The University of Washington continues its distinguished record of producing Fulbright students, as six undergraduate students/bachelor’s alumni, and six graduate students/alumni have been offered prestigious Fulbright grants for the 2023-24 academic year. They will join approximately 2,000 students and recent graduates from around the country to teach, study and research abroad in countries such as Botswana, Taiwan and Finland. Three additional undergraduate students have been named alternates.
UW students or recent graduates in this year’s class of Fulbright Fellows. Top row, left to right: Jacob Beckert, Rachel Shi, Laarisa Ozeransky, Auden Finch, Camille Ungco. Middle row, left to right: Lillian Williamson, Eliyah Omar, Kennedy Patterson, Mia Filardi, Nicholas Andrews. Bottom row, left to right: Jessie Cox, Jennifer Ha. Photo collage courtesy of University of Washington
“We are so excited for these students to continue their academic journeys and explorations in international contexts and communities,” remarked Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “The abilities of these students to embrace an exchange of knowledge, culture and understanding is an important component to developing compassionate and intelligent leaders in all fields.”
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the largest U.S. international exchange program offering opportunities for United States students to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide.
The 2023-24 bachelor’s level Fulbright students are:
Jessie Cox: English Teaching Assistantship Award to South Korea
Mia Filardi: Study Award to Finland
Auden Finch: Study Award to Germany
Jennifer Ha (UW Bothell): English Teaching Assistantship Award to Taiwan
Kennedy Patterson: English Teaching Assistantship Award to Botswana
Lillian Williamson: English Teaching Assistantship Award to Spain
About the Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards
The Fulbright application process is supported by the Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards (OMSFA), a UAA program. OMSFA works with faculty, staff and students to identify and support promising students in developing the skills and personal insights necessary to become strong candidates for this and other prestigious awards. The UW campus application process and timelines for students interested in Fulbright and other scholarships is available at OMSFA’s website.
University of Washington sophomore Isabell Ellison was recently named a Udall Scholar! Ellison is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with a focus on improving communities through infrastructure.
Five University of Washington undergraduates have been honored as Goldwater Scholars by the Goldwater Foundation, marking 2023 as the first time five students from the UW were named in a single year.
The Goldwater Foundation awards undergraduate scholarships to students who show exceptional academic promise pursuing research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. The five UW nominees were selected from a pool of 5,000 students nominated by 427 institutions across the country. A total of 413 scholars were announced from the 2023 competition, bringing the number of scholarships awarded by the Goldwater Foundation since 1989 to 10,283.
This year’s UW Goldwater Scholars are Abigail Burtner, Jan Buzek, Nuria Alina Chandra, Meg Takezawa and Peter Yu. All scholars hail from Washington state, spanning across Pullman, Duvall, Olympia and Seattle. Their undergraduate research projects with faculty include a range of topics such as transportation engineering, immunology, cryptology and chronic pain.
“We are so proud of these five Goldwater Scholars. These are talented and devoted students and have already accomplished a lot — as undergraduates,” said Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “When you combine their intellect and enthusiasm for making the world a better place with the UW’s world-class researchers and scientific leaders who support undergraduate research, remarkable outcomes happen. As they progress in their studies and careers, we can all look forward to the ways their work will benefit people and the planet.”
Meet the 2023 UW Goldwater Scholars
Abigail Burtner
Hometown: Olympia, WA
“I aim to obtain a Ph.D. in Biochemistry with a focus on vaccine or drug design; I then plan to pursue a career in industry/academia addressing public health challenges due to infectious disease,” says Goldwater Scholar Abigail Burtner.
Burtner is a junior in the Honors Program majoring in biochemistry and minoring in data science and chemistry. Broadly interested in immunology and protein design, she works in the King Lab at the Institute for Protein Design designing de novo proteins to bind toll-like receptors, key receptors that activate the innate immune system, for applications in vaccine development.
Burtner aims to obtain a Ph.D. in biochemistry to pursue research on medical issues at the biochemical scale. Following her graduate work, she intends to pursue a research career aimed at vaccine or drug development to address major public health issues with cutting-edge technology and methods (e.g., deep learning in protein design and computational modeling).
Jan Buzek
Hometown: Seattle, WA
“I am interested in pursuing a research career in theoretical computer science, combining ideas from complexity and mathematics to build algorithms and secure systems based on computational problems,” says Goldwater Scholar Jan Buzek.
