University of Washington senior and Renton, WA, native Dustin Dacuan was recently named one of 25 fellows selected through a competitive process for the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color. Dacuan will be the first in his family to graduate from college, which he is on track to do this spring with a major in international studies and a minor in diversity.
Elizabeth “Beth” Robinson was in the first Robinson Center Early Entrance Program class and is now the chief financial officer of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Beth will visit the Seattle campus during HuskyFest to share her story with current students and alumni through her talk, “From College Student to Political Appointee.”
Byron Gray and Cameron Turtle, University of Washington seniors, are among 32 Rhodes Scholars named for 2012. The UW is the only public university in the nation with more than one new scholar. Gray and Turtle responded to a few questions we posed. Read the Q&A and a digest of media coverage of the scholarship announcements.
UAA alumnus Peter Kithene gave the keynote address at the 2011 University of Washington donor gala, held in Suzzallo Library’s Graduate Reading Room. As an undergraduate, Peter started the Mama Maria health clinics to bring much-needed healthcare to his home village in rural Kenya as well as other rural places in Kenya.
Best-selling and award-winning author David Guterson talks about his experiences as a UW undergraduate in the Honors Program, a teacher, and writer with current Honors student Kat Chow.
The Robinson Center is a national leader for developing programs that serve highly capable young pre-college and college students. In 2011, the Robinson Center created an advisory board to support the mission of and promote the Center, suggest and discuss program development, and reach out to the campus, gifted, and broader communities. Meet the board members!
Each of us can point to a teacher who’s made a difference in our lives—someone who’s challenged us to live up to our potential, follow our dreams, discover our talents and how we can contribute to the world. This fall, we’re celebrating back-to-school with a focus on some UAA alumni who are now teachers. Maybe they’ll remind you of a teacher who’s inspired you.
Alumni e-News Table of ContentsTim says, “My students make me want to teach. Every day I walk into the classroom, and I know that I have some of the brightest minds in the country.”
Tim Harris (’10), an Honors alumnus and former student employee of First Year Programs, is currently a volunteer with Teach For America in Detroit at the Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts. After receiving encouragement from friends and family to participate in Teach For America, and not having a solid post-graduation plan, he enrolled in the program. However, he didn’t feel the inspiration to teach until he was actually in his teaching job, and connecting with students. “My students make me want to teach. Every day I walk into the classroom, and I know that I have some of the brightest minds in the country, but because of the lack of resources my students have had in the past, they haven’t been able to demonstrate their genius.”
Curiosity and commitment inspire Tim. “In my students, I call it the ’So what you’re saying’ moment. Whenever my students are able to respond to discussions, labs, or lessons with a ’So, what you’re saying is…’ and build a valid point, [it] gives me chills. Or, when students ask ‘why” or ’how’ and are relentless in getting an answer, I feel the urge to support them in answering these questions.” And what about when students get frustrated? “I am always re-inspired whenever a student says ‘I’m going to get this.’ Pushing through adversity is a challenge that is important to the success of students, and to see that in my classroom makes me proud.”
Tim’s number one influence is his dad. “I learned how to network from him, how to stay organized, and how to keep my car running. He never had a college education, yet he has incredible social intelligence. Despite the countless hours he puts in at work—he sacrifices a lot for his family—he always made sure that my siblings and I [were] supported, so that we could attend college.”
Pushing him to ask questions even when he thought he had the answer, Tim’s high school English teacher, Mrs. Martin, taught him the most in school. “So I guess all the Google searches and general quandaries I’ve had about the world are a result of her. I appreciated that she got me so energized that I had to take ownership of my own learning.”
Tim is teaching advanced placement chemistry to seniors this year, and was initially concerned that his students would be too intimidated to handle the high level of work. He was proven wrong. These students are “on a mission. [They] come to class and work immediately. Students’ frustrations turn into motivation to get the right answers. Students support one another; when one student dropped out of [advanced placement], the rest rallied to get her back to the class.”
In the classroom, Tim doesn’t have a motto—his students came up their own. “[They] came up with their own chant that they yell at the top of their lungs at the end of every day. It goes, ‘We’re smart, and we know it, and we ain’t afraid to show it, AP chemistry!’ For students to be so proud of their intelligence is remarkable.”
