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

WHY WE WALK

The science behind putting one foot in front of the other

Teachers of the Year They are just like us p28 Bringing Back the Bronze Tsutakawa gate saga p30 Pam Cipriano Heart of health care p34

Chilling Out For most people, camping season starts in early summer. For a few hardy UW students, it started in March. This spring, UW Recreation staff led a small snow camping expedition to Lake Easton State Park. The overnight trip offered lessons in the basics of snow camping, snowshoeing and survival skills like building quinzhees, shelters made from large piles of loose snow. To build their quinzhees, students piled snow into mounds and left them to harden. Then the mounds were carefully hollowed out. Sticks and poles poked into the structure helped guide student Samantha Lieberman as she removed snow from the inside. Photo by April Hong

OF WASHINGTON LAKE EASTON

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Yasmine Farhat, environmental engineering Ph.D. candidate

You’re determined to make a difference. We’re here to help you chart your course. At the University of Washington, we believe that education is the key to unlocking change — within yourself, and around the world.

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ON THE AIR

Gary Lai, ’99, steps out of the New Shepard crew capsule and into the West �exas landscape after a 10-minute flight into space. He was one of six people on the NS-20 Blue Origin mission in March. Read the story on page 20.

Did you know KUOW was born before NPR? The UW-affiliated station celebrates 70 years of news and entertainment in the Puget Sound area.

TO THE 9TH CIRCUIT

COURTESY BLUE ORIGIN

Judge Sal Mendoza Jr., ’94, has been nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He could be the first Latino judge from Washington state to serve.

Why We Walk

Good, Better, Best

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UW experts explore how walking benefits the body and the brain. By Hannelore Sudermann

The UW’s Teachers of the Year know their stuff— and show every day how much they are just like us. By Caitlin Klask

Stealing Beauty

A daughter tells the story of her artist father and the theft of his beloved bronze gates from the Washington Park Arboretum. By Mayumi Tsutakawa

The Heart of Health Care Pam Cipriano is advancing the role and visibility of nurses both here and abroad. By Chris Talbott

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FORWARD

Global Realities Commencement Celebration Roar of the Crowd

THE HUB

Goodbye, Scissor’s Edge State of the Art Circadian Rhythm Research Athletics

COLUMNS

Sketches Alumni Awards Media Coast Guard Leader Tribute In Memory

UDUB

Husky Sailing Club

Cover illustration by James Yamasaki.

MAP OF THE STARS

In April, Jean Smart, ’74, joined the list of Huskies with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Find the other seven Hollywood legends on our website.

A FUTURE WHERE YOUR PAYCHECK DOESN’T IMPACT YOUR PREGNANCY. People who can’t afford or access prenatal care are more likely to suffer pregnancy-related complications. Healthier communities make healthier people. The University of Washington is leading the way in addressing the interconnected factors that influence how long and how well we live, from poverty and health care to systemic inequities and climate change. In partnership with community organizations, the UW transforms research into concrete actions that improve and save lives across the country — and around the world.

LEARN MORE uw.edu/populationhealth

O P I N I O N A N D T H O U G H T F R O M T H E U W FA M I LY

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE JACKSON SCHOOL O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L S T U D I E S

Global Realities By Leela Fernandes

As we emerge from a global pandemic that profoundly unsettled University life, we now turn to face multiple, often intersecting, global challenges. The pandemic illuminated and exacerbated underlying inequalities not only in our own country, but within nations and between the Global North and Global South. More than ever, universities must rise to the challenge of catalyzing positive change. The disparate access to health care— more than half the world’s population lacks access, according to the World Health Organization—and significant disparities in access to vaccines are among the many ways socioeconomic inequalities shaped by class, race, gender, caste 6

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and social geography have worsened the effects of the pandemic. These inequalities are woven into a series of overlapping global challenges that include the effects of climate change and a range of geopolitical crises in places such as Yemen, South Sudan and Ukraine. As our students and scholars navigate a world shaped by these and other challenges, we are compelled to think more about inequality. Global challenges like COVID-19 do not stop at the borders of nation-states. And we are witnessing the complexities of globalization through financial markets and supply chains, and the global impact of geopolitical unrest through refugee crises and migration.

Universities must be agents of change through global engagement and international education. New generations of students, regardless of their intellectual fields of interest or the professions they seek, will become global citizens and can influence the decisions of businesses, organizations and governments. Our faculty and scholars already bring to the fore their expertise in areas like identity and culture, migration, markets, development, human rights, Indigenous politics, food security, foreign policy and international security. They advise governments, inform global conversations and advocate for human rights. Universities can have a real impact by building on this expertise and engaging the general public. While the challenges we face are global in scale, solutions to climate change, political conflict and deep-seated inequalities require an in-depth understanding of particular places and their cultures, histories and political and economic contexts. In our fast-paced world, universities have the resources, the institutional capacity, and responsibility to drive such understanding. We need travel and the immersive and in-depth study of particular communities, countries and regions. This provides distinctive understandings of how the world works. Universities have a social responsibility to support such forms of student engagement and learning. Finally, the global challenges we face also present universities with an ethical responsibility. We need a kind of global engagement that is founded on intellectual humility. That means we are open to learning from communities and comparative contexts rather than assuming we can develop global solutions from the specificities of our own interests and experiences. In this endeavor, “diversity, equity and inclusion” must be more than a formulaic institutional policy. Rather, universities must revise their own institutional structures and intellectual approaches to facilitate reciprocal forms of engagement and learning, breaking from histories of colonialism and racial inequality. In the process, the challenge for universities is to grapple with local change within their own institutional and educational structures even as they seek progress on a global scale. —Leela Fernandes is the Stanley D. Golub Endowed Chair. Her scholarship focuses on questions of inequality and change. ILLUSTRATION BY ANTHONY RUSSO

Putting minds at ease That’s what UW Medicine’s top-ranking neurologists and neurosurgeons do best. Find complete care for headaches, strokes, seizures, brain tumors and aneurysms, Alzheimer’s disease and more at the UW Medicine Neurosciences Institute. Our neurological specialists provide treatment, surgery and rehabilitative care — right here in the Puget Sound region. uwmedicine.org/nsi

STA F F A publication of the UW Alumni Association and the University of Washington since 1908 PUBLISHER Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 ASST. VICE PRESIDENT, UWAA MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Terri Hiroshima EDITOR Jon Marmor, ’94 MANAGING EDITOR Hannelore Sudermann, ’96 ART DIRECTOR Ken Shafer DIGITAL EDITOR Caitlin Klask STAFF WRITER Chris Talbott CONTRIBUTING STAFF Ben Erickson,

Karen Rippel Chilcote, Jane Higgins, Kerry MacDonald, ’04 UWAA BOARD OF TRUSTEES PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS

Chair, Nate Fulton, ’99 Vice Chair, Roman Trujillo, ’95 CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Mayumi Tsutakawa CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Matt Hagen, April Hong, Anil Kapahi, Andrew Shurtleff, Mark Stone, Dennis Wise CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS

Joe Anderson, Olivier Kugler, David Plunkert, Anthony Russo, James Yamasaki MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR

EDITORIAL OFFICES

Commencement Countdown

Phone 206-543-0540 Email magazine@uw.edu Fax 206-685-0611 4333 Brooklyn Ave. N.E. UW Tower 01, Box 359559 Seattle, WA 98195-9559 ADVERTISING

For the past two years, our graduates have left the University without much fanfare. Zoom events—thanks to the pandemic—supplanted the real-life celebrations that often come with cards and cakes and photos of the new graduates in their caps and gowns. But this year, the UW’s newest class of alumni will have their day. And so will those from the two years prior. With double graduation events for each campus, the Husky alumni will have real pomp-and-circumstance occasions, just like their predecessors have had for the past 145 years. For graduates from the main campus, two ceremonies will honor the past three graduating years. On June 11, the class of 2022 will be feted in Husky Stadium. Then on June 12, more than 4,000 graduates from the classes of 2021 and 2020 will return to walk in person. UW Tacoma will hold two ceremonies at the

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Washington State Fair Grandstands on June 13. And on June 15, UW Bothell will hold a final pair of ceremonies at Hec Edmundson Pavilion in Seattle. These students have faced some of the most unusual and challenging higher-education experiences in history. More than ever, they deserve to be celebrated. Also, we should recognize their mentors and teachers, who themselves sacrificed and stretched to deliver the best possible educational experiences. In this issue, we offer a tribute to our teachers of the year—faculty from all levels and disciplines who are the newest recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Award. Six are recognized for their mastery of their subjects and for inspiring and mentoring their students. But awards could well go to all of the UW faculty, many of whom gave so much time and effort to reach and support their students, our new alumni, over the past three years.

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PLUNKERT

SagaCity Media, Inc. 509 Olive Way, Suite 305, Seattle, WA 98101 Jeff Adams, ’83 jadams@sagacitymedia.com, 206-454-3007 Carol Cummins ccummins@sagacitymedia.com, 206-454-3058 Robert Page rpage@sagacitymedia.com, 206-979-5821 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 necessarily represent the UW’s official position. �his magazine does not endorse, directly or by implication, 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.

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R O A R F R O M T H E C R O W D

Deeply Inspired

I was moved by Luna Reyna’s legal-relief article (“Parole Model,” Winter 2021). The UW juvenile parole project connecting incarcerated individuals with a team focused on relieving their long, juvenile-imposed sentences is deeply inspiring. I am a UW donor and a 1998 graduate of Pacific Lutheran University with a degree in sociology with a crime-and-deviance concentration. If a program like this had existed when I was a student, my entire career trajectory would have been different. I struggled to find an opportunity that spoke to my inspiration and opened doors to a career path in that vein. I ended up in a successful tech career and now I am in K-12 education, but the itch has never been fully scratched. I’m excited to see news of this program and it motivates me to continue supporting UW as a donor. The article has inspired me to investigate nonprofit organizations to see how I can get back involved in this space. Cynthia Hagan, Seattle

FOREVER PART OF THE PACK The official source for alumni apparel, Husky gear, books, and more since 1900

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Time to Act

I am so proud of my alma mater for taking the lead in the recent pandemic, climate change, and equity issues, which always involve housing, hunger, and health. The problem is the disconnect between understanding/solutions and getting our government to take action. It is time for the University to take the next step in solving these issues: creating the political will for Congress to take action. The latest UN report on climate change makes it clear that we can’t wait. Students often have the knowledge, energy and desire to make a difference, but too often lack the understanding of how to translate that into action, beyond protesting. We need actions that will actually culminate in solutions/initiatives becoming the laws of the land. Let’s rise to this challenge, with the University of Washington taking the lead, as we have done so often. Our very existence depends on it! Willie Dickerson, ’73, ’94, Snohomish

Awareness Needed

I write as counterpoint to two letters of complaint printed in the Spring 2022 issue of the UW Magazine. Both indicate dissatisfaction with the article “The Machine Runs Amok” (Winter 2021). One points out that mis/disinformation can come from either the left or right of the political spectrum, which is a legitimate point. But the other letter writer seems to assert that the value of attacking fake news and its ilk was compromised because the article’s author didn’t happen to mention his personal concern about “now infamous Don Lemon.” The second letter is more aggressive, arguing that the article “crosses the line from legitimate opinion to propaganda. It is poorly researched, undocumented, opinionated blather.” Ouch. In the first case, I disagree that the value of the article itself is in any way diminished because the author used a representative and provable set of examples without mentioning Don Lemon. As for the second letter, I continue to scratch my head over its tone and apparent intent. The magazine is not a scientific journal. The goal of this article, and others like it, is to raise issues and focus on a few core elements to broadly educate and then let the reader decide how to go beyond the article to further their knowledge on the subject if they so choose. I think a sentence near the end of the article already responds to the second letter writer’s own situation: “If someone’s mind is made up one way or another, there may not be much you can do to convince them, so you may have to evaluate whether it’s worth the effort.” Dick Almy, ’79, ’81, Seattle

UW or The UW?

Congratulations for changing the name of “Columns” to “University of Washington Magazine,” simultaneously unbranding it as just another alumni magazine. However, you haven’t yet eliminated the thing that for me is the most grating. Nobody, I repeat, nobody calls UW “the UW,” now or ever. That’s why I was happy that in his article “For the Love of iPhone” (Spring 2022), writer Clinton Colmenares actually wrote a sentence ending with “...chair of the psychology department at UW at the time.” Now that Mr. Colmenares has set a precedent, might you take the overdue step of thoroughly rooting out “the UW”? Dave Ayars, ’76, Seattle Editor’s note: �he UW style guide says that referring to the University as “the UW” is proper usage.

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©2022 AT&T Intellectual Property. AT&T and the Globe logo are registered trademarks and service marks of AT&T Intellectual Property. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. SUMMER 2022

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MATT HAGEN

Hanging up the Shears

The Scissor’s Edge, a salon and barbershop in the HUB since 1949, is closing By Chris Talbott Jane Snell will be putting down her scissors and shears for good at �he Scissor’s Edge, the shop in the HUB that she has owned for the past 38 years.

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Year after year, from the time she bought The Scissor’s Edge salon and barbershop in 1984, Jane Snell daydreamed about taking time to enjoy the cherry blossoms each spring. As she thought about it while cutting and dyeing hair, she built a particular scene in her mind. “I’ve always wanted to go out to the cherry blossoms with a bottle of wine and sit on the bench and just enjoy the beauty after work and, like, put the wine in my coffee mug,” Snell says. Being a go-getter, though, she never

could justify putting down the shears and venturing over. Too busy, too busy, and the decades slipped by—until this spring. She’s closing her Husky Union Building landmark on June 10 after 38 years and has finally checked out the internationally renowned arboreal scene. She didn’t bring the wine, but everything else was as she’d hoped. “I should have done it, and I thought about it, but then I would have had to leave campus [to get the wine] and come back,” Snell says. “But I thought, you know what,

just seeing the cherry blossoms is better than nothing.” The Scissor’s Edge opened in the HUB in 1949, making it one of the campus’ oldest continuously operating institutions. But time has changed the traffic patterns, Snell says, and COVID-19 only accelerated a longterm decline in potential customers. When she took over the business, 19,000 people passed through the HUB each day. And four times a year, students would line up outside her door to copy lecture notes, a quarterly event that helped fill her appointment book. “I have to say it was the best advertising when we had the lecture notes, because they’re sitting out there for three hours and they would see a lot of people come in ratty and leave beautiful,” Snell says. The internet wiped out that customer source, and the proliferation of dorms with cafeterias and restaurants, coffee shops and new meeting technologies were already diminishing traffic in the HUB, Snell says. Now foot traffic rarely tops 3,000, and even her decades-long customers are hesitant to come on campus. And she’s got a lot of those. “Probably 70% of them I’ve done 30 years or longer,” Snell says. “And probably about 10% of my clients or maybe even 15% are from the first year I started.” Jane Lybecker, ’96, a now-retired administrator who managed the Materials Science and Engineering Department, first ventured into The Scissor’s Edge in the early ’90s and never stopped coming. “I went to her because it was convenient on campus,” Lybecker says. “Somebody recommended her and I went. She does such a fabulous job cutting hair, and nobody’s ever colored it like she has. She’s so good at that, and friendly and fun.” So much fun the two decided to take a vacation together to Spain and are now close friends. Their senses of humor mesh. “When I decided to get my hair cut shorter, and we were talking about styles, she says, ‘You want a little bit of sass?’ ” Lybecker recalls. “So she left it a little bit long in the back. That was my sass.” Snell’s not sure what she’ll do next. She thought she’d run The Scissor’s Edge until retirement, but she is only 58. She opened a studio in her home during the height of COVID and could pivot there. And she has an ailing mother she’d like to spend time with too. “I might just take three months off after I do this, and then we’ll see what happens,” Snell says.

