Coaches’ Corner: Jennifer Cohen
One of the first things Jennifer Cohen did on becoming athletic director of the University of Washington last May was shelve the hardware. The UW’s previous athletic director, Scott Woodward, had kept an array of championship rings displayed on a wall over a conference table in his office in Graves Hall. In making the space [...]
Stepping Out with the Tuesday Trekkers
Seven years ago, Sandy Wood joined the UW Faculty Auxiliary and quickly discovered the Tuesday Trekkers. “It was a dream come true,” she says. A UW graduate and the wife of a retired faculty member, Wood was looking for an healthy ways to fill her days in addition to spending time with friends, grandchildren, gardening, [...]
Coaches’ Corner: Elise Ray
If there is such a thing as a fifth act in the drama of American athletics, Elise Ray just opened hers to a standing ovation. This past April, Ray closed the books on her first season as head coach of UW Gymnastics, leading the GymDawgs to a program-record eighth-ranked finish nationally, ten spots ahead of the [...]
Staff Story: Gene Woodard
Gene Woodard is a man on the move. The director of the Building Services Department at the University of Washington used to joke that he might be one of the few people who has been in every bathroom on the UW’s Seattle campus. “Then I realized the plumbers probably have me beat there,” he says. [...]
Faculty Friday: Kristi Straus
Somewhere along the way to hauling yet another five-liter jug of water up to her second-floor room in a small village high in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, Kristi Straus decided enough was enough. She paused and looked around, reflecting on the community of subsistence farmers with whom she’d spent the past two years as a 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer. “The people [...]
#UWTimeOff: Featured Photos and Prize-winners
When we put out the call in November asking you to share your favorite moments from your time off from work, we couldn’t fathom the response it would get. From chance encounters with a bagpiper in a Hungarian forest to bike rides through the Washington countryside to Incan ruins and otherworldly ossuaries, you delivered first-in-class [...]
Faculty Friday: Marcos Llobera
Much as museums might make it seem, the past is not static. Its inhabitants no less frozen in amber or suspended in action poses as part of some done-up diorama than the scene outside your window at this very moment. Indeed, if there is one constant throughout history, it’s that humans move. In the process, [...]
Faculty Friday: Zoe Barsness
If you want something done, do it yourself. But if you want something done right, do it together. That’s the driving ethos behind Zoe Barsness’ work as chair of the Faculty Senate, the legislative body of faculty consisting of 122 elected senators who, together with the president, formulate regulations and procedures that govern and guide [...]
Faculty Friday: Will DePaolo
Will DePaolo studies bacteria, but his science goes viral. The associate professor of medicine’s videos exploring the bacterial science behind everyday objects have amassed millions of hits on BuzzFeed and led to appearances on The Today Show, but DePaolo, the director of the University of Washington’s new Center for Microbiome Sciences and Therapeutics (CMiST), says he [...]
Kneadful Things: The Benefits of Massage
On February 21 and 22, The Whole U surprised doctors, nurses, and staff with free chair massages at pop-up locations at Harborview and UW Medical Centers. In four sessions across two days at eight separate locations, 12 licensed massage therapists volunteered their time and mastery of the musculoskeletal system to provide more than 400 staff members with [...]
Staff Story: Linda Di Biase
All librarians like a good challenge—Linda Di Biase perhaps more than most. Three days a week, Di Biase serves as the eBook and collaborative collection strategy librarian in the University of Washington’s Collection Analysis and Strategy Department. When she’s not building and analyzing library collections or helping PhD students access hard-to-find documents half-way around the [...]
Faculty Friday: Kathryn Topper
Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Kathryn Topper thought she wanted to be an astronaut or astrophysicist. That was until tenth grade, when she fell in with a different crowd. This group made a habit of gathering late into the night to talk, sing, and drink—sometimes making a competition of flinging dregs of wine [...]