If you flip over the badge of any Microsoft employee, regardless of their title or seniority, you’ll find the following phrase: “Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
This is the mission statement of Microsoft, and it applies to everyone who works at the company, including people with disabilities like vision impairments, cognitive impairments like autism, and physical disabilities, among others.
UW senior Teresa Mata-Cervantes remembers a moment in high school when her peers were looking up colleges like Harvard for a class project. At the time, she never thought that she could attend an Ivy League school. “I thought that was crazy to think about applying there,” Mata-Cervantes said. “Now, I think I might apply to Harvard.
Some demographic estimates suggest that within the first 130 years of contact with the “New World,” 95 percent of indigenous people died. “What would the United States look like if 95 percent of the people were gone like that?”. Christopher Teuton, professor and chair of the UW Department of American Indian Studies (AIS), said while snapping his fingers.
On Friday night, the Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Activists (SARVA), an ASUW entity, hosted Take Back the Night, which is an open mic for victims and survivors to share their stories. By breaking the silence, SARVA strives to empower victims and survivors of sexual assault to share their stories on their own terms.
The No. 1 tip for securing a job is to network, which is particularly true in user experience (UX) fields. Most companies in the technology industry have a UX designer on their team, but these positions are highly competitive. When Gail Thynes, a current UX designer at Microsoft, was completing her bachelor’s degree in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the UW as a non-traditional student, she noticed that UX professionals were often out of students’ reach.
On Friday night, Kane 130 was packed with attendees who watched with bated breath as Chinese yo-yo duo Andrew Kan and Nick Tse sent their yo-yos sailing through the air in sync to the bridge of “How Far I’ll Go” from Disney’s “Moana.”. The duo was one of 13 groups performing at the annual UW Asian Student Commission (ASC) Talent Show.
At the UW, less than half of prospective engineering freshmen successfully complete an engineering degree, and this number is lower for students of low income backgrounds. People like Sonya Cunningham are committed to changing that and supporting the potential of these students. Cunningham is the director of the UW Washington State Academic RedShirt (STARS) program, which focuses on supporting economically disadvantaged and educationally underserved students from Washington who are highly motivated to pursue engineering degrees.
Last Friday, the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ Intellectual House was full of students, faculty, and community members who gathered to celebrate the works and narratives of indigenous women-identifying scholars. “The voice of indigenous women is an important one,” said Casey Wynecoop, the administrative coordinator at the Intellectual House.
Nonfiction writer, Cowlitz Indian tribe member, and UW alumna Elissa Washuta is unabashed about sharing her identity. She owns and shares her experiences with mental health, bipolar disorder, and trauma through writing, and finds it plays a large role in her healing process. Washuta has written pieces on these topics and others in “Literary Hub,” “The Weeklings,” and “The Chronicle of Higher Education.”.
