Is it a doctor’s job to get the best outcomes for their patients or to tell the truth? What happens when these two things are not aligned? These are questions that ����ԭ�� students have to wrangle with in Biol 180: Introductory Biology. The goal, says , UW assistant professor of biology, is to have students experience a more nuanced side of biology. There is not always one right answer, and issues of power and relationships often come into play.

Theobald aims to connect the biology concepts the students learn in class to real-world issues, something she hopes will help both retain students in the biology major at the UW and help non-majors in the class with their future careers.

Just how common is it for biology curricula to include real-world examples? One way to answer this question is to look at educational resources for biology instructors.

In published in Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research, Theobald and her team examined almost 3,000 science guidelines and assessment questions from 16 sources — including MCAT practice questions and questions from the Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science and AP biology tests — for any connections to society. Of the approximately 200 elements — about 7% — that had real-world implications, many discussed ethics and public health issues.

UW News spoke with Theobald; lead author , UW postdoctoral fellow in biology; and co-author , UW doctoral student in biology, to find out more about these results and what they mean for biology education today.

Why do you think so few learning objectives and assessment questions were connected to real-world examples?

Carly Busch: One reason is probably that there’s a perception that real-world connections are not a part of the primary purpose of the course, that they only belong as an addendum or an aside.

This perception makes sense in some ways, given how departments and institutions have conceptualized biology and what biology undergraduate students expect to get out of a biology degree. But the lack of these connections to society was also remarkable, because I think they play a really important role in developing undergraduate students holistically and broadly as they continue on in their science careers. Real-world examples can support students’ interest in science and help them develop their scientific identity.

Madison Meuler: I think there is also a belief of, “Oh well, this is an intro biology class. If this person is going to be a scientist, they’ll get training in the societal stuff later.” But I think there’s value in having this type of information even in intro courses.

Students in these courses may or may not go on to major in biology, and may or may not pursue a career in STEM. But even if this is their only science course in college, what could they take away from it that can help them be an informed citizen in the world?

Science plays a huge role in politics and in a lot of decisions that affect people’s day-to-day lives. It’s a missed opportunity if you’re not making those connections in the classroom. We want students, regardless of their future careers, to at least walk away being equipped with some skills to critically analyze the role that science is playing in society.

You found that roughly half of the questions that did mention society only vaguely referenced real-world scenarios. Can you give examples of implicit versus explicit mentions?

CB: So the most vague mention was from the American Association of Immunologists’ recommendations for an undergraduate immunology course. This is one of the advanced subtopics that they list: the implications of Emil Von Behring’s . We coded it as a vague mention because some of those implications could be related to society, not only focused on scientific experiments.

An example of explicit incorporation is from the bioinformatics core competencies. It asks students to explain the implications, good and bad, of being able to walk into a doctor’s office and have your genome sequenced and analyzed, or of being able to obtain genetic information from direct-to-consumer testing services. There we have a very clear example of students being asked to think about how the science concept fits in with society.

Do you think that connecting science to society can help retain students in science?

CB: We haven’t tested this yet, but based on prior research, there is reason to believe that incorporating these connections is going to help students be more engaged in what they’re learning in class. Engagement is closely tied to students’ performance outcomes, which often make or break their decision to persist in a major.

There is also a theory that helping students apply what they’re learning in the classroom to things happening in their lives and in their communities .

This is something I am excited to study in the future — to understand how making these connections expands students’ perceptions of what science is and who does science. The types of research questions that most scientists ask are on topics they personally are interested in. Maybe they study wildflowers in Washington because they love hiking, and they’ve always been struck by how beautiful the flowers are. That’s the beauty of being an academic researcher: You get to explore all of the different things that you’re curious about.

MM: Connecting content to real-world experiences could also increase retention by helping students feel a sense of belonging in the classroom. You’re far less likely to persist in a class if you feel like you don’t belong in that physical space, right? The course content definitely plays a role in that.

I think that making these connections between content and societal issues could help students start thinking things like, “Oh, this is a thing I care about, how could I design a study that could provide evidence to help inform a policy decision?”

Elli Theobald: Students have said to me, “I don’t want to be a scientist because I want to help people.” And that’s a problem. If we’re teaching science in a way that makes it feel like it isn’t helping people, then we’re doing something wrong. It’s just such a huge disservice to biology because we’ll lose so many amazing and capable students who could push our field forward.