STATE OF THE ART MAGMA SLIT

Immersive Art Engage your senses with paintings, sculptures, sounds, scents and live performances, all components of the Henry Art Gallery’s commissioned work from Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca. Her art is collaborative, bringing together performers, the audience, metal sculptures and mural-sized works. In this exhibit, a line of steel structures titled “PUERTA DE TRENZAS” or “Gate of Braids” spans the gallery. They are based on Huanca’s drawings of people and groups

of people adorned with ropes of braided hair. According to the exhibit description, Huanca’s art “aims to destabilize the male gaze while exploring femme and Indigenous, specifically Andean, narratives and mark-making.” Four large paintings that surround the stage represent the four seasons in colors of mostly blue, white, green and orange. The olfactory experience includes smells from nature like leather, a tree native to the Yucatan and burnt earth. “MAGMA SLIT” runs through April 2023. SUMMER 2022

Work and Sleep

Our circadian rhythms affect our work life. Managers would do well to align work hours to suit employees’ natural patterns. By Chris Talbott As the pandemic reshapes how, when and where Americans work, research at the UW suggests we might want to hang onto some of the flexibility we enjoyed over the past two years. Christopher Barnes, an expert in organizational behavior at the Foster School of Business, leads research into how sleep and our circadian rhythms affect our work life. It’s a newer area of study, and so far, Barnes has found a number of positive outcomes when businesses allow their employees to align their natural rhythms with their work schedules. “For most people, it’s a matter of shifting even one or two hours from some sort of anchor,” Barnes says. “Let’s say the anchor is 8 to 5, and if you give workers the flexibility to push that forward or backward by an hour or two, that’s already a potentially large benefit to their lives.” The benefit of flexing workdays is just one of the sleep-related discoveries Barnes has made over the last decade. Another study, conducted with Indiana University’s Cristiano L. Guarana, ’15, and others, 14

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focused on circadian rhythms and how sufficient sleep affects a leader’s charisma, which then fosters an impression that the leader and the mission are extraordinary. The study, “Too Tired to Inspire or Be Inspired: Sleep Deprivation

People are often willing to undermine their own health in order to do other things. and Charismatic Leadership,” was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Barnes and his colleagues found that leaders are more charismatic and inspiring when they align their personal rhythms—and get sufficient sleep—in advance of times of high employee interactions like speeches, meetings or retreats. They also found that employees

are more willing to be inspired when listening to their leaders during their own optimal times. In another study, his group explored chronotypes, the natural tendency of people to sleep and wake at particular times. Those with a morning chronotype—euphemistically called larks—do better with important work activities early in the day. Those with a night chronotype—called owls—perform better later in the day. Most of us are forced to live a lark’s schedule. But many of us must follow schedules more suited to owls. “I think we see this especially in the context of people who work the night shift,” Barnes says. The findings dovetail with two other recent Barnes studies that focus on sleep and work. One showed that a bias developed against individuals who start their day later when given the chance to determine their own schedule. The other measured the impact of circadian rhythms on behavior at work. “We find that larks are more unethical late at night than in the early morning and owls are more unethical early in the morning than late at night,” Barnes says. “So it’s kind of the same idea that you get a better employee if you have an alignment between their work schedule and their circadian rhythm.” Barnes says he has also discovered that it’s much easier to convince folks to sleep better so they can work better than to sleep longer so they can live longer. “For some reason, if you tell people that they will live healthier lives as they get more sleep, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, I kind of get that but, you know, there are so many other things I need to do with my time,’” Barnes says. “People are often willing to undermine their own health in order to do other things, maybe because the price for that doesn’t usually come out for a few years down the line.” Barnes and his colleagues also have looked at how insomnia affects work outcomes and whether glasses that help filter blue light during the day foster better sleep at night, and thus better performance at work. Now that he has identified some of the problems that sleep deprivation presents in the workplace, Barnes is turning his scholarly attention to identifying ways to help workers and managers bring their best selves to the job. “I’m working on a few more projects right now that are really focused on small-scale, easy-to-implement interventions that can help people sleep better, which is good for them, and gets better work outcomes as a result, which is good for organizations,” Barnes says. “So everybody wins.”

For the Next Generation Tom Ikeda glimpsed the future when taking on a dark part of our past: Japanese American incarceration By Caitlin Klask Microsoft. Each academic discipline supplied him with the essential tools to lead Densho: His chemistry degree taught him to start with a hypothesis and test it, chemical engineering helped him grapple with large-scale infrastructure, and his MBA gave him the financial skills for managing a nonprofit organization. Entranced by technology, he saw the future of storytelling taking place on the personal computer screen. “The mantra was that information should be at your fingertips … it was the water I would swim in every day at Microsoft,” Ikeda says. Still, elders in the community encouraged Densho leaders to create VHS copies or printed transcripts of interviews to distribute to libraries across the nation. “This whole concept of a digital, online presence —they just didn’t understand. Even when I explained it to them, they said, ‘That

COURTESY DENSHO

After 26 years leading Densho, a nonprofit organization committed to preserving and sharing Japanese American history, executive director Tom Ikeda, ’76, ’79, ’83, is retiring this summer. During his tenure, he conducted more than 250 interviews with World War II incarceration camp survivors, received local and national honors and brought Japanese American history into the digital age. It started with a call from a former Microsoft senior executive on a Sunday in the mid-1990s. “Scott Oki reached out to me and said, ‘There’s this new project that is starting to collect the stories of Japanese Americans,” says Ikeda, who grew up with Oki in Rainier Valley. “It just seemed like the perfect match.” Ikeda studied chemistry, chemical engineering and business at the UW and spent his early career working for IBM and

Densho founder �om Ikeda

sounds so pie in the sky.’ ” But Ikeda’s decision to create a “museum without walls” paid off. Each year, Densho showcases its rich content to roughly 1 million visitors. Even before COVID-19 lockdowns, most Seattle museums saw far fewer in-person annual Continued on p. 17

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COURTESY DENSHO

visits. “When I go to museums,” Ikeda says, “you don’t see very many younger people. They’re accessing this information online.” Spreading the word about Japanese American incarceration to young people is key for Densho, especially since Washington schools do not include it in the core curriculum. “Education is a confounding issue,” Ikeda says. School districts make their own decisions about which subjects are taught, so advocating for the inclusion of Japanese American history isn’t ideal. Instead, Densho partners with TED-Ed to reach larger audiences with digitally accessible learning modules. “My thinking has been, let’s make it as easy as possible to make these materials available.” Ikeda attributes some of Densho’s success to Japanese American community leaders like Aki Kurose. He recalls a town hall in the early days, where some community elders expressed concern for the project, and were reluctant to tell their stories and relive the pain of the war. Kurose knew her influence. “She would say loud enough for people to hear, ‘Tommy, what

Densho staff gather outside their office, located near the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist �emple. �om Ikeda (bottom right, wearing white) founded Densho in 1996 to “educate, preserve, collaborate, and inspire action for equity.”

you’re doing is the best thing possible that we need. Thank you for doing this.’ ” As it turned out, sharing their stories became a healing process for interviewees. Some recounted memories for the first time. Martha Nishitani, who owned a dance studio on University Way Northeast for decades, broke out in tears after her interview. Ikeda recalls her saying, “Now I can die, because my story has been told.” Eighty years after internment began, most potential storytellers have died. Densho will continue sharing and preserving

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survivors’ stories and showing up as an ally for other vulnerable communities. But when it comes to the future, Ikeda maintains his “pie-in-the-sky” thinking. “We are this really interesting treasure that is still waiting to be discovered by people in the academic world,” he says. Densho’s archive contains more than 111,000 photos and objects, as well as thousands of hours of video interviews. “With machine learning and data science, you have different ways of looking at these digital archives. It’s ripe for new things to happen.”

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RESEARCH

UW scientists help complete the sequence of a human genome By Chris Talbott

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GUT CHECK When it comes to gut health, putting the right foods into your diet might be as important as what you leave out, says Dr. Chris Damman, a UW gastroenterologist. You might be starving your gut microbiome. People focus on the nutrients their body needs, but they don’t focus much on the nutrients their microbiome needs. Damman studies the microbiome’s role as a protector against inflammatory bowel disease, metabolic disease, infectious diarrhea and malnutrition. Most dietary advice lists what to avoid: sugars, saturated fats, salts and processed foods. But many commercial diets also take out good food and nutrients that come in whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables and nuts. “If you revamp your microbiome by focusing on the nutrients they consume, they will produce metabolites that stimulate the body to naturally produce factors like GLP-1, a blockbuster hormone for diabetes and obesity, to help reset the metabolism so you’re not craving sugary foods as much,” he says. Consider the “four F’s”: fibers, phenols, fermented foods and healthy fats. Studies show these foods in your diet can boost your metabolism, immune system, and even lifespan.

UW NEWS

Twenty years ago, as a youngster with an interest in science, Mitchell Vollger saw the headlines heralding the cracking of the human genetic code. He was struck with a sense of melancholy. “I remember very clearly seeing the covers of National Geographic and Science and Nature in the early 2000s and truly thinking, ‘Oh, that’s so cool,’ ” Vollger says. “ ‘Too bad it’s over.’ ” But it wasn’t over. There were gaps in the sequence, and about 8% of the genome was still missing. Now a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Evan Eichler’s genome sciences research lab, Vollger, ’21, is part of an international team building on the groundbreaking work of the Human Genome Project by producing the first gapless sequence of the human genome. Vollger came to the UW with experience helping complete a reference genome for a yeast strain. Upon joining the Eichler lab, “I learned that it wasn’t complete in humans, either. There was still work to be done completing the human genome. And so I think that’s been the ambition from sort of almost day one in Evan’s lab. My thesis proposal, written four or five years ago, was to finish a human genome. And it’s exciting that the technologies all came together at exactly the right time to do that.” In 2001, when researchers announced to great fanfare that they’d mapped the human genome, they were able to do so because they determined there were parts of the genome that were too hard to decipher. And, frankly, those parts didn’t look all that promising; just a jumble of incomplete and repetitive information. Eichler, then in his early 30s and among the youngest scientists in the group of 3,000 on the project, wasn’t convinced that the missing 8% was unimportant. “There was a lot of celebration,” Eichler says. “I remember there being huge parties, actually, about this.” But like we all learned

UW MEDICINE

Finally Finishing the Sequence

in the movie “Jurassic Park,” filling in the gaps of a genome is a tricky business and genetics requires precision. “When the job isn’t complete, it comes back to haunt you,” Eichler says. Eichler became convinced these mysterious regions of DNA—called segmental duplications—were really important. While some folks agreed, the easiest thing for most scientists on the project to do was decide “these are really difficult bits” and set them aside, he says. “They realized that the technologies just weren’t ready and it would just take hard slogging to get through some of this. So when I set up my lab, I designed it to basically focus on the hard slogging, to go through these difficult regions, and that’s the way it was for 15 years. I would say it was really hard slogging.” Eichler, Vollger and their 100 or so colleagues in the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium set out to obtain complete sequences of all 23 human chromosomes end to end. Their research slowly revealed Eichler's early suspicions were correct as technology allowed them to examine longer and longer strands of DNA, among other advances. The areas were indeed key, governing aspects important to human evolution and development like cell division, protein production in living cells and brain size. “I think that’s pretty fundamental stuff,” says Eichler. They determined that about 950 of the 20,000 genes in our genome originate in the segmental duplications. The work was highlighted in a paper called “The Complete Sequence of the Human Genome,” published in the journal Science on April 1. Vollger was lead author on a companion paper, “Segmental Duplications and Their Variation in a Complete Human Genome,” based on research done with fellow graduate student Phil Dishuck. Though the human genome is now fully mapped, it won’t be the last paper Vollger helps produce on the topic, says Eichler. “This is not the end of anything, right? It’s only the beginning.” Next, Eichler is convinced, many more discoveries will come. They may revolutionize health care, and help us understand both where we came from evolutionarily and where we’re going. “Ultimately, if we could fast forward 20 years, this will be part of the way your genetic record is reported,” Eichler says. “You will actually have a complete sequence of your mom’s and your dad’s contributions sitting in your medical record and people will be mapping predispositions and protections against disease based on that complete map.”

EARTH-FRIENDLY ELECTRONICS The very components that make electronics fast and easy to use also make their disposal an environmental nightmare. Components of smartphones, computers and even kitchen appliances contain heavy metals and other compounds that are toxic to us and harmful to ecosystems. According to the World Economic Forum, e-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world. Three researchers in the UW College of Engineering are exploring ways to make electronics more earth-friendly, with biodegradable circuit boards that dissolve in water, inks from algae and recyclable synthetic polymers. Read the full story: https://www.washington.edu/ news/2022/04/21/sustainable-electronics/

GROWING TOGETHER Each day is a chance to grow. BECU celebrates the opportunity to continue our partnership with the University of Washington and its Alumni Association. Together we spring into action to support and uplift communities across the Pacific Northwest.

Federally insured by NCUA. becu.org

Earth and Space Gary Lai, the lead architect of Blue Origin’s New Shepard program, heads to the heavens By Hannelore Sudermann

When he was asked to fill a seat on Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket launch in March, Gary Lai could hardly refuse. As the lead architect on the New Shepard program, he had a role in planning, coordinating and designing every element. Now he had a chance to experience it for himself. Blue Origin is an aerospace manufacturer and private spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon. Lai, ’99, joined Blue Origin in 2004. With New Shepard, Lai was the lead in systems engineering and the person in charge of integrating the entire program technically. He even figured out where the launch site would be and then brought in a general contractor to design and build the facility. He also led the team that de-

COURTESY BLUE ORIGIN

Gary Lai, seated right, was one of the first 20 employees of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company. In March, he joined five other passengers for the company’s fourth manned suborbital space flight.

veloped the crew capsule. On March 31, Lai joined five other passengers in West Texas for a 10-minute trip, Blue Origin’s fourth human-crewed flight. “It was a combination of everything I expected and not what I expected at all,” Lai says. He entered the capsule thinking he would compare his experience to what he intended in the design and then bring details back to the team.

“I was expecting to be carefully observing,” he says. “And that’s what I did all the way up until the engine started.” But then he hit sensory overload. They soared above 100 kilometers, reaching 2,200 mph, three times the speed of sound. The seats are next to windows 20 times the size of a typical airplane’s. “If you turn your head, all you see is outside,” he says. The sound was deafening. In 60 seconds the sky turned from blue to black. Then the booster throttled back to three Gs, then half a G “and then the engine cuts off and you start floating.” The crew capsule and booster disengaged and the passengers unbuckled their harnesses to float in the cabin for a minute or two. They quickly returned to their seats before the capsule started its descent. Two sets of parachutes deployed to slow it down. Close to the ground, the capsule drifted at 17 mph, landing in the sand and sending up a massive puff of West Texas dust. “Even to this day, six weeks later, I have complete recall of every second,” Lai says. The physical sensations, the sounds and sights: he can completely replay them in his head. “Only the births of both my children are that memorable,” he says.

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During rowing season, it’s usually mostly about getting the schedules and lineups set. Home events and road events certainly offer different challenges, and Windermere Cup/Opening Day is an entirely different beast. We hold meetings for months to prepare for that event. How many media requests do you field? Things aren’t the same as they used to be as media and its coverage has changed so drastically. We used to deal with opposing team media much, much more than we do now, and there used to be seven daily newspapers that covered us on a daily basis; now there are two. But requests come in all forms and, when the UW is highly ranked, and when we are playing a big-time home game against a top opponent, I will get something like 100-150 work emails in a given day. What’s it like handling football?

UW ATHLETICS COMMUNICATIONS

Media Man

As a kid growing up in Kansas City, Jeff Bechthold wanted to be a sportswriter. But when he was in college, he discovered the profession of sports information, and off he went. For the past 31 years, Bechthold has worked in sports information for the UW athletic department. He handles Husky football and crew. Interview by Jon Marmor Did you grow up in a sports family?

We are fortunate that the UW has so many advantages when it comes to being a successful rowing program, thanks to our location and to our long and successful history. The primary thing that has struck me over the years when it comes to working with rowers is how high-achieving they tend to be, across all aspects of their lives. What’s even more impressive is that women’s rowing is one of the few sports where athletes can arrive at the college level with no experience and, relatively quickly, become elite. The history of UW rowers with no prior experience earning Olympic medals is incredible. Most memorable Husky football moment?

Did you play sports in high school and/or college?

Most memorable Husky rowing moment?

I played everything at the youth level—baseball, basketball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, wrestling and more. But not at the high school or college level. I tried out for the high school golf team each year—it got me two free weeks of nine holes after school each day—but never made it.

The first time I attended the men’s national championships in New Jersey in 2014, the Huskies won the varsity eight race for the fourth year in a row. I’d never seen the Huskies win a national championship in person. Three years later, when the UW women became the first team ever to sweep all three NCAA grand finals—on that same lake in New Jersey—is also a top memory.

