University of Washington Magazine - September 2022 by University of Washington Alumni Association / Alumni Relations

waterfront

Our Poet Laureate Ada Limón has a way with words It Begins with a Dreamer Alula Asfaw helps high-need students Touch Down Kalen DeBoer pumps up Husky football Seattle’s

Turning the Tide Transforming

Photo by Rajah Bose

WASHINGTONOF

RITZVILLE State of Happiness

Early each summer, the University orga nizes a statewide field trip to introduce new faculty and administrators to Washington. In June, 34 newcomers boarded a charter bus for a five-day, 1,000mile tour that started at the Burke Museum, then wound its way to Mount St. Helens, wine country, a gravitational wave observatory in central Washington and the Gonzaga-UW health sciences building in Spokane. The bus also stopped in Ritzville to visit a fifth-generation wheat farm. Below, Josephine Walwema, an as sistant teaching professor in English, embraces the view from a John Deere combine.

When I asked him to reschedule, he asked how he could help.

WHITTIERTRUST.COM/UW — Adrian, West Hollywood $10 MILLION MARKETABLE SECURITIES AND/OR LIQUID ASSETS REQUIRED. Investment and Wealth Management Services are provided by Whittier Trust Company and The Whittier Trust Company of Nevada, Inc. (referred to herein individually and collectively as “Whittier Trust”), state-chartered trust companies wholly owned by Whittier Holdings, Inc. (“WHI”), a closely held holding company. This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended, and should not be construed, as investment, tax or legal advice. Past performance is no guaranteeoffutureresultsandnoinvestmentorfinancialplanningstrategycanguaranteeprofitorprotectionagainstlosses.Allnames,characters,andincidents,exceptforcertainincidentalreferences,arefictitious.Anyresemblancetorealpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.Learn More

I’ve never been the best at remembering dates. My wife jokes that I would forget my own birthday if she didn’t write it down for me. In fact, it wasn’t until I saw her reminder next to my morning co ee that I realized I had forgotten to pay our insurance. After calling our provider, I learned that our coverage had been cancelled and could not be reinstated. When I asked my wealth advisor, Jim, if we could reschedule our meeting given the circumstances, he responded with: “We’ll handle it”. Within a few days he had secured us new policies for our vehicles, home and investment properties. I found out later that he had even put down his company card to expedite the process. Jim isn’t in the insurance business. He just wanted to ensure we had coverage. For us that was monumental, but for Jim, he was just taking care of the little things.

— Adrian, West Hollywood $10 MILLION MARKETABLE SECURITIES AND/OR LIQUID ASSETS REQUIRED. Investment and Wealth Management Services are provided by Whittier Trust Company and The Whittier Trust Company of Nevada, Inc. (referred to herein individually and collectively as “Whittier Trust”), state-chartered trust companies wholly owned by Whittier Holdings, Inc. (“WHI”), a closely held holding company. This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended, and should not be construed, as investment, tax or legal advice. Past performance is no guaranteeoffutureresultsandnoinvestmentorfinancialplanningstrategycanguaranteeprofitorprotectionagainstlosses.Allnames,characters,andincidents,exceptforcertainincidentalreferences,arefictitious.Anyresemblancetorealpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.

When I asked him to reschedule, he asked how he could help.

Investment Management & Consulting | Trust Services | Family O ce Philanthropy & Family Continuity | Real Estate CONTACT PAUL CANTOR | 206.332.0836 | WHITTIERTRUST.COM/UW — Adrian, West Hollywood $10 MILLION MARKETABLE SECURITIES AND/OR LIQUID ASSETS REQUIRED. Investment and Wealth Management Services are provided by Whittier Trust Company and The Whittier Trust Company of Nevada, Inc. (referred to herein individually and collectively as “Whittier Trust”), state-chartered trust companies wholly owned by Whittier Holdings, Inc. (“WHI”), a closely held holding company. This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended, and should not be construed, as investment, tax or legal advice. Past performance is no guaranteeoffutureresultsandnoinvestmentorfinancialplanningstrategycanguaranteeprofitorprotectionagainstlosses.Allnames,characters,andincidents,exceptforcertainincidentalreferences,arefictitious.Anyresemblancetorealpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.

At the University of Washington, when we pull together, we discover cures, unravel mysteries, find creative solutions and inspire others to do the same. When we strive toward a common goal, we go further, faster — together. uw.edu/boundless TOGETHER WE WILL

By Hannelore Sudermann

STONEMARK

The viaduct is gone, and Seattle’s waterfront is beginning to take shape with a current of support from UW experts, students and alumni

It Begins With a Dreamer

By Jon Marmor

Alula Asfaw needed help on his journey to college—and now he’s illuminating the path for underrepresented schoolchildren

By Chris Talbott

Turning the Tide

Touch Down Kalen DeBoer arrived from California with a heck of a resume and an attacking style to turn the Huskies back into a national power

Thanks to a $5 million gift from Microsoft President Brad Smith and Kathy Surace-Smith, vice president at NanoString Technologies, the campaign to renovate the historic ASUW Shell House—home to the “Boys in the Boat” who won Olympic gold in 1936—received a tremendous boost. Microsoft Philanthropies also donated $2 million to the UW’s fundraising campaign, which will turn the longtime home of UW rowing into a gathering and learning space for students and the community. Read about it on p. 48.

ON THE COVER Research scientist Kerry Accola, ’21, of the UW Wetland Eco system Team studies aquatic life along the Seattle waterfront.

4 UW MAGAZINE VOLUME 33 NUMBER 3 FALL 2022 FORWARD 6 Our Common Humanity 8 Equity in Education 10 Roar From the Crowd THE HUB 12 Poet Laureate 13 State of the Art 14 Seattle’s Black History 20 Research 24 Athletics COLUMNS 37 Sketches 41 Media 53 Tribute 54 In Memory IMPACT 44 Leaders of Color 46 Elevating Nursing 48 The Big Picture UDUB 56 Sailgating

ubookstore.com ubook storeseat tle

Show off your Husky pride in officially-licensed Washington football apparel.

As the Puget Sound region continues to recover from the economic and civic impacts of the pandemic, the UW is poised to be a key partner in bringing hope to our communities. A campaign now un derway to restore the historic ASUW Shell House reminds us what those of us who live and work here can accomplish togeth er. In that space, the storied “Boys in the Boat” trained under the leadership of George Pocock to become 1936 Olympic rowing champions. Through the shell house, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, — Intellectual House, the Rose collection of Native Art at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma’s first doctoral program on tribal lands, we are creating connections to the history of the land and the Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. On these and many other projects, we work closely with com munities to help steward these precious gifts and programs.

This fall marks the second year of welcom ing students back to campus since the start of the pandemic. And while we were over joyed to reopen most of our classrooms, labs, offices and communal spaces last year, we were nevertheless cautious about the return to on-campus life. Vaccines were still not available for teens or younger chil dren, and treatments for those with COVID-19 were much more limited. Communities and campuses every where grappled with uncertainty: Was it OK to meet in groups? Take public transportation? For many of us, even our sense of how to be in community felt off-kilter, our social skills and sense of belonging weakened by the many months of social distancing. As the academic year begins, we strive to be back in full swing, reunited as a community and ready to resume the shared experiences and togetherness that enrich our lives. Crucially, in the face of our pro foundly fractured and polarized society, we need to rebuild the ties that connect us to each other, to regain our belief in our common humanity, and to seek out common ground and common purpose. Our great public University is well-suited to fostering these kinds of connections and creating physical and spiritual spaces to allow them to flourish.

In Bothell and Tacoma, our campuses enter their second years with dynamic new leaders: Chancellor Kristin Esterberg and Chancellor Sheila Edwards Lange. Both are prioritizing strengthening community ties and engagement, and the Greater Seattle Business Association recently named Tacoma’s Lange “Community Leader of the Year.” From the “Paint the Park Purple” night to root for the Tacoma Rainiers in Cheney Stadium to the new residential village under construction at UW Bothell, all three UW campuses are focused on ways of creating community around academic, social and cultural events.

By Ana Mari Cauce

Each of us, in one way or another, has felt the losses of the pandemic compounded by the alienating effects of a polarized and splintering society. Together, we can work to rebuild trust, grace and shared ambition for a more equitable, vibrant and thriving world. Our University holds the capacity to bolster that rebuilding, creating spaces for all people of good faith to seek each other and the solutions to the challenges that affect us all.

6 UW MAGAZINE OPINION AND THOUGHT FROM THE UW FAMILY ILLUSTRATION BY ANTHONY RUSSO MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Our Seattle campus is now served to the north and south by light rail stations, connecting thousands of students, faculty and staff to neighborhoods and destina tions throughout the city, from the UW Medical Center-Northwest to the Rainier Valley home of the Othello-UW Commons, a learning and collaboration space. Light rail also improves public access to our beautiful grounds, performing arts centers, sports venues, museums, public events and community spaces. We welcome this increased fluidity and the new points of connection between the University and the public we serve.

Our Community Reunited

Working together, we can rebuild trust, grace and shared ambition

A higher degree of healthcare. For you. For our community. The region’s ﬁrst air medical transport service. Airlift Northwest: UW School of Medicine: Ranked #1 in the nation for primary care education.* Valley Medical Center: Where more than 2,700 healthy babies are born every year. caring professionals 34,000+ MedicalHarborviewCenter: The only Level I adult and pediatric trauma and burn center for Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. 300+ UW Medical Center: Ranked #1 in Washington** U.S. News & World Report AIRLIFT NORTHWEST | FRED HUTCHINSON CANCER CENTER | HARBORVIEW MEDICAL CENTER | UW MEDICAL CENTER – MONTLAKE UW MEDICAL CENTER – NORTHWEST | UW PHYSICIANS | UW MEDICINE PRIMARY CARE | UW SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | VALLEY MEDICAL CENTER Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center: Top ranked in the Paciﬁc Northwest*

DIGITAL

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sheila Farr, Michelle Ma CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Rajah Bose, Rick Dahms, Malinda Hartong, Anil Kapahi, Mark Stone, Dennis Wise

8 UW MAGAZINE STAFF ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PLUNKERT MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Joe Anderson, Olivier Kugler, David Plunkert, Anthony Russo

ADVERTISING SagaCity Media, Inc. 509 Olive Way, Suite 305, Seattle, WA 98101 Janet jmorgan@sagacitymedia.com,Morgan 253-303-1700

Equity in Education

Robert rpage@sagacitymedia.com,Page 206-979-5821

COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS Chair, Sabrina Taylor, ’13 Vice Chair, Roman Trujillo, ’95

By Jon Marmor

ASST.

ART

Carol ccummins@sagacitymedia.com,Cummins 206-454-3058

PUBLISHER Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 VICE PRESIDENT, UWAA Terri Hiroshima Jon Marmor, ’94 EDITOR Hannelore Sudermann, ’96 DIRECTOR Ken Shafer EDITOR Caitlin Klask STAFF WRITER Chris Talbott STAFF Ben Erickson, Karen Rippel Chilcote, Jane Higgins, Kerry MacDonald, ’04 UWAA BOARD OF

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

In a post-pandemic world, tackling inequity is the primary goal

EDITORIAL OFFICES Phone 206-543-0540 Email magazine@uw.edu Fax 4333206-685-0611BrooklynAve. N.E. UW Tower 01, Box 359559 Seattle, WA 98195-9559

Tuan has dedicated her career to strengthening equity and inclusion for students of all backgrounds. With her, it’s personal; she was born in Taiwan and migrated to the U.S. at the age of 3 with her family. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the trans formational generation that helped diversify the region. That life experience formed her commitment to make sure all students know they matter and belong. A sociologist by training, she has made this focus on equity and inclusion the iden tity of the College of Education. The college is doing much more than just turning out teachers; it’s tackling inequality, ensuring mental health is a top priority, seizing upon the massive disruption caused by the pan demic, attracting bright, caring educators, finding ways to support teachers on the front lines, and helping lead America to a better place. America’s students—from kindergarten through graduate school— deserve nothing less.

Association and the

EDITOR

A publication of the UW Alumni University of Washington since 1908

MANAGING

TRUSTEES PUBLICATIONS

University of Washington Magazine is published quarterly by the UW Alumni Association and UW for graduates and friends of the UW (ISSN 1047-8604; Canadian Publication Agreement #40845662). Opinions expressed are those of the signed contributors or the editors and do not nec essarily represent the UW’s official position. �his magazine does not endorse, directly or by impli cation, any products or services advertised except those sponsored directly by the UWAA. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Station A, PO Box 54, Windsor, ON N9A 6J5 CANADA.

CONTRIBUTING

For the past 2½ years, nothing was turned more upside down by the pandemic than education. The sudden, though temporary, end to in-person classes affected the entire education spectrum, from kindergarten through graduate school. And now that things have pretty much returned to how they used to be (the word “normal” is not that accurate these days), we asked Mia Tuan, dean of the University of Washington’s nationally ranked College of Education, to weigh in as the 2022-23 academic year is about to begin.

“The pandemic magnified existing issues within education,” Tuan explains. “What we saw are major inequities and their con sequences, and those who suffered the most. Those with options to leave K-12 public schools did not have the same chal lenges. Those without options were vulnerable to falling behind.” But it wasn’t all bad news. “Some com munities of color who went through virtual learning responded better because they were not subject to the racism that occurred in person,” Tuan says. “It was a welcome shift not having to be in an environment where they felt beleaguered. That was a surprise. In some communities of color, certain kinds of learning happened that picked up the slack—not just book learning but other ways.”

116 Fairview Avenue North | Seattle, WA 98109 Mirabella Seattle is a resident-centered, not-for-profit Pacific Retirement Services community and an equal housing opportunity. See upcoming events or schedule a tour today! Call 206-337-0443 or visit us online at our.events/seattle OUR SPACIOUS, LIGHT-FILLED APARTMENTS set a modern standard with the finest finishes and amenities. Enjoy gorgeous stone countertops, stainless steel appliances, and individually controlled heating and cooling systems, among other exceptional features. All of our nearly 100 floor plans have private balconies with unique city views. Express your style by customizing your apartment home prior to moving in. No matter what model of home you choose, you’ll enjoy hassle-free living, resort-like amenities, and an on-site healthcare continuum. Come see our tremendous selection of homes! WITH YOUR PERSONAL TOUCH STYLE &

Larry Silverman, ’69, ’71 Bravo, Bechthold! I was pleased and surprised to see the ar ticle on Jeff Bechthold (“Media Man,” Summer 2022). I have a slightly strange tale that shows what an outstanding Husky Jeff is: I was looking on eBay for a gift for my wife. She went to WSU (I know), and she likes to receive Cougar stuff as gifts. I found a burial urn in the form of a football helmet with Cougar livery. I showed it to her and asked if she would like to be buried in an urn that looked like a Cougar helmet. She was more than excited and responded in the affirmative. I thought OK, if she wants to show her team spirit by resting for all eternity in a Cougar helmet, the least I could do was make that possible. Further, I thought that I might avail myself of a Husky helmet from the ’75 season. I searched eBay for a Dawg version but there was none to be found. Not to be deterred, I called the com pany and negotiated them into supplying me with a gold helmet with a purple face cage. This is where Jeff comes in. After a brief search, I found Jeff and explained my predicament. Jeff thought it was a bit weird but said he would get me two Husky hel met stickers (block W). He did, and now I have a great-looking urn to spend eternity in. I’m sure that this might be one of the stories we all tell sitting around the camp fire, but as strange as the request was, Jeff helped me without reservation. Thanks, Jeff, and as a lifetime Dawg, I’m really glad you are on our side.

magazine.uw.edu

Merlin Rainwater, ’81, ’00, Seattle

I was pleased to read the article “Caring for Custodians” (Spring 2022). I do feel that most of the time these workers are not recognized and appreciated for the service they give. I try to show my appre ciation for those who are often overlooked as they provide cleaning services, drive the garbage trucks, pick up trash and stock our grocery stores.

