Viewpoint | Spring 2021

Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington | Spring 2021

Vaccine Equity By building trust and expanding access, we serve the communities most at risk.

Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington

SPRING 2021

FOUNDED 2004

Published by the UW Alumni Association in partnership with the UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity 4311 11th Ave. NE, Suite 220 Box 354989 Seattle, WA 98195-4989 Phone: 206-543-0540 Fax: 206-685-0611 Email: vwpoint@uw.edu CO URTE SY THE SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

Viewpoint on the Web: UWalum.com/viewpoint

VIEWPOINT S TA F F UW P HOTO

BY R I C K EY HA L L V I C E P R E S I D E N T F O R M I N O R I T Y A F FA I R S & D I V E R S I T Y

Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 PUBLISHER

Hannelore Sudermann, ’96 EDITOR

Ken Shafer ART DIRECTOR

A Time of Hope

Joe Anderson, ’96 C O N T R I B U T I N G I L L U S T R AT O R

David Ryder, ’06, ’11 CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Welcome to the spring 2021 issue of Viewpoint. As you stroll through these pages, I hope you enjoy the stories and appreciate the impact of the people featured.

You’ll notice the cover story is about vaccine equity, but when you read deeper, you’ll find the article is about more than just vaccines. It is about addressing disparities in access to all health care, about the people doing the hard work to reach rightfully skeptical communities and, most of all, about hope for a tomorrow in which the pandemic is effectively managed and we are able to gather together again in person.

This issue highlights the accomplishments of many alumni, faculty and current students, as well as the many “firsts.”

The first to get a vaccine. The first antiracism program at the UW School of Nursing. The first Latina pilot on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team. The first Black editor of The Daily. First alumni of

2

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

the Brotherhood Initiative, and the program’s first major donor. And many, many first-generation college graduates.

Whether you participate every year or this is your first time, I invite you to join OMA&D and the Friends of the Educational Opportunity Program on May 12 for our free virtual Celebration. We will recognize exceptional students and honor the 2021 Odegaard Award recipient Emile Pitre. As a student, Emile was one of the founding members of the UW Black Student Union, which in 1968 demanded an office like OMA&D be established. He later joined the staff and served with distinction for more than 30 years. We hope you will join us for an evening of excellence and inspiration.

Amanda Heidt, Nicole Pasia, Gabriela Tedeschi CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

VIEWPOINT A DV I S O RY COMMITTEE

Rickey Hall

Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity University Diversity Officer

Eleanor J. Lee, ’00, ’05 Director of Communications UW Graduate School

IN THIS ISSUE

4

NEWS

6

COVER STORY

Racing Toward Vaccine Equity

10

FEATURE

The Road to Faculty Diversity

12

MEDIA

13

IN MEMORY

Bryan Monroe

15

VIEW

The Adventure Gap

Tamara Leonard

Associate Director Center for Global Studies Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

Eric Moss

Director of Communications Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity

A B O U T T H E COV E R The work of alumni artist Joe Anderson, ’96, has appeared in publications that include The New Yorker, The Boston Globe and the University of Washington Magazine. For this issue of Viewpoint, he focused on vaccine equity.

A Radical View Into History “We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton … the night was excessively severe … which the men bore without the least murmur …

—Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776, 1954” is Jacob Lawrence’s take on Washington’s troops crossing the Delaware during the American Revolution.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003

A little-seen series by Jacob Lawrence, one of the country’s most celebrated Black artists and one of the UW’s most beloved art professors, is now on view at the Seattle Art Museum. Nearly 70 years after their creation, the pieces resonate with today’s cultural crises.

Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, moved to Seattle in 1970 after the UW hired him during a campaign to bring more Black faculty to campus. While at the University, the painter and printmaker mentored artists who have gone on to illustrious careers including Marvin Oliver, ’73, and Barbara Earl Thomas, ’73.

Now his 30-panel series, “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” which Lawrence created in the 1950s, is showing in Seattle. It tells a racially diverse story of America's history from 1775 to 1817. When it went up for sale in the late 1950s, the time of the Red Scare and Civil Rights rulings like Brown v. Board of Education, buyers weren’t interested in

keeping the collection whole. The panels were sold off as individual works. Some were lost.

Efforts to reunite the series for an exhibit culminated with the formation of an exhibit in 2020. In the recent months, as news of the exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum spread, two missing panels were discovered in private hands. Both owners agreed to show their paintings alongside those from other private owners, and the nearly complete set is in Seattle through May 23. The whereabouts of three panels remains unknown.

the story of diversity at the UW

3

Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington

SPRING 2021

FOUNDED 2004

Published by the UW Alumni Association in partnership with the UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity 4311 11th Ave. NE, Suite 220 Box 354989 Seattle, WA 98195-4989 Phone: 206-543-0540 Fax: 206-685-0611 Email: vwpoint@uw.edu CO URTE SY THE SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

Viewpoint on the Web: UWalum.com/viewpoint

VIEWPOINT S TA F F UW P HOTO

BY R I C K EY HA L L V I C E P R E S I D E N T F O R M I N O R I T Y A F FA I R S & D I V E R S I T Y

Paul Rucker, ’95, ’02 PUBLISHER

Hannelore Sudermann, ’96 EDITOR

Ken Shafer ART DIRECTOR

A Time of Hope

Joe Anderson, ’96 C O N T R I B U T I N G I L L U S T R AT O R

David Ryder, ’06, ’11 CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Welcome to the spring 2021 issue of Viewpoint. As you stroll through these pages, I hope you enjoy the stories and appreciate the impact of the people featured.

You’ll notice the cover story is about vaccine equity, but when you read deeper, you’ll find the article is about more than just vaccines. It is about addressing disparities in access to all health care, about the people doing the hard work to reach rightfully skeptical communities and, most of all, about hope for a tomorrow in which the pandemic is effectively managed and we are able to gather together again in person.

This issue highlights the accomplishments of many alumni, faculty and current students, as well as the many “firsts.”

The first to get a vaccine. The first antiracism program at the UW School of Nursing. The first Latina pilot on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team. The first Black editor of The Daily. First alumni of

2

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

the Brotherhood Initiative, and the program’s first major donor. And many, many first-generation college graduates.

Whether you participate every year or this is your first time, I invite you to join OMA&D and the Friends of the Educational Opportunity Program on May 12 for our free virtual Celebration. We will recognize exceptional students and honor the 2021 Odegaard Award recipient Emile Pitre. As a student, Emile was one of the founding members of the UW Black Student Union, which in 1968 demanded an office like OMA&D be established. He later joined the staff and served with distinction for more than 30 years. We hope you will join us for an evening of excellence and inspiration.

Amanda Heidt, Nicole Pasia, Gabriela Tedeschi CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

VIEWPOINT A DV I S O RY COMMITTEE

Rickey Hall

Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity University Diversity Officer

Eleanor J. Lee, ’00, ’05 Director of Communications UW Graduate School

IN THIS ISSUE

4

NEWS

6

COVER STORY

Racing Toward Vaccine Equity

10

FEATURE

The Road to Faculty Diversity

12

MEDIA

13

IN MEMORY

Bryan Monroe

15

VIEW

The Adventure Gap

Tamara Leonard

Associate Director Center for Global Studies Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

Eric Moss

Director of Communications Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity

A B O U T T H E COV E R The work of alumni artist Joe Anderson, ’96, has appeared in publications that include The New Yorker, The Boston Globe and the University of Washington Magazine. For this issue of Viewpoint, he focused on vaccine equity.

A Radical View Into History “We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton … the night was excessively severe … which the men bore without the least murmur …

—Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776, 1954” is Jacob Lawrence’s take on Washington’s troops crossing the Delaware during the American Revolution.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003

A little-seen series by Jacob Lawrence, one of the country’s most celebrated Black artists and one of the UW’s most beloved art professors, is now on view at the Seattle Art Museum. Nearly 70 years after their creation, the pieces resonate with today’s cultural crises.

Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, moved to Seattle in 1970 after the UW hired him during a campaign to bring more Black faculty to campus. While at the University, the painter and printmaker mentored artists who have gone on to illustrious careers including Marvin Oliver, ’73, and Barbara Earl Thomas, ’73.

Now his 30-panel series, “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” which Lawrence created in the 1950s, is showing in Seattle. It tells a racially diverse story of America's history from 1775 to 1817. When it went up for sale in the late 1950s, the time of the Red Scare and Civil Rights rulings like Brown v. Board of Education, buyers weren’t interested in

keeping the collection whole. The panels were sold off as individual works. Some were lost.

Efforts to reunite the series for an exhibit culminated with the formation of an exhibit in 2020. In the recent months, as news of the exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum spread, two missing panels were discovered in private hands. Both owners agreed to show their paintings alongside those from other private owners, and the nearly complete set is in Seattle through May 23. The whereabouts of three panels remains unknown.

the story of diversity at the UW

3

News

GUESTS FROM T H E G R E AT R I V E R Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2017. She was inspired by the program’s mission and Lott’s commitment to turning his ideas into action. Not long after, Yang ran into Lott in Mary Gates Hall and asked how she could help. Yang and Lott met regularly to talk about the Brotherhood Initiative and ways the program could grow. “In academia, you have a lot of theory,” says Yang. “Dr. Lott is an inspiring leader to me because he is one of the few people I know in academia who has a theory and is doing something about it.”

BRIEFS Anti-Racism in Nursing

CO URTESY THE CO LLEGE O F E D UCATIO N

Building Brotherhood

By Gabriela Tedeschi

Now in its fourth year, the Brotherhood Initiative is supporting young men of color in their college experience.

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Ralina Joseph Joins Graduate School Professor Ralina Joseph has joined the Graduate School as associate dean of diversity and student affairs. The communication professor brings a history of building communities around equity and understanding.

Joseph founded the UW Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity, a cross-campus collaborative space for research and teaching on topics about race and its intersections.

She also helped form WIRED (Women Investigating Race, Ethnicity and Difference), a network of support for colleagues across campus, and created Interrupting Privilege, a program she first developed in partnership with the UW Alumni Association to bring alumni and students together to talk and learn about race and develop skills to do the work

Tacoma’s New Tribal Liaison Gabe Minthorn, a member of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, will be tribal liaison for UW Tacoma. Minthorn, who also has ties to the Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes, earned his master’s in teaching from Lewis & Clark College.

He started as tribal liaison in late 2020.

