UWFA Blog

The Scholarship Awards Dinner and Lecture was held on November 9th at the UW Club where a scholarship of $4,000.- was given to three enterprising undergraduate seniors of the University of Washington. Each student expressed heartfelt thanks for this help in meeting the high cost of education.

Mahdi Ramadan, a neurobiology major, was inspired by firsthand experience with cerebral palsy. He is intent on a career developing concrete applications to support brain functioning and is well on his way after an internship at the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

Madeline Dai received the Barbara Garlid Scholarship. She is studying psychology and plans to attend graduate school in order to become a licensed psychologist to help people better help themselves. She is interested in family cohesion and resilience in the face of hardship through mental health problems.

Christopher Perry was awarded the Melba Schmitz Scholarship for students in the social sciences. He is poised to receive a BA in psychology with a minor in bioethics and is planning to pursue a PhD in psychology. His areas of interest include substance abuse treatment and creating equitable conditions for minority students.

Tom Hammond‘s riveting talk ‘Glaciers of the North Cascades” capped the evening off. Tom is president of the North Cascades Conservation Council and is the field scientist for the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project. His slide show of the glaciers of Washington State, photographed over a 33 year period, needs little comment; it is a visual demonstration of the effects of recent warming trends.

As members of the Scholarship Committee, we have come away from the selection process with the staunch belief in the good of the UWFA Scholarship. We greatly appreciate its founders and donors and would like to honor their endeavor to help the next generation. By the same token, we are struck by the hard work and dedication of the applicants. Not only are they studying hard and doing well academically while working part-time, but they are also going beyond themselves to provide service to the community through projects as varied as Middle East peace camps and analyzing micro-aggression against women and minorities in the STEM classroom. These are deserving people that make us feel hopeful.

Joan Burton, Anni Fuller, Esther Neeser

Our historian took the time to put together some interesting facts about the relationship between University of Washington Club and the UW Faculty Auxiliary. 1916 was an important date for our organization.

100 YEARS UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON CLUB AND UW FACULTY AUXILIARY

      (through the years the names of the UWFA and the UW Club have taken on new names)

• The Faculty Women’s Club was formed in the spring of 1908 and consisted of both Women Faculty and Faculty Wives.
• In the next year, 1909, Seattle hosted its first World’s Fair in June through October… the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Definitely a magnificent occasion! The UW campus was covered with new buildings (many temporary) and marvelous exhibitions and activities. (Photos are available online).
• From the website of the current UW Club, we learn that, following the closing of the Exposition in October of 1909, 40 faculty men purchased the so-called Hoo-Hoo House that had been constructed for the Fair for an organization of lumbermen. (See photos at the UW Club).

This then became the home of Faculty Men’s Club…. just one year after the formation of the Faculty Women’s Club!

Briefly jumping forward….. just as the current Faculty Auxiliary celebrated its Centennial Anniversary in 2008, so did the current UW Club celebrate theirs in 2009!  And returning to the chronology….

• In the year 1916, please note 100 years ago, the two groups making up the Faculty Women’s Club became separate organizations: the Faculty Women’s Association and the Faculty Wives’ Club. (The latter was renamed University of Washington Faculty Auxiliary in 1976.)
• It was also in 1916 that both ladies’ groups were granted access to the men’s Hoo-Hoo House for their meetings, study groups and cultural events.
• Eleven years later, in 1927, when an addition was added to the Men’s Club building, the Faculty Wives provided a financial contribution toward the Club’s furnishings, as did the Clubs of the Faculty Women and Faculty Men. (This renovation included, however, a small door on one side of the building, leading through the narrow hall-like access to the lower level dining room, through which all women were obliged to enter and exit the building!  It took a while, but this situation did become rectified!
• In 1952 the Men’s Club (H-H H) was demolished and replaced with “what this marvelous building is now”! Once again, a considerable donation was provided by the Faculty Wives toward this lovely modern construction. The Club was given a new name: Faculty Center.
• Until completion of the new and much larger facility in 1960, the Faculty Wives had continued many of their activities in the Student Union Building (SUB, later the Husky Union Building).
• Also during the years 1957 through 1967, all three Faculty Clubs joined for the annual Christmas Dinners, first at the SUB and later at the new Faculty Center. Since the completion of the new Club building, the UWFA has continued to hold a great many of its events and activities…. lectures, movies, business meetings, scholarship awards events and receptions in this wonderful facility, which in 2004 was renamed once again, now as the UW Club.
• In 2016 the UW Faculty Auxiliary proudly takes note of, and honors the 100 years of the close association and interactions of our two very special University of Washington organizations.

Carol Hol         UW Faculty Auxiliary Historian          April 11, 2016

Carol Hol is now working on a comprehensive history of the UWFA and hopefully, we will  post excerpts of it as they come along.

Hello all,

What makes a Spring Luncheon wonderful? Well, if you were at the last UWFA Spring Luncheon at the Seattle Yacht Club in May, you would say without hesitation, that that Luncheon was wonderful. It had all the usual accruements, a beautiful location, delicious food, and a great speaker and still it was more than that.

The guest list topped more than 100 guests and when you get so many distinguished looking ladies and gentleman together in their finery it makes a strong, positive impression. Everyone was happy to see their fellow members and I believe we had a record number of men in the audience too. Did you know that currently men are our fasted growing demographic in the Auxiliary? Well, all I can say is WELCOME.

Everything went so smoothly under the direction of Spring Luncheon Chair Mary Alice Crosson, who, with so much grace and charm and diplomacy,  had volunteers at the ready for everything from script sale to seating charts and the name tag table. Thank you, Mary Alice, we know that making it look so easy is really very very hard. Also a special thanks to Carmen Robbin for sponsoring us yet again at the beautiful Seattle Yacht Club.

Mary Albrecht, as Chair of Courtesy and House, also did a tremendous job, always with a smile, and we got much information and feedback from the forms everyone filled out and then of course she provided that beautiful, yet elusive potted plant for the raffle.

After lunch was served I was allowed to say a few words and I want to stress here the hard work of the 2015/16 Board of Directors and that also of the Long Range Planning Committee. Our crowning achievements, the new website at http://www.washington.edu/uwfa/ and the opportunity to have online giving through the website http://www.washington.edu/uwfa/uwfa-scholarships/ were highlighted as well as was the fact that we now have our second ever male Board member, webmaster Peter Schiess, who, with all his efforts on behalf of the UWFA has been our Man of the Year!

I also welcomed and introduced our new UWFA President for the 2016/17 academic year, Nancy Kenagy, and I couldn’t be more pleased to have her bring her tremendous leadership ability and energy to the position. She then in turn introduced the new board, and we welcomed them with a round of applause.

The speaker, David B. Williams, took us on a ride to Reshape the Seattle Landscape in words and pictures that was as breathtaking as any roller coaster ride could be. The way the city leaders of their time dealt with such “minor” obstacles such as hills and inclines in the city can only be marveled at and their tenacity to make sure that downtown would be flat and conducive to business has born fruit, not immediately, but certainly in our time.

What more can I say about such a fine event except again thank you to all who attended, and who helped in any way shape or form.

Thank you

Dagmar Shannon, Past President J