Viewpoint | Fall 2018

Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington | Fall 2018

HELPING HUNGRY HUSKIES A TASTE FOR ADVOCACY A GIFT FOR LABOR STUDIES

ON THEIR OWN First-Generation Students Find Their Way On Campus

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FALL 2018

FOUNDED 2004

Published by the UW Alumni Association

P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E U W A LU M N I A S S O C I AT I O N I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H T H E U W O F F I C E O F M I N O R I T Y A F FA I R S & D I V E R S I T Y

viewpoint

:: Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington

in partnership with

VIEWPOINT LETTER

the UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity

4311 11th Ave. NE, Suite 220 Box 354989 Seattle, WA 98195-4989 Phone: 206-543-0540 Fax: 206-685-0611 Email: vwpoint@uw.edu Viewpoint on the Web: UWalum.com/viewpoint

viewpoint STA F F P UB LIS HER

Paul Rucker M ANAG ING EDIT OR

Hannelore Sudermann ART DIRECTOR

Carol Nakagawa WRITERS

Julie Davidow, Kim Eckart, Lara Herrington, Jackson Holtz, Manisha Jha P HOT OG RAP HERS

Matt Hagen, Karen Orders, Emile Pitre, Corinne Thrash

viewpoint ADVISORY COMMITTEE Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 Executive Director UW Alumni Association

Rickey Hall Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity University Diversity Officer

Eleanor J. Lee, ’00, ’05 Director of Communications UW Graduate School

Erin Rowley Director of Communications Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity

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Join us on this journey

INCE 2004, Viewpoint magazine has worked in partnership with the diversity community at the UW and with the UW Alumni Association to tell the stories of the University and the many communities that surround and support it.

We have evolved into this 16-page glossy magazine with a press run of about 27,000, most of which is mailed out to alumni and friends, with a few thousand distributed on campus in Seattle, Tacoma and Bothell.

Recently, you may have noticed our efforts to enhance and expand what we do. For one thing, we are inviting guest editors to guide the intellectual content of our issues. It allows us to bring forward the ideas and expertise of faculty like Andrea Otanez (a former Seattle Times editor and the 2017 Western Washington Journalism Educator of the Year), star alumni like Brian Monroe, ’87, (former editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines) and community leaders like former Seattle City Councilwoman Dolores Sibonga, ’52, ’73. Their insights, ideas and experiences inform and deepen the stories we tell.

We are also dipping into a pool of talented student writers, like Manisha Jha, who in this issue brings us into the UW Food Pantry—a much needed resource for students facing food insecurity.

We’re asking top writers, photographers and designers to find and deliver more stories about teaching and research in areas like human rights, global health and social justice. They also help us deliver news of the work the University does to address the changing needs of our student body. And in each issue we strive to surface a gem of a story, like that of Taylor Hoang (UW Bothell), ’02, a first-generation graduate whose restaurants populate both sides of King County and who has become a leading advocate for small business and immigrant business owners throughout the region.

We’re trying to break our traditional patterns of putting this magazine together—with the hope that it might bring us into new topics and territory to better serve you, our community of readers.

But what stories aren’t we telling? Who aren’t we serving? These are questions I’m learning to ask as we look through an equity lens at the work we do at this magazine. That’s where you can come in. We’re seeking topics, ideas and people to help us tell a richer story of diversity at the University of Washington and show in more and different ways how the University and its alumni are addressing equity, diversity and social justice throughout the state.

Thank you for joining us on this journey.

Hannelore Sudermann Managing Editor

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In This Issue 3 Message From OMA&D 4 In the News 5 An Equity Lens Features 6 First Generation 10 Taylor Hoang Serves Eats and Advocacy 13 Helping Hungry Huskies 15 Donor Profile §Lorne § Murray

On the Cover The UW’s Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity helps first-generation students get to and through school. As undergraduate students like Walker Flynn, left, Alberta Harvey, center, and Sara Chen are discovering, surviving their early challenges can build resilience.

—Photo by Karen Orders

POINT OF VIEW

EMILE PITRE

OMA&D staff members know firsthand how hard it is to be the first in their families to attend college. To show their support for today’s students, they donned “I Am First-Generation” buttons to recognize the inaugural National First-Generation College Celebration last fall.

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Smoothing the way

s the first person in my immediate family to attend college, I can relate to the challenges that our first-generation students face at the University of Washington. There truly is value in knowing someone who has gone before you to help navigate or negotiate the college experience.

Not only is this important during the application process, it is critical for students once they are pursuing their degrees.

Coming into spaces on campus as a firstgeneration student (and in my case also as a person of color) can lead to impostor syndrome or feelings of inadequacy, even when in reality most students feel this at some point.

Depending on their background, immigrant or otherwise, many first-generation students who are pursuing higher education are also opening new doors of opportunity for their family and maybe their whole community. It can be a heavy burden for them

to bear when success or failure could mean success or failure for an entire family or community.

For these reasons, it is important that our students are surrounded by people who can affirm their experience. The Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) has a long history of supporting students from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds. From college-access programs like Upward Bound and Educational Talent Search, to others that work with current students like TRIO Student Support Services, OMA&D exists to provide these affirmations, as do many other programs across

the three UW campuses.

