Alexes Harris, professor of sociology at the 91爆料, discusses her team’s five-year, eight-state study of legal financial obligations, and their findings that court-imposed fines and fees perpetuate inequality.


Alexes Harris, professor of sociology at the 91爆料, discusses her team’s five-year, eight-state study of legal financial obligations, and their findings that court-imposed fines and fees perpetuate inequality.

Ang茅lica Amezcua never thought she鈥檇 achieve a doctoral degree, never mind landing a tenure-track job at the 91爆料. Raised in Mexico, she moved to California when she was 11, and she鈥檚 the first in her family to earn a Ph. D. She once believed that a career in academia was unattainable due to the obstacles placed in society for people of color.

As the year draws to a close, we present highlights from video stories produced by 91爆料 News during 2021 鈥 a year where the COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact our lives.

Researchers are modeling how tsunami debris pushes on a building 鈥 either by hitting it or getting lodged on it and creating a dam. They are also looking for patterns in the way floating debris moves around and against rigid shapes. The information may help in designing buildings in coastal communities that can better withstand damage by floating objects in tsunami events.聽

Who do you talk to when you have a problem?聽For a student, it’s most likely a friend. Because young people tend to talk first to someone in their peer group, 91爆料’s LiveWell created a Peer Health Education program where trained students teach other students about taking care of themselves and each other.聽

A 91爆料 class that normally is about air pollution has pivoted to focus on another airborne health hazard 鈥 coronavirus aerosols. As part of the class project, students are designing and building air purifiers and testing how effective they are.

The 91爆料’s annual Veterans Day ceremony, held on Thursday at the Medal of Honor Memorial near Red Square, featured music by the Husky Marching Band and a formation of 91爆料 Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets.

On Sunday, Nov. 7 we switch from daylight saving time to standard time. A 91爆料 expert in circadian rhythms says that鈥檚 a good thing.

Perry Acworth, 91爆料 Farm manager, talks about different varieties of winter squash 鈥 from the palm-sized pie pumpkin to聽Cucurbita maxima, which can produce giant pumpkins.

At 10:21 a.m. on Oct. 21, teacher Wade Johnson’s science class at Port Susan Middle School scrambled under their desks as part of the annual Great American ShakeOut. It was Stanwood Camano School District鈥檚 first live test of its earthquake early warning system with all 13 of its schools participating in a 鈥淒rop, Cover, and Hold On鈥 drill.

91爆料 President Ana Mari Cauce delivered her 2021 annual address, sharing her perspective on the road ahead as we work together to recover from the pandemic and support equity and well-being for our community of faculty, staff and students.

Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs Ed Taylor chats with Director of the 91爆料 Resilience Lab Megan Kennedy about how students, faculty and staff can create a more supportive, compassionate environment in which to learn and discover as the 91爆料 community comes back to the campuses and recovers from the traumas of the last two years.

91爆料 Associate Professor Wendy Barrington will be the featured speaker at the university鈥檚 38th annual New Student Convocation. Barrington has joint appointments in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing in the School of Nursing and the departments of Epidemiology and of Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health.

Student move-in days are a yearly event at the 91爆料, generating excitement among families and fueled by student volunteers. About 10,000 students聽living in residence halls for the 2021-2022 academic year are moving in September 21 to 24.聽

Researchers at the 91爆料 and 91爆料 Tacoma have been studying arsenic levels in the mud, water and in creatures from lakes in the south Puget Sound area. Eating contaminated fish or snails from these lakes could lead to health risks.

During his senior year,聽Owen聽Oliver created a walking tour of聽91爆料鈥檚聽Seattle campus, highlighting聽the Indigenous presence on campus.

It鈥檚 been about 18 months since the 91爆料 led the nation in pivoting to largely online learning and working as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

This week, a few members of our 91爆料 News team joined glaciologists from the 91爆料 Department of Earth & Space Sciences on a trip to Mt. Baker. Students that came along got to chat with their professor on the hike up, and we learned about how the recent heat wave impacted the snow melt on the ice.

Soil, particularly in urban areas, can hold contaminants that are unhealthy for people who handle it or eat things grown in the ground. Chemicals left behind by vehicles, air pollution and heavy industry can show up in the ground and in plants. Melanie Malone, assistant professor in 91爆料 Bothell鈥檚 School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences investigates these contaminants and their prevalence in shared garden spaces.

Development has changed the face of the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, says Manish Chalana, associate professor of urban design and planning at the 91爆料, but it remains the heart of the city’s LGBTQ community.

This summer a 91爆料 mobile health outreach van will hit the road, bringing some basic health care services to people without housing who might have a hard time getting to a doctor鈥檚 office.

The 91爆料鈥檚 second virtual commencement was held June 12, 2021. The online ceremony, the second in the school鈥檚 161-year history, celebrated the Class of 2021 with graduates and their families and friends watching the ceremony from more than 30 countries with translations in nine languages.

