The new federal REAL ID Act goes into effect May 7th. This will change the way we are able to board flights to travel within the United States. Your standard driver license or identification card will no longer be accepted by the Transportation Security Administration.
This webinar will provide information about the new federal REAL ID travel requirements and your options for acceptable travel documents.
The University of Washington made the Chronicle of Higher Education’s list of the top Fulbright producing institutions. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar and Fulbright U.S. Student Programs are sponsored by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to support academic exchanges between the United States and over 160 countries around the world.
Five undergraduate or recent graduates and eight graduate-level students (a total of 13 students) received Fulbright awards and six UW faculty were named Fulbright scholars. The Fulbright experience gives students and scholars the opportunity to live and work abroad, learning about their host country and developing a new community of colleagues and friends. These programs are designed to help participants gain a greater understanding of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, ultimately promoting an atmosphere of openness and mutual understanding.
Founded in 1946, the Fulbright Program is an international academic exchange program that aims to increase mutual understanding and support friendly and peaceful relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The UW is proud to have had Fulbright recipients as far back as 1949.
The Office of Global Affairs is the liaison for UW faculty for the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Please contact Anita Ramasastry (arama@uw.edu) if you have any questions or need support.
Join us for a spring lecture series on the international impact of the second Trump presidency.
These talks and discussions are available as an in-person 2-credit/no-credit course for UW students. It is also available and free for the public via livestream only. Faculty and guest speaker presentations will explore how different regions and global issues are affected by the policies of the Trump administration. Moderated by Danny Hoffman, Director of the Jackson School of International Studies and Stanley D. Golub Chair of International Studies.
JSIS 478 E – Trump in the World 2.0 (SLN 21568) – listed in MyPlan under Special Topics in International and Global Studies. Register in MyPlan for the course; regular attendance required if taking the course
Wednesday, February 26 // 4:30-5:30 PM // UW Career & Internship Center Lobby
Are you curious about what it’s like to serve in the Peace Corps?
Join us at 134 Mary Gates Hall to learn about the challenging, rewarding, and inspiring moments of service from returned Peace Corps Volunteers who will share stories from their unique service journeys abroad.
The Office of Global Affairs is pleased to feature Sabrina Prestes Oliveira for our January 2025 edition of the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Sabrina Prestes Oliveira is currently a senior studying Data Visualization in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the UW Bothell (UWB) campus. Sabrina describes her experience exploring what it means to be a global citizen, learning about international human rights and making the most of global learning opportunities.
Global Scholars Graduation Ceremony
UWB’s Global Scholars Program was my way to incorporate international awareness while majoring in Data Visualization. Connecting with the cohort throughout the year, reflecting on our global experiences in class, and having critical discussions about how our personal identities and notions of the world are shaped by international power dynamics, brought me closer to my peers than in most other courses. We also had career-building workshops and the chance to hear from speakers and former Global Scholars about their experiences working in international affairs. Many of us in the program are first-generation students and/or first/second-generation Americans, and it’s rare to find welcoming spaces that provide much-needed insights about networking, the nuances of local and global engagement, and advocacy.
Poster Presentation on Human Rights Day
During our week in D.C., as part of the seminar, we met a delegation of Ecuadorian activists and public defenders in partnership with local advocacy organizations as well as Amazon Watch and Amnesty International. The stories they shared about violence, cultural erasure, police brutality, and territorial/environmental rights violations motivated me to focus on Ecuador for my research paper.
Ecuador once stood out in the region for its low homicide rates and progressive human rights legislation (even if it was more on paper than in practice). Now, it has become prized territory for international criminal organizations in the trafficking of drugs. A weakened state and prison system have allowed these organizations to take control. The more I researched, the more I discovered that drug traffickers are by no means independent agents. They are enabled by and benefit from both international and local political and corporate interests.
I was recently selected for UW’s Mary Gates Leadership Scholarship to support a project to pinpoint, assess, and visualize Latino community needs and demographics in WA. The Latino Educational Training Institute (LETI) is expanding their educational and entrepreneurship programs to Everett, and thoughtful data analysis can help guide their upcoming outreach initiatives. While I’ve started my analysis with data from the U.S. Census, with the support of the LETI team, I hope to expand into broader sources and find ways to highlight empowerment and opportunity in our community.
