38 minute read
The Download
from iNews 2021
by UWiSchool
Exhibit tells stories of beauty, strength, resilience
Miranda Belarde-Lewis Devastating colonial practices are the focus of an exhibition curated by Assistant Professor Miranda Belarde-Lewis that went on display this fall at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in Vancouver, B .C . “Sho Sho Esquire: Doctrine of Discovery” showcases Esquiro’s meticulously crafted couture gowns, textiles, paintings and photographs, which celebrate the beauty, strength and resilience of First Nations communities in the face of historical and ongoing trauma . “This powerful and vital exhibition of contemporary fashion sheds an urgent light on the devastating impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery, an international law which influenced European settlers to believe they had dominion over the lands and Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere,” said Belarde-Lewis, the iSchool’s Joseph & Jill McKinstry Endowed Faculty Fellow in Native North American Indigenous Knowledge . The exhibition continues through June 5 . Meanwhile, “Raven and the Box of Daylight,” an exhibition of the work of Native glass artist Preston Singletary curated by BelardeLewis, will go on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D .C ., on Jan . 28, 2022 . If you’re making travel plans, you have until Jan . 29, 2023, to get there .
Advertisement
Five iSchool students among the Husky 100
Each year, the Husky 100 honors students who are making the most of their UW experience, in the classroom and in their communities . Five iSchool students were among the 2021 honorees . They are (top row, left) Jack Lucas Chang, INFO ’21; (top row, right) Ali Salahuddin, a current MSIM student; (bottom row, from left) Jamie Ramos, MLIS ’21; Benjamin Xie, a current Ph .D . candidate; and Travis Windleharth, Ph .D . ’21 .
Mike at the mic
Michael Eisenberg, professor and dean emeritus, is never shy about sharing his opinions . A podcast he launched this year gives him a platform for sharing them . In “Libraries Lead,” he and co-host David Lankes of the University of South Carolina tackle topics such as social justice, misinformation and our emerging “new normal .” Mike and Dave think that this can be a time of life-altering, groundbreaking, and transformative change with libraries and librarians fulfilling major roles to play as society comes to grip with the post-pandemic landscape . It’s not all business, though — they also include segments such as “wazzup with Dave and Mike” and an “awesome library thingy” in each episode . You can find “Libraries Lead” at librarieslead .org and on Apple, Spotify or whatever podcasting app you prefer .
iSchool lands high on the charts
The iSchool held the No . 2 spot in the latest rankings of U .S . master’s degree programs in library and information science by U .S . News & World Report . The iSchool rose steadily up the rankings in the past two decades, first reaching No . 2 in 2017 . It also ranked highly in several specialties, including digital librarianship (#2), information systems (#2), health librarianship (#3), and children and youth services (#5) .
Distinguished connections
Iisaaksiichaa Ross Braine, MSIM ’15, who was honored with the 2019 iSchool Distinguished Alumni Award, got a boost as he returned to start on his Ph .D . this fall . Braine was named the inaugural recipient of the Joseph and Jill McKinstry Endowed Ph .D . Fellowship in Native North American Indigenous Knowledge . The fellowship provides broad-based financial support while Braine completes his doctorate at the iSchool . Braine previously worked as the UW tribal liaison and director of wǝłǝbʔaltxw (Intellectual House) . Jill McKinstry was the Distinguished Alumni Award recipient in 2020 .
Blame it on Siri?
Does hanging out with Alexa or Siri affect the way children communicate with their fellow humans? A recent study led by Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker sought to find out if there’s any carryover . The team had a conversational agent (an animated robot or cactus character) teach 22 children between the ages of 5 and 10 to use the word “bungo” to ask it to speak more quickly . The children readily used the word when a robot slowed down its speech . While most children did use bungo in conversations with their parents, it became a source of play or an inside joke about acting like a robot . But when a researcher spoke slowly to the children, the kids rarely used bungo . Overall, the researchers found that children are sensitive to context when it comes to these conversations . So if a child is acting sassy, it’s probably not Siri’s fault .
Making headlines
Associate Professor Chirag Shah is trying his hand at editing . The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) has selected him as the founding editor-in-chief of a new publication, Information Matters . The digital publication, launched this fall at asist .org, will regularly communicate the latest trends and happenings in the information field to the public .
Story by Jim Davis
EVERYBODY WINS
iMentorship program for INFO and MSIM students creates rewarding partnerships for all
At some point, every aspiring entrepreneur either takes the risk and plunges ahead or sets aside the dream, possibly forever. Justin Banusing came to that crossroads last spring.
