Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington | Fall 2023
Community at the Core The University of Washington Tacoma embraces its urban-serving role Also: Behind the Scenes at the Museums and Campus Access for Everyone
Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington
CO URTESY ELAVIE ND UR A
BY E L AV I E N D U R A , VICE CHANCELLOR FOR EQUITY AND INCLUSION, UW TACOMA
Charting Pathways to Inclusive Excellence Elavie Ndura, Ph.D. was born and raised in Burundi. Witness to ethnic violience in her homeland and to how socio-cultural factors priveleged some while disempowering others, she came to understand that education could help restore humanity and mediate peace.
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Welcome to the fall 2023 issue of Viewpoint! My connection with the University of Washington started on a breezy spring day. I was settling into my role as an associate vice president and campus diversity officer in Northern California when a call caught my attention. At the other end was a search consultant representing the University of Washington Tacoma. I listened, but with hesitation. I finally had a strong team and a number of diversity, equity and inclusion allies engaged in the work on campus and in neighboring communities. I had just secured a robust Faculty Senate endorsement for the institutional anti-racism action plan that had taken months to develop and negotiate. I had just moved into my brand-new house, which had taken a year to build. And did I mention that I was within driving distance to my young grandsons? The consultant listened to all these explanations and then pressed on to tell me more about UW Tacoma and Chancellor Sheila Edwards Lange. Out of politeness and, perhaps, mild interest, I listened. And
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then I became intrigued. A few weeks later, I arrived on campus to meet with UW Tacoma students, faculty and staff. I learned that building community was a top priority. I found an instant connection to my future colleagues and community as my life mission is to empower muted voices and make my community better than I found it. So here I am, in my second year as UW Tacoma’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion and professor of education. During my first year, I invested time deepening my understanding of UW Tacoma’s context, culture and people. I created crosscampus coalitions to support the planning and implementation of a DEI action plan. I launched the broad UW Diversity Blueprint so that UW Tacoma could carry it out locally. I contributed to the development of UW Tacoma’s Strategic Plan. Equity is one of UW Tacoma’s five strategic priorities. This commitment to “promote and model inclusive excellence and social justice” anchors all of our work as we seek to elevate the wellbeing and success of all students, staff and faculty. Hence, an imminent task was to develop a shared understanding of inclusive excellence so everyone could see themselves as a contributor to and a beneficiary of UW Tacoma's equity-centered mission. I brought forward my own pillars of inclusive excellence which include a safe and welcoming community, equitable opportunities and outcomes, strategic partnerships, intercultural competency and cultural humility. At UW Tacoma, we do not simply talk about equity and inclusion, we walk the talk in pursuit of inclusive excellence and social justice. This issue of Viewpoint highlights the leadership and work of UW Tacoma, communities, organizations and individuals. It opens with a story featuring the 2023 Canoe Journey hosted by the Muckleshoot Nation. A feature story follows, painting a coveted portrait of UW Tacoma as a lively, urban-serving campus, a minority serving institution and home to a majority of firstgeneration students. UWAA president and UWT alum Joe Davis shares his experiences as a Tacoma student. And you will read about a project to bring the history of Tacoma's once-vibrant Japanese neighborhood back into view. I feel your excitement about UW Tacoma and our neighboring communities. I invite you to visit the websites of UW Tacoma at https://www.tacoma.uw.edu and UW Tacoma’s Office of Equity and Inclusion at https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/equity to learn more about what we do. Enjoy reading and sharing!
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FOUNDED 2004
Published by the UW Alumni Association in consultation with the UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity 4311 11th Ave. NE, Suite 220 Box 354989 Seattle, WA 98195-4989 Phone: 206-543-0540 Fax: 206-685-0611 Email: vwpoint@uw.edu Viewpoint on the Web: UWalum.com/viewpoint
VIEWPOINT S TA F F Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 PUBLISHER
Hannelore Sudermann, ’96 EDITOR
Ken Shafer ART DIRECTOR
Caitlin Klask WRITER
Jackson Holtz, Nancy Joseph, Tatiana Rodriguez CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Apri Hong, RT Moriarty, Mark Stone, Eric Wilson-Edge CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
VIEWPOINT ADVISORS
Rickey Hall
Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity University Diversity Officer
Annie Pellicciotti
Director of Communications UW Graduate School
Elavie Ndura
Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion UW Tacoma
Eric Moss
Director of Communications Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity
MAR K STO NE
IN THIS ISSUE
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NEWS
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COVER STORY
UW Tacoma 9
FEATURE
Celebrating Cultural Museums 14
IN MEMORY | MEDIA
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VIEW
Invisible History A B O U T T H E COV E R The University of Washington Tacoma makes its home amid warehouses and business buildings in Tacoma’s historic Union Station District. Photo by RT Moriarty.
Canoe Journey
Tribal Canoe Journey is an annual event that brings together tribal and First Nations communities to celebrate their shared heritage. Over days or weeks (depending on their starting point) large canoes navigate the waters of the Pacific Northwest to reach the host tribe for a full week of protocol and celebration. This year, the Muckleshoot Tribe hosted, with about 100 canoes arriving at the final host destination of Alki Beach in West Seattle. Joining the journey this summer was the new Shell House Canoe Family, , made up of UW students, alumni, faculty, staff, elders and other community members. Their canoe is the Willapa Spirit Honor Canoe, once the honor canoe of Emmet Oliver, ’47, who founded the canoe journey in 1989 with the Paddle to Seattle. Oliver’s daughter, Marilyn Oliver-Bard, gifted the Willapa Spirit to the UW in a formal ceremony during the journey in July. Oliver’s son Marvin Oliver, UW professor emeritus of American Indian studies, had done the artwork on the canoe. Taking more than a year to prepare, the UW canoe family carved paddles, trained as pullers, learned songs and protocols and coordinated logistics for each landing site. For many, it was their first time participating. For most, it won’t be their last.—Nancy Joseph
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Reaching All Learners The UW’s DO-IT program works to adapt classrooms and labs to be used by all people By Jackson Holtz
Every summer, a cohort of DO-I� Scholars come to the UW to take part in labs and lectures, work on projects, try out living in student housing and explore the campus and the greater community.