Terry Benish, ’78, Suquamish CORRECTION

A OFCENTURYMEMORIES

TEST SMARTSYOUR

Cheers! UW alumna and Toastmaster extraor dinaire Yvette Gunther turned 100 this summer. She recounts her mem ories at the UW during World War II.

Most of us know the school colors, mascot and building names … but how deep does your UW knowledge go? Take our quiz to find out. MAP MAKER Thaddeus Spratlen might be better known for men toring students, but his work with the Multicultural Alumni Partnership left an “everlasting legacy.”

JOIN EMAIL: magazine@uw.edu (Letters may be edited for length or clarity.)

Carol McCain, ’64, Jackson, Wyoming Stone Connection It was interesting and revealing for me to read about Dave Stone (December 2021). Dave and I were both members of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity back in the day. And we both lived at the fraternity. I remember that he was a member of the UW ROTC. Dave was a year ahead of me, as I was in the class of 1969. I hadn’t kept in touch with him since he graduated, so I learned some things about his life since 1968 through the article. I also knew Marcie back then through some social connec tions. I believe she was a member of a sorority back in the 1960s.

Chuck Nordquist, ’75, Yuma, Arizona Konick’s Lesson Willis Konick was born 24 years before I was born. He grew up in a home on Queen Anne Hill a block away from where I grew up and we went to the same high school (Queen Anne). When I returned from ser vice in the Navy in 1975 and attended UW, I took a class from him in winter quarter after his award as most favorite professor as voted on by students. Before I was done, I took every possible class I could from him and participated in sketches. It was a dark time for me, with deaths in my fam ily and other bad things, and Willis helped me think there was joy in daily life. The lesson from Willis to UW that I fear is still unlearned is that the University exists to educate young people. It’s not about get ting research money and aligning itself to corporate entities. It is solely about the kids, which Willis knew in his heart.

For more great UW content Go Online

THE CONVERSATION

Walk Talk If walking is central to our evolution as hu mans, why does your discussion of walking in modern life (“Why We Walk,” Summer 2022) treat it as a special activity? Walking is primarily a way of getting from one place to another. The health benefits of walking are just as great from walking to the gro cery store, walking to work or walking to the bus as they are from walking for the sake of walking. Sadly, we have built many barriers to walking into our communities. To gain full benefit from this primary means of human transport, we need to re-create barrier-free walkable communities.

The Overlooked

Our story on new Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan (Summer 2022) erroneously stated that Fagan, ’00, was the first wom an vice commandant of the Coast Guard. That distinction is held by Vice Admiral Vivien Crea, the 25th vice com mandant of the Coast Guard. In addition, Vice Admiral Sally Brice-O’Hara was the second woman to hold that position as the 27th vice commandant.

PHOTOGRAPHYPARRISCORY

1986.5.16027.5COLLECTION,POST-INTELLIGENCERSEATTLEMOHAI,

10 UW MAGAZINE ROAR FROM THE CROWD

NEWS AND RESEARCH FROM THE

What is essential to a great poem?

Really great poems can surprise us and move us in unexpected ways. A great poem often has the perfect combination of music, story and emotional content. So it’s matching all three of those things all at once, and they come together in a har monious way that feels sort of indescrib able. You can’t figure out what it is that Continued on p. 15

By Chris Talbott

In July, Ada Limón was caught by surprise. The School of Drama graduate had a grow ing fan base for her effervescent poetry, had so far published six celebrated vol umes and had won a National Book Award. But she had no idea she was on the cusp of being named U.S. Poet Laureate.

As a student, Ada Limón learned that keeping a sense of wonder is essen tial ‘as a human moving in the often unfriendly chaos of the world.’ UW

dinary on many different levels.” Luckily Limón, ’98, came out of her media timeout to share insight into her art and her pivotal time at the UW.

A former drama student becomes the official poet of the United States

12 UW MAGAZINE

In the first weeks after the announce ment, she was so inundated with interview requests, she had to take a pause. “It is a very weird thing,” Limón says. “I will say that you do not go into poetry for the fame or the money. So that there are people who recognize who I am, that recognize my work and my words, is really extraor

CONGRESSOFLIBRARY

The LaureatePoet

Artist Willem Volkersz came to the U.S. from his native Holland in 1953 after spending his early life under Nazi occu pation. A pioneer in the use of neon in art, he developed a love of photography, trav el, American roadside culture, pop art, and folk and visionary art. Volkersz, ’65, will have an exhibit of his work, “The View From Here,” on display at the Boise Art Museum from Oct. 8 to Jan. 8. Here is his 2000 image, “America the Beautiful,” made of neon, wood and acrylic/latex paint.

HEREFROMVIEWTHE

ARTTHEOFSTATE

Glowing Observations

The book’s storytelling builds up to the Civil Rights movement in Seattle, which brought Black leaders to the fore and ex tended their influence throughout the city.

2014.49.091-009-05COLLECTION,SMITHALMOHAI,

Quintard Taylor tells the stories of Seattle’s small, but influential Black community

At the heart of Taylor’s book is the Central District, the vibrant home to the region’s largest African American population. The community saw a boom of Black residents during and after World War II and peaked in the 1970s at nearly 40,000 (in a city with a total population of more than 500,000).

The need for more scholarship around the Black experience in the West was clear, says Taylor. As he was building his exper tise in the subject, he encountered col leagues who believed that African Americans not only hadn’t contributed to the development of Seattle, but that they hadn’t even existed there. As one friend put it, “nobody cares about nine Negroes in the West,” he says.

“We saw the rise of Black power, and we see a new leadership class coming togeth er,” Taylor says. In addition to Washington state, Taylor has taught history at universities in Oregon, California and Nigeria. A UW professor emeritus, he has mentored generations of future historians. In 2007, he started BlackPast.org, an online reference center focused on African American and global African history. It has become a resource for millions of visitors. Through his scholarship, Taylor has opened the way for new generations of scholars. “‘Forging’ remains the definitive study of African Americans in Seattle,” says Quin’Nita Cobbins-Modica, ’18, an assistant professor at Seattle Pacific University who specializes in African American women’s history in the West. She wrote the introduction to the new edition of Taylor’s book. While the histo ry's timeline ends with the Civil Rights era, Cobbins-Modica noted, even today, in the wake of activism like the summer protests of 2020 on Capitol Hill, Seattle and its Black community continue to be deeply connected to the experiences and activism of the rest of the nation.

In the 1980s, when historian Quintard Taylor turned to the archives to research Black history in Seattle, he came up al most empty. In fact, Suzzallo Library, one of the core repositories of Northwest history, could only offer him a 1978 doc toral dissertation. It was titled “African Americans in the West.” “And it was mine,” he says.

The book also explores the influence the Black community had on local worklife, mu sic and culture. Nightclubs and jazz venues drew visitors from across the city and fos tered luminaries like Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Ray Charles. The history also highlights the long-standing cooperation between the Black and Asian communities to combat racist public policy.

This was importantanbook that had to be written.

In 1994, Taylor responded with “The Forging of a Black Community,” a thor ough history of Seattle’s African American residents from the 1858 arrival of Seattle’s first Black settler, Manuel Lopes, to the Civil Rights era. This summer, soon af ter it was declared one of the 10 most influential books published by the University of Washington Press in the past century, the press released a new edition. “I knew that this was an import ant book that had to be written,” Taylor says. “The history is there. … Somebody had to come along and put all the infor mation together.” Once he started look ing, he found a wealth of stories with the help of community members, some of whose families went back generations. Taylor realized how different Seattle was from other urban African American com munities. He didn’t find the stories of vio lence, overt racism and crowded tenement houses. At the same time, the local Black residents did encounter discrimination when seeking work and housing, manag ing daily life in Seattle and even seeking a good education for their children.

By Hannelore Sudermann

In gathering history, Taylor turned to primary sources with the help of several notable African American Seattleites, in cluding former student activist and politi cian Larry Gossett, ’71, teacher and historian Wilson E. Reed, ’71, ’73, and Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, ’39, who helped him build relationships within Seattle’s Black community for more than two decades.

14 UW MAGAZINE

In 1953, brothers Robert and Zeb Hills stand in front of their restaurant in Seattle's Central District. �he vibrant community of African Seattlety,”offeaturecan-ownedAmeribusinessesin“�heForgingaBlackCommuniQuintard�aylor'shistory.

The Past is Present

NEW REGENT WELCOMED Leonor Fuller, a former criminal prosecutor and assistant city attorney in Seattle, joined the UW Board of Regents in May. Her deep roots at the University include three degrees: a bachelor’s in 1978, a master’s in 1980 in Spanish language and literature, and a Juris Doctor in 1984. She began her legal career in the Seattle City Attorney’s office as a prose cutor and civil litigator. Fuller served as the chair of the Women of the Washington State Association of Justice and was a founding board member of the WSAJ Foundation. She retired from Fuller & Fuller Attorneys in Olym pia in 2020 after 36 years of practicing law.

FULLER&FULLERCOURTESYUWMEDICINE

I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back. Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam, the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.

Fuller has a history of volunteering with the UW law school, and currently serves on the school’s leadership council. She also served 17 years as a trustee on the board of South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia.

It’s a sort of a balancing act of protecting that artist in me that just wants to sit in my PJs and write poems. You know, pet the cat and the dog and weep a little and read a poem. And then there’s part of me that wants to go out there and help to spread the message of poetry, to elevate poetry, to really help others recognize that it’s a tool we can use to help heal ourselves, especially right now when we need so much healing.

Poet Laureate Continued from p. 12

What did you take away from your time at the UW?

Lover By Ada Limón

The University of Washington Medical Cen ter is the top hospital in Washington state and in the Seattle metropolitan area, accord ing to U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” rankings. The medical center also ranked among the top in the nation in several adult specialties, most notably rehabilitation medicine (No. 5), diabetes and endocrinolo gy (No. 7), ear, nose and throat (No. 24), and urology (No. 26). It also ranked high (No. 27) for cancer with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. U.S. News evaluated more than 4,500 medical centers nationwide in 15 specialties and 20 procedures and conditions. Its “Best Hospitals” methodology encompasses an analysis of various data categories, including survival, the volume of high-risk patients, pa tient experience, nurse staffing and advanced clinical technologies.

That was my first experience in my life where it was like, oh, seek out the creative people and then you will find your com munity, and that’s what I did. And the UW is such a wonderful mix of different artists. I took almost every dance class you could take. I have a degree in theater. I took all the classes that you could take in the theater department, including sound design. And then, really, I was running out of electives inside those two depart ments, and they sort of pushed me out. They were like, “You need to go some where else and to take something else and be more well-rounded,” and that’s when I found creative writing.

FALL 2022 15 NEWS BRIEFS you love about it, but somehow you’re moved to tears or you’re moved to laugh or you’re suddenly, like, “Oh, I feel more in my body,” or, “I feel more connected to the world.” There’s some sort of inde scribable moment or experience that the reader goes through, and it’s usually be cause those three things are working to gether, and in ways that are surprising. I feel like the best poems can really change a whole day. And sometimes they can change your whole life.

Easy light storms in through the window, soft edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s nest rigged high in the maple. I’ve got a bone to pick with whomever is in charge. All year, I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then, Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely excited for the word lover to come back. Come back lover, come back to the five and dime. I could squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover, what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me, a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.

From “The Hurting Kind” by Ada Limón (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Ada Limón. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. Pet the cat and the dog and weep a little and read a poem.

HIGH MARKS FOR UW MEDICINE

How has the news and the response changed things for you?

The UW is very much in my heart. One of the things that was really important to me was that I didn’t know quite how to find my footing at the University to start because, as you know, it’s enormous and I’m from a small town—Sonoma, California. The population of the UW is bigger than my hometown. I had to figure out where I fit. And I found the artists.

HUSKY PICKS Top (L to R): COLOSSEUM PURPLE TEE shop.gohuskies.com; VINTAGE LUNCH BOX ubookstore.com; HEATHER LONG-SLEEVE TEE amazon.com/uwhuskies; ZEPHYR SNAPBACK HAT shop.gohuskies.com; HUSKY CHEERLEADER PLUSH ubookstore.com; SPRINT BACKPACK logobrands.com; Bottom (L to R): BLACK LONG-SLEEVE TEE amazon.com/uwhuskies; CHAMPION PURPLE TEE ubookstore.com SHOP ONLINE Exploration is at the heart of the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, where this photo was taken. PURPLE & GOLD ARE PERFECT FOR FIELD TRIPS, PLAY DATES, SCAVENGER HUNTS AND OTHER ADVENTURES.

FALL 2022 17

Company Holland

Behzod Abduraimov Kodō Takács RagamalaQuartetDance Company Camille A. Brown & Dancers Angela Hewitt Strings for Peace The Motherboard Suite Dover AaronFatoumataQuartetDiawaraStepAfrika!DiehlLosAngelesMaster Chorale DanielRUBBERBANDAlexander Jones UWAA MEMBERS SAVE ON SUBSCRIPTIONS & SINGLE

Juilliard

It’s hard to forget the excruciating heat that blanketed the Pacific Northwest in late June 2021. Temperatures soared well above 100 degrees, with Seattle hitting a record 108 degrees on June 28. During the heat wave, research scien tists, tribal ecologists and community members noticed a disturbing uptick of dying and dead shellfish on beaches in Washington and British Columbia. Quickly realizing this was an unprecedented event, the groups organized to document the die-offs as they were happening. Now, a team led by the UW has compiled and analyzed hundreds of the field obser vations to produce the first comprehensive report of the impact of the 2021 heat wave on shellfish. It found that many shellfish were victims of a “perfect storm” of factors: The lowest low tides of the year occurred during the hottest days—and at the warm est times of day. The results were recently published in the journal Ecology. “You really couldn’t have come up with a worse scenario for intertidal organisms,” says lead author Wendel Raymond, a re search scientist at UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. “This analysis has given us a really good general picture of how shellfish were impacted by the heat wave, but we know this isn’t even the full story.” The researchers found that each species’ ecology contributed to how it survived the extreme heat. Some shellfish that naturally burrow deep beneath the surface, like butter clams, usually fared better than ones that typically ride out low tide just below the sand’s surface, such as cockles. They also found that shellfish on the outer coast ex perienced low tide about four hours earlier, when it was cooler, than shellfish on inland beaches. This analysis was funded by Washington Sea Grant.

Martha

SERVICEFISHERIESINDIANNORTHWEST

Hellish Shellfishfor

Sō Percussion

Learn more about UWAA MEMBER MEANYCENTER.ORGDISCOUNTS

Tribal scientists join the UW and volunteers to study the fate of our region’s shellfish in hot weather

By Michelle Ma

Robyn AbbyCuartetoOrlinLatinoamericanoPilobolusZandtheNewUtilityDaniilTrifonov with Caroline Shaw String Quartet Graham Dance Andrews TICKETS

A few miles can add years to your life. Your neighborhood affects the air you breathe, the water you drink, your access to healthy food — and how long you live.

LEARNuw.edu/populationhealthMORE

Healthier communities make healthier people. The University of Washington is at the forefront of addressing the interconnected factors that influence how long and how well we live, from climate change and poverty to systemic inequities and health care. In partnership with community organizations, the UW transforms research into concrete actions that improve and save lives across the country — and around the world.

