Pursuing undergraduate education in developed countries has become a phenomenal trend in China over the past ten years. At the University of Washington (UW), among 7299 international students in 2014, 3845 are from China and over three-fourths of them are undergraduate students. Though Chinese students have been a significantly growing student body at UW, there has not been sufficient research to comprehensively understand them. My research is to create an ethnography of undergraduate Chinese international students at the University of Washington. The ethnography centers around the challenges they have faced at the crossroad of stepping into young adulthood and adjusting to American culture; and changes they have undergone in the U.S., including those of identities, beliefs, life styles, interests, and personalities. I aim to capture characteristics unique to this Chinese generation studying abroad who were born in 1990s under one-child policy, growing up in the era of economic reform in China and globalization; and to understand the sociopolitical, economic factors in China that made this studying abroad trend possible. The ethnography also focuses on students’ values and relationships with their families as singletons and how their transnational lives change the dynamics of their original families. I conducted in-depth interviews with ten junior and senior Chinese international students with various majors and backgrounds at UW. Reoccurring themes from fieldwork, which are being further investigated, include realization of being racial and ethnic minority in the U.S., challenges of assimilating into American society, social dynamics among Chinese and American peers, restrictions of working opportunities in the U.S., non-traditional definition on filial piety, etc. This ethnography intends to promote understanding of Chinese international students at UW and shed light on the only-child generation in China.
 

Evidence suggests that today’s radio caters more to consumer behavior with more product advertising than original content. Community radio aims to change this trend by producing original content with free form product advertising. In this way broadcasting can be used to empower marginalized groups and cultivate diversity. This community-based action research supports the development of UWave Radio as a campus/community Low-Power FM station. Our research question is, “How can UWave Radio and other community low power FM radio stations best serve diversity and student voice at public universities like UW Bothell?” We approach this question using action-oriented community engaged methods that allow researchers to work with community members in building a participatory media organization. We are able to do this by researching how local community radio stations are engaging with the community. Some of the stations that we have been able to contact for interviews are Bellevue College’s KBCU, KAOS in Olympia and WWU’s KUGS. We’ve also conducted surveys from UWave Radio listeners by collecting emails at the events we host on campus. We also use focus groups in order to brainstorm and review effective strategies for outreach. Our progress to date also includes a robust student-run online radio station (http://uwave.fm), with long-range budget and business planning, an FM construction permit for 104.9 (KUWU) and approval of an 18-month extension to our construction permit while we continue to negotiate with the UW for final approval. Thus far I’ve observed how this student led organization facilitates the cultivation of diversity by amplifying a diverse body of voices as directors, managers, show hosts and listeners to the station. By making broadcast radio accessible on campus it can be used as a resource for students to express themselves in a way that also develops their appreciation for diversity.

Since the founding of the United States, education has been used as a means to create and maintain the idea of a citizen. Classrooms are therefore always social and political spaces. Often classrooms are spaces where people are socialized into dominant ways of thinking and understanding of the world which perpetuates existing structural inequalities and systemic violence. Mainstream understandings of poverty that hold individuals responsible for their own situation fails to recognize structural causes of poverty and its relationship with the reproduction of privilege. In order to push back, it is important to begin unlearning these dominant ways of thinking about poverty and privilege. The purpose of my research was to better understand how university classrooms can be spaces where previous beliefs and social norms about poverty and privilege are affirmed or altered. I examined what role the teacher’s instructional content, class activities, and approach to learning played in that process of possible transformation for students. Specifically, I examined how these pedagogies affect pre-existing ideas about poverty, privilege, and class relations in the U.S and how people understand their own class identities and shape their. My research had two main components: 1) participant observation in a University of Washington class where themes of poverty and privilege are related to course content, during Winter Quarter 2016; and 2) several focus groups with students enrolled in the class. Through my research I found that the instructor incorporated radical pedagogies through decentering his own authority, creating lots of space for discussion, and presenting ideas and questions that challenged dominant ways of understanding. Students expressed that these methods helped build a trusting yet rigorous space that allowed them to begin a process of unlearning previous assumptions. My research therefore has implications for educators working to create spaces of unlearning in their own classrooms.
 