Minthorn is focusing on cultivating existing relationships with area tribes while establishing lines of communication with others outside the region. “I want to go out and talk to students and talk to their families and let them know that we’re here,” he says.

Late last fall, artists Tony Johnson (naschio) and Adam McIsaac installed their sculpture, “Guests From the Great River,” just outside the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Johnson, who is also the Chinook Indian Nation Chairman, studied art and anthropology at the UW in the 1990s. He hopes the artwork inspires that moment of greeting and respect when canoe families raise their paddles as they land on neighbors’ beaches. The piece consists of 11 large-scale bronze paddles arranged in the shape of a canoe.

All the pieces are modeled after existing paddles used by families who live near the mouth of the Columbia River. Those in front, the furthest from the museum, are modeled after 200-year-old paddles in Johnson's own family. “For us, being able to bring this Chinookan style here, along with all the teachings associated with it, is really exciting,” says Johnson.

Despite Moratorium, Evictions Continue Washington landlords are finding ways around the pandemic-related moratoriums on evictions, and this is disproportionately affecting people of color. Preliminary findings from an Evans School of Public Policy & Governance study show an increase in reports of renters being evicted from their homes through informal methods such as texts, emails or verbal communication from landlords telling them to leave.

“If a landlord wants to evict a tenant and they’re really intent on doing it, they are probably going to accomplish it without serving a formal eviction notice,” says Matt Fowle, a doctoral candidate and one of the researchers on the study. “Tenants perceive that they have less power now compared to landlords than they did before the pandemic.”

Just as the pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on BIPOC communities, research shows Black, Indigenous, and Latinx renters were most likely to report being housing insecure. They were also more likely to be behind on their rent payments. “Landlords, [property] managers, are always very willing to believe that you’re the problem in any situation when you are a Black person living in a white community,” one respondent said in an interview for the study.

The research was funded by the West Coast Poverty Center and the UW Population Health Initiative, which addresses the most persistent and emerging challenges in human health, environmental resilience, and social and economic equity. The study focused on tenant experience, but Fowle noted that eviction moratoriums have hit landlords with only one or two properties especially hard. They may have also lost jobs and may need the income from their properties to pay their bills.

Looking ahead, the study offers this final note: Both tenants and landlords will need financial assistance before the statewide moratorium ends on June 30. Otherwise there could be mass evictions and a rise in homelessness.

COU RT ES Y T HE BU RK E M US EUM

4

In 2016, education professor Joe Lott and a team of graduate students and researchers launched a program to help close the achievement gap for male students of color. Last June, 17 students from the first cohort graduated, and now three more classes of young men are following in their footsteps.

Studies over the past two decades show that men of color in colleges and universities graduate at lower rates than all other populations. They may feel isolated in predominantly white academic settings. The initiative seeks to counter that by providing the men with social-engagement opportunities, mentoring and general support to improve their social and academic success.

This spring, the UW’s Brotherhood Initiative found its first consistent source of funding thanks to an endowment established by Olga Yang, ’82. “The goal of the BI is so basic,” says Yang. “It’s making sure students have the chance that they deserve. When I learned about the program, I immediately thought, ‘What can I do?’”

As an undergraduate at UW, Yang knew the feeling of not belonging. She had immigrated from the Philippines with her family when she was a teen. “I thought I could never go to college in the United States until an EOP [Educational Opportunity Program] counselor said I should go to school and make something of myself,” says Yang. Just having someone offer to help meant a lot, and it helped her relate to the work of the Brotherhood Initiative.

Yang learned about the effort when Lott gave the Samuel E.

To counter the health impacts of racism, the School of Nursing is establishing a Center for Antiracism in Nursing. “There is much work to do to become anti-racist, not just as a society, but as a school, a university, a profession and a community,” says Executive Dean Azita Emami. “As the cornerstone for health care and advocates for the communities they serve, nurses are in the ideal position to do this work.” Plans for the new center were announced in February. The school is planning listening sessions and establishing an advisory committee of faculty, staff, students, alumni, health care workers, community organizations and professional associations. The long-term vision for the center is for it to serve as a nationally recognized hub that transforms nursing training, practice and research, and influences health and public policy.

of anti-racism. In her newest role, Joseph seeks to ensure that BIPOC and firstgeneration graduate students have more mentors and support across their academic careers.

UW STUDY:

the story of diversity at the UW

5

News

GUESTS FROM T H E G R E AT R I V E R Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2017. She was inspired by the program’s mission and Lott’s commitment to turning his ideas into action. Not long after, Yang ran into Lott in Mary Gates Hall and asked how she could help. Yang and Lott met regularly to talk about the Brotherhood Initiative and ways the program could grow. “In academia, you have a lot of theory,” says Yang. “Dr. Lott is an inspiring leader to me because he is one of the few people I know in academia who has a theory and is doing something about it.”

BRIEFS Anti-Racism in Nursing

CO URTESY THE CO LLEGE O F E D UCATIO N

Building Brotherhood

By Gabriela Tedeschi

Now in its fourth year, the Brotherhood Initiative is supporting young men of color in their college experience.

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Ralina Joseph Joins Graduate School Professor Ralina Joseph has joined the Graduate School as associate dean of diversity and student affairs. The communication professor brings a history of building communities around equity and understanding.

Joseph founded the UW Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity, a cross-campus collaborative space for research and teaching on topics about race and its intersections.

She also helped form WIRED (Women Investigating Race, Ethnicity and Difference), a network of support for colleagues across campus, and created Interrupting Privilege, a program she first developed in partnership with the UW Alumni Association to bring alumni and students together to talk and learn about race and develop skills to do the work

Tacoma’s New Tribal Liaison Gabe Minthorn, a member of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, will be tribal liaison for UW Tacoma. Minthorn, who also has ties to the Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes, earned his master’s in teaching from Lewis & Clark College.

He started as tribal liaison in late 2020.

Minthorn is focusing on cultivating existing relationships with area tribes while establishing lines of communication with others outside the region. “I want to go out and talk to students and talk to their families and let them know that we’re here,” he says.

Late last fall, artists Tony Johnson (naschio) and Adam McIsaac installed their sculpture, “Guests From the Great River,” just outside the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Johnson, who is also the Chinook Indian Nation Chairman, studied art and anthropology at the UW in the 1990s. He hopes the artwork inspires that moment of greeting and respect when canoe families raise their paddles as they land on neighbors’ beaches. The piece consists of 11 large-scale bronze paddles arranged in the shape of a canoe.

All the pieces are modeled after existing paddles used by families who live near the mouth of the Columbia River. Those in front, the furthest from the museum, are modeled after 200-year-old paddles in Johnson's own family. “For us, being able to bring this Chinookan style here, along with all the teachings associated with it, is really exciting,” says Johnson.

Despite Moratorium, Evictions Continue Washington landlords are finding ways around the pandemic-related moratoriums on evictions, and this is disproportionately affecting people of color. Preliminary findings from an Evans School of Public Policy & Governance study show an increase in reports of renters being evicted from their homes through informal methods such as texts, emails or verbal communication from landlords telling them to leave.

“If a landlord wants to evict a tenant and they’re really intent on doing it, they are probably going to accomplish it without serving a formal eviction notice,” says Matt Fowle, a doctoral candidate and one of the researchers on the study. “Tenants perceive that they have less power now compared to landlords than they did before the pandemic.”

Just as the pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on BIPOC communities, research shows Black, Indigenous, and Latinx renters were most likely to report being housing insecure. They were also more likely to be behind on their rent payments. “Landlords, [property] managers, are always very willing to believe that you’re the problem in any situation when you are a Black person living in a white community,” one respondent said in an interview for the study.

The research was funded by the West Coast Poverty Center and the UW Population Health Initiative, which addresses the most persistent and emerging challenges in human health, environmental resilience, and social and economic equity. The study focused on tenant experience, but Fowle noted that eviction moratoriums have hit landlords with only one or two properties especially hard. They may have also lost jobs and may need the income from their properties to pay their bills.

Looking ahead, the study offers this final note: Both tenants and landlords will need financial assistance before the statewide moratorium ends on June 30. Otherwise there could be mass evictions and a rise in homelessness.

COU RT ES Y T HE BU RK E M US EUM

4

In 2016, education professor Joe Lott and a team of graduate students and researchers launched a program to help close the achievement gap for male students of color. Last June, 17 students from the first cohort graduated, and now three more classes of young men are following in their footsteps.

Studies over the past two decades show that men of color in colleges and universities graduate at lower rates than all other populations. They may feel isolated in predominantly white academic settings. The initiative seeks to counter that by providing the men with social-engagement opportunities, mentoring and general support to improve their social and academic success.

This spring, the UW’s Brotherhood Initiative found its first consistent source of funding thanks to an endowment established by Olga Yang, ’82. “The goal of the BI is so basic,” says Yang. “It’s making sure students have the chance that they deserve. When I learned about the program, I immediately thought, ‘What can I do?’”

As an undergraduate at UW, Yang knew the feeling of not belonging. She had immigrated from the Philippines with her family when she was a teen. “I thought I could never go to college in the United States until an EOP [Educational Opportunity Program] counselor said I should go to school and make something of myself,” says Yang. Just having someone offer to help meant a lot, and it helped her relate to the work of the Brotherhood Initiative.

Yang learned about the effort when Lott gave the Samuel E.

To counter the health impacts of racism, the School of Nursing is establishing a Center for Antiracism in Nursing. “There is much work to do to become anti-racist, not just as a society, but as a school, a university, a profession and a community,” says Executive Dean Azita Emami. “As the cornerstone for health care and advocates for the communities they serve, nurses are in the ideal position to do this work.” Plans for the new center were announced in February. The school is planning listening sessions and establishing an advisory committee of faculty, staff, students, alumni, health care workers, community organizations and professional associations. The long-term vision for the center is for it to serve as a nationally recognized hub that transforms nursing training, practice and research, and influences health and public policy.

of anti-racism. In her newest role, Joseph seeks to ensure that BIPOC and firstgeneration graduate students have more mentors and support across their academic careers.

UW STUDY:

the story of diversity at the UW

5

C O V E R

S T O R Y

Vaccine Equity The race is on to deliver vaccines to those who need them most

BY H A N N E LOR E S U D E R M A N N P H OTO S BY DAV I D RYD E R

Jennifer Hernandez prepares doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a UW Medicine mobile vaccine clinic at Martin Luther King Jr. Apartments, an affordable housing complex in South Seattle.