Situatedcountry.onthe

Husky_Senior_Care_0922_1.2H.indd 1 8/1/22 1:18 PM

BOSERAJAH

UW School of Medicine students in Spokane have stateof-the-art classrooms, anatomy labs and research and study spaces. �he structure was designed and built by McKinstry.

WWAMI medical students at the UW School of Medicine in Spokane complete their first 18 months of medical training in Eastern Washington: basic science and clinical education, as well as rural train ing early in the curriculum. This year’s Spokane class of about 60 first-year med ical students started their training in the new building.Seniors never had it so good.

FOUNDED BY UW GRADS IN 2009 TO SUPPORT SENIORS IN HOUSEHOLD ENVIRONMENTS

Longhouse provides vibrant adult family homes for seniors with dementia or other chronic conditions who cannot stay at home. In Senior Living, smaller is better! Locations in Northgate, Bothell, and Everett.

Spokane is home to a new 86,000-squarefoot center for health sciences, medical education and innovation. The first three stories of the building, which held its grand opening in September, will house the UW School of Medicine-Gonzaga University Regional Health Partnership. The Northwest faces a growing short age of primary care physicians, especially in rural and underserved areas. To better address this need, the UW and Gonzaga created the health partnership in 2016 to educate and retain physicians to live and work in communities throughout the re gion. The UW leads medical training for five states: Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. Two of the WWAMI partner states, Wyoming and Montana, are facing the most severe doctor short ages in the southern edge of Gonzaga’s campus along the Spokane River, the privately funded, $60 million facility provides classrooms, labs, offices and study spaces for the UW School of Medicine and Gonzaga’s Department of Human Physiology. “Working together, we are creating better access to health care for the patients and communities in Washington who need it most,” says UW President Ana Mari Cauce.

Now more than ever, household options are better for seniors.

FALL 2022 19

A new center for health education opens in Spokane

Husky Senior Care provides in-home caregivers, telehealth, and nursing services for seniors at home. Stay at home with help from our dedicated team.

LOCALLY LEARN MORE!

Doctors in the House

OWNED AND OPERATED IN SEATTLE • CALL OR VISIT OUR WEBSITES TO

www.HuskySeniorCare.com Seattle: Bellevue:206-599-9990425-241-4900 www.HuskySeniorCare.com 206-366-1771 www.Longhouse.com

The project brings to life the vision of Spokane community leaders and develop ers to create a life-sciences industry cluster and spur growth through innovation and collaboration between academia and in dustry. “In fulfilling our promise to each other, to our students, and to our commu nity and region, we have reaffirmed our long-term commitment to broadening the array of health-related education and re search endeavors, and to preparing the next generation of health care profession als here in Spokane and the Inland Northwest,” says Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh.

HSC was founded by UW grads in 2009 to serve the alumni of all colleges and universi�es. We �rovide reﬁned in‐home care for seniors. Call today!

A GLACIAL VIEW

Grave Language Classics student finds new meaning in ancient Roman epitaphs

SERVICEPARKNATIONAL/GLACIERHOLGATE

SWEET RETURNS

By Hannelore Sudermann Funsten’s paper on the poem brought her her first recognition in the field. Another poem Funsten studied this year was found in a large cemetery, called a columbarium, discovered off the Via Appia in 1852. Underground and several stories deep, this burial chamber was the resting site for the ashes of freed men and enslaved people, as well as traders and tax collectors. The engraving is difficult to access because it’s on private property, says Funsten, but there are photographs to work from. The words seem to tell the story of a woman who had multiple love interests. In Funsten’s reading, the poem suggests that the woman attracted atten tion with the jewelry her lover gave her and that an envious person killed her. Funsten’s scholarship covers fresh ter ritory. Its unique focus is verse epitaphs found in columbaria. “That’s exciting, be cause we don’t have poetry at all from enslaved or formerly enslaved people, or much writing from people of that time who weren’t professional writers,” she says. The epitaphs, which can offer a view into moments of great change, capture what is important to this non-elite group of people. “We’ve lost about 90% of the history from ancient Greece and Rome,” she says. “Here are otherwise untold stories.”

While most doctoral candidates spend their last year of school teaching and writing, Grace Funsten, ’17, ’22, spent hers in Rome visiting cool, underground chambers where the ashes of certain ancient Romans were housed. A winner of the coveted Rome Prize, Funsten joined a group of select scholars in the Eternal City this year and pursued her studies from a home base at the American Academy. With a stipend and command of Latin, she steeped herself in funerary verse carved in marble. The epitaphs often recounted illicit love af fairs, but Funsten saw a deeper context: These were indicators of larger political change and featured the voices of the non-elite, words that would otherwise be lost to Funsten’sposterity.pathway to Rome started with a Latin class in high school. Studying clas sics at the UW, she became hooked on epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions, in a graduate seminar taught by Sarah Levin-Richardson. She was delighted by an epitaph for a dog called Margarita. It was written around the second century A.D., and in the dog’s own voice. She found the message was not so much an expression of grief as a parody of elegy. It even refer enced the work of the poet Ovid, she notes.

RESEARCH

MOLAJOLIDANIELE

While studies show that taxing sweetened beverages significantly reduces sales, ques tions still remain about whether the taxes place a greater economic burden on low er-income households. New UW research published in the journal Food Policy showed the tax paid by lower-income households consumed a larger proportion of their in come, but still only 0.01% to 0.05%. The annual per-capita dollar amount that house holds paid toward the tax, between $5.50 and $31, didn’t differ by income level. The researchers also found that the income from sweetened-beverage taxes was redistribut ed more to lower-income communities than those communities paid in taxes. Revenue raised by Seattle’s sweetened-beverage tax is used to increase access to healthy food and support child health and learning. In 2020, the revenue was also used to provide support to communities disproportionately harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

20 UW MAGAZINE Grace Funsten explores the art of the epitaph in the library at the American Academy in Rome. Her research focuses on ofcapturedinscriptionsfunerarythattheculturethetime.

As glaciers worldwide retreat due to climate change, park managers want to know what’s on the horizon. A new study from the UW and the National Park Service measures 38 years of change for glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park, a stunning jewel about two hours south of Anchorage. The study, pub lished in The Journal of Glaciology, finds that 13 of the 19 glaciers show substantial retreat, four are relatively stable, and two have ad vanced. It also finds trends in which glacier types are disappearing fastest. Lake-termi nating glaciers, which include the popular Bear and Pedersen glaciers, are retreating fastest. One surprising finding was that Holgate Glacier (below), which terminates at the ocean, has grown in recent years. The new data for Alaska provide a baseline to study how climate change—including warmer air temperatures, as well as changes in both the types and amount of precipita tion—will continue to affect these glaciers.

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF seasons change, the partnership between BECU and the University of Washington and the Alumni Association remains united with a continued commitment to improve the well-being of our communities across Puget Sound.

Federally insured by NCUA becu.org

The

Some discounts, coverages, payment plans, and features are not available in all states, in all GEICO companies, or in all situations. GEICO contracts with various membership entities and other organizations, but these entities do not underwrite the offered insurance products. Discount amount varies in some states. One group discount applicable per policy. Coverage is individual. In New York a premium reduction may be available. GEICO may not be involved in a formal relationship with each organization; however, you still may qualify for a special discount based on your membership, employment or affiliation with those organizations. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, DC 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. © 2022 GEICO. FIT. partnership with University of Washington and GEICO.

THE PERFECT

Sometimes work assignments are a strug gle for Kels Rizzo. The public policy in tern for the UW Student Disability Commission is autistic, ADHD and dys lexic. It might take Rizzo a while to figure out how to process and best accomplish their“It’swork.not even the kind of thing where once you figure it out, it’s the same all the time,” Rizzo said at a recent seminar about supporting neurodiverse colleagues. “The needs change. There are certain types of assignments where I need noise-canceling headphones and I need to not be interrupt ed. And if people interrupt me, then—es pecially if they are demanding—they’re not going to get the kindest face from me.”

Having a neurodiverse workplace can provide businesses a competitive edge. The business world is just start ing to understand and explore the benefits. According to a recent Deloitte study, neurodivergent work ers bring new skills, new ways of thinking and fresh problem-solving approaches. And, according to mul tiple studies, about 15% to 20% of the global population is neurodiver gent. Unfortunately, many neurodi vergent people go unemployed or underemployed.Figuringouthow to make space— and grace—for neurodiverse col leagues brought Rizzo and participants from across campus to share their stories. The path to a truly diverse of fice starts with recognizing that we all work in different ways, they said. Managers can show just how invested they are in fostering diversity on their team, said Ashley Cowan D’Ambrosio, ’19, a disability activist and guest lecturer in the College of Education. “We have got to consider having diverse teams a value and also a measurement of what it means to be a good manager,” she added. “And that means thinking about how am I

An estimated 20% of the population is neurodivergent with conditions like autism, Asperger's or ADHD. Workplaces can be neuro-friendly and inclusive, benefiting both workers and employers. Visit eraliving.com/joy or call (206) 333-0290 to learn more.

Employees who are ADHD, autistic and otherwise neurodiverse can benefit the workplace

FALL 2022 23 CREDITPHOTO JAFFEDAVID

atNeurodiversityWork

By Chris Talbott setting the tone for the culture in the space.”

University House Wallingford and Issaquah are proud partners of Era Living retirement communities feature lush gardens ideal for outdoor gatherings, technology to help you connect, and a variety of stimulating and enriching activities to keep your mind engaged.

Find connection and joyIN EVERYDAY LIVING

Exercising patience—rather than pow er—is key to fostering a diverse workplace, said Lucas Harrington, a psychologist at the UW Autism Center. It’s much easier to navigate a workplace where managers are open to different communication and work styles. “I think (the message) is really just please, give everybody a break,” Rizzo said. “We’re all doing the best we can at any given time.”

By Jon Marmor

Led by three women’s Husky programs that recorded a maximum 1,000 and Husky football’s conference-leading 993 score, UW student-athletes once again excelled in the NCAA’s latest Academic Progress Rate, which covers the 2020-21 school year. UW’s score of 986 marked the ninth consecutive time that all of Washington’s student-athletes scored above 980. Husky football’s score of 993 again ranked first in the Pac-12 (take that, Stanford, Cal and UCLA). Husky softball, women’s track and field, and women’s cross-country teams placed first or tied for first in the confer ence with their 1,000 scores.

Gabbie Plain Dylan Teves

Once her playing days were over, Frimpong Ellertson—a two-time AllAmerican in 2003 and 2004—started her coaching career. She began as a U.S. Youth National Team coach before returning to the UW as an assistant coach two years ago. In her first year, she helped the Huskies reach their sixth Sweet 16 appearance.

On the Coaching Front Jason Kelly, who previously spent seven seasons as pitching coach for Husky base ball, was named head coach. He succeeds Lindsay Meggs, who announced his retire ment after the 2022 season. … Rahim Esmail succeeded Matt Anger as head men’s ten nis coach following Anger’s retirement af ter 28 years. Esmail served as associate head coach last year. He and Anger led the Huskies to their first NCAA Championships berth since 2017. Esmail joined the Huskies in 2021 after coaching at Samford University. … Washington’s upward ascent in cross country and track and field under coaches Maurica and Andy Powell will continue, as their contracts were extended through 2029. The Huskies had five Top-25 finishes last year in six NCAA Championship meets.

A first-team All-American who came to the UW from Liberty High School in Renton, he now plays for the Seattle Sounders of Major League Soccer.

24 UW

Dominating pitcher, two soccer standouts earn top recognition from the Pac-12

Three Huskies, Three Honors!

We Win in the Classroom—Again

(3)COMMUNICATIONSATHLETICS

The Tom Hansen Medal is given annually to each member institution’s premier stu dent-athletes—and how fitting it is that the award is named in honor of Hansen, ’59, who served 26 years as the Pac-10 commissioner until his retirement in 2009. That brings us to Frimpong Ellertson, a native of Vancouver, Washington, who played for the Huskies from 2001 to 2004 and is now an assistant coach for the Huskies, having joined the team in 2020. A two-time Pac-10 Player of the Year, she is the UW’s all-time leader in goals and points. In 2004, her senior season, she helped the Huskies make their first ap pearance in the Elite Eight. She played at the professional level for several years and spent five years on the U.S. Women’s National Team. She also competed for Team USA in the 2007 World Cup in China.

The conference of champions presented graduating seniors Gabbie Plain and Dylan Teves with the 2021-22 Tom Hansen Medal as the UW’s outstanding female and male student-athletes based on their perfor mance and achievement in scholarship, athletics and leadership. And Tina Frimpong Ellertson, one of the greatest players in Husky women’s soccer history, was induct ed into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor, the conference’s most prestigious recognition forPlain,student-athletes.whogrewup in Australia, is a fourtime All-American pitcher who led the Huskies to a runner-up appearance in the 2018 College Softball World Series. The second Husky to be a four-time AllAmerican, she was the second Husky ever to record more than 1,000 career strikeouts (1,068) and the fourth pitcher to record 100plus wins (she had 108). She also represented Australia in the 2020 Summer Olympics. Soccer midfielder Teves, who was born in Honolulu, earned a ton of honors during his four years at the UW, including being named a finalist for the MAC Hermann Trophy, the highest honor in college soccer.

Tina Frimpong Ellertson MAGAZINE

Assistant women’s soccer coach �ina Frimpong Ellertson spurs on her players.

PERRY ACWORTH, ’14 UW Farm Manager At the UW Farm, when Perry Acworth snaps one of the purple-and-white pea flowers off the vine to show how they self-pollinate, her face lights up. The proud UW grad brings her love of agriculture, sustainability and education daily to the acre and a half of certified-organic farm on the Seattle campus. She oversees hundreds of students and community members who plant, nurture and harvest more than 100 varieties of vegetables, fruit and flowers. This farm-fresh produce ends up at campus dining halls, on the UW Pantry’s shelves for Huskies in need, and at dinner tables through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) share. For Acworth, the farm is a living laboratory where Huskies come together to learn and experiment — and grow.

realdawgswearpurplereal_dawgswearpurple

REAL DAWGS WEAR PURPLE

By CHRIS TALBOTT Photos by MARK STONE

ATALINA BURCH AND MIKE CAPUTO, ’10 , snorkel along the new Seattle seawall, clad in dry suits and carrying wet-dry clipboards and flashlights on a cloudy August morning. As is often the case, it doesn’t take long before passersby on the sidewalk above take notice of the UW’s Wetland Ecosystem Team members and start shouting questions.

Seattle’s waterfront is getting a major makeover —with a little help from the UW C

Turning the Tide

FALL 2022 27

“It’s interesting,” Burch, a graduate student, says later as she’s gearing up for another swim. “Most people think we’re doing water sampling. It’s always fun and interesting that that’s the first thing they think. Like, they don't really imagine there are fish out here.”

Not only are there fish—there are more and more of them each year. Along the seawall, which was designed with the help of UW scientists and engineers and serves as the foundation for the city’s new waterfront, the researchers count herring, shiner perch, sand lance, a growing host of invertebrates and, most importantly, salmon. All kinds of salmon. This is just one place where the UW’s expertise touches on Seattle’s new central waterfront project, an $835 million pub lic-private effort to reconnect the city’s downtown with Puget Sound. Designed to undo more than a century of mistakes, missteps and neglect, the finished project will be a showpiece that stretches north from Pioneer Park to beyond Pike Place Market. With parks and art, shops, walking trails and performance spaces, it will rival any urban waterfront in the world. But you won’t be able to see all the magic from dry land. “Stick your head in the water and it’s a different place,” says UW research scientist Bob Oxborrow, ’12. “I was surprised on my first snorkel that there’s so much life down under the pier,” adds Burch. “All the sea stars and sea cu cumbers, lots of schools, thousands of herring. It’s unexpected.”

