October 11, 2001
Etc.
GENEROUS UW: When it was announced that UW employees could donate to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund – which goes to help the victims of the terrorist attacks – through the University’s Combined Fund Drive, they responded enthusiastically. Fund drive chair Dean Speer reports employees have given more than $27,000 to the relief effort thus far.
LEADING INNOVATOR: Alan Marlatt, psychology professor and director of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center, has been recognized as one of five winners of the Innovators Combating Substance Abuse Award by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The award includes a $300,000 grant that Marlatt will use to expand prevention and treatment work among American Indian adolescents and to evaluate the use of meditation among prison inmates with alcohol and drug problems.
COMPETITIVE APPOINTEE: Dick Thompson, the director of UW’s Office of Government Relations, was recently appointed executive director of the Washington Competitiveness Council. Gov. Gary Locke created the council in an effort to make Washington a leader in business development. Thompson has worked closely with Locke in the past, serving as the governor’s director of the Office of Financial Management from 1997 to 1999.
BABY BUMP: In a column by the LA Times’ Kathleen Kelleher, UW Sociology Professor Pepper Schwartz was quoted as saying that there might be a modest “baby bump” down the road because of the impulsive sexuality that occurs under the anxiety and tension of wartime or other crisis conditions.
An innocent enough remark, you might think. But Schwartz reports it was picked up by “the whole world. I have talked to New Zealand, Australia, England, France, Colombia, Canada, Scotland Ireland, and probably 50 American cities,” she said.
“I am amazed at all this attention,” Schwartz went on. “Even Rush Limbaugh (aarrgh!) said something about it – and was laudatory about me! This is scary. It’s been an extreme event.”
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