Buzek is a junior studying computer science and mathematics and is interested in cryptography, number theory and computational complexity.
In sophomore year, he did a research project on twin smooth integers that began at the Washington Experimental Mathematics Lab and continued for a year independently. The project focused on finding very large consecutive integers with as small prime factors as possible, a task for which no effective algorithms are known. Buzek’s five person team found new, more efficient algorithms for locating such integers, which have applications in cryptography. This year, Buzek has been studying cryptography and discrete mathematics abroad at the University of Heidelberg and ETH Zürich. He intends to go to graduate school to study cryptography.
Nuria Alina Chandra
Hometown: Olympia, WA
“I will research machine learning, computational biology, and algorithms to develop tools that prevent, treat, and cure disease. My research career will span from theory to clinical application,” says Goldwater Scholar Nuria Alina Chandra.
Chandra is a senior in the Honors Program majoring in computer science and minoring in global health. She began her UW research journey with Dr. Jennifer Rabbitts at Seattle Children’s Hospital studying the development of acute and chronic pain after surgery and traumatic injury. Chandra is currently part of the Mostafavi Computational Biology Lab, where she uses deep learning to study regulatory genetics in immune cells. The long-term goal of this research is to be able to predict the effect of genetic mutations on immunological diseases. She has also explored theoretical research through a geometric combinatorics research project with Dr. Rekha Thomas on graphical designs.
Chandra plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science and then work at the intersection of machine learning, computational biology, and algorithms research. Chandra wants her research to have an impact spanning from theory to clinical applications.
Meg Takezawa
Hometown: Duvall, WA
“I aim to pursue a Ph.D. and an interdisciplinary research career in chemistry and engineering to develop microscale technologies to analyze symptoms due to infectious diseases,” says Goldwater Scholar Meg Takezawa.
Takezawa is a junior majoring in biochemistry. Since she joined the Theberge Lab in her first year at the UW, she has been using microfluidics to innovate a salivary diagnostic device and analyze cellular responses in allergic inflammation through her past research projects. In the summer of her second year, she had an internship at Coburg University, Germany, where she fabricated microfluidic devices for separation techniques. These experiences inspired her to pursue an interdisciplinary research career to analyze the underlying chemistry that drive diseases and symptoms.
Takezawa plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry, ultimately pursuing research to develop microscale technologies and chemical tools for bioanalytics. Takezawa aspires to make globally accessible novel technologies to further improve therapeutics.
Peter Yu
Hometown: Pullman, WA
“After graduating, I will pursue a Ph.D. in transportation engineering, followed by a faculty position at a R1 university with research in traffic operations and intelligent transportation systems,” says Goldwater Scholar Peter Yu.
Yu is a junior majoring in civil and environmental engineering with a focus on transportation engineering. He is passionate about highway transportation engineering, with interests in highway design, traffic operations and simulation, traffic signal control and intelligent transportation systems. Since his freshman year, he has been a member of the Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory led by Dr. Yinhai Wang. In the lab, he has developed and tested novel highway geometric designs, traffic control schemes, and intelligent transportation systems to increase safety and mobility for all roadway users.
Yu has developed several new alternative intersection/interchange and freeway designs and novel traffic control schemes for them. He has been analyzing their safety and operational performance with traffic microsimulation. Yu aims to obtain a Ph.D. in civil engineering and make meaningful contributions to the transportation engineering field globally through research and innovation.
About the Goldwater Foundation
The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established in 1986. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in the fields of the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields. Learn more at Goldwater Scholarship.
Learn more about scholarship opportunities at the UW
The Goldwater Scholarship application process is supported by the Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards (OMSFA), a UAA program. OMSFA works with faculty, staff and students to identify and support promising students in developing the skills and personal insights necessary to become strong candidates for this and other prestigious awards.
Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) conducts research to facilitate the advancement of equity in higher education. Ascendium invests in research that helps to build a body of evidence about how to ensure rural learners from low-income backgrounds can achieve their postsecondary education and career goals. Ascendium expects this investment in CCRI’s research will catalyze action affecting policies and practices grounded in high-quality evidence and research.