“The UW’s tentacles are all over it,” cracks Tim Kuniholm, ’90, the Seattle Aquarium’s director of public affairs and mar keting. He points to project managers, contractors, elected officials and city staff.

“I think the power of this story is how many University of Washington alumni are involved,” says Ben Franz-Knight, ’96, former executive director of the Pike Place Market and a project consultant on the the Aquarium’s Ocean Pavilion project. “It’s just massive. I mean, the mayor [Bruce Harrell] who’s going to cut the ribbon on this thing, he played football at UW.” FranzKnight himself was president of the UW Alumni Association of Board of Trustees.

And by the time it’s complete in 2025, hundreds of UW graduates—with degrees in engineering, urban planning, fisheries, architecture and business—will have participated.

The list includes Angela Brady, ’95, a civil engineering graduate who directs the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Waterfront Program. At last count, she says, there were 16 UW alumni in her department alone. And there are nine UW grads at Friends of Waterfront Seattle, the nonprofit that will oversee the area after it’s “Therecomplete.aremultiple [Husky alums] that I work with who, whether they’re engineers or contractors or project managers or architects, this is an investment of a decade or more of their lives,” Franz-Knight says.

The restoration of habitat is among the first of many positive effects of the project. The multibillion-dollar retooling of Seattle’s transportation and infrastructure plan includes a massive new $113 million Ocean Pavilion for the Seattle Aquarium, playgrounds, a new walkway from Pike Place Market to the waterfront, rerouted traffic patterns, pedestrian and bike paths, a new ferry terminal, piers large enough to hold concerts, a stormwater filtering system and—startlingly—a rocky stretch of beach. The project kicked into high gear with the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in 2018-19, and its best elements are already emerging. The city made use of the UW’s Climate Impacts Group sea level rise projections in planning. Before that, seismic studies, historical assessments and statistical traffic reviews were among the dozens of different ways UW research and expertise had been put into use for the project.

The Aquarium’s Kuniholm believes the connection makes sense: “The UDub community is so connected to the water. If you’ve ever sailgated into a Husky home game, or you’re on a canoe in the Arboretum or visiting the Shell House, you’ll un derstand the University’s long, rich history and connection to theThatwater.”connection is what landscape architecture professor Nancy Rottle and her colleagues wanted their students to consider when they envisioned the future of Seattle’s waterfront as an active, vibrant public space to serve a multicultural, intergener ational population. It deserves the attention, Rottle says: “It’s Previous Caputo,Scientistsspread:Mike’10,left, and Bob Oxborrow, ’12, from the UW Wetland Ecosystem Team enter the water off the edge of downtown to study the health of nearshore wildlife. Below, they snorkel with clipboards to make notes on the fish they encounter.

Rottle and her team of scholars and students offered a vision of how to knit it all together: the landscape, the ecology, the ferry terminal, the public spaces, the aquarium and the busi nesses, says Maggie Walker, ’74, of the Friends of Waterfront Seattle board. The nonprofit is a partner to the city of Seattle to help fund and build a new waterfront and to create exercise, education and entertainment programs for the park. The idea of tying everything together into one big project informed the hiring of James Corner Field Operations, the landscape archi tecture firm that led the design and construction of the High Line in AccordingManhattan.toAquarium CEO Bob Davidson, ’00, the project probably got its start with Seattle Mayor Paul Schell. Davidson remembers a meeting where Schell, a former dean of the UW College of Built Environments, who was then head of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development, offered a new vision for the city.

“He had a model of the downtown, including the waterfront and the viaduct,” Davidson says. “So he started by walking around the model and removing the viaduct, dropping it on the floor and saying, ‘This is where we should be going in this city.’ And everybody thought, ‘Oh, nobody’s going to move the viaduct.’”

“There’s that idea that we shape our environments and our environments shape us,” Rottle says. “As designers, we believe that. So I think those elements are really critical.” The project they imagined can’t undo decades of abuse, Rottle says. But it “recognizes it’s a waterfront and that here’s a whole ecology to that waterfront that is really critical to these juvenile salmon that are swimming along it.”

FALL 2022 29

While the waterfront project is not yet complete, some of it is already drawing crowds. Mary Ann Stancel, ’04, above, leads a sound journey meditation for visitors to Pier 62. The new acre-sized floating dock hosts free programs like yoga and concerts. Left and below, the waterfront already fea tures the Seattle Great Wheel at Pier 57, which opened in 2012, and picture-perfect sunsets.

Seattle’s birthplace. It’s where the city meets the water.” In 2011, Rottle’s students produced a study that emphasized bringing pedestrians and bicyclists down to the water’s edge and making landscape decisions that would help undo ecological damage that continues even now as untreated stormwater flows into Elliott Bay.

Just a few years later in 1995, a UW engineering team reported on the seismic vulnerability of the viaduct to the Washington State Department of Transportation, triggering planning for repair

Everybody who has been there has a waterfront memory, whether it was visiting the Aquarium or the Seattle Great Wheel at Pier 57, or getting into trouble on a Friday night as a teen or wandering through the wonderfully weird shops and seafood joints along the piers while leading out-of-towners on a tour.

Visitors stand atop a sidewalk filled with glass blocks to allow sunlight to filter to the water below, where salmon fry and other small creatures seek shelter against a new seawall. Right, kelp provide food and shelter to young fish. Below, a sample of tiny aquatic creatures is examined back on campus.

One of the first pieces—and one of the largest ecological engineering projects in history—was the $410 million seawall restoration project. The old haphazard structure was replaced with a new seismically sound wall designed to improve the marine habitat, especially for juvenile salmon.

“That’s the opportunity you needed to pull this off,” FranzKnight says. “If you have to replace a seawall along a major urban waterfront, that’s your opportunity right there.”

Jeff Cordell, a UW aquatic and fisheries scientist, helped design the textured-and-stepped wall to offer small fish and other im portant creatures protection from predators. Glass blocks dot the waterfront walkway above, allowing daylight to filter down so juvenile salmon can find the small creatures they eat. Jason Toft, ’00, who studied with Cordell, now monitors the aquatic life there as head of the Wetland Team. He and his crew are al ready seeing improvement after a decade of monitoring, though not all nearshore species have returned.

“When I talk to people when we go to meetings worldwide, they’re noticing that Seattle has pulled this off on a larger scale than has happened elsewhere,” Toft says. Now other cities are asking for his expertise. “People are paying attention.”

30 UW MAGAZINE

WISEDENNIS

People have been paying attention to this little stretch of land for millennia. It was already a long-established population center for Indigenous people when white settlers founded Seattle in 1851, and it’s had many iterations in the decades since, evolving into a place of alternately starry-eyed and morbid fascination.

or replacement. Then in 2001, the Nisqually earthquake, the 6.8 temblor that was the biggest to strike the state in a generation gave city leaders the opening they needed to swing for some of Schell’s conceptual fences. Not only did the quake expose the viaduct as vulnerable, it also destroyed a portion of the already cracking and crumbling seawall.

“And then the third sort of major issue that has plagued the waterfront forever, and still does, is it’s a really important northsouth corridor,” Ott says. “But it’s an equally important east-west corridor. So how do you accommodate both? … Now it’s more of a psychological barrier. How do you fuse these areas together: the uphill part of town and the waterfront?”

espite the obstacles, life went on in the viaduct’s shadow, and more memories sprouted. For 30 years, artist Norie Sato’s studio was in an old building that sat near the south end of the viaduct like a mushroom under a tree. She moved in after completing her MFA at the UW, joining a collective of artist alums who formed Triangle Studios. She didn’t realize it at the time, but the spot held even more personal history, something she reflected on in a 1991 pop-up show along the waterfront. “It really was about my coming to the U.S.,” says Sato, ’74, who emigrated through Seattle with her parents when she was 5, then returned to the city years later to attend the UW. “The ship that came from Japan landed at Pier 50. Pier 50 was really outside my studio window. I was in the studio there for so many years without really realizing that I was looking out on this area because Pier 50 had been torn down. That was kind of a really interesting circle that occurred, you might say.” Sato has been commissioned by the city to install one of seven new large-scale art pieces for the waterfront project. Hers is a tall fern frond that wraps around a showcase stairway at Union Street and Alaskan Way. It’s meant to mimic the ferns that grew irrepressibly out of the wall on that very spot, resistant to all efforts to eradicate them over the decades. Sato believes the resilient fern is an apt metaphor for the waterfront.

Davidson’s early memories are family drives from Tukwila in the 1950s. Each trip was its own adventure. “We’d go to the Ivar’s Fish Bar, and that was a treat,” he says. “We’d park under the viaduct and somebody would go in and pick up fish and chips and we’d eat in the car. And that was our waterfront exposure. The waterfront was very gritty.” Gritty might be a kind description. Scary. Dangerous. Exhilarating. Mysterious. Historian Jennifer Ott, ’93, says all apply. The assistant director at HistoryLink, an online encyclopedia of Washington state’s history, leads biweekly walking tours, exposing the fasci nating and complex history along a mile-long stretch. “The waterfront is the core of Seattle’s business community in those early years, and it was absolutely makeshift,” Ott says. “It drives civic leaders nuts that this is our core economic driver, and we are basically having parts of it fall into the water.” Seattle’s early planners had three major obstacles, Ott says. The first two were a general lack of level land and Denny Hill, the bluff that abutted Elliott Bay. North of modern-day Madison Street, it wasn’t possible to build a traditional seawall because of a steep drop-off along the coastline. But the Depression brought government funding and labor, and the city began to regrade Denny, moving the hill and driving wooden pylons and pouring concrete footings to create the waterfront we’ve been familiar with for the past near-century.

Just across from the Seattle Aquarium, a new Ocean Pavilion rises on land that used to be under the Alaskan Way Viaduct. When it’s completed in 2025, the aquarium addition will also be part of a struc ture with rooftop parks, stairs and walkways that connects Pike Place Market to the waterfront below.

“It is just an amazing change for Seattle,” Sato says. “What we’re doing now is we’ve got a whole new front door. It’s just an amazing legacy that the city, the current generation, is leaving for the Already,future.”itis something to behold. When Franz-Knight stands in front of the Aquarium—a place almost all Seattle residents and visitors have stood at least once—he can already see it in his head. The finished project will dramatically swoop down from Pike Place Market over a rerouted Alaskan Way to the Aquarium’s new Overlook Pavilion. From there, sweeping stairs will take you down to Elliott Franz-KnightBay.worked on the project from 2010 to 2017 when, as its executive director, he led the market’s Puget Sound-facing upgrades in preparation for the viaduct’s demolition. He can’t wait for that day in 2025 when the project is complete and he can make that unbroken climb from the Aquarium to the market. It’ll be a little like walking on clouds. “That will be a very notable day,” he says. “I get a little emotional thinking about it.”

By Hannelore Sudermann

DREAMER

Photo by Malinda Hartong

IT BEGINS WITH A Alula Asfaw is out to change education

Today, the Dream Project is going strong. This year there are plans to send 33 students to 37 Puget Sound-area schools. Since its start, hundreds of UW student-mentors have helped thou sands of teens find their way to the UW and other schools.

Some of his new friends came from more privileged back grounds, and while they were very positive with him, “they were profoundly disconnected from appreciating the plight and path and kind of life circumstances of people like me,” he says. Asfaw was caught between his new life and the old. “I did have that feeling of guilt, questions around fairness that were just hard to ignore,” he says. Wondering how he could leverage what he had at the UW to benefit future students, he and a few friends came up with an outreach program that would put UW students to work helping high schoolers make it to college. “There are a lot of people who don’t know how to navigate this process of apply ing to college,” Asfaw says. “And there are a lot of talented, smart, capable kids who are coming up short, not because of their skills or grades or test scores, but because they’re just not navigating well.” Then he met Stan Chernicoff, a UW geology professor who had created a nighttime study center for undergraduates in Mary Gates Hall. Chernicoff was impressed with the freshman’s ideas and energy. “Rarely would a day go by when he didn’t show up in my office,” he says. “He wanted to share things that interested him. He just didn’t believe things couldn’t be done.”

Asfaw was also sharing his ideas with his classmates. One evening over chili cheese fries at Schultzy’s, a group of them were swept up for hours in conversation about how some high schoolers were finding their way to college through federal and UW outreach programs, but others at different high schools were not. They thought it was arbitrary. “We were angry, and we wanted the UW to do something,” says Jenée Myers Twitchell, ’04, ’09, ’17, a co-founder and later director of the project that grew out of that discussion.

With help from faculty including Chernicoff and Ed Taylor, ’93, dean of undergraduate academic affairs, Asfaw, Myers Twitchell and three other students developed a plan to send UW undergraduates to middle and high schools to help stu dents overcome barriers to college. Under the Dream Project, UW interns could attend classes about educational equity and participate in outreach, and many would come away with a greater understanding about the complexities and challenges facing low-income and first-generation students.

Whether in Seattle or Cincinnati, Asfaw has always focused on improving access to education and breaking through sys temic limitations. He expanded his efforts to explore curricu lum, instruction and even the school’s physical design. His goals are not just to help children with academics, but with social and emotional growth as well. “Of course, this is bold and arrogant to think that one guy and his team can change the paradigm,” Chernicoff says. “But they may be on to something in terms of solving problems. If we’re going to make education better, it takes thinkers and do ers—people like Alula.”

The federally funded program provides potential first-genera tion college students and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds with tutoring and advising to prepare them for college. It operates in just a few Seattle-area high schools. When Asfaw changed schools, he was no longer eligible for the program. Nonetheless, director Leny Valerio-Buford “fought hard to make sure there was an exception for me to remain,” he says. “I credit her a lot for supporting me and getting me into the University of Washington.”

FALL 2022 33 Alula Asfaw ran a pilot project that provided learning skills and confidence to children at Bond Hill Academy, a public elementary school in Cincinnati.

Though the college-readiness program brought Asfaw to the UW campus for events a few times, when he arrived as a fresh man, he felt both out of his depth and incredibly fortunate. “I could have easily not been here,” he says. “And others of my class mates who were much smarter than I was did not make it here.”

ALULA ASFAW DREAMS BIG. As a student at the UW, he was stunned by the good luck and support he received get ting into college. His dream, then, was to open the way for oth er students like him who might not realize that going to college was a Afterpossibility.graduating in 2008 with degrees in English and political science, he dreamt of going into public service and education, and he landed a job in Washington, D.C., working in the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. In that role, he supported place-based initiatives to improve schooling in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. After that, he attended the University of Cambridge to pur sue a master’s degree in politics, development and democratic education. There, and at Yale Law School, he dreamt of using his experience, including his new legal expertise, to spark pro found change in the American educational system. So, about six years ago, he created a program to help disadvantaged school children—and possibly change the paradigm of education. In 2016, Asfaw founded Bonds of Union, a nonprofit educa tional organization that aims to help the highest-need students by giving them a learning coach who not only focuses on their math skills, but also their social-emotional skills and critical thinking. Today, the nonprofit’s pilot project, called Ascend, is wrapping up at Bond Hill Academy, a public elementary school in Cincinnati, Ohio. The students who took part showed a marked improvement in their test scores, much higher than their classmates, says Asfaw, who had moved to Cincinnati to run the nonprofit. “Math was the vehicle for us to teach them to be lifelong learners,” he says. Asfaw knows the challenges struggling schoolchildren face. He had several different homes as a child. His family immigrat ed from Ethiopia, bringing Alula to the United States when he was 2 months old. After moving between the two countries, Asfaw returned permanently to the U.S. at age 6. When he start ed the sixth grade, his mother went home to East Africa and he stayed behind. He moved in with his older brothers—three had settled in the Seattle area—living with different siblings at dif ferent“Mytimes.pathto the University of Washington was a lot of just stu pid luck,” he says. “I’d been recommended by a teacher at Cleveland High School to sign up for this program called Upward Bound. If they had caught me at a different day or a different time, I prob ably wouldn’t have done it.”

