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2007 Dean's Medalists (clockwise from upper left) Leah Schrager, Sean Hughes, Nick Reichert, and Leanne Do. Photo by Nancy Joseph. |
Four Top Students Named Dean’s Medalists
Four students, eight degrees. That’s how the math adds up for this year’s talented Dean’s Medalists in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Dean’s Medal is presented to four undergraduates each year, one from each of the College’s divisions: arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. The students are selected on the basis of grade point average and faculty recommendations.
Leanne Do, Dean’s Medalist in the Social Sciences, earned a political science degree while taking on leadership roles in the UW Leaders program, serving as a writing tutor, and participating in an array of community service activities. “She has the most extensive record of community service that I have ever encountered among UW students,” writes Professor Karen Litfin, “including work on civil rights, student governance, youth and women’s leadership, and environmental stewardship.” Like all Dean’s Medalists, Do has outstanding grades, but “what her grades cannot demonstrate is her curious, ambitious, and generous way of engaging difficult material,” says Professor Naomi Murakawa. “Her joy in learning is contagious.”
Sean Hughes, Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities, entered the UW through the Academy for Young Scholars Program. He is a triple threat, with degrees in Danish, neurobiology, and biochemistry. While many students would be overwhelmed by the coursework required for a triple degree, Hughes—described by one professor as a “current Renaissance man”—managed to find the time to work in a faculty research laboratory, tutor UW and high school students, write short stories, and begin translating a Danish novel into English. “He is a very kind and modest young
man,” says Scandinavian Studies visiting lecturer Jan Krogh Nielsen, “with great intellectual capacity, a multi-faceted talent, and a work ethic that somehow makes everything look easy.”
Nick Reichert, Dean’s Medalist in the Sciences, has the unusual distinction of earning two mathematics degrees—a bachelor’s and master’s degree—simultaneously. He came to the UW through the Early Entrance Program. “He is only 20 years old,” says Professor James Morrow, “[but] he has been taking graduate courses in math for three years and in nearly every case he is clearly the top student.” Reichert has pursued independent research and participated in the Research Experience for Undergraduates program, first as a student and later as a teaching assistant (TA). He has also served as a TA for the honors 300-level course sequence. “The students loved working with him,” says Morrow. “Although he is extremely talented, he can sympathize with students who are struggling to master the material.”
Leah Schrager, Dean’s Medalist in the Arts, earned degrees in dance and biology. She excelled in biology—her GPA was the second highest of the department’s nearly 1,000 majors—while devoting considerable energy to dance scholarship and performance. She has performed with the UW’s Chamber Dance Company more than any other undergraduate, and recently received a scholarship to develop and perform an original piece involving dancers, actors, musicians, and writers. “I believe Leah’s greatest accomplishment at the UW has been finding the connective threads between her biology and dance degrees,” says Dance Program Director Elizabeth Cooper, “and integrating them into a meaningful and multi-faceted approach to the study of human movement that embraces the arts, sciences, and social sciences."
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Andrea Peterson accepted her Teacher of the Year award from President Bush at a White House ceremony on April 26, 2007. Photo by Eric Draper. |
Washington’s Top Teacher Goes National
When Andrea Peterson (‘96) was profiled in the last issue of A&S Perspectives, she had been named Washington Teacher of the Year and was awaiting word on the national Teacher of the Year award.
The wait is over. In April, Peterson learned that she had been chosen as the nation’s top teacher for 2007. The last time a Washington State teacher had been chosen for the national award was 1970.
“It’s incredibly humbling,” Peterson told the Seattle Times after learning of the award. She was honored by President Bush in a special ceremony at the White House.
Peterson is the vocal and instrumental music teacher at Monte Cristo Elementary School in Granite Falls, Washington. She earned her B.A. in music education from the UW.
As Teacher of the Year, Peterson will be released from her classroom duties for a year to travel around the country as a teaching “ambassador.” In her acceptance speech, Peterson pledged to use her platform to urge parents and communities to become more involved in their schools.
Sociology Students Lend a Hand in New Orleans
Last year, graduate student Amy Bailey volunteered to help hurricane victims in New Orleans. When she returned to Seattle and shared her experiences with colleagues in the UW Department of Sociology, they were inspired to do the same.
Ten sociology graduate students (including Bailey) and thirteen students from the UW School of Law spent spring break in New Orleans, working with Common Ground Collective, a non-profit created to help the recovery effort. While the law students provided legal aid, the sociology students got down and dirty. They gutted buildings, reframed portions of a house, installed drywall, and took on other tasks as needed.
“There was no electricity in the area where we were working,” says Irina Voloshin. “We had to drag generators around. Things that should have taken two hours took six due to lack of infrastructure.”
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| Volunteers in New Orleans, wearing protective gear, take a break from gutting a house. Photo by David Sharrow. |
“It’s almost a war zone,” adds fellow volunteer Jon Agnone. “The police presence is the military. You pass by rows and rows of razed houses. The scale of decimation is hard to get out of your mind.”
Agnone is president of the Department of Sociology’s Graduate Student Association, which raised funds from UW faculty, staff, friends, and family, and secured a grant from the UW Learning for Leadership Council, to cover travel expenses and purchase safety equipment for the volunteers.
The students volunteered for personal rather than academic reasons, but many discovered that the experience related to their studies. Voloshin, whose focus is inequality, found New Orleans to be a heartbreaking case study. While poor neighborhoods hard hit by the storm were still in shambles, tourist areas had been rebuilt. “Upon our arrival there, it became clear how relevant this is to much of what we’re studying,” she says. “It’s not why I went down there, but I did find that it was directly pertinent to what I’m drawn to in sociology.”