6

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

In December, when a crate containing the first 300 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine came off a delivery truck at the Lummi Tribal Health Center, the tribe was prepared. Six months earlier, 64 members had volunteered for a UW-administered vaccine trial. It was a goal for the researchers that communities of color who are hardest hit by coronavirus (Latinx, Black and Native American) were included in the trial to ensure the vaccine would be as effective for them as for white test subjects.

In deciding whether to take part in the trial, the Lummi community explored issues of distrust and fear around the vaccine.

“There were hundreds of meetings and calls with community members about vaccines in general,” says Doctor Dakotah Lane, ’03. “It was a big ask to get this trial going.” But because of that process, the community and the tribal leaders had had their big discussions about vaccines months earlier. And their participation in the trial meant they had a -80 C freezer already installed at the clinic. When the approved vaccine became available in late 2020, the Lummi had just one of two such freezers in the county.

Lane, a member of the Lummi Nation, grew up around the reservation. Many of his patients are family or lifelong neighbors. He started on his path to medicine started after graduating in engineering at the UW and then serving in the Peace Corps in Malawi. He enrolled in medical school at Weill Cornell Medicine and prepared himself to return to provide medical care to his home community. The first COVID-19 case came in February 2020.

“I’ve been a physician here since 2016 and became medical director about two years ago,” he says. “I never thought I would be facing one of the largest generational challenges you could imagine.”

Lane is a linchpin between the community and the American medical system. In the past year, he has helped address members’ concerns about vaccine safety and historic distrust of American medicine. Working with elders and tribal leaders, he encouraged other Lummi members and their families to get their vaccines as soon as they were available. The tribe led the country in efficient and equitable vaccine distribution.

The Lummi story is one of success, but nationwide we’re falling short on distributing vaccines to the communities who need

the story of diversity at the UW

7

C O V E R

S T O R Y

Vaccine Equity The race is on to deliver vaccines to those who need them most

BY H A N N E LOR E S U D E R M A N N P H OTO S BY DAV I D RYD E R

Jennifer Hernandez prepares doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a UW Medicine mobile vaccine clinic at Martin Luther King Jr. Apartments, an affordable housing complex in South Seattle.

6

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

In December, when a crate containing the first 300 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine came off a delivery truck at the Lummi Tribal Health Center, the tribe was prepared. Six months earlier, 64 members had volunteered for a UW-administered vaccine trial. It was a goal for the researchers that communities of color who are hardest hit by coronavirus (Latinx, Black and Native American) were included in the trial to ensure the vaccine would be as effective for them as for white test subjects.

In deciding whether to take part in the trial, the Lummi community explored issues of distrust and fear around the vaccine.

“There were hundreds of meetings and calls with community members about vaccines in general,” says Doctor Dakotah Lane, ’03. “It was a big ask to get this trial going.” But because of that process, the community and the tribal leaders had had their big discussions about vaccines months earlier. And their participation in the trial meant they had a -80 C freezer already installed at the clinic. When the approved vaccine became available in late 2020, the Lummi had just one of two such freezers in the county.

Lane, a member of the Lummi Nation, grew up around the reservation. Many of his patients are family or lifelong neighbors. He started on his path to medicine started after graduating in engineering at the UW and then serving in the Peace Corps in Malawi. He enrolled in medical school at Weill Cornell Medicine and prepared himself to return to provide medical care to his home community. The first COVID-19 case came in February 2020.

“I’ve been a physician here since 2016 and became medical director about two years ago,” he says. “I never thought I would be facing one of the largest generational challenges you could imagine.”

Lane is a linchpin between the community and the American medical system. In the past year, he has helped address members’ concerns about vaccine safety and historic distrust of American medicine. Working with elders and tribal leaders, he encouraged other Lummi members and their families to get their vaccines as soon as they were available. The tribe led the country in efficient and equitable vaccine distribution.

The Lummi story is one of success, but nationwide we’re falling short on distributing vaccines to the communities who need

the story of diversity at the UW

7

it most—that includes Native Americans, who have been killed by the coronavirus at a faster rate than any other group in the U.S., according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. A recent report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that in the first 2 ½ months of the U.S. vaccination program, there were significant racial, ethnic and economic disparities in vaccine coverage in nearly every state. It’s not just a matter of getting the vaccines to the states, it’s a need for planned and tailored approaches to ensure the vaccines are equitably distributed, says Paula Houston, the chief equity officer for UW Medicine and associate vice president for medical affairs for the UW. Here in Washington, lack of access, distrust of the American medical system and the need for an organized plan to reach the most vulnerable people are the biggest challenges, says Houston, who has been central to the UW’s effort to distribute the vaccine.

When the vaccines first became available in December, Houston and her colleagues focused on equitably distributing the vaccine to the workers in the UW Medicine system, particularly to people of color. “We started with working on how do we get appropriate messaging to our workforce, particularly to our workforce who is of limited English proficiency, often essential workers who have great responsibility for keeping us running,” she says. Right away, the team realized that communicating only in English and primarily by email wasn’t working. Almost 40 % of the workers they wanted to reach were declining the vaccine.

“We needed to do something different as we were rolling out invitations to come get your vaccine,” she says.

The Medicine team launched a series of community conversations (now available on YouTube) in multiple languages. In two—Spanish and English—Santiago Neme, a UW doctor who completed his UW Master’s of Public Health in 2014, explained how the MRNA-type vaccines work. The vaccine tells the body to produce a protein that then triggers an immune response. “It’s not COVID. It cannot cause COVID to folks. We’re mimicking

COVID without having any COVID in the vaccine.” What is so extraordinary is that the first two vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, have an efficacy rate of about 95%, he points out.

Those first two vaccines have been studied in over 70,000 patients and by late winter had been distributed to more than 200 million people worldwide. “They are extremely safe,” he says. He shares his own vaccine experience, explaining that the only side effect for most people is pain around the site of vaccination.

UW Medicine produced at least nine such conversations in languages including Cantonese, Mandarin, and Oromo and Amharic, the languages widely spoken in Ethiopia. “These have been really well received,” says Houston. “We invited employees and their family and community members to join in the viewing. Now as we’re moving into more community vaccines, we’re thinking about how do we do more public vaccine information sessions.”

There’s no mystery as to who they need to reach first. “We know in our Pacific Islander population, there is very high disproportionality in terms of burden of disease. Then it would be the Latinx community and then our Black community,” says Houston. “That’s something we’re particularly interested in right now. We know our Black elders are not taking the vaccine in levels that we would like.” Houston and her colleagues are working with senior centers, churches and community-based providers to remedy that.

Vaccine hesitancy is definitely at play with all of these communities: The distrust of the American medical system is well founded among people of color, says Houston. Black people in this country have had a horrible history in our medical system, having been experimented on since the time of slavery, she says.

Some of the beliefs "like Black people having thicker skin and not feeling pain as much, and having blood that coagulates better, these are things that came directly out of slave medicine and from slave owners. … In many ways, the medical community still perpetuates these falsehoods.”

“Native populations have experienced the same kind of atroci-

Staff from the UW Medicine mobile clinic began delivering vaccines in mid-spring with an aim to reach medically underserved communities.

Dion Thoms, assistant manager at the Martin Luther King Jr. apartment complex, receives a vaccine during a mobile COVID-19 vaccine clinic. A UW Medicine team provided vaccines to employees and residents at the Beacon Hill site.

The distrust of the American medical system is well founded among people of color ties, and even more recently,” she says. And people of color have had their own present-day experiences, feeling like they’re not treated fairly by their medical providers.

All the more reason to go to greater lengths to make the vaccines accessible and to connect with the most vulnerable in our communities. We need these outreach efforts, and we need to be focused on reaching our most vulnerable populations with the vaccines, Houston says. If we aren’t focused, people will slip through the cracks. “What it takes is making different decisions, and we’re making different decisions.”

One effort is to reach out to communities of color with the help of people of color. UW Medicine celebrated the 100,000th vaccine dose distributed via Wanda Herndon, a Seattle influencer and former Starbucks vice president for communications and public affairs. She celebrated getting her shot on a video, saying, “I was so nervous that I wasn’t even going to get it.”

8

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Like Herndon, not everyone is hesitant. “There are some community pockets ready to get the vaccine, and they’re just waiting,” says Houston. Now the UW is working to find those pockets and determine whether pop-up clinics, a mobile unit or a mass-vaccination site would serve them best.

After a “boot-camp” training, hundreds of students from the schools of pharmacy, nursing, medicine, social work and dentistry have gone to clinics and pharmacies around Puget Sound to help with vaccine delivery. Diep Ngo is one of nearly 90 pharmacy students traveling to clinics to deliver vaccines. Personally, she told UW News, she wants to do more public health outreach with medically underserved people, including her own Vietnamese immigrant community.

Even though it was impossible to know when it would come, “we spent 25 years preparing for the COVID pandemic,” says Don Downing, ’75, the clinical professor in the School of Pharmacy who helped develop the first pharmacist-delivered vaccination program in the country. Through an effort to provide students with servicelearning experience through community outreach, the health sciences students and faculty have been building pathways into historically underserved communities. Those relationships with community centers, churches and health organizations like the Somali Health Board are opening doors to distributing the vaccines.

This spring, nearly 1,000 students signed up to be volunteer vaccinators and have been working in clinics throughout the Puget Sound region. “We are ready for this,” says Downing.

Following established connections and forging new ones for the sake of getting vaccines into arms, “we’re learning as we are out doing our community engagement,” says Houston. “We’re also asking how are we going to have a post-COVID presence in some of these communities,” says Houston. The providers want to maintain the relationships they have developed through testing and vaccine delivery in order to better serve all the health care needs of the communities, she adds. “We all just want to do the right thing.”

the story of diversity at the UW

9

it most—that includes Native Americans, who have been killed by the coronavirus at a faster rate than any other group in the U.S., according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. A recent report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that in the first 2 ½ months of the U.S. vaccination program, there were significant racial, ethnic and economic disparities in vaccine coverage in nearly every state. It’s not just a matter of getting the vaccines to the states, it’s a need for planned and tailored approaches to ensure the vaccines are equitably distributed, says Paula Houston, the chief equity officer for UW Medicine and associate vice president for medical affairs for the UW. Here in Washington, lack of access, distrust of the American medical system and the need for an organized plan to reach the most vulnerable people are the biggest challenges, says Houston, who has been central to the UW’s effort to distribute the vaccine.