Generally speaking, we have a head coach press conference on Mondays, for which I will have prepared a new set of game notes. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we have player and assistant coach interviews after practices, and then the head coach after Thursday’s practices. On Friday, we typically meet with the TV crew, and the game is Saturday. All during the week, we’re fielding credential requests for press, visiting team staff and media, professional scouts, etc., along with a thousand other small details.

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What’s it like handling rowing?

My family always enjoyed sports, and I, at one point or another, participated in nearly all of the routine team sports. I grew up mostly in Kansas City and went to hundreds of Royals, Kings and Chiefs games, as well as the occasional KU basketball game. Kansas City isn’t much of a college town, so it was mostly pro sports for me growing up.

What’s a typical day like during football season?

I’m proud to be associated with our football program. The nature of sports dictates that, for most, there will always be ups and downs. And the nature of my job means that I’m, by definition, a background person. But from my close observation over all these years, I can say confidently that the vast majority of young men who play Husky football are exemplary individuals with uncommon work ethics and great attitudes. My main takeaway is that college sports, and football in particular given the large rosters, are about opportunities which in many cases wouldn’t have otherwise been available, and which frequently change families in a positive way for generations to come.

Several come to mind very quickly, but the one that is the most personal and meaningful was the moment it was announced on TV that the Huskies were selected as one of four teams in the 2016 College Football Playoff. That brought a wave of emotion I didn’t expect.

You’ve been at the UW forever. What’s next? Thirty-plus years ago, I applied for jobs at all kinds of schools all over the country. I only got an interview for two of those positions and got one of them—at UW. It’s not an exaggeration to say it was the best job I applied for, despite being the only one I was offered. Where would I go from here? When I leave, it’ll probably be to become a barbecue caterer, or to travel with my wife and daughters.

SCORECARD JEFF BECHTHOLD

What’s a typical day like during rowing season?

REAL DAWGS WEAR PURPLE Each ice cream cone is a chance for Lois Ko to share “a little scoop of joy” with the world. In 2016, the proud Husky grad opened Sweet Alchemy Ice Creamery in the same spot on the Ave where she served up happiness as a part-time scooper in college. At the back of her store, Lois churns farm-fresh milk and locally sourced ingredients into unique flavors like toasted black sesame, Aztec chocolate and Persian rose. She’s committed to running a just and sustainable business, and everything at the small-batch creamery — from the waffle cones to the fudge sauce — is made from scratch and infused with Purple Pride. LOIS KO, ’05

Founder of Sweet Alchemy

realdawgswearpurple wearpurple real_dawgs

WH Y W E W A L� WE were bipedal before we were human. But science still has much to explore about how we evolved—body and brain—to be walkers.

FORGET CROSSFIT and high-intensity interval train-

ing; walking is America’s most popular form of exercise. Today, more than 145 million people include it as part of a physically active lifestyle, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the numbers continue to rise: Recreational walking has surpassed pre-pandemic levels. The activity brings many known benefits: weight loss, heart health and lower blood sugar. But lately, scientists are discovering much more. A Stanford study of 176 adults found that walking boosted creativity by 60%. Another study, published in Frontiers in Public Health, linked bipedalism and brain power, making the argument that walking and the development of the human brain are profoundly interlinked. That's something UW Anthropology Professor Patricia Kramer, ’98, an expert in physical and biological anthropology, thinks about when she’s strolling across campus to her lab. She’s mulling more than her immediate health; she’s considering how humans evolved over millions of years to be very good walkers. At the Primate Evolutionary Biomechanics Lab, she and her team

By Hannelore Sudermann

study it from an engineering as well as anthropological point of view. “We were born to do it,” she says. “This is something that truly fascinates me. It has for my entire career. It’s this quintessential thing that we do, and we do it all the time from our first steps as babies to old age. And when you can’t walk, it can really change your quality of life. “Our story, the story of the genus Homo, is about bipedal movement,” Kramer adds. Evidence has early humans walking upright about 6 million years ago, give or take a few million years. Our early human ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, was bipedal with long thighs and strong knees that allowed her to support her weight on one leg at a time. The foot particularly intrigues Kramer. The way it is built with a high arch and ability to move from heel to toe is especially suited to walking. Three to 4 million years ago came Lucy, whose fossilized skeleton was discovered in Africa in 1974. The first scientists to study her quickly realized that her normal mode of movement was walking upright. Her foot, arched and stiff, is very similar to ours. Around that time—3.6 million years ago—our predecessors made the Laetoli footprint trail, a site in Tanzania of about 30 yards

Illustration by James Yamasaki SUMMER 2022

where three sets of feet once crossed wet volcanic ash. Those walkers were bipedal with human-like feet. They too stepped from heel to toe. Our ability to walk on two limbs came first, before our larger brains, Kramer explains. “We’re actually very energetically efficient at walking and standing,” she says. “That’s a good clue that selection has worked on us for millions of years to make us good at this.” It made it easier to maneuver through different environments and move across landscapes. Free hands allowed humans to carry tools, food and babies, and to gather fruit from trees. Kramer bristles that so many of us today are deskbound. “We were not adapted to be sedentary critters, and we are not adapted to sit on our couches and look at our screens,” she says. Common mythology has humans divided into hunters and gatherers, but the reality is that by the time you get into our genus, all individuals in the group were walkers. “The fossil record bears that out,” she says. Around 100,000 years ago, our species began migrating out of Africa and, in short time on the geological scale, had moved into Europe and Asia. She points to the peopling of the Americas around 16,000 years ago, “once we arrive, all of a sudden—by that I mean a couple of thousand years—we’re everywhere. I think it is because we are adapted to move.” Our understanding of the benefits of walking is still evolving, says Dr. Cindy Lin, a clinical associate professor of Sports & Spine Medicine in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. Only recently have researchers explored how many steps a day are best for us. For the past few decades, conventional wisdom

that map your walks and runs as well as offer incentives and social-media challenges. “We have a lot of tools to support taking more steps,” Lin says. “It all depends on what motivates you.” Walking became a habit for Neil Smith about 50 years ago when he moved to Seattle. His motivation was exploring the city’s neighborhoods on foot. He kept up walking all through his time as a civil engineering student at the UW and then over 26 years as a Boeing engineer. Fifteen years ago, he joined a just-formed group called Sound Steppers and today leads sojourns through neighborhoods and parks throughout the Puget Sound region. “I’m a planner and I love planning walks,” he says as we meet in front of the light rail station on Brooklyn Avenue Northeast at the start of a stroll through campus. Smith sports a bright yellow rain jacket and a fresh pair of Merrell sneakers. “I get a new pair every six months,” he says. His excursions, usually two-hour and 6-mile events once or twice a week, can quickly wear out his footwear. Every Thursday he leads a group of 10 to 14 walkers, mostly regulars who are accustomed to his fast clip. He also joins other groups on weekend strolls, exploring neighborhoods from Samish Island to Seward Park. Sound Steppers is part of a national effort called Volkswalking, he explains. It is a big deal here in Washington, where more than 20 groups are registered with the American Volkssport Association. The movement started in Germany in the 1960s and came to the U.S. in the late 1970s with enthusiastic participation from military veterans who had encountered it while stationed in Germany. The sport is about walking for walking’s sake, with the goal of reaching a specific distance, usually 6.2 miles, through neighborhoods, parks and countryside. It is for all ages, though Smith’s crowd mostly consists of retirees who enjoy being outside, raising their heart rates and making social connections. “For me, walking is about maintaining better health and keeping my blood pressure down,” Smith says. “I also like the group thing, the camaraderie and the friendships.” During the worst parts of the pandemic, Smith sorely missed the organized walks, but he managed to keep a few Sound Steppers together for smaller outings. It was the one thing that helped him not feel totally isolated, he says. Once the COVID-19 vaccines became available, the Sound Steppers’ attendance surged. The benefits of walking include healthy aging and extend beyond the body to the brain—playing a role in staving off cognitive decline. “Research shows that the earlier we start walking, the better our chances are for healthy aging,” says Carolyn Parsey, a neuropsychologist at UW Medicine’s Memory and Brain Wellness Center. But “starting any time will improve your health.” A Colorado State University study of older men and women published last fall found that exercise, particularly brisk walking, improved the amount of white matter in the brain. The study also looked at a control group and a dancing group and found the people who took a brisk 40-minute walk three times a week had the most prevalent improvements in their white matter, with brains looking larger and tissue lesions appearing to diminish. While interesting, these findings may not be conclusive, Parsey says. When it comes to white-matter research, we still have much to explore. “But if you zoom out and ask, is exercise going to impact vascular health broadly—by that I mean the heart and the brain—then the answer is yes.” Walking can also play a role in the preservation of brain volume overall, she says. “I often tell our patients that our brain needs blood too, and our heart and brain work together and need each other to be

Walking may be linked to improvements in the amount of the brain’s white matter. said we needed to walk 10,000 steps a day. But that number was a marketing strategy by a pedometer manufacturer, as it sounded good and was easy to remember, Lin says. Thanks to recent medical studies, we now know the real target for most adults is a much more attainable 7,000 to 7,500 steps. Lin cites a University of Massachusetts, Amherst study that associated that number with a 50% to 70% smaller chance of early death. “That study targeted middle-aged people. But older adults showed similar findings,” says Lin. “And I would say this is a general recommendation for the whole population.” Walking has many benefits. For people with diabetes, even a 15-minute walk after a meal can help reduce blood sugar. It’s also great for breaking up prolonged sitting time. “If you sit longer than six hours a day, it’s not good for your health,” says Lin, who suggests getting up and moving every half-hour. “It all adds up to your overall step-count goal. People have traditionally thought that to exercise, you need to get sweaty or go to a gym. But we need to be more inclusive about activity, and not everybody has the time or resources to do a 30-minute gym workout daily, nor do they necessarily have to. Being creative and building in little bites of movement throughout the day contributes to your step-count goal.” The practitioners in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and members of The Sports Institute at UW Medicine encourage their patients to find what works for them to stay active, Lin says. Wearables and digital-health tools might work for some people; many do not realize that our iPhones and Androids are already counting steps for us. Also, there are multiple free apps

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JOHN READER / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Scientists first discovered prehistoric footprints at Laetoli in �anzania in the 1970s. �hey offer evidence that early humans were walking upright 3.6 million years ago.

healthy. If we do those good interventions for heart health, we might very well see improvements in brain health.” Walking also helps with balance, reducing risk of falls and preserving muscle strength. That’s really important from a neurological perspective, Parsey says. “The last thing we want is for someone to fall and hit their head.” This summer, the Memory and Brain Wellness Center is taking part in a walking and dementia study out of Oregon Health & Science University. The SHARP study (Sharing History through Active Reminiscence and Photo Imagery) combines memory sharing and social engagement on walks through historically Black neighborhoods. In February, a Seattle team held two focus groups in Seattle’s Central District. The team devised walks with the help of African American community members to focus on people, events and landmarks

throughout the neighborhood. “It’s not just walking, but social and cognitive engagement,” says Parsey. The aim is to mitigate memory loss or improve cognitive health. Parsey offered a final thought—older adults need about 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. “You don’t have to do a 65-minute spin class. It doesn’t have to be huge blocks of time. Just 20 or 30 minutes a day five to six days a week will get you there.” She describes moderate intensity as “walking with a friend and talking. You may be breathy, but you can still hold a conversation.” Mavis Tsai, ’82, clinical psychologist and UW research scientist at the Center for the Science of Social Connection, has built her practice around conversation. On a recent afternoon, she and Falkor, her small white pup, cross Eastlake Avenue East to meet me for a walk-and-talk along Lake Union. Tsai views walking as essential to physical and mental well-being. “We weren’t designed to sit for long periods of time,” she says, echoing her colleagues’ comments. She adds that she uses a treadmill desk. She can type comfortably at a pace of 1.4 mph. Even better, walking outside and walking with another person can do more for you, she says. Tsai has built a practice around addressing isolation, loneliness and disconnection. “Social isolation can increase a person’s risk of death from all causes,” she says. Walking provides opportunities for contact and can strengthen neighborhood social ties. Simply acknowledging others as you go past or waving hello to your neighbors can bring some feelings of connection. It also might improve your mood and quell anxiety, she says. Working with her patients, Tsai found that the act of taking a walk opened them up to sharing more than they might when sitting for face-to-face therapy. The stimuli of the outdoors and the work of walking may help them overcome some barriers to expressing themselves, she says. Walking with a companion provides you with an opportunity to create more meaningful interactions. “If you want to connect more deeply, go for a walk,” she says. As we navigate the sidewalk together, Tsai suggests that we connect with our surroundings by naming things that we see—clouds, colorful clover, a blossoming weed. “I’m noticing this family of ducklings is going really fast,” she says. I point out a thick rope framing a bed erupting with flowers. “I never noticed that rope before,” Tsai says, adding, “There are no rules. We are just getting into our senses of the moment. As you get into your conversation, you have to be willing to be more vulnerable. Be openhearted and self-disclosing.” Then she dives into deeper, more personal questions in order to create a more meaningful connection. Walking and communicating is certainly something we humans evolved to do, notes Kramer, the anthropologist. “As primates, we’re social and we want to see and smell and touch others. Our brains are programmed to want that.” While connecting and communicating during walking has not changed over the millennia, how and where we walk has. We’re not built for strolling in a straight line or on a flat surface, Kramer says. We have evolved to move up and down hills, on slopes, in snow. “When you’re out walking, you’re getting a lot of sensory input. You’re feeling the breeze on your face, you’re seeing the building or hill in the distance, you’re hearing a bird, you’re feeling the ground with your feet,” she says. “Walking engages our senses in ways we find rewarding.” SUMMER 2022

GOOD, BET They garden, they read, they cook and they dream of becoming dentists. Teachers: They’re just like us.

By Caitlin Klask

STEFANIE IVERSON-CABRAL

SAMUEL JAFFEE

INES JURCEVIC

Assistant Teaching Professor, UW Bothell

Associate Teaching Professor, UW Seattle

Assistant Professor, UW Seattle

Specialty: Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Global Health, School of Nursing & Health Studies

Specialty: Spanish and Portuguese Studies, College of Arts & Sciences

Specialty: Social Psychology and Public Policy, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance

Favorite place in the world: The Andean Region—Peru, Colombia, Ecuador.

Her mentors: Jenessa Shapiro at UCLA, Cheryl Kaiser at the UW and Sophie Trawalter at the University of Virginia.

Her post-pandemic dreams: Traveling, eventually. “At this point, just going out to dinner would be a real treat.” Hobbies outside of the classroom: Crocheting, gardening, walking and visiting museums. What she’s reading: The “Bridgerton” books. “The author’s husband is an infectious disease doctor that I had rotated in a lab with.” Her dream career as a child: “Oh, it is varied. My mom will tell the story that the very first thing I said I wanted to be was a crossing guard.” Other ideas included a costume or set designer for period pieces. Something she finds surprising: “Something I find myself telling [students] a lot lately is that college is hard. College is challenging, and that’s even at the best of times. It became so clear that they’re so incredibly resilient. Especially our students at UW Bothell, who [at the beginning of the pandemic] were those first responders, the paramedics taking care of the outbreak and transporting the patients from the Life Care Center. Our students are the nurses who are working in those COVID clinics. And then, on top of that, they all had family responsibilities, and the stress and the trauma that we’re all experiencing, and yet they still showed up.”

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What meal he’s cooking: Ash-e Reshteh, a Persian stew. What kind of student was he? “I was a curious reader … and yet I seldom spoke and I often fell asleep in class. I think it’s good for students to know their professors were not always the best students in the room, and yet here we are. They still have a bright future ahead of them.” Two people he’d invite to Kane Hall: Junot Diaz, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and Ruth Behar, an anthropologist, poet, historian and community champion. What he’s (re)reading: “Dance Dance Dance” by Haruki Murakami. “I really like the way he has such a deep understanding for his characters … By the time you’re done, you feel like you’ve gotten to know the whole person.” How he fosters discussion in class: “I like to leave space. If you don’t fill all the space with your own voice and your own ideas, [students] are going to be filling that space. I try not to be overbearing and leave students to come to their own conclusions and ask their own questions. I try to support unstructured discussion in a structured way, giving it a theater for unstructured ideas.”