school and college to ensure they are supported with technology so they can fully participate in learning and research. But it’s the core project—the DO-IT Scholars program—that best exemplifies how the center helps bring students with disabilities into higher education and STEM fields. Each summer, about three dozen high school students with disabilities spend a week at the UW, experiencing life in campus housing, building community and learning what it takes to go to college. “I tell the students that I’m going to be very happy for them if they’re successful,”
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when Sheryl Burgstahler was working in desktop computing at the UW. She recognized the potential of the internet—a new technology at the time—to assist students with disabilities. She noted that some of the region’s big companies were already using the technology, and that the UW’s computers could help with work like reading and writing documents. With a grant from the National Science Foundation and funding from the state of Washington, Burgstahler established the DO-IT program. She advocated for the use of emerging technologies to provide access to people with disabilities, and since then DO-IT has continually adapted to the newest platforms and devices. And DOIT Center staff work with students in high
EL I ZA B ETH WOO L NE R
A decade ago, Dustine Bowker went to a pizza party at the Husky Union Building. Then a junior at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Bowker, who identifies as being on the autism spectrum, came to the University of Washington to learn about a program designed to help people like him. He’s had to learn to recognize social cues, he said, and adapt to fit into many situations. But at the HUB that day 10 years ago, he felt a sense of belonging. “That was my very first event where I saw dozens of people with disabilities in the same room, and that was a new experience for me,” Bowker says. “It’s a type of community, I guess, that I didn’t even realize was there.” After attending the event, Bowker became a DO-IT scholar, joining a cohort of other Washington high school students with disabilities who come to the UW to learn about going to college, the different ways technology can help them as students and the power of friendship, mentoring and leadership. Now in its 31st year, the Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology Center— DO-IT for short—has provided support, advocacy and mentoring to more than 500 students with disabilities. They have gone on to complete high school and pursue four-year degrees, often in fields of science and technology. The DOIT Center provides a roadmap for students with various disabilities to transition to college and find the accommodations they need on campus. Over the years, DO-IT has also created a larger community of professionals with disabilities. It all started in the early 1990s
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Burgstahler says. “But I’m going to be a lot happier if I see that they’re contributing to a more inclusive world.” The program is “building that community, No. 1, so students can actually feel like they belong somewhere with other people like them,” says Kayla Brown, a DO-IT coordinator who was a scholar in 2005. She went on to become a DO-IT ambassador, earned a master’s in social work and then returned to DO-IT to help others. Brown is a first-generation college student who uses a motorized wheelchair. Through DO-IT, she learned to advocate for herself. “I felt less alone,” she says. “There are a lot of things any student has to do, but I felt like I was just a little bit behind everyone else.” Brown’s job includes coordinating projects and programs as well as speaking publicly about disability advocacy and culture. The work goes beyond people with disabilities, she says, pointing to the way environments can be designed to be accessible to people regardless of age, size, ability or disability. Wider doorways and sidewalk curbs with ramps or the addition
of text on screen or video captions can expand access for everyone. “One of the biggest influences with DO-IT is learning about disability, how to interact with people with disabilities, knowing about areas like the disability rights movements,” Bowker says. Through DO-IT, he’s made lifelong friends and now better understands that, when it comes to disability rights, he’s building on the legacy of earlier advocates. “I wanted to give back to that community in a way,” he says. “And I think DO-IT has been one of the most profound sources of that.”
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NOAA
COHO CRISIS
L I SA K AY P HOTO GR AP HY
A few years ago, UW Tacoma scientists and scientists from Washington State University pinpointed a degraded chemical from car tires as the toxin killing coho salmon. The finding came after decades of research into what was wiping out nearly all the samon returning to spawn in certain urban streams. Late this summer, the Puyallup, Port Gamble S’Klallam, and Yurok tribes petitioned the EPA to ban the chemical, 6PPD, to save the salmon that the tribes rely on and that are at the center of their cultures. In the petition they note that the mass mortality of caused by the degraded chemical—which is now also found in soils, sediments, household dust and human urine—undermines Washington state’s billion-dollar effort to restore coho salmon in the Puget Sound.
In Pursuit of Tech Equity While researching technology, equity and innovation, Ph.D. candidate Jay Cunningham makes time to help steward the University as a UW regent By Tatiana Rodriguez
TAR A BROWN
SUPPORTING SCHOLARS
Last spring at the annual Celebration event, donors gave more than $370,000 to fund scholarships for students in the UW’s Educational Opportunity Program and who use the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity. Hosted by the Friends of the EOP and OMA&D, the dinner brought together 550 alumni, community members and the business community to invest in the education of students who are American Indian and Alaska Native, underrepresented minority, low-income, first-generation and formerly in foster care. Outstanding students like Sung Zathang (above, right) were recognized for their contributions to campus and the community. They rely on the financial support to help with tuition, fees and other expenses.
As the student representative on the UW Board of Regents, Jay Cunningham joins a select group of citizens appointed by the governor to steward and govern the University. His term runs through June 30, 2024.