By JON MARMOR

Photo by RICK DAHMS

FALL 2022 35 DOWNTOUCHcoachheadnewurgency,ofsenseaandexpectationshighWith DEBOERKALENtopthetobackHuskiesthetakingonsightshissetsandStateEvergreentheinlands WE ARE MORE THAN JUST FOOTBALL PLAYERS, WE ARE MORE THAN JUST SATURDAY AFTERNOONS AND SATURDAY NIGHTS.

The Husky defense will mirror the same philosophy: “We will attack constantly, and cause havoc in the backfield. Our mindset is to create confusion in our opponents.”“Confusion” is an apt word to describe college football these days, what with the pandemic turning everything upside down, the impact of NIL (name, image and like ness revenue for players) and the transfer portal becoming major players in the sport. Then there was July’s stunning announce ment that USC and UCLA were bolting the Pac-12 Conference for the Big Ten starting in 2024. Many things are up in the air, but one thing is for sure. DeBoer knows what he needs to focus on this season.

Acknowledging his reputation as the master of a pass-first offense, he clarifies: “You are not just going to see us passing the ball. We will be attacking by passing and running. We want to be diverse in our offense and keep the defense on its heels.”

THE FIRST TIME KALEN DEBOER stepped inside Husky Stadium was on a spectacular September day five years ago. Lake Washington shimmered in the background, providing a glorious setting for a late-afternoon nonconference football game between the No. 6-ranked Huskies and Fresno State. Unfortunately for DeBoer, that’s where his joy ended. At the time, he was Fresno State’s offensive coordinator, and on that day, nothing went right for the team from central California. The 2017 Huskies—fresh off earning a berth in the 2016 College Football Playoff—raced out to a 41-7 halftime lead and coasted to a 48-16 romp before 68,384 satisfied fans who had national title hopes on their minds.

“If you don’t have expectations, then it won’t happen. Success is what this place is all about. Even though there has been a lot of change, you can adjust and work together. All I am going to do is ask the guys to be their best.” DeBoer has already looked well beyond the football field to show everyone how important community is to Husky football with community-service projects and sum mer camps. “That way we can touch a lot of lives,” he explains. “We are more than just football players, we are more than just Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights. We need to connect with the community. And our players have tremendous pride in doing that, in following our goal to be servant-minded.”Withanoutlook like that—both on and off the field—Kalen DeBoer is reinforcing the values, strengths and communi ty-minded approach that has always made Husky football the No. 1 game in town.

The second time DeBoer stepped inside Husky Stadium, things were a bit different. It was just a couple of days after this past Thanksgiving, only this time, he was taking a tour of the stadium’s offices and facilities instead of being in the coaches booth in the press box. With him were his wife, Nicole, and their daughters Alexis and Avery. And this time, DeBoer was not the opponent; he was being welcomed as the 30th head coach in Husky football history. “Looking out over the lake, seeing snowcapped mountains, the view was really something,” he recalled this summer. “Sharing that with my family is something we’ll always cherish.” His arrival from the heart of California’s lush San Joaquin Valley couldn’t have come at a better time, for things on Montlake had been uneasy ever since Chris Petersen surprised everyone by stepping down after the 2019 season, his sixth at the helm. In the two years since, Husky fans endured the pandemic, a disappointing 7-9 record for 2020 and 2021 and their third head coach in three years. Not exactly the recipe for the kind of success expected up here.

But if anyone knows a thing or two about success, it’s DeBoer, 47, who brings a remarkable resume to Husky football, such as a 79-9 record as a head coach along with three national championships. While he wasn’t the big gest-name coach available, DeBoer, a native of tiny Milbank, South Dakota, arrived in the Emerald City with just about everyone in the nation congratulating the Huskies for hiring a coach who was such a great fit. DeBoer knows he has a big job ahead of him, namely returning the Dawgs to national prominence for a fan base itching to see them contend for a conference title—and more.

“As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I knew this has always been a program that does things right,” says DeBoer, who was born, raised, educated and started his coaching career in South Dakota. “The Huskies go to Rose Bowls, and they have their priorities in the right order.” He was alluding, in part, to the June an nouncement that the Husky football team had once again led the Pac-12 with a 993 APR score, a measure of academic performance, topping West Coast academic powerhouses such as Stanford, Cal and UCLA. “There is a great tradition of academic success here at UW.” Fans are just as eager to see that success play out in Husky Stadium so the Huskies can return to being a regional and national power. DeBoer, an All-American wide receiver at the University of Sioux Falls, thinks he knows how to get there.

“I feel the urgency and expectation to win, now,” he says. “There is no timeline to turn things around. We’ll do our very best to win it all this fall.

“Attacking, going after the opponent right away, is the way we will play,” says DeBoer, who has created offensive power houses during his 25-year coaching career, which includes seven years as a head coach (two years at Fresno State and five years at the University of Sioux Falls) as well as stints as offensive coordinator, quarterback coach and wide receiver coach at other schools. His head-coaching record is nothing short of eye-popping: in five years leading the University of Sioux Falls, the Cougars went 67-3, won three NAIA cham pionships, were runner-up once and made the semifinals the other year. At Fresno State, where he was the head coach for 2020 and 2021, he went 12-6 and made the Bulldogs a team to fear.

HERNANDEZRALPH

Rikki Hughes has won two Emmy Awards and three Grammys. Not bad for someone who planned to go to medical school.

When Will Smith asked Rikki Hughes to helm “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” reunion show in 2021, the Los Angeles-based pro ducer and director sought a lot of advice before jumping on the phone with arguably the world’s biggest celebrity. Some she took, some she didn’t. “Everyone was, like, ‘Make sure you don’t mention Janet Hubert,’” Hughes says. “I just have a little bit of a different viewpoint.” Hughes couldn’t imagine do ing the project without the actor who played the original Aunt Viv, the moral compass of a show that remains a pop-cul ture touchstone and helped catapult rapper Smith to stardom on the screen. Smith and Hubert had been feuding for decades, though, and her participation in the re union seemed unlikely.

Finding the human side of her famous collaborators has helped the 1991 UW graduate become a rising figure in the world of TV. She’s won two Emmy Awards and three Grammys and has produced some of the most watched shows of the past few years: Millions watched the “Fresh Prince” reunion on HBO Max. And she has produced several Dave Chappelle Netflix specials and comedy albums, including the popular and con troversial “The Closer.”

She’s also one of the few Black women directors in TV. Her move into the direc tor’s chair is a natural progression in her career, but certainly not the position she thought she’d be in when she graduated from the UW and took a summer job before enrolling in UCLA medical school. It changed her life. That job was as assistant tour manager for rapper Warren G and a crew of musi cians who were stepping out of Long Beach and into the national spotlight. “And I was like, ‘Oh, my parents are gonna kill me,” Hughes says, laughing. “So I talked to my mom and my dad, and my mom was like, ‘Well, look, you can always come back to go to medical school.’ And I was like, ‘What?!’ ” Her dad doubled down, guaranteeing a plane ticket home if things didn’t work

Collaborating with Will Smith and Dave Chappelle is all in a day’s work for one of TV’s leading women directors

The first thing she did when she got on the phone with Smith was ask, What about Viv? “And he was like, ‘You know, it’s been 27 years, Rikki. If you feel like this is a good place, I trust you,’ she says.

Continued on p. 39 NEWS FROM THE UW COMMUNITY 36 UW MAGAZINE

Hollywood Husky

By Chris Talbott

“And so I went off and had many conver sations with Janet, and we spent a couple of weeks just really figuring it out, finding the human part of it.”

SKETCHES SHERIDANDAN

FALL 2022 37

MARASIGANJOEL out. So she took the leap. “And I had the time of my life,” Hughes says. Career decisions came easy after that. She was already earning more than a doctor and having a lot more fun. After a few years in music production, she turned to TV. By the mid-2000s, she was the Black Entertainment Televison network’s go-to producer for its BET Hip-Hop Awards, BET Honors and “Rip the Runway.” At the same time, she moved into producing comedy television specials, working with Katt Williams, Bill Bellamy and Chappelle, three popular comedians. In 2018, Hughes became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) for her work on “Dave Chappelle: Equanimity.” Since then, she has moved into the di recting booth and is the showrunner of HBO Max’s “The Hype” streetwear com petition show as she continues to expand her Magic Lemonade Productions into one of Hollywood’s most successful Blackowned companies. “She definitely gives lots and lots of brown people opportunities,” says Robyn Lattaker-Johnson, ’92, a close friend. “For example, I introduced her to my former assistant, who happened to be out of work, and now she’s Rikki’s assistant. So I do think Rikki and I have always had that vision to make sure that we do what we can to help in this industry, because the doors have been closed to us for a long time.” That assistant is now a de velopment executive at Magic Lemonade. Like Hughes, Lattaker-Johnson grad uated with a different plan before land ing in Hollywood. She saw herself as a broadcast journalist specializing in hu man-interest stories. But like her friend and fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister, she ended up in the TV industry instead. She worked as a network exec utive at BET, the Oprah Winfrey Network, Syfy and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ music network Revolt, specializing in unscript ed“Iprogramming.wouldsaywhen I started in this business almost 30 years ago, I didn’t see many people that looked like me,” Lattaker-Johnson says. “From the corpo rate network level to the producers behind the scenes making the content, there just weren’t a lot of us. Today there’s so many more.” Many of the ideas she now employs to open doors for herself and others began with her work on campus in Seattle, Hughes says. She was a 16-year-old fresh man from L.A. who graduated at 20 with a degree in African American Studies. She remembers college as a time swirling with ideas and people from different plac es. Her studies with Albert Black in the Department of Sociology and John C. Walter in American Ethnic Studies con tinue to inform her thinking as she tries to effect change in an industry that’s been slow to change. “In Seattle, what I learned was invaluable. And that was how to communicate on a mass scale with people from so many dif ferent walks of life,” Hughes says. “So many different people from so many different walks of life all came together at this one spot on this beautiful campus.”

It’s not about just having Black content. It’s about being very authentic in the space.

When George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, spark ing worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, Hughes found herself in many discussions about increasing content focused on Black voices and lives. Again, her viewpoint was a little different. “I was so happy that I had the foundation to be able to say, ‘Well, hold on, it’s not about just having Black content,’” Hughes says. “‘It’s about being very au thentic in the space. It’s about being deliberate in how we approach things and also just having equity.’” She also leaned on her experiences to navigate the turmoil surrounding her two most famous collaborators. Chappelle has repeatedly made jokes about trans people and taken heat for it in a variety of ways, including cancellations of his shows. And Smith has been embroiled in controversy since slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars earlier this year. Hughes doesn’t believe either man should be judged for one moment in his life. “Choices mean everything, and both of these guys have made really bold strides and sacrifices to get where they are,” Hughes says. “No one is perfect. We watch, and every now and then, we see moments of imperfection. And to me it’s the beauty of the imperfections, because it’s like, ‘What happens next?’ I care less about when people fall down. I’m always concerned about how do we get back up.” Aside from her �V suc cess, Hughes has earned a reputation for giving Black and brown people opportunities to work in the business.entertainment

Rikki Hughes, producer Continued from p. 36

FALL 2022 39

WITH OUR GLOBAL PARTNERS PROUD TO BE THE OFFICIAL AIRLINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON. ANDalaskaair.com/HuskiesVISITTHEFAM.

By Hannelore Sudermann

The blue suit for which the show is named refers to the suit Congressman Andy Kim of New Jersey wore on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riots. In the aftermath, Kim was photo graphed cleaning up garbage from the halls of the Capitol. The suit is now in the Smithsonian.

MEDIA What Your Food Ate: How to Heal the Land and Reclaim our Health

Menace to Empire Moon-Ho Press,UniversityJungofCaliforniaFebruary2022

Current hate crimes against Asian Ameri cans have deep roots in American empire build ing around the world, including places like the Philippines, Hawaii, Ko rea, Japan and Vietnam. History professor Jung wrote his book to reckon with that past, and the United States’ historical, government-led vilification of Asians and Asian immigrants.

In May, Audrey Quinn was visiting a friend’s apartment when her pocket started vibrating. And vibrating. She tried to ignore it, but then, with apologies, she pulled her cellphone from her jeans. “Did you just win a Pulitzer?” someone texted. As far as Quinn knew, no. She wasn’t even aware that a podcast she had worked on was nominated. But after a few seconds and a few more texts, she realized that “Suave,” the series about life prison sen tences for juveniles, a series that she spent nearly a year editing, had won in the Audio Reporting category. “There I was just sitting on the couch with my 2-year-old playing in the other room. It was just such a weird, surreal moment,” she says. Quinn, ’07, came to the UW to study neurobiology. She was drawn to the field because understanding the mind seemed like an elevated pursuit. “But I struggled through it,” she says. After college, she realized “I really en joyed talking about the science behind how our brains work, but I didn’t thrive in the day-to-day research.” While doing lab work, she tuned into “Radiolab,” a science podcast known for its sound design, and “This American Life,” a public radio show. She loved the format of those shows. She obtained free training at Bellevue College’s radio station in exchange for producing stories. That led to an internship at KUOW and to Quinn finding her calling. It was time to move to New York. Quinn’s science background and report ing experience landed her with CBS’ SmartPlanet. She later worked as a guest reporter for NPR’s “Planet Money” and found a full-time position with New York Public Radio. At the same time, she worked as an independent contractor and started teaching journalism at New York University. In 2019, Futuro Media invited Quinn to join a major project: Reporter Maria Hinojosa, an Emmy Award winner, had been interviewing David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez for 25 years. Gonzalez had been sentenced to life in prison as a juvenile. In 2012, a Supreme Court decision allowed him to be released after 31 years. The podcast explores his journey through the criminal-justice system and his adjustment to life on the “outside.”

A Pulitzer Podcaster

Audrey Quinn’s inno vative editing skills helped tell the story of David Luis ‘Suave’ Gonzalez, who was sentenced to life in prison as a juvenile.

FALL 2022 41

QUINNAUDREYCOURTESY

Audrey Quinn detours from a life in science to become an award-winning storyteller

Quinn had already done some reporting about imprisoned people and was eager to join the team. She met the producers, including Hinojosa, who was deeply in vested in Suave’s story. Quinn brought the innovative editing skills she developed on the crest of a growing podcast industry. The team started building the podcast in October 2019 and didn’t finish until sum mer 2020. “We made it, and because we had the time and everybody was so in vested in it, we remade it,” says Quinn, who recalls walking around her Brooklyn neighborhood listening to version upon version as she fine-tuned it. “The team was so strong, and the tape was so strong,” she says. “We kept it really immersive in Suave’s journey and snuck in a lot of facts and numbers and history.” Although she has won a Pulitzer, Quinn’s life has changed “very little,” she says. “It feels really good knowing that something I worked on was recognized on this huge stage.”

The Blue Suit Podcast Shin Yu Pai, ’09 KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio Writer and visual artist Pai has turned her tal ents to a new podcast that celebrates and explores commonplace things and uncommon people. The series—based out of KUOW’s studios—has featured Jessica Rubenacker, ’09, exhibits director at the Wing Luke Museum, and her passion for plant collecting. Another highlighted Anida Yoeu Ali, a UW Bothell art ist-in-residence famed for her global perfor mance project wearing a red, sparkly chador.

