If aliens were ever to land, Michael Berry thinks his music theory students would be prepared. “I want my students to be able to figure out what makes their music tick,” Berry says, calling up connotations of the scene in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which aliens and humans communicate through a [...]

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If Adam Warren could time travel, he might head to Mexico City in the 1920s—the period immediately following a decade of revolutionary war that was, in his view, “a moment of radical new ideas and imagining how Mexican society might be transformed.” Then again, Warren says he’d have to consider other areas of his research [...]

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Crash the boards in support of Huskies Women’s Basketball and Gymnastics with select ticket discounts from UW Athletics! There’s an unforgettable scene in Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life in which a basketball gym floor splits open during a high school dance, sending unsuspecting dancers splashing down into a 25-yard swimming pool below. [...]

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Kim Durand never envisioned that one of the high points in her career in college athletics would come clutching a box full of hats. But that’s just where she found herself late last spring in Fullerton, California: standing well back into foul territory, box of hats in hand, as UW Baseball battled into extra innings [...]

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In academia, many devote long stretches of their lives to preparing for a career they’ve aspired to since they were young. A few outliers find their way to faculty positions via the confluence of aptitude and happy accident. Fewer still spend years preparing for a future career without ever really realizing it. Dr. Joyce Yen [...]

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Lynn Hermanson goes by many titles: wife, mother, teacher, counselor, and confidant. As assistant director of UW Tacoma’s Institute for Global Engagement and the Global Honors Program, she says she often thinks of herself as a “GPS for students in higher education,” helping students—many of whom are first-generation college-goers like herself—find success on their own [...]

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To understand trolls is to understand oneself—and professor Lotta Gavel Adams knows them better than most. But Gavel Adams, professor emerita and Barbro Osher Endowed Chair of Swedish Studies at the University of Washington, insists she’s neither troll scholar nor folklorist. “I am an historian of literature and culture who looks at what trolls look like [...]

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“The pursuit of happiness.” It’s a phrase that helped form our basis as a nation, but could it be that the pursuit of “happiness” is leaving us less happy than ever before? What is happiness, anyway? Those are questions Annie Nguyen explores in the writing classes she teaches as a lecturer at the University of Washington Tacoma; [...]

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Harry the Husky is about to hit the big time for the first time. For most of the year, the UW Spirit cheer and dance program follows the schedule of other UW teams, performing at football, volleyball, and men’s and women’s basketball games. But this January, the team of 16 dancers, 24 coed stunters and [...]

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Step into Steve Herbert’s office in Smith Hall at the University of Washington and it’s the art that immediately catches your eye. On a back wall above his desk hang two large pen-and-ink drawings of labyrinthine detail, imbued with a spinning sense of motion through thousands of short hatch marks made by a ballpoint pen. [...]

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Leonora Clarke isn’t a doctor, but she does work hard to provide healthcare to the underserved. As manager of service learning at UW Medical Center, Clarke works to support 50 healthcare projects staffed by more than 500 medical students serving thousands across Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. “Service learning is about getting out, using [...]

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For some, traveling the world conveys a sense of freedom. For Sonal Khullar, associate professor of art history at the University of Washington, however, the act of crossing borders all too often illustrates the strictures and stumbling blocks of globalism in the twenty-first century. “One of the things I’ve noted is that we usually think [...]

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