Latino Leadership Initiative cohort at Bothell High School after the first mentoring session
The UWB’s Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) is truly a game-changing program as a Latino student. I joined in 2024 simply looking to connect with other Latinos on campus but also as the chance to hear many WA leaders’ stories of representing their communities, starting a business, and advocating for change in local politics. The leadership seminars with the Latino Educational Training Institute made me realize that success, unlike what we’re always told, isn’t solely an individual effort. Connecting with UWB’s LLI cohort and organizing our service project, where we hosted college/career mentoring sessions for Latino high schoolers, helped me find a space here in the U.S. where I felt I could contribute meaningfully.
This spring, Professor Yen-Chu Weng, UW College of the Environment, brought together students from the University of Washington and National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan to evaluate the accessibility of interpretive signs in nature parks.
Professor Weng’s course, “Environmental Issues in East Asia”, was a five-week collaboration with Professor Chen-Chen Cheng’s course in Special Education from National Kaohsiung Normal University. The partnership was the result of a 2023-2024 UW Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellowship. COIL Fellowship projects link university classes in different countries, provide students with critical digital literacy and virtual collaboration skills through shared assignments and projects and allow faculty members from each country to co-teach and manage coursework.
Students attended joint lectures on the basic design principles for accessible interpretive signs and inclusive communication for people with disabilities. They also conducted field work to observe and analyze interpretive signs in their respective cities – The UW Arboretum and the UW Farm in Seattle and several parks in Kaohsiung and Tainan, two major cities in Southern Taiwan. In a survey following the project, students ranked the following as having the strongest impact on their growth: Learning and understanding other ways of seeing the world, growth in self-awareness, greater understanding of different cultures, and understanding how to interact with people from different cultures.
As the academic school year comes to an end, many students will continue their studies by packing a suitcase and heading overseas. A record-high 3,000 UW students will study abroad this school year. UW leaders say these programs promise profound experiences and lifelong memories, and new research shows that college students who study abroad are more likely to graduate.
“Studying abroad increases success for everyone,” said Dr. Gayle Christensen, interim vice provost, Office of Global Affairs, and a coauthor on a paper that evaluated graduation rates of students who study abroad. “But it increases the success for underrepresented students and underserved students even more.”
The study, published last year in the Journal of College Student Development by Tory Brundage, Doctoral Candidate in the College of Education and Dr. Gayle Christensen, found that students on college and university campuses who study abroad complete their degrees at higher rates, particularly among historically underserved students — defined as students who identify as Black, Latinx, Native American or Pacific Islander.
Learn more about how study abroad at the UW is a high-impact practice.
Join us this Thursday for Falling Walls Lab in Seattle at CoMotion! Our finalists will pitch their cutting-edge ideas that have a positive impact on science & society and have a chance to win a trip to the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin this November.
📆 Thursday, May 16 | 4-8 pm (PST)
📍 CoMotion at the University of Washington
👉Register here
UW faculty, staff and students are invited to attend a spring seminar sponsored by the UW Office of Global Affairs that will explore the impact of built environments on global health.
New research out of the University of Washington indicates that students on college and university campuses who study abroad complete their degrees at higher rates than those who do not study abroad, particularly among historically underserved student populations*.
UW students visiting the Colosseum
A new publication in the Journal of College Student Development by Tory L. Brundage, Doctoral Candidate in the College of Education, and Dr. Gayle Christensen, Interim Vice Provost for Global Affairs and Affiliate Assistant Professor in the College of Education, at the University of Washington, finds that study abroad is a high-impact practice for the students who are least likely to study abroad and indicates the need for continued work to strengthen access to study abroad opportunities for historically underserved students.
*In the context of this research, historically underserved student populations are students who identify as Black, Latinx, Native American and/or Pacific Islander.
Students attended joint lectures on the basic design principles for accessible interpretive signs and inclusive communication for people with disabilities. They also conducted field work to observe and analyze interpretive signs in their respective cities – The UW Arboretum and the UW Farm in Seattle and several parks in Kaohsiung and Tainan, two major cities in Southern Taiwan. In a survey following the project, students ranked the following as having the strongest impact on their growth: Learning and understanding other ways of seeing the world, growth in self-awareness, greater understanding of different cultures, and understanding how to interact with people from different cultures.
“Studying abroad increases success for everyone,” said Dr. Gayle Christensen, interim vice provost, 