Banusing, then a junior at the Information School, had an idea for a startup to build esports programs for colleges and high schools in Southeast Asia, where competitive multiplayer video gaming is popular but formal esports programs are scarce.
While attending the UW last spring, Banusing also had a full-time job at a streaming content company. Should he stick with the job or pursue his business idea?
So, Banusing signed up for the iMentorship program, which has connected hundreds of iSchool students with professionals for career advice, insight on the job market and as a way to jumpstart their networking. Banusing was matched with Pioneer Square Labs’ Ansel Santosa.
With Santosa’s encouragement, Banusing launched AcadArena with two others this spring, raising enough capital in an initial round of funding to hire 20 full-time staffers. The company is creating esports programs in the Philippines and Singapore with plans to expand to Malaysia
iMentorship participants show mentors their thanks. Shown are (clockwise from far page, top left): Lia Kitahata, INFO; Nina Slazinik, MSIM; Alycia Nguyen, INFO; Shareen Chang, INFO, and her dog, Bin Bin; Ken Yu-Ru Yang, MSIM, Eric Latham II, INFO; and Kenny Nguyen, MSIM.
and other countries.
“I don’t think I’d be here without the mentorship program, because honestly Ansel helped unlock the secret sauce when it comes to fundraising and creating a presentation and building together the team,” Banusing said. “We still talk a lot.”
The iMentorship program will start its fifth year this winter. The iSchool’s Laura Schildkraut created the noncredit extracurricular program to help students achieve their career goals while tapping into passionate support from iSchool alumni and others. It is mostly for upper division students in the Informatics and Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) programs.
Schildkraut, an assistant teaching professor who runs the iSchool’s Informatics internship program, recruits the mentors and connects them with the students, but leaves the structure of the meetings to each pair. Usually, mentors and mentees get together every other week for several months during winter and spring quarters.
“We have students who want to be entrepreneurs,” Schildkraut said. “I don’t want to force them to write a resume. There are students who already have jobs and what they want to know is how to hit the ground running. … I leave it for the mentor and the mentee to figure out what they want to do.”
The program has grown in popularity since it was launched. In the pilot year, 2017-18, there were 38 mentor-mentee pairings. Last year, there were 171. Students get to connect with professionals in their field and gain a role model, but Schildkraut notes that mentors receive practical experience, too.
“Companies will encourage some of their younger
–Laura Schildkraut
employees to mentor because that’s getting them ready for supervisory positions and roles,” Schildkraut said. “This is like gold all around. There’s no downside, which is what I just love about it.”
Many of the mentors graduated from the iSchool, but Schildkraut notes that it’s not an alumni program. Schildkraut welcomes mentors with no ties to the school. One of those mentors is Jessica Turner, who works as a senior technical product manager for defense contractor Anduril Industries in Seattle.
Turner, who learned about the iMentorship program through a mutual acquaintance with Schildkraut, is one of four mentors who have volunteered every year since the program started. She critiques her mentees’ resumes, reviews their LinkedIn accounts and helps them practice interviewing. She also helps them understand what they might want to do after graduating.
Many of her mentees have been young women. She talks to them about her own experiences as a woman entering the tech world a decade ago and also has introduced them to a younger female colleague. Women need to understand that their experience in the workplace may be different from that of their male co-workers, Turner said. “It’s important being able to hear from other women who have gone through the same thing and understand what it’s like to reassure you that maybe it’s not as bad as you sometimes hear,” she said. “Or if it is, you have some other person who can talk to you and tell you why it’s still worth it.”
Nissim Panchpor has experienced both sides of the iMentorship program. He was a mentee in the first year of the program and served as a mentor for three years.
The Microsoft data engineer earned his master’s degree through the MSIM program in 2018. He came to the iSchool after working for IBM in India. In his final year of the MSIM program, Panchpor signed up for a mentorship and was matched with Aditya Kaul, who then was working with PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“One of the main areas that he helped me with was my resume,” Panchpor said. “Even though I had a lot of content, it was probably a bit too much. I see that all the time now. People have so much content in a one-page resume. It’s really difficult to read.”
Kaul also gave Panchpor an interview tip. Kaul suggested that Panchpor bring examples of his work product to the job interview. Panchpor printed data visualization charts and took them to his interview at Microsoft.
The hiring manager later told Panchpor that the handouts factored into the decision to hire him. The manager was working on a similar problem and reviewed the graphs after the interview.
