Hartwell Wins Nobel Prize
A Spiritual Journey--50 Teachers and a Bus
Burke Museum Welcomes New Director
Middle and High Schools Become Part of UW's Cosmic Ray Observatory
The Creative Context: Looking at Dance
Developing Collaborative Courses in the Humanities
Three A&S Projects Receive UIF Funding
On the Web: The Labor Press Project

Hartwell Wins Nobel Prize for His Genetics Research

In the 1960s, Lee Hartwell began studying yeast cells in the laboratory. He believed that yeast cells—the same yeast that is essential for brewing beer and baking bread—could provide important clues about cell development while being simpler and easier to manipulate than human cells. His approach proved fruitful. The scientific community now recognizes that yeast is a superb model for studying many basic cellular processes.

Lee Hartwell

For his pioneering work in yeast genetics, much of which was done in the College of the Arts and Sciences’ Department of Genetics, Hartwell was named winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Hartwell—now president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and professor of genetics—shares the honor with Paul Nurse and Timothy Hunt of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. The researchers will receive the award on Dec. 10.

Hartwell is being honored for the discovery of the universal mechanism that controls cell division in all eukaryotic (nucleated) organisms, from yeast to frogs to humans, using yeast as a model organism. Understanding the regulation of cell division—how cells determine when and how to multiply or otherwise develop, and how that process can go awry— is fundamental to understanding how cancer cells mutate and to developing approaches that predict, prevent, or reverse that mutation.

“Maybe the most extraordinary feature of Lee Hartwell’s science is the depth of his thinking,” says Breck Byers, chair of the College’s Department of Genetics. “Lee began his groundbreaking studies in the Department of Genetics by finding a bunch of funny-looking yeast mutants and wondering what they could tell him about life. Rather than applying technologies that weren’t yet ready for the problem at hand, he focused on learning the fundamental basis of the mutant cells’ defects by the straight-forward methods of yeast genetics—using sterile toothpicks to transfer mutants between petri plates, doing crosses and dissections, and scoring the results. From this work, he ended up developing novel concepts that help us understand how growth is controlled in all types of cells, including those in cancer. Tellingly, when a reporter asked him what modern technology had contributed to his prize-winning research, his humorous response was, ‘Toothpicks.’

"Perhaps the real answer should be toothpicks—and phenomenal insight.”

When Hartwell began studying yeast cells, it was “a fairly risky assumption,” as he was the only person looking at yeast cells to find genes that control cell development. Today, the yeast-related research of Hartwell and his colleagues is being used to develop drugs for use against cancer and other diseases.

Hartwell joined the UW faculty in 1968 and has been a professor of genetics since 1973. He also is an adjunct professor of medicine at UW. In 1996 he joined the faculty of the Hutchinson Center and in 1997 became its president and director.

Hartwell’s is the second Nobel Prize awarded to Arts and Sciences faculty. Hans Dehmelt, professor of physics, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for the development of the ion trap technique.

A Spiritual Journey— 50 Teachers and a Bus

In June, nearly 50 middle and high school teachers travelled to a mosque and a Thai Buddhist temple, among other spiritual destinations. And they never left the Seattle area.

	K-12 teachers spoke with a variety of spiritual leaders during the "Spiritual Spaces" seminar.

The teachers were participants in “Spiritual Spaces Around the World,” a three-day seminar offered by the Jackson School of International Studies and the Center for International Business Education and Research. The seminar included a dozen lectures, most led by UW faculty, and afternoon field trips to churches and temples throughout the region. The goal, says Felicia Hecker, associate director of the Jackson School’s Middle East Center, was to “open doors to worlds they don’t know about.”

For many of the teachers, the visits were indeed a new experience. “A lot of them have not had the opportunity to travel very widely, so some of this was really foreign to them,” recalls Hecker. “They did not know such places existed in the Seattle area. For some, the visits touched an emotional nerve.”