Hobbies outside the classroom: Cooking (veggie enchiladas) and gardening (flowers and strawberries). Her ideal career as a child: “I really wanted to be a dentist, because they always make people smile.” Her pets: Two black cats named Rafiki Bombardier and Calypso Java Kelly. What she’s reading: A potty-training book for her toddler and “The Wheel of Time” (in “The Eye of the World” series). Her reputation: Tricking her students. “I keep students on their toes in terms of the demonstrations that I do. I’m putting you in positions where you’re probably going to make the wrong, less-desirable, less-preferable choice. And then we’re going to talk about why.” Something she finds surprising: “The amount of resilience our students have had. They have done more than we reasonably should have asked or needed to ask, anything we could have expected of students, especially in the past two years. [I have] a real appreciation for their ability to show up in the classroom every single week and engage with each other in a really productive way. We’re all trying, right? In whatever role we’re in.”

TTER, BEST! But these six are the cream of the crop.

The 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award Winners

ADAM LEACHÉ

MIKELLE NUWER

CLAUDIA SELLMAIER

Professor, UW Seattle

Senior Lecturer, UW Seattle

Assistant Professor, UW Tacoma

Specialty: Biology, College of Arts & Sciences

Specialty: Oceanography and Marine Sciences, College of the Environment

Specialty: Social Work and Criminal Justice

When he’s not in the Life Sciences building, you’ll find him: Behind the glass walls of the Burke Museum, working as the genetic resources and herpetology curator.

UW student since: 1995! She’s a triple Dawg with a B.S. (1999), M.S. (2004) and Ph.D. (2008), all in oceanography.

Hobbies outside the classroom: Surfing, “but mostly dreaming of surfing, since it’s not an option in Seattle.” He also builds models of remote-control cars, LEGOs and more with his kids.

Someone she admires: “I am kind of a fangirl of President Cauce.”

Career aptitude tests told him: He’d be a bus driver or a systems analyst.

Her personality in school: “Being a good student was my identity, and I was very serious about it. And the worst part is that my poor oldest son has picked some of this up! Don’t worry, he’s in therapy for it.”

Someone he’d like to see at Kane Hall: Julie Stein, the newly retired Burke Museum executive director. “She’s an inspirational teacher and leader.” A revelation during quarantine: “Early on during the pandemic, I discovered I could turn off my Zoom camera and multitask during meetings. That was a joyous moment.” Former occupations: “Shipping clerk, grocery bagger, hotel doorman and clerical assistant, to name a few.” Favorite books: “Dune,” “The Lord of the Rings.” A classroom observation: “Students are capable of producing high-quality work when you give them the right tools, but the most rewarding part is when they combine their new skills with their personal creativity. This is when the most exceptional work materializes.”

Her classroom method: “I approach teaching as a scientist looking for observations and trends and patterns and evidence.”

Two people she’d invite to Kane Hall: Eddie Vedder and Martha Graham. Her favorite hobby: “I like long walks on the beach. My favorite place ever is probably Whidbey Island, at the Double Bluff dog beach.” Something she picked up during quarantine: “We got a book about stairways in Seattle, so we went exploring all the different stairway walks in our city, which are amazing.” Advice for women in science, technology, engineering and math: “Research is slow and not immediately rewarding. And always frustrating. It’s hard work. What sets you apart is the amount of work you are willing to put in. Work hard, find your people, lean on them. And don’t be afraid. You are going to make mistakes.”

Photos by Mark Stone

Outside the classroom, you might find her at: Priest Point Park, the Olympia farmers market or a Berlin nightclub. Her dog’s name: Jack. “He’s very cute. That’s why I keep him.” Former occupation: Cook. What she’s reading: “I like to read my German novels before bed. That’s my ‘shutting down’ kind of literature.” A few people she admires: Dr. Erin Casey, Dr. JaeRan Kim, Dr. Janice Laakso, and (of course) Sinead O’Connor. What’s different about her classes? Students practice real-world advocacy with organizations like the National Association of Social Workers, Planned Parenthood, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, Statewide Poverty Action Network, Interfaith Works and with various legislators in Olympia. Something she finds surprising: “Students showing up and getting totally engaged. They’re not just like, ‘OK, I need to do these four things to pass the class,’ but they take the material and really run with it. And I then hear, ‘My letter to the editor got published in The Seattle Times!’ Or, ‘I developed this training!’ I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but it’s always exciting to see. They really did all of that. And not for grades, but because they know it’s important.”

SUMMER 2022

Stolen Beauty The story of the shocking theft, destruction and replacement of George Tsutakawa’s sculptural gates at the Washington Park Arboretum

By Mayumi Tsutakawa Mayumi �sutakawa, ’72, ’76, shares the legacy of her father, George �sutakawa, ’37, ’50. Famed for his graceful and abstract bronze structures, he designed the Memorial Gates for the Washington Park Arboretum as well as fountains throughout the Northwest.

“The antique bronze gates, subdued in the reflected sunlight, are cunningly designed but so sturdily built as to resist time and its erosion,” noted a 1976 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin covering the installation of the Arboretum Memorial Gates designed by UW Professor George Tsutakawa, a noted American sculptor. In fact, my father expressed the idea that the sturdy bronze material he used for dozens of sculptures and fountains could last for hundreds of years. Instead, the Memorial Gates, which sat near the north entry to the Washington Park Arboretum at the Graham Visitors Center, were destroyed almost 45 years after they were lovingly installed and dedicated. One night in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, thieves cut through the supports and quickly loaded the two heavy gates, 20 feet wide in total, into a truck to be hauled away and sold for scrap. The vandalism and theft shocked the neighborhood as well as the UW community and Arboretum volunteers. The entire Tsutakawa family and Arboretum staff reacted with surprise, dismay and perhaps a bit of anger, that a work of art lovingly created by our father, George, was obliterated. The Seattle Police Department, savvy to metal theft, one of the fastest-growing crimes in our region, quickly recovered the cut-up

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SUMMER 2022

MOHAI, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, 2000.107.214.28.06, PHOTO BY GRANT M. HALLER

George �sutakawa polishes the bronze gates he designed for the Washington Park Arboretum.

“I think it’s very important that you design something which is appropriate to the scale, and to the environment, and to the wishes of the people.“ COURTESY THE GEORGE TSUTAKAWA FAMILY

�sutakawa looks over a maquette of the 1971 “Seven Flowers” fountain, which he designed for a site in downtown Bellevue.

DAVE POTTS/COURTESY DENSHO UW COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

While most famous for his bronze fountains, �sutakawa explored a variety of media and subjects. �his 1950 watercolor, “Beach Images,” is part of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering art collection.

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�sutakawa shows off one of the “Memorial Gates,” which were commissioned in 1971 by the UW and the Arboretum Foundation to recognize those who built and cared for the Washington Park Arboretum.

pieces of gate through detective work and a bulletin to scrap metal dealers. The thieves had tried to sell some of the bronze to a local recycling business. One gate had been destroyed and the other significantly damaged. Sadly, the pieces could not be put back together. According to my brother, Gerard Tsutakawa, who helped fabricate the original gates when he was a young metalsmith, the design is so intricate, involving branches of bronze that curve inward in two dimensions, there was no hope for repair. “My reaction to the theft was shock,” he says, “pure miserable shock.” He added that the replacement of the gates would have to start from scratch with our father’s original designs and drawings. The Arboretum Foundation, headed by Jane Stonecipher, sprang into action, communicating with the younger sculptor Tsutakawa, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture and its own supportive board members. Over a one-year period, the foundation raised more than $150,000 from private and public sources to replace the gates, including reconstruction by Gerard Tsutakawa. One bright spot is that the Memorial Gates likely will be installed in a site more secure and visible to visitors, behind the north entry locked gates. The reinstallation and a community celebration will be later this year, concluding another chapter in my father's long and celebrated career. George Tsutakawa was the second son of Shozo Tsutakawa, a prosperous businessman who came to Seattle in 1904 to develop an import-export business. George was born on Federal Avenue on Capitol Hill and attended public school there until age 7, when his father moved the family to Japan. He attended school for 10 years in Okayama and Fukuyama. But he was an uninterested academic student, preferring to discover Japanese traditional arts with his two sets of grandparents. Because his father wanted him to continue in the family metal-import business, the two had a falling out. At 16, cognizant of Japan’s growing militarism, George studied Japanese carpentry, then came back to Seattle and never saw his father again. But he did help his two uncles with a Seattle branch of the family business. He managed and lived behind their produce stand at the corner of Rainier Avenue and Jackson Street. George attended Broadway High School (now Seattle Central College) and studied with excellent art teachers there. At school, he met other emerging Northwest artists such as Morris Graves and Fay Chong. George enrolled at the UW to continue his art education, receiving his BFA degree in 1937. Due to his obligations to his uncles’ produce market, he didn’t have a lot of time to spend on campus, and what he did have was spent in the art school studios. His early artwork included linoleum block prints inspired by his experience working in Alaska canneries, and modernist

home overlooking the I-90 bridge in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle. The metal-fabrication shop and wood sculpture studio took up the garage and basement. Today the home houses many of George’s early and later artwork. The couple had four children, all of whom went on to work in the arts as artists, musicians, teachers and writers. After many years apprenticing under our father, then managing their major sculpture projects, Gerard became a metal and wood sculptor. Younger brother Deems became a jazz musician, youngest brother Marcus, ’78, ’83, became a symphony orchestra conductor and I, Mayumi, am an arts writer. Nine members of our extended family earned degrees from or otherwise attended the UW. While our family traveled through the Pacific Northwest and the U.S., the most significant of George’s travels included the sites of ancient civilizations such as the Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, the pyramids in Egypt, and the ancient palaces of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. As a humanist, he was not religious but believed in the deep value of humanity and its cultural achievements. Ayame was a talented and culturally refined hostess and arts advocate as well as a mother of four and grandmother of seven. She was George’s primary business manager, especially as he took on larger and more complicated international projects. And she welcomed many notable visitors at our home, including legendary Japanese ceramicist Shoji Hamada, wood furniture designer George Nakashima and visionary sculptor Isamu Noguchi. She passed away in 2017 at age 93. George created more than 75 fountains and sculptures, many of which are still on view in public spaces in North America and Japan. He also taught art at the UW for more than 30 years and influenced generations of students. In 1984, his career was recognized as a University of Washington Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus, the highest honor bestowed upon an alumnus by the UW and the UW Alumni Association. He was given honorary doctorate degrees from Whitman College and Seattle University and received notable awards from the emperor of Japan and from the National Japanese American Citizen’s League. The Seattle Art Museum has 21 of his works, the earliest dating to 1931, in its permanent collection. My father died in his Seattle home in 1997 at age 87. Now, thanks to the work of donors, volunteers and the Tsutakawa family, the gates he designed, a beloved landmark to thousands of visitors each year, will soon return to their home at the arboretum. —Mayumi �sutakawa is a former writer and editor for �he Seattle �imes and an arts grantmaker. �oday, in addition to freelance arts writing, she is working on a record of her family’s 100-year history in the Pacific Northwest.

COURTESY THE ARBORETUM FOUNDATION

paintings, wood sculptures, lamps and collapsible furniture. George was an active artist, exhibiting in many local and national exhibitions. He took part in the Puyallup Fair Art Exhibit and the International Art Exhibit, held in the Chinatown-International District, with his artist friends such as James Washington Jr., Val Laigo, and Andrew Chin. During World War II, George was drafted into the U.S. Army. He reached the rank of sergeant and was assigned to teach Japanese language in the Military Intelligence School in Minneapolis. As a Kibei Nisei, born in the U.S. but raised in Japan before returning to Seattle, he was completely bilingual. He sometimes traveled by train to visit his relatives, specifically his sister and her Moriguchi family, who were incarcerated at the Tule Lake concentration camp in far northern California. He drew upon his understanding of the imprisonment in 1983 when the Japanese American Citizens League asked him to create a sculpture for the Puyallup Fairgrounds in honor of the 8,000 Seattleites of Japanese descent who were detained there for five months before being incarcerated at the Minidoka Camp in Idaho. His design, called “Harmony,” is a column with the figures of a father, mother and children reaching toward each other. While visiting Tule Lake, George was introduced to Ayame Iwasa, a notable student of Japanese traditional dance who regularly performed on the stage in camp. Ayame, my mother, was also Kibei Nisei, second-generation Japanese American, born in Hollywood in 1924. She too had been sent to Japan and raised in the Okayama area before returning to live in Sacramento. The couple became engaged through an arranged marriage. After the war, Ayame came to Seattle and the couple married in 1947, living in a tiny house in the alley near 12th Avenue and Alder Street. George enrolled in graduate school under the GI Bill and completed his MFA degree in sculpture from the UW in 1950. He studied with the famed Ukrainian-born sculptor Alexander Archipenko, one of the first Cubist sculptors, when he was a visiting faculty member. George started his academic career teaching Japanese in the UW’s Far Eastern Studies Department. Then he taught design in the School of Architecture and painting and sculpture in the School of Art. He served on the faculty of the UW for more than 37 years. He was a popular and positive teacher who imparted his love for art to thousands of students. George’s friendship with the noted Korean American photographer Johsel Namkung led to his discovery of the concept of obos. Johsel introduced George to a book by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, “Beyond the High Himalayas,” written in 1952. The concept of obos involves the stacking of rocks by pilgrims on high Himalayan passes as a prayer for safe passage. George was taken by this concept and felt it connected humans from the earth to the heavens, as in Shinto rituals. He adopted the idea of stacked shapes in his sculptures and fountains. And he would witness the obos himself when he trekked in Nepal up to 13,000 feet at age 67. The Seattle Public Library fountain, his first fountain sculpture, was based on the concept of obos. Titled “Fountain of Wisdom,” it was first sited on the 5th Avenue side of the new library designed by the architectural firm of NBBJ in 1960. Due to his teaching career at the UW, he was well known by the rising young architects of the time. Thus, he was commissioned to install his fountains in many new buildings, parks and shopping malls throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. George’s professional art career spanned 60 years. At first, he used oil paints to explore abstract themes. Later, at the urging of the internationally recognized artist Mark Tobey, he began to explore his cultural roots and use sumi paint to depict landscapes and sea life. My parents welcomed Tobey and other Seattle artists such as Paul Horiuchi to come paint with sumi ink together at art salons in our home. In 1955, George and Ayame had settled into a large, historic

SUMMER 2022

THE

HEART OF

Throughout the Ebola and COVID-19 crises, nursing leader Pam Cipriano has delivered doses of hope and advocacy

HEALTH CARE BY C H R I S TA L B O T T PHOTO BY ANDREW SHURTLEFF

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PAMELA CIPRIANO learned a very important lesson while

Pamela Cipriano is the recipient of the 2022 UW Alumna Summa Laude Dignata award for her service as a leader for the world’s 28 million registered nurses. She is the dean of the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing and president of the International Council of Nurses.