As a kid, Jay Cunningham was interested in technology, but he could never afford the latest gadgets. Instead, he would watch product reviews on YouTube. When he was a high school senior, he was thrilled when his library got an Alexa smart speaker. However, when he or other students would try to use it, it wouldn’t understand their questions. “I’m from a Black Southern town in rural Mississippi,” Cunningham says. “People who make AI technology don’t look or sound like me. So how is Alexa supposed to know what I ask?” As an undergraduate at the University of Alabama, Cunningham studied computer science and interned at Meta, the company that owns and operates Facebook and Instagram. He became interested in humancentered design after meeting research scientists working with Oculus headsets and virtual reality. He began to examine how people interacted with robots and how culture influenced technology. This newfound interest caused him to further his studies in the UW’s Human-Centered Design & Engineering program. Now a fifth-year Ph.D. student, Cunningham focuses his research on inclusive and responsible artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches for marginal-
ized and vulnerable users. He explores the use of the human-centered design methods of community collaboration and participatory design that center around equity and address implications around identity, culture and power. “Black and African American English speakers typically have a much harder time interacting with language technologies like voice assistance and transcription, or even speech to text,” he says. Throughout his academic career, Cunningham has noted how few people there are in engineering spaces who look and sound like him. He is the first African American man in the HCDE doctoral program, and has worked with the department to recruit more Black students and faculty. Cunningham has also joined a number of student organizations and mentored undergraduate students through research programs. He also works with Black community programs that mentor first- and second-year students at Seattle’s Garfield High School. This year, Cunningham joined the UW Board of Regents as the student representative. He says he plans to bring more than a student perspective to the board: “I have made Seattle my home and have dedicated myself to leaving the University better than how I came in.”
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UW TACO MA
A PLACE
of PROMISE Since moving into Tacoma three decades ago, the UW has sought to serve not only its students but the community as a whole By H annelore S udermann
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hen Danica Miller looks at the UW Tacoma campus, she sees more than the university where she has built her career in Native American studies, history, literature and art. She sees the school that her father, Bill Sterud, the Puyallup tribal chair, helped break ground for 35 years ago. She sees a place of learning for historically marginalized students, a home for Indigenous teaching and learning, a growing number of faculty of color and a new minor in Native American Studies. And she celebrates that all this is taking place on the homelands of her ancestors. “I feel so fortunate to be doing this work we are now in these ways of cultural awareness and acknowledgement, but also in far-reaching pathways with other tribes as well as on-the-ground work with Indigenous students,” she says.
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Forty years ago, the neighborhood where UW Tacoma now stands was a derelict commercial area troubled with crime and empty warehouses. The city was in an economic downturn and its deep-water port, Commencement Bay, was listed as one of the most toxic waterways in the country. Elected officials, businesses and community leaders banded together to turn Tacoma around, seeking to make it safer for residents and more inviting to commercial interests. They needed to highlight the region’s rich natural beauty and cultural diversity, bolster the economy and improve access to education. They hit on the idea of trading crime and grime for college students. Setting their sights on a UW branch campus, they began courting legislators to support the cause.
DeAnn Dillon, left, was one of 10 doctoral students from the ‘Muckleshoot Cohort,’ a partnership between UW �acoma and the Muckleshoot �ribal College, to graduate this spring. She is now teaching at UW�.
A study revealed the population of South Puget Sound was profoundly underserved by public higher education. The region had fewer bachelor’s degrees than most urban areas of the state, and many potential students were place-bound—by families, jobs and limited resources—and didn’t have access to four-year public degrees or graduate programs. The findings, in turn, won over the state’s leaders to support not only a UW branch campus in Tacoma but one in Bothell as well. The Tacoma leaders’ dream became real in 1990, when UW Tacoma welcomed its first students. Though it had just 13 faculty and 187 undergraduates—and in a temporary location—it was a turning point for the city. Today the Tacoma campus one of the most diverse in the state: 63% of undergraduates are students of color, and the majority are the first in their family to attend college. With nearly 5,000 students overall, it embraces its role as an urban-serving university. The students and faculty are engaged in the community through service learning and community service, as well as through research and scholarship. Mayor Victoria Woodards, a lifelong resident of the city, remembers the day the UW Tacoma campus opened and that the city was forever changed. “What’s so great about the people at UW Tacoma is that they use the resources of the students and the faculty not just to provide education inside the UW but also
outside in the community,” she says. “Those are resources that a city can’t pay for.” Of course, there’s economic benefit to bringing students into the downtown core, but there’s so much more, she says. For example, the students take on research projects that can improve the city leaders’ understanding of specific problems and “give us ideas that can shape the city,” she says. From its founding, the Tacoma campus has always been focused on the bigger picture, “committed to addressing issues of interest in the community,” says Sheila Edwards Lange, UW Tacoma’s chancellor. Whether that’s equitable economic development that supports women- and minority-owned busineses or reaching older and first-generation students, or expanding the teacher pool—from preschool to college—with more diverse and culturally competent educators, the Tacoma campus is working on it, she says. That community-serving commitment also has manifested in programs to improve water quality, address gentrification and housing needs, and work with small businesses to help them adapt to a changing economy. Over its first two decades, UW Tacoma focused on building the faculty, student body and campus—today it offers nearly 40 undergraduate degrees and 14 graduate degrees. Around 2011, campus leaders started to position UWT as a major resource for the community—emphasizing education and opportunity for South Puget Sound residents and directing scholarship and research to meet the broader needs of the region. As the campus grows more aware of the needs of its students and the greater community, it adds programs, creates projects and pursues community engagement to meet them, says Edwards Lange. In recent years, the school has expanded the diversity of
ER IC WILSO N E D G E
�he land where UW �acoma sits is the ancestral home for the Puyallup �ribe. �oday a welcome figure by artist Qwalsius (Shaun Peterson) stands near campus.