Since this is Tim’s second year as a Teach For America corps member, his commitment to the program will finish in spring 2012. “The current game plan is to be in medical school by the age of 30; so I have a six-year plan. That gives me six years to travel the world, pick up a new hobby, learn how to make the perfect guacamole, and make a positive impact on 10,000 lives. I’d like to see my juniors get into the college of their dreams; I’ll need one more year in the classroom to do that. But there are a few other opportunities I’m looking into right now, in education and elsewhere, but we’ll just have to wait to see.”
Alumni e-News
Table of ContentsAs vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the University of Washington Seattle, Dr. Edward Taylor oversees educational opportunities that deepen and enrich the undergraduate experience including First Year Programs, educational assessment, experiential learning, academic advising and the University Honors Program.
Dear UAA Alumni and Friends
With the growth in undergraduate tuition and the complexity of the moment that we live in, this is a remarkable and noteworthy time to be dedicated to the education and preparation of undergraduate students for the 21st century. I was reminded of this at Freshman Convocation, our ceremonial welcoming of freshmen to the University of Washington. Hec Ed was full of new Huskies and their families—it was an inspiring moment kicking off a new stage in the lives of these students, beginning the celebration of the UW’s 150th anniversary, and introducing our new president, Michael K. Young, to the newest members of our community. Following the ceremony, I had the opportunity to shake hands with students from all over the globe. Despite—and perhaps because of—the challenges our community faces, it was an exuberant, exciting, and invigorating start to the quarter.
UAA Alumni: What are you doing now? How have your undergraduate experiences impacted your current work? Tell us about it by emailing UAAalum@uw.edu and we’ll include it in the Alumnotes section of this e-newsletter.
This quarter, I am teaching a Freshman Interest Group class with Honors Program Director Jim Clauss in which we examine transformation through varied texts including Virgil’s Aeneid, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and a beautiful book of poems called The Bled by Frances McCue. Each week, we sit down with 20 of our freshmen and get an up close look at why we speak of our students as being so talented and diverse. I was compelled by a student from Rainier Beach connecting Aeneas’s personal transformation to her own thoughts about her personhood as she transitions into the UW. Listening to a young man from Bellevue and a young woman from Taiwan talk about these texts and what it means to understand transformation and heroism in both a classic and contemporary sense gave me an up close look at what it means to build an intellectual and social community around issues that matter in the world. The closer I look, the more profound I find our students to be.
As I reflect on these and other UW undergraduates and the journeys they are embarking upon—some of quite epic proportions—I am reminded of William Cronon’s essay, “Only Connect,” in which he discusses the purpose of a liberal arts education as that of “nurtur[ing] the growth of human talent in the service of human freedom.” He concludes that “In the act of making us free, [education] also binds us to the communities that gave us our freedom in the first place; it makes us responsible to those communities in ways that limit our freedom. In the end, it turns out that liberty is not about thinking or saying or doing whatever we want. It is about exercising our freedom in such a way as to make a difference in the world and make a difference for more than just ourselves.”
This freedom relates to the kind of commitment the UW makes to the public: that we will educate young people well; that we will enact and engage the values of integrity, truth, and discovery. At some level, these values are really about the formation of relationships. They are lived out in classrooms, in the research process, in mentorship and advising, and through service to the community.
And we see the embodiment of this work in our alumni, which you’ll learn about in this issue of our e-newsletter. Best-selling novelist David Guterson is deeply involved in his community. Several alumni are teachers, one of our most noble professions, and share their insights from a variety of classrooms. Hear 2007 CNN Hero and UW alumnus Peter Kithene talk about how the relationships he formed here inspired him to continue the work of bringing healthcare to his home village in Kenya. At the end of the day, all these endeavors are ultimately about the shaping of human lives in service to improving the world that we live in.
So while this is a challenging moment for our University and community, and while we may at times feel burdened by budget cuts and a sense of scarcity, the well of student and alumni talent never runs dry and it is from there that we draw inspiration.
The University of Washington is sixth in the nation for producing U.S. Fulbright students, as 24 undergraduate and graduate students were recently awarded the prestigious grants for 2011-12.
Curiosity and commitment inspire Tim. “In my students, I call it the ’So what you’re saying’ moment. Whenever my students are able to respond to discussions, labs, or lessons with a ’So, what you’re saying is…’ and build a valid point, [it] gives me chills. Or, when students ask ‘why” or ’how’ and are relentless in getting an answer, I feel the urge to support them in answering these questions.” And what about when students get frustrated? “I am always re-inspired whenever a student says ‘I’m going to get this.’ Pushing through adversity is a challenge that is important to the success of students, and to see that in my classroom makes me proud.”