The CCRI project will address mentorship program gaps through a multisite, three-stage study of mentorship programs at public rural community colleges across the United States. Drawing upon institutional websites, in-depth interviews and student survey responses, this project will benefit both scholars and practitioners by producing a database of mentoring strategies at rural community colleges.
“We at CCRI are excited for the opportunity to learn how rural two-year institutions across the country are supporting students from low-income backgrounds with mentorship programs,” shared CCRI director, Lia Wetzstein, Ph.D. The CCRI data will advance the understanding of how the evidence-based solution of mentoring is being implemented at rural colleges while gauging the student experience with a primary focus on students from low-income backgrounds and racially minoritized students.
“We are grateful to Ascendium Education Group for their support,” Wetzstein continued. Ascendium is interested in generating evidence about practices and programs that increase the completion of high-quality postsecondary education and training and successful transition to high-quality jobs. Through the CCRI analysis of the nationwide landscape of rural community college mentorship and mentorship experiences, this project will produce models of mentorship to specifically address the rural community college context and rural students’ experience.
Last year CCRI was awarded a $1.2 million grant from Ascendium to work toward equity in STEM education for low-income learners across Washington state. CCRI, a program within Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the UW, is an influential contributor in community college and transfer partnership research identifying strategies that help students transfer to four-year institutions and complete their bachelor’s degrees.
The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge announced that the University of Washington has been awarded a Highly Established Action Plan Seal recognizing their commitment to increasing nonpartisan democratic engagement and building a related strong nonpartisan action plan in 2022. The UW is one of 121 colleges and universities nationwide to receive the seal.
The UW is the only institution in Washington state to receive this designation, which was earned through developing a data-driven action plan to improve civic learning, political engagement, and voter participation.
“This is wonderful recognition of the UW’s commitment to preparing students for democratic engagement,” said Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “Participating in our democracy and in our communities as engaged and ethical leaders is part of what it means to be educated. We are proud of the collaborations the CELE Center is leading and convening to meet this societal need.”
The Action Plan that resulted in this designation was developed by the Democracy Dawgs, a coalition of students, staff, faculty, community members and civic leaders in a collaboration convened by the Community Engagement and Leadership Education (CELE) Center.
The UW student population has one of the highest voter participation rates out of American universities with 85% of students who are eligible to vote being registered voters (data from 2020). The Democracy Dawgs have built on that foundation to create more centralized communications and processes to increase student voting rates and promote civic participation and democratic engagement. In 2022, 77% of students registered to vote voted in the midterm elections; the average voting rate among PAC-12 campuses was 70%.
The UW began participating in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge in 2017, which has now grown to over 960 colleges and universities working together to increase nonpartisan student civic learning, political engagement and voter participation.
From the thousands of undergraduate students at the University of Washington, three are selected each year for the prestigious President’s Medalist Award. Olivia Brandon, Peyton Goodwin and Anaëlle Enders are the medalists for 2021–22, selected by a committee for their high GPAs, rigor of classes and numbers of Honors courses. All three are students in the University Honors Program, completing the Interdisciplinary Honors track.
Daniel Chen ’22, has been named a Marshall Scholarship recipient. Chen graduated last spring with majors in microbiology and informatics, and will be pursuing a master’s degree in biological sciences and genomic medicine and conducting genomic medicine research at the Sanger Institute at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Undergraduate Academic Affairs is pleased to welcome Emily Kolby to her new appointment as director of First Year Curriculum and Engagement. Kolby identifies First Year Programs’ guiding principles of intentionality, collaboration, equity and access as essential to the work of serving students. She believes that with continuing the work of intentionally connecting with each student, that the program can create full and holistic first year experiences.
In June, 2021, Vice Provost and Dean Ed Taylor joined then-Mayor Jenny Durkan and educational leaders to announce increased funding for the successful Seattle Promise college tuition and success program. The new funding prepares and supports Seattle Promise students in several ways, including their application and then transfer to the UW.
As reported by The Seattle Times, in the news conference Taylor “likened it to a relay race, with the batons passed smoothly from high schools to community colleges and then to the UW.”
The first cohort of participants in the Path to UW partnership have wrapped up a year of advice and support.
The baton was passed to the UW as the partnership officially launched September 2021. The first cohort of participants in the Path to UW partnership have wrapped up a year of advice and support. Eighty-three Seattle Promise students applied to the UW during this process, and 60 were admitted for the upcoming 2022-23 academic school year.
