Etc.: Campus news & notes

PAINTING WITH PEEPS: Look again at the pink petals in the photo above. They’re Peeps. First Peeps of Seattle Spring Blossoms made Jaime Navetta, research nurse in Behavioral Nursing and Health Systems, a winner in the annual Seattle Times Master Peeps Contest. The eight winning creations published April 4 were chosen from nearly 400 entries.

It might seem, in looking at Navetta’s entry, that she was inspired by the cherry blossoms in the Quad, but that isn’t true. “I recently got a new camera and had a lot of photos from my yard,” Navetta said. “I noticed that the pink petals from my nectarine tree looked a lot like pink Peeps. While I really don’t like Peeps for the sugary marshmallow, they are certainly quite versatile as an art medium. Instead of the original yellow chicks, there are now varieties of colors and shapes from green bunnies to purple chicks. If nothing else, it makes for a great conversation piece. I am already planning a UW-themed entry for next year. Stay tuned.” 

MATH MAVENS: Randall LeVeque, Applied Mathematics and Gunther Uhlmann, Mathematics are two of 34 professionals named fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Fellows are chosen for significant contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. According to the society, those chosen have “shown excellence in research, industrial work, educational activities or other activities directly related to the society’s goals.” By honoring them as Fellows, the society acknowledges them as leaders in their fields.

BEST BOOK: Thaisa Way, who was recently promoted to associate professor with tenure, has won the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize for Unbounded Practice: Women and Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century. Published by the University of Virginia Press in 2009, the book shows not only how women entered landscape architecture but how they shaped the practice and profession as it came of age. The Foundation for Landscape Studies awards the Jackson prize, named in honor of a founding figure in landscape studies, to a distinguished book published in English during the previous three years.

GREAT PLACE PROFS: Daniel Winterbottom, Jeff Hou and Julie Johnson, associate professors of landscape architecture, have won Great Places awards. Winterbottom won a design award for the Gardens of Hope, his work in Guatemala. In 2006, 2007 and 2009, Winterbottom took UW students to Guatemala City, where they designed and built three gardens for school children. The gardens include play, learning, gathering and therapeutic space. The garden is also next to the biggest garbage dump in Central America, where the children’s parents scrounge their daily existence.

Hou and Johnson, along with Laura Lawson, an associate professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, won a book award for Greening Cities, Growing Communities, published in fall 2009. The book offers insight about shared gardening plots in Seattle as well as ways to develop community gardens.

As international prizes, the seven annual Great Places awards are sponsored by Places journal and the Environmental Design Research Association in cooperation with Metropolis magazine.

Do you know someone who deserves kudos for an outstanding achievement, award, appointment or book publication? If so, send that person’s name, title and achievement to uweek@u.washington.edu.