When prospective and current students have mentors and supporters to help fill these gaps—many of whom have similar experiences—it makes all the difference.

It is also important for people to tell their stories. Knowing just how many other classmates, faculty and staff members are first generation can serve as inspiration for what is possible.

For me, participating in Educational Talent Search while in high school was instrumental. My ETS counselor introduced me to a scholarship I would have never known about and helped me through the college application process. The result? Education has been a passport not only for me, but also my family. It’s changed our lives.

Rickey Hall, Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity University Diversity Officer

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CORINNE T HRA SH /U. OF WA SH IN G TON

Members of the University of Washington Micronesian Islands Club perform at a recent celebration for the launch of the new Oceania and Pacific Islander Studies

Aloha nui loa to a new minor WASHINGTON HAS THE THIRD-LARGEST population of Pacific Islanders in the nation. Now, after years of lobbying by faculty and students, a new minor in Oceania and Pacific Islander Studies began last spring. The 25-credit, interdisciplinary program is housed in the Department of American Indian Studies and includes classes from the Departments of American Ethnic Studies, Anthropology and English, and the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs.

The goal is to offer students a “transformative academic experience” in a curriculum that opens new lines of inquiry into the histories and cultures of a vast yet community-oriented region.

The minor, one of nine new UW minors over the past three years, is believed to be the only such program outside the University of Hawaii. Here at the UW, the name includes “Oceania”—the geographic region that includes Guam, the Marshall Islands and Polynesia, with a nod to the link between the vast ocean and the islands.

– Kim Eckart

Students helping students With a new fund, the BSU supports and inspires AFTER FIVE YEARS of fundraising, one of the most influential of the UW’s student clubs and organizations, the Black Student Union, has established an endowment to provide financial support for members who are committed to social justice or are working in underrepresented communities. The money was raised through gifts at the annual BSU Legacy Soirée.

The UW Black Student Union Legacy Endowed Fund will help students affiliated with BSU cover tuition, books, fees and other expenses. The goal is that the resource will support and inspire future generations of activists and leaders.

“Activism, regardless of identity or social status, is at the core of BSU,” says BSU’s recent president, Naomi Rodriguez, who graduated in June with a degree in law, societies and justice. The fund will help students continue their activism by removing some stress around money. “It will not only give them the chance to express their activism and their knowledge about a progressive world,” Rodriguez says, “but it will also inspire them to achieve their goals no matter what barriers are against them.”

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At the helm of the Kelly ECC AFTER WORKING in different roles in the OMA&D for 18 years, Magdalena Fonseca, ’98, ’11, is now the director of the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center. She has been tireless in her efforts to help all students, and has worked specifically to ensure undocumented students are heard on campus. She developed a program for faculty and staff to learn to be allies and become resources for undocumented and immigrant students.

Now her mission is focused on building on the Kelly ECC's long history of welcoming students who have been marginalized, and ensuring they have a home on campus where they are acknowledged and celebrated.

STEVE Z Y LIUS / UCI

in the news

Leading the law school THE NEW DEAN of the UW School of Law, Mario L. Barnes, started work this summer. A scholar on the legal and social implications of race and gender, he focuses on employment, education and criminal and military law. In 2015, The National Jurist Magazine named him as one of 20 national leaders in furthering diversity efforts in legal education.

Barnes earned both his bachelor’s degree in psychology and his juris doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his master of laws at the University of Wisconsin. Before joining the University of California at Irvine in 2009, he was a faculty member at the University of Miami School of Law, where he was twice selected as the Black Law Students Association’s Outstanding Law Professor. He also served as a William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Prior to his academic career, Barnes spent 12 years on active duty in the Navy and 11 years in reserve service.

He retired from the Navy in 2013.

“As a person whose life has been transformed by the opportunities afforded by public research universities, I am excited and honored to be joining the UW community. I was immediately attracted to the law school’s access mission, impeccable academic programs and deep commitments to public service, innovation and inclusive excellence,” Barnes says. “I look forward to working with campus leadership and law school faculty, staff, students and alumni to chart a way forward that ensures the institution will continue to produce practiceready graduates who will have a local, national and global impact.”

– Jackson Holtz

In the name of Frank Jenkins Honoring a union leader by funding labor studies Sharpened focus with an equity lens

MOH A I, S EAT T LE POS T -INT ELLIG ENCER COLLECT ION

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Waterfront workers gather at Smith Cove during the 1934 longshoremen’s strike. Frank Jenkins Junior (1903-1974) first became a union officer during the labor dispute. He was widely respected for his advocacy, which combined union leadership with civil rights activism.

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RANK JENKINS JR. was the grandson of a runaway slave, the firstborn son of a Buffalo Soldier, a native Filipino and one of Seattle’s first African-American labor leaders. He worked for nearly half a century as a longshoreman and member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Now, a $250,000 fellowship at the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies has been established in his name to preserve Jenkins' lifelong commitment to social and economic justice.

