It would not be too far a stretch to describe Ashwini Sadekar as a Renaissance woman. That’s not to say she is some kind of modern-day Leonardo da Vinci (though the 15th century polymath is one of her foremost inspirations). But, in her own way and time, Sadekar is fusing disparate disciplines into a body [...]

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Not all superfans wear capes. But Barry Erickson does. Or did. For a quarter century, beginning in the mid-1980s, he entertained the home fans and antagonized visitors at UW football games in the guise of Captain Husky, a kind of vigilante mascot, whose DIY costume, broad comic skits and thundering crowd spell outs became an [...]

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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” This question, posed by the poet Mary Oliver, was designed to inspire a bit of introspection. But when Maria Lamarca Anderson encountered it — on a milestone birthday at her physical and emotional limit in the thin air of [...]

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“History never repeats itself,” wrote Mark Twain, “but it often rhymes.” That famous notion by the iconic American author certainly tracks with UW Rowing, a program that has been so good for so long that its storied history sometimes achieves a measure of rhythmic symmetry. To wit: In 1936, an understated former Washington oarsman named [...]

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Marie Cockerham felt ready for a new challenge. She had worked nearly two decades as a clinical nurse and, increasingly, a nurse educator when she took on a staff support position at UW Medical Center that was created to address the pervasive emotional stress and strain borne by healthcare providers. In this new role, Cockerham [...]

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Identifying the root cause of the climate crisis is simple enough. Finding solutions? Not so simple. It requires enormous creativity, commitment and collaboration, often among traditional antagonists in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. To foster these ad hoc collaborations, there is UW EarthLab, a transdisciplinary institute within the College of the Environment that is [...]

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As she leads a tour of the diverse vegetation proliferating inside the UW Biology Greenhouse, Katie Sadler compulsively collects dead leaves, desiccated flowers and spent branches, almost without noticing, the way a mother casually fusses with her child’s hair or straightens his collar. “I wish I had my pruning shears,” she says, with a knowing [...]

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Nicole Klein is not ordinarily a building hugger. But not long ago, in the middle of a tour she was leading of the old ASUW Shell House, Klein found herself overcome by emotion, temporarily unable to speak and compelled to wrap her arms around its walls of rough-hewn Douglas fir for a lingering moment. “I [...]

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“Study abroad changed my life.” This is a headline for many a blog post, tagline for many a study abroad program brochure, popular Tik Tok theme and a common refrain among students and alumni of overseas study. Indeed, a quick Google search of that phrase pulls up dozens of first-person accounts about how being an [...]

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Meaningful recognition is a powerful motivator. People need to know that what they are doing matters. They need consistent acknowledgement of their value in an organization, and they need to be given recognition in a way that is significant to them. For nurses and other patient care providers, meaningful recognition might be the difference between [...]

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Working the night shift is not for everyone. There’s that perpetual jet-lagged feeling resulting from shift-work sleep disorder, the strain on one’s social life, the detrimental health effects and the disconnect with family members and friends who operate on a daytime schedule. But for those with night-owl tendencies, the night shift can have its benefits: [...]

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George Thomas Jr. first became interested in salmon when, as a student at Indiana University at Bloomington, he was recruited from an introductory stream ecology course to spend the summer on the Olympic Peninsula assisting a team of researchers studying coho salmon habitat. Working among tributaries feeding the Queets River the summer before his sophomore [...]

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