The summer seminar for teachers is offered annually, each year exploring a topic with an international focus. Hecker chose this year’s topic with the field visits in mind. “As this city has become more diverse, quite a range of temples, mosques, and churches have appeared,” she explains. “I figured, ‘Why not try to couple scholarly lectures with visits to sacred sites?’ It seemed like a good opportunity for teachers to meet people in the places where they worship.” The sites included Idris Mosque Northgate, St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, Gurudwara Singh Sabha of Washington-Renton, and Washington Buddhavanaram Temple.

The seminar’s keynote speaker—Professor Richard Hecht of University of California, Santa Barbara—helped prepare the teachers for the site visits by exploring what constitutes spiritual space. He noted that sacred spaces from many cultures share common elements, such as “lifted” spaces like domes or arches, and the presentation of offerings.

“He tried to get people to think about sacred spaces in a broader way than just religion,” says participant Julia Seibert, a world history teacher at Lindberg High School in the Renton School District. “He gave the example of the Vietnam Memorial, which people visit almost like a pilgrimage, leaving flowers at the site. It got me to look at the idea of spiritual spaces with a fresh eye. I plan to have my students think about places other than churches that are spiritual to them.”

Other seminar speakers focused on specific regions or cultures, from Chinese to Russian to Jewish sacred spaces. One speaker focused on a less traditional sacred space: the labyrinth. “She came with a labyrinth—a replication of the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral—on a huge quilt that almost filled the HUB West Ballroom,” recalls Hecker. “She had the participants walk the labyrinth and explained how it can be a tool for meditation and can provide an opportunity for people to create their own sacred space.”

Seibert, who teaches world religions as part of her curriculum, says the three-day seminar sparked new ideas for the classroom. While she was aware of many of the temples prior to attending the seminar, some of the teachers were not. “I had no idea there were such ‘exotic’ places in Seattle,” commented one teacher at the end of the program, adding, “I felt like I went around the world without leaving Seattle.”

Burke Museum Welcomes New Director

He has headed some of the world’s top natural history museums, in such locations as Ottawa, Canada, and Melbourne, Australia. He oversaw the planning and construction of an innovative new museum that incorporates information technology as a basic element of its structure. Now George MacDonald is turning his attention to the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

George MacDonald

MacDonald became director of the Burke Museum on November 1. “George’s extensive experience in the museum world and his professional interest in Native Northwest culture make him uniquely qualified for this position,” says Michael Halleran, divisional dean for the arts and humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. “The museum will flourish under his leadership.”

MacDonald’s early career, in archaeological and ethno-historical research, began in British Columbia and Alaska. In 1960, he joined the staff of Ottawa’s National Museum of Manand served as acting director when it became the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1983. He held the post of President/CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation until 1999. Along the way, MacDonald was actively involved in the planning of a new building for the museum and the securing of major donations that made it possible.

That experience proved invaluable when MacDonald was appointed CEO of Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia in 1999 and charged with overseeing the construction of the Melbourne Museum, which focuses on the natural history and culture of Australia.

In both the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Melbourne Museum facilities, the influence of electronic media is significant, ranging from 3-D interactive tours to online educational websites. “I always try to keep the technology as invisible as possible,” says MacDonald. “It is clear, however, that we are on the verge of having hand-held computers that will bring a different kind of experience to the museum exhibit hall. It will be possible to examine an artifact or specimen from every conceivable perspective while you confront it physically.”

One of MacDonald’s primary goals as director of the Burke Museum will be to help usher the museum into this new era and perhaps even a new physical facility. “I see the Burke Museum as a wonderful collection of natural and cultural historical material with a great staff to interpret it to the public,” says MacDonald. “Getting a new facility of the right size and character is the current challenge.”

Remaining a scholar throughout his career in museum administration, MacDonald has authored more than 150 publications. The vast majority of his research has focused on the peoples of the coast of British Columbia and southeast Alaska. His appointment at the Burke will include a professorship in the UW’s Department of Anthropology.