Geology Montgomeryprofessorandhis wife, Biklé, a field biologist and landscape architect, dig into the connections between soil health and human health. They show how the soil, plants and animals are all part of one system that affects human health. They argue that we should shift ag riculture’s focus from quantity to nutrition, variety and ecosystem well-being.

David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé W. W. Norton & Company, June 2022

A program of the UW Alumni Association

At first, everything in the school was borrowed or came from donations. But then the Romanian government and UNICEF delivered more resources, includ ing giving each child a blue UNICEF backpack filled with notebooks, colored pencils and paints. The organization also provided every class with supplies and materials for three months of instruction.

“We basically haven’t stopped working since we arrived in March,” Konovalova says. “Right now, we are running a summer camp for our children.” She is quick to express her gratitude to the Romanian people and their government. She also credits her UW community, particularly her friends from college who used their social networks to spread the word about the school and its needs.

Anastasiia Konovalova and her fellow teachers serve 350 kids in two locations in Romania. Become an advocate today

She and a few other teachers started providing classes in a refugee center, but demand for the school grew quickly and they needed more dedicated resources. They reached out to the Romanian gov ernment. A nearby high school offered eight classrooms. It wasn’t an ideal situa tion—after the high school adjourned for the day, the Ukrainian teachers and 277 students moved in from 3 to 6 p.m.—but it wasThousandssomething.offamilies from Odesa and other parts of Ukraine fled to Romania for the safety of their children. According to UNICEF, more than 1.1 million Ukrainians have fled through Romania. More than 80,000 have stayed in that country, most of them women and children.

A few weeks ago, the former UW ex change student called from a playground in Bucharest, Romania, to talk about her move and her efforts to establish a school for refugee children in their new—hope fully temporary—city. Before the war, Konovalova was head teacher at Ostrovok Primary School. Right away in the new country, she thought about how to offer Ukrainian children some normalcy and a place to learn and socialize with other children. She credits her experience at the UW, where she was an exchange stu dent in 2011 and 2012, as the source of energy and imagination that led her to create a free primary school.

Higher Education Needs Your Voice UWimpact.org

In May, the first lady, Jill Biden, visited the school and heard the stories of the mothers, children and teachers. The news of that visit—which was shared around the globe—prompted further support from private gifts to complement the resources from non-governmental organizations and the Romanian government. On the day of her phone call, a UW alum had sent $100 for sports equipment.

By Hannelore Sudermann MOLDOVANIOANA

ADVOCATE

42 UW MAGAZINE

In March, not long after the first Russian airstrikes on Odesa, Anastasiia Konovalova fled her home in Ukraine with her toddler, Kyril. The teacher had to leave behind her husband and parents, but she brought math books and a desire to continue teach ing Ukrainian children.

Now, she and her fellow teachers serve 350 kids in two locations. The new school year starts up in September, and they will continue to offer classes in the late after noon. “We’re encouraging our children to join Romanian schools and come to us after,” she says. Now that it’s clear their stays will be longer than a month or two, “we need a medium-term plan,” Konovalova says. “We have people who have nowhere to go back to.” Others are physically in Romania, but mentally back in Ukraine. “They’re always thinking, maybe tomorrow we’ll go home.”

School in Wartime

A Ukrainian teacher creates normalcy for refugee children

Konovalova describes her time as a UW exchange student as the best year of her life. “I had a scholarship and I lived on campus and I met all these wonderful peo ple,” she says. That experience comes into play now. “I don’t know if I would be able to do what I’m doing now without the UW. I learned there didn’t have to be boundaries, so much was possible.”

The UWAA offers a variety of opportunities for UW alumni, students and friends to connect in the professional development space, including online services, events and mentoring opportunities. Explore the power of the pack together.

UW HUSKY LANDING

UWALUM.COM/CAREERDESIGNFELLOWSHIP

UWALUM.COM/HUSKYLANDING

Huskies@Work pairs students and alums for a one-on-one in-person or virtual meetup.

— UW Alum LET’S GO FOR A RUN! It’s back and better than ever. Join fellow Huskies on Sunday, Oct. 9 for UWAA’s signature scholarship fun run, Alaska Airlines Dawg Dash. This annual 10K Run and 5K Run/Walk through UW’s iconic campus includes a Husky Pups Run for kids, dog registration and a Post-Dash Bash for runners. Not in Seattle? Not a problem. Sign up for our Run Anywhere virtual option and run with the pack wherever you call home. Registration discounts available for UWAA mem bers and students. UWALUM.COM/DAWGDASH

UWALUM.COM/HUSKIES@WORK

“It is so rewarding to talk with very bright students that are starting out their journey. Gives me hope for the future.”

FALL 2022 43 NEWS FROM THE UWAA

New this year! The UW Alumni Association is teaming up with the pro career coaches at Mission Collaborative to present a 30-day online program designed with the mid-career professional in mind. If you’re not getting the work-life balance, growth or compensation you deserve in your career, it’s time to make a change. A mix of individual selfpaced discovery, team working sessions and partner conversations — Career Design Fellowship is de signed to keep participants engaged and on track with the help of Mission Collaborative and a sup portive UW Husky Pack. Stop going through the motions in an unfulfilling career and invest in yourself. UWAA life and annual members receive significant registration discounts.

FELLOWSHIP

HUSKIES@WORK Huskies@Work matches current UW stu dents with alumni and friends to discuss career journeys and job experiences. Participants begin by creating a profile on UW Husky Landing and completing a pro gram application. Then the great match begins! UWAA connects current students with an alum who has a shared background and interests for a meetup. Students receive insights and advice; alumni enjoy a chance to inspire the next generation of Huskies. It’s the perfect program for participants who could use a little more help making a connection and have a story to share. Applications are open through Oct. 16 for conversations in November.

The online home for career-minded Huskies, UW Husky Landing is the net working platform for the extended UW community. Alumni, students, faculty and staff from all three UW campuses are wel come. UW Husky Landing helps to take the work out of networking with online prompts and tools that make it easy to connect, resources on a range of profes sional growth topics and discussion boards. Whether you’re looking for your first job out of college or are a seasoned professional looking to build your network, there’s a place here for you. UW Husky Landing is free and — best of all — you can sign up at any time.

Give Back. Get Back.

UWALUM.COM/EVENTS

UWAA’s professional development programs offer alumni opportunities to further their careers and help others along as well UW CAREERALUMNIDESIGN

Stanigar’s college career could have ended as many do—economic struggles and other systemic barriers lead to Black men having the lowest graduation rates of any demographic group, a full 20% lower than white men. Instead, he found the UW Brotherhood Initiative (BI), a grow ing program aligned with the UW’s Race & Equity Initiative. Designed to provide a more inclusive learning community for men of color on campus, the Brotherhood Initiative offers cohort-based seminars and one-on-one mentorship.

“I just thought, before I have an unfor tunate accident with the police, let me write down everything I can for my boys— a conceptual road map to navigate life,” Lott says. He built the Brotherhood Initiative with a team of doctoral and post doctoral students; it launched in 2016 with an inaugural cohort of about 30 men from underrepresented communities of color. The goal was to advance the lives of young men at the UW and illuminate both the obstacles and pathways to success. They gathered weekly to build community and create a safe space to learn about nav igating the university and life in general, while creating a resource network and finding enrichment from academic, civic and leadership opportunities. Now the Initiative is welcoming its sixth cohort—doubled in size to 60 students, selected based on applications andByinterviews.collectingquantitative and qualitative information, BI researchers are not only tracking how students are doing

With the BI’s support, Stanigar’s hard work, quiet confidence and earnest com mitment to making a difference have served him well. The senior is now a double major in business (marketing and information systems) with Foster School honors. He’s a mentor through Young Executives of Color and a Mary Gates Leadership Scholar. And he’s deeply in vested in giving back to the organization to which he attributes his success.

What Leadership Looks Like

As the UW’s Brotherhood Initiative grows—and welcomes a counterpart Sisterhood Initiative this fall—students like senior Noah Stanigar continue to soar

BUILDING BROTHERHOODTHE INITIATIVE

By Chelsea Lin academically and outside of class—they’re aiming to improve curriculum, programs and services, making the BI even more effective with each new cohort.

To Stanigar, the heart of the program is Paul Metellus, the BI’s student success coordinator. He’s the pipeline to resources, the one writing the newsletters, an advo cate, adviser, mentor, friend—he’s “the dude who’s carrying it on his back,” saysMetellusStanigar.builds rapport from the start by giving every new BI student his cell number. “If they have a good relationship with me and really trust me,” he says, “it makes it easier to come to me when they’re stressed.” That stress is real: Black men are more likely to be juggling full-time employment with classes, to be the first in their family to attend college, and to have no cushion of generational wealth. Metellus works with the students to overcome any obsta cle—big or small—to reaching graduation.

“If there are life issues going on, that’s definitely impacting them academically,” he says. Same for financial troubles. He cultivates connections all over campus so he can send students to not only the appropriate department but to a friendly face there. “I always say, ‘Take a deep breath, we’ll get through this together.’” Metellus was integral in helping Stanigar get through that first year. “It was my first Paul Metellus (far left) and Joe Lott (far right) join the BI’s latest graduates at the 2022 End of Year & Celebration.Graduation

AND OPPORTUNITY AT THE UW 44 UW MAGAZINE

Like every college freshman in fall 2019, Noah Stanigar had a first year that did not go as planned. The Jamaican-born, Las Vegas–raised undergrad says he had no idea what to expect from the University of Washington. But things started to derail even before a pandemic forced classes online. “My first quarter was hard,” Stanigar, ’23, remembers. “That transition, moving from Las Vegas and getting acclimated to Washington, classes and the environment— it was a lot to handle at first. Then, seeing barely anyone that looks like you, it some times drags you down emotionally. That was before I found a community.”

Dr. Joe Lott started teaching at the UW in 2007. But it wasn’t until an unarmed Trayvon Martin was shot in Florida—as Lott pondered the lives of his own young sons and a career ahead of him in aca demia—that he kept returning to this question: “What can we imagine as a better learning space for young men of color?”

So far, it’s working: The BI’s five-year graduation rate is currently 82%, virtually identical to that of male students not from underrepresented communities. Put simply, Lott says, they refuse to let anyone fail. “When people are struggling, trying to leave, we will absolutely call their mothers,” he says. “These young men are in an environment that wasn’t cre ated for them. So we decode the environment and help them see the pathways to success based on who they are and who they want to be.”

GENEROSITY

DENNIS WISE Noah Stanigar, shown here in the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center, came into his own once he found a community in the Brotherhood Initiative. As president of the BI’s Brothers in Color student organization, he helps deepen the BI’s impact for students.

This fall, the Sisterhood Initiative wel comes its first cohort of women of color. The program, led by Dr. Rashida Love, had originally planned to accept 30 stu dents. Love got 63 applications. “I made the decision pretty soon that I wasn’t going to cut people,” Love says, with a smile despite having willingly doubled her workload. “I can’t hear about what the Sisterhood Initiative would mean to them and then say, ‘No, so sorry.’” Though women of color graduate at slightly higher rates than their male counterparts, Love is quick to point out that higher education wasn’t built to include any Black or Indigenous people. (The majority of U.S. colleges and univer sities were designed to educate affluent white men; it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that legislation finally opened up large-scale access for Black and Indigenous men and women.) Love had just finished her dissertation—on the ex periences of Black women multicultural directors at predominantly white institu tions—when she learned the UW was hiring to build out this program. It was a perfect match.

FALL 2022 45

midterm that got me,” Stanigar says, de scribing a bad grade he received after inadvertently skipping a page of the exam. Then a discussion with an aca demic adviser left him feeling even more worried—“like all was lost.” Metellus helped him “become levelheaded and realize everything was not going to fall apart,” he recalls. “Learning that I was able to make mistakes in college really boosted myMetellusmorale.”says, “I’m really proud of Noah. He’s passionate about creating a space for men of color on campus to thrive and flourish the way he’s been able to thrive and flourish.”

Stanigar is all for the intersectionality brought forth by the Sisterhood Initiative— he hopes to see the Brotherhood Initiative’s message and resources amplified to all students of color. “As a person, as a pro fessional, as a student—there are a lot of things I wouldn’t have been involved with,” he says, if not for the program. “Every little thing I’ve earned or achieved, the Brotherhood Initiative has had an impact.”

Love has helped build the Sisterhood Initiative “to create a campus space for women of color to feel seen and heard, where they can stand in their authenticity in every space,” she says. “The goal is not to try to mimic the experience of white students but to create, to think about: What does leadership look like for us? Why can’t that be more powerful than the model that’s out there?”

SISTERHOOD TAKES FLIGHT

Many gifts, one goal. The Brotherhood and Sisterhood Initiatives exist thanks to a range of philanthropic support—from individual contributions to corporate giving. In 2021, UW President Ana Mari Cauce allocated significant resources from a flexible fund toward both initiatives, paving the way for a bright future for the students of color they will impact, for years to come.

No matter how you give—through directed gifts or a flexible fund like the UW Fund—we are grateful for your support of the University of Washington.

giving.uw.edu/sept-2022

Finally, after working as a surgical recovery nurse back in Seattle at Swedish Hospital, Montgomery made the difficult decision to step back from nursing practice. Bruce’s biotech career had taken off—he co-invented and led development teams for one of the first AIDS drugs and two new cystic fibrosis therapies—and Joanne devoted her time and care to raising the couple’s two young boys. But while she was no longer a practicing nurse, Montgomery still maintained a strong connection to the profession. And a new chapter began. “That’s when I launched my volunteer career,” she says.

For more than 20 years, Montgomery has also been involved with the Seattle chapter of the ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Foundation, which partners with the UW and Washington State University to fund doctoral students in STEM disciplines. She loved supporting graduate students and helping attract the very best to the state and the UW, but something was missing: Nursing graduate students weren’t eligible for ARCS support.

Joanne Montgomery’s volunteer leadership has helped guide the UW in its role as one of the country’s preeminent public universities. And her persistent advocacy has helped the School of Nursing, also one of the best in the country, to grow even stronger.

When she decided to take a step back from her nursing career, Joanne Montgomery, ’77, didn’t slow down. In the late 1990s, after more than 20 years as a critical-care nurse, she began a new chapter as a volunteer and advocate for the profession. She’s now spent 20 more years (and counting) as a philanthropic leader at the University of Washington, raising money and support to bolster the UW and especially the School of Nursing.

Joanne Montgomery, recipient of the 2022 Gates Volunteer Service Award, spent two decades as a nurse—and two more ensuring that the UW is at the forefront of the field

“For some reason, people think nursing is a soft science,” says Montgomery. “It’s not. It’s a hard science.” With unwavering conviction, she helped lobby the national ARCS organization to allow the Seattle chapter to offer nursing fellowships—and in 2006 it became the first chapter in the nation to do so. “These fellowship opportunities,” Emami notes, “have played a crucial role in our ability to recruit top-tier graduate nursing students from diverse communities nationwide.”

Azita Emami, executive dean of the School of Nursing, says Montgomery’s leadership during this time is a landmark effort with tremendous long-term impact—enabling the school’s am bitious plans for the future: “plans that will benefit rural as well as urban areas of the state, while extending the School of Nursing’s health-care leadership and contributing to the University’s legacy of community service.”

46 UW MAGAZINE

JOANNE MONTGOMERY, R.N. Joanne met Bruce Montgomery, ’75, ’79, while studying for mid terms in the 24-hour Health Sciences Library. Their first date was a coffee break, and then they went back to studying— Joanne, to be a nurse, and Bruce, to be a doctor. After they grad uated, their careers would take them across the country and back; they returned to Seattle in 1994. Joanne held several chal lenging and rewarding nursing positions throughout those years: working in surgical ICU overflow trauma at Harborview in Seattle; caring for AIDS patients at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in the terrifying early days of that epidemic; and serving at another VA hospital in New York.