“Frank started on the waterfront at a time when workers were considered unskilled labor and easily replaced,” says Robert Duggan, ’54, a friend and former longshoreman. “At his retirement in the ’70s, he had led the establishment of practices and procedures resulting in longshore workers being highly skilled and highly paid. He had the foresight to see how cranes and containers would change the industry and the nature of the work.”

Jenkins was born in 1902 in San Francisco, and his family moved to Seattle in 1909. In 1918, Jenkins quit Queen Anne High School to start working on the bustling waterfront. It was there that he developed a reputation as

a skilled longshoreman and union negotiator. He also helped break color barriers among union leadership.

Frank was charismatic and had natural leadership abilities, Duggan says. “Fellow workers recognized this by electing him as their spokesman for 35-plus years.

The people on the other side of the table always wanted to know what Frank thought,” he says.

The fellowship honors Jenkins’ legacy by providing financial awards to UW students who are focusing on labor and civil rights. “Jenkins put his heart and soul into a union that dramatically changed social norms by placing men of all different ethnicities and races side by side in the workforce,” says Michael McCann, director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and professor of political science at the UW. “An endowed fellowship in his name will recognize emerging leaders following in Frank’s footsteps.”

Most of the money for the fellowship was contributed by ILWU Local 19. Many of the local’s members were born after 1974, when Jenkins died, notes Duggan. “That impresses me and shows the power of what Frank did for his fellow workers.” 

ONTINUING THE EFFORTS around the University-wide endeavor to promote race and equity, the UW Alumni Association convened a panel of experts and advocates from on and off campus to share their stories with several hundred UW communications and outreach workers last spring. They talked about seeing their work through an equity lens—whether they’re writing a press release, choosing a photo for a web page or holding a reunion or fundraiser.

Leilani Lewis, assistant director of diversity communications and outreach, talked about getting phone calls from people across campus who are grappling with the word choices and story ideas. “This happens every day,” she says. “I review images with my colleagues and we talk about language…. We ask ourselves are we tokenizing people. Are we stereotyping them?”

It’s complex work, but it’s necessary, she says. “The culture of our organization resonates out into the greater community like a pebble in a pond.”

Often in the LGBTQ community, the group most represented is white and male, says Jaimée Marsh, assistant director of the Q Center.

“As a staff we’re constantly coming together and checking our identities and how they work in this space,” she says. Even in meetings and special events “we’re asking who’s not here and why.”

In 2015, President Ana Mari Cauce launched the Race and Equity Initiative, challenging all of campus to take responsibility for addressing bias and improving university culture. Now in its third year, the Initiative has officially and unofficially sparked efforts throughout the University to further an inclusive and equitable environment. 

– Jackson Holtz the story of diversity at the UW

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FIRSTfindGENS their way

BY J U LI E D AV I D OW

RESILIENCE, PERSISTENCE & BELONGING

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PHO TO S BY K AREN O RDERS

A UW nursing camp for high-schoolers gave Srinya Sukrachan the sense she could survive college. She not only survived, she thrived. Today, when she’s not working with high-risk pregnancy patients at a Seattle hospital, the first-generation alumna is back on campus helping future nurses.

help students survive the complexities of college

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COVER STORY

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RINYA SUKRACHAN always pictured herself in the background. The recent University of Washington School of Nursing graduate never wanted to be a doctor, for example. Diagnosing does not appeal to her.

“I like being behind the scenes,” she says. “I don’t need to … have the shining star.”

Sukrachan, 26, recently accepted a job at Swedish Medical Center in the antepartum ward working with women who have high-risk pregnancies. While at the UW, she founded a club for future nurses, received numerous scholarships and served as volunteer coordinator at a camp for high school kids interested in nursing, a camp that she once attended.

But it wasn’t simple.

Sukrachan is the first in her family to graduate from college and, like many first-generation students, she wasn’t sure what college might demand, she sometimes felt like an imposter and hesitated to ask for help—sometimes she didn’t even know what kind of help to seek. But her mentors at the nursing school made sure she did not give up. “I wasn’t always the one to reach out to them,” she says. “I didn’t know if they cared about me in that way.”

At the UW’s Seattle campus, about 30 percent of this year’s incoming freshmen are first-generation, defined by the U.S. Department of Education as students whose parents do not have a four-year degree. At UW Bothell and UW Tacoma, first-gen students make up more than half of the population.

Nationally, first-gen students tend to come from lower-income households. They leave college without completing a degree at higher rates than students whose parents finished college.

“I’m pretty happy. I’ve lasted two years so far,” says Alberta Harvey, a member of the Yakama Nation who has her sights set on a business degree.

One of the keys to surviving her freshman year was finding and bonding with other students who were having the same experiences, she says.

After tackling classes in the summer quarter, she took a break before returning to school in September. But she was raring to start her junior year. “It feels good to be back on campus,” she says. “I sort of feel like I’m home.”

For Sara Chen, the complications of being first gen started even before she got college. She had to figure out on her own how to navigate the testing and application processes. Then she had to explain to her parents, Chinese immigrants, why she had to pay fees just to apply. And then, once in school, she found her long daily commute to class from South Seattle exhausting. Fortunately, she now lives closer.