When the vaccines first became available in December, Houston and her colleagues focused on equitably distributing the vaccine to the workers in the UW Medicine system, particularly to people of color. “We started with working on how do we get appropriate messaging to our workforce, particularly to our workforce who is of limited English proficiency, often essential workers who have great responsibility for keeping us running,” she says. Right away, the team realized that communicating only in English and primarily by email wasn’t working. Almost 40 % of the workers they wanted to reach were declining the vaccine.

“We needed to do something different as we were rolling out invitations to come get your vaccine,” she says.

The Medicine team launched a series of community conversations (now available on YouTube) in multiple languages. In two—Spanish and English—Santiago Neme, a UW doctor who completed his UW Master’s of Public Health in 2014, explained how the MRNA-type vaccines work. The vaccine tells the body to produce a protein that then triggers an immune response. “It’s not COVID. It cannot cause COVID to folks. We’re mimicking

COVID without having any COVID in the vaccine.” What is so extraordinary is that the first two vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, have an efficacy rate of about 95%, he points out.

Those first two vaccines have been studied in over 70,000 patients and by late winter had been distributed to more than 200 million people worldwide. “They are extremely safe,” he says. He shares his own vaccine experience, explaining that the only side effect for most people is pain around the site of vaccination.

UW Medicine produced at least nine such conversations in languages including Cantonese, Mandarin, and Oromo and Amharic, the languages widely spoken in Ethiopia. “These have been really well received,” says Houston. “We invited employees and their family and community members to join in the viewing. Now as we’re moving into more community vaccines, we’re thinking about how do we do more public vaccine information sessions.”

There’s no mystery as to who they need to reach first. “We know in our Pacific Islander population, there is very high disproportionality in terms of burden of disease. Then it would be the Latinx community and then our Black community,” says Houston. “That’s something we’re particularly interested in right now. We know our Black elders are not taking the vaccine in levels that we would like.” Houston and her colleagues are working with senior centers, churches and community-based providers to remedy that.

Vaccine hesitancy is definitely at play with all of these communities: The distrust of the American medical system is well founded among people of color, says Houston. Black people in this country have had a horrible history in our medical system, having been experimented on since the time of slavery, she says.

Some of the beliefs "like Black people having thicker skin and not feeling pain as much, and having blood that coagulates better, these are things that came directly out of slave medicine and from slave owners. … In many ways, the medical community still perpetuates these falsehoods.”

“Native populations have experienced the same kind of atroci-

Staff from the UW Medicine mobile clinic began delivering vaccines in mid-spring with an aim to reach medically underserved communities.

Dion Thoms, assistant manager at the Martin Luther King Jr. apartment complex, receives a vaccine during a mobile COVID-19 vaccine clinic. A UW Medicine team provided vaccines to employees and residents at the Beacon Hill site.

The distrust of the American medical system is well founded among people of color ties, and even more recently,” she says. And people of color have had their own present-day experiences, feeling like they’re not treated fairly by their medical providers.

All the more reason to go to greater lengths to make the vaccines accessible and to connect with the most vulnerable in our communities. We need these outreach efforts, and we need to be focused on reaching our most vulnerable populations with the vaccines, Houston says. If we aren’t focused, people will slip through the cracks. “What it takes is making different decisions, and we’re making different decisions.”

One effort is to reach out to communities of color with the help of people of color. UW Medicine celebrated the 100,000th vaccine dose distributed via Wanda Herndon, a Seattle influencer and former Starbucks vice president for communications and public affairs. She celebrated getting her shot on a video, saying, “I was so nervous that I wasn’t even going to get it.”

8

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Like Herndon, not everyone is hesitant. “There are some community pockets ready to get the vaccine, and they’re just waiting,” says Houston. Now the UW is working to find those pockets and determine whether pop-up clinics, a mobile unit or a mass-vaccination site would serve them best.

After a “boot-camp” training, hundreds of students from the schools of pharmacy, nursing, medicine, social work and dentistry have gone to clinics and pharmacies around Puget Sound to help with vaccine delivery. Diep Ngo is one of nearly 90 pharmacy students traveling to clinics to deliver vaccines. Personally, she told UW News, she wants to do more public health outreach with medically underserved people, including her own Vietnamese immigrant community.

Even though it was impossible to know when it would come, “we spent 25 years preparing for the COVID pandemic,” says Don Downing, ’75, the clinical professor in the School of Pharmacy who helped develop the first pharmacist-delivered vaccination program in the country. Through an effort to provide students with servicelearning experience through community outreach, the health sciences students and faculty have been building pathways into historically underserved communities. Those relationships with community centers, churches and health organizations like the Somali Health Board are opening doors to distributing the vaccines.

This spring, nearly 1,000 students signed up to be volunteer vaccinators and have been working in clinics throughout the Puget Sound region. “We are ready for this,” says Downing.

Following established connections and forging new ones for the sake of getting vaccines into arms, “we’re learning as we are out doing our community engagement,” says Houston. “We’re also asking how are we going to have a post-COVID presence in some of these communities,” says Houston. The providers want to maintain the relationships they have developed through testing and vaccine delivery in order to better serve all the health care needs of the communities, she adds. “We all just want to do the right thing.”

the story of diversity at the UW

9

EVERYBODY. EVERY DAY. [ Who does the work of making the UW a more equitable place? ]

James Banks joined the College of Education faculty in 1969 during the UW’s first push to hire promising and distinguished faculty of color. Here, in 1990, he shares his expertise on multicultural education with a class.

UW P H OTO A RCH I V ES

10

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

In 1969, James A. Banks was wrapping up his doctorate in education at Michigan State University when a UW professor visited campus. The professor, who was there to present a lecture, asked about top students near graduation. Banks’ advisor pointed to the bright, young graduate student. “That was recruitment,” Banks says. “In those days, hiring was done person to person.”

The UW flew Banks to Seattle to visit the College of Education and interview. He was drawn to the position because it was situated in diverse communities that included Hispanic and Asian people, not just Black and white, and that’s where he wanted his research to focus.

When the offer came, it included a salary of $15,000, a few thousand dollars higher than the typical starting salary at the UW. The dean knew what he was doing, says Banks. The offer made him feel valued as he settled into campus.

Banks arrived in the first university-wide effort to recruit faculty of color. The push came in the wake of student activism that culminated in spring 1968 with a Black Student Union-led sit-in in President Charles E. Odegaard’s office. On the students’ list of demands was recruiting Black teachers and administrators.

Starting in the fall of 1968 with the hiring of 12 Black instructors to tenure-track and lecture positions on campus, an era of seeking out top scholars of color began. In 1970, the UW invited Jacob Lawrence, an artist of international renown, to teach in the School of Art. Then came the hiring of other promising intellectual leaders, including Thaddeus Spratlin in the School of Business, Colleen McElroy in English, Carlos Gil in History, Marvin Oliver in American Indian Studies and Tetsuden Kashima in Asian American Studies. Samuel E. Kelly, ’71, became the UW’s first Black senior administrator, taking on the role of vice president of minority affairs and overseeing the program that is known today as the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity.

Banks has studied the issue of bringing diversity into education from many sides. He started his career helping educators of all identities find ways to teach Black experience, an effort born out of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He understood and argued that all aspects of a school had to be examined and changed—from policies and teacher attitudes to textbooks and teaching styles. His work evolved to focus on ethnic groups in education and then developed into the discipline of multicultural education.

A stellar scholar, Banks received tenure in the College of Education in 1971. He became a full professor in 1973, quickly rising as a leader in his field. Today, he is known as the founder of multicultural education.

When he was mid-career and clearly a leader in his field, Kent State lured him with an offer of an endowed chair, a research assistant and a higher salary. “But UW matched the salary and the other stipulations of the offer and promised me they would search for the endowed chair,” says Banks. “So I stayed.” He became the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies.

From Banks’ point of view, the UW and the college did many things right. He felt valued, his scholarship was widely accepted, and he was honored and promoted throughout his career.

But how has the UW fared since that first push to diversify brought Banks and others to campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

“In the last 50 years we have made some progress,” said Rickey Hall, the current vice president of minority affairs and diversity. Hall spoke in March at a university-wide forum hosted by Provost Mark Richards.

In the recent years, the UW has seen the highest racial and gender diversity among students in its history, “and yet we have fallen short on our faculty diversity efforts,” Hall said. When it comes to racial—and in some cases gender—diversity, the UW

is behind national averages. The percentage of Black faculty at the UW has not increased in a decade. “For those who care about diversity, this should be distressing,” he said.

Several of the changes the BSU called for in 1968 mirror the new list of demands from the BSU in 2020. “The question we all should be asking is how do we accelerate change and assure that in 10 years students aren’t raising the same issues and concerns that were raised in 1968 and in 2020,” said Hall. "Diversity is everybody's work," and we need to be thinking about it every day.

Conversations around the country, particularly at public institutions, focus on not only redoubling efforts to ensure equal access for all students, but on looking anew at what diversity can contribute to learning, discovery and community engagement.

The work ahead includes training across the university, said Hall.

“We have a responsibility to help people understand what they don’t know and to develop new knowledge, skills and habits that will help them work more effectively across differences.” The work also requires a focus on equity in all aspects of University decision-making, he said.

In February, Provost Richards announced a new faculty diversity initiative, to which he was providing $5 million for hiring faculty to the Seattle campus over the next two years. The effort builds on the years of work of individual faculty members—like Banks—who have recruited and mentored new faculty, he said.

The chancellors at UW Tacoma and UW Bothell are similarly directing funding for recruitment to those campuses, he said.

“If our faculty, staff and students better reflect the people in our communities, our campuses will become more welcoming to all people,” he said. The changes to come include public art and names on streets and buildings and statues. “We don’t want to just look diverse,” Richards said. “We want to be diverse. And we want our university to feel diverse ... We are really just getting started in the hard work.”

Recently, the University has made key equity-driven hires across campus. This May, for example, Karen Thomas-Brown joins the College of Engineering as the new associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). She comes from the University of Michigan’s College of Education, where she was a full professor. In addition to her strong academic background, Thomas-Brown is a faculty leader in inclusion and anti-racism. Positions similar to hers have been developed and filled in colleges around campus, embedding the work of DEI—not just around faculty hiring, but in all aspects of teaching, research and management—at a high level in deans’ offices.