In recognition of Montgomery’s selfless volunteerism, inspiring philanthropy and ongoing impact, the University of Washington Foundation has honored her with the 2022 Gates Volunteer Service Award, presented annually to those who have taken the University to new heights—and encouraged many others to do the same.

Shaping the

LANDMARK EFFORTS

Nursing has been part of Montgomery’s life since she was a teenage candy-striper, volunteering at the hospital near her Normandy Park home and dreaming of studying nursing at the UW. Forty-five years after achieving that dream, Montgomery has made an enduring mark at her alma mater. She and her husband, Bruce, have given generously across the University for more than three decades, providing crucial resources to the School of Nursing, UW Medicine, the Department of Chemistry, UW Athletics and beyond.

Montgomery’s career of UW service began on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the School of Nursing, a role she held for 20 years, helping bring top nursing students and faculty to the University and further broadening its impact. In 2021, Joanne became an emeritus member of the Advisory Board. Montgomery co-chaired the school’s Be Boundless campaign, which raised more than $42 million for the future of the school.

The Montgomerys immediately led by example, establishing an ARCS fellowship in nursing (in addition to a second in honor of the American Lung Association). Their generosity inspired four other named ARCS endowments that support the School of BeyondNursing.ARCS, the Montgomerys have created endowed professorships in nursing and chemistry, a fellowship for doctoral nursing students, and a chair in pulmonary and critical care, and they’ve given generously to support programs and initiatives across the University.

On this page, we celebrate an exemplar of service: Joanne Montgomery, ’77, the recipient of this year’s Gates Volunteer Service Award. After graduating from the School of Nursing and working in the field for two decades, Joanne has spent two more serving the UW as a philanthropic leader. She has made a difference across the entire University, and her unwavering advocacy for the top-ranked School of Nursing has helped it continue to attract the very best faculty and students—all in the name of expanding its impact for the health of people across Washington and all over the world. Whatever your cause, and however you give, be it through philanthropic support, advocacy or volunteering, we are grateful for the difference you make—and for reminding us of what is possible.

By Patrick Crumb Chair, UW Foundation Board

On page 44, you can read about another meaningful form of advocacy. Launched in 2016 to promote academic success and leadership opportunities for men of color at the UW, the Brotherhood Initiative is thriving thanks to a community of generous donors and volunteers who provide crucial resources to help expand its reach and make a real difference in students’ lives. I’m proud to announce that this fall, the UW welcomes to campus the first cohort of the Sisterhood Initiative.

WISEDENNIS FALL 2022 47

LEADING AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL

For more than a decade, Joanne matched this cross-university philanthropy with cross-university leadership on the UW Foundation Board, which cultivates meaningful financial support for the UW’s mission. She has held multiple roles as a director, helping propel the whole University forward—and is as dedicated as ever to bringing the School of Nursing to the“Aforefront.bigpassion for me was educating others about what nursing is and what it does, because there is a lot of misconcep tion out there,” she says. She spearheaded a nursing “Dawg tank,” where distinguished nurse researchers pitched their innovative, life-changing research ideas to a panel of potential funders. Whether Montgomery is helping promote UW Nurse Camp (which increases access and opportunities in nursing for high school students from underrepresented, underserved commu nities), supporting and encouraging graduate students, or helping attract and retain leading faculty in the School of Nursing, she is not only working to shape the future of this vital field—she’s ensuring that that future is being forged here at the UW. For Montgomery, the most meaningful part of all her work isn’t attracting outstanding students to the UW. It’s watching what they’ll do next. “It means everything to me,” she says. “What graduates will go on to accomplish. All the impact they’ll have.”

inAdvocacyAction WISEDENNIS

When I was a UW Law student in the late 1980s, I didn’t give much thought to the ASUW Shell House, perched unassumingly on the shore of Lake Washington where Union Bay meets the Montlake Cut. Despite its many layers of historical significance, it was closed to the public and used as convenient storage for decades.In2018—inspired, in part, by the bestseller “The Boys in the Boat”—I joined other UW volunteers in supporting a campaign to restore the building to its rightful place as a historic centerpiece of the waterfront community. And now, thanks to a broadening circle of generous supporters making game-changing gifts, it looks like this dream may soon be realized. Learn more about the ASUW Shell House on page 48. It’s a lesson I’ve learned again and again at the UW: Never underestimate the power of passionate volunteers and advo cates when they unite behind a cause.

Learn more about how you can support the ASUW Shell House at giving.uw.edu/asuw-shell-house Director,NicoleContact:KleinASUW Shell House Campaign 425-246-7373kleinn@uw.edu

This has been a place to gather since time immemorial. Long before Lake Washington and Lake Union were connected by the Montlake Cut, the Lakes Duwamish people would come together here to portage across the narrow isthmus that spanned the water.

The spot’s Lushootseed name—stəxʷugʷił (stukh-ug-weelth)—means “carry a canoe.”

In the final weeks of World War I, the U.S. Navy built a seaplane hangar here; it’s one of only two such wooden hangars still standing.

“This building is about much more than the past—it is about the present and the future,” says Smith. “It’s a place for the people who live here to meet and accomplish great things the way the ‘Boys in the Boat’ did.”

PICTUREBIGTHE

The structure, dubbed the Associated Students of UW (ASUW) Shell House, then became the workshop of legendary boatmaker George Pocock—and was home to a UW rowing program that won eight national championships in just under 30 years and inspired the bestselling book “The Boys in the Boat,” about the team’s journey to winning gold at the 1936 Olympics.

For several more decades the building was known as the Canoe House, the UW hub for canoeing, sailing and other water recreation. And then it was used mostly for storage, fading into obscurity. Until now.

The Shell House will feature prominently in the upcoming George Clooney film adaptation of “The Boys in the Boat,” but it’s on the cusp of an even greater starring role. The completed facility will celebrate the UW’s legacy of con nection to the water and the Pacific Northwest, hosting thematic programs, courses and events. It will once again be a place to gather on the water’s edge, where the campus and community can reflect on our past as we move ever forward, together.

Says Surace-Smith, “We hope others see what we see: the tremendous potential and value of opening and restoring this iconic space for the community.”

EVER FORWARD By Jamie Swenson

Photo by Mark Stone

Thanks to a catalyzing donation from Brad Smith and Kathy Surace-Smith—and the support of an ever-growing group of generous donors—the Shell House will soon be renovated and restored to glory. Smith and Surace-Smith made their gift with a vision of the facility’s potential as a communal centerpiece.

REGIONAL TRUSTEES Emily Anderson, ’09 Regional Trustee Roman Trujillo, ’95 Washington State Trustee Eugene Saburi, ’93 International Trustee

JacqueTRUSTEESREPRESENTATIVEUNIVERSITYJulien,’15 UW Bothell Trustee Rai Nauman Mumtaz, ’07, ’10 UW Tacoma Trustee 2022 – 2023 KAPAHIANIL

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

By Kris Lambright

UWAA TRUSTEES

New UWAA President Kris Lambright has set her sights on reaching a broader audience of alumni and ensuring BIPOC and other un derrepresented alums feel welcome.

All alums have a unique Husky story. I want to share mine.

Kris Lambright, ’86 President Amit Ranade, ’98, ’03 Past President Joe M. Davis II, ’16 President-elect Sabrina Taylor, ’13 Vice President Mark Ostersmith, ’90 Treasurer Bettina Carey, ’84 Secretary Erin McCallum, ’89 Assistant Secretary/LAC Chair Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 Executive Director, Ex Officio

50 UW MAGAZINE

AT-LARGE TRUSTEES

Courtney Acoff, ’10 John Amaya, ’01, ’05 Skylar Brown, ’19 Pam Cleaver, ’85 Danielle DuCré, ’08 Matt EchoHawk-Hayashi, ’00 Deborah Fournier, ’95 Evelyn Hernandez, ’16 Mina Hooshangi, ’12 Tanya Kumar, ’18 Solynn McCurdy, ’01 Janet Phan, ’09, ’13 Mike Tulee, ’93, ’15

A Husky Family Legacy

I am a third-generation Husky. My maternal grandparents graduated in the 1920s and ’30s. My dad, Jim, was in school and on the football team when I was born and later coached here for 30 years, so I literally grew up around Husky Stadium. My con nection to Husky Athletics became even stronger when I became a proud picco lo-playing member of the Husky Marching Band. I joined an amazing group of dedi cated musicians and rabid Husky fans, many of whom remain my closest friends. Adding to the family fun, my brother Eric also attended UW and played football. But I want to highlight the less-wellknown role that my mom, Beryl Simpson, played in my story. My mom is both my mentor and role model. She is a “double Dawg,” with both accounting and law de grees. When I was trying to decide on my major, she talked to me about the great foundation a business/accounting degree would provide. And, of course, she was right! I’ve been fortunate to have an im pactful career in nonprofit and social-service executive leadership. It was also inspiring to have her attending law school while my brother and I were on campus. I now add a new chapter to my Husky story with the honor to serve as president of the UW Alumni Association Board of Trustees. For more than 130 years, the UWAA has mobilized UW graduates and friends to make a profound difference in the life of the UW. The UWAA has extraordinary volunteers and professional staff who share a deep commitment to building inclusion and be longing within our diverse community. I plan to continue the UWAA’s strong focus in broadening our community engagement and supporting UW’s commitment to di versity, equity and inclusion. In the year ahead, we will be expanding our community-centered engagement ini tiatives to reach out to broader audiences and strengthen authentic relationships, focusing on historically underrepresented alums who may not have felt a sense of belonging in the past. I’m also pleased to share an exciting new strategic alliance between the UWAA and University Book Store, one of our community’s oldest, independent book stores. In the year ahead, the UWAA and the Book Store will explore new and mean ingful ways to reach and serve the UW community, its alumni and the broader public at large. I want to thank the thousands of UWAA members who have supported our University for generations and encourage all alumni to consider joining the UWAA in its support of the UW. Keep an eye out for events and oppor tunities to engage with the UWAA in these new ways (be sure to check our website, washington.edu/alumni/). As I continue to add to my Husky story, I invite you all to join me: Dive in and be active!

UPCHURCHMICHAELCOURTESY

For the full article, go magazine.uw.edu/hartlto

My Friend, John Hartl

Of Rock Hudson in the 1966 movie “Blindfold,” he wrote: “Hudson didn’t act, he behaved.” And of Hudson’s co-star Claudia Cardinale: “Her performance consists mostly of changing from one skin-tight costume to another and then getting her sweater wet.” Humorous in an understated way, some times tart but blunt when he needed to be, John was able to place films in context of the times, in the history of cinema and within the work of individual directors and actors—all when he was in his early 20s. That’s because he had been studying movies since childhood. While still in el ementary school, John made a weekly movie bulletin board for the family, featuring everything playing in their small town of Othello and at the nearby theaters in Quincy and Wenatchee. According to his sister Mary, John would put up clips from reviews, publicity photos, and his own remarks and illustrations. Then, just for himself, John

A movie buff from childhood, John Hartl's voice as a film critic was "utterly assured and unaffected."

John Hartl was still an undergraduate at the University of Washington when he began his career as a film critic for The Seattle Times in 1966. For the next half century, he would guide and instruct read ers, helping us understand, in ways we might not have been able to articulate, why a film worked—or crashed. Even after he took an early retirement from The Times in 2001, disillusioned with newspaper life and an onslaught of trivial movies, he couldn’t give up. He kept writing freelance reviews until the progression of Lewy body dementia stopped him a few years ago. He was 76 when he died on June 3, still enthralled by movies. It’s rare for someone so young to come to a job fully formed. But even in his ear liest reviews, John’s voice was utterly assured and unaffected. He could sum up a performance with a few choice words.

My Seattle Times colleague was born to be a movie reviewer

FALL 2022 51

A Personal Remembrance

STAY SUPPORTCONNECTEDSTUDENTSENJOYBENEFITS LEARN MORE UWALUM.COM/JOINUWAA JoinPack!the

By Sheila Farr had another bulletin board. That’s where he’d post the films showing in his imaginary moviehouse: “Citizen Kane,” sci-fi and horror movies, Hollywood classics, the great silent films of Chaplin, Keaton, W.C. Fields. In John’s ideal moviehouse, there was always a double feature. When John got a paper route to earn money, he began collecting—and mak ing—8mm and 16mm movies. He would entertain the neighborhood kids in the garage, hanging a sheet for a screen, selling popcorn and homemade root beer. At 16, he won first place in a Portland newspaper’s Oscar awards contest, choosing the winner in nine out of 10 categories. (He got free movie passes for a year—a real bonanza.) Did he already know that newspapers and movies would be his life?—Sheila Farr is an author and arts writer. She served as the visual art critic for �he Seattle �imes from 2000 until 2009.

WA•SEATTLE

DEST•STARBUCKS1971 To learn more, marysplaceseattle.orgvisit: This is our hometown, where we’re from and where we live. And we believe everyone deserves a place to call home. That’s why we’re committed to supporting local efforts to shelter families. Our ongoing collaboration with Mary’s Place — a Seattle-based emergency shelter provider— helps bring women, children and families inside. We care about our community. Because this is our hometown.

RECOGNITION JOHN BISSET, ’58, was a member of the 1958 Husky Hall of Fame crew that stunned the world-champi on Soviet team in Moscow as part of a goodwill mis sion that made them the first U.S. athletes to compete behind the Iron Curtain. He spent 12 years as executive director of the UW Alumni Association, where he institut ed the Teacher of the Year Award and the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series. He died June 6 at age 85.

Philanthropist Harriet Stimson Bullitt’s advocacy for Earth knew no bounds fields as she sought new directions for the“Overfoundation.time,they became a broader set of interests that included everything from solar energy to toxics to radioactive waste at Hanford to cleaning up Puget Sound,” Hayes says. “And as she got into one area after another, she would frequently speak with someone at the University to make sure that she was well-grounded in the science.”Among her many donations to the University, she endowed the executive directorship of the UW’s EarthLab, a proj ect that serves as a “bridge between academic disciplines and folks who are actually out in the world getting dirt un der their fingernails,” Hayes explains. Bullitt spent a lot of time in the out doors getting her own fingers in the dirt and had an eclectic list of experiences that included a fencing championship, competitive flamenco dancing and even captaining her own tugboat.

Philanthropist Harriet Stimson Bullitt, ’64, collected eclectic experiences and planted seeds that grew all over the Pacific Northwest before her death on April 23 at the age of 97. Bullitt led efforts by her family founda tion to donate more than $200 million to environmental causes and founded the Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort in Leavenworth. She also started a publica tion that championed the early work of authors Ken Kesey and Ivan Doig, ’69, and cartoonist Gary Larson. It would even tually become Seattle Magazine. Bullitt earned her degree in zoology from the University of Washington in 1964, but that was just a small part of her association with the University as she took on new challenges and interests over the decades. Denis Hayes, CEO and chair man of the Bullitt Foundation, says she developed friendships with many profes sors in the natural sciences after graduation. That list grew and diversified into other Loving the Environment Was Her Nature

PHOTOGRAPHYTRIMPEKEN FALL 2022 53 TRIBUTE 1924-2022BULLITTSTIMSONHARRIET

JORDAN SHELLEY, ’20, was a young emergency medical technician who came to rural Washington in 2007 after being adopted along with his siblings from an Ethiopian orphanage. He came to the UW from Skagit Valley College, where he won a prestigious two-year scholarship to study in Seattle. He had dreams of going to medical school before he was killed in a traffic accident on the Ship Canal Bridge. He died May 24 at age 22.