Panchpor has been impressed with all three of his mentees and recommended them for jobs at Microsoft. His first mentee was Yufei Li, who was in her second year in the MSIM program in spring 2019.
Li was on a job search when she signed up for the
From top to bottom, students Diego Torres, INFO; Rayna Tilley, INFO; and Thet Myat Noe, MSIM.
Students Jared Garalde, MSIM (above left); Divya Suresh Kumar, MSIM (far right); and Justin Banusing, INFO.
iMentorship program. She wanted to be a business intelligence engineer and counted herself lucky when she was connected with Panchpor.
They met for coffee, sometimes weekly, during that spring as Panchpor reviewed her resume and made suggestions on her portfolio and website. He also gave her sample questions that he expected would be asked in an interview.
That May, Li landed a job with travel insurance business International Medical Group in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she still works. She told her parents first — they were in Seattle visiting from China. Then she texted Panchpor.
Li and Panchpor later celebrated over appetizers at a restaurant at Pike Place Market. They’ve kept in touch even after Li graduated.
“He not only helped me land my position,” Li said. “He also has helped me with rules in life as well.”
Santosa, who worked with Banusing on his startup, is another of the mentors who have volunteered every year of the program. Santosa graduated from the iSchool in 2013 and serves on the Informatics Advisory Board, where he first heard about the iMentorship program.
“I had such a great experience (at the iSchool) and love the school not only for what it does for students, but also for the Seattle employment community,” said Santosa, who is an engineer on the core team at Pioneer Square Labs.
Santosa walked Banusing through the tactical steps of creating a startup — hiring, managing an engineering team, interacting with venture capitalists. Santosa also reviewed Banusing’s pitch deck or business presentation.
“I helped reassure him what an incredible candidate he is for any job and that isn’t going to change if he takes a year or two to pursue his startup,” Santosa said.
Banusing is back at the UW this fall, planning to finish his Informatics degree in winter quarter while working on his business.
“My startup is all about building gaming in schools,” he said. “It’s not a good look if the founder’s a dropout.”
If you’re interested in participating in iMentorship, contact Laura Schildkraut at laurasc@uw.edu.
iSTAMP pairs professionals and MLIS students
While iMentorship primarily serves students in the Informatics and Master of Science in Information Management programs, another iSchool mentorship initiative focuses on students earning their Master of Library and Information Science . The student-led iSTAMP (Student-to-Alumni Mentorship Program) pairs MLIS students with professionals in the field who have at least two years of work experience . iSTAMP is an opportunity to form meaningful connections between students and alumni to support personal and professional growth in the library and information science field, focusing on more than just specific career goals . Alumni and students meet monthly online or in person . Faculty sponsor Helene Williams arranges the iSTAMP pairings prior to each academic year . If you’re interested in participating in future years, contact iSTAMP coordinators Emily Beran and Laura Beene at istamp@uw .edu .
Voice of knowledge
Naomi Bishop is an outspoken advocate for equity, education and public health. As a health sciences librarian, she brings her convictions to her work.
As Naomi Bishop walks through Phoenix’s Heard Museum, she’s in awe of the intricate Native American artwork on display: tiny animal-shaped brooches; large, handspun Navajo fabrics; dolls depicting Native warriors on horseback, embellished with thousands of tiny beads.
Down the hallway is a large exhibit documenting the tragic history of American Indian boarding schools, where the federal government sent generations of children — by force or coercion — and immersed them in European-American culture in the 19th through mid-20th centuries. Native American culture was erased in the process, as the schools banned traditional languages, songs and dances, cut children’s hair, and forced them to wear American-style clothes. Trauma and abuse were common.
For Bishop, a member of the Akimel O’odham (Pima) tribe in Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community, that history is in her blood. Her own grandfather was sent to a boarding school and forced to learn English.
“For Native people, there was a time when we weren’t allowed to practice our language, we weren’t allowed to share our knowledge,” she says.
As a librarian, Bishop, MLIS ’10, feels empowered to share knowledge on a daily basis, and she’s never shy about doing so. Her commitment to lifelong learning, her advocacy for public health, and her passion for equity in the library, university and health-care fields are among the reasons she is the 2021 iSchool Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.
As a health sciences librarian at the College of Medicine on the University of Arizona’s Phoenix campus, she helps students and faculty conduct research, teaches and leads workshops, and promotes community initiatives at the school. She tries to connect students with the large Native and Hispanic populations in Arizona — the people they will serve as physicians.