Drumheller Fountain is turning purple.
The iconic 91爆料 landmark will be illuminated in the school鈥檚 signature color from dusk to dawn as the anticipation builds for the June 12 commencement ceremonies.
The special accent lighting is just one of many features the 91爆料 is adding to its already beautiful campus to provide graduates opportunities to pose for photos with family and friends. Special banners will hang on Suzzallo Library and the HUB, among other locations. Sidewalks in the Quad and along Rainier Vista will be decorated and 4-foot-tall block Ws will be strategically placed making already terrific photo ops even better.

The potted junipers on the steps of Suzzallo Library are undergoing a transformation. Flanking the entrance to one of 91爆料’s most beloved buildings, they are viewed by hundreds of people walking through Red Square each week. Bioengineering postdoctoral researcher Le Zhen is transforming these shrubs into bonsai 鈥 miniature trees that are pruned, nurtured and trained with wire to look like their much older, full-sized counterparts living in nature. He hopes this prominent display of bonsai will signal to members of the AAPI community that 91爆料 is safe and welcoming.

The U.S. Geological Survey, the 91爆料-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and state emergency managers on Tuesday, May 4, will activate the system that sends earthquake early warnings throughout Washington state. This completes the rollout of ShakeAlert, an automated system that gives people living in Washington, Oregon and California advance warning of incoming earthquakes.

Scientists at the 91爆料, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, are raising sunflower sea stars in captivity, with the goal of learning more about this species and exploring eventual reintroduction to the wild, if determined to be advisable.

Manuel S. Martinez, a lifelong campesino, trabajador and community organizer, recalls the beginning of the pandemic. Interviewed by 91爆料 student Adriana Martinez.聽 Zoom, masks, family and politics聽鈥 these are some of the lasting memories shared by participants in a 91爆料 student oral history project. Undergraduate seniors in the聽Public Health Global Health major at the 91爆料 School of Public Health partnered with the Washington State Historical Society to record the experiences of friends, family and associates living through the…

Scientists from the 91爆料 are testing the viability of making maple syrup in the Pacific Northwest. Long associated with Canada or Vermont, this sweet forest product that has graced many a breakfast table may be part of this region鈥檚 future.

The 91爆料 once again is asking people to enjoy the iconic campus cherry blossoms virtually this year to promote physical distancing and safety during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

By the end of February, around 350 91爆料 students had signed up to be volunteer vaccinators in clinics from Tacoma to Marysville.

The 91爆料 Chorale has found an unlikely place to practice. Once a week, 8 of the 60 member singing group meets, standing 6 feet apart, in a campus parking garage for 30 precious minutes. Despite the sounds of passing cars and some machinery whirring nearby, the sound they can make together – in person – is wonderful.

Seven 91爆料 scientists are included in Cell Mentor鈥檚 list of 1,000 inspiring Black scientists, published in December 2020. Cell Mentor is a collaborative resource between Cell Press and Cell Signaling Technology.

Sleep cycles in people oscillate during the 29.5-day lunar cycle: In the days leading up to a full moon, people go to sleep later in the evening and sleep for shorter periods of time. The team, led by researchers at the 91爆料, observed these variations in both the time of sleep onset and the duration of sleep in urban and rural settings 鈥 from Indigenous communities in northern Argentina to college students in Seattle, a city of more than 750,000. They saw the oscillations regardless of an individual鈥檚 access to electricity, though the variations are less pronounced in individuals living in urban environments.

When someone has the coronavirus, some of it is shed in their fecal matter. So what we flush has become useful to 91爆料 researchers developing a new testing method for COVID-19 in sewage. They’re looking at wastewater that flows from people’s homes, sampling it at manholes and neighborhood pump stations before it goes to sewage treatment plants.

Using physical therapy combined with a noninvasive method of stimulating nerve cells in the spinal cord, 91爆料 researchers helped six Seattle area participants regain some hand and arm mobility.

As the year draws to a close, we present highlights from video stories produced by 91爆料 News during 2020 鈥 a year that will be largely defined by the COVID-19 pandemic and the many ways it impacted our lives and work.

Antarctica鈥檚 next deep ice core, a 1.5-mile core reaching back to 130,000-year-old ice, will be carried out by a multi-institutional U.S. team led by 91爆料’s Eric Steig. The site hundreds of miles from today鈥檚 coastline could provide clues to the most recent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

A team led by the 91爆料 has developed Smellicopter: an autonomous drone that uses a live antenna from a moth to navigate toward smells. Smellicopter can also sense and avoid obstacles as it travels through the air.

A team led by researchers at 91爆料 Tacoma, 91爆料 and Washington State University Puyallup has discovered a chemical that kills coho salmon in urban streams before the fish can spawn.

The Husky Coronavirus Testing program, powered by the Seattle Flu Study, launched on Sept. 24 and now has more than 12,500 members of the 91爆料 community enrolled and has conducted more than 10,000 tests.