In Our Nature

Update 4/18: Melanie Wade was named one of seven 2016 Husky Green Award winners.

UW fans know Melanie Wade for her contributions to the Husky volleyball team, including All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention nods her junior and senior year. Off the court, she's worked throughout her career to implement sustainability initiatives within the UW athletic department and across the campus as a whole....

Update 4/18: Aaron Tam was named one of the seven 2016 Husky Green Award winners.

UW student Aaron Tam is no stranger when it comes to environmental stewardship and advocacy. He is actively involved with several organizations on campus, including Carbon Washington, Earth Club, and UW Recycling.

As UW campus coordinator for Carbon Washington, Tam has led many community service projects in habitat restoration and petition gathering. He was also the only UW undergraduate student to collect over 1,400...

UW Bothell graduate student Alison Schmidt has volunteered all over Seattle. Most of her volunteer experiences have been with Seattle Tilth, where she focused on community engagement and education on recycling and composting and local farming and student learning gardens. She has also done ecological restoration with community partners like Mountain to Sound Greenway and Friends of North Creek Forest. Recently, she began participating in the kayak cleanups with Puget Sound Keepers on Lake Union.

Before pursuing her degree in environmental studies, Jansen spent 14 years working for...

As the manager of Cultivate, James Windau makes sustainability a top priority. The on-campus, full-service restaurant works to incorporate local and seasonal food, including serving produce grown on the UW Farm. Windau and Cultivate have recently signed up for Smart Catch, a chef-driven, sustainable seafood program. The program works to support environmentally sustainable fishing practices.

UW Housing and Food Services works to ensure the food and dining experiences on...

Update 4/18: Confronting Climate Change was named one of the seven 2016 Husky Green Award winners.

In the spring of 2015, the student group Confronting Climate Change - also known as Divest UW - celebrated a victory when the University of Washington's Board of Regents voted to divest from coal companies. 

The move was one that the group had fought for. In 2012, Divest UW delivered a petition to then-UW president Michael Young requesting fossil...

This past December, Salina Abraham was one of four University of Washington undergraduates to attend the Global Landscapes Forum in Paris. At the Forum, more than 3,000 people came together to forge solutions to the planet’s greatest climate and development challenges through sustainable land use. Abraham’s speech is featured in the video below.

“I was honored to be able to share solutions developed by youth and share our sentiments,” said Abraham. “...

Carolyn Hartman has worked diligently to promote environmental education and campus sustainability in numerous leadership capacities throughout her time at UW.

For the past three years, she has represented environmental student groups as an ASUW student senator. Last school year, she impressively leveraged her involvement with both the ASUW Senate and SEED, the HFS-affiliated environmental student group, to pass a resolution in support of increasing composting programs in the residence...

The UW International Forestry Students' Association (IFSA) was created just a year ago, but it's already grown into a robust community of environmental sustainability leaders, with more than 10 officers and 43 active members.

The UW arm of IFSA came into being when a group of students wanted to create a connection between UW students and the international environmental community. Since then, the student organization has traveled to the International Forestry Students' Symposium in the Philippines and the Global Landscapes Forum in...

Kathryn Jansen is the UW Department of Surgery's medical student program operations specialist. After noticing that the department didn't have compost and recycling bins readily available, Jansen made it a priority to add several to the department's break and conference rooms.

"We produce a ton of coffee grounds and filters, along with other food waste, while trying to keep our staff and residents caffeinated all day and night," said Jansen. "I would see the garbage bin overflowing with items that could be composted."

The Department of Surgery is the second largest department...

The UW Office of Admissions recently started a transition from paper-based applications to a digital process. On April 14, Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions David Sundine joined us for a Green Bag talk on the process and the benefits of the new system.

It was a fabulous talk that attracted a broad audience including folks from UW-IT, UW Sustainability, the School of Public Policy and Governance, Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and even UW Bothell. Sundine talked about how the new system makes the undergraduate admissions process much timelier and efficient while - as...