A professor needs a new keypad lock. A research scientist wants a wall in their office painted. A first-year student living in McCarty Hall notices a light flickering. A visitor to campus reports an overflowing toilet in the HUB.
These are some of the kinds of requests coming into UW Facilities (UWF) every week, which are then resolved by the hundreds of front-line staff who take care of the 150 or so buildings that make up the UW campus.
Dozens of leaks flooded UW buildings over a three-day weekend last year, leading to over $500,000 in damage. Now, thanks to new water sensors, UW Facilities staff can get to some leaks almost as soon as they start.
UW Facilities’ Salvage Wood Program gives campus trees a second life. When trees need to be cut down — due to construction, natural death, disease or other reasons — Facilities staff save the trees from the compost pile and transform them into usable wood for construction or woodworking.
When new Sound Transit light rail stations open this month, it will be a win for mobility around the region. It will also mean an upgrade to the U-PASS, said Bill Bryant, assistant director of UW Transportation Services.
Starting Aug. 30, the Link light rail will go north to Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace and Shoreline. The UW community will be able to easily explore more of the region thanks to the unlimited rides the U-PASS provides.
Decarbonizing UW operations is a big job that involves rebuilding the campus energy infrastructure, and it will take nearly a decade to complete. But it just got a boost from an unexpected source.
Right now, the UW burns natural gas to create steam and heat campus, emitting greenhouse gases. The University is at the beginning of an effort to decarbonize its energy system, called the Energy Transformation Strategy.
Kye Lee, a UW custodian at the Physics/Astronomy Building, began his journey learning English almost 60 years ago, as a schoolboy in South Korea. Like many students who learn from textbooks, his reading comprehension skills were good, but he had trouble with speaking and pronunciation. By the time he moved to the United States, he was 50, a hard age to acquire a second language.
Today, the Yoshino cherry trees in the UW’s Quad are as iconic to the University as Suzzallo Library and Drumheller Fountain. But it’s been 60 years since they were transplanted from the Arboretum, and even legends aren’t immortal.
Late Friday afternoon before Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Jodene Davis returned to her office in Mary Gates Hall, where she works as a director in Undergraduate Academic Affairs. Her colleagues pointed to the ceiling in the hall of their ground-floor suite. Water was coming out of the tiles, making its way down the wall and out the bottom of a doorframe.
The challenge: Prepare the UW campus to host a live national TV show, manage hundreds of students lined up before dawn, and do it all on the busiest spot in campus. You have less than a week. Go.
Every September, UW sports fans return to campus decked out in Husky colors — but this year, they won’t be the only ones creating a purple haze on Montlake. The venues can turn purple too, thanks to new sports lighting.