The first ones: Walker Flynn, left, Alberta Harvey, center, and Sara Chen navigate the culture and bureaucracies of higher education. With the help of friends, mentors and teachers, they traverse different worlds of home and school. Today one-third of incoming undergraduates are first generation.

Walker Flynn, a junior from Tacoma, went through a time when he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in school. He credits Kendrick Wilson, an academic counselor on the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity's Educational Opportunity Program team, with helping him find the motivation to keep working toward his American Ethnic Studies degree.

Universities are challenged to get first-gen students through some of the statistical disadvantages they face while also building on their unique strengths, says Ibette Valle, ’16, a

doctoral student in social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She studies how social, cultural and familial factors affect the college transition of first-generation students.

It is important to recognize that many firstgen students who come to college do not separate from their families and become independent, she says. Rather, they are an extension of families who rely on them to help pay bills, provide language translation and care for younger siblings. Ü the story of diversity at the UW

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COU RT ES Y IBET T E VA LLE

Ibette Valle, ’16, now a Ph.D student at University of California, Santa Cruz, draws upon her own experience to inform her studies on how social environments, culture and family affect the college transition for first-generation students.

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FIRST GEN When she arrived at the UW in 2012, Valle was the first in her family to graduate from high school. Her parents, migrant farmworkers from the state of Guerrero in Mexico, had finished their educations in elementary school.

When Valle was 16, her older brother was deported. Her parents went back to Mexico to help their son get settled while Valle stayed behind in Vancouver for her last year of high school. Alone there, she was responsible for paying bills and taking care of the family’s apartment.

Instead of seeing those commitments as burdens to overcome, Valle says, colleges should take steps to encourage the kind of family interconnectedness first-gen students often bring with them to campus. For example, Valle wanted to invite her parents for UW Parent and Family weekends, but “none of the programming would’ve been relevant to them because it was all in English.”

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For the most part, Valle considers the UW’s services for students like her better than services on other campuses. The College Assistance Migrant Program in OMA&D helped her find a community, she says. She also worked at First Year Programs, where the staff was eager to hear her ideas for improving outreach to first-year students. “They wanted my feedback and they wanted to implement it right away,” Valle says.

The UW is pursuing new ways to support firstgeneration students, says Michaelann Jundt, associate dean of undergraduate academic affairs.

Steps like offering families financial assistance to travel to campus for orientation could go a long way toward helping first-gens feel like they belong. OMA&D also provides services like tutoring and one-on-one advising for about 3,500 first-gen students of all backgrounds. The office also connects first-gen students with peers and mentors who have similar interests.

Last November, the UW participated in the national First Generation College Celebration. Embracing the notion, OMA&D handed out some 2,000 buttons campus-wide declaring, “I am firstgeneration.” The celebration invited faculty and staff to identify themselves as first-generation to students and offered them a chance to find others on campus—including staff and professors—who were also the first in their families to go to college.

“It sends a message to those first-gen students to look where these people ended up—that you, too, can do it,” says Rickey Hall, vice president for minority affairs and diversity and university diversity officer. Hall is also first-gen.

Danica Miller says she felt isolated as a firstgen undergraduate at Western Washington University and later as a graduate student at Fordham University in New York. Today, Miller, a member of the Puyallup Tribe, teaches Ameri-

COU RT ES Y IBET T E VA LLE

First-gens like Marcus Johnson, ’13, UW Bothell, bring a variety of identities and expectations to graduate school. Now, while navigating toward his Ph.D. in communication, he’s part of a community of leaders lighting the way for future first gens.

can Indian Studies at UW Tacoma. “If there were things that I didn’t know—and I see this all of the time with my students—I assumed it was me,” Miller says.

To address that alienation and apprehension first-gen students sometimes experience about their place at the University, Miller makes a point at the end of each semester to let students know she is available to review law school applications or strategize about letters of recommendation.

“For me that’s part of the sort of privilege of being a first-generation prof,” Miller says. “They just need somebody to validate that they’re amazing.”

Like Miller, Marcus Johnson is a first-gen who brings a variety of identities and experiences to college. Now a 39-year-old Ph.D. student in communication, Johnson thinks of himself a bridge between his family and higher education—not just as a first-generation college student, but also as a black man who grew up in Seattle’s

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FOR ME THAT ’S PART OF THE...PRIVILEGE OF BEING A FIRST-GENERATION PROF. THEY JUST NEED SOMEBODY TO VALIDATE THAT THEY ’RE AMAZING. — Danica Miller

Yesler Terrace public housing project.

He had to push past the limited expectations for those who do not fit the stereotype of college-bound students. At Cleveland High School, Johnson was assigned to special-education classes for unspecified behavioral issues. As a result, he says, when he decided to go to college, he had to teach himself algebra and calculus. He also learned on his own how to fill out a college application, all the while working and caring for his daughter and his nephews.

First-generation graduate students have an even steeper hill to climb, coping with impostor syndrome, greater financial challenges, and the

complex norms and culture of graduate school.