Bishop scans items on display in the University of Arizona’s Health Sciences Library.
“My goal of being here as a librarian is, it’s not just books and models,” she says. “You need to learn about the community. It’s something you can experience, not just study.”
One of her initiatives at her library was a display about access to health care among Native people in Arizona. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, students knew about the challenges faced by tribal communities and responded by conducting a donation drive to bring personal protective equipment to them.
“I wasn’t behind all of that, but our students were engaged, I think, because they were exposed to that information and knew there was more to this community,” Bishop says.
On campus, she’s been outspoken about implicit bias in medical literature, prompting changes to the university’s curriculum. She recently co-wrote in a journal arguing that structural racism, discrimination and assimilation need to be accounted for as factors that contribute to health problems.
Bishop looks over southern Phoenix from a viewpoint at South Mountain Park. South Mountain has a prominent role in oral traditions and songs of the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and other tribes in the region.
For example, she noted that doctors have been taught that Native Americans are susceptible to conditions such as diabetes, simply because they get the disease at higher rates than whites. But factors such as the removal of tribes’ traditional water sources go unaddressed as public health concerns.
“Instead of just saying, ‘Here are these problems,’ let’s address why,” Bishop says. “Let’s think about food and access to water and what’s being done to address that.”
She also had an influence on policy in Maricopa County, where she lives. In the early stages of the pandemic, a doctor from the county Board of Volunteers reached out to her, asking what research was available about the efficacy of cloth masks in preventing the virus from spreading. Bishop put her librarian skills to work, gathering information from countries where masks were more commonly worn. City and county leaders cited the information she provided in justifying their vote to enact a mask mandate in public spaces.
Bishop lives her values, and that comes across in her
Bishop looks at a display at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, which is dedicated to Native art.
work at the health sciences library, says her supervisor, Native American master’s student at the iSchool. She took Library Director David Bickford. a leap of faith after visiting Seattle and meeting Cheryl
“She’s highly sensitive to the diversity of our student Metoyer, then the associate dean for research; and Ph.D. body and celebrates all of them through displays and students Miranda Belarde-Lewis and Marisa Duarte, who through her collection development,” he says. “She’s done are now faculty members at the iSchool and Arizona State a great deal to expand our commitment to diverse authors, University, respectively. and not just diversity in terms of authors’ ancestry and Metoyer, who was among Bishop’s mentors at the characteristics, but also looking at things from different iSchool, recalled that she brought the same determination perspectives.” and critical thinking on social justice issues to her classes
Bishop’s leadership on social justice issues was among at the UW. For one assignment, Bishop did a presentation the reasons she was chosen from 1,865 nominees as on the cultural importance of how people, places and the winner of the I Love My Librarian Award, given things are named and renamed, using her own tribe as an annually by the American Library Association with example. support from the Carnegie Corporation and the New York Europeans’ approach was, “You erase the name of the Public Library. In the past, she has also been a recipient place, you erase the name of the people, and you rename of the American Indian Library Association’s (AILA) it so it fits within your lexicon,” Metoyer says. “She did a Rising Leader Award and a participant in the 2010 ALA very powerful presentation, and it was real, because she Spectrum Leadership Institute. While at the iSchool, she was speaking about her own community.” had support from the Sylvia Lake Finley Multi-Ethnic Bishop remains active in AILA, pressing for inclusion Library Fellowship. of Native authors and helping to choose the winners of
When Bishop began the Master of Library and its Youth Literature Awards. She and other advocates Information Science program in 2008, she was the lone notched a recent success when the Association for Library
Bishop, pictured at South Mountain Park in south Phoenix, has called the desert home for most of her life.
Bishop thumbs through her collection of children’s books by Native authors in her office. Along with her job in health sciences, she has worked with the American Indian Library Association to advocate for Native authors.
Service to Children announced that AILA’s awards would be part of its slate of youth media prizes, along with the Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal and other prestigious awards.
Inclusion in the awards will open up more opportunities for Native authors to tell their stories, Bishop says.
“That was the whole point of our awards — to get major publishers to see Native talent, to see Native artists and illustrations done in the most beautiful way to tell our stories,” she says. “Let these Native people publish and you will get incredible stories, real stories of life and love, and Caldecott winners and Newbery winners.”
The next step is to get those stories in the hands of young readers.
On her way out of the Heard Museum, Bishop stops by the children’s playroom and examines its book collection. As she peruses the titles, she grows flustered. In a museum dedicated to American Indian art, she can’t find any books by Native authors.
