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From
UW Competition, ACompany is Born
Working with SAM
Ready, Set, Launch: UW Campaign Goes Public
Stacey, Van Volkenburgh Named Divisional Deans
Simpson Center Offers Public Humanities
Professorship
From UW Competition,
A Company is Born
It all started with
a dead fish.
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Roni
Kopelman (left), with Stuart Jamieson in the AquaStasis
offices, holds a prototype of their water monitor. Photo
by Nancy Joseph. |
Roni Kopelman, a UW graduate
student in the Department
of Chemistry, was scooping a lifeless tiger barb out of his
fish tank, wondering why all the water testing devices on the market
identify water quality problems after the fact. “I wondered,
‘Why isn’t there one that monitors the water continuously?’”
recalls Kopelman.
Soon there will be, thanks to Kopelman and Stuart Jamieson, a 2004
graduate of the UW’s MBA program. The two recently launched
AquaStasis, a company whose
first product will be a tag that monitors pH continuously in any
aquatic environment, from aquarium to pool to hot tub.
The pair started their
company after winning the grand prize—along with teammates
Gautham Ravi and Brian Smart—in the UW Business School’s
Center for Technology
Entrepreneurship (CTE) Business Plan Competition. The grand
prize netted them $25,000, plus an additional $5,000 as the best
technology company.
Kopelman and fellow chemistry student Smart signed up for the competition
after taking several CTE courses. “I’d never taken a
business class before,” says Kopelman, “but I thought
that combining my scientific background with business sense might
open some doors for me and lead to a career outside of a lab.”
Jamieson also has a science background; he was a physicist and software
developer before heading for business school. He and Kopelman met
in an entrepreneurship class and decided to join forces for the
competition. Once Kopelman encountered the dead fish, they were
on their way.
“The idea just made sense right away,” says Jamieson,
“and it had real technology behind it.”
The team began meeting weekly in January, and within three months
had developed a business plan and prototypes for their product.
“With the prototypes, we could show people that we not only
had this idea, but that it worked, which was hugely helpful,”
says Jamieson.
For the competition, they had to participate in a mock trade show
with
31 other teams. The top 16 teams then presented their plan to seven
judges, who chose four for a final presentation—the same day—to
a packed auditorium and a new panel of judges. “That was rough,”
says Jamieson. “Those final judges went for the jugular. It
was at a whole other level.” In the end, the judges agreed
that the water monitor was a winner.
“The idea is so simple,” says Kopelman, “that
we kept wondering why there wasn’t such a product already
on the market. We’ve done a ton of research to make sure that
the idea is unique and protectable.”
AquaStasis is preparing to test market their product shortly, and
Kopelman and Jamieson are researching industrial design and production
options—all while Kopelman finishes his chemistry dissertation.
They hope to develop other continuous monitoring devices once the
water monitor is launched. “We’re dealing with new challenges
every day,” says Jamieson. “That’s one of the
things that makes this fun. We’re learning all the time.”
Working
with SAM
When Spain in the Age
of Exploration 1492-1819 opened at the Seattle Art Museum in October,
Benjamin Schmidt couldn’t wait to visit. He’d been to
many museum exhibitions, but this one was different. This time,
he had been involved in the exhibition from the early planning stages.
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| Benjamin
Schmidt. Photo by Nancy Joseph. |
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Schmidt, a UW associate
professor in the Department
of History, was contacted by Seattle
Art Museum (SAM) curator Chiyo Ishikawa about two years ago,
when she began planning the major loan exhibition about the Spanish
empire. Schmidt had recently written a book about the Dutch, which
Ishikawa thought would provide a useful perspective on Spain.
“The Netherlands was part of the Spanish empire,” explains
Schmidt. “So when researching the imperial experience of the
Dutch, you also have to engage with imperial Spain.”
That first conversation with Ishikawa led to others, and before
long Schmidt was serving on the advisory board for the exhibition
and writing (with a colleague at Johns Hopkins University, Richard
Kagan) one of the opening essays in the exhibition catalogue.
“The show focuses on Spain’s imperial moment,”
says Schmidt. “Spain was the superpower at the time. It was
expansive and empire-minded. Chiyo and I did a lot of talking about
what that might mean at this particular moment in history. It’s
hard not to be struck by certain analogies in contemporary history.”
Other UW faculty have served as advisers for SAM—most recently
art history professor Marek Wieczorek, who co-curated “International
Abstraction: Making Painting Real,”—but it was Schmidt’s
first time in such a role. It took some getting used to.
“Historians write narratives, and in writing they both pose
questions and offer answers,” says Schmidt. “We’re
trying to tell people what happened in the past and what lessons
that offers for us today. In a museum exhibit, the questions are
more subtly posed through the art and the answers are less obvious.
You leave a lot more to viewers’ imaginations.”
This quarter, Schmidt is teaching a new class on Spanish history
that ties closely with the SAM exhibition, with students visiting
the show as part of the course.