ARTHUR L. ARMSTRONG ’51, Lynnwood, age 94, June 22

ALUMNI JACK RALPH BELUR Mercer Island, age 94, April 29

WILLIAM IIDA ’74, Puyallup, age 70, May 17

LAURIE ANNE RILEY Seattle, age 75, June 2 PAUL SHANNON Seattle, age 83, May 18 1940 FREDERICK CHESTERLEY ’42, Blaine, age 87, Sept. 4, 2006

FREDERICK JOHN GALL ’70, Kirkland, age 77, June 20

KATHLEEN BROUGHER Los Altos Hills, California, age 83, May 24

WILLIAM HARPER ’65, Sammamish, age 79, May 16

DAVID W. SANDELL ’60, ’64, Grove, Oklahoma, age 81, March 12

WALLACE C. VOLZ JR. ’63, Shelton, age 84, Nov. 24

TIA SCIGULINSKY ’64, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, age 79, May 22

JUDY NEUMANN ’74, Seattle, age 78, Feb. 18

54 UW MAGAZINE In Memory

LARRY C. OTTEN Kirkland, age 70, April 7

LAWRENCE SCHINKE ’57, Renton, age 86, June 18

VERNITA JENNINGS ’42, Seattle, age 101, March 23

THOMAS WALKER PROFIT ’72, Redmond, age 78, April 18

RICHARD S. LOUDON ’52, ’54, Seattle, age 92, May 17 MARILYN LOUISE BALE ’53, age 90, May 23 JOSEPH C. DONOGHUE ’53, Bellevue, age 92, May 27 DANIEL R. HUNTINGTON ’53, Snohomish, age 90, March 28 DONALD ANGUS MCKAY ’54, Freeland, age 88, May 23 THOMAS PULLEN ’54, Bellevue, age 90, June 13

KATHRYN JEAN CLARKE ’66, ’72, Seattle, age 78, June 26

JOHN NEWTON HUNT ’74, Kenmore, age 86, April 25

GERALDINE MARIE SPILLERS ’71, Chesterfield, Missouri, age 72, March 19

JAMES A. ANDERSEN ’49, ’51, Bellevue, age 97, May 1

RICHARD D. ULREY ’55, Boulder, Colorado, age 92, Oct. 17 HANNA MISCH FRENCH ’56, ’74, Seattle, age 88, June 5 HARRISON SARGENT JR. ’56, Seattle, age 87, May 24 HUGH CURRIN CHEESMAN ’57, Edmonds, age 88, June 21

MICHEL PHILIPPE STERN ’58, ’60, Mercer Island, age 85, June 13

STANLEY TOSHIHIKO MAEBORI ’65, Hononulu, age 79, April 14

SALLY A. NORDSTROM ’61, Bellevue, age 80, April 1 MARIA ORALLO ’61, Seattle, age 95, March 20

M. WAYNE BLAIR ’65, ’68, Poulsbo, age 79, June 3

ROBERT BELLANTI ’69, Las Vegas, Nevada, age 76, April 24

MOLLIE JEAN BARDUE ’51, Camano Island, age 93, Feb. 28 SIGMUND BRUDEVOLD ’51, Seattle, age 94, March 29

RICHARD H. RAHE ’61, Wilsonville, Oregon, age 85, March 24

GERALD DAVID RAMEY ’68, Edmonds, age 89, May 11

JAMES TRAVIS ’58, Seattle, age 89, Feb. 21 1960 PAUL BAUMGAERTNER ’60, Silverdale, age 84, April 10

WILLIAM E. HOLLY ’62, Port Orchard, age 81, Sept. 6, 2021

SYLVIA MARGARET ANDERSON ’55, Seattle, age 90, May 19 WYMAN KIRBY DOBSON ’55, ’60, Renton, age 88, March 24 ARTHUR GUNLOGSON ’55, Burien, age 93, May 4 BERNARD F. RAY ’55, Sammamish, age 88, May 30

RICHARD MONSON ’74, Seattle, age 86, April 22

ROBERT STEVENSON ’51, Seattle, age 97, April 10

ANNE B. WORLEY ’51, Lopez Island, age 92, March 15

DANA F. BESECKER ’74, Bellevue, age 72, April 13

JEAN BERNICE HANSEN ’49, Seattle, age 95, June 10 1950 FRANK ERNEST CHRISTENSEN ’50, ’56, Shoreline, age 93, May 31

GORDON MERRITT ’70, Seattle, age 74, April 16 ALAN A. ARAMAKI ’71, ’72, Renton, age 78, May 18

ROBERT WOOD WILKINSON ’65, Issaquah, age 81, Dec. 29

LINDA HARRIS LAMB ’58, Bothell, age 85, May 13

DAVID BRUCE NICHOLSON ’58, ’68, Seattle, age 86, Oct. 11

CHARLES BLAKE GILKEY ’47, Mukilteo, age 95, May 27

JERALD DAYLE BATES ’65, ’69, Woodinville, age 79, Jan. 1

ARNOLD TRENT WELLMAN ’46, ’56, Freeland, age 97, March 24

BRADLEY LUTON ’66, Hansville, age 83, April 8 MARK BOWMAN ’68, Issaquah, age 76, March 13

JOHN ULVILA ’69, ’70, Kirkland, age 81, June 11 1970

JOANNE LOUISE CRAIG ’73, ’78, ’84, Seattle, age 71, April 28

HAROLD S. PERANTIE ’69, Kent, age 79, Feb. 7

LAEL ELLIS BRAYMER ’52, Renton, age 91, May 1 MERRILL “GENE” BUETOW ’52, ’63, Oro Valley, Arizona, age 92, April 13

RAYMOND WALTER BLANK JR. ’70, Bellingham, age 74, May 16

JOHN CASSEDY DAY ’50, Seattle, age 95, April 10 BERYL JEANNE CRONKHITE ’50, ’54, Kirkland, age 90, April 21 BOWEN SCARFF ’50, Seattle, age 94, April 28

JAMES ALBERT ALMON ’69, Scarsdale, New York, age 77, April 17

DONALD W. PHELAN Bellevue, age 93, May 13

MARGRETTA H. STANTON ’47, Spokane, age 92, June 15 FRANK WESLEY BURNS III ’48, ’53, Freeland, age 98, June 15 ALICE CHRISTINE MILLER ’48, Belfair, age 94, May 6 MARILYN NEWLAND ’48, Vashon, age 95, April 13

BARBARA BRIER WELLMAN ’46, Freeland, age 96, June 20, 2021

LEON E. MUHLICK ’61, Enumclaw, age 83, June 18

JAMES PHILIP SIFFERMAN ’75, Grapeview, age 70, May 11

CRAIG SARAN ran his family’s business, Superior Home Services, for many years but ended his work career at UW Medical Center–Montlake as an environmental services manager. In retirement, he mentored students at Pine hurst Middle School in Seattle and was a beloved teacher. He died June 22 at the age of 75.

DAVID E. BARNETT, ’84, played a major role with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and its econom ic development initiatives. The Aberdeen native, who was elected chairman of the Cowlitz general council in 2021, led the effort to deed tribal land into trust to devel op a casino. He died May 26 at the age of 61.

JAMES M. BARDEEN was a UW physics professor with an international reputation for elucidating the properties and behaviors of black holes and unraveling the equations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The son of a twotime Nobel laureate in physics, he retired from the UW in 2006. He died June 20 at the age of 83.

JAMES PATRICK BUSHNELL ’81, Seattle, age 62, April 23 MARY DALLAS-SMITH ’81, age 89, June 24

TIM BULLARD, ’62, was an offensive lineman for the Husky football team that won the 1960 Rose Bowl. He later served in Vietnam as a first lieutenant communications officer in the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. Returning to Seattle after the war, the communi cations major spent 23 years working as a director and producer for KOMO-TV. He died April 7 at the age of 81.

JOHN J. AYLWARD, ’71, was one of the most prominent actors to come out of the UW’s drama department. He had major roles in the TV series “The West Wing” and “ER,” and acted in many movies and theater produc tions. He co-founded Seattle’s Empty Space Theatre and was a company member of Seattle Repertory Theater. He died May 16 at the age of 75.

LAVERNA COBB, perhaps best known in her role as organist at Queen Anne Christian Church in the 1950s and ’60s, spent the last 10 years of her professional career working at the UW School of Fisheries. Cobb, of Bothell, died March 7 at age 92.

GLEN A. LOVE, ’54, ’59, ’64, rowed under “Boys in the Boat” legends Stan Pocock and Al Ulbrickson before helping found the discipline of ecological literary criti cism while teaching at the University of Oregon. Love wrote three books and edited or co-edited more than 70 others. He also teamed with his wife of more than 65 years, Rhoda, to publish “Ecological Crisis: Readings for Survival” in 1970. A fly-fishing conser vationist and advocate for the West’s wild spaces, Love was the inspiration for the founding of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. He died May 8 at the age of 89.

ANDY JOW TUN LOOK ’75, Seattle, age 75, May 19

ROLAND A. HUBLOU, ’58, served in the U.S. Navy dental corps after graduating from the UW School of Dentist ry. He later established a private practice, was a strong supporter of the UW dental school and served as an affili ate faculty member, lecturing and providing clinical instruc tion until he was 85. He also provided pro bono services for those less fortunate. He died Feb. 9 at the age of 88.

ERICA BENNETT ’77, Fairfax, Virginia, age 66, April 10 LEONARD RENE DUPREE ’77, Green Valley, Arizona, age 70, April 28

STEVE CUMMINGS ’79, Kalispell, Montana, age 71, June 7 1980

DONNA BETH WINDBLADE ’77, Lake Forest Park, age 77, May 12 GORDON AUBREY FUNAI ’78, Bothell, age 66, March 13

PAUL ANTHONY CAPELOTO ’80, Seattle, age 65, May 18 JOHN GIVINS ’80, Seattle, age 64, April 5

To report an obituary Email us at magazine@uw.edu or call 206-543-0540

FALL 2022 55

GREG BENTON ’84, ’88, Tacoma, age 62, May 27

MARJORIE H. BENNETT ’86, Mercer Island, age 90, March 26 1990 TRACIE GALLAHER ’90, Seattle, age 56, April 11 2000 ANITA M. PHILLIPS ’00, Bellevue, age 45, April 15

JACQUELINE A. JUHL, ’96, served on the faculty of the UW School of Dentistry. She was awarded fellowships in Dental Education and Care for Persons with Disabilities. She was co-author and editor of “SMART Oral Health: The Medical Management of Caries.” She died Feb. 6 at the age of 71.

HUGH MCELHENNY, ’52, was one of the most exciting football players ever to wear the purple and gold. The Los Angeles native was a firstteam All-American running back in 1951 and set 16 school records; his 296 rushing yards against WSU in the 1950 Apple Cup still stands today. A first-round NFL draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers, he earned six Pro Bowl selections and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981. He died June 17 at the age of 93.

ROSS HUNTER CHAMBERS served in the National Guard and had a long career in commercial real estate. He also fundraised to support Harborview Medical Center’s burn unit to provide virtual re ality therapy for burn victims’ pain relief. He died May 25 at the age of 80.

JOAN FLAKS BRASHEM was a board member of Hillel at the University of Washington and past treasurer of United Jewish Appeal in Tacoma. She died May 9 at the age of 90.

MARIA LUISA LACABE ’82, ’84, ’95, Seattle, age 88, April 6 MATTHEW BALLARD ’84, age 64, April 1

JENNIE CLAIRE PROCTOR ’77, Los Angeles, age 85, Feb. 19

KACEE CHANDLER ’84, Bellevue, age 70, April 5

CHARLES MARKS joined the UW philosophy department in 1966, served as its chairman in the 1980s and retired from the University in 2007. He published numerous articles on the philosophy of the mind and the history of philosophy. Marks died April 18 at age 81.

JUDY POLL was a former UW student and Mercer Island schoolteacher who was a big supporter of the UW. She died May 5 at the age of 80.

BRUCE A. WALKER, ’56, served as president of the UW Alumni Association Board of Trustees and received the 1993 UWAA Distinguished Service Award. A member of the UW Foun dation Board, he was a noted community, business and philanthropic leader who once said, “I put a high value on volunteerism. Giving back to the community is like casting bread upon the waters.” He died May 26 at the age of 88.

FACULTY AND FRIENDS

L. CRAIG PURKEY, ’66, had a long career at the UW, serving as budget director and vice provost for planning and budgeting. He died May 5 at the age of 80.

FRANKLIN R. LINDSAY, ’72, ’74, ’78, was a staff psychologist at the UW Counseling Center in the late 1970s as well as a clinical assistant professor in the UW psychology depart ment. He died April 28 at the age of 77.

GAIL TANAKA ’77, Seattle, age 70, June 7

By Caitlin Klask

always makes autumn Saturdays special

THINGS THAT DEFINE THE UW 56 UW MAGAZINE The Greatest

In Columbia, South Carolina, you can tail gate on a train car. Ole Miss fans dressed to the nines gather by the tens of thousands in The Grove in bucolic (and humid) Oxford.

University of Tennessee, Baylor University and the UW treasure the tradition of tail gating by boat, also known as “sailgating.” But nobody does it quite like the Huskies. “Both [Baylor and Tennessee] have a river that brings football fans into the sta dium,” says Connor Savage, the UW’s director of stadium operations and events. “From what I understand, it’s not a river that people want to swim in, or very well used, or very scenic.” But the UW is blessed with the greatest setting in college football. Each game day, as many as 3,400 Husky football fans reach Husky Stadium by water. (Total attendance is typically around 70,000.)

Sailgating began many years ago without an official docking spot; boaters crossing spectacular Lake Washington would tie up to trees along the muddy shore. Now, you’ll find everything from small skiffs to 94-foot yachts full of exuberant fans taking in the views before the game. Private docking spots are extremely limited. “I liken it to trying to get season tickets at Fenway Park or Wrigley Field,” Savage says. “We have a waitlist of more than 100 boaters who have been trying to get on the dock for years.” At least 20 boats have maintained their coveted dock space for more than 20 years, according to Savage. “We have a lot of people who are willing to spend a lot of money, but we don’t take bribes, so you have to wait,” he says. But you don’t have to dock to enjoy the full sailgating experience. Anyone can throw an anchor down in Union Bay—just wave your hands and a shuttle boat service will take you from your boat to the stadi um’s dock. And if you’d like a designated Setting in Football Sailgating games

before Husky

College

WHAT GIVES YOU HOPE? Learn more about UW Honors: honors.uw.edu Support UW Honors as we expand our capacity to recruit exceptional students to the UW: honors.uw.edu/leadership-fund

Private docking spots are very limited, sort of like trying to get season tickets to Fenway Park or Wrigley Field.

Today’s urgent problems don’t come with singular solutions. That’s why UW Honors exists –to foster collective brilliance in search of answers. To better understand how incarceration contributes to housing instability, Law Societies and Justice major Courtney Hooks took the Honors course Abolishing Poverty. “My future deﬁnitely lies in community based work . . . Let’s create an alternative route of what justice looks like to us.” Honors students like Courtney take intellectual risks as they prepare for a lifetime of inquiry, discovery, innovation and leadership.

driver, charter boats are available to carry anywhere from 20 to 500 passengers, offering food, drinks and the best sight seeing imaginable along the way. “Lake Washington presents a really cool and unique backdrop,” Savage says. “Until you’re down there at the water, it’s hard to get a grip on it.”

COMMUNICATIONSATHLETICS

KEEPLEARNING.UW.EDU Certificates, degrees and courses for busy adults, with flexible options in the evening and online. SOMETHINGLEARNNEW EXPLORE THE POSSIBILITIES 4333 Brooklyn Ave NE Campus Box 359508 Seattle, WA 98195