November 4, 2020
Faculty/staff honors: New atmospheric research board trustee; prize-winning fiction; PBS show consultant
A University of Washington meteorologist joins a national board for atmospheric research, an English professor’s story is honored and a Jackson School faculty member helps with research for a PBS show.
Shuyi Chen elected to national board for atmospheric research
Shuyi Chen
Shuyi Chen, UW professor of atmospheric sciences, has been elected one of five new trustees to the board of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the group that manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The corporation, or UCAR, is a nonprofit consortium of 120 North American universities focused on research and training in atmospheric sciences and related Earth system sciences. Its 18 board members serve three-year terms. The new trustees were announced on Oct. 26.
Chen is a meteorologist whose research involves observing how the atmosphere and ocean interact with hurricanes and typhoons in tropical areas, and the use of mathematical models to predict weather patterns.
Joining Chen as a new board trustee is a former director of the National Science Foundation. Others are from the Georgia Institute of Technology; North Carolina State University; the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Colorado Foundation.
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David Crouse story wins award from literary journal
David Crouse
UW English professor David Crouse won the 2019 fiction prize from the online literary journal Juxtaprose for a story titled “Sixty Eight to Seventy.” The prize was announced earlier this year.
The publication, founded in 2015, sponsors annual contests for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and photography. Crouse’s story will appear in an upcoming issue. He also has new stories coming in the journals Agni and The Bennington Review.
Crouse is the author of two collections of short fiction: “Copy Cats” in 2005 and “The Man Back There and Other Stories” in 2008. He is at work on a collection of Alaska-themed stories, which will include “Sixty Eight to Seventy.”
One online reviewer wrote that Crouse’s writing “has a cool, measured urgency to it that invites his readers not to miss the most delicate flickers of language as he describes his characters’ often confused or detached states of mind.”
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Devin Naar does research for PBS show ‘Finding Your Roots’
Devin Naar
Devin Naar, UW professor of history and Jewish studies and chair of the Jackson School’s Sephardic Studies Program, conducted research for a recent episode of the PBS program “Finding Your Roots,” hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The program, which aired Oct. 13 on PBS, features Gates talking with fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, whose mother was a Sephardic Jew from Salonica and survivor of the Auschwitz death camp.
Naar, author of the 2018 book “Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece,” did extensive research on von Fürstenberg‘s family and is noted in the credits of the episode. In 2016 he did similar research, and was featured, in TLC’s “Who Do You Think You Are.”
Tag(s): College of Arts & Sciences • College of the Environment • David Crouse • Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science • Department of English • Devin Naar • Jackson School of International Studies • Sephardic Studies Program • Shuyi Chen