Resources and more info for and about the transfer student experience
The next Seattle Promise application for Seattle’s public high school class of 2023 opens in autumn, 2022. Learn more at Seattle Colleges.
For the next cohort, a pool of around 1,100 students in Seattle Promise will have the ability to access the Path to UW adviser, Lily Peterson, and could choose to move forward in applying for a UW transfer. Path to UW programming includes events and workshops to help students explore transferring to the UW, prepare to apply and transfer to the UW, individualized admissions and advising support, and summer seminar courses to help students prepare academically for the transition to the UW.
Many Seattle Promise students would be the first in their families to earn a college degree, come from low-income backgrounds, or experience other barriers to higher education. For these students, this can make the college application and transition process ambiguous and difficult to navigate. An adviser with experience in admissions, financial aid applications and academic planning helps students transfer successfully by supporting each student in learning how and what information to access to get their needs met in a larger system.
Path to UW adviser Peterson’s own pathway to advising is rooted in her belief in access to higher education and support for all students. Peterson’s dual roles of UW undergraduate academic adviser and UW adviser to Path to UW have allowed her to witness firsthand the discrepancy between societal narratives of equity in access to higher education versus the lived reality. Peterson sums up the goal of the Path project as “supporting students who are furthest from educational justice.”
Adviser Lily Peterson helps students in the Seattle Promise program make their way to the UW. Photo: Photo by Ian Teodoro
Peterson explains, “People assume that everybody has the same access to being able to apply to and be competitive and successfully enter into a four-year institution. But realistically, a lot of students are not even given a chance because of barriers, because of funding.”
Many students who Peterson and her fellow advisers support are navigating numerous unseen barriers that impact educational access, from funding and financial responsibilities, familial obligations, limited resources of time and even wider community responsibilities.
Knowledge and understanding of these intersections of systems help advisers apply holistic approaches to their work. Advisers help students understand the university system so they are better prepared to move through it. Identifying each student’s personal educational goals and dreams, advisers can accompany them with opportunities, information and tools so that they may realize them. Peterson additionally helps students efficiently connect to UW units, and she partners closely with directors and staff in UW resources.
As the Path to UW continues into its second year, advisers will walk alongside them, checking in to learn, “What are the students’ influences or family impacts on their decisions? What timelines do they need to be on? Where have they felt seen or unseen in representation? Do they feel safe and able to participate in certain programs?” For Peterson, learning the answers to these questions enables her to better understand the student in front of her and is fundamental to her practice of advising.
Christine Stickler, retiring director of Riverways Education Partnerships
After 25 years of service to the University of Washington and our local and statewide communities, Christine Stickler will be retiring July 2022. Stickler, founder and director of Riverways Education Partnerships, has transformed the learning and growth of countless students, connecting over 1,000 UW students with thousands of students in rural and tribal communities across Washington state. Riverways Education Partnership is a K-12 outreach program, and part of the Community Engagement and Leadership Education (CELE) Center, where programs are centered around community-engaged learning, democratic engagement, leadership education, student success and place-based initiatives.
In the past two+ decades, Stickler has created pathways connecting 10,000 UW students with tutoring and mentoring opportunities in K-12 schools and organizations to address inequities in education. She has strengthened bridges between the UW and community colleges through the Riverways Guides program connecting Native UW students with Native youth to envision pathways toward higher education through community college. With unwavering commitment and steadfast vision, she has built dynamic partnerships including Neah Bay Elementary School where storytelling and digital literacy are used to support students in imagining their futures.
As Stickler prepares to retire from Riverways Education Partnerships, she shares her thoughts on her accomplishments as director, the transformation of undergraduates through the outreach program, and the enduring impact of relationships and storytelling.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
It has changed me in every way you can imagine. I became aware of the amazing state that we live in. I spent the last 25 years traveling to remote, rural and tribal communities getting to know the community members. The reason the program is as strong as it is today, is because relationships were formed. I’ve been the incredibly fortunate recipient of the friendships that come from going back to community. That’s number one. Number two is the chance to have worked with literally thousands of undergraduate students who have been drawn to a program that said, “Do you want to experience life outside of Seattle? Do you want to experience what it means to travel to a tribal community and learn from the people that live there?”