“I’m going to have to talk to someone about that,” she says.
Legacy of care
Scott Barker left an enduring stamp on the iSchool and on information science
By Doug Parry
“He was my best friend.”
“He was super involved.”
“We would just chat about anything.”
When Scott Barker’s former students and TAs talk about the longtime IT director and teaching professor, they all seem to echo the same sentiments. He was always available to talk, always supporting them, always looking out for their best interests.
When Barker passed away unexpectedly on July 23 at age 59, he left a hole in the lives of family, colleagues, friends and students. He also left an enduring stamp on the Information School and the information science field, and a legacy of some 2,000 iSchool alumni whose lives he touched during his 22 years at the University of Washington.
Through his roles as an instructor, administrator and, from 2007-18, chair of the Informatics program, Barker had an extraordinary role in shaping the school. He was a key figure from the outset, having been lured west by Dean Emeritus Michael Eisenberg in 1999 to be part of the transformation from a single librarianship master’s program to an interdisciplinary information school. He ensured the school’s technology was second to none on campus, and he advocated for calling it “iSchool” for short — the first of dozens now doing so around the world.
When he became Informatics chair, the program became his passion. He threw himself into marketing the then-little-known major on campus, putting it on the map for freshman interest groups and UW admissions staff. Barker oversaw the program’s growth from 35-student cohorts each year to more than 200, even as it turned away hundreds more outstanding applicants. If Barker had his way, though, there would be no limit to the number of Informatics majors on campus.
“He fought for what he believed in, which was increasing enrollment and opening the opportunities up,” said Eisenberg, who became one of Barker’s closest friends. “Scott truly believed that information is the center of everything and it’s relevant to everybody, no matter what they do.”
That belief motivated him as he secured resources to grow the Informatics program and animated him when he taught INFO 200, the gateway course to the major. Reserved by nature, Barker became a showman in large lecture halls full of students, turning a dry subject such as IMAP protocols into an object of fascination and using a menacing voice to introduce students to the “DEEP … DARK … WEB.”
“He was a champion,” iSchool Professor Batya Friedman said. “He wanted every student to succeed. He wanted every student who wanted to do Informatics to be able to do Informatics. He
Remembering Scott Barker
Visit scottbarker.ischool.uw.edu to read more, leave your memories in our guestbook, or make a gift to the Scott Barker Endowed Fund for Excellence in Informatics . A computer lab in Mary Gates Hall has been named the Scott F . Barker Co-Lab in his honor .
Inspiring ‘unlock moments’
Smartsheet CEO hopes new scholarship will change lives — and technology
By Doug Parry
Mark Mader loves seeing people have “unlock moments” — when a light bulb goes on and they realize they’re capable of more than they thought possible.
The Smartsheet president and CEO hopes to inspire those moments with the establishment of a new scholarship at the University of Washington Information School. The Mark and Jaimee Mader Term Scholarship in Informatics will cover part of recipients’ tuition costs, beginning with three incoming freshmen this fall.
Much like when someone unlocks the solution to a problem using software, they can get a feeling of exhilaration when they find success in the classroom, with long-term benefits, Mader said.
“That feeling of, ‘I didn’t know I could get a scholarship, I thought I was completely boxed in,’ and all of a sudden that flips — that is a huge accelerant for people,” he said. “That’s not a temporary feeling; it can affect somebody for many years. That’s something we wanted to cultivate.”
Mader, a member of the iSchool Founding Board, said his own experience was one reason he wanted to fund the scholarships. He graduated from college without accumulating debt and wants to see more students have the same opportunity.
He was also motivated by a desire to broaden the talent pool for technology companies such as Smartsheet, which offers businesses a suite of software for collaboration and work management. The scholarship is intended to address systemic racism and grow diversity in tech by addressing the cost barrier, which is faced more frequently by people from historically minoritized groups.
“I think there’s been a growing awareness in the last year of an ‘advantage gap’ that exists, and I believe people have a duty to empower others,” Mader said. “There’s still much work to do, and many high-potential people who can be better positioned to thrive, who don’t have the means and may not know that there is capital interested in investing in them.”
Smartsheet employs about 10 iSchool alumni and is a frequent sponsor of Capstone projects, in which students tackle a project in collaboration with sponsors from the private or public sectors. In a field where talent is in demand, the Informatics program is ideal for investment because it produces graduates who are able to contribute from day one, Mader said.
“The performance of the iSchoolers we’ve had at the business so far motivated me to fund this with Jaimee,” he said.