Banks, with his experience as a specialist in multicultural education, suggests the UW explore making cluster hires of new faculty to assemble groups of diverse educators who share a research focus across disciplines. They can build a community and provide support to one another, he says.

But simply recruiting faculty and staff and students to increase representation on campus is not enough, said Richards, explaining that it’s time to improve onboarding and develop a better understanding of BIPOC faculty experience from the time they arrive and throughout their careers. “We need to change the campus climate so that they want to stay, and they can thrive here,” he said. “We have a unique opportunity right now to change, ... We need to ask ourselves what we have learned over the past year and how we can use those lessons to shape the future of higher education.”

To watch a discussion about faculty diversity, visit the recent UW Provost’s Town Hall: washington.edu/provost/townhall/

the story of diversity at the UW

11

EVERYBODY. EVERY DAY. [ Who does the work of making the UW a more equitable place? ]

James Banks joined the College of Education faculty in 1969 during the UW’s first push to hire promising and distinguished faculty of color. Here, in 1990, he shares his expertise on multicultural education with a class.

UW P H OTO A RCH I V ES

10

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

In 1969, James A. Banks was wrapping up his doctorate in education at Michigan State University when a UW professor visited campus. The professor, who was there to present a lecture, asked about top students near graduation. Banks’ advisor pointed to the bright, young graduate student. “That was recruitment,” Banks says. “In those days, hiring was done person to person.”

The UW flew Banks to Seattle to visit the College of Education and interview. He was drawn to the position because it was situated in diverse communities that included Hispanic and Asian people, not just Black and white, and that’s where he wanted his research to focus.

When the offer came, it included a salary of $15,000, a few thousand dollars higher than the typical starting salary at the UW. The dean knew what he was doing, says Banks. The offer made him feel valued as he settled into campus.

Banks arrived in the first university-wide effort to recruit faculty of color. The push came in the wake of student activism that culminated in spring 1968 with a Black Student Union-led sit-in in President Charles E. Odegaard’s office. On the students’ list of demands was recruiting Black teachers and administrators.

Starting in the fall of 1968 with the hiring of 12 Black instructors to tenure-track and lecture positions on campus, an era of seeking out top scholars of color began. In 1970, the UW invited Jacob Lawrence, an artist of international renown, to teach in the School of Art. Then came the hiring of other promising intellectual leaders, including Thaddeus Spratlin in the School of Business, Colleen McElroy in English, Carlos Gil in History, Marvin Oliver in American Indian Studies and Tetsuden Kashima in Asian American Studies. Samuel E. Kelly, ’71, became the UW’s first Black senior administrator, taking on the role of vice president of minority affairs and overseeing the program that is known today as the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity.

Banks has studied the issue of bringing diversity into education from many sides. He started his career helping educators of all identities find ways to teach Black experience, an effort born out of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He understood and argued that all aspects of a school had to be examined and changed—from policies and teacher attitudes to textbooks and teaching styles. His work evolved to focus on ethnic groups in education and then developed into the discipline of multicultural education.

A stellar scholar, Banks received tenure in the College of Education in 1971. He became a full professor in 1973, quickly rising as a leader in his field. Today, he is known as the founder of multicultural education.

When he was mid-career and clearly a leader in his field, Kent State lured him with an offer of an endowed chair, a research assistant and a higher salary. “But UW matched the salary and the other stipulations of the offer and promised me they would search for the endowed chair,” says Banks. “So I stayed.” He became the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies.

From Banks’ point of view, the UW and the college did many things right. He felt valued, his scholarship was widely accepted, and he was honored and promoted throughout his career.

But how has the UW fared since that first push to diversify brought Banks and others to campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

“In the last 50 years we have made some progress,” said Rickey Hall, the current vice president of minority affairs and diversity. Hall spoke in March at a university-wide forum hosted by Provost Mark Richards.

In the recent years, the UW has seen the highest racial and gender diversity among students in its history, “and yet we have fallen short on our faculty diversity efforts,” Hall said. When it comes to racial—and in some cases gender—diversity, the UW

is behind national averages. The percentage of Black faculty at the UW has not increased in a decade. “For those who care about diversity, this should be distressing,” he said.

Several of the changes the BSU called for in 1968 mirror the new list of demands from the BSU in 2020. “The question we all should be asking is how do we accelerate change and assure that in 10 years students aren’t raising the same issues and concerns that were raised in 1968 and in 2020,” said Hall. "Diversity is everybody's work," and we need to be thinking about it every day.

Conversations around the country, particularly at public institutions, focus on not only redoubling efforts to ensure equal access for all students, but on looking anew at what diversity can contribute to learning, discovery and community engagement.

The work ahead includes training across the university, said Hall.

“We have a responsibility to help people understand what they don’t know and to develop new knowledge, skills and habits that will help them work more effectively across differences.” The work also requires a focus on equity in all aspects of University decision-making, he said.

In February, Provost Richards announced a new faculty diversity initiative, to which he was providing $5 million for hiring faculty to the Seattle campus over the next two years. The effort builds on the years of work of individual faculty members—like Banks—who have recruited and mentored new faculty, he said.

The chancellors at UW Tacoma and UW Bothell are similarly directing funding for recruitment to those campuses, he said.

“If our faculty, staff and students better reflect the people in our communities, our campuses will become more welcoming to all people,” he said. The changes to come include public art and names on streets and buildings and statues. “We don’t want to just look diverse,” Richards said. “We want to be diverse. And we want our university to feel diverse ... We are really just getting started in the hard work.”

Recently, the University has made key equity-driven hires across campus. This May, for example, Karen Thomas-Brown joins the College of Engineering as the new associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). She comes from the University of Michigan’s College of Education, where she was a full professor. In addition to her strong academic background, Thomas-Brown is a faculty leader in inclusion and anti-racism. Positions similar to hers have been developed and filled in colleges around campus, embedding the work of DEI—not just around faculty hiring, but in all aspects of teaching, research and management—at a high level in deans’ offices.

Banks, with his experience as a specialist in multicultural education, suggests the UW explore making cluster hires of new faculty to assemble groups of diverse educators who share a research focus across disciplines. They can build a community and provide support to one another, he says.

But simply recruiting faculty and staff and students to increase representation on campus is not enough, said Richards, explaining that it’s time to improve onboarding and develop a better understanding of BIPOC faculty experience from the time they arrive and throughout their careers. “We need to change the campus climate so that they want to stay, and they can thrive here,” he said. “We have a unique opportunity right now to change, ... We need to ask ourselves what we have learned over the past year and how we can use those lessons to shape the future of higher education.”

To watch a discussion about faculty diversity, visit the recent UW Provost’s Town Hall: washington.edu/provost/townhall/

the story of diversity at the UW

11

High Flyer Cecilia Aragon is a woman of many firsts. She is a child of a first-generation immigrant family (her father is from Chile and her mother from the Philippines). She is the first Latina full professor in the College of Engineering. And she’s the first Latina on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team.

Between 1991 and 1994, Aragon competed in the “Olympics” of modern aviation— performing complex loops, rolls and flips in her Sabre 320—and earned bronze medals in both the US National and World Aerobatic Championships. Her first flight, in a cramped, two-passenger plane was a turning point in her life. Learning to fly opened her up to the rewards of taking risk. In addition to becoming a professional pilot, she has since excelled in the fields of data and computer science, and has won a Fulbright and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama.

Last fall, Aragon’s memoir, “Flying Free: My Victory Over Fear to Become the First Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team,” came out. It is for “anybody who has been discouraged all their life,” she says. Aragon spoke with science writer Amanda Heidt about her love of flight, her research and the challenges women in STEM now face.

What was the impetus for this book? I was an extremely fearful

What was your first time flying like? I really thought I wasn’t

going to make it. … But then we took off. We lifted off over the San Francisco Bay and the sun was sparkling on the blue waters, and the Golden Gate Bridge was gleaming. I thought “This is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.” My friend took me out over the California coast so low that you could see the waves crashing against the cliffs. It was gorgeous. It felt like the sky was calling to me. When we got back on the ground, I signed up for flying lessons.

What’s your favorite kind of plane? The Saber. What I needed was a plane built for a 100-pound, 5’2” person. The Saber was built for somebody else, but eventually I bought the project and modified it. It was built specifically for me to win the World Aerobatic Championships. My instructor gave me a wonderful metaphor for being a woman in this world, especially a Latina in STEM. He said, “If the cockpit is not set up for you, you will have trouble flying, and you will think it’s your fault. But the problem is that your environment is not set up for you.”

Did the confidence that you gained from flying bleed into other parts of your life?

There are many things in my life, like getting my Ph.D., which I thought were impossible.

I dropped out of my Ph.D. program before I learned to fly. Learning to fly gave me the courage to go back. Once you have done something that seems impossible and once you have faced your fear, you can always remember that.

Can you talk about your research? Human-centered data science takes a stance against

this myth of data being objective and unbiased and somehow better than humans. Humans have biases, and computers magnify those biases. In today’s data science, it’s very often data that’s produced by humans to describe humans. Human-centered data science means that as you are studying this data, you constantly keep in mind that there is no such thing as pure objectivity. All data is really human filtered. By centering the human in your analysis of the data, you are doing the right thing to be ethical about the data.

Why did now feel like the time to write your book? I knew I wanted to tell the story in 1999, but writing a memoir is really hard, and I wanted to do it myself. So it took all these years to really learn how to write a memoir. I took classes. I got a certificate in memoir writing. I got an MFA in creative writing. One day I sat down and wrote an outline of 40 scenes. Over the next three months, I just wrote. I have this full-time job, I have a family, so I got up really early. It just poured out of me.

12

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Since 1994, alumni and friends in the Multicultural Alumni Partnership have worked together to promote diversity at the UW and address issues of equity and diversity on our campuses and in our community. They do this through mentoring, supporting lectures, networking in the community and providing scholarships. Each academic year, the partnership reaches out to historically underrepresented UW students with financial support.

This year’s promising scholars range from early undergraduates who are still zeroing in on a major to those pursuing graduate and professional degrees.

Gillian Duenas

says “Håfa adai!” (“Hello” in Chamorro).

A 2020 alum with a degree in speech and hearing sciences and a minor in diversity, Duenas returned to campus for the master of social work program.