Middle and High Schools Become Part of UW’s Cosmic Ray Observatory

It’s not every middle schooler who can boast that she’s spent time with a particle detector. But students at eleven Seattle-area middle and high schools can make such claims, thanks to a research project coordinated by faculty in the UW Department of Physics.

The project—the Washington Area Large-scale Time-coincidence Array (WALTA)—aims to find out more about the highest-energy cosmic rays. To accomplish this, eleven schools will install particle detectors, linked using the Internet, as part of a large cosmic ray observatory.

“Cosmic rays are subatomic particles that constantly rain down on Earth,” explains UW Physics Professor R. Jeffrey Wilkes. “They provide information on violent, high-energy processes in distant stars, allowing us to study fundamental particles and forces of nature under conditions far beyond the reach of man-made particle accelerators.”

When a cosmic ray hits the Earth’s atmosphere, it interacts with atoms to create a shower of secondary particles that can number in the billions. The new particles continue traveling toward Earth and by the time they reach the surface they can have spread across an area as large as 60 square miles. If more than one cosmic ray hits at the same time, the detection area could be much greater. Such a shower will trigger detectors in the school network, which will download information at regular intervals to a UW data analysis center.

Science teachers from the participating schools spent a week at the UW in August, learning the fundamentals of cosmic ray physics and preparing portions of the detectors to be installed at their schools. Equipment supplied by UW physicists includes detector modules salvaged from completed physics research.

Students and teachers at each school will analyze the data they are contributing as well as the data submitted by others. UW faculty and graduate students will work with teachers to develop classroom materials that integrate the cosmic ray research into the school’s curriculum.

WALTA joins groups in California, Colorado, Nebraska, and Alberta, Canada, that are gathering, sharing, and assessing information on cosmic rays. Four more groups are forming in the U.S. and Canada. The goal is to inspire students as well as collect data.

The WALTA workshop was funded through a grant from Quarknet, an outreach program of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.

The Creative Context: Looking at Dance

For the past decade, the Dance Program has presented an annual concert of historically and artistically important choreographic works that have rarely or never been performed in our region. To deepen and broaden the educational impact of this annual concert, the Dance Program is now offering The Creative Context, a 200-level course open to the community as well as UW students.

	Chamber Dance Company member--and graduate student--Jeff Curtis. Photo by Kozo.

The course uses the repertoire of the UW’s Chamber Dance Company as the basis for an in-depth investigation of the socio-political, economic, and aesthetic context in which the works were created. At the end of the course, participants will attend the Chamber Dance Company concert and discuss the featuredchoreography.

“The course offers dancers and non-dancers a meaningful context and vocabulary for viewing, interpreting, and critiquing renowned dances and choreographers,” says Elizabeth Cooper, director of the Dance Program. “Chamber Dance Company performers will participate, providing unique insights into the rehearsal and reconstruction process and allowing for an examination of the art form from a kinesthetic viewpoint.”

For more information, contact Elizabeth Cooper in the Dance Program at bcoop@u.washington.edu or 206-543-9843.

Developing Collaborative Courses in the Humanities

Some topics can be understood fully only when studied from several viewpoints. How did Darwin’s The Origin of Species influence society? How has the definition of family changed over time and across cultures? In a new series of team-taught undergraduate courses in the humanities, these and other topics will be explored with an interdisciplinary perspective.

Fred Danz (center) with Michael Halleran, divisional dean for the humanities, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities' Margit Dementi.

The Danz Courses in the Humanities were introduced in October as a one-year pilot project, with one course offered each quarter. The first, focusing on family, is being taught collaboratively by professors of classics and history. The second, exploring Darwin’s influential text, will bring together professors of speech communication and history/medicalhistory and ethics. The final course, “InVivo: Traversing Scientific and Artistic Observations of Life,” will be taught by professors of art, medicine, communications, and comparative history of ideas. All of the courses are offered by the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Support for the pilot program was provided through a $50,000 gift from the Frederic Danz Foundation, which has now generously committed an additional $300,000 to extend the program through 2005, with $200,000 more available pending positive results.

