Here’s a look at three podcasts being created by 91̽»¨departments or people, including a couple that have been underway for quite a while.

91̽»¨Notebook will occasionally report on campus podcasts and ask a few questions of one producer or host each time.

““

This podcast name plays in part on the word “podcast” linked with Tacoma’s Point Defiance and a Husky Dawg’s paws. The name also reflects a philosophy of telling interesting stories about people, research, initiatives, community partnerships and other issues related to 91̽»¨Tacoma and higher education.

Launched in April 2019, the podcast is produced by , a writer for 91̽»¨Tacoma communications and hosted by students. Maria Crisostimo hosted in the last school year, then Katherine Felts filled in over the summer and now the podcast is hosted by student Sarah Smith.

The first season’s 16 episodes discussed topics including the indigenous history of the Tacoma area, building connections from prison to college and the dangers of microplastics in Puget Sound waters — even two faculty members’ love for the movie “Jurassic Park.” A second season is underway. The theme song was written by , UWT senior lecturer. The podcast has been downloaded about 3,000 times.

How long does it take you to record and produce a single episode?

Wilson-Edge:  We rent space in a small, locally owned recording studio called Moon Yard. Doug Mackey owns the studio and is one of the co-creators of the City of Tacoma’s . We book the space for an hour to conduct the interview. Most of the recordings take about 45 minutes. From there it takes about two to four hours to edit the show. So, anywhere from three to five hours per episode.

Who is your audience? Is the podcast finding its audience?

W-E: Given our focus on external communication, our audience includes alumni, donors, future students and their parents, community leaders, 91̽»¨folks outside of the Tacoma campus — and, of course, our own faculty, staff and students. We aim to reach parts of these audiences that may not engage with us via our website or social media.

We do think we are reaching that audience, although we’ve learned it takes time to grow the listener base. A key to that is consistent quality and a broad range of topics so that if someone doesn’t care much for one episode, they might be really drawn to another.

What episode might be the best for a newcomer to listen to first?

W-E: “” is technically the first episode. It’s with (social and historical studies) and her dad, Puyallup Tribe Vice Chairman (he was chairman at the time of the recording) Bill Sterud. 91̽»¨Tacoma sits on traditional Puyallup land so we thought the first episode should be about the Puyallup and the indigenous history of the area. .

***

Other ongoing 91̽»¨podcasts:

““

Hosted by

Rosenthal is a doctoral student of electrical and computer engineering and Kelly a doctoral student in aeronautics and astronautics. In each episode of this podcast the two friends battle science misinformation by “unraveling” research papers behind the latest headlines in science. Topics over 77 episodes include “” and “” In each episode, one host studies a paper in depth and explains it to the other, who asks questions, and they alternate roles. For those new to the podcast, the two suggest episode 16: “” About 22,000 downloads. Read more on the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics .

***

““

Hosted by , professor of architecture

Prakash is an architectural historian and practicing architect and as well as a professor. “ArchitectureTalk,” now with almost 61 episodes, takes up cross-disciplinary questions of the built environment with architects and 91̽»¨faculty members. His wide variety of topics includes architecture in global history, urban development, the Islamic world, Seattle and its history and more, as well as considerations of famous architects. There is an episode featuring 91̽»¨Dance Department chair discussing “.” Over 75,000 downloads. Read more at 91̽»¨News.

• In the next podcast roundup: “Crossing North” from the Department of Scandinavian Studies.

91̽»¨Notebook is a section of the 91̽»¨News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 91̽»¨. Read all posts here.

Kate Simonen, Vikram Prakash honored by Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture

and , faculty members in the Department of Architecture, have both received 2020 Architectural Education Awards from the .

The honor architectural educators across a dozen categories for “exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship and service.”

Prakash, professor of architecture, received a Distinguished Professor Award, recognizing “a positive, stimulating and nurturing” influence on students, inspiring them to contribute to the advancement of architecture.

Simonen, associate professor of architecture, received the TAD Research Contribution Award, for the best article — “Benchmarking the Embodied Carbon of Buildings” — from the association’s Simonen’s co-authors are graduate research assistant and Swiss researcher . Simonen is founding director of the UW-based . Learn more on the College of Built Environments .

Top newsmaker: Simonen also was named one of the by Engineering News Record. “It has been a banner year for Kate Simonen and her burgeoning band of embodied carbon busters bent on reducing the negative environmental impacts of building production,” the editors write. The top newsmakers will be celebrated April 2 at an event in New York.

***

Seattle Times names Valerie Curtis-Newton among most influential people of the decade

The Seattle Times has named , 91̽»¨professor of drama, as one of “.”

A professor of directing and acting, Curtis-Newton is head of directing for the School of Drama, and also heads the , dedicated to exploring African American life, history and culture.

Calling Curtis-Newton “a titan in the Seattle cultural scene,” the Times writes: “She got there not by being flashy (though she’s certainly capable of inspiring a crowd) but by doing the hard work in the trenches, with the community and inside arts organizations large and small, doggedly insisting on two things: artistic excellence and increasingly incorporating a Black lens into the collective view of what theater is and can be.”

***

Alison Gray, professor of oceanography, receives first Microsoft Investigator Fellowship

, 91̽»¨assistant professor of oceanography, has been named recipient of an inaugural . The awards are given to empower researchers of all disciplines who plan to make an impact with research and teaching using the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Each fellowship provides $100,000 a year for two years and various training and community events.

Gray studies the circulation of the ocean and its impact on the physics and chemistry of the climate system. Her research seeks to improve understanding of the interactions between ocean circulation and global biogeochemical cycles.