Being a first-generation college student and a Pacific Islander woman at the UW was challenging, but she found passion and strength with Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities at the UW—as well as her volunteer work with the Pipeline Project and the UWMC Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Clinic.

Claire McCreery

is a sophomore from Hawaii planning to major in political science and then pursue a law degree. As a student of Asian American, Native American and European origins, she has been contributing to diverse communities through organizations like the Hawaii Club and First Nations.

Challenging herself with rigorous classes in political science, law and social problems, she is building a solid background in social justice issues.

Christine Sohn is a Julia JannonShields has pursued

degrees in community, environment and planning and communication. She wants to address environmental injustice and work toward a sustainable and equitable future.

At the UW she has immersed herself in the community through the Associated Students of the University of Washington, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity and various other organizations while maintaining a strong academic standing.

graduate student at the School of Social Work.

A job as a residential youth counselor at a treatment center and a desire to break down barriers to mental health access led Christine to the UW’s social work program.

She also interns at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service as a children’s youth mental health counselor and as a volunteer coordinator with Jumpstart at the UW.

Continued on p. 14

CO URTE SY THE MO NRO E FAMILY

child. I was afraid of heights. I was afraid of climbing up ladders.

I was afraid of shaking hands with a stranger. I also had been told my whole life, “Girls can’t do science.” “Girls aren’t good at math.”

“You shouldn’t be in college taking up a space.” People actually said things like this to me. Then when I was 25, a friend offered me a ride in a small airplane. My first thought was, “There’s no way I can do this.” But then I thought, “It’s time to make a change, because the way I’ve been living has been making my life narrower and narrower. If I don’t face my fears, I will never do anything I want to.”

MEET THE 2020 MAP AWARD RECIPIENTS

REMEMBERING

Bryan Monroe Brian Monroe, ’87, the first Black editor of The Daily, went on to a storied journalism career that included guiding editorial for the nation’s two leading magazines for Black audiences, heading a Pulitzer-prize winning newspaper team and being the first print journalist to interview the country’s first Black president-elect.

Monroe often described himself as a “pesky kid from Clover Park High School who used to run around Red Square with a camera.” He started his career as a photography intern at The Seattle Times and then worked at newspapers around the country before becoming an editor and eventually assistant vice president of news at the former Knight Ridder media company. It was in that position where he led the team at the Sun Herald of Biloxi, Mississippi that won the public service Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2005, as the category 5 hurricane was moving through the Gulf of Mexico, Monroe, known as “The Disaster Dude,” assembled a group of writers and photographers and flew from California to the south just as the storm was arriving. He and his team headed straight for Biloxi, where the hurricane was making landfall and in the process of wiping out 20 percent of the town. They arrived to find “destruction all around,” said Monroe. He sensitively guided the coverage of the human toll that Katrina took.

In 2008, Bryan Monroe, ’87, was the first print journalist to interview President-Elect Barack Obama.

“I’ve worked in TV and radio and newspapers, magazines. I’ve been all over the world covering presidents and potentates. But at the core, what I’ve learned about journalism, what I’ve learned about photography and storytelling and empathy and connecting with people was here in Seattle as a photographer,” he said at a 2017 Collaborating for a Cause lecture in Seattle. This grounding served him well, fostering his talents for connecting with the people he worked with and covered.

Monroe’s energies and talents landed him the position of editorial director at EBONY and Jet magazines in 2006. He was also the 16th president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Most recently, he was associate professor of practice at Temple University and had just been named editor of CNNPolitics.com.

He didn’t need much convincing to serve as the first guest editor of Viewpoint Magazine back in 2016. He had recently stepped into a teaching position at Temple and happily gave a bit of his time to guide the issue’s storytelling. He invited his UW classmates—longtime friends who had gone on to exciting careers— to interact with current students. They shared the lessons they learned with the students following in their footsteps.

Monroe died of a heart attack in early January at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. He was 55.

the story of diversity at the UW

13

High Flyer Cecilia Aragon is a woman of many firsts. She is a child of a first-generation immigrant family (her father is from Chile and her mother from the Philippines). She is the first Latina full professor in the College of Engineering. And she’s the first Latina on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team.

Between 1991 and 1994, Aragon competed in the “Olympics” of modern aviation— performing complex loops, rolls and flips in her Sabre 320—and earned bronze medals in both the US National and World Aerobatic Championships. Her first flight, in a cramped, two-passenger plane was a turning point in her life. Learning to fly opened her up to the rewards of taking risk. In addition to becoming a professional pilot, she has since excelled in the fields of data and computer science, and has won a Fulbright and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama.

Last fall, Aragon’s memoir, “Flying Free: My Victory Over Fear to Become the First Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team,” came out. It is for “anybody who has been discouraged all their life,” she says. Aragon spoke with science writer Amanda Heidt about her love of flight, her research and the challenges women in STEM now face.

What was the impetus for this book? I was an extremely fearful

What was your first time flying like? I really thought I wasn’t

going to make it. … But then we took off. We lifted off over the San Francisco Bay and the sun was sparkling on the blue waters, and the Golden Gate Bridge was gleaming. I thought “This is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.” My friend took me out over the California coast so low that you could see the waves crashing against the cliffs. It was gorgeous. It felt like the sky was calling to me. When we got back on the ground, I signed up for flying lessons.

What’s your favorite kind of plane? The Saber. What I needed was a plane built for a 100-pound, 5’2” person. The Saber was built for somebody else, but eventually I bought the project and modified it. It was built specifically for me to win the World Aerobatic Championships. My instructor gave me a wonderful metaphor for being a woman in this world, especially a Latina in STEM. He said, “If the cockpit is not set up for you, you will have trouble flying, and you will think it’s your fault. But the problem is that your environment is not set up for you.”

Did the confidence that you gained from flying bleed into other parts of your life?

There are many things in my life, like getting my Ph.D., which I thought were impossible.

I dropped out of my Ph.D. program before I learned to fly. Learning to fly gave me the courage to go back. Once you have done something that seems impossible and once you have faced your fear, you can always remember that.

Can you talk about your research? Human-centered data science takes a stance against

this myth of data being objective and unbiased and somehow better than humans. Humans have biases, and computers magnify those biases. In today’s data science, it’s very often data that’s produced by humans to describe humans. Human-centered data science means that as you are studying this data, you constantly keep in mind that there is no such thing as pure objectivity. All data is really human filtered. By centering the human in your analysis of the data, you are doing the right thing to be ethical about the data.

Why did now feel like the time to write your book? I knew I wanted to tell the story in 1999, but writing a memoir is really hard, and I wanted to do it myself. So it took all these years to really learn how to write a memoir. I took classes. I got a certificate in memoir writing. I got an MFA in creative writing. One day I sat down and wrote an outline of 40 scenes. Over the next three months, I just wrote. I have this full-time job, I have a family, so I got up really early. It just poured out of me.

12

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Since 1994, alumni and friends in the Multicultural Alumni Partnership have worked together to promote diversity at the UW and address issues of equity and diversity on our campuses and in our community. They do this through mentoring, supporting lectures, networking in the community and providing scholarships. Each academic year, the partnership reaches out to historically underrepresented UW students with financial support.

This year’s promising scholars range from early undergraduates who are still zeroing in on a major to those pursuing graduate and professional degrees.

Gillian Duenas

says “Håfa adai!” (“Hello” in Chamorro).

A 2020 alum with a degree in speech and hearing sciences and a minor in diversity, Duenas returned to campus for the master of social work program.

Being a first-generation college student and a Pacific Islander woman at the UW was challenging, but she found passion and strength with Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities at the UW—as well as her volunteer work with the Pipeline Project and the UWMC Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Clinic.

Claire McCreery

is a sophomore from Hawaii planning to major in political science and then pursue a law degree. As a student of Asian American, Native American and European origins, she has been contributing to diverse communities through organizations like the Hawaii Club and First Nations.

Challenging herself with rigorous classes in political science, law and social problems, she is building a solid background in social justice issues.

Christine Sohn is a Julia JannonShields has pursued

degrees in community, environment and planning and communication. She wants to address environmental injustice and work toward a sustainable and equitable future.

At the UW she has immersed herself in the community through the Associated Students of the University of Washington, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity and various other organizations while maintaining a strong academic standing.

graduate student at the School of Social Work.

A job as a residential youth counselor at a treatment center and a desire to break down barriers to mental health access led Christine to the UW’s social work program.

She also interns at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service as a children’s youth mental health counselor and as a volunteer coordinator with Jumpstart at the UW.

Continued on p. 14

CO URTE SY THE MO NRO E FAMILY

child. I was afraid of heights. I was afraid of climbing up ladders.

I was afraid of shaking hands with a stranger. I also had been told my whole life, “Girls can’t do science.” “Girls aren’t good at math.”

“You shouldn’t be in college taking up a space.” People actually said things like this to me. Then when I was 25, a friend offered me a ride in a small airplane. My first thought was, “There’s no way I can do this.” But then I thought, “It’s time to make a change, because the way I’ve been living has been making my life narrower and narrower. If I don’t face my fears, I will never do anything I want to.”

MEET THE 2020 MAP AWARD RECIPIENTS

REMEMBERING

Bryan Monroe Brian Monroe, ’87, the first Black editor of The Daily, went on to a storied journalism career that included guiding editorial for the nation’s two leading magazines for Black audiences, heading a Pulitzer-prize winning newspaper team and being the first print journalist to interview the country’s first Black president-elect.

Monroe often described himself as a “pesky kid from Clover Park High School who used to run around Red Square with a camera.” He started his career as a photography intern at The Seattle Times and then worked at newspapers around the country before becoming an editor and eventually assistant vice president of news at the former Knight Ridder media company. It was in that position where he led the team at the Sun Herald of Biloxi, Mississippi that won the public service Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2005, as the category 5 hurricane was moving through the Gulf of Mexico, Monroe, known as “The Disaster Dude,” assembled a group of writers and photographers and flew from California to the south just as the storm was arriving. He and his team headed straight for Biloxi, where the hurricane was making landfall and in the process of wiping out 20 percent of the town. They arrived to find “destruction all around,” said Monroe. He sensitively guided the coverage of the human toll that Katrina took.

In 2008, Bryan Monroe, ’87, was the first print journalist to interview President-Elect Barack Obama.