The Alumna Summa Laude Dignata is the highest honor bestowed upon a UW graduate and is presented annually by the UW and the UW Alumni Association. It recognizes a legacy of achievement and service built over a lifetime.

responding to the first international crisis of her public service career. She was head of the American Nurses Association in 2015 when Ebola spread around the world, setting off what we thought of as an international crisis at the time. Little was known about the highly contagious Ebola or the conditions under which it spread out of hot spots in West Africa. Questions moved faster than the virus itself, and public-health professionals had few concrete answers for reporters.   “What was interesting for me is that the role that actually evolved for me as president of the American Nurses Association was to provide a voice of calm and reason,” Cipriano, ’81, says. She became an expert source for national and international media by providing insight about infection control and protecting health-care workers. Fast forward a half-decade and Cipriano again found herself the eye of a storm as COVID-19 spread around the world, then spread again and again in waves that sent us all into hiding and killed more than 1 million people nationwide over a two-year period. Now as president of the International Council of Nurses, a professional organization that represents the world’s 28 million registered nurses, she stepped into the storm again and applied what she learned during Ebola.   This time, though, the issues were not just supersized, but politicized, with disinformation and misinformation supplanting a lack of information. It turns out those were just a few of the issues. “One of the early things you’ll remember was health-care workers really crying out for protective equipment,” Cipriano says. “They were being made to reuse equipment that wasn’t supposed to be reused, and our supply chains were woefully behind. We didn’t even know what we needed initially. So the fear was multiplied within the health-care setting. Not only were health-care workers taking care of people they couldn’t save, but they were feeling like they were vulnerable, and they were then feeling like they couldn’t go home to their families.” For her fierce advocacy for her colleagues and as a voice of reason in unreasonable times, Cipriano is this year’s Alumna Summa Laude Dignata, the highest honor bestowed upon a UW graduate by the University and the UW Alumni Association. “Many UW graduates rise to local visibility either in professional, philanthropic or other realms,” says Azita Emami, executive dean of the UW School of Nursing. “Some do so regionally, and a few achieve national recognition. A very few do what Pam Cipriano has done and achieve global stature, most recently as president of the International Council of Nurses, while simultaneously having both professional visibility and educational impact as dean of the University of Virginia School of Nursing, one of the nation’s leading nursing schools. Pam’s efforts have been a spark of hope for countless nurses in many countries.” Cipriano joins a long list of illustrious ASLD recipients that includes Nobel Prize winners, public policy makers and researchers working on some of the biggest scientific and social questions of our time. Few have faced the monumental global challenges Cipriano has wrestled with over the past decade. “One of the things that I would say is that she is a leader,” says Marla Weston, the CEO of the American Nurses Association during Cipriano’s presidency. “She thinks deeply about the issues, and she thinks about how to move the profession forward. It’s very easy to wax eloquently about what’s wrong. But it’s a special kind of leader who thinks about how to move, in this case, the profession or the organization or health care forward.” Even as the pandemic seemed to abate, Cipriano was presented

with another global challenge that offered no easy answers or options: the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This time it was nurses deliberately put in the crosshairs and other horrors as the Russians bombed hospitals, the injured overwhelmed those left standing, and the refugee crisis climbed into the millions. The first level of concern is the nurses who are sleeping in the basements of hospitals as bombs fall around them. Beyond that, the complexity of the situation is hard to fathom. Cipriano has spearheaded International Council of Nurses fundraising and public relations efforts to call attention to the atrocities, some of which have been deemed war crimes. “We are in touch with the nurses in Ukraine,” Cipriano says. “We will help tell their story. The refugee communities in the surrounding countries will have stories that will be unbelievable for years to come. And we’re already worried about human trafficking concerns that we’re hearing about. Borders are overwhelmed with the number of people going across.” A 1981 graduate of the rigorous UW School of Nursing’s Master of Science program, Cipriano has led a varied educational and professional path. Currently the dean of the University of Virginia School of Nursing, where she’s the Sadie Heath Cabaniss professor of nursing, she earned her doctorate at the University of Utah after her time in Seattle. She then embarked on a remarkable run of professional leadership roles, including nurse manager at LDS Hospital Intermountain Health Care in Utah, director of Surgery-Trauma Services at the Medical University of South Carolina, chief nursing and chief clinical officer for the University of Virginia Health System and interim chief operating officer at Wake Forest Baptist Health. Her many accomplishments include being Distinguished Nurse Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) and the inaugural editor-in-chief of American Nurse Today. She has earned a Fellowship Ad Eundem at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Health Care Leader Award at the American Academy of Nursing. Tim Brigham, chief of staff and chief education officer at the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, has worked with Cipriano at the National Academy of Medicine. He says leadership comes naturally for Cipriano because “it’s woven into her DNA.” “She gains your respect and admiration by her authenticity and her integrity,” says Brigham, who co-chairs a Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience working group with Cipriano. “The things that made her a COO, made her a dean, made her everything that she does is what she brings to the table. So she’s one of those amazing people that you meet once in a while in your life that are truly great.” Barring another international crisis, Cipriano hopes to make her work with the Academy a priority. The pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated iniquities in the health-care profession. Significant improvement in working conditions, pay and mental-health support for nurses are among the many goals.   “I’ve continued to be really dedicated to trying to raise the level of visibility and influence of nurses because we are so overlooked in the bigger scheme of things,” Cipriano says. “But I guess I will continue to be optimistic that nurses will continue to play a greater and greater role in designing, improving and leading health care, not just in our country but around the world. It has been difficult having been in nursing now many, many years to see nurses be overlooked. Nurses are a phenomenal source of information, expertise, problem-solving ability, tenacity and, as we’ve seen in the last several years, extraordinary dedication to do whatever it takes in any kind of health-care emergency.” SUMMER 2022

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classroom so students could watch the first Space Shuttle launch. That sealed the deal for Hu. After graduating from the UW’s highly competitive aeronautics and astronautics program, Hu went to work for NASA and has spent the past 30 years in a number of Orion leadership positions, including manager of avionics, power and software, as well as deputy manager of the Vehicle Integration Office. Before Orion, he had an impressive resume of important technical and leadership roles in support of NASA human exploration initiatives, the

C O M M U N I T Y

I am leading a team and the infrastructure to explore beyond Earth. And I can’t wait to launch it.

COURTESY NASA

From Star Wars to the Stars NASA is going back to the moon and planning to land humans on Mars, thanks to Orion manager Howard Hu By Jon Marmor

New Orion program manager Howard Hu attends the rollout of the stacked Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System rocket ahead of NASA’s wet dress rehearsal in March. Blastoff for the unmanned spaceship’s test flight to the moon and back should be happening in the next few months.

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From the moment his dad took him to see “Star Wars” when he was a kid, Howard Hu knew he wanted to design and build spaceships. That dream has become a reality. Hu, ’91, ’94, who has worked for NASA his entire career, was recently promoted to head up NASA’s Orion program, which will send an unmanned spaceship on a test flight around the moon in the next few months. Orion is the first step in NASA’s bodacious Artemis project, which will return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024— and prepare for human missions to Mars. One Artemis priority is to land the first woman and first person of color on the

moon. “This represents humanity for everyone,” says Hu, an immigrant from Shanghai who moved with his family to Seattle when he was little. “This will prove that Orion was for all to explore space.” Hu, who holds two degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from the UW College of Engineering, grew up in the North Seattle area and went to Shorecrest High School. He was always good at math and science and read a lot of science fiction books. Seeing George Lucas’ milestone movie made him wonder how he could work in a field that combined engineering and space exploration. On an April day in 1981, a teacher rolled a TV cart into his

International Space Station and Space Shuttle program. And now, he has one of NASA’s highest-profile roles. “NASA is working to build a long-term human presence on and around the moon that will benefit people on Earth,” says Vanessa Wyche, director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Hu is based. Orion will be a space trailblazer in more ways than one. It will lift off using the most powerful rocket in the world. It will fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown, traveling 280,000 miles from Earth and thousands of miles beyond the moon during its four- to six-week mission. It’s also the product of international collaboration not seen since the International Space Station was built. Orion, which made its very first flight test in December 2014, will be powered by a service module provided by the European Space Agency. Built using refurbished engines and design from the Space Shuttle, it will eventually carry six astronauts, compared to the three that flew to the moon on Apollo. Moreover, the 970 outer tiles are made of the same material as the tiles that protected the shuttle from its fiery reentry. “I have been working on the program for a long time,” Hu says. “This is a big dream come true. I came to work on space explorations at the cusp of the future. I am leading a team and the infrastructure to explore beyond Earth. And I can’t wait to launch it.”

SKETCHES JEFF RIFFELL

Jeff Riffell Mosquito guy

SUMMER 2022

A S S O C I A T I O N

COURTESY SIROTNIK FAMILY

ANIL KAPAHI

Michael Verchot

Ken Sirotnik

UWAA Distinguished Service Award

Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award

As co-founder and director of UW’s Consulting and Business Development Center, Verchot, ’95, has helped generate millions of dollars in revenue and create or retain thousands of jobs in the Puget Sound area. The center provides courses and support from student consulting teams for hundreds of businesses owned by people of color, women and other underserved communities. It also places graduate students on the boards of area nonprofits. Verchot has also spread the center’s model to 12 other cities through the Ascend program. The center grew out of Verchot’s work in pursuit of his MBA in the 1990s with marketing professors Thaddeus Spratlen and David Gautschi, who were exploring why small businesses owned by people of color underperformed while others thrived and what the UW could do to help. “Michael is a champion for creating opportunities, access and equity through business education,” says Aggie Clark, ’86, ’99, co-chair of the Center’s board of directors and past president of the UWAA. “Michael is an inspirational leader who magnifies the impacts that the University of Washington makes in our community and beyond.”

The best educators don’t just teach in the moment. Their words and discoveries sit in the minds of their students, waiting to be unpacked years or even decades later. Such was the impact of College of Education Professor Emeritus Ken Sirotnik. More than 20 years after his time at the UW, nominator Andrew Grzadzielewski, ’05, finds himself reflecting on conversations with Sirotnik and how the sifting of memories is constantly rewarding: “Those who were committed to creating change always had a friend in Ken, especially when the going got tough. Knowing that Ken was rooting for you made a tough job a little easier. That is what I will miss most about Ken.” Sirotnik died in 2004 after 40 years in education at UCLA and UW. Chairman of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the College of Education and co-founder of the Center for Educational Renewal, Sirotnik has a legacy that continues at the UW through the Ken Sirotnik Endowed Scholarship supporting equity, leadership and social justice in education.

This honor from the UW Alumni Association recognizes extraordinary volunteer leadership within the UWAA and those who embody the UW’s values and public service mission.

Created in 2017, the Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award honors a UW teacher, living or not, who has influenced and inspired students long after they graduated.

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DAVA RECIPIENTS Established in 2012, the Distinguished Alumni Veteran Award honors living UW alumni veterans who have made a positive impact. Here is a list of the previous recipients of the UW’s DAVA award: 2021

Dave Stone, ’68 U.S. ARMY 2020

Bill Center, ’78 U.S. NAVY 2019

The Hon. Ronald E. Cox, ’73 U.S. ARMY 2018

Priscilla “Patty” Taylor, ’93, ’96 U.S. ARMY

ANIL KAPAHI

Erasmo Gamboa

Retiree Excellence in Community Service Award Scholarship and public service went hand in hand during Gamboa’s more than 40 years as a Latin American Studies scholar. A child of farmworkers in Eastern Washington, he was one of a small group of students of color recruited to attend the UW in 1968. There he helped found the UW chapter of M.E.Ch.A (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán). As a teacher and historian, Gamboa, ’70, ’73, ’84, became a leading expert on the Latinx experience in the Pacific Northwest. In 2007 he was given the UW Outstanding Public Service Award. Since his 2017 retirement, he has helped open The Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/ Latino/a/ Culture, the first museum to showcase the history and culture of the region’s Spanish-speaking communities. He also identifies buildings of historic significance for the Washington State Historical Society. Over the decades, Gamboa has served as trustee, board member or adviser to the Ethnic Heritage Council, the Washington Commission for the Humanities and the Washington State Centennial Commission. He has continued to raise money for Sea Mar Community Health Centers, which provide health care support and other resources for diverse communities.

This honor from the UW and the UW Retirement Association pays tribute to UW retirees who have demonstrated exceptional dedication to community service following their retirement.

2017

Raymond Emory, ’52 U.S. NAVY 2016

Gen. Peter Chiarelli, ’80 U.S. ARMY 2015

Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, ’76, ’91 U.S. ARMY 2014

Richard H. Layton, ’54, ’58 U.S. NAVY 2013

Charles W. H. Matthaei, ’43 U.S. NAVY 2012

Herb Bridge, ’47 U.S. NAVY

Honor a UW alum veteran Do you know a Husky vet who has made a difference? Tell us their story. Go to Washington.edu/ alumni/about-uwaa/awards/distinguished-alumni-veteran-award and click “How to Nominate.”

SUMMER 2022

Writer-director Wes Hurley, right, works with actors Dan Lauria, left, and Marya Sea Kaminski during the filming of “Potato Dreams of America” in Seattle.

Dreaming of America Filmmaker Wes Hurley has built a community of allies from his tim at the UW, and it’s paying off By Chris Talbott

By now, after a year on the film festival circuit, filmmaker Wes Hurley, ’04, has gotten used to the questions. They’ve become inevitable after viewers watch his scrappy autobiographical film, “Potato Dreams of America.” And he can’t really blame people. “It’s a wild story,” Hurley admits. “At every Q&A, I tell people it’s actually 99.9% true. I didn’t make anything up in the story. It has a whimsical kind of tone to it. But there are no events or twists or turns that are invented. It’s all from real life.” As Marya Sea Kaminski, ’04, one of the actors who plays Hurley’s delightfully off-kilter mother, puts it: “It’s better than fiction.” “Potato Dreams” opens in gritty 40

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Vladivostok, Russia, with a very young Potato (born Vasili Naumenko) watching his father assault his mother over a bottle of liquor. It’s a devastating scene that sets up the film’s grim opening act. Ninety minutes later—without giving everything away— tears of sadness are replaced with tears of joy on a Seattle film set in a meta moment that completes an amazing story arc. It’s a cathartic experience that has the fingerprints of UW graduates all over it (we’ll get to that in a bit). It’s so unforgettable, an early 13-minute version composed mostly of Hurley and his mother matter-of-factly telling their story captured the competition jury’s attention at South by Southwest. The film won the short documentary award and became eligible for the

MEDIA Academy Awards. That led to funding and a distribution deal that put Hurley’s fifth feature in theaters around the nation, even amid the pandemic. Now available via video on demand, the film is part Chris Columbus (the sweet bits), part John Waters (the naughty bits), and has all the hallmarks of a viral sleeper in need of a moment. It’s been picked up by HBO for European release this year. Built on small steps taken toward a huge vision that he developed while watching old movies and soap operas with his mother and daydreaming about the American dream, the film is the culmination of an amazing journey. It’s also another new beginning as the film’s reception takes Hurley to fresh and unexpected places and experiences. “It’s a huge step for me,” Hurley says. “It’s the first time where I could pay. It was a union film. We paid everybody union wages. All of my previous projects were volunteer-based. And the fact that it played in theaters, all of that is a really big deal. So hopefully the next one will be easier to make.” Following that harrowing opening scene—young Potato’s father is played by Michael Place, ’04—Hurley builds the world of his childhood in simple, poignant scenes that feel like moments from American sitcoms like “The Wonder Years” (the movie even features Wonder dad Dan Lauria) or “Young Sheldon,” only with a razor blade hidden in each scene. Their life in Russia is not simple. The post-Soviet world Hurley depicts in the early ’90s is brutish, patriarchal, full of violent crime and anti-gay laws. The threat of death looms as more than just a threat. They are forced to live with Potato’s grandmother, played by the delightful “Orange is the New Black” veteran Lea DeLaria, who constantly reminds his mother that she should have stayed with his father. Even an abusive husband was better than no husband at all. And when Potato blanches at a lewd picture of a woman offered by a friend, he masks his emerging sexuality, careful to hide the truth for fear he might be attacked or killed. Oh, and a slacker Jesus Christ makes a cameo appearance. Young Potato and his mother escape their daily lives by diving into a new channel on television that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union. It plays American movies and TV shows, the things we might think of as pedestrian. In the America that Potato dreamed of, life was an endless run of schlocky late-20th century comedies that just seemed so … nice. “I remember so clearly him talking about ‘Little Curly Sue’ and ‘Beethoven,’ right?” Kaminski says. “All these movies that

growing up in America, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, ‘Little Curly Sue,’ whatever.’ But that was so impactful for him. And I remember him talking also about the soap opera ‘Santa Barbara,’ and that’s what they were dreaming of coming to America. They just thought it was going to be just like ‘Santa Barbara.’ So, you know, to have those sorts of influences, it almost feels like film found him. It so clearly is his medium.” The key moment in “Potato Dreams”— and Hurley’s life—comes when his mother, Lena, pursues a mail-order bride opportunity so they can escape to America. It is a desperate move and lands her in another abusive relationship. There’s so much more to the story that’s best left a surprise. But suffice to say the move changes their world, eventually for the better. “His mother is like one of those golden people who’s literally like magic, you know?” Kaminski says. “She is unbelievably kind, unbelievably funny, always unexpected, has an amazing fashion sense. And when you start to piece together the chapters of her life, she’s a miracle.” Hurley wrote the part of his mother in America with Kaminski in mind. The two met at UW where Kaminski was a teaching assistant and Hurley was a student chasing a double major in interdisciplinary visual arts and drama (there was no film school at the time). Later, Kaminski co-founded the Washington Ensemble Theatre and found Hurley an enthusiastic participant, in his own way. “I learned to use the camera because I bought a camera and I was like a videographer for all of their shows,” Hurley says. “And then I started to make short films.” He later delved into episodic entertainment with his web/TV series “Capitol Hill,” an interesting pastiche of Seattle weird crossed with ’70s and ’80s TV dramas that highlighted Hurley’s versatility as writer, director and producer. “He was always working on imaginative, otherworldly projects,” says Kaminski, now the artistic director of the Pittsburgh Public Theater. “He always was sort of thinking beyond the rest of us in terms of storytelling.” Rather than decamp to Los Angeles after school, Hurley chose to stay in Seattle, where there are fewer resources for filmmakers. So he made his own, building a community of likeminded creators like Kaminski and Place. The list is a long one. “They’re all over the film, UW people, both on camera and behind the camera,” Hurley says. “Bobby Aguilar, who was a UW graduate, he lights all of my films. Gosh, they’re like in every scene. There’s UW people everywhere and that’s great.”