This study looked at biology education resources. Do you know if biology instructors are already incorporating more real-world connections in their courses? ��

CB: If instructors aren’t getting support but they’re still making these connections in the classroom, it’s because they are putting that onus on themselves and choosing to add it. I applaud all instructors who are making these connections, and I fully expect that more connections are being made than and in these resources. We are currently collecting actual course materials from intro bio courses to see where instructors are making these connections.

But I also think that it would be such a valuable resource for instructors to have more support in making those connections. Here’s where I think really bolstering the amount of resources for instructors could provide more scaffolding for instructors to be able to provide a variety of connections, or to even recognize opportunities to make these connections in the course objectives. One of my hopes for this work is that it helps to provide motivation for those sorts of materials.

ET: Instructors are amazing. They’re working so hard to connect the content in some way to students’ lives, or to find the best, coolest examples. They need to have support from their institutions to be able to do more of this in their classrooms.

This research was funded by The National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Theobald atellij@uw.edu Busch at cbusch3@uw.edu and Meuler at mmeuler@uw.edu.

The historic Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl set sail for San Francisco from the Port of Seattle on Monday, marking the end of and another stop on the to support a sustainable future at sea.

The ship, built in 1914, boasts three towering masts and hails from Bergen, Norway. During the inaugural One Ocean Week Seattle, organized by , it docked at Pier 66 to welcome attendees and members of the public aboard to explore and learn.

The drew hundreds of people to Seattle to discuss marine ecosystems, the seafood industry, shipping and renewable energy, and more. ����ԭ�� scientists joined policymakers, educators and industry leaders to define and address priorities in stewardship and ocean science.

, a UW affiliate professor and research scientist at the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, served as a panelist on the “Coast to Coast Collaboration in Research” aboard Statsraad Lehmkuhl on Friday morning.

Moore contributed her expertise as a marine mammal ecologist to help launch the in the Pacific Arctic in 2010, leading to an international effort to establish a network of observatories in the Arctic to track ecosystem health amidst physical changes to the region.

The panel, part of a series hosted by , offered a chance to discuss shared goals as melting ice opens the Arctic up to more traffic.

���� was an important opportunity for international collaboration and public engagement regarding rapid ecosystem changes in Arctic, and local, waters,” Moore said.

, a UW professor of mechanical engineering, helped lead a “behind the scenes” lab tour hosted by the , which joins researchers at UW, Oregon State University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

During the tour, researchers showcased marine energy monitoring projects at the , including videos and sonar documenting interactions between marine life and tidal energy turbines, sensors to detect underwater collisions, and systems to monitor how much noise is produced by the devices that help harness energy from waves and currents.

“These tools help us identify and minimize environmental effects associated with harnessing energy from waves, tides and rivers,” Polagye said.

, a UW principal research scientist of aquatic and fishery sciences participated in a panel discussion, where he shared his work on habitat in , which borders downtown Seattle. Toft’s lab studies how shoreline development impacts habitat value for young salmon.

“Although the shorelines of Elliott Bay have been heavily modified, restoration efforts have had positive results,” he said. “The panel gave us a chance to discuss the importance of maintaining a healthy shoreline along a major urban working waterfront.”

Despite the density of human activity along the shores of Elliott Bay, these waters are home to key species, including kelp, orcas and salmon. Maintaining functionality without losing habitat is a challenge, requiring input from various stakeholders, and creativity.

, a coastal hazards specialist at , provided an update on observed and projected sea level rise during a Friday workshop bringing together coastal managers and tribes around the Puget Sound region.

“The opportunity to meet in person with that many people who all came for the workshop was invaluable,” he said.

To connect with a UW expert in ocean or environmental science, contact Gillian Dohrn in UW News at gdohrn@uw.edu.

Bee experts wouldn’t have previously expected to find the likes of Osmia cyaneonitens, Dufourea dilatipes and Stelis heronae in Washington. But this year, researchers added eight new bee species to a list of the state’s native pollinators.��

While collecting pollinators in Chelan County to study how climate and wildfires affect native bee populations, , a ����ԭ�� research scientist of biology, discovered never recorded in Washington and 100 species that had not previously been documented in Chelan County. Expert taxonomists from Utah to British Columbia helped her identify the bees, which were photographed in high resolution for her research.��

 ����’s a really exciting moment. Sitting with an expert taxonomist to determine the identity of an undocumented bee filled me with awe,” said Maust, who completed this research as a UW doctoral student of of environmental and forest sciences. “They cited subtle characteristics that I would not have even known to examine. The findings also have important implications for biodiversity. It’s difficult to conserve a species when we don’t know its name or native range.”