A spirit of giving runs deep in Mader’s family. His mother, Eva, was a longtime crisis-line operator for LifeWire, helping people find shelter from abusive situations. Jaimee Mader’s mother, Dixie Jo Porter, was a leading fundraiser for the Seattle YWCA and her father, W. Thomas Porter, was a passionate supporter of UW Athletics who led fundraising efforts during the $54 million Campaign for the Student Athlete of the late 1990s. He passed away recently at age 87.
The three inaugural Mader Scholarship recipients — Nawal Dhabar, Jessica Mendoza and Nadia Sheikh — are all incoming freshmen who received direct admission to the Informatics program. Dhabar wrote that she is interested in a career in user interface design, Mendoza expressed her interest in information technology management, and Sheikh intends to concentrate on biomedical informatics.
In a letter expressing her gratitude for the scholarship, Dhabar wrote that it was a “blessing” that would allow her to pursue a career in tech without imposing financial stress on her family. “Thanks to this scholarship, I will be able to pursue my goals of working in the UI design field and breaking barriers as a Black Muslim woman in the field of tech,” she wrote.
Sheikh, who said the Biomedical & Health Informatics track was appealing because it combines health and technology, will be able to hit the ground running in Informatics without having to work during the school year. “This scholarship will help me with achieving my goal because it lets me focus more on school,” Sheikh said. “It takes a whole lot of weight off my shoulders.”
Mark and Jaimee Mader
Amber Pepka, who now lives in Lynnwood, was evicted by two previous landlords with little notice. Changes to state law, supported by iSchool research, require tenants to be given more time to vacate.
FOUNDATION FOR CHANGE
iSchool researchers scoured public records for meaningful data on evictions. Their work helped advocates make the case to enact new protections for tenants.
STORY BY JIM DAVIS MAIN PHOTO BY DOUG PARRY
Amber Pepka learned she was being evicted the first time five years ago when a friend visited her Bremerton apartment. Pepka was a student at Olympic College living with her boyfriend.
When the friend came over, she asked if they had seen the notice on their door. “We’re like, ‘No, what notice?’” Pepka said. “She was like, ‘You guys are getting kicked out.’”
A new landlord had purchased the property and gave all of the tenants, including Pepka and her boyfriend, 20 days to leave. The landlord wanted to do a major renovation and charge higher rent, Pepka said.
They were able to find another apartment in Bremerton, but two years later, they faced eviction a second time. The landlord was painting the exterior of the apartments and the painters knocked over planters on Pepka’s deck.
When she complained, the manager said that the painters had seen inside her apartment and said it was messy. The manager gave Pepka and her then husband 20 days to vacate. The couple were able to get a reprieve, but were still forced out a couple of months later.
Pepka and others in similar situations could be helped by changes to state law that provide new protections for tenants. Those protections were enacted in part due to
research from the University of Washington’s Information School, eScience Institute and Department of Sociology.
The Legislature this past spring passed a “just-cause” law that requires landlords to cite a reason for an eviction and, depending on the reason, extend the length of notice for evictions for tenants from what had been 20 days to longer in certain situations. For instance, landlords must give tenants 120 days’ notice for evictions for planned renovations. A second law called “right to counsel” that passed this year also provides legal assistance for some low-income tenants in eviction proceedings.
Washington Rep. Nicole Macri, D-Seattle, one of the sponsors of the new laws, has been interested in eviction reform since being elected in 2016, but needed a clear picture of what was occurring.
“We didn’t know the answers to who was impacted by evictions and who would benefit and how if we changed policy around residential evictions,” Macri said.
One of her former interns knew a Ph.D. candidate in the UW’s sociology department who had done his dissertation on one year of evictions in King County. That candidate, Tim Thomas, had been working with the ACLU and the Northwest Justice Project on a court case and was looking to see whether women were evicted at higher rates than men.
Reviewing more than 5,000 court records from 2013, Thomas found that there was no statistically significant gender difference in evictions for that lone year, but he found that people of color were being evicted at much higher rates than white people.
“The disparate impacts by race were pretty massive, particularly for King County, because only 9% of the population is African American, but Black women were being evicted seven times more than white women,” Thomas said.
Macri asked Thomas to expand this research to the rest of the state. Thomas was working on this problem when he met Bill Howe, an iSchool associate professor and founding director of the eScience Institute, at a conference. Howe and Thomas agreed to collaborate on what became the Washington Evictions Research Project.