Daniel J. Evans: An Autobiography By Daniel J. Evans, ’48, ’49 Legacy Washington/ Washington Secretary of State, 2022 A three-term governor and U.S. Senator, Evans’ story is, as well, a history of Washington state. A childhood in Washington, delivering the keynote at the 1968 Republican National Convention and guiding the UW as a regent, he provides detailed recollections of his storied career in public service. The book can be purchased at the Secretary of State’s website. Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest Lowell Skoog, ’17 Mountaineers Books, 2021 A skier-historian, Skoog sets out to capture the long love affair the people of the PNW have had with skiing. He describes early adventures back at the start of the 20th century when Mount Rainier was a new national park. It was a mode for miners, trappers and military men preparing to take to the Alps during World War II. The Mountaineers, a Seattle-based organization with many members from the students and faculty at the UW, made some of the first outings to the Cascade foothills and built a lodge. By the 1930s, they were scheming to build a public ski area at Snoqualmie Pass. Some of Skoog’s research and a number of the book’s historical photos came from the UW Archives. Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia José Alaniz Ohio State University Press, 2022 Looking at modern Russian comics, Alaniz, a professor in both Slavic Languages & Literatures and Cinema & Media Studies, explores the komiksisty culture over the last three decades from the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union to the current Putin administration. Surviving decades of both political repression and societal contempt, comics in Russia today are both an art form and an industry. Alaniz provides the history of the form coming into its own.

SUMMER 2022

Heartfelt Effort

Friends create DP Foundation to honor Daniel Phelps and raise awareness about sudden cardiac arrest By Jon Marmor

COURTESY ADAM LANG

The tragedy occurred nearly seven years ago. But it still doesn’t seem real that Daniel Ryan Phelps, then 27 and a former UW men’s soccer player who seemed to be in the pink of health, is gone. Sudden cardiac arrest, the leading cause of death in young athletes, is what Phelps, ’10, succumbed to in his Seattle apartment on Dec. 13, 2015. Shock waves of grief hit his family, friends, and the UW men’s soccer program. His best friend, Adam Lang, ’10, a teammate on the Husky soccer team, knew he had to do something to honor his friend. So he and a group of buddies created an annual charity golf tournament called the DP Open to honor Phelps and raise money for the Nick of Time Foundation. It's a local nonprofit that screens for sudden cardiac arrest at local schools, and teaches kids how to

Adam Lang (left) and Daniel Phelps were UW soccer teammates and best buds. Here, they are at Lang’s wedding, just a few days before Phelps died of sudden cardiac arrest.

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perform CPR and use a defibrillator. Since that first DP Open was held in 2017 at Washington National Golf Club, Lang and his friends have raised more than $130,000, which has helped screen m o r e t h a n 4 ,0 0 0 y o u n g h e a r t s . Additionally, through their Soccership program, they have donated money to local soccer clubs in Seattle to help make soccer more affordable for families. That’s a way to use broken hearts to literally keep other hearts beating. Lang and his friends recently launched the DP Foundation to formalize their efforts. “Their desire to make a difference in Daniel’s memory was also our mission in Nick’s memory,” says Darla Varrenti, a Seattle-area mom who created the Nick of Time Foundation after her teenage son Nicholas died after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest in 2004. The Nick of Time Foundation is dedicated to keeping others with hidden cardiac problems alive. “Both organizations wanted to give back to our communities, and the DP Open wanted to help the Nick of Time Foundation provide free EKG youth heart screenings for young people in our communities.” Says Husky soccer coach Jamie Clark: “It’s amazing how Adam and a number of classmates have taken a tragedy and … tried to make sure that it will not happen again. This has brought a group of friends together and given them incredible purpose. We always hope that sport and what it can teach and effect transcends the physical field on which we play. The DP Open is proof of this. More important than any goal that Adam has ever scored, a friendship forged out of the game will have such a positive impact long into the future.” Today, Lang works in product marketing Continued on p. 51

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NEWS FROM THE UWAA

Gather with the Pack Long summer days mean more time to get together with your Husky community! Cheer on the home team, lend a paw and stay informed with the UW Alumni Association. UWalum.com/events

JUNE

UW Night at the Seattle Storm The four-time WNBA champion Seattle Storm match up against Husky hoops legend Kelsey Plum ’19, and the Las Vegas Aces. Celebrate the Storm’s inaugural season in Climate Pledge Arena, support UWAA scholarships and receive free Husky swag.

Brooks Running UWAA Member Shopping Night Gear up for your next race, trail run, or walk around the neighborhood with this exclusive member night event at Brooks Running. Save big on the latest shoes and apparel and “Run Happy!”

JULY

13 JULY

UW Night at the Sounders Cheer on UW’s own Cristian Roldan and the two-time MLS Cup Champion Seattle Sounders as they take on the Colorado Rapids. Your ticket includes a $5 donation that supports UWAA scholarships. All UWAA members can stop by our table located in the north concourse to receive a free Husky branded scarf.

2018 UW Day at the Sounders

JULY

Better Together Service Days with BECU The UW and Washington State University are teaming up to fight summer food insecurity JULY with shared partner BECU. Embrace the Husky spirit of service and support local organizations in your community or join us on-site to volunteer with the pack at Spokane’s Second Harvest (7/29) or Seattle’s Food Lifeline (7/30).

29 30 AUG

UW Night at the Mariners Cheer on the Mariners as they take on the Los Angeles Angels on a Friday fireworks night celebration. Your ticket purchase helps support UWAA scholarships and includes a Husky themed Mariners hat. Level up your game at UWAA’s pre-game Husky Social with ballpark favorite food, fun and views. UWAA members save 20% on pre-game Husky social tickets.

OCT

Alaska Airlines Dawg Dash EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION OPENS IN JUNE Everyone’s favorite campus

run is back and better than ever. With registrations open for Dawgs, children and dogs, as well as a virtual version perfect for Huskies far from Seattle, it’s guaranteed to be a hit. UWAA members receive best prices and exclusive gear. Sign up today!

CONNECT ONLINE

UW ALUMNI BOOK CLUB KLARA AND THE SUN

Kazuro Ishiguro’s speculative fiction explores empathy, morality and love through the eyes of Klara, a humanized robot. Read along and join us for online discussions with campus experts and fellow Huskies.

UW HUSKY LANDING ONLINE NETWORK AND MENTORING

Be a part of the powerful professional network platform specifically for the UW community! Whether you’re looking for your first job out of college or building your network as a seasoned professional, there’s a place here for you.

SUMMER 2022

GENEROSITY AND

O P P O R T U N I T Y AT T H E U W

Dynamic Times, Dynamic Giving

Through the UW Fund and other unrestricted philanthropy, donors to the University of Washington can make an immediate impact where it’s needed most.

By Jamie Swenson

EXPANDING BLACK OPPORTUNITY

In June 2020, amid a global reckoning for racial justice and equity, leaders on all three UW campuses supported 44

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establishing Black Opportunity Funds, to help address the systemic racism and inequities harming the Black community—and increase opportunities for Black UW students, faculty and staff. Many UW supporters had been asking for such a fund to give to, and University leadership responded quickly, designating additional flexible funding to amplify donors’ generosity. The Black Opportunity Funds award grants to UW students, faculty and staff to support the University’s Black community, educational enhancement and innovative projects. So far, grants have been awarded to student organizations, programs for student success and retention, and research grants to study issues impacting Black students. At UW Tacoma, recent University commitments to the Black Opportunity Funds will also support community partnerships; at UW Bothell, they also power a need-based

faculty and staff to thrive. And when we do that, we will all be better for it.”

NEW POSSIBILITIES

When donors John and Rosalind Jacobi established an endowed deanship in the UW College of Built Environments (CBE), they wanted to strengthen the school’s vision of a more just and beautiful world for all. The Jacobis’ endowment provides significant funding that can be used as priorities develop and opportunities arise in the CBE. Renée Cheng, inaugural John and Rosalind Jacobi Family Endowed Dean, will start by using the funds to expand access to integrated student advising, mentoring and internship programs—helping expose CBE students to a breadth of educational experiences, connections between departments, and new possibilities.

These are gifts University leadership can direct for greatest effect—quickly used to meet current priorities and emerging opportunities. scholarship for students experiencing housing insecurity, job insecurity, or mental health and wellness challenges. When the UW launched the Black Opportunity Funds, President Ana Mari Cauce and Rickey Hall, vice president for minority affairs & diversity and university diversity officer, wrote that supporting the funds would “increase opportunities for Black UW students,

“Students are the heart of our college,” says Cheng, emphasizing the CBE’s commitment to nurturing and challenging current and future generations of students. Thanks to gifts like the Jacobis’, the CBE will be able to act quickly and meaningfully, deepening the college’s impact on students and faculty, both within the UW and across the community.

DENNIS WISE

Two years ago, the world learned how quickly everything could change. While the COVID-19 pandemic was threatening lives, it was also exposing and magnifying systemic inequities—ones we continue to grapple with today. “In my 30-plus years as an educator and member of the Husky community,” wrote UW President Ana Mari Cauce earlier this year, “I have never experienced a time of such dramatic and rapid change.” As our state’s flagship public university, the UW plays a critical role at the nexus of challenge and opportunity—constantly identifying, studying and addressing the challenges faced by our state, our country and our world. Many of these challenges didn’t start with the pandemic and won’t end when it does. In our swiftly evolving environment, it’s more critical than ever that the University work creatively and strategically to meet the needs of the students, families and public we serve. And philanthropy drives the UW’s ability to act quickly and meaningfully. While supporting specific UW causes and units is crucial to our public-serving mission, gifts to flexible funds like the University of Washington Fund have a unique impact. These are gifts that University leadership can direct for greatest effect—so they can be quickly used to meet current priorities and emerging opportunities. When you support an unrestricted fund in a UW department or contribute to a University-wide fund such as the UW Fund, you power the UW’s ability to make a difference in the world. Read on for examples of how flexible funds create lasting change at the UW and beyond.

Give, flexibly. When you contribute to the University of Washington Fund or another flexible fund, you give leadership the ability to address the highest priorities and needs across all three UW campuses. giving.uw.edu/june-2022

FORGING CONNECTIONS

Last fall, Creative Destruction Lab—a nonprofit seed-stage program for developing massively scalable scienceand technology-based companies— launched its third U.S. location: CDL–Seattle, based at the UW’s Michael G. Foster School of Business. Supported partly by philanthropic funding spent at the direction of President Cauce, this partnership will start with a focus on computational health—an interdisciplinary field combining health and computer sciences. In a collaboration with Microsoft, the U W C ol l ege of Engineer ing, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and CoMotion, the UW’s collaborative innovation hub, CDL–Seattle will bring experienced entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers and economists to serve as mentors to participating tech startups. And CDL– Seattle will strengthen the student experience, says Foster School Dean Frank Hodge: “It will offer students a highly experiential, hands-on entrepreneurial education.” Already recognized as hubs for cloud computing, AI, machine learning and biotech, Washington state and Seattle have all the ingredients to power the

next wave of computational health— and CDL–Seattle will help forge those connections. Together, we can improve the health-care landscape: helping optimize individual health care, using population health data to address inequities, mapping the immune system and more.

SUPPORTING RISING LEADERS

The UW is devoted to preparing the next generation of global citizens and leaders—beginning here in Washington state with the UW Presidential Scholarship program. Launched in 2018 with a gift from William and Pamela Ayer, this signature scholarship goes beyond grades and checked boxes to recognize UW applicants from Washington who are already leading by example, using their talents and creativity to make an impact in their communities. Covering nearly all tuition costs and including a customized leadership and mentorship program, the Presidential Scholarship program has produced graduates who will go on to be leaders in our state and beyond. Thanks to philanthropy that President Cauce was able to direct to this program, the UW is growing the Presidential Scholarship Endowment—expanding our ability

to attract and support Washington’s standout student leaders. Andy Manzano, ’23, is one such rising star making the most of his Presidential Scholarship. The business administration major has helped high schoolers from low-income families and underserved communities chart a path to higher education and contributed to a more inclusive campus environment. Through internships, Manzano is gaining the skills and connections to help make organizations more equitable. “This scholarship was my key to higher education,” Manzano says. “But I didn’t realize how far that impact would go.”

THE POWER OF PHILANTHROPY

Donors play a pivotal role in helping the University improve and transform our communities, state and world. When you make a gift to the UW fund, or to an unrestricted fund within a UW department, you help the University move quickly to address urgent and emerging needs—so it can direct its power toward doing the most good. However you choose to donate to the University of Washington, our students, faculty and staff—and all those we serve—couldn’t be more grateful for your generosity.

Presidential Scholar Andy Manzano has worked with Young Executives of Color, the Office of Multicultural Outreach & Recruitment, Upward Bound and other organizations building more inclusive communities on campus. “From the moment I received the Presidential Scholarship,” he says, “it’s been a life of service—to be a part of that process for somebody else.”

SUMMER 2022

‘Let’s Do Something About It’

By supporting students, professors and research-based solutions to global problems, Leo Maddox Schneider’s family is honoring his passion for learning and making a difference.

By Malavika Jagannathan

Thirteen-year-old Leo Maddox Schneider was an enthusiastic learner. The Seattle middle schooler spoke conversational Spanish and Bulgarian. He was a math whiz several levels ahead of his grade. He loved gaming and coding, but he was equally passionate about recycling and the health of the oceans. Leo’s parents, Sylvia Bolton and Matt Schneider, were inspired by their son’s love for education and dreams of creating a better world. After Leo’s untimely death, his family chose to honor his legacy through the University of Washington. They selected the UW because of its support for students and its leadership in the fields Leo loved the most: computer science and oceanography. “Leo imagined a future for himself where he could chase his dreams,” says Bolton, Leo’s mom. “We want to support young people like him who are turning their ideas into reality, making a difference in the world and becoming leaders of the next generation.” The family currently supports scholarships in computer science and oceanography, an endowed professorship, a student-focused learning laboratory and an innovation prize for creating solutions to plastic pollution in the ocean. Those are just some of the ways the family aims to make a global impact in Leo’s memory.

MAKING LEO’S DREAMS A REALITY

Like many kids his age, Leo loved playing video games like Minecraft and Fortnite with his friends. That inspired him to learn coding, which sparked his dreams of studying computer 46

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science and eventually starting a tech company. But those dreams were cut short by a tragic car accident in 2019. Now the Leo Maddox Foundation Scholarship in Computer Science & Engineering supports undergraduates who share Leo’s passion. Ten scholarships have been awarded so far by the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, covering tuition and other educational expenses for students like Cynthia Richey, ’23, a computer science major and math minor from South Carolina. Thanks to the scholarship, Richey has been able to tutor other students in math, work part time at a startup and conduct research—activities that are relevant to her fields of study. The scholarship funding has also given her more time to devote to academics. “I am humbled to be a part of Leo’s legacy,” says Richey, who hopes to either work in the tech industry or pursue a Ph.D. in computer science. “The scholarship has opened doors for me, made my life easier and given me opportunities to make the most of my college experience.” Leo’s legacy also lives on in the Leo Maddox Laboratory, a learning space at the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering where Richey and her fellow computer science majors study and collaborate. It’s the kind of space, his mother says, where Leo would have loved to hang out with his friends and dream up big, bold ideas to make the world a better place.