Taxonomists refer to detailed sets of characteristics to differentiate bees by family, genera and species. The morphological qualities of bees are incredibly diverse, and individual species can vary in small but significant ways.  Bees can be distinguished from each other by the shape and structure of wing veins, hair color on the ‘terga’ — plates forming the bee’s abdomen — and the location of ‘scopa,’ or pollen carrying hairs.

If you are interested in bees, Maust said, the trains volunteers to find, collect and identify native bees. Individuals can also share bee photos and observations on sites like where the data is made available to researchers.��

Depicted below are a few of the new-to-Washington bees Maust observed and the characteristics scientists focused on for classification. Click the image to see the full resolution photo.

The scopa on the abdomen of this female bee and its heavily pitted ‘terga’ with inflated edges helped Maust to identify it as Dianthidium singulare.

This fierce-looking female Osmia cyaneonitens has huge mandibles (teeth) and flashy blue coloring. Osmia, in the mason bee family, use their large mandibles to move mud or cut leaves or petals to build nests. Their bodies are often metallic blue and green.

This Dufourea dilatipes Maust collected belongs to a rare group of the Halictidae family, commonly called ‘sweat bees’ because they are attracted to the salt and moisture in the sweat of mammals. All members of this family have a strongly arched basal vein on the forewing. Dufourea dilatipes exclusively forages on Calochortus flowers for pollen and nectar. 

Black and brown coloration on the head, abdomen and thorax is one trait of Melissodes nigracauda. This one was caught in a soap/water trap, which Maust said can result in a spiky hairdo sometimes smoothed by “relaxing” the bee and giving it  a blow dry before pinning.��

Stelis heronae, at 4 to 5 millimeters long, is so small it was hard for Maust to pin. It wasn’t described by any taxonomists until 2024, which made it tricky to identify. Stelis heronae is distinguished from other species by the maculations, or colored markings, on its terga. It is a cuckoo, or parasitic, bee that lays its eggs in the nests of other bees. Maust pointed out that female Stelis lack scopal hairs under their abdomens because, like other parasitic bees, they do not gather pollen but instead rely on the pollen stores of their hosts.

For more information, contact Maust at amaust@uw.edu.��

Every year, undergraduates at the ����ԭ�� start their college experience, often in cavernous classrooms, learning alongside dozens, if not hundreds, of their peers. Research shows that taking these courses — some prerequisites and other classes on popular topics — can make students feel isolated, scared and not up to the task.

To confront loneliness and promote student well-being, the UW is piloting a two-year project called “Five for Flourishing” that provides instructors with five simple academic interventions to support students and help them succeed. Sponsored by the , the and the Provost’s office, Five for Flourishing’s initial cohort — 13 instructors of large classes from all three UW campuses — will use the strategies to help welcome students, show compassion and support them in their academic journeys.

“Addressing mental health and well-being on a college campus requires a comprehensive approach,” said , director of the Resilience Lab, whose mission is to promote well-being among UW students, faculty and staff. “This is an intervention where we can activate the learning environment for undergraduate students in large classes with minimal effort by the instructors and make a difference.”

Inspired by similar, but more intensive programs at other institutions, Philip Reid, vice provost of Academic and Student Affairs, and Marisa Nickle, senior director of Strategy & Academic Initiatives, saw an opportunity for the UW’s students. What emerged is a simple turnkey program that provides instructors with interventions to work into their curriculums.

“We know that students, especially incoming first-year students, can experience anxiety and stress at times,” Provost Tricia Serio said. “We’re so excited to offer our instructors a program that welcomes students and helps set them on a path to succeed in the classroom and on campus, while acknowledging that they may be navigating these challenging feelings.”

In 2020, the Resilience Lab published an for instructors that outlined a number of interventions to support student well-being. By contrast, Five for Flourishing is designed to be a streamlined, simple tool for instructors to add to their teaching plan.

Here’s how it works: Five for Flourishing begins by adding a message to course syllabuses that welcomes students, creates a sense of belonging and normalizes asking for support, even when students are stressed by factors outside the classroom.

Next, Five for Flourishing provides a quarter’s worth of welcome-to-class slides specific to each UW campus that point to wellness resources, cultural happenings, ways to participate in democracy, and opportunities for students to connect with one another.