Schmidt’s first experience with SAM was such a success that
he has now been tapped to co-curate, with SAM’s curator of
decorative arts, an exhibition on exoticism that will be presented
at SAM in 2008.
“I’ve never had this kind of role before, so it is exciting,”
he says. “Exhibitions provide a very different way of looking
at intellectual problems, which I really like.”
Ready,
Set, Launch: UW Campaign Goes Public
Two billion dollars. That’s how much the University of Washington
hopes to raise through “Campaign UW: Creating Futures,”
a fund-raising drive that entered its public phase on October 15
with a community celebration at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. It is the
largest fund-raising effort ever attempted in the Pacific Northwest.
Why set such an ambitious goal? “Everybody knows how economically
challenged this university is,” says David Hodge, dean of
the College of Arts and Sciences. “By any measure, relative
to our peers, we fell badly over the last 15 years with respect
to the funding we have available, which means that our students,
staff, and faculty just don’t have the same resources to succeed.
It’s really just that simple.”
The numbers tell the
story. While state support at peer insitutions has risen since 1991,
it has dropped at the UW and now totals more than $3,000 less per
student than the average at peer institutions. “Campaign contributions
provide vital opportunities to our students, faculty, and staff,”
says Hodge, “and they support innovative programs that bring
distinction to the University and engagement with our community.”
Campaign UW has been in a “quiet” phase for four years,
already yielding more than $1.14 billion in leadership gifts and
commitments. “Despite those daunting numbers, the reality
is that every gift—whatever the size —brings the UW
closer to its goal,” says Hodge.
For more about Campaign
UW, click here.
Stacey,
Van Volkenburgh Named Divisional Deans
The College of Arts and Sciences welcomes two new divisional deans
to its staff: Robert Stacey and Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh. Both
are familiar faces around the College.
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Divisional
Deans Bob Stacey and Liz Van Volkenburg. Photo by Nancy
Joseph. |
Bob Stacey, divisional
dean for the social sciences, is no newcomer to administration.
Since joining the UW faculty in 1988, he has served in many leadership
positions, including a five-year stint as chair of the Department
of History.
Stacey’s own specialty is medieval history, with an emphasis
on the study of English Jews in the Middle Ages—an interest
that was piqued while studying at Oxford University. (He later earned
a Ph.D. from Yale University.) His passion for history has translated
to stellar teaching and a UW Distinguished Teaching Award in 1997.
How does being a divisional dean compare with being a department
chair? “Some of the challenges are the same,” says Stacey,
“including huge student enrollments, budgetary limitations,
and the need to replace retiring faculty with
top flight people. But the disciplinary and interdisciplinary reach
of the social sciences is really quite enormous. It’s a challenge
to fully understand all the different things this division does—but
it is an enjoyable challenge.”
Liz Van Volkenburgh first arrived at the UW in 1975 as a graduate
student in the Department of Botany (now included in the Department
of Biology). She earned her Ph.D. in 1980, and after completing
two postdocs at other institutions, returned to the UW where she
has served as a postdoc, a research professor, and tenured professor
before being named divisional dean for research.
Although Van Volkenburgh has been immersed in research throughout
her career —mostly concerning the physiological mechanisms
that lead to plant growth—
she gained an appreciation for the College’s breadth of research
while serving on the College Council for the past two years.
“It was there that I got to see how the College operates,”
says Van Volkenburgh. “From that perch you get to see everything.
I was reveling in the creative endeavors of the whole faculty. I
just loved seeing what people’s output is.”
In her new role, she hopes to direct faculty to new sources of funding
and encourage interdisciplinary research, which has become increasingly
common.
“Research is what all of us—including students—are
doing to create new knowledge,” she says. “Sometimes
it happens with funding, sometimes without. I want to help both.
All of it is valuable.”
Simpson Center Offers Public Humanities
Professorship
Continuing its emphasis on the public humanities—creating
meaningful links between the humanities and the community—the
Walter Chapin Simpson
Center for the Humanities has created the Simpson Professorship
in the Public Humanities. The first of its kind in the nation, the
professorship honors a senior faculty member whose research has
at its core a public humanities mission. The three-year professorship,
funded through the Simpson PSB Fund, provides support for the development
and implementation of programs within the community.
The Center’s first Simpson Professor is Katharyne Mitchell,
UW professor of geography, who will investigate what she sees as
a far-reaching transformation of childhood in the U.S., with a particular
focus on schools. Her work will involve collaborations with K-12
teachers and students, whom she will engage in her research and
a series of public forums. Mitchell also will explore how intensified
global competition, public divestment, and heightened fears about
domestic and foreign violence are affecting institutions and individuals.
“It is my hope that the Simpson Professorship will serve to
develop new models of what public scholarship is, what it can be,
and what it can do, both for the University and the community,”
says Kathleen Woodward, director of the Simpson Center. “We
believe that this will serve as a model nationwide, inspiring other
universities to undertake similar investments in public scholarship.”
[Autumn 2004 - Table of Contents]
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