Recognizing these things, the Graduate School has started a program to create visibility for first-generation graduate students, faculty and campus leaders. The program helps students meet other first-gens through social events and workshops, reducing the stigma of being firstgen by highlighting students’ strengths and diverse experiences.

“It’s not just about being first-gen. It’s about being a father, being a black male,” says Johnson.

“There are multiple layers to my identity that I have to deal with every day when I step foot here.” 

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GOOD EATS with a side of advocacy UW BOTHELL ALUMNA TAYLOR HOANG

speaks up for small and immigrant-owned business • B Y J U L I E D AV I D O W

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P H OTOS BY KARE N ORD E RS

T’S 10:30 a.m. on a summer Wednesday at Taylor Hoang’s new side-by-side restaurants in Redmond. With the lunch rush looming, Hoang walks with purpose, her eyes focused on catching mistakes before they happen.

As usual, her morning is packed, her attention divided between a server in training, a takeout order to fill and a chef who needs a hand in the kitchen. She sits down for our interview, a mug of jasmine tea in front of her.

Maxwella Cafe & Bar and District 1 Saigon anchor the ground floor of a new apartment complex, with a banner out front bearing the slogan “Live Modern. Live Up.” Hoang chose this spot on this street in Redmond for its potential. Construction sites surround the apartments. The Microsoft campus is less than five minutes up the road. A new light rail station set to open across the street in 2023 will connect Redmond with Bellevue and downtown Seattle. A new hotel next door brings in visitors connected to Microsoft and other eastside tech companies.

At Maxwella, a modern take on a French cafe with high ceilings and exposed ductwork, customers eat breakfast and peer into laptops. Construction workers in orange vests trickle in to for coffee and pastries to go. The restaurant is named for Hoang's children: Maxwell, 6, and Ella, 9.

Hoang uses terms like “market share” and “growth potential” to describe her new restaurants. She chafes at what she says is a stereotype that lumps all so-called ethnic food together as “cheap eats.” Fresh ingredients and traditionally prepared food, for example, take time and money. Pho broth requires eight to

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10 hours of simmering beef or chicken bones to break down the collagen and extract the rich flavor prized in the traditional Vietnamese soup. That’s an investment she believes customers appreciate and are willing to pay for. “When you have good food people will seek you out,” she says.

Hoang, UW Bothell’s Distinguished Alumna of the Year for 2018, is spending four or five mornings a week in Redmond, guiding her newest eateries through these treacherous first months and making sure they stay true to her vision. But in recent years, she has also put herself at the center of some of the area’s most heated political debates. Underlying it all, is city of Seattle’s efforts to address the city’s affordability crisis and how those efforts might help or harm small businesses.

Since the campaign to raise Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, Hoang has been outspoken about what she considers the city’s increasing hostility toward small businesses. “I’ve gotten … regulation fatigue,” says Hoang, who graduated with a business degree from UW Bothell in 2002.

In 2015, she sold one of her four Pho Cyclo Cafe restaurants in Seattle and closed another last year. The rising cost of real estate, in addition to new laws, make doing business in Seattle too expensive, she says. In particular, she cites the recent ban on plastic straws, the new soda tax, the $15 minimum wage and a proposed employee head tax on businesses with annual revenues over $20 million.

The restaurateur's road to small-business advocacy was a long one. Hoang’s father, a soldier in the South Vietnamese Ü

Taylor Hoang has a group of restaurants and a catering company.

She’s a longtime advocate for small, minorityand Taylor Hoang has five immigrant-owned restaurants and abusicatering nesses and She’s advises the company. a longtime City of Seattle. advocate for small, minority- and immigrant-owned businesses and advises the City of Seattle. And she’s a first-generation college graduate.

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Ü

HOANG Army, escaped to the United States in 1975.

Hoang and her mother, Lien Dang, stayed behind, and Hoang lived with her grandparents while her mother was forced to live in a Communist re-education camp for several years. In 1982, when Hoang was 7, she and her mother joined Hoang’s father. The family settled in Everett, but Hoang grew up at her mother’s restaurant, Huong Binh, in Seattle’s Little Saigon. Her time after school was spent snapping peas, peeling garlic and waiting tables.

Hoang’s mother, now 65, still works seven days a week at her own restaurant. She also makes the pickled vegetables featured on District 1’s menu. “My mother can’t sit still,” Hoang says. “She always, constantly has to be doing something.” The pickling recipe for mustard greens comes from Hoang’s grandmother.

A few years ago, with her own restaurants thriving, Hoang decided it was her turn to speak for small-business owners in Seattle.

Unlike her mother’s generation of immigrant business owners, Hoang says she has the language skills, education and time to get involved in politics and policymaking. “For my generation and other entrepreneurs I work with in the community, we know that our voices and our actions can count for something.”

Hoang co-founded the nonprofit Ethnic Business Coalition in 2014, after the minimumwage law passed in Seattle. Her mission was to promote small businesses owned by immigrants and people of color and help them navigate local laws. Last year, Mayor Jenny Durkan appointed her to the city’s new Small Business Advisory Council.