The Odegaard Writing and Research Center (OWRC) is one of the most well-known and broadly focused writing support resources on the UW campus. Our staff of nearly 70 tutors offers about 500 bookable appointments each week; additionally, a consistent flow of unscheduled writers enter the center daily. To manage incoming traffic, two years ago, the OWRC instituted a concierge position with responsibilities that include answering general questions, assisting writers with booking appointments, notifying tutors of appointment arrivals, and conducting drop-in sessions. Still, traffic flow into the OWRC is occasionally overwhelming and concierge staff often mention the logistical challenges and frustrations inherent in the position. We decided to assess the concierge position from a design perspective, using focus groups, interviews, surveys and ethnographic observation. We wanted to know more about the nature of challenges faced by concierge staff and to identify measures that would improve our writers’ user experience. Preliminary results from this project point us to several recurring problems for which we plan to generate and test solutions iteratively. In addition to improving the experience our fellow Huskies have in the OWRC, our work may have implications for other institutions that experience high traffic flow and want to make their check-in experience more streamlined and welcoming.

This research focuses on the ongoing student activism at the University of Washington Bothell advocating for a Diversity Center. Since 2011, students have expressed their need for for a Diversity Center on campus. On February 25th, 2015, the students of the University of Washington Bothell organized a campus walkout declaring a state of emergency for marginalized students on campus and stated their need for a Diversity Center at UW Bothell. This projects highlights the voices and experiences of the students through analyzing social structures, institutions, and their connection to collective identity, collective activism. We argue that this form of activism is used as a tactic of decolonization and resistance, as it challenges the historic capitalistic colonization of the university. The focus of this research is to recognize that social institutions are shaped, transformed, and influenced by a social structure. This work is important in understanding the institutions epistemic framework is rooted an continues to operate through white supremacy and capitalism. Therefore, we ask ourselves the questions: what has been the role of the students’ activism on campus for a Diversity Center? And how does such transform, decolonize, the university? In order for us to answer the questions and document the activism, we have and will continue to conduct interviews and focus groups with student activists, in addition to engaging in social media analysis about the campus walkout. Some evidence that we have found was that students felt caged and a sense of not belonging by not having a Diversity Center, which has has motivated their activism, while critically analyzing their own intersecting identities. Therefore, through this resistance and activism, students have redefined collective efficacy, developed intentional communities, and work to both heal and dismantle systems of oppression.

This research represents the culmination of my fieldwork as an anthropologist and activist in the Seattle counter-trafficking movement.The Seattle anti-trafficking movement is experiencing a transitional moment, as it reemerges from antebellum abolitionism to transform into the standard-bearer for human rights in the 21st century. Though renovated with the human rights vernacular of modern social justice, many of the mythologies found thriving within the global discussion of modern slavery are those of antebellum characters revived and renamed. Grassroots efforts have begun to instigate a culture shift in how we view ‘our role’ as bystanders to these heinous crimes, though the methodologies utilized by counter trafficking activists and volunteers in Seattle have yet to be given serious critique. While productive, it is my observation that some of the tactics utilized by both myself and fellow activists may reflect the nature of a community and culture that demands the commodification of humanitarianism – methodologies requiring by nature the depreciation of the ideal of inalienable human rights. How does this observation help us to define the 21st century abolitionist movement? While the isms of today are often discussed as contours that define and divide us, the people that I have had the privilege of working with over the past three years have found common ground not in faith, methodologies, or even priorities; rather, it has been an earnest desire to do good in addition to merely surviving. It takes great courage to overcome the paralysis triggered by the overwhelming global horrors we are confronted with everyday. I chose here to explore this space between the rhetoric of ethics and the demands of work in the field, focusing both on the trends represented in character mythologies, and how we work to move forward within and despite them.