Agnone had a similar response. “Social scientists—at least quantitative social scientists—tend to be disengaged and distanced from what they study,” he says. “Being able to see it up close contextualizes it in a different way.”
This benefit was not lost on Sociology lecturer Jonathan Wender, who invited four of the students to share their observations in his “Social Problems” course. The students are planning a similar panel for the broader department community.
“People are surprised that things haven’t improved more in New Orleans,” says Agnone. “Keeping attention on the issue is really important. I think that’s the number one thing we can do now.”
UW Undergrads Dominate International Math Competition
What do Lance Armstrong and the UW Department of Mathematics have in common? An unprecedented seven wins in a grueling competition.
Two teams from the UW were among the 14 “Outstanding Winners”—along
with teams from Harvard, Duke and MIT—
of the 2007 Mathematical Contest in Modeling, an international competition that had 949 entries this year.
Jim Morrow, professor of mathematics, began entering teams in the competition in 2001. The UW quickly became a powerhouse, garnering seven wins in six years. Names and affiliations are removed from the final submissions, so reputation and past successes do not influence the judging.
The entrants choose from two questions, which they have four days to tackle. Both winning UW teams selected this year’s problem on gerrymandering, which required them to devise a fair, mathematical way to divide up states’ congressional districts. The students could research the problem in libraries or online, but they were barred from communicating with friends, family, or professors. Team members worked together from dawn until long after dusk, sharing computer programming, mathematics research, and report-writing duties.
“The skills that you learn are really marketable—teamwork, problem-solving,
how to communicate ideas,” says team member Sam Burden.
That is not lost on potential employers. Morrow says that winning team members are often recruited by companies such as the National Security Agency, Microsoft, and investment company D.E. Shaw.
When archaeologists unearthed 84,600 archaeological specimens in Port Angeles several years ago, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe began planning a museum and curatorial facility to house them. But until that museum is built, the collection will be well cared for at the Burke Museum, as outlined in a five-year trust agreement recently signed by the Burke and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT).
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| Archaeologists contracted by the Washington Department of Transportation work at the Tse-whit-zen site. Photo courtesy of WSDOT. |
The artifacts come from Tse-whit-zen village, a site dating from about 500 BC to 1900 AD. The village was uncovered by WSDOT during construction of a dry dock in Port Angeles in 2003-2004. With approximately 900 cubic feet of material, this is the largest archaeology collection currently at the Burke.
Many archaeological collections are held in trust by the Burke Museum for federal, state, county, city, and tribal governmental bodies. The Burke is often selected to care for collections because of its vast experience in archaeology and curating archaeological collections, as well as its excellent record of working with area tribes. While at the Burke, these collections are made available for research.
Museum staff recently completed an inventory of the Tse-whit-zen collection, a process that took five months.
“This is the biggest excavation of a precontact Native American settlement in recent memory,” says Burke Held-in-Trust Program Manager Steve Denton, “and will greatly increase our understanding of the region’s history when it is analyzed.” The artifacts include spindle whorls, stone bowls, combs, needles, harpoons, and other typical objects of daily life found in Native villages along the Puget Sound coastline.
Dream Student, Dream Project
“I see him being governor of the State of Washington. Or a senator. I see him being a public servant in the purest and most positive way.”
Professor Stan Chernicoff is talking about UW junior Alula Asfaw, an English and political science major who recently received a prestigious Truman Scholarship. Truman Scholars are chosen on the basis of leadership potential, intellectual ability, and likelihood of making a difference.
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| Alula Asfaw. Photo by Matt Harris. |
Asfaw was a freshman when he came to Chernicoff with a simple yet ambitious idea: to have UW undergraduates help first generation, low-income high school students navigate the complex process of applying for and selecting a college.
The idea became The Dream Project, a course and outreach program that now
involves more than 80 UW students working with six Seattle-area high schools. The UW students meet regularly with high school juniors to discuss SAT preparation and course selection; later they guide the students through the process of applying
for college and financial aid.
Asfaw’s idea for the program reflects the challenges he faced in preparing for college. Born in Ethiopia, Asfaw lived in the U.S. briefly as a young child and returned permanently at age six. “My parents felt I would not be able to get a good education in Ethiopia,” he explains. “I came to the U.S. to live with my much older brother.”
Although he wanted to go to college, Asfaw recalls being confused by the application process. “Not having parents who had gone through it, I didn’t know what to do,” he recalls. “I ended up applying for the Upward Bound Project at the UW, and that’s how I ended up at the University and in college more generally.”
Asfaw wanted to provide support for others who might be similarly overwhelmed. He figured that the best mentors for high school students preparing for college would be undergraduates who had just completed the process themselves. Chernicoff helped Asfaw fine tune the idea, suggesting a course with a community service component. “I felt that tying this to a class would lead to a deeper commitment, a required commitment,” says Chernicoff.
The course focuses on issues of equity, social mobility, and educational opportunity. The service learning component includes weekly visits to participating high schools and special on-campus programs for the high school students, all developed by the UW students.
The results of these efforts? The Dream Project’s first cohort of high school participants just graduated, and 70 percent are going to four-year colleges next year. Many others are heading for community college.
Chernicoff is impressed—though not surprised—by what Asfaw and other Dream Project students have accomplished.
“Students are amazing at this university,” he says. “If you give them opportunities, rarely do they disappoint. They are so competent on so many different fronts.”
Asfaw agrees, and insists that his Truman Award reflects not just his own accomplishments, but those of the many students involved in The Dream Project. “For me, this award always sits in the framework of all the people who are committed to the project,” he says.
But it is evident that Asfaw’s leadership and vision are what made The Dream Project a reality.
“Alula sees issues that need to be addressed and mobilizes people to join him and share his passion,” says Chernicoff. “The sky is the limit with this young man. It gives one hope.”