“I’ve worked in TV and radio and newspapers, magazines. I’ve been all over the world covering presidents and potentates. But at the core, what I’ve learned about journalism, what I’ve learned about photography and storytelling and empathy and connecting with people was here in Seattle as a photographer,” he said at a 2017 Collaborating for a Cause lecture in Seattle. This grounding served him well, fostering his talents for connecting with the people he worked with and covered.

Monroe’s energies and talents landed him the position of editorial director at EBONY and Jet magazines in 2006. He was also the 16th president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Most recently, he was associate professor of practice at Temple University and had just been named editor of CNNPolitics.com.

He didn’t need much convincing to serve as the first guest editor of Viewpoint Magazine back in 2016. He had recently stepped into a teaching position at Temple and happily gave a bit of his time to guide the issue’s storytelling. He invited his UW classmates—longtime friends who had gone on to exciting careers— to interact with current students. They shared the lessons they learned with the students following in their footsteps.

Monroe died of a heart attack in early January at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. He was 55.

the story of diversity at the UW

13

Continued from p. 12

Health Care Organizations Endow Scholarships

Building Black Opportunity Last July, the UW and the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity launched a Black Opportunity Fund to address the harmful legacies that colonialism, racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism have on Black communities.

The fund came about after months of Black student-led organizing and activism across campus and in the greater Seattle area. It also followed another wave of killings of Black people including George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade by law enforcement, and in the wake of the stabbing death of Nina Pop. Continuing a long history of restorativejustice work on UW’s campus, the Black Student Union, along with representatives from other Black organizations, presented a list of demands to UW leadership last fall. One demand included financial support for Black student organizations. The Black Opportunity Fund is an extension of this demand as well as a result of many

14

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

conversations between Black students and faculty and University leaders about creating a more supportive space on campus for Black students, faculty and staff.

In January, an anonymous donor invested $300,000 to start an endowment within the Black Opportunity Fund. “Members of our generous community have stepped forward in support of enhancing the campus experiences for the UW Black campus community,” says Rickey Hall, Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity.

“Establishing an endowment signals that we are not just doing this work for the moment. Addressing systemic racism is not a short-term effort. It is something that we at the university should be working on every day. We are fortunate to have a generous supporter step forward in this way.”

For further information and to find other ways to support OMA&D or the Black Opportunity Fund, please contact Katherine Day Hase, Director of Advancement, OMA&D, at kdayhase@uw.edu.

Jonathan Trejo, a first-generation college student, is in his third year at the School of Medicine. He studied biology at UC Berkeley and while in the San Francisco Bay Area, served his LGBTQ and Latinx communities with free HIV testing and counseling services. He has continued his HIV testing work with the LGBTQ community at Peer Seattle. Trejo wants to serve the communities he comes from and help improve equity in the medical field.

OWEN G. LEE SCHOLARSHIP

Michelle Um is a

third-year student majoring in psychology and education.

She plans on graduate school and then a career as a high school counselor. She served on the leadership team for campusbased Psychology Connected and as a mentor for the Dream Project. As a First-year Interest Group leader, she helped students navigate the transition from high school to college.

ALFREDO ARREGUIN SCHOLARSHIP

Erica Matthews

started out teaching math to middle schoolers, but soon realized she loved being a performer. She began

The Adventure Gap

THADDEUS AND LOIS SPRATLEN SCHOLARSHIP

BY NICOLE PASIA

Let’s make time in nature more inclusive Carolina Rodriguez

is a first-generation college student and a junior studying medical anthropology and global health. She grew up in a low-income community in Wapato, Washington, and her high school didn’t have many resources. When she was accepted into the UW, paying for college was one of many osbtacles her family would work to overcome. She plans to go to medical school and become a neurosurgeon.

ROGER SHIMOMURA SCHOLARSHIP

Alice Liu is pursuing a

doctor of musical arts with a focus on piano performance. Before moving to Seattle, she completed a music residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and a master’s degree at McGill University. As a pianist, she recently won a UW concerto competition.

Her academic interests cross the boundary between the arts and sciences, and her interdisciplinary research focuses on musical neuroeducation. She strives to bridge the gap between researcher, educator and performer.

NICO LE PASIA

When Rogelio Riojas, ’77, first walked into the Instructional Center on the Seattle campus he was impressed by how much the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity resource was helping students tackle some of the most challenging classes, the ones that would open the doors for them to explore different fields, particularly science and medicine. He also recognized the need and potential for not-for-profits and other corporations to meet their missions of community outreach by supporting students who are underrepresented in higher education.

Riojas is the founder and executive director of Sea Mar Community Health Centers. Since 1978, the non-profit has provided health clinics and health education services to diverse communities around Washington. But that’s just his day job. He has also served as a UW Regents and, in doing so, draws from his own experience as a first-generation Latino student navigating the classrooms and challenges of college at the UW and as a

healthcare leader in Washington.

Sea Mar, which was founded by Latino community leaders in 1978, is a community-based not-for-profit committed to providing quality health, educational and cultural services to diverse communities. For the past 25 years, the organization has held charity golf tournament to provide college scholarships for students from farmworker families.

Last fall, the organization took a new step. SeaMar partnered with MultiCare Health Systems to develop a $100,000 gift to OMA&D and the Office of Equity and Inclusion at UW Tacoma. The funding supports undergraduates in both Seattle and Tacoma, where MultiCare is headquartered. The two health organizations are proud to invest in the future leaders who graduate from the UW, says Riojas. “We know UW students represent the next generation of healthcare professionals in our region, and both our organizations want to be there to support their success.”

The generosity of these two pillars of Washington’s non-profit healthcare community will benefit students now and for generations to come, says Rickey Hall, Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity and University Diversity Officer.

Riojas hopes the support with reach the students who need it most, particularly those who might pursue careers that support human health and wellbeing.

acting on independent film projects in the Southeast. She is now in the UW's Professional Actor Training Program and has most recently appeared in the UW’s production of “The Women of Lockerbie” and Wooden O’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

We’re more than a year into COVID-19 quarantine, and one of the few places we can find respite is the outdoors. Escaping Zoom fatigue for a hike in the picturesque Pacific Northwest is a luxury, but for whom is this luxury accessible?

My first real camping trip came when I was well into college. As I debated which snacks to bring and wondered if my ride would let me have the aux cord, I realized I was missing an important camping essential: a tent. I eventually borrowed one, but it was a painful reminder that although I was born and raised in this place of sweeping mountain ranges and coastal forests, I was out of my element.

I attended a predominantly white high school, where my social media feed was filled with posts from classmates trekking through the woods on weekend camping trips or snowboarding in Snoqualmie Pass decked out in Patagonia gear. My own family never spent much time outdoors.

My parents, who immigrated from the Philippines in the late 1990s, were unfamiliar with camping culture. When they took me to REI to buy a sleeping bag for outdoor camp in sixth grade, we gazed at the endless aisles of outdoor gear, not knowing where to begin.

The idea of outdoor recreation is heavily romanticized: Images of experienced, mainly white male explorers embarking on expeditions to remote wildernesses come to mind. Furthermore, the demographic represented does not accurately reflect the general population. According to a recent National Park Service survey, minorities make up roughly 20% of outdoor recreation participants, despite accounting for nearly 40% of the U.S. population. “If the outdoors are inclusive or exclusive, it's because we've created them that way,” says Jeff Rose, an assistant professor of parks, recreation and tourism at the University of Utah.

The path to making those spaces more inclusive involves breaking down economic and transportation barriers, he says.

Brands such as Patagonia and REI benefit from the capitalization of the outdoor industry, worth $427.2 billion in 2017 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. With images of expensive expeditions portrayed in media and advertising, it can be easy to think that this is the only way to legitimately enjoy the outdoors.

However, these experiences are unattainable if you don’t have the gear or the established knowledge about recreating outdoors.

“A lot of my white friends that have camping gear of their own,” says Mo Jackson, of Olympia, who started a GoFundMe BIPOC camping gear campaign. “Not only do they have the gear from their parents, they also just have the knowledge of what they need from having gone with their parents.”

BIPOC and people with disabilities on average have lower incomes than white, able-bodied people, which means less disposable income for buying recreation gear. But money isn’t the only challenge. Racist and classist gatekeeping of hiking spaces also impedes the ability to access the outdoors. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, well, we don’t want everybody to know where this spot is, or only certain types of people,’” Jackson says. “Let’s be really honest [about] why you’re wanting to keep this knowledge from other people.”

It is important to note that BIPOC and other people not traditionally represented in the outdoor industry still participate.

Affinity groups such as Unlikely Hikers and Seattle-based Black People Hike provide inclusive spaces for people of shared identities to connect and experience the outdoors together. And brands such as SlimPickins Outfitters, the first Black-owned American outdoor gear shop, empower BIPOC to explore the outdoors.

Even with groups and businesses such as these, there is much work to be done in diversifying the world of outdoor recreation.

Immediate actions include providing physical resources for underprivileged groups, such as Jackson’s GoFundMe campaign. Help can also take the form of sharing knowledge, such as spreading the word about hiking locations and gear recommendations. “It’s celebrating things like just going for a hike in your local park just as much as celebrating doing [Mount] Everest,” says Morgan Oyster-Sands, a diversity, inclusion and equity specialist for the Northwest Outward Bound School.

As we head into a second summer of social distancing, I hope to make space for myself to enjoy our beautiful region. Participating in the outdoors—whether that’s savoring an afternoon in a city park or organizing a socially distanced group hike—is just as valid.

Nicole Pasia graduates this spring with a journalism degree. She first wrote about the accessibility of outdoor recreation for �he Pacific Wave, a magazine for students produced out of �he Daily.

the story of diversity at the UW

15

Continued from p. 12

Health Care Organizations Endow Scholarships

Building Black Opportunity Last July, the UW and the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity launched a Black Opportunity Fund to address the harmful legacies that colonialism, racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism have on Black communities.

The fund came about after months of Black student-led organizing and activism across campus and in the greater Seattle area. It also followed another wave of killings of Black people including George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade by law enforcement, and in the wake of the stabbing death of Nina Pop. Continuing a long history of restorativejustice work on UW’s campus, the Black Student Union, along with representatives from other Black organizations, presented a list of demands to UW leadership last fall. One demand included financial support for Black student organizations. The Black Opportunity Fund is an extension of this demand as well as a result of many

14

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

conversations between Black students and faculty and University leaders about creating a more supportive space on campus for Black students, faculty and staff.