Inspired by Leo’s legacy. When you support the Leo Maddox Foundation scholarships, you help create a new generation of oceanographers and computer scientists. giving.uw.edu/june-2022

The Gift of Impact

PROTECTING OUR OCEANS

DENNIS WISE

Growing up in Seattle, Leo spent countless hours exploring Puget Sound by boat with his mom and paddleboarding with friends on Lake Union. All that time on the water, coupled with his enthusiasm for recycling, spurred another passion: to clean up plastic pollution in the ocean. Thanks to generous support from the Leo Maddox family, students and faculty members like Prof. Parker MacCready at the UW School of Oceanography will work to achieve Leo’s vision for cleaner, healthier oceans. As the inaugural Leo Maddox Endowed Professor in Oceanography, MacCready plans to hire another researcher for his LiveOcean forecast model. This daily forecast tracks currents, acidification, harmful algae blooms and other underwater conditions in the coastal waters of Oregon, Washington and the Salish Sea. “That information is used by crab fishermen, oyster growers and state managers of coastal razor clams,” explains MacCready, who hopes to make the model more reliable and useful for communities across the Pacific Northwest. The family is also investing in creating a new generation of oceanographers. Thirteen students have received the Leo Maddox Foundation Scholarship in Oceanography, providing access to climate-related education and hands-on research. In December 2021, four scholars spent several weeks aboard the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson, where they studied the impact of plastics and toxic pollutants on marine life. The school’s top research prize for students is also inspired by Leo, whose response to a challenge was often “Let’s do something about it.” In November 2021, Georges Kanaan, a graduate student in biological oceanography, won the first Leo Maddox Innovation Cup. Kanaan plans to use the $40,000 prize to study the use of biosurfactants from bacteria native to the Arctic in cleaning up oil spills and microplastics—potentially a natural alternative to the sometimes-toxic chemicals currently used. For Leo’s mother, the prize exemplifies her young son’s can-do attitude and desire to solve complex global problems like plastics in the ocean. It’s that spirit that drives the family’s philanthropy in Leo’s memory.

By Patrick Crumb Chair, UW Foundation Board

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SYLVIA BOLTON

When I graduated from UW Law almost 35 years ago, I made my first gift to the school: $25. The UW had given me an affordable path to realizing my dream of becoming a lawyer, and I wanted to give back. But I wasn’t only grateful for how affordable my education was; I was grateful for how excellent it was. So when I made that first donation, I gave it to the Excellence in Law Fund, which lets the Law School leadership direct resources where they’re needed most—whether it’s ensuring high-quality instruction and faculty, providing student support, or launching research projects and initiatives that tackle the most pressing legal issues of the day. I was happy putting my trust in UW Law’s leaders to use my gift in the ways that made the most sense for the school’s needs, knowing my donation would have an immediate impact. There are many ways to give to the University of Washington, and each one is important to our public-serving mission. But as we’ve all learned recently, change is difficult to predict—and it can be mightily disruptive. In times of great need and great opportunity, being able to use financial support where it’s most urgently needed helps our University act decisively. (Read more about this type of giving on page 44.) You can make a gift of this type within a specific department, so that your philanthropy supports that department’s most crucial needs. Or you can support the University as a whole by contributing to a University-wide fund, such as the UW Fund— and rest assured that University of Washington leadership will direct it wisely to make a real and appreciable difference. When you make a gift to the UW Fund or a similar unrestricted fund, you are helping the University do what we do best: spark positive change for our Husky community, our state and the world. No matter where or how you give to the UW, you can be sure that your gift will translate to impact. And for that, we will always be grateful.

“They give because they want to solve global challenges,” says Vivian Ho, ’86, who directs the family’s philanthropic efforts. “We can all join them and do our parts to make the world a better place.” James Anderson, Sylvia Bolton, Vivian Ho, Rick Keil, Marzette Mondin and Kristin Osborne contributed to this story.

SUMMER 2022

THE BIG PICTURE

BELIEVE THE HYPE As a Black high school soccer player in predominantly white Vancouver, Washington, MaKayla Woods was called “sassy” and told she had “an attitude” because she was confident and competitive. She sometimes felt like an impostor, asking herself: “Should I tone down my playing style? Hide my personality so I don’t make anyone uncomfortable?” Luckily for the UW, she didn’t. When Woods, ’22, arrived on campus with a soccer scholarship in 2018, she felt accepted for who she was—and she wanted to make sure others felt the same. Woods’ leadership skills shone as co-president of the Black Student-Athlete Alliance; on the hiring committee for the University’s associate athletic director for diversity, equity and inclusion; and in a Pac-12 commercial encouraging fans to advocate for inclusion and equity. In her four years as a forward on the soccer team, Woods always found her way to the middle of the pregame huddle to pump up her teammates: “I’ve always been very vocal, encouraging and positive. It’s my duty to be who I am. Before a game, that means being the hype girl.” Woods graduates this June with a major in sociology and minors in diversity and education. She begins graduate school this fall at the University of Southern California, where she’ll be pursuing a Master of Social Work. By Jamie Swenson Photo by Mark Stone 48

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Support students, athletes and leaders. When you contribute to the Competitive Edge Fund, you can make a difference for Husky Athletics programs supporting 650 student-athletes in all 22 women’s and men’s sports. giving.uw.edu/june-2022

SUMMER 2022

High-Water Mark Glass ceiling breaks as Linda Fagan becomes first woman to head a U.S. military branch

Linda Fagan will continue to put her UW master’s degree in marine affairs to good use in her new role leading the U.S. Coast Guard. It was only a year ago that she was nominated to be the service’s No. 2.

Firsts for Women

COURTESY U.S. COAST GUARD

Yet another historic achievement for women connected to the University of Washington took place in April. That’s when Admiral Linda Fagan, ’00, became the first woman nominated to serve as commandant of the Coast Guard. A graduate of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs in the UW College of the Environment, Fagan becomes the first woman to head a U.S. armed service. This news really didn’t come as a surprise; just a year ago, she became the first woman named the Coast Guard’s vice commandant and the first woman to be promoted to four stars. “Admiral Fagan’s nomination will inspire generations of American women to strive to serve at the highest level in the Armed Forces,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). Fagan is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. She went on to earn her master’s in marine affairs from the UW and a master’s in national security strategy from the National Defense University. She served as the Coast Guard’s Pacific Area commander before she was appointed last year as the service’s vice commandant. Fagan joins a list of women with UW connections to make history. The first woman directors of the National Science Foundation and NOAA are alumni.

A program of the UW Alumni Association

Linda Buck, ’75, became the first alum-

na to receive the Nobel Prize. Her award was in Physiology or Medicine.

captain the 747-400 and the 777. She earned her bachelor’s in aeronautics & astronautics from the UW.

Lynn Colella, ’72, was a superstar swim-

Christine Gregoire, ’69, ’71, was the

mer who was the first UW woman to win an Olympic medal—a silver in the 200 butterfly in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Rita R. Colwell, ’61, became the first

first woman to be elected attorney general in the state of Washington.

Jane Lubchenco, ’71, was the first wom-

woman director of the National Science Foundation. She served in that role from 1998 to 2004. She holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the UW College of the Environment.

an administrator of the National O c e a n o g ra p h i c a n d At m o s p h e r i c Administration. She served in that role from 2009 to 2013. She earned a master’s in zoology from the UW College of Arts & Sciences.

Suzanna Darcy-Henneman, ’81, be-

Dolores Sibonga, ’52, ’73, was the first

came the first woman employed as a Boeing production and experimental test pilot. In 1989, she became the first woman to

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Filipina American woman admitted to the Washington state bar and became the first woman of color to sit on the Seattle City Council.

ADVOCATE

Alumnae have an impressive legacy of being the first in their field. The nomination of Linda Fagan, ’00, to become commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard—the first woman to head a U.S. armed service—is just the latest. Here’s a look at several others.

Higher Education Needs Your Voice

Become an advocate today UWimpact.org

Friends and teammates said that Daniel Phelps (right) was the fittest player on the Husky men’s soccer team, which made it even harder to believe when he tragically died from sudden cardiac arrest.

COURTESY ADAM LANG

Heartfelt Effort Continued from p. 42 at Smartsheet, and he and his wife Shanti have two kids, the latest coming in April. His drive to continue honoring his friend is as strong as when they entered the UW as freshmen scholarship soccer players in 2006. “Friendships were so important to Daniel,” Lang recalls. Phelps could make anyone laugh and was the “human social calendar” everyone relied on. He was in Lang’s wedding party, and died five days after the wedding. The effort to honor Phelps and the support of the Nick of Time Foundation runs deep in the UW soccer program. Every season, the team dedicates one game to Daniel. Clark, the soccer coach, helps the soccer alumni network stay in touch. “Daniel’s death was such a shock to us all, he was always the fittest player on the team,” says Lang.“We shared so many special memories on and off the field, and I feel so grateful for the joy and laughter he added to my life. Life will never be the same.” To support the DP Foundation, please go to danielphelpsfoundation.org, and if you’d like to sponsor the upcoming charity tournament on Aug. 13 at Echo Falls Golf Club, email adam@dpopen.com.

CLASS OF 2022

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UWALUM.COM/GRADGIFT22 SUMMER 2022

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

STARBUCKS

•

ESTD 1971

hometown.

To learn more, visit: marysplaceseattle.org

WA • SEATTLE

This is our

TRIBUTE JOANN TARICANI 1953-2022

Many Roles, Many Impacts

Music School Director JoAnn Taricani gave her all to every responsibility she tackled

COURTESY SCHOOL OF MUSIC

It’s only fitting that JoAnn Taricani’s memorial service was full of music. The April gathering was a reminder of how much joy the School of Music director brought her students and colleagues over more than four decades before her sudden death Feb. 1 at age 68. Taricani grew up on the East Coast and came to the UW in 1980 after earning graduate degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an influential administrator, educator, researcher and arranger. A longtime chair of Music History, she also coordinated the school’s graduate program and served on UW budget and facilities planning committees. She chaired the advisory committee for Intercollegiate Athletics and served legislative representative for the faculty senate. Taricani was a tenacious advocate who roamed the halls of the state capitol. She doggedly fought to get a faculty representative on the UW Board of Regents. “And she continued working toward that goal every year, including this one, right up until the end,” said Chris Laws, faculty senate chairman. “It is far beyond

bittersweet that she passed from us without knowing the results of this year’s debating and this year’s votes. I am proud beyond words to say that we—that she— finally succeeded.” Taricani was a member of the UW Medicine board of directors, several other UWM advisory boards and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance board. She was known for being focused and prepared. “The combination of her personal qualities of listening and intelligence helped,” said UW Medicine CEO Paul Ramsey. “But her meticulous preparation with her intelligence and integrity and commitment to the mission led her to asking the most important questions, often in a quiet fashion.” Taricani’s research brought to life historic moments through scholarly texts, live performances and modern recordings. Her magnum opus was a three-volume edition of musical works surrounding the plays of 18th century British author Henry Fielding. The work earned her the 2017 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, the highest honor in her field.

RECOGNITION STEVEN M. GOLDBLATT spent 27 years as the chair of construction management in the College of Built Environments. He was the associate dean for external affairs and president of the Associated Schools of Construction. He was arbitrator, mediator and consultant on more than 100 public projects, including Seattle City Hall and Pike Place Market. He died Feb. 7 at the age of 72. ELEANOR OWEN, ’70, ’75, was an advocate and educator who helped change how the government treated people with mental illness. After her son was diagnosed with schizophrenia, she made it her mission to improve the lives, treatment and legal standing of those with mental health challenges. She co-founded the National Alliance for Mental Illness and founded Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Service Center. She died Feb. 6. She was 101.

SUMMER 2022

In Memory

GEORGE THOMAS FRALEY

KENNETH M. COX

JESS GREENBORG

HARRY CHARLES VYE

PATRICIA ROCKEFELLER HEEB

CHARLES WITHAM

EDY HIDEYOSHI HORIKAWA

ALBERTA DANIELE BENSON

’58, Nine Mile Falls, age 88, Oct. 4 ’58, ’62, Kirkland, age 86, Jan. 11 ’58, West Chester, Pennsylvania, April 17, 2021

ALUMNI JANICE RAE REINKING

Woodinville, age 75, Dec. 27 FREDERICK HENRY WEHDE

Bothell, age 97

1930 KATHRYN HODGES

ROBERT REGAN

’51, Kirkland, age 93, Jan. 24 FREDERICK J. THOMPSON

’51, Lynden, age 96, Nov. 13 DANIEL HOGUE DEVIN

’52, Seattle, age 91, Dec. 30 FRANK J. GUTHRIE

’52, Burien, age 94, Dec. 22 WILLIAM MILES CONNER

’39, ’51, Seattle, age 105, Jan. 29

’53, Bellevue, age 90, Jan. 28

1940

SAMUEL JOSEPH BEARD

CAROLINE E. HECK HAGA

’40, age 103, Jan. 28

’54, Bellevue, age 91, Nov. 22 DONALD FOOTE

’54, Woodinville, age 95, Jan. 20 MARILYN E. GARNER

ARNOLD TRENT WELLMAN

’46, ’56, Freeland

’54, ’61, Anacortes, age 89, Jan. 15

BARBARA BRIER WELLMAN

ROGER J. SULLIVAN

’46, Freeland

HARRIET F. (GOWDY) DAMANT

’54, Escondido, California, age 88, Oct. 23

’47, Columbus, Ohio, age 96, Nov. 17

JOHN RHYS EVANS III

ELMER M. MATSON JR.

PEGGY FERBER

’47, Seattle, age 99, Jan. 22

’55, Seattle, age 88, Jan. 14 ’55, Seattle, age 88, Sept. 2

’58, ’61, Seattle, age 101, Nov. 20 GARY ROGER LETSINGER

’58, Kent, age 85, Nov. 27 FREDERICK CHARLES PNEUMAN

’58, Medina, age 90, Dec. 12 AUDREY LEE ROBINSON

’58, Bremerton, age 85, Dec. 18

EARL CORIELL

LOIS SOFTKY AMBACHER

’49, Polson, Montana, age 97, Feb. 12

’57, Mountlake Terrace, age 85, Aug. 20

MARGARET RIESE

MYRNA BENNETT

1950

MARY E. “BETTE” KOON

’49, Shoreline, age 94, Jan. 14

CHARLES ROBINSON

’50, Mill Creek, age 95, March 12 ROY DE SOTO

’51, Snohomish, age 92, Jan. 1

’57, Shelton, age 86, Jan. 30 ’57, Shoreline, age 88, Feb. 1 SUE (WATKINS) LEACH

’57, ’60, Seattle, age 85, Dec. 23 ROBERT MELVIN ROED

’57, Chelan, age 89, Jan. 7 CARYL EVANS STRANCE

’63, Calabasas, California, age 80, Dec. 15 RONALD L. REISBIG

’72, Kirkland, age 71, Dec. 6 LENORE ZIONTZ

’72, ’79, Redmond, age 88, Feb. 13 JAY DEMERS

’73, Seattle, age 70, Jan. 7 SCOTT LEE HARRIS

’73, Palm Desert, California, age 76, Nov. 27

’58, Corvallis, Oregon, age 90, Dec. 5

’63, ’71, Burlington, age 81, April 8

DIANE M. PRIVETTE

ROBERT ACKERMAN

LLOYD COBLE

’59, Everett, age 84, Nov. 21

’64, Covington, age 79, Jan. 1

JEAN MARIE ENTICKNAP

CLYDE AMBACHER

A. MYRICK FREEMAN III

’59, Mountlake Terrace, age 90, Aug. 23

’64, ’65, Georgetown, Maine, age 86, Feb. 7

JAMIE MELANIE LESCHEN

DALE CHARLES CHRISTOFFERSON

RAYMOND WILLIS LARSEN JR.

