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UW and the community

The University of Washington joined Lincoln Property Company, Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation and Sound Transit on May 10 to celebrate the groundbreaking of the new University District Station Building, along with local officials, community leaders and neighbors. The 266,000-square-foot office building resting above the University District light rail station will feature ground-floor retail and amenities, office space and a rooftop terrace.

Leaders from Washington higher education institutions met with national policymakers April 4 to discuss opportunities provided by the CHIPS and Science Act. U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene and National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan visited the University of Washington campus to talk about the legislation, which provides more than $100 billion to fund scientific research and workforce training. The UW and other Washington colleges and universities are poised to receive funds from the CHIPS and Science Act to invest in chip…

Students from the Lummi Nation School visited the University of Washington in earlh February for a real-time Q&A with astronaut Josh Cassada aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Cassada helped do space research on a plant science experiment the students sent to the ISS.

More than 40,000 property deeds containing racially discriminatory language have been uncovered in Western Washington by the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project. Director James Gregory, professor of history at the University of Washington, and his team aren’t finished yet.

It’s ski season and cold sunny days fill outdoor enthusiasts with delight, but ski areas usually come with stairs, crowds and an infrastructure generally built for skiers and snowboarders who ride solo and on two legs.   
Observing this winter activity through a lens of accessibility and disability justice is the point of a new class developed by UW Bothell associate teaching professor Jason Naranjo. His course, “Disability & Society — A Focus on Community and the Outdoors,” pairs UW students with skiers from Outdoors for All, an organization that provides adaptive outdoor activities for people who, for cognitive or physical reasons, can’t simply pop on skis and hit the slopes.

Perched on the southeast corner of the University of Washington campus, where the Montlake Cut meets Union Bay, the ASUW Shell House looks as vulnerable as it does majestic. Over the course of a century, the structure built as a critical wartime post later was the home to a group of rowers who captured the nation’s imagination before becoming an all-but-forgotten artifact of the past. Now, propelled by a wave of renewed interest, the 12,000-square-foot wooden structure is the focus of an $18.5 million campaign that will restore and renovate the space.

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce delivered her annual address to the community on Oct. 20. Highlights of the speech are reflected in this video. The audience was invited to attend the event remotely via livestream. President Cauce talked about the power of public research universities to bring communities together across differences to address some of the world’s greatest challenges. Higher-education institutions, particularly the UW, are being called on to do great things, and “we will answer that call,”…

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce is among the new members elected to the National Academy of Medicine “for exemplary and visionary leadership in public higher education administration; innovations in health research, education, and service systems that enhance pathways for women and underrepresented groups; initiatives to address interconnections between health equity, population health, and climate change; and pioneering behavioral health intervention research on Latinos.”

Early Sunday morning, the University of Washington used the UW Alert system to warn the Seattle campus community about a shooting that occurred near NE 43rd Street and University Way NE just after 1 a.m. Four UW students were injured and transported to Harborview Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries. UW President Ana Mari Cauce made the following statement in response to the shooting.

New Directions in Public Gardens, a speaker series created by the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, will conclude in September with the final speaker and a town hall. Past guests addressed topics like engaging with local Indigenous populations and opportunities for public land to support urban food systems and engage with BIPOC communities.

The University of Washington Board of Regents on Thursday approved a resolution to begin exiting all direct investments in fossil-fuel companies with the goal of complete divestiture by Fiscal Year 2027. The resolution includes a commitment not to renew indirect investments in funds primarily focusing on fossil-fuel extraction or reserves. Both commitments include allowances for firms contributing to the transition to sustainable energy.

The Our Future Duwamish project, available to community groups through The Seattle Public Library, uses an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset to help viewers imagine rising seas from a vantage point along the South Seattle waterway.

On Saturday, for the first time since 2019, the UW held in-person Commencement ceremonies at Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium where the University conferred degrees on the Class of 2022. On Sunday, it welcomed alumni from the 2020 and 2021 school years for a Return to Husky Stadium Graduation Celebration.

In 2016, Alexes Harris was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. But a search for a bone marrow donor turned up only five matches, and none ended up being a donor. People of color are underrepresented in the bone marrow registry; according to Be The Match, the nation’s largest bone marrow registry, white people have a 79% chance of finding a match. But a Black person’s potential match is only 29%, and Asian and Latinx people both have about a 47% chance. People of Native American ancestry have a 60% chance of finding a match.

Forest fire smoke can make you sick, and we’re experiencing more them. In terms of public health, it seems logical to reduce forest fires to limit unhealthy air pollution, but forest managers are increasingly seeing prescribed burning as an essential tool to reduce explosive wildfires. How should we plan to deal with the impacts of these fires?

Paula Thiele, a communication major who will graduate this spring, became the inaugural scholar to participate in the UW’s new Scholarship for Immersive Internships in León, dubbed “¡Spain Works!” — a partnership between the UW León Center, UW Study Abroad and the UW Career & Internship Center.

With the start of spring quarter on March 28, face masks became optional — but still recommended — inside most UW facilities. In light of the policy change, UW News spoke with several experts about what to expect on campus, how the current science and transmission rates inform our policy, and emotions and feelings we may experience as a result of removing our face coverings.

Laada Bilaniuk is a professor of anthropology at the whose expertise is Ukrainian culture and society. The daughter of Ukrainian Americans, she shares insights on the Ukrainian people who are resisting, how the conflict relates to the use of language and the perspective of the local Ukrainian community.

As the green crab invasion in the state worsens, a new analysis method developed by University of Washington and Washington Sea Grant scientists could help contain future invasions and prevent new outbreaks using water testing and genetic analysis. The results show that the DNA-based technique works as well in detecting the presence of green crabs as setting traps to catch the live animals, which is a more laborious process. Results suggest these two methods could complement each other as approaches to learn where the species’ range is expanding.