A quick story about Pipeline
Riverways was formerly called the Pipeline Project. We got the name 25 years ago as part of an initial funding grant from Coca-Cola. After 20 years, the name had too much connotation to the school-to-prison pipeline. We worked with First Nation students and with Tami Hohn, a Native language and law professor at UW. Tammy came up with the name Riverways, which we all absolutely loved. It’s beautiful.
Then there was Riverways
I think of all the undergraduates that I’ve been able to meet, have them do the experience, who then came back to be a team leader. Many of those students are now close friends of mine — my life has been changed by the people that I’ve met. I’ve gotten to work with some incredible colleagues at the University of Washington, [including] community partners, UW alumni and colleagues that have enriched my life and shown me things I never would have dreamed of.
And the K-12 students! In 2006 I met Auston Jimmicum, member of the Makah Tribe, in our Neah Bay program when he was in elementary school. Auston came to UW as a freshman, became part of the Neah Bay: Telling our Stories Program and went back to his community. Now he’s in law school at the University of Idaho.
When I think about it, the bittersweet part about retiring is that I feel I’ve had one of the best jobs in the world. I’ve loved it. I’ve been able to show my passion and have a way for that passion to develop and be nurtured. I don’t know how many people can say that about their jobs. I feel blessed.
How has the program evolved over the years?
We’ve connected on a deeper level with American Indian Studies Program and Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS). Their support has meant the world to us. With funding from CAIIS we started the Riverway Guides program. We’ve been able to hire Native UW students, previously community college students, who mentor kids in tribal communities. They encourage them to consider community college as a pathway to higher ed. That idea came to be because of our relationship with CAIIS and the AISP. We also have had an amazing partnership over the past 16 years with Polly Olson, tribal liaison at the Burke Museum. She introduced us to the Yakama Nation. These partnerships have grown over the years and have enriched the program. Not only do we have really strong partnerships now, but we have built solid funding.
I believe with all my heart that the relationships form the basis of the work.
What do you see as the current state of educational justice and where things are moving?
One of our goals was looking at issues of educational inequity anywhere we found it and trying to be part of the solution or part of the resources going towards dealing with those issues of inequity. In Seattle, it was targeting schools that had the lowest test scores and the least access to resources. Around the state, we learned by our travels to rural and tribal communities. What we are asked to address when we go into those districts is the idea of making sure there’s no barriers in the minds of the kids we’re working with, that they have a pathway that could lead them to higher ed if that’s what they choose to do, and that there are resources to support them. That if they do come to the University of Washington, resources like First Nations and the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House will provide them a home away from their communities.
Can you speak to a highlight you’ve had in collaboration with undergrads?
Staying around for 25 years, one of the beautiful things about it is that I’ve had a number of students who did the program as elementary school students out in rural tribal schools and ended up at UW. That said, this program had such an impact on me, I want to be part of it and go back out. One of our alternative spring break programs, Literacy Arts, is where students go into the community for a week and help kids write stories and publish a book about identity and place. I’ve had undergraduates come up to me and go, I still have my book!
Right now we are in the midst of putting out the magazine for this year, themed “A Poem Is a Possibility.”
We were able to work with Washington state poet laureate, Rena Priest, who is just amazing. She trained the UW students on how to do poetry with youth in a way that they didn’t even know they were writing poems! It was just beautiful!
The incredible richness we have in this state
I believe we’re at a very exciting time. In the last three or four years, I’ve seen a seismic shift towards recognizing the importance of the incredible richness we have in this state. Recognizing the Indigenous and rural communities. We now have more outside funding and University attention. My goal was that my legacy would be that the person that came into this job would not have to struggle for funding and would be able to just focus on the work, so we’re in a better place today than we’ve ever been in 25 years.
The importance of stories
What are you most excited about in this next adventure in your life?
My passion is writing with kids and helping kids to discover the amazing voice they have. So my dream is, I want to see if in six months or so I could possibly write a grant and work with arts organizations to get a mobile publishing center. An RV that would go around to rural and tribal communities and help kids publish their writings.I am also really excited about doing some arts and writing activities with refugee immigrant communities here in Seattle. Art and writing is what I want to do. One of the things I’ve learned so powerfully over the years is that people are desperate to tell their stories, and don’t have the chance or opportunity to do it.
I just feel blessed that I have had a program that has allowed so many people to find that place, to share their voice and to share their story.
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