Microsoft chose 15 fellowships among over 290 proposals received. Learn more on the College of the Environment or the original Microsoft .

***

Donna Berry, Jennifer Sonney chosen for School of Nursing faculty endowed fellowships

School of Nursing faculty members and have been chosen the inaugural recipients of two endowed faculty fellowship awards.

Berry will receive the Health Informatics Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Nursing, established by Marjorie V. Batey. Berry will work to implement evidence-based practices in acute care and ambulatory settings by integrating health informatics technologies into clinical processes.

Sonney, an assistant professor of nursing, will receive the Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Symptom Science, which is supported by two endowments; one was established by Batey in the name of Elizabeth C. Giblin; the other is in the names of Lucia S. and Herbert L. Pruzan. Sonney will work to improve the health of children with asthma by reducing symptoms and establishing lifelong self-management skills.

Learn more from an .

***

Four 91̽»¨bioengineers receive Society for Biomaterials 2020 awards

, and will receive the 2020 Technology Innovation and Development Award from the which promotes advances in biomaterials sciences research and development. will receive the society’s 2020 Young Investigators Award. The were announced Jan. 6.

The Technology Innovation and Development Award recognizes an individual or team’s successful application of basic and applied biomaterials research in development of a new medical product or technology that significantly benefits medical or surgical patients.

The three faculty members were honored for leadership of the UW-based , which was started by Ratner and is co-directed by Castner and Gamble.

Gamble is a research associate professor of bioengineering, Castner a professor emeritus of chemical engineering and of bioengineering, and Ratner a professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering.

The Young Investigators Award recognizes an individual demonstrating outstanding achievements in biomaterials research. DeForest is assistant professor of chemical engineering and of bioengineering.

All four are of the .

, an associate professor in the College of Education, has been awarded a $1 million from the .

With the four-year grant, Paris will work with , a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, to study the strengths and limitations of  “culturally sustaining pedagogies” — practices designed to foster cultural pluralism — implemented in four different educational contexts in the United States, Spain and South Africa. Paris is the James A. & Cherry Banks Professor of Multicultural Education.

Also, , 91̽»¨assistant professor of education, also has been awarded a four-year, $1 million grant from the Spencer Foundation, to study the impact of dual-credit coursework — conferring both high school and college credit — across four years. .

For more information, contact Paris at dparis@uw.edu; and Duncheon at duncheon@uw.edu.

* * *

Architecture professor , who is co-principal investigator for the , or GAHTC for short, has received a three-year, $1 million grant renewal from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The collaborative, Prakash and co-PI of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, , expands on a the two wrote. The purpose of the book was to “offer a framework for instructors in breaking free of the Eurocentric canonical categories that structure the current historiographical narrative.” Or, more simply put, to “take the ghost out of the global perspective.”

The award is the third installment of a grant first awarded in 2013, now totaling $3.5 million. The funding will provide for teaching modules, workshops and fellowships for the collaborative.

For more information, contact Prakash at vprakash@uw.edu

91̽»¨Notebook is a section of the 91̽»¨News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 91̽»¨. Read all posts here.

says his weekly “” podcast got its start, as many things do, from a student’s idea.

Prakash is a professor of architecture in the 91̽»¨ . An architect himself, he is also an author, a theorist and an architectural historian.

He said he has always felt “energized” by discussions in seminars and at conferences of “impromptu topics at the edges of the known, discussed and well traversed.” But such conversations, he said, “usually dissolved in time, unable to survive the scrutiny and surveillance of the published work.”

Prakash said he was lamenting just that — and the lack of “new media conversations on contemporary architectural thinking” — in a seminar when a student suggested simply, “Why don’t you start your own podcast?”

Sixteen episodes after its September 2017 debut, Prakash’s “ArchitectureTalk” podcast has been downloaded about 6,300 times from listeners in more than a dozen countries. The recordings are available on all major podcast platforms, including iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud and more.

Discussion themes range from general topics like historic preservation, modernism and urbanism to how fashion and art curation dovetail with architecture, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture in the Islamic world, and Seattle’s architectural culture.

The podcast, Prakash said, is intended not just for practicing professionals in the field but “architects, architectural thinkers, anyone interested in architecture, particularly from other disciplines. People in general.”

For one recent episode — perhaps his favorite yet, downloaded more than 600 times — Prakash , of India, the 2018 recipient of the , which is akin to a Nobel Prize of architecture. Prakash said he was amazed when the famous architect “was happy to speculate on the ‘best’ buildings of his long career, and then ventured to candidly discuss the very serendipitous way in which he was inspired to design them.”

Another memorable moment was when an associate professor of architecture at Washington State University, “upended my understanding of public and private when he suggested that in an Islamic city the street is private and the home public,” Prakash said.

91̽»¨talents are included in the podcast, too, such as when Prakash spoke with landscape architecture professor and urban design associate professor for a .” His producer for the podcast series is Elizabeth Umbanhowar, a doctoral student in landscape architecture.

Prakash said he listens daily to — and is inspired by — NPR interviewer , and agrees with her thinking that any story is interesting if you dig deep enough.

He said he’s always on the lookout for podcast guests and topics.

“It could be a story I have just read online, or a conversation with a friend at a bar. I am also looking for a vast multidisciplinary spread,” Prakash said.

​”In a sense, I am trying to see how people ​from different perspectives and backgrounds look — or could be made to look — at architecture.”

###

To learn more about Prakash and his work, contact him at vprakash@uw.edu. Follow him on Twitter: .