UW TACOM A
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the faculty to be more in line with the diversity of the student body—bringing in more teachers from underrepresented backgrounds and building on a foundation of leading scholars. They include Carolyn West, a nationally recognized clinical psychologist with an expertise in domestic violence and women’s empowerment with a particular focus on Black women, and Rubén Casas, who explores public space and civic engagement and advocates for adapting Tacoma’s downtown to increase pedestrian traffic and public use. Danica Miller, who now co-leads the tri-campus UW Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, brings Indigenous ways of learning, (Lushootseed) language preservation and Indigenous community connection. When Rachel Endo came to Tacoma to be the founding dean of the school of education, there was work to do to address the shortage of K-12 teachers—particularly teachers from underrepresented backgrounds and those who were prepared to incorporate anti-racist and equity-centered practices. The need led UW Tacoma to create a new bachelor’s degree in education in 2022 that uses service learning, psychology and inclusive practices. While it won’t completely solve the problem of too few teachers, the effort will create a steady stream of culturally competent teachers for Tacoma’s classrooms. Meanwhile, the UWT also expanded its educational leadership offerings to include a focus on Indigenous graduate students. A new program with the Muckleshoot Tribal College celebrated the first cohort of Muckleshoot Scholars completing their doctorates last spring. In 2017, UW Tacoma became a federally designated Minority Serving Institution. Last year, this coveted acknowledgment brought a $2 million award from the U.S. Department of Education to support Asian American, Native American Pacific Islander and low-income students. Endo, the principal investigator for the
project, says the grant benefits students in every field of study on the Tacoma campus. About a quarter of the UW Tacoma students is Asian American or Pacific Islander, and more than half come from low-income backgrounds. Tacoma has significant enrollment of Vietnamese, Filipino and Korean American students, as well as a number from Samoan and Guamanian descent. The campus itself serves Tacoma in myriad ways. When it opened at its permanent site on the south edge of downtown in 1997, it brought new life to the landscape, which has served changing communities over the last 180 years. For the white settlers in the 1850s, it was prime real estate for shipping and commerce thanks to the deep waters of Commencement Bay. But it also has a troubled history. For the wave of Chinese immigrants who came to work on the railroad and stayed to help build wharves and warehouses in the mid-1800s, it became a place of tragedy as a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in the 1890s triggered a mob to drive the immigrants from the city and burn their buildings to the ground. The rough history of exclusion replayed 60 years later when a thriving Japantown—some of which was on the site of the current UW Tacoma campus—was abandoned as hundreds of families were forced into concentration camps during World War II. Today, UW Tacoma joins the citywide movement to acknowledge the troubled history, embrace the community’s current diversity and make changes toward becoming a more equitable, anti-racist city. Now perched on this land with so many layers of history—and history of diversity—UWT’s faculty, students and alumni are deep into the work of clarifying and celebrating the history and cultures of the area, owning the harm that has occurred and serving new generations of Tacomans. “That is the role of the public university,” says Edwards Lange.
Insights From an Alum Joe Davis,’16, is the first president of the UW Alumni As-
sociation to have graduated from UW Tacoma. A military veteran, he transferred to the Tacoma campus from Pierce College, where he had enrolled after serving in the Army. Today he is a deputy sheriff in Snohomish County. He shared some highlights of his Tacoma experience with writer Caitlin Klask.
Joe Davis didn't grow up thinking he’d go to college. But after serving in the Army, he saw it as a pathway to a career in public service and law enforcement.
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What drew you to UW �acoma? It has a small-school feel. Our average class size was 16 to 1. In my organic chemistry class, there were like 30 people, and I know at the UW in Seattle, that organic chemistry class is a lecture hall of 300 people. My organic chemistry teacher, Dr. Meg Henderson would just say, “Hey, these are my office hours—you guys are free to come by.” All of my professors were extremely supportive. Dr. Jutta Heller was absolutely amazing. She emigrated from Germany and was a first-generation college student. She had a huge compassion for first-generation students, and taking molecular biology with her, she was always patient, and she made learning fun. What did you appreciate about UW�? It’s an urban-serving campus. It’s the only university in the state of Washington that is part of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities. Specifically, UW Tacoma helped revitalize downtown Tacoma. And it’s mainly a commuter campus. And the high veteran population, obviously, being military myself. But what I really appreciate about it is the room for growth. I know a lot of people haven’t seen it, but there’s the big W. That W is the center of campus, and there are several blocks west that UW Tacoma owns
with the ability to expand. So right now, I believe there are 5,000 matriculated students, and the hope is to grow to 10,000 someday. You reached out to UW �acoma to get involved after finishing your degree. What made you do that? I’m proud of graduating college, specifically from the University of Washington, and more specifically from UW Tacoma. I wanted to stay involved. I’ve always been the type of person who is not going to wait for someone to approach me. I’m going to seek out opportunities. Right off the bat, I bought a life membership without knowing anything about the UWAA. I also asked what opportunities there were to get involved and heard about representing UW Tacoma on the UWAA Board of Trustees. I was like, whatever it is, sign me up—I’ll learn about it. As for the UW community … a lot of things divide people. I joined the military at a young age. I grew up in an environment where I saw [diversity], and then joining the military, you were still surrounded by that. Skin color, sexual orientation, none of that really deterred me. I’ve never viewed that as a barrier. But what I can appreciate about the UW is that we’re all family. It’s just another thing that binds us together.
STORIES TO TELL
Culturally specific museums build empathy, promote equity and tell more complete histories. See how three from the Seattle area draw upon their UW ties and engage in evolving conversations around race, history and identity.
BY H A N N E LOR E S U D E R M A N N P H OTOS BY A P R I L H O N G
In the early 1960s, Seattle City Councilman Wing Luke, ’51, ’58, worried that the city’s vibrant Asian American community was changing too quickly. Construction on the new Interstate 5 would bisect the ChinatownInternational Disrict that for served as the hub for Seattle’s Asian community and commerce. As Seattle grew, the neighborhood risked being subsumed by development. Luke envisioned a museum to preserve the history that encompassed thousands of lives, a multiplicity of cultures and the city’s story. the story of diversity at the UW
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ing Luke died in a plane crash in 1965. Two years later, his friends, family and constituents realized his vision. First opened in a small storefront, the Wing Luke museum celebrated Asian American art and history and was at the forfront of a wave culturally specific museums across the country. Today, Washington is home to a number of culturally specific museums and more than a dozen tribal museums and cultural Polly Yorioka, a graduate student in museology, holds a photograph of her great-grandmother that she discovered in the Wing Luke collections. It factors into the museum’s newest exhibition, “Sound Check! �he Music We Make.” Below, Jessica Rubenacker, ’09, exhibit director at the Wing, takes a last look at an exhibit about to be taken down. Previous page, the early 1900s scrim from the historic Nippon Kan theater now hangs in the Wing’s �ateuchi Story �heatre.
