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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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When a veteran leaves a branch of the armed forces, it is often seen as a time to get on with the business of living. But for military veterans, the transition to civilian life is not always easy. That’s where Thomas Kuljam comes in. As director of UW Tacoma’s Veterans Incubator for Better Entrepreneurship (VIBE), [...]

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The moment Bruce McCormick was first moved to dance, the dancers hardly moved at all. “I remember just looking up and all the dancers all looked so tall and were smiling and I was completely in awe,” McCormick says, recalling the feeling of standing at the foot of the stage as a 7-year-old during a dress rehearsal [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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