Faculty Friday: Josh Reid
On May 17, 1999, nine members of the Makah tribal nation paddled a canoe into the waters off Cape Alava on the Olympic Peninsula in pursuit of a 30-foot gray whale. From the first harpoon strike to a finishing shot delivered by a specialized rifle, the hunt lasted no more than ten minutes, but kicked [...]
Raise the Bar: Summer Spotlight Week 2
From wall-sits and destress sessions to pushups and potlucks, Week 2 of our Raise the Bar challenge for wellness in the workplace held a range of sunny surprises. In addition to all your work to emphasize a culture of team wellness, we’ve been floored by your humor, hard work, and incredibly clever team names. As [...]
Staff Story: Katie Gallagher
When Katie Gallagher moved to Seattle from Rhode Island three years ago, she didn’t know what the future would hold, so she decided to activate a connection from her past. Near the end of her studies as an undergraduate at the University of Rhode Island, Gallagher had attended a feminist camp in New York City [...]
Raise the Bar: Summer Spotlight Week 1
We’re well into Week 2 of our 60-day Raise the Bar challenge and one thing is clear: the consistent level of creativity and commitment across the University of Washington as groups work together to promote wellness in the workplace. Just like wellness, your strategies have taken many forms: “wellness walls” that promote healthful office environments; [...]
Faculty Friday: Jennifer Stuber
As humans, we leave little room for tragedy in our lives. When tragic events do occur—invading the idyll of the everyday and shattering our confidence in common bonds—we all too often attempt to cope by burying associated memories deep beyond reach: suffering stifled, pain pent up, and the confusion sown by death, disease, and mental [...]
Faculty Friday: Luke Tornabene
Luke Tornabene hovers above the abyss, suspended somewhere between fathomless darkness and daylight 800 feet above. A thin layer of condensation has formed on the interior of the five-person submersible—the product of warm air within the cockpit reacting to increasingly cold water without as the research vessel slips ever deeper into the dusk-colored Caribbean waters [...]
Staff Story: Alysun Deckert
Alysun Deckert knows what it means to run fast. She always has, dating back to high school in Salinas, Kansas where she won nine state championships running cross-country and as a track athlete in the 1600m and 3200m. Turned marathoner after college, she also knows what it means to sustain performance at the highest levels—not [...]
Staff Story: Zhuou Li
When Zhuou Li emigrated from China to Seattle in 1992, everything was new—everything, that is, except for the journey itself. It was a passage Li’s father had made twelve years before him and one his grandfather had completed some four decades before that. “They’d work here and then go back to China, marry, then apply [...]
Call for Submissions: Faculty Friday
Every week, The Whole U spotlights the life and work of a UW faculty member in our recurring profile feature, Faculty Friday, with the aim of telling the “story behind the story” of that faculty member’s path to the University of Washington, while also sharing their research with a wider audience. The depth and breadth of talent at [...]
Faculty Friday: Ellwood Wiggins
We can learn a lot from the world’s worst villains—that is, if we only spare some sympathy to take a moment to see things their way. If that strikes you as an inflammatory suggestion, it’s supposed to be. For Ellwood Wiggins, assistant professor of Germanics at the University of Washington, it’s an essential exercise in [...]
Faculty Friday: Pedro Domingos
Most computer scientists seek to empower machines. Pedro Domingos would rather empower people. “You may not be interested in technology, but technology is interested in you,” he says, using a witting corruption of Leon Trotsky’s famous quip about politics to underscore why he believes it’s increasingly important for people to take an active interest in how artificially intelligent technology is coming to influence everyday life. A professor [...]
Staff Story: Bethany Staelens
Few who undertake the transition from actor to activist manage to continue to do both well. Bethany Staelens, on the other hand, has always performed where it counts. By night, Staelens sings at the front a 19-piece big band, but once the footlights fade and the next day dawns, she can be found at the [...]