“She looked at her mother and she realized all of these issues that her mother had gone through being an immigrant and not knowing the language and the system well,” says Assunta Ng, a member of the Ethnic Business Coalition’s board of directors and publisher of the Northwest Asian Weekly and the Seattle Chinese Post. “You have to run the business and compete for labor and buy good ingredients,” Ng says. “That’s not easy.”

Hoang believes the $15 minimum wage—the highest in the country—is particularly challenging for immigrant-owned small businesses, which are often already operating on thin profit margins. She echoes a refrain among opponents of a higher minimum wage who say employers—especially smaller businesses —

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FOR MY GENERATION AND OTHER ENTREPRENEURS I WORK WITH IN THE COMMUNITY, WE KNOW THAT OUR VOICES AND OUR ACTIONS CAN COUNT FOR SOMETHING. — Taylor Hoang

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will be forced to cut jobs, ultimately hurting workers.

She acknowledges that immigrants also make up a large percentage of low-wage workers in the city’s restaurants, warehouses and retail shops and would benefit the most from a higher minimum wage. “That...was a very difficult conversation,” Hoang says. “We kind of pointed out to policymakers that, yes, we want to support this, but at the same time we also can’t forget” that immigrants are business owners, too.

A higher minimum wage also disrupts the informal system of support immigrant business owners have traditionally provided for newcomers, Hoang says. “Immigrants are the very ones who are starting businesses and giving opportunities to other immigrants to get jobs and get into the workforce,” Hoang says, adding that she’s watched her mother struggle to keep up with rising rents and labor costs at her restaurant.

In March, Hoang was at the forefront of the city’s small-business owners who joined Ama-

zon, other large companies and neighborhood groups to oppose the controversial employee head tax. The tax, applied to business with revenues above $20 million, intended to raise $47 million annually from 2019 to 2023 to pay for affordable housing and services for the city’s growing homeless population. Hoang led a group of more than 300 small business owners who signed a letter to the city council in opposition to the proposal passed by the council in May and revoked less than a month later.

“We both believe in socially progressive policy,” says Joe Fugere, owner of Tutta Bella and a co-chair with Hoang of the Small Business Advisory Council, “as long as it doesn’t leave small business owners out of the picture.”

With her tea mug still full, Hoang moves toward the kitchen to answer a question from the chef. At the prep station, she washes her hands, puts on gloves and starts assembling spring rolls. She dunks the round wrappers in hot water and fills them with shrimp, rice noodles, bean sprouts, lettuce and cilantro.

Hoang wanted to offer a different kind of Vietnamese cuisine, one more reflective of the variety of flavors and influences available in the dynamic neighborhood in Ho Chi Minh City from which her restaurant, District 1, takes its name.

She lived in the neighborhood from 2004 to 2009 while founding and running a company to help coffee farmers in Vietnam switch to growing a more profitable type of bean.

A neighborhood where colonial buildings, side-street food stalls, temples and pagodas stand alongside luxury hotels and skyscrapers, the original District 1 is at the heart of Ho Chi Minh City and the center of Vietnam’s turn toward the global economy. “Culture, commerce and capitalism are at the forefront of the district’s drive for growth,” according to the restaurant’s website.

Hoang describes the neighborhood as an international food mecca. “You can have street food, amazing tapas, Indian food, Thai. It’s like New York City,” she says. Some of this variety is what Hoang is aiming for with dishes such as braised lamb chops served with pickled pearl onions or mustard greens and grilled pork rolls. “That gives me leeway to kind of play with the food,” Hoang says.

With tables filling up and the lunch rush beginning, she looks at her watch, smiles and suggests we wrap up the interview. She has work to do. 

Many students face food insecurity during their time in college.

Fortunately, a new on-campus food pantry has opened its doors to Huskies in need.

HELPING HUNGRY HUSKIES A new campus food pantry works to reduce hunger and end the stigma of food insecurity

BY MANI S H A J H A

A

S AN UNDERGRADUATE, Melodie Reece often found herself short on food.

When she wasn’t working to complete her global studies degree, she was clocking 19 ½ hours every week as a student employee. She didn’t qualify for public aid because the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program requires its recipients to work more than 20 hours a week. Instead, she navigated the University District Food Bank on Roosevelt.

“Food banks can be pretty intimidating sometimes,” she says.

“There are a lot of intergenerational people. You don’t know what kind of information they’re going to ask of you. It can be pretty invasive.”

Sometimes she had to wait at night for the food bank to open.

“I remember having to arrange my schedule around the food bank’s distribution hours,” Reece says.

Since graduating in 2013, she has returned to the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance for a master’s in public administration. This time at the UW, she’s here to do more than complete her degree. Because she knows her experience as a student sometimes too broke to buy food is far from unique, she works at an on-campus food pantry designed exclusively for students.

Nationwide, 52 percent of college students who don’t reside on campus or with family live in poverty, according to a 2016 study by the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness. And this year, a survey published by Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab found that 36 percent of

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PH OTO BY MATT HAG EN

college students say they are food insecure.