centers that preserve, celebrate and tell the historical and contemporary stories of the region’s first people. Born out of the need to capture stories, artifacts and histories before they were lost or forgotten, and because traditional museums overlooked or excluded the art and experiences of many cultural and ethnic groups, identity-based museums started to appear across the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, and now, when it comes to being relevant and responsive to their communities, culturally specific museums lead the way. At the heart of their work are education, preservation, scholarship and identity. They support the well-being of the communities and cultures they represent and build empathy and intercultural competence among all visitors. But there is still work to be done. In September, the Wing Luke Museum was attacked by man swinging a sledgehammer at its windows and shouting racist slurs. Museum staff and community members quieted him and kept him onsite until police arrived. He was later charged with a hate crime and malicious mischief. Culturally specific museums like the Wing, the Northwest African American Museum and the newest, the Sea Mar Museum of Latino/a and Chicano/a Culture help us tell a more inclusive story about our region. And they all have deep ties with the University of Washington. Their founders, boards and volunteers are filled with alumni. Faculty help develop exhibits, students do internships, scholars use their archives. And many of the very people who bring them to life—the curators, the fundraisers, the designers, the architects—come with UW in their backgrounds. Far from stuffy, they innovate and respond to current community interests. The Wing Luke, for example, pioneered the process of consulting with local residents and organizations to develop and define exhibits. The Northwest African American Museum blends history and contemporary art in its storytelling, and by inhabiting a once abandoned public school building that now includes affordable housing, it brings vibrancy to the neighborhood. And the Sea Mar museum shares its building with a health clinic and community event space with the understanding that celebrating a community’s identity and culture contributes to the health of its members. Special, specific spaces like the Buffalo Soldier Museum in Tacoma and the National Nordic Museum in Ballard give richer meaning to what it means to be living in the Northwest. Considering these ideas, Steffi Morrison, ’19, explored the role of empathy in her thesis for her master’s in museology, which she is putting to use as collections manager at the Wing. In her conclusion, she determined that “culturally centered museums can become not solely places of stored memory and established facts, but as living institutions that are committed to social values in which visitors are inspired to move towards active, compassionate empathy.” What follows is a gallery of three museums, each celebrating culture and identity, each with strong UW connections, and each essential to our regional narrative.
The Wing Luke Museum �his summer, deep in the archives of the Wing Luke Museum, Polly Yorioka chanced upon an unexpected treasure. It was a nearly century-old photo of her great-grandmother playing a traditional Japanese string instrument called the koto. Yorioka, a UW student working on her master’s in museology, was in the midst of an internship helping develop the Wing’s latest exhibit, “Sound Check! The Music We Make.” The large-scale exhibition of sound, image, artifact and story follows the music of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities--music they created, enjoyed and that served as the
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background to their lives. During the weeks curating the materials, Yorioka worked alongside Jessica Rubenacker, ’09, exploring the museum’s own archives and collecting and preparing artifacts from individuals in the community who had fascinating music stories to tell. The curators were delighted to bring in a colorful silk jacket from singer-songwrier Roger Rigor, of VST & Company, one of the Philippines’ most popular disco bands of the late 1970s and early ’80s. Rigor later moved to Seattle and became a public school teacher. There are also guitars from well-known local artists like Kim Thayil, the lead guitarist of Seattle-based band Soundgarden. Thayil, who is of Indian ancestry, and bandmate Hiro Yamamoto, of Japanese descent, were founding members of a band that helped take the Seattle sound to the world. “A lot of people don’t think of Soundgarden being two-thirds Asian American, but it was,” says Rubenacker. The museum’s exhibit director, Rubenacker also teaches as guest faculty in the UW’s museology program. That was where she first met Yorioka, who still can’t believe her luck in landing the Wing Luke internship. “This is the first exhibit I’ve worked on,” Yorioka says. “It’s a new adventure. I’m going from learning the theories to actually getting to do it.” Yorioka finds it especially poingant to find her own family, which had longstanding ties to Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, in the exhibit. Yorioka does her work in a cozy archive space past a warren of offices and meeting rooms that make up the upper floors of the historic East Kong Yick Building. In 1910, 170 Chinese residents in Seattle pooled their money to develop the four-story red brick building, and its twin, the West Kong Yick Building, with storefronts below and singleoccupant hotel rooms used by Chinese, Japanese and Filipino traveling workers above. In 2007, the museum’s executive director, UW alum Ron Chew, led the acquisition of the structure, renovating and preserving it for future generations. During Chew’s tenure at the museum, he brought the Wing to national recognition for centering individuals’ stories in the exhibit narratives and expanding community-based exhibit development. Because of the Wing’s commitment to education and public service, in 2021 it became the first Smithsonian Institution-affiliated museum in the Northwest, allowing it to bring to Seattle the expertise, collections and programming of the national museum. But much of the “Sound Check!” exhibit is built from local resources. It includes artifacts on loan from MoPOP and photos from Densho, the Seattle-based nonprofit that preserves documents and testimonies of Japanese Americans. The radio station KEXP (which was formerly UW’s student-run station, KCMU) has loaned equipment for a DJ booth. The station will also develop broadcast programming that relates to “Sound Check!” over the 12-month run of the exhibition. It is a feast for the ears and eyes. Visitors can learn more about Filipino music tradition and ponder endearing local photos— like one of the 1974 Franklin High School JazzLab. The adolescents, dressed in wide-collared shirts, were an awkward bunch, but under the guidance of conductor Charles Chinn, they created a fierce sound. Several went on to be professional musicians—including one Kenneth Gorlick, aka Kenny G. From world famous to deeply local, from Chinese opera to modern hip-hop, “We are sharing all sorts of stories from historic to contemporary,” says Rubenacker. There’s kabuki, concerts and variety shows at the Nippon Kan theater and the more recent beats of the Blue Scholars, the hip hop duo of George Quibuyen and Saba Mohajerjasbi, who met as UW students in 1999. Quibuyen also once worked at the Wing Luke. While the exhibit might offer a nostalgic tour for certain community members, it’s filled with fresh stories that will intrigue “the broad audience of folks in Seattle,” says Rubenacker. “This topic is so universal. Music touches all of us.”