“I felt this was the least I could do,” says Frederic Danz, ‘40, an A&S alumnus and a longtime supporter of the humanities at the UW. “It seemed to me that the humanities do not have as much support as some of the ‘harder’ disciplines in academia, such as aeronautics or medicine. This seemed to be a place where I could be of some help.”

Michael Halleran, divisional dean for the arts and humanities, says that the College has been working for some time towards creating multidisciplinary courses in the humanities. “Now,” he says, “through Fred Danz’s extremely generous gift, we will be able to introduce many students to the breadth and interconnectedness of the humanities. This is wonderfully exciting.”

Three A&S Projects Receive UIF Funding

The University Initiatives Fund was established in 1996 by UW President Richard McCormick to allow the University to invest in transformative, cutting-edge programs. Three of the five projects chosen in the latest round of UIF funding involve Arts and Sciences units working in collaboration with other UW colleges:

The Center for Digital Arts will involve “technologists and artists working in tandem to create and discover new knowledge in both fields, as well as to develop new genres of art that could only be created using digital technology,” says Richard Karpen, principal investigator, who is a professor of music and director of the Center for Advanced Research Technology in the Arts and Humanities (CARTAH).

CARTAH and the Animation Research Labs (ARL) are two existing digital arts-related units that will be integral to the Digital Arts Program as it develops. The program also will involve Art, Music, Computer Science and Engineering, Architecture, Electrical Engineering, and Drama. The funding provides for the hiring of new faculty and the construction of digital studios to support both advanced technology research and the creation of new works of art.

Karpen says the program will be unusual in the arts in that it will offer a doctorate on the fine arts side of things, something not usually found. For example, an art student today can get a doctorate in art history but not in studio art. The advanced student in digital arts will be actively creating new art along with a wide range of research.

The Program on Values in Society will be a minor for undergraduates and a certificate program for graduate students in the field of applied ethics. It is a collaboration of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Evans School of Public Affairs,the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, the Information School, the Business School, the Graduate School, and Undergraduate Education.

“What we’re trying to do is to bring abstract moral and political thinking to bear on the nitty gritty of specific, complex ethical problems,” says Jean Roberts, associate professor of philosophy and principal investigator.

Four new faculty will be hired for the program. Two will be in the Philosophy Department specializing in medical ethics and environmental ethics. The other two will be in joint positions—one between philosophy and public affairs, one between philosophy and medical history and ethics in the School of Medicine.

Climate Change and the Global CO2 Cycle is a collaboration between the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences. It creates an interdisciplinary program in climate change and the global CO2 cycle that will both integrate existing strengths and fill some gaps, says James Murray, professor of oceanography and principal investigator.

“We plan to set up an interdisciplinary curriculum that graduate students from all these different fields can take,” explains Murray. “The UW has many strengths in this field, but our efforts up to now have been uncoordinated, so we haven’t had the impact nationally that we should have. With this grant we’ll be able to do that.”

On the Web: The Labor Press Project

From 1900 to 1928, the Seattle Union Record was the voice of labor in the Northwest. At times, the daily newspaper’s circulation reached 80,000. It was resurrected in 2000 by members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild during their seven-week strike against the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The intriguing history of the Union Record and dozens of other labor publications can be found on a new website for the Labor Press Project.

The Labor Press Project, coordinated by History Professor James Gregory, explores the history and ongoing influence of newspapers and periodicals published by unions, labor councils, and radical organizations. “These media have been a critical part of American labor movements since the early nineteenth century,” says Gregory, “and an equally critical, if largely unacknowledged, part of the history of journalism.”

The initial focus of the project is the history of labor media in the Pacific Northwest. Reports written by students in Gregory’s “Class and Labor in American History” course are central to the project. The site also includes photographs, cartoons, and facsimile pages from periodicals dating back more than a century.

The Labor Press Project is part of a series of web-based resources created by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies to explore the labor history of the Pacific Northwest.

[Autumn 2001 - Table of Contents]