In January, an anonymous donor invested $300,000 to start an endowment within the Black Opportunity Fund. “Members of our generous community have stepped forward in support of enhancing the campus experiences for the UW Black campus community,” says Rickey Hall, Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity.

“Establishing an endowment signals that we are not just doing this work for the moment. Addressing systemic racism is not a short-term effort. It is something that we at the university should be working on every day. We are fortunate to have a generous supporter step forward in this way.”

For further information and to find other ways to support OMA&D or the Black Opportunity Fund, please contact Katherine Day Hase, Director of Advancement, OMA&D, at kdayhase@uw.edu.

Jonathan Trejo, a first-generation college student, is in his third year at the School of Medicine. He studied biology at UC Berkeley and while in the San Francisco Bay Area, served his LGBTQ and Latinx communities with free HIV testing and counseling services. He has continued his HIV testing work with the LGBTQ community at Peer Seattle. Trejo wants to serve the communities he comes from and help improve equity in the medical field.

OWEN G. LEE SCHOLARSHIP

Michelle Um is a

third-year student majoring in psychology and education.

She plans on graduate school and then a career as a high school counselor. She served on the leadership team for campusbased Psychology Connected and as a mentor for the Dream Project. As a First-year Interest Group leader, she helped students navigate the transition from high school to college.

ALFREDO ARREGUIN SCHOLARSHIP

Erica Matthews

started out teaching math to middle schoolers, but soon realized she loved being a performer. She began

The Adventure Gap

THADDEUS AND LOIS SPRATLEN SCHOLARSHIP

BY NICOLE PASIA

Let’s make time in nature more inclusive Carolina Rodriguez

is a first-generation college student and a junior studying medical anthropology and global health. She grew up in a low-income community in Wapato, Washington, and her high school didn’t have many resources. When she was accepted into the UW, paying for college was one of many osbtacles her family would work to overcome. She plans to go to medical school and become a neurosurgeon.

ROGER SHIMOMURA SCHOLARSHIP

Alice Liu is pursuing a

doctor of musical arts with a focus on piano performance. Before moving to Seattle, she completed a music residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and a master’s degree at McGill University. As a pianist, she recently won a UW concerto competition.

Her academic interests cross the boundary between the arts and sciences, and her interdisciplinary research focuses on musical neuroeducation. She strives to bridge the gap between researcher, educator and performer.

NICO LE PASIA

When Rogelio Riojas, ’77, first walked into the Instructional Center on the Seattle campus he was impressed by how much the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity resource was helping students tackle some of the most challenging classes, the ones that would open the doors for them to explore different fields, particularly science and medicine. He also recognized the need and potential for not-for-profits and other corporations to meet their missions of community outreach by supporting students who are underrepresented in higher education.

Riojas is the founder and executive director of Sea Mar Community Health Centers. Since 1978, the non-profit has provided health clinics and health education services to diverse communities around Washington. But that’s just his day job. He has also served as a UW Regents and, in doing so, draws from his own experience as a first-generation Latino student navigating the classrooms and challenges of college at the UW and as a

healthcare leader in Washington.

Sea Mar, which was founded by Latino community leaders in 1978, is a community-based not-for-profit committed to providing quality health, educational and cultural services to diverse communities. For the past 25 years, the organization has held charity golf tournament to provide college scholarships for students from farmworker families.

Last fall, the organization took a new step. SeaMar partnered with MultiCare Health Systems to develop a $100,000 gift to OMA&D and the Office of Equity and Inclusion at UW Tacoma. The funding supports undergraduates in both Seattle and Tacoma, where MultiCare is headquartered. The two health organizations are proud to invest in the future leaders who graduate from the UW, says Riojas. “We know UW students represent the next generation of healthcare professionals in our region, and both our organizations want to be there to support their success.”

The generosity of these two pillars of Washington’s non-profit healthcare community will benefit students now and for generations to come, says Rickey Hall, Vice President for Minority Affairs & Diversity and University Diversity Officer.

Riojas hopes the support with reach the students who need it most, particularly those who might pursue careers that support human health and wellbeing.

acting on independent film projects in the Southeast. She is now in the UW's Professional Actor Training Program and has most recently appeared in the UW’s production of “The Women of Lockerbie” and Wooden O’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

We’re more than a year into COVID-19 quarantine, and one of the few places we can find respite is the outdoors. Escaping Zoom fatigue for a hike in the picturesque Pacific Northwest is a luxury, but for whom is this luxury accessible?

My first real camping trip came when I was well into college. As I debated which snacks to bring and wondered if my ride would let me have the aux cord, I realized I was missing an important camping essential: a tent. I eventually borrowed one, but it was a painful reminder that although I was born and raised in this place of sweeping mountain ranges and coastal forests, I was out of my element.

I attended a predominantly white high school, where my social media feed was filled with posts from classmates trekking through the woods on weekend camping trips or snowboarding in Snoqualmie Pass decked out in Patagonia gear. My own family never spent much time outdoors.

My parents, who immigrated from the Philippines in the late 1990s, were unfamiliar with camping culture. When they took me to REI to buy a sleeping bag for outdoor camp in sixth grade, we gazed at the endless aisles of outdoor gear, not knowing where to begin.

The idea of outdoor recreation is heavily romanticized: Images of experienced, mainly white male explorers embarking on expeditions to remote wildernesses come to mind. Furthermore, the demographic represented does not accurately reflect the general population. According to a recent National Park Service survey, minorities make up roughly 20% of outdoor recreation participants, despite accounting for nearly 40% of the U.S. population. “If the outdoors are inclusive or exclusive, it's because we've created them that way,” says Jeff Rose, an assistant professor of parks, recreation and tourism at the University of Utah.

The path to making those spaces more inclusive involves breaking down economic and transportation barriers, he says.

Brands such as Patagonia and REI benefit from the capitalization of the outdoor industry, worth $427.2 billion in 2017 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. With images of expensive expeditions portrayed in media and advertising, it can be easy to think that this is the only way to legitimately enjoy the outdoors.

However, these experiences are unattainable if you don’t have the gear or the established knowledge about recreating outdoors.

“A lot of my white friends that have camping gear of their own,” says Mo Jackson, of Olympia, who started a GoFundMe BIPOC camping gear campaign. “Not only do they have the gear from their parents, they also just have the knowledge of what they need from having gone with their parents.”

BIPOC and people with disabilities on average have lower incomes than white, able-bodied people, which means less disposable income for buying recreation gear. But money isn’t the only challenge. Racist and classist gatekeeping of hiking spaces also impedes the ability to access the outdoors. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, well, we don’t want everybody to know where this spot is, or only certain types of people,’” Jackson says. “Let’s be really honest [about] why you’re wanting to keep this knowledge from other people.”

It is important to note that BIPOC and other people not traditionally represented in the outdoor industry still participate.

Affinity groups such as Unlikely Hikers and Seattle-based Black People Hike provide inclusive spaces for people of shared identities to connect and experience the outdoors together. And brands such as SlimPickins Outfitters, the first Black-owned American outdoor gear shop, empower BIPOC to explore the outdoors.

Even with groups and businesses such as these, there is much work to be done in diversifying the world of outdoor recreation.

Immediate actions include providing physical resources for underprivileged groups, such as Jackson’s GoFundMe campaign. Help can also take the form of sharing knowledge, such as spreading the word about hiking locations and gear recommendations. “It’s celebrating things like just going for a hike in your local park just as much as celebrating doing [Mount] Everest,” says Morgan Oyster-Sands, a diversity, inclusion and equity specialist for the Northwest Outward Bound School.

As we head into a second summer of social distancing, I hope to make space for myself to enjoy our beautiful region. Participating in the outdoors—whether that’s savoring an afternoon in a city park or organizing a socially distanced group hike—is just as valid.

Nicole Pasia graduates this spring with a journalism degree. She first wrote about the accessibility of outdoor recreation for �he Pacific Wave, a magazine for students produced out of �he Daily.

the story of diversity at the UW

15

Telling the Story of Diversity at the University of Washington

4333 Brooklyn Ave NE Campus Box 359508 Seattle, WA 98195

Charles E. Odegaard Award Recipients 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974

16

Marvin Oliver Ricardo S. Martinez Joanne and Bruce Harrell Richard A. Jones Colleen Fukui-Sketchley Denny Hurtado Rogelio Riojas Gertrude Peoples Assunta Ng Nelson Del Rio W. Ron Allen 1968 Black Student Union Alan T. Sugiyama Charles Mitchell Mike McGavick Jeff and Susan Brotman Herman McKinney Constance L. Proctor Ernest Dunston Vivian Lee Albert Black Bill Hilliard Andy Reynolds Hubert G. Locke Ron Moore Bernie Whitebear Ron Sims Sandra Madrid Ken Jacobsen Herman D. Lujan J. Ray Bowen Frank Byrdwell Andrew V. Smith Phyllis Kenney Norm Rice Nancy Weber William Irmscher Mark Cooper Millie Russell Minoru Masuda Toby Burton Vivian Kelly Sam and Joyce Kelly Leonie Piternick Larry Gossett Dalwyn Knight

V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m .c o m / v i ew p o i n t

Join Us in a Landmark 50th Celebration!

This year, Celebration takes place May 12 at 6 p.m. as a free virtual event that everyone is invited to attend.

The program, hosted by the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity and the Friends of the Educational Opportunity Program, includes highlighting student scholars—three of whom will share their stories—and remembering Gabe Gallardo, a UW leader in ensuring underrepresented students had access to higher education.

Emile Pitre, ’69, will be honored as the Odegaard Awardee. He helped found the UW’s Black Student Union in 1968 and served for many years as an OMA&D staff member, as well as mentor and adviser to students and staff. The recognition is for Pitre’s advocacy and dedi-

cation to educational opportunity for underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students. The award for Pitre was announced in January, 2020, and has carried over to this year’s Celebration.

Radio and TV newscaster Angela King, ’95, a former EOP student, returns to host the evening. A live band will perform and, as usual, everyone will be together as a community, to interact with friends and loved ones, and to have some fun while investing in the futures of EOP students.

In previous years, the lively event brought hundreds of alumni and friends to the HUB ballroom. This year, it will be free and broadcast online. To learn more, visit washington.edu/omad/celebration