The Northwest African American Museum Museum president and CEO LaNesha DeBardelaben, above, talks about the many roles of the Northwest African American Museum. It is a home for history, a celebration of cultural heritage, and, a gallery for showcasing Black artists, top.
In November 1985, a group of artists and activists broke into the shuttered Charles Colman School building and started an eight-year occupation of the space, demanding that it be turned into an African American heritage museum. The group of about 40 included Charles James, ’75, Omari Tahir-Garrett, Michael Greenwood and Earl Debnam. The four remained, lived in the space without heat or running water, and undertook what would be one of the longest acts of civil disobedience the country has seen. The building had long been a landmark for the Black community, serving since the 1940s as the school for most of Seattle’s African American children as well as for many of Chi-
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nese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry. But the school was closed in 1985 because of the expansion of Interstate 90 nearby. By that time, leaders in Seattle’s African American community had their sights set on the building for a museum. It wasn’t until 1993 under the leadership of Norman Rice, ’74, Seattle’s first African American mayor, that the city agreed to fund the museum, and the occupation came to an end. An advisory committee was formed, and Royer appointed UW alum Bob Flowers to head the museum board. From there, the story becomes complex with bureaucratic challenges and division among the early activists and Black civic leaders. But through it all, the dream of a museum survived. In 2003, the building was designated as a historic landmark because it’s connected to the cultural heritage of the community, because it’s architecturally distinctive and because it’s a known and visible feature of the neighborhood. Today, an inviting 19,000-square-foot space dominates the ground floor of the vintage brick building. It holds galleries for art and history as well as an artist’s studio, offices, a gift shop and a children’s reading corner. At one end of the history area, a display highlights African Americans in Washington’s history. And there, in the middle of it is Manima Wilson, the first African American to graduate from the UW—circa 1911. The Northwest African American Museum first opened its doors in 1998, with the first director Carver Gayton, ’60, ’72, ’76. His tenure was followed in 2008 by artist Barbara Earl Thomas, ’73, ’77. The first exhibit featured the works of world-renowned and Seattle-based artists James W. Washington Jr. and UW Professor Emeritus Jacob Lawrence. Over the years, it has grown and expanded... finding new ways to tell the community's stories.
Professor Emeritus Erasmo Gamboa serves as an advisor to the Sea Mar Museum.
“When I arrived in 2017, the museum was moving into it’s 10year anniversary looking for new energy, fresh programs and new approaches to community engagement,” says LaNesha DeBardelaben, president and CEO. DeBardelaben came to Seattle with a breadth of experience that included a leadership role at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and a stint as president of the national Association of African American Museum’s board of directors. She is also pursuing a Ph.D. in the history of education at the UW. From its founding, the museum’s story is interlaced with UW people and influence, she says. One of the musuem’s innovative projects featured a UW-developed program called Interrupting Privilege, which was led by Professor Ralina Joseph. It included UW students and was based out of the museum, where it would be more accessible to its community participants. “We open up the museum space for empowering conversations regarding dismantling inequities, improving radical listening and tooling up ourselves for activism,” says DeBardelaben. “We are dedicated to culture, education, empowerment and informed activism. “We are in the Pacific Northwest, where there are not many spaces that center and celebrate Black excellence and Black representation,” she says. “Though this museum is dedicated to telling Black stories, it is for everybody. We seek to provide a sense of belonging and warmth and welcome to everybody.” The museum’s offerings extend beyond the property. The Knowledge Is Power program sends 20,000 African American children’s books to children across the region. And to her knowledge, “we’re the first museum in the country to create their own African American museum choir,” she says. “We pop up in communities and sing.” The choir, known as the African American Cultural Ensemble, has brought joyful sounds to soccer games, graduations and community events across the state. The museum shares the old school with the Urban League Village, an affordable housing project that offers 36 units. Within a half-hour of opening on a recent weekday morning, several groups were already inside the galleries exploring the history of Black settlers and luminaries in Washington.
The Sea Mar Museum Just inside the door of the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/ Latino/a Culture stand two authentic, intact farmworker cabins. The one-room wooden shacks were painstakingly relocated from a farm in Eastern Washington, where they once housed families of workers who traveled the West for seasonal employment in the fields and orchards of the Columbia Basin. Their presence is testimony to the rugged realities of the Mexican and Mexican American families who sought opportunity in Washington. This exhibit, representing the first surge of Chicanos and Latinos moving to Washington around the time of World War II opens the experience of the 4-year-old museum in South Seattle. One of the newest culturally specific museums in the region, it first welcomed visitors in fall 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic. But its founders have been dreaming of this project for decades. In the late 1960s, nearly all of Washington’s Hispanic residents lived east of the Cascades. Of them, a few—often the children or grandchildren of the immigrant families—came to Seattle to study at the University of Washington, where they formed a community dedicated to social change. Inspired by the farmworker movement in California and activism around civil rights and the Vietnam War, they organized, became student leaders and expanded their reach into the greater Seattle community. On campus, they persuaded their classmates to boycott the residence
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halls and the HUB to stop them from selling non-union grapes as part of a grape boycott. They joined forces with the Black Student Union, Native American students and Asian American students to push for more faculty of color and the expansion of class offerings to include in Chicano history and literature. Those early students—many of whom graduated to become teachers, lawyers and business leaders—created the foundation for a vibrant Hispanic and Latino community in the Puget Sound region, says Professor Emeritus Erasmo Gamboa, ’70, ’73, ’84. Gamboa was one of them. His parents, Mexican immigrants, had moved the family to Eastern Washington, and he grew up in Yakima Valley. He has memories of living in a farmworker cabin as a child. He was one of the first students of color recruited to the UW in 1968 in the precursor to the Educational Opportunity Program and became a historian of the West, with a focus on the Latino experience. His fellow students included Rogelio Riojas, ’73, ’75, ’77, a UW Regent and a founder and CEO of Sea Mar Community Health Centers; Norma Zavala, ’80, ’02, ’07, a Seattle-area education leader who serves on the museum’s board; and architecture alumnus, Jose Bazán, ’78, ’80, who designed the museum space and advised on how to develop the exhibits, which include a rich assortment of artifacts and art. “We didn’t start with a thousand artifacts, but we had the idea, the commitment,” Gamboa says. They reached out to families they knew would have memorabilia. The encouraged a Yakima-area farm family to donate the cabins. They visited museums around the country, then decided not to pretty-up the artifacts. “We want to tell our story with the rust, with the blemishes,” Gamboa says. “The cabins’ thin walls and knob and tube wiring within the reach of children helps tell the story.” Many things set this museum apart, including that it is the
A farmworker cabin from the Columbia Basin offers visitors to the Sea Mar Museum a view to the experience of many central Washington families.