With details like this in mind, the Division of Student Life launched UW Campus Food Pantry two years ago. Also, a task force was started to investigate how many students at UW were facing food insecurity. While the findings are yet to come, the need is clear. Just in its first quarter, the pantry served more than 260 people and distributed more than 2,000 pounds of food. And the numbers have risen every quarter since then. To date, the pantry has hosted over 1,500 visits to its locations at the Husky Union Building (HUB) and the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center (ECC).

The pantry relies on donations from food drives by student clubs and academic departments. These are supplemented by a regional food bank distributor that sells bulk food to the pantry at discounted rates. Additionally, “every once in a while the (UW) farm will have extra produce that they have harvested and they will graciously donate to the pantry,” Reece says. The farm grows vegetables like radish, spinach, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes and carrots. These donations are always the first to go, but students can also take home a box of produce for $5 each week, which, without pantry support, would normally cost $30 per week.

This summer, the basement of the Kelly ECC housed shelves full of non-perishable foods. Red and green cans of Campbell’s soup, beans, condensed milk and vegetables were stacked from top to bottom. A clear plastic box full of tampons, pads, baby Ü the story of diversity at the UW

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HUNGRY HUSKIES

food, shampoo and conditioner sat on the bottom right shelf. Bags of ramen and rice, stacks of cooking products, red and yellow bottles of condiments, and brightly colored bags of Doritos waited to be taken home by anyone with a Husky card.

“Students find themselves hungry or food insecure for a variety of reasons,” Reece says. Many are struggling to pay their rent, buy their books and still have enough leftover to fully feed themselves before their next round of loans and scholarships comes through. International students and graduate students also make up a large portion of pantry users, according to Reece.

“There was a grad student who visited the pantry a couple times,” Reece recalls. The first time, he confided in Reece that he was a really big runner before he started grad school, but didn’t have the money for the calories he needed to keep up with running.

“That is so heartbreaking,” Reece says. “Exercise is self-care. It helps you de-stress. If you can’t do that as a grad student, that’s insane.”

Students can find their way to the pantry

through a variety of avenues. Any time a student goes somewhere on campus looking for help or has a student conduct issue or an appointment with Health and Wellness, they are offered resources, including the food pantry.

Faculty and staff are not always as willing to use a resource they see as “for students,” but they are welcome, too.

The pantry can also be reached through Facebook and by email or phone. Reece sets up an appointment when someone reaches out or is referred. She meets them at the front desk of the HUB or the Kelly ECC and walks them to where the food is stored and talks them through the process and guidelines, of which there are few.

“It’s all on the honor system,” Reece says. The visitor will take what they need, and “they can always chat us up when they need more.”

While many students have visited through appointments, the pantry has hosted pop-up events at both the HUB and the Kelly ECC where, over a three-hour rush, the doors open wide. Visitors grab food before completing a satisfaction survey and swiping their Husky card so their

pantry needs can be tracked. One exit survey in April showed that more than half of respondents were food insecure enough to skip or eat an unsatisfying meal at least once a week.

This fall, the pantry is moving to a permanent location on the north side of Poplar Hall, not far from the Kelly ECC and close to the Ave and several bus lines. In the new site, which was donated by Housing and Food Services, the pantry can offer regular hours during the week, says Sean Ferris, the Office of Student Life’s lead for the food pantry. “The new site will also allow for community space and workspace where students involved in food insecurity and in food justice will be able to meet,” he says.

“As hosts to the food pantry, the HUB and the Kelly ECC have been great partners up to now,” Ferris says. “But the new space, which should open in November, will definitely provide opportunities to expand the pantry and serve more students.”

To donate, request a bin to host a food drive or drop off food at the Kelly ECC front desk. Request a bin through uwpantry@uw.edu. 

DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT. SUPPORT TWO ICONIC ORGANIZATIONS Since 1968, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) has broadened college access and supported success for underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students across Washington state.

Founded in 1889, the UW Alumni Association (UWAA) has created one of the most loyal and connected alumni communities in the nation.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of OMA&D, the UWAA is proud to offer a limited-time membership offer. Support excellence, diversity and inclusion at the UW, and join the 56,000-strong UWAA community, with one donation!

With your $100 gift, you will: • Make a $50 tax-deductible donation to OMA&D’s Educational Opportunity Program Endowed Fund • Enjoy two years of UWAA annual membership benefits (normally $50 per year) • Receive a commemorative W honoring the 50th anniversary of OMA&D

Learn more at UWalum.com/omad50 14

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m . c o m / v i e w p o i n t

From struggling student to top doc, one alum credits his UW mentors for his success B Y L A R A H E R R I N G TO N

D

uring his first two years of high school, Lorne Murray wasn’t sure he would even get to college. But thanks to his hard work, and his mom, his grades were good enough to land him at the UW. Still, once on campus, the young man from Bremerton faced significant financial and academic challenges and would have had to struggle a lot more if it weren’t for the help of a few people in the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D).

Murray credits Bill Baker, one of the founding staff members of the OMA&D, with helping him finance his education. Baker “made it so extraordinarily easy to get scholarship money...for my entire college career,” Murray says. He helped Murray, who was studying microbiology, access the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and the President’s Achievement Award. As a junior Murray obtained a coveted United Negro College Fund (UNCF)-Merck Undergraduate Science Research Scholarship, which earned him two paid internships and more than $20,000 to cover his educational costs.

