Milestone It’s graduation day at Husky Stadium.
During the commencement ceremonies, students stand when their school or college is called. When students from the College of Arts and Sciences are asked to stand, “it seems like the whole stadium rises,” Ana Mari Cauce, dean of the College, says with pride and delight. No wonder. The College of Arts and Sciences awards more than 70 percent of undergraduate degrees each year for the UW Seattle campus. “The College is the foundation for a lot of what happens at the University,” Cauce explains. “Our faculty teach foundational courses for all undergraduates, not just those pursuing Arts and Sciences majors. Engineers need math and physics. I hope that future doctors will take a literature class as well as chemistry and biology.” Beyond preparing students for careers, the College encourages them to become informed and engaged citizens. “We care about students being able to make a living, but we also want to help them make a life,” says Cauce. “Through liberal arts courses covering everything from art to international studies, students can explore their individuality. But they also learn about our common human experiences—how our society works, how people in different countries see the world. We provide courses that pay dividends throughout a lifetime in terms of the fullness of life outside of the workplace.” The College has been paying those dividends for generations. Tracing its roots back to the earliest days of the Territorial University in 1861, the College of Arts and Sciences celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, providing an opportunity to acknowledge the
achievements of faculty, staff, and students—past and present— from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning alumni to faculty recipients of the UW’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Legendary history professor Giovanni Costigan won the first Distinguished Teaching Award in 1970. Since then, half of all the awards have gone to Arts and Sciences faculty—including the College’s last three deans. As the oldest part of the University, the College of Arts and Sciences also has been an incubator for other UW programs. The School of Medicine, founded in 1946, incorporated the College’s Department of Anatomy. Computer Science began in the 1970s as a joint program between Arts and Sciences and Engineering; 20 years later, it moved into the College of Engineering. Most recently, the Arts and Sciences departments of Atmospheric Sciences, and Earth and Space Sciences, became part of the new College of the December 2011
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