first in the Pacific Northwest to represent Chicano and Latino culture, but it may be unique in the nation with its ties to a community health center. In fact, it shares a building with Sea Mar’s adolescent medical clinic, as well as the organization’s two Spanish-language radio stations. Sea Mar, a health and human services non-profit, was founded by UW alumni in 1978 to serve the Latino community. The dream was always to have a museum dedicated to sharing the stories of the Latino/a experience in Washington, says Teofila Cruz-Uribe, ’17, ’18, who uses her UW graduate degrees in international studies and museology in her role as the museum’s director. “There is a gap in the public record where oftentimes the presence of Latinos in this state is overlooked. Sea Mar was founded to serve the underserved community, and the mission has expanded to include being a resource for community, history and identity.” Behind the diorama of life on an Eastern Washington farm, massive photographic murals of protest and activism in Washington in the 1960s and ’70s lead the way to the next gallery. Gamboa points out and names people he recognizes. Further back, the museum opens to a large room filled with items and photographs that break into vignettes. One section tells the story of labor, with ephemera from orchards and hop farms. Others focus on community, rife with instruments, posters and sports equipment. A special section focuses on military service. Another highlights University of Washington and student activism. All built around the Latino experience. The museum is by no means complete, Gamboa says. The plans are to push through the back wall into an existing space now filled with offices. “We continue to collect and continue to flesh out our vision of the story our museum should tell,” he says.
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In Memory
JOHN CHRISTOPHER WALTER, was a UW professor emeritus of American ethnic and African American studies from 1989 to 2007. He advocated for expanding the coverage of African American studies at the UW and was an intellectual leader in civil rights justice. At the UW, he encouraged many students to pursue their studies with a focus on social justice. His courses on Blacks and the Law, the History of the South Since the Civil War, Music and Social Change, and The Jazz Age were always oversubscribed. He was awarded the American Book Award in 1990 for his biography “The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany Hall, 1920-1970.” He died on March 21 at the age of 90.
New ‘Ways of Knowing’ The UW’s new podcast series connects current issues and events with eye-opening cultural and historical insights
HERBERT MINORU TSUCHIYA, ’58, a School of Pharmacy alum, served the Rainier Valley as a pharmacist and community volunteer for more than 50 years. He opened the Genesee Street Pharmacy and was the clinic pharmacy manager at the Columbia Health Center Pharmacy and Rainier Park Medical Clinic. His honors include a Seattle Mayor’s Small Business Award and the Distinguished Alumnus Award for Excellence in Pharmacy Practice. Tsuchiya was born in Seattle in 1932. In 1942, his family was forced to the Minidoka prison camp. When they returned, he finished high school and attended the UW where he later created the Herbert & Bertha Tsuchiya Endowed Student Support Fund for Global Research. He died August 21 at the age of 90.
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In 1941, Marvel Comics introduced the Armless �iger Man. The supervillain features in an episode of a new podcast series highlighting the expertise of faculty from the College of Arts & Sciences.
With the help of luminaries from the UW’s humanities faculty, this eight-part series explores race, immigration, disability, history, poetry, nature—and comic books. Blending current scholarship and a variety of analytical methods, the innovative collection of episodes not only explores specific subjects, it opens up the listener to fresh ideas and approaches to understanding. In one of the early episodes, Professor Habiba Ibrahim focuses on Frederick Douglas’s autobiography and why, in Western ways of thinking, common perceptions of age and time don’t seem to apply to Black people. In another episode, Professor José Alaniz considers comic book characters with disability. The series, produced by the UW News team with the help of The World According to Sound can be found at washington. edu/news/podcasts and on streaming platforms Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts. Episode 1: JESSE OAK TAYLOR What determines the start of the Anthropocene—the geological epoch marked by human impact on the planet? The debate hinges, in part, on how we define “signature events,” occurrences that prove humans have changed
the Earth in a detectable and definitive way. Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English, shows how reading—finding the clues—is a fundamental analytical tool of both the sciences and the humanities. Episode 2: CHARLES LAPORT “Dover Beach,” a 19th-century poem by Matthew Arnold, can be read as both a romantic lament and an existential commentary on the loss of religious faith. Through close reading—a way of reading for insight, not information—English professor Charles LaPort focuses on the inconsistencies of rhythm and rhyme. And he points out how, through using close reading to study a work, we can uncover new meanings. Episode 3: HABIBA IBRAHIM The autobiography of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, tells how the brilliant writer and abolitionist endured enslavement as a child and escaped. Habiba Ibrahim, professor of English, noted Douglass never knew, nor is there an official record of, his exact age. With the murder of Trayvon Martin, who was not yet an adult when he was killed in Florida 10 years ago, Ibrahim began studying age as it relates to race. Episode 4: LOUISE MACKENZIE In the 16th century, writers in Europe depicted the wilderness as terrifying and dangerous. But in the centuries to come, that fear of remote, unpopulated places gradually turned to awe, reverence and ultimately a powerful and problematic form of desire. Louise Mackenzie, associate professor of French, contrasts “La Savoie,” a poem by Jacques Peletier du Mans in which the French Alps are ruinous and horrible, with a conteporary view of the same region as a nature-lover’s dream. Episode 5: JOSÉ ALANIZ Who gets to be a superhero? How about a villain? It depends on where you look. In the 1940s, comic book villains were often distinguished from heroes through physical disability. That changed in the 1960s and '70s, when it became more common for heroes—think Daredevil and Professor X—to be built around disability. José Alaniz, professor of Slavic languages