trip to Antarctica about the geography, the history and nature as it displays itself on the inhospitable ice and frigid water. It is a continent of great wonder and beauty and a place of superlatives. I will talk about some of our experiences, impressions and show you the pictures I took and part of a video the cruise line took of our trip via drone.

Is the ice really blue? Yes it is! Are the icebergs really huge? Yes they are! Are penguins really cute? Yes they are!

I look forward to seeing you on Zoom and talking about one of my favorite places on earth.”

UWFA Lecture: “Thom Lee, Korean Five Elements” Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Thom Lee  “Korean Five Elements” Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Several years ago, Thom Lee took a trip to South Korea to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday.  This presentation will examine the trip in a thematic way using the traditional Five Element theory that pervades the country and culture.  The Elements are water, wood, fire, earth, and metal.  Please join us next Wednesday for this interesting lecture.

Thom Lee is a Washington native.  He was born in Everett, and spent most of his childhood and early teens in the state.  He has explored many disciplines including art, history, anthropology, philosophy, botany, culinary arts, and vocal music.  He holds a MFA from the Ohio State University, but has degrees and credentials from Binghamton University, University of Washington, and Ewha University in Seoul Korea.  He currently teaches ceramics, design and drawing at Everett Community College, but also lectures in Global Ethnobotany, Sustainable Nutrition, and Humanities classes. Classical Asian Five-Element Theory is a major interest of Thom’s, and his presentation will examine a recent trip to Korea through the lens of this philosophy.