“The overall question was who’s getting evicted and how often,” Howe said. “This was not largely known, even though the data to answer that kind of question is publicly available.”
Howe was able to funnel funding for the project through a grant from Microsoft. He also connected Thomas with iSchool Assistant Teaching Professor Ott Toomet and other graduate students.
Their research on several counties around the state found similar racial disparities in evictions. Black adults were named in eviction filings at much higher rates than average, with 1 in 6 given notices in Pierce County and 1 in 11 in King County from 2013 to 2017.
“These findings were very surprising and disturbing to policymakers,” Macri said. “I think that really helped shift the narrative and engagement about how landlord-tenant policy impacts residents in our state.”
Real stories emerge behind the numbers, including that of Celina Espinoza and her family. Like Pepka, Espinoza and her family have faced eviction twice in the past five years.
The first time occurred in 2017, when Espinoza was 17 and living with her mom and two siblings at a complex of eight townhomes in Burlington. Her family had been living there for eight years when a new owner purchased
Bill Howe, iSchool associate professor
Ott Toomet, iSchool assistant teaching professor
the property and sent the family an eviction notice.
“We weren’t given a reason as to why they didn’t want to keep us, but they kept some other tenants in the complex,” said Espinoza, who is now 22.
When they asked why they were being evicted, the new owners said they wanted to do a remodel, but the family later learned that the place underwent only minor renovations.
Espinoza’s mom is an accountant who was trying to start her own business and was also pregnant at the time. “I saw the stress and the toll that it took on my mom,” Espinoza said.
Their family found a new home in Sedro-Woolley at an attached townhome. They faced eviction again in 2019 when the property’s owner sold the townhome. They’re now living at a house in Burlington.
Espinoza is attending Western Washington University, working toward a degree in physical education and health with minors in education and social justice. She’s glad that the Legislature has leveled the playing field for tenants.
“From what I experienced, I just think that the laws that were in place were inhumane and unjust, especially for people who are struggling to find affordable housing,” she said.
The iSchool research presented unique challenges that took an “advanced level of computational knowhow,” Howe said. The researchers had to go through thousands of court records that were in PDF formats. Some of the information that needed to be found and sorted was handwritten. The iSchool researchers created a machine-learning program to gather the data.
“We’re really being able to answer fundamentally different questions that you couldn’t answer otherwise, because it was not feasible or possible to do without these tools and techniques,” Howe said.
Thomas, who is now research director at the Urban Displacement Project at the University of California, Berkeley, said this research requires collaboration.
“Computer scientists need domain knowledge,” Thomas said. “So, they need to work with social scientists like us. We need computer scientists, so we can advance research through technology.”
In 2019, the research led the Legislature to pass a set of reforms that required landlords to give tenants 14 days to respond to an eviction notice for failure to pay rent, rather than the three days previously required. It also requires more plain language in eviction notices.
Macri sees these reforms, and the ones passed earlier this year, as addressing the homelessness crisis. She works for the Downtown Emergency Services Center, a Seattle-based nonprofit that provides housing and health care for people who are homeless. She said there are valid reasons to evict tenants; she’s had to evict people in her job at the nonprofit.
She also understands how many people who are evicted end up homeless. A 2018 report from the Seattle Women’s Commission found that 88% of evictions lead to homelessness. Macri has witnessed people struggle for years after becoming homeless.
“When you listen to these stories again and again and again about the commonalities of how people lose their housing, I really felt like we had to address it at this moment in the process when people lose housing,” Macri said. “How can we prevent that?”
Pepka never became homeless. After being forced out the second time, she and her now ex-husband found a small house to rent in Port Orchard that was in disrepair, and had a tree-damaged roof.
Through this, Pepka obtained her associate’s degree from Olympic College and later a bachelor’s degree from Champlain College, based in Burlington, Vermont.
She’s moved to Lynnwood and works full-time as a tax conversion analyst for an accounting software company. She’s also pursuing a master’s degree through Champlain. She testified about her experiences with evictions before the Legislature earlier this year.
“I’m obviously in a much better situation than I was when I faced those evictions,” Pepka said. “Not everyone is as lucky as I am to be able to get out of that. So, l find it necessary to continue fighting for people who are still trapped.”
Celina Espinoza, whose family was evicted twice.
wanted everyone to feel like they had a place there, no matter what background they were coming from or however they arrived at it.”