But money was just one issue. The competitive atmosphere and the feeling of anonymity

If you want to learn more about the instructional center or make a gift through your estate, please tear and mail back this insert, or contact Daya Terry at wmnterry@ uw.edu or 206-616-2492.

You can also make a gift online at: uw.edu/omad/advancement

J A RED OPPERMA N

Heart of the matter

J A ROD OPPERMA N

DONOR PROFILE | LORNE MURRAY, ’96

nior adviser to the vice president of OMA&D, helped him out. Rosebaugh served as Murray’s first real mentor, and Pitre tutored Murray in chemistry. “Working with them was very eye-opening and inspiring,” Murray says. “I didn’t want to let them down, because they were spending the time to help me.”

Bolstered by their support, Murray learned to compete with confidence.

He remembers receiving an exam grade from an “infamously intense” biochemistry professor. “The average grade was failing, and I scored 150 out of 150,” he says. “The first thing I wanted to do was tell Pitre, because it was definitely the most difficult class I took.” After graduating, Murray took his hard-earned confidence and sharpened work ethic to Harvard Medical School and then to Arizona’s Integrated Medical Services, where he is now lead cardiologist.

UW also awakened in Murray a desire to give back. In 2014, to honor the staff members who helped him When he thinks of the help he had as a student, Dr. Lorne Mursucceed, Murray established the ray’s heart fills with gratitude. He recognizes those who helped Lorne Murray Scholarship in Honor him most by providing a scholarship in their names. of Emile Pitre, William Baker & Karlotta Rosebaugh. This endowed scholarship benon a big campus weighed heavily on Murray as efits undergraduate students from disadvantaged well. Fortunately the Instructional Center and backgrounds in OMA&D's EOP. Students who are staff members Karlotta Rosebaugh, now-retired selected have overcome significant factors to atdirector of Health Sciences Center Minority Stutend the UW.  dents Program, and Emile Pitre, now-retired se-

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the story of diversity at the UW

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Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington

4333 Brooklyn Ave NE Campus Box 359508 Seattle, WA 98195

Dr. Samuel E. Kelly Award

MAP

BRIDGING THE GAP BREAKFAST Saturday, Oct. 20, 8:45 a.m.

HUB Ballroom Join a group of dedicated UW alumni and friends on Homecoming Saturday for the Multicultural Alumni Partnership‘s annual breakfast benefiting the MAP Endowed Scholarship Fund.

Meet scholarship recipients and celebrate the achievements of distinguished alumni.

Register at UWalum.com/map

CYNTHIA DEL ROSARIO, ’94, ’96, is the diversity programs adviser at the iSchool, where she has worked since 2007. She has focused on access, inclusion and an equitable and excellent educational and/or work-life experience. She also leads the iSchool’s curriculum transformation project and connects faculty with community members who have expertise in diversity practices.

Distinguished Alumni Award RAUL ANAYA, ’79, is the assistant director of the Educational Opportunity Program. He works with economically disadvantaged, underrepresented minority and first-gen students to meet a range of needs from financial aid to exploring majors and setting career goals. Known as the “Financial Aid Guru,” Anaya tackles some of the most challenging cases the office encounters.

He is also active in advocacy work around undocumented student issues and community college relationships.

MANKA DHINGRA, ’99, is the Washington state senator from the 45th Legislative District (East King County). She earned her law degree at the UW and clerked for a state Supreme Court judge before becoming a deputy prosecuting attorney for King County.

Some of her legal work involved mental health and veterans courts. Outside of the courtroom, she is a community leader and anti-domestic violence advocate.

SCOTT PINKHAM, ’87, (Nez Perce) is the counseling services coordinator who leads the Minority Scholars Engineering Program in the College of Engineering. In his various roles and efforts at the university, he recruits, advises, mentors and volunteers. He also is the adviser to the American Indian Science & Engineering Society student chapter. He lectures in American Indian Studies. And he represents District 1 on the Board of Directors for Seattle Public Schools.

Community Service Award CHRISTOPHER H. BENNETT is co-publisher and editor at the Seattle Medium newspaper, which he founded in 1970. The weekly African American paper tells the stories of the community and delivers news of interest and relevance to his readers. Bennett also has a long history of community-building activities including providing scholarships for African American youth. He has also served on the Seattle Human Rights Commission and been involved in African American civil rights issues in other states. His publishing portfolio has grown to include the Tacoma True Citizen and the Portland Medium, as well as several radio stations.

THE NORTHWEST IMMIGRANT RIGHTS PROJECT was founded in the 1980s to address the needs of refugees fleeing Central America. Today, the NWIRP serves lowincome immigrants from around the world who have come to Washington state. The non-profit organization provides legal assistance to people seeking political asylum, women fleeing violence, and people seeking visas for their families, naturalization and citizenship. This year, the NWIRP has gone to court to oppose separating and deporting families and advocated for an end of local law enforcement’s overstepping immigration authority.