and literatures, analyzes the physical depictions of superheroes and villains through the decades. Episode 6: DIANA FLORES RUIZ An empty wallet, a hairbrush, a diaper. These few items left behind by migrants at the United States-Mexico border, were photographed for a 2021 Los Angeles Times story. Diana Flores Ruíz, assistant professor of cinema and media studies, discusses how the same images can be used on both sides of a debate. She describes how the photos evoked empathy and assistance for humanitarian organizations, but were also used to garner support for vigilante groups by inducing fear. Episode 7: CHADWICK ALLEN The Octagon Earthworks in central Ohio is one of thousands of Indigenous mound sites across the eastern half of North America. Professor Chadwick Allen, who teaches in both English and American Indian studies, explores the subjects of Native American earthworks and cultural erasure. The Octagon Earthworks, he explains, is actually a gigantic clock whose builders possessed substantial astronomical knowledge. Episode 8: MAYA ANGELA SMITH When you hear a cover of a favorite song, the lyrics and melody may be similar, but there are also enough differences to make it unique. Associate Professor Maya Angela Smith introduces translation studies through the song “Ne Me Quitee Pas.” Originally written and recorded by the Belgian Jacques Brel, the version by American Nina Simone carries racialized and gendered dimensions. Different artists bring different identity markers to the same song, highlighting distinct political, social and cultural narratives.
MEDIA Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City By Jane Wong, ’16 Tin House Press, Spring 2023 Poet and author Jane Wong, who holds a UW Ph.D. in English, adds memoir to her rich resume of creative work. In “Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City,” she recounts her childhood on the Jersey Shore in the 1980s, where her family ran a Chinese American restaurant and struggled to realize the American dream. The Los Angeles Times calls the book a love letter to the Asian American working class. Wong is an associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University. Washington State Rising By Marc Arsell Robinson, ’04 New York University Press, August 2023 Adding to the history and literature around the activism that took place at and around the University of Washington in the 1960s, Robinson brings the Black Power movement—particularly the Black Student Union—into focus. He explores how it unfolded on the UW campus in Seattle as well as at Washington State University in Pullman. His deep understanding of both schools is rooted in his time as a UW undergraduate and then as a doctoral candidate at WSU. Today he is an assistant professor of African American history at California State University, San Bernadino, where he continues his research on the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements in the Pacific Northwest. Stayed On Freedom By Dan Berger Basic Books, 2023 Professor Dan Berger, who teaches history and comparative ethnic studies at UW Bothell, writes the biography of two activists who fell in love while working as organizers in the South. Focusing on Zoharah and Michael Simmons, self-described foot soldiers in the civil rights movement, Berger spins out their tale of family and 60 years of civil rights activism and at the same time tells the story of the Black Power Movement in the U.S. and around the world.
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Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington
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In this 1927 photo, school children and faculty stand outside the Japanese Language School in �acoma. It occupied land that today is home to the UW �acoma campus. Below, a bronze sculpture titled “Maru” (circle) by Gerard �sutakawa comemmorates the school.
Invisible History Undoing the erasure of Tacoma’s Japantown By Hannelore Sudermann
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U W TACOM A
In the 1880s, about a decade after it the city was founded, the first Japanese settlers moved into Tacoma. Many had come to work on railroads and in the mills, others to start small businesses. Before long, they had built a neighborhood and business district on a hillside not far from Commencement Bay. It was a vibrant place with hotels, grocery stories, barbers, laundries, a newspaper and a school where children could learn Japanese language, culture and history. “At one time, up to 180 businesses were operated by Japanese Americans in Tacoma,” says Tamiko Nimura, ’00, ’04. She is a writer and historian researching the history of Japanese Americans in the city and expanding on the work of UW Tacoma professors Lisa Hoffman and Mary Hanneman, who wrote “Becoming Nisei,” about the city’s Japantown before World War II. “Learning about the original site of Uwajimaya blew me away,” she says, referring to the iconic family run grocery chain that is now headquartered in Seattle. She was inspired to work with her husband, Joshua Parmenter, ’02, ’05, to develop a smartphone app called “Tacoma Japantown Walking Tour.” Part of the UW Tacoma campus was home to the Nihongo Gakka (Japanese Language School), where the community’s children went every day between grade school and dinner. Today, little is left of Japantown. In 1942, the residents were
forced en masse into internment camps. The school became a registration center and a place where families left their belongings. Over the decades, the building fell into disrepair. Attempts were made to save it, and it was nominated to the National Historic Registry. But its days were already numbered when the UW bought the property in 1993. At that point, the structure was deemed to be beyond repair. Before it was demolished in 2004, it was one of the last two remaining Japanese language schools on the West Coast, where there had once been well over 200. Nimura learned some of this history in 2014 while attending a dedication for “Maru” (which means circle), a 9-foot-tall sculpture on the Tacoma campus that commemorates the school and the Japanese community. Nimura was inspired to help. Her latest project is a digital exhibit of stories, photographs and details of the Japantown that once was. “One of my priorities is to uplift the voices of folks who grew up here,” she says. With funding from a UW Tacoma federal grant and private donations, she continues to “gather and share as much information as I have and know about the history of Tacoma’s Japantown,” she says. “The mission is to make sure we don’t lose sight of how important this community was.” The online exhibit, with photos, oral histories, maps and interactive story maps, will be open to the public later this fall.