Instructors will encourage students, especially before and after exams or big assignments, to adopt a growth mindset — the notion that these academic tasks aren’t a reflection of their self-worth or intelligence, but rather a method to determine a student’s strengths and areas for additional learning.

“This builds on a lot of research on the misperception that intelligence is fixed,” said , director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. “The reality is that intelligence isn’t fixed and that people can grow.”

Research also shows that when students connect with one another, they’re more likely to do well academically and socially, which in turn makes them more likely to graduate. Five for Flourishing instructors will place students in small groups and invite them to discuss course material, build their professional communication skills and experience group problem solving. The students’ only assignment is to take notes on their discussions and share those with the instructor.

“This builds on the idea that prompting students to get together in really low-stakes environments helps establish a secondary support network that they can tap when they run into trouble,” Moon said. ���� overcomes the idea of just going into class and looking straight ahead and not looking sideways.”

Finally, Five for Flourishing instructors conduct a mid-quarter check in with their students to ask what’s working well and what could be better, what’s helping them to learn and what’s hindering their success.

“Many of the professors at UW have real compassion and care for students, and this project helps them to channel that compassion and care in really productive ways,” Moon said.

Every student will be asked to complete a survey at the beginning and end of the quarter. That data will inform how to adjust and continue to scale the program. Instructors will also receive a small stipend for participating.

, a teaching professor in the School of Engineering and Technology at UW Tacoma, is in the inaugural Five for Flourishing teaching cohort. He’s already been using similar academic interventions for all his classes, including high-enrollment courses like popular games programming. Building upon his existing tools, he’s excited to see these student supports scale up and reach more undergraduates.

“Every single faculty member that I’ve had a chance to chat with, all of them care so deeply about student experience, that is also what I care about,” Marriott said. “Spreading this out to more faculty, after we have some data and feedback, is going to be awesome.”

In Seattle, also plans to use Five for Flourishing in her Intro to Medical Anthropology course, with 225 students, and Comparative Study of Death, with 80 students. While she too had compassionate components to her teaching, she appreciates the framework of Five for Flourishing, the training she’s received, and, as a scientist, she’s looking forward to seeing the data from the student surveys to see what is and isn’t working as intended.

She’s seen students who struggle with anxiety and loneliness, students who are afraid to walk into class, or are balancing long commutes, family demands and academics. Programs like Five for Flourishing establish universal accommodations to uplift and support the entire student body.

“The University, in doing this Five for Flourishing, is setting a stone, a ground stone, to say to our community, ‘Look, we do have a problem here, and this is one way to solve it,’” Saravia said.

Helping students understand that they are not alone will have benefits for their entire lives.

“Feeling lonely has social impacts. If you feel lonely, you’re less engaged. And if we are less engaged, we have less possibilities of a thriving democracy. If we don’t know how to talk to one another, how to find common ground, or how to set boundaries, or how to see a problem together, how to even think about it together … If we don’t have that, we are in trouble as a society,” she said. “I’m very hopeful that Five for Flourishing will give all of us a strong start to change that and to inspire students to learn from one another, to see each other. I’m hopeful, too, that engagement with one another will build community, and teach them to have effective engagement with the world.”

At first, some parents were wary: An audio chatbot was supposed to teach their kids to speak positively to themselves through lessons about a superhero named Zip. In a world of Siri and Alexa, many people are skeptical that the makers of such technologies are putting children’s welfare first.

Researchers at the ����ԭ�� created a new web app aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management. In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings through lessons. The UW team found that, after speaking with the app for a week, most children could explain the concept of supportive self-talk (the things people say to themselves either audibly or mentally) and apply it in their daily lives. And kids who’d engaged in negative self-talk before the study were able to turn that habit positive.

The UW team in June at the 2023 Interaction Design and Children conference. The app is still a prototype and is not yet publicly available.

The UW team saw a few reasons to develop an educational chatbot. Positive self-talk has shown a range of benefits for kids, from to . And previous studies have shown children can learn various tasks and abilities from chatbots. Yet little research explores how chatbots can help kids effectively acquire socioemotional skills.

“There is room to design child-centric experiences with a chatbot that provide fun and educational practice opportunities without invasive data harvesting that compromises children’s privacy,” said senior author , an associate professor in the UW Information School. “Over the last few decades, television programs like ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Mister Rogers,’ and ‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood’ have shown that it is possible for TV to help kids cultivate socioemotional skills. We asked: Can we make a space where kids can practice these skills in an interactive app? We wanted to create something useful and fun — a ‘Sesame Street’ experience for a smart speaker.”