STEVEN IRA ZABINSKY

JOAN CHRISTINE ARMITAGE

DOROTHY BECKER

’59, Redmond, age 85, Dec. 9 RYO INOUYE

’59, Kenmore, age 84, Jan. 29 WILLIAM I. MCCAUGHEY

’59, Bellevue, age 85, Feb. 2 JIM MINARD

BARBARA (SHEA) SAUERBREY

’56, Seattle, age 89, Jan. 29

BRIDGET HANLEY

PATRICIA A. MOIR

ROBERT S. YEATS

BEVERLY BREAR JENSEN

YOSHITADA NAKAGAWA

’63, Seattle, age 84, Nov. 11

’71, Edmonds, age 72, Jan. 13

DAVE STRONG

GORDON STUART PEEK

’48, ’51, Olympia, age 96, Sept. 8

WILLIAM PHILIP CALVIN

JOANN PETERSEN

WILLIAM G. SROUFE

’59, Portland, Oregon, age 88, Nov. 3

MARK LEONARD LITCHMAN

’63, Albuquerque, New Mexico, age 79, Nov. 26

’70, Issaquah, age 86, Dec. 31

’63, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, age 79, June 4, 2017

’55, Seattle, age 86, Dec. 24

’47, Seattle, age 96, March 2

’61, Midway, Utah, age 83, Jan. 23

GEORGE W. PLOUDRE

’58, Bellingham, age 85, Feb. 2

MARYJANE HEDREEN

’56, Mill Valley, California, age 88, Jan. 22

’61, ’66, Seattle, age 84, Jan. 3

1970

JOAN M. SCHWINDT

KENNETH D. NELSON

’47, Seattle, age 101

’61, Mill Hall, Pennsylvania, age 88, Feb. 5

’64, Mount Vernon, age 90, Dec. 13

’65, Bellevue, age 78, Feb. 5 WILLIAM C. CALLAGHAN

’73, Kent, age 72, Dec. 16 ’75, Willow Springs, Missouri, age 76, Oct. 25 ’76, Seattle, age 72, Dec. 31 ’76, ’93, ’95, Seattle, age 68, Jan. 16 ’76, ’89, ’93, Albuquerque, New Mexico, age 69, Dec. 27 ’79, Mercer Island, age 90, Jan. 1

’65, ’72, Bellingham, age 87, Jan. 7

CHRISTY GEORGE

CAROLINE LOUISE PETTIT

MICHAEL STEWART MILLER

’65, Edmonds, age 78, Jan. 23

’79, Seattle, age 74, Dec. 20 ’79, Oak Harbor, age 65, Aug. 20

SUSAN READING POZZI

’65, Anchorage, Alaska, age 78, Jan. 13

ROBERT JAMES RONEY

’59, Bellevue, age 85, Jan. 20

CHARLES BOATRIGHT SWANSON

LARRY STAIR

1980

’59, Hunts Point, age 83, Jan. 29

1960 CLARE IRENE ANDRIESEN

’60, Anacortes, age 84, May 8, 2018 JUDITH ANN GRAHAM ECHOLS

’60, Vancouver, B.C., age 82, Oct. 3, 2020 GEORGE HAROLD HAGEVIK

’60, ’63, Denver, age 84, Jan. 1 JAMES LEACH

’65, ’75, Redmond, age 81, Jan. 1 RICHARD K. “DICK” MEIGS

’66, Napa, California, age 77 FRANK KOICHI TANAKA

’66, Bellevue, age 80, Jan. 9 JEAN DEDERER RODEN

’68, Minneapolis, age 91, Jan. 13 YVONNE LAIRD SEIDLER

’68, University Place, age 91, July 29 ANGEL DIEZ

’79, Scottsdale, Arizona, age 74, Jan. 6

ANTONIO G.R. “TONY” ESPEJO

’80, ’83, Mukilteo, age 90, Feb. 6 BRIAN TUCKER

’80, Camano Island, age 82, Dec. 21 DIANE M. TOMPKINS

’82, Kirkland, age 61, Feb. 14 CLAUDINE M. ERLANDSON

’84, Snohomish, age 83, Feb. 7

’60, Arlington, age 85, Nov. 6

’69, Vancouver, Washington, age 76, Jan. 26

GEOFFREY BRADEN

’85, Seattle, age 74, Jan. 11

’51, Winthrop, age 94, Feb. 1

’57, Lake Oswego, Oregon, age 88, Feb. 22

GEORGE MANO

DARYL J. HABICH

SAMUEL OWEN SMITH

JOAN THRASHER MORGAN

JAMES KIRK ANGSTEAD

HELEN CHRISTOFFERSON

VICTOR WILLIAM RANTALA

AMANDA L. CICHANSKI

DOUGLAS WILLIAM DEVIN

’51, Seattle, age 91, July 5

UW MAGAZINE

’58, Seattle, age 85, Jan. 11

’60, Seattle, age 91, Feb. 11 ’61, Seattle, age 85, Dec. 21

’69, Monroe, age 77, Jan. 24 ’69, Seattle, age 92, Jan. 31

’85, Seattle, age 63, Jan. 13 ’86, Tacoma, age 71, Nov. 9

LINDA KAY VANSANDT

’86, Mesa, Arizona, age 63, Oct. 31 KENNETH RICHARD BROOKS

’89, Mukilteo, age 78, Nov. 1

1990 ROBIN ACKERLEY CALHOUN

’90, Hollister, Florida, age 77, Jan. 10

of artifacts from Columbia River tribal nations, including the 9,000-year-old bones of Kennewick Man. He became a leader of the Wanapum people while in his 20s and was relentless in his support of his culture. Buck died Feb. 11 at the age of 66 in his ancestral village of P’na on the Columbia River in Grant County. ALICE S. BURGESS was a

’93, Seattle, age 86, Feb. 7

former UW faculty member who taught courses in business writing and public relations. She and her husband Stan were also regulars at UW women’s volleyball matches. She died Feb. 19 at the age of 72.

FLOYD J. MCKAY

ALBERT SHELDON CARLIN

STACIE LEE HANSON

’90, Yakima, age 52, Aug. 6 ALIX H. FORTSON

’95, Bellingham, age 86, March 4

FACULTY & FRIENDS EVAN H. ABRAMSON joined

the UW Department of Earth & Space Sciences in 1988 and spent three decades as a research associate professor, with a brief stint at Brookhaven National Laboratories. He studied the properties of fluids at high pressures and temperatures. His recent research focused on icy worlds in our solar system and beyond. He died March 4 at age 64 in a boating accident while in Mexico, along with his diving partner and fellow UW employee Tom Schaefer. STAN BARER, ’63, a former

UW regent with a long history of volunteerism, was recognized with the 2021 Gates Volunteer Service Award before his death Dec. 13 at the age of 82. He established the Barer Institute for Law & Global Human Services with his wife Alta to help the University expand its reach. A law alumnus, he helped draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while working for Sen. Warren Magnuson, ’26, ’29. HARVY BLANKS was on the

1969 Husky football team that experienced tumultuous times under Coach Jim Owens. He was among four Black players suspended for not signing an oath of loyalty to Owens and was the only player who was not reinstated to the team. After leaving the UW, he continued his education at Cornell University, and had a thriving career in the theater, including a Broadway debut in 2017. He died Feb. 6 at the age of 73. REX BUCK JR. was a key figure

in repatriating hundreds of ancestors and tens of thousands

spent more than three decades at the UW as a clinical psychologist. He conducted groundbreaking research into the behavioral effects of marijuana, studied drug abuse and addiction, and helped design innovative treatments that used virtual-reality technology to treat spider phobias. He died Jan. 18 at the age of 86. TIM FULLER was a faculty

member in the UW School of Pharmacy. He was known for championing the ability of pharmacists to prescribe drug therapy. His many contributions were recognized by the Washington State Pharmacists Association and the UW Pharmacy School Alumni Association. He died Jan. 17 at the age of 75. ALLEN ABBEY GOLDSTEIN

was a professor in the UW Department of Mathematics. His contributions to the development of iterative non-linear optimization included the “Goldstein Condition”—the method for determining the amount to move along a given search directive. He died Jan. 21 at the age of 97. BLAINE HAMMOND was direc-

tor of the Wesley Foundation at the University of Washington. He died Jan. 14 at the age of 98. ELIZABETH “BETTY” HEDREEN

was a supporter of the arts in Seattle. She also served on the Seattle Chapter of ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists). She died Jan. 29 at the age of 85. DEBORAH HILL, ’92, was a

neuropsychologist at Seattle Children’s who specialized in treating children with special needs. She died Jan. 5 at the age of 64. DOUG JECK was an accom-

plished ceramics artist who

The UW Alumni Association is mourning the loss of two beloved dedicated volunteers. MARIE P. OLMSTEAD, ’58, a resident of Clyde Hill, was honored as the

UWAA’s Volunteer of the Year in 1991-92 and received the UWAA’s Distinguished Service Award in 2006. She practiced dental hygiene for 22 years and spent 20 years as director of fund development of Youth Eastside Services. A native of Ellensburg, she was a founding member of the Bellevue Schools Foundation and served on the boards of many community organizations and businesses. She died Feb. 3 at the age of 85. H. LEE GIBBON, ’77, a Spokane resident, was a longtime Spokane restau-

rateur and former member of the UWAA Board of Trustees. He opened Rocky Rococo’s in downtown Spokane in the mid-1980s and worked there until retiring in May 2020. He served on the Tyee Board, was district governor for Eastern Washington for the alumni association and a committee member of the Friends of the UW School of Medicine in Spokane. Gibbon—with his daughter, Alex, left—died April 3 at the age of 67. taught in the UW School of Art + Art History + Design for 26 years. His lifelike works often included a mix of clay, hair, concrete, fur and wood, and were collected by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian, American Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Jeck died Feb. 7 at age 58. ELIZABETH KAMP worked for

25 years at Suzzallo Library until her retirement in 2005. She volunteered at Northwest Center day care. She died Dec. 24 at the age of 81. JOANN ROSALIE DEGIDIO MASTELLER worked at the UW in

the financial director’s office followed by a job in Schmitz Hall. She died Dec. 23 at the age of 86.

THOMAS MCCORMICK served

as UW campus minister from 1966 to 1985. He joined the faculty of the UW School of Medicine in 1974 to develop the medical school’s first program in medical ethics. He began a counseling service for medical students and served as the chaplain to Husky Football in the 1970s and 1980s. He was honored with the Margaret S. Anderson Award for Distinguished Service to students at the UW School of Medicine. He died Feb. 12, 2021 at the age of 86. DEBORAH ANN NICKERSON

was a founding member of UW’s Department of Genome Sciences in 1992 and became a pioneer in human genomics. She was one of the most-cited scientists of the past decade and served as director of one of five Mendelian research centers established by the

National Institutes of Health. She died suddenly at the age of 67 on Dec. 24. KARL HARRINGTON POTTER

served as a professor in the departments of Philosophy and South Asia Studies at the UW from 1971 to 1997. He wrote the “Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies,” a 25-volume series. He died Jan. 11 at the age of 94. THOMAS STEVENSON REES,

’72, spent his entire 44-year career as an audiologist at UW Medicine-Harborview. He also taught part-time at the UW. He died Feb. 2 at the age of 75. ROBERT ROSENBERG served in

the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and served as a clinical associate professor of radiology at the UW. He was president of the Radiological Society of North America. He died Jan. 7 at the age of 96. TOM SCHAEFER earned his

master’s in oceanography from the University in 1984, then returned and found a home as a facilities assistant in the UW School of Social Work for more than 25 years. He died March 4 at age 67 in a boating accident while in Mexico, along with his diving partner and fellow UW employee Evan Abramson. THEILINE “TY” PIGOTT SCHUEMANN was an enthusiastic

UW supporter whose commitment to the community was apparent by the number of volunteer boards she served on. She died Dec. 30 at the age of 90. JAMES D. SIEGWARTH, ’57,

’66, earned his bachelor’s and

doctorate degrees in physics and taught for a brief time at the UW before working as a senior scientist studying cryogenics at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He died Jan. 12 at the age of 87. MICHAEL C. SPAFFORD was

a renowned professor in the UW School of Art + Art History + Design as well as a highly recognized painter and printmaker who drew inspiration from classical mythology. He won the Prix de Rome in 1967 and served on the art school faculty for 35 years. He died Jan. 29 at the age of 86. DONNA J. SUNKEL worked

for the UW as a financial administrator for more than 30 years. She died Nov. 29 at the age of 81. RAE DENNIS TUFTS, ’69,

was a lecturer in the UW Department of Architecture who served on the UW Rome Center board. She died Dec. 16 at the age of 89. LEONARD WARE was a former

UW student who became a prominent Silicon Valley lawyer and Morgan Hill rancher. He joined the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, authored in by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. A big supporter of the UW, he died Dec. 19 at the age of 93. GRAHAM GRIFFITH WHYTE,

’75, was a Seattle native who worked for the state of Washington, dividing his time between UW Medical Center Montlake and Harborview Medical Center as a lead laboratory technician for more than 30 years. He died Jan. 12 at the age of 69.

SUMMER 2022

T H I N G S

T H A T

D E F I N E

T H E

U W

A culture of camaraderie is one of the aspects that is most treasured by the students who join the Husky Sailing Club—even those who have never been in a sailboat before.

COURTESY SARAH KAHLE

Clear Sailing Ahead The Husky Sailing Club survived COVID-19 thanks to support from the new Husky Sailing Foundation By Caitlin Klask On a windy day at Magnuson Park, you might see dogs romping through the offleash area, kites soaring over the sports fields, or—if the water’s right—a pack of Huskies sailing around Lake Washington in 12 new dinghies. The Husky Sailing Team is a UW sports club with a history of producing Olympian athletes and racing against tough East Coast competition. But it’s also a tightknit community of students who strive to create a welcoming environment for anyone who wants to sail. Started in 1948 as the Husky Sailing Club, the team practiced on Union Bay until moving to Sail Sand Point about a decade ago. It’s known as one of the first and only all-gender sports in college competition; the UW offers a women’s team and a coed team. Across the country, 36 schools compete in fully funded varsity sailing, while roughly 200 (including the Huskies) are club teams. Without varsity funding, responsibility has largely been up to student sailors. “It’s on the captains to do a lot,” says former captain Sarah Kahle, ’23. “It’s seriously 56

UW MAGAZINE

like a full-time job.” But thanks to dedicated alumni like Carol Buchan, ’78, a new nonprofit called the Husky Sailing Foundation aims to create a more stable future. It has already provided funding for coaches, not to mention helping secure those shiny new boats. “The Husky Sailing Foundation’s mission is to provide support to enable [Husky Sailing] to consistently field an inclusive and competitive team,” says Buchan, vice president of the foundation. “I am personally committed to our mission’s success so future Husky sailors can enjoy the experience and rewards of collegiate sailing that I enjoyed.” While East Coast schools boast cutthroat recruitment processes, the Husky Sailing Team welcomes all students with commitment—tryouts are not necessary. Although 86% of all intercollegiate sailors (and 96% of U.S. sailing coaches) are white, the team will work with the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center to recruit more diverse athletes. “Sailing is a sport that requires vast amounts of privilege to even get into

because of how specialized and inaccessible it can be,” says Kahle. “Though we’re sailing our best and competing to win … the team values perseverance over raw talent.” Despite undeniable team cohesion and strong support from the foundation, the Husky sailors have encountered rough waters. Kahle recalls preparing for a spring break road trip with the team in 2020, just before COVID-19. “I remember saying to my co-captain, ‘I’ll see you next week!’ And then I didn’t see her for seven months.” Two years later, only five veteran sailors remain alongside about two dozen postCOVID-era recruits. The culture of a team that once felt like family is now in limbo. “We’ve had a difficult time bonding through virtual events, especially without a spring season in two years,” Kahle says. But nothing can keep these Huskies down in the doldrums. Kahle and her teammates hope to pass on sailing team traditions—like the “freshman clown car.” When she was a first-year, Kahle recalls not having a car to get to off-campus practices at Sail Sand Point; she was crammed into an upperclassman’s back seat alongside fellow carless first-years. As a senior with a car of her own, she carries on the tradition by offering rides to as many first-years as she can fit. And those 12 new boats? They’ll all need names. Kahle says, if given the chance, she’d choose something “probably really nerdy. Like Millennium Falcon or Enterprise.”

Anyone could manage our family Trust but he earned our family’s trust. Scout always made Pop Pop smile and smiles were hard to come by at the end. We wanted him to be happy but the hospital said, “Absolutely no dogs allowed.” I don’t know what Tim said or did, but he arranged for us to bring Scout in before Pop Pop passed. I’ve never seen him happier and more at peace than when he was sitting with his beloved dog. Tim could make us millions of dollars managing our portfolio, and he has, but he’ll never give us anything more valuable than that moment because true worth is in the little things. — David, Santa Barbara

Investment Management & Consulting | Trust Services | Family Office Philanthropy & Family Continuity | Real Estate

CONTACT PAUL CANTOR | 206.332.0836 | WHITTIERTRUST.COM/UW $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 guarantee of future results and no investment or financial planning strategy can guarantee profit or protection against losses. All names, characters, and incidents, except for certain incidental references, are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.