Tour educates UW faculty

They left last week on a five-day tour of the state that took them over the snow-topped Cascades, through the farmlands of Central Washington and to the Canadian border. It was the first time many had been outside Seattle and in the rest of the state.


		Mike Kane / P-I
	University of Washington systems librarian Anjanette Young photographs Mount St. Helens during a tour of Washington as part of an orientation program to help new faculty learn about the state's geography, history, politics and economy.

The trip introduced them to the geography, history, politics and economics of their new home. They also met the people they work for: the farmers, the small-town teachers and the kids from rural Washington for whom attending the state's biggest public university can seem out of reach.

Provost Phyllis Wise, herself a new UW faculty member, joined the trip.

"I really have a new appreciation of how many people look to us for their way to discover, their way to open doors," she said.

An unfamiliar Washington

A day after leaving Seattle, the faculty crossed over to the eastern side of the Cascades -- and entered a Washington they didn't know.

"Don't be dissuaded by country music, conservative talk radio," joked Erasmo Gamboa, a UW associate professor of American ethic studies, who met the tour in Central Washington.

They visited a library at the Yakama Nation Cultural Heritage Center, where the UW had helped establish a computer lab. Native American artwork and books on Chief Sealth and Sacagawea adorned the shelves.


		Mike Kane / P-I
	From left, UW faculty members Ulrike Peters, Nicole Bouche and Mehilka Inanici and UW executive director of media relations and communications Norm Arkans chat on the tour bus as they make their way around the state.

Educators on the reservation are teaching children their native language, Sahaptin, to reclaim it, said head librarian Vivian Adams. Phrases on the library wall are written in English and Sahaptin, and children receive bookmarks with such words as "leg" and "mouth" written in the native language.

They also are working to preserve their stories. One, for instance, explains how the tails of fighting beavers created Union Gap, an opening between two mountains in Yakima County.

"I think it's great. ... Our job is to share our culture with everyone," Adams said of the faculty visit. "I say bring them on. Let's teach them all."

Some encouraged faculty members to bring their own teachings to that part of the state, including Gamboa, who has worked in Eastern Washington to collect oral histories from elderly Latinos.

He asked his visiting colleagues to consider expanding their research to the area and including local students in their work. Eastern Washington is different, he acknowledged, but that should not deter them from exploring research opportunities there.

Still, the differences between the two sides of the state struck many faculty members.

They drove by miles of sagebrush. Hop vines and potato fields. Golden hillsides and plateaus. The occasional house or farm. Cities small by Seattle standards.

As the bus drove through Moses Lake one day, Gloria Coronado, a research assistant professor in epidemiology, grabbed the microphone and gave a brief history of her hometown, a place where the teenagers hung out at the local sand dunes and Seattle was considered "the big, scary city."

After passing by the town's namesake landmark -- the lake -- she pointed out another noteworthy attraction.

"We're going to be coming up on the second Starbucks of Moses Lake," she told the group, which pleaded -- to no avail -- for the bus driver to stop.

A Starbucks stop would have to wait until Bellingham.

Local academic pride


		Mike Kane / P-I
	UW assistant health sciences librarian Andrea Ryce of British Columbia looks out at the Columbia River while crossing the Bridge of the Gods near Bonneville Dam.

At nearly every stop, locals were eager and proud to present their own academic advancements to members of the large research university.

At Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, they showed off their new library. And at Toppenish Middle School, they highlighted the students.

There, two eighth-graders showed the UW faculty how they had learned about aerospace as part of a NASA educational program.

The boys recently went to Washington, D.C., to present their work. That trip included visits to the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial -- historical monuments the boys had seen only on television.

Teachers in Toppenish -- a town of about 9,200 where colorful murals of farm life brighten dozens of the buildings -- are trying to get more local kids to go to college. Roughly 70 percent of the district's high school seniors applied for post-secondary education, but educators don't know how many will attend, said Loueta Johnson, who manages the Gear Up program there for the UW.

Many students don't leave their hometown, because their families pressure them to stay, for both financial and emotional reasons, Johnson said. Some make it to the other side of the state, though. About 10 percent of the graduating senior class from Toppenish High School will attend the UW this fall, she said.

"It's a huge intimidation to go into a city like Yakima, let alone across the mountains to Seattle," she said.

Before leaving the school, the professors chatted briefly with several Toppenish High School students and graduates.

"I'm glad that they came, said Naila Prieto, a 19-year-old UW sophomore, after their departure. "They know where we come from now."


		Mike Kane / P-I
	UW assistant professor of medical history and ethics Helene Starks watches a large sturgeon swim by the glass of a viewing pond at Bonneville Dam Fish Hatchery in Cascade Locks, Ore.

"They'll understand our culture shock," added Jennifer Alvisurez, 18, who will attend the UW as a freshman this fall.

For some of the faculty, the meeting with the students emphasized the obstacles students in the area must overcome to make it to a university like the UW. It even affected professors from Washington, such as Helene Starks, an assistant professor in the medical school.

"That was a really important reminder of the metaphorical gap that people have to get across to get to Seattle," she said.

Bonding on the bus

At Washington Pass, UW faculty members Cindy Perry and Susan Gaylard took in the view of snowy mountains at an overlook.

"We got to walk through the snow. Isn't that exciting?" exclaimed Perry, an assistant nursing professor originally from Chicago.

"I can't believe there's snow in June," said Gaylard, an assistant professor in the department of French and Italian studies who is from Cape Town, South Africa.

A group of faculty members posed for pictures before the mountains on their return to the western side of the state -- many friends after spending close to 14 hours a day together.

The bus tour included faculty members from Italy and Illinois, China and Colorado, Germany and Georgia. They studied medicine, engineering, psychology and Italian. Some had just completed their first year teaching.


		Mike Kane / P-I
	Assistant communications professor Gina Neff samples some wine at Barnard Griffin Winery in Richland during the Washington tour for new professors.

The long stretches on the bus between stops -- which included visits to an organic cherry orchard, winery, smoke-jumper base and, at the end of the day, hot tubs -- provided hours of conversation.

They shared the imagined terror of an erupting volcano as Mount St. Helens came into view.

Televisions on board showed a movie of the devastating 1980 eruption, warning of the volcano's past -- and potential to erupt again.

"Not today!" someone shouted from the back of the bus, followed by nervous laughter.

People also chatted about their research, students and tenure and shared tips on what they had learned during their first year or two in the city about traffic and organic produce.


		Mike Kane / P-I
	Assistant professor of dentistry Hai Zhang snaps a photo of a statue near a hops field at Heritage University.

"You have the common bond of being new to the university," said Ken Oshima, an assistant professor in the architecture department who joined the UW last year. "These bus times are the times that you really can talk to people -- people who you wouldn't really have an opportunity to talk to."

The university spent about $38,000 on the five-day tour, which was free to faculty members. Taxpayer money and tuition was not used, a university spokesman said.

It could have lasting effects.

Annette Henry, a professor at the UW's Tacoma campus, said she intends to take what she has learned from the trip into her classroom.

"It means a lot to students when you can say to them, 'Oh yeah, I was in Yakima last week,' " she said.

"In a few months, I'll realize just how significant it's been."

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