The UW researchers began with two prototype ideas with the goal to teach socioemotional skills broadly. After testing, they narrowed the scope, focusing on a superhero named Zip and the aim of teaching supportive self-talk. They decided to test the app on siblings, since research shows that when they use technology with another person.

Ten pairs of Seattle-area siblings participated in the study. For a week, they opened the app and met an interactive narrator who told them stories about Zip and asked them to reflect on Zip’s encounters with other characters, including a supervillain. During and after the study, kids described applying positive self-talk; several mentioned using it when they were upset or angry.

By the end of the study, all five kids who said they used negative self-talk before had replaced it with positive self-talk. Having the children work with their siblings supported learning in some cases, but some parents found the kids struggling to take turns while using the app.

The length of these effects isn’t clear, researchers note. The study spanned just one week and the tendency for survey participants to respond in ways that make them look good could lead kids to speak positively about the app’s effects. Future research may include longer studies in more natural settings.

“Our goal is to make the app accessible to a wider audience in the future,” said lead author , a UW doctoral student in the iSchool. “We’re exploring the integration of large language models — the systems that power tech like ChatGPT — into our prototype and we plan to work with content creators to adapt existing socioemotional learning materials into our system. The hope is that these will facilitate more prolonged and effective interventions.”

Other authors are , a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs who graduated from the UW iSchool; , a UW research assistant in the iSchool; , a UW masters student, and , a UW doctoral student, both in the human centered design and engineering department; and , a masters student at the University of Southern California who did undergraduate work at the UW iSchool. This research was funded by the Jacobs Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Researchers.

For more information, contact Hiniker at alexisr@uw.edu and Fu at chrisfu@uw.edu.

Picture a bench. Maybe you imagine the wooden seat of a picnic table, the metal of a bus shelter, the plastic of a school cafeteria.

Different materials, different locations, same basic purpose: to welcome more than one person.

This spring quarter, in Architecture 231: Making and Meaning, that was the essential mission of the culminating project: Build a bench, create a social opportunity.

“Architecture is taking an idea and turning it into a reality that someone can experience,” said co-instructor .

And so, this month, there were some two dozen benches, scattered around both Gould Hall and Architecture Hall in a pop-up demonstration of student work. There were benches with backs, with ramps, with steps and shelves and swings. Benches in the shape of an L, or a C, or an ocean wave. Nicholls encouraged students to find places that were underused, or even overused, and “help them out with a bench.”

The class started with small, individual projects, made of reclaimed and found materials, such as cardboard and sticks, to teach scale and structure. Then came the bench project, a team endeavor that involved planning and sketching, trial and error, and use of the College of Built Environments’ Fabrication Lab to cut and assemble the lumber.

Sophomore Jasmine Madrigal was part of a group that constructed a bench with squared-off, V-shaped legs and a corner shelf.

“I’ve learned about the materials, that not everything will stay the same as you first conceptualize it, and we sometimes had to compromise our ideas in order to develop it further,” Madrigal said.

That’s the point of the class, co-instructor and Architecture alum said – to learn process, collaboration and attention to detail.

“Students come into the class having an idea and think it’s built automatically,” Leanos said with a smile.

While a few benches may find a permanent home at Gould or Architecture Hall, most will be taken apart, so the materials can be used again, in a future class.

These nocturnal flying mammals live in cities and rural areas and in most climates around the world – and maybe even in your own backyard.

, a ����ԭ�� professor of biology and curator of mammals at the , explains that there are over 1,400 species of bats spanning an incredible diversity. Only three of the species are vampire bats which feed on the blood of birds or mammals. Most bats feed on insects, but diets vary from lizards, birds or mice to fruit and nectar. Bats play a vital role in ecosystems by controlling insect populations, pollinating plants as they move from bloom to bloom, and spreading seeds as they fly and poop.