Friedman arrived at the iSchool not long after Barker and was charged with developing the Informatics major. She worked sideby-side with Barker, who brought his technical expertise to the table as they built the curriculum of core courses and electives. He was hooked on the program, its quirky, fun atmosphere and the tight-knit community that he helped foster. When he took over as chair a few years later, he became its leading evangelist. “I think he really believed that the things that we were offering were the kinds of things that every citizen should be aware of,” Friedman said.
When his term as program chair ended in 2018, Barker continued to teach and help launch the Informatics minor with Professor Amy Ko, the current chair. Though his administrative role had changed, his passion for the major and the students was as strong as ever. He still learned every student’s name; he reached out to many of them unprompted, just to check in; and he responded to instant messages from teaching assistants in the wee hours of the morning.
“He felt like a friend, not really like a boss,” said Shane Martin, ’20, a TA for Barker from 2018-20. “He would ask me questions about of the blue, like, ‘How is your internship going?’ ” Martin said. He would reach out and check in on me, just at random times. Sometimes at 11:30, sometimes at 2 a.m.”
One year, after realizing that several of his students and TAs had nowhere to go for the Thanksgiving holiday while attending school far from home, Barker extended an invitation to his home for a traditional meal. It soon became an annual tradition — “Thanksgiving at Scott’s,” an open invitation to all Informatics students.
Barker’s connection with students was like something out of fiction, said Ansel Santosa, ’13, a senior software engineer at Pioneer Square Labs. He applied to the Informatics program after taking an INFO 200 class taught by Barker and Eisenberg. “I feel like he was the Hagrid of the iSchool,” Santosa said, likening Barker to students’ loyal ally in the Harry Potter series. “You feel like he’d been there forever, was super supportive, had a lot of pull with everybody, and really cared about the students.”
That made a big difference to Brenda Obonyo, a senior Informatics major who took INFO 200 with Barker. When Obonyo was unhappy with a grade in a course with another instructor, she turned to Barker, who liked to call her “best friend.” He advised her to advocate for herself when she believes she’s in the right, but he also told her that a poor grade wouldn’t define her.
“He told me, ‘You know, Brenda, no one will ever ask you what grade you got after this. Just remember you are not your grade.’ That statement plays a role in my life right now,” she said.
Barker’s mentorship made such an impression that Santosa, Martin and Obonyo all spoke of their desire to emulate him — his caring, pragmatic approach; his responsiveness; his genuine interest in the lives and well-being of others. They represent just a few of the thousands of people who will carry his example of leadership forward, Friedman said. “If those students all go out in the world and make a positive difference, that is all a tribute ultimately to Scott,” she said. “Then they will help people, and the people they impact. … There is a long tail here. Ripples that Scott has put out into the world.” program, which is seeking funding to send an openly queer astronaut into space. As a queer woman, it’s a goal she cares about deeply.
“That kind of visibility is important, not only for our own community but also for our capability to inspire the next generation,” she said.
Gatta was hired by Blue Origin right out of school. She is an aerospace data engineer on New Glenn, the largest payload capacity rocket ever created. Her work is creating a software platform that connects, tracks and interprets the immense amount of information that’s collected from the rocket’s many sensors.
Now, Gatta is thinking beyond her work and focusing on helping other people in the field. At Blue Origin, she is the president of an LGBTQ+ organization of more than 150 employees.
“I think a lot of my goals now for the future are not so much career-oriented, but about my volunteer work, and my job affords me that time,” she said. “When you’re in college, it’s always about what you create and what you do. Now that I’ve graduated, my life has centered around — what are you cultivating? What are you revisiting? Who are you helping?”
FANS, from Page 11
They argue that such campaigns have design implications for social media platforms such as Twitter, where #MatchAMillion took off.
In conducting her research, Lee faces misperceptions that BTS is a boy band that needn’t be taken seriously, or that its fans are mindlessly following what’s been fed to them. “I soon learned that the ARMY fandom is probably one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented communities in the media, often by people who aren’t part of the community. I want to document what the fandom is really like, from an insider’s point of view,” she said. The disregard for BTS and pop music is similar to what she encounters in one of her primary research interests — documenting the history of video game development.
“I do research with popular media, and it’s a common thread that something that brings joy to people is often undervalued and undermined,” she said. “At the end of the day, physical health will enable you to continue living, but mentally what keeps people wanting to live are these things that bring people joy.
“What’s considered as fun things are often not documented well, they are not preserved well, and a lot of it is already lost. If I can do research to help document that a little better and push the needle a little more, I’ll say that’s a really fulfilling career.”