One focus of Santana’s research is how bats have evolved to have different abilities and specializations. Bats are the only mammals that fly by flapping their wings (compared to gliding). Their handlike, membraned wing structures are incredibly maneuverable in tight spaces. Flying has enabled bats to access a lot of different food sources, she explains, which has probably shaped their diversity over time.��

Bat skulls, for example, have different shapes. Fruit-eating bats tend to have a shorter skull, optimized for a stronger bite, whereas a nectar bat’s long snout houses a long tongue. But they’re not limited to foraging with their mouths. Many bats will scoop up insects with a membrane that stretches between their hind legs like a sail while flying.��

Even vampire bats, who sidle up to their animal prey to make a small incision with sharp teeth and lick the resulting blood, have evolved to hop and scoot using their legs and folded wings to get away quickly from their victims. After a big meal, it turns out, they can be too heavy to fly.

Santana hopes people will get past bats’ scary reputation.��

���� would make sense that because we can’t quite discern what these animals are at night, we might be a little scared of them. But if you see the faces of bats – some flying foxes look like little puppies – you realize they can be super cute.”

For more information, contact Sharlene Santana / ssantana@uw.edu

For five days in April, jazz music echoed through the Meany Hall Studio Theatre.����

But the sounds of collaboration didn’t end there.����

In between playing, students and faculty engaged in listening sessions and conversations about the recording process. That was the format for this year’s , held annually through the ����ԭ�� School of Music.��

Typically, the project brings in guest artists to work with students and put on public performances. This year, the event had a different focus as recording engineer offered students an in-depth experience focused on the performance and engineering sides of recording. The new format allowed students and faculty to gain experience with UW’s new mobile recording system. While teaching fundamental recording and audio skills, Boucher also worked with students and faculty to document new works and experiment with techniques.��

“You become a better musician by becoming a better recording engineer,” Boucher said, “and vice versa.”��

Boucher has credits as an engineer, mixer and producer. He’s worked with a variety pop and rock musicians, including Andrew Bird, Madison Cunningham and Rufus Wainwright. He has also worked on motion picture soundtracks, earning engineering credits on “Frozen” and “Encanto,” among others.��

, associate professor of jazz studies, is the faculty advisor for the Improvised Music Project. The program, which will return to its original format in 2023, is open to any students and faculty members across the School of Music.��

“Recording is about our ability to listen deeply and listen to greater levels of detail and respect that detail,” Poor said. “You get this other perspective that you can’t naturally have when you’re playing by yourself.”��

��For more information, contact Poor at tedpoor@uw.edu.��

Who do you talk to when you have a problem?��

“For a student, it’s most likely a friend,” said Jennifer Laxague, assistant director of LiveWell & Campus Health Promotion at the ����ԭ��. Because young people tend to talk first to someone in their peer group, created a Peer Health Education program where trained students teach other students about taking care of themselves and each other.��

are current undergraduate and graduate students who give interactive workshops on health and wellness topics such as mental health, sleep, healthy relationships and alcohol use. Sharing evidence-based knowledge, skills and campus resources, these workshops are aimed at promoting life-long behaviors that support health, self-growth and meaningful connection. Workshops can be requested for UW students by anyone — faculty, staff, students, registered student organizations or departments.

New this year is the launch of a one-on-one peer coaching program that is free to UW students at the Seattle campus. sessions teach students to identify their strengths and personal-change goals, learn useful and effective skills for personal development and self-management, and work toward the transformations they want to see in themselves, their relationships and their lives. Peer wellness coaches are students who receive additional in-depth training and supervision and are available for appointments online or in person.

Peer Wellness Coaching isn’t a replacement for professional psychological counseling that should be provided by a licensed professional, Laxague said. Rather, it’s a learning space for students looking for ways to solve problems and to grow their self-efficacy.

“This type of self-learning will serve students not only in college but throughout their future lives,” Laxague said.

With the coronavirus still a concern this fall, a UW class that normally is about air pollution and emissions has pivoted to focus on another airborne health hazard — coronavirus aerosols.

Air pollution expert��, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering, is leading his class in building and testing low-cost, DIY air purifiers. The MERV filters used in their design can remove common pollutants from the air, plus virus particles — and can be used to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.��

These types of homemade air purifiers have already been successful at removing particles found in wildfire smoke from the air.��

As part of the class project, the students are designing various configurations of the purifiers and testing how effective they are. Initially, the students built a “one fan, one filter” device. Then they built larger devices with two to five filters in triangular or three-dimensional box shapes. Students will be testing their��devices to see whether having the fan push or pull air through the filter is better, how noisy the purifiers are and how effective they are at removing particles from the air.��

For more information about the class and project, contact Marshall at jdmarsh@uw.edu.��For video, contact Kiyomi Taguchi at ktaguchi@uw.edu or 206-685-2716.