Welcome to this year’s final installment of office hours.   
2008 has been a really wonderful year here at the 
University of Washington.  We’ve had many exciting things 
occur and we’ve also had some extraordinary 
accomplishments from our faculty, staff and students.   
We’ve seen great success with our Capitol Campaign, 
we’ve launched many new programs and there’s, in fact, a 
lot of change going on right now on the campus.  Perhaps 
one of the most important and exciting for me is the 
creation of a new College of the Environment, an issue 
we’ve been discussing widely across the campus, we 
discussed last month at the Board of Regents meeting and 
it will be taken to them in June for a decision about 
whether or not to move forward with this great 
opportunity.  

Back in 1861, when the university was founded on a site 
that’s now downtown Seattle, this site, our current campus 
location, was not much more than a pristine wooded area.  
Things have changed a great deal in that time frame.  Back 
in 1861 no one was worried about global climate change 
or massive urbanization or transportation problems or the 
sustainability of our environment.  Today, we have to 
worry greatly about all of those things.  And the University 
of Washington has to play a role in finding solutions to 
those issues.    

Along with these great challenges for our planet come 
some remarkable opportunities for the University of 
Washington.  I’m hard pressed to find another university 
that has a better collection of faculty, staff, and students 
already working in the areas of environmental studies, 
global climate change, all of the issues around 
sustainability of our planet.  But the problem is, is that 
those 400 faculty and their colleagues are spread all 
across the university.  There’s no coherent whole to it.  
When students want to study environmental issues, they 
have to go around from department to department.  They 
can’t go to one place.  There’s no place where we get the 
critical mass and effort and focus that we really need to 
have if we’re going to address the real questions of global 
climate change and environmental sustainability.  That’s 
why we want to create the new College of the 
Environment.

Today we don’t know exactly what configuration the 
College of the Environment is going to take.  Indeed, in 
June we’ll be asking the Regents to approve essentially a 
shell of an organization.  What we have to do is continue to 
talk with all the schools and colleges and departments who 
want to be involved in this enterprise.  We’ll be doing that 
throughout the summer, into the fall and probably well 
into next year before we find exactly the way we want to 
shape and build this unique new college.  What’s critical is 
though, that we have permeable walls so faculty, students 
and staff can move into it and out of it.  That it becomes 
something very different than the current kinds of 
structures that we use.  What the college will have to do 
also is, be able to interact with people and the community, 
citizens, businesses, everyone who’s involved in issues of 
sustainability, in a new, more facile way than we’ve ever 
done before.  It’s an exciting opportunity for us.  We need 
to take advantage of it and we need to do it now.  
2008 has also been a great year for our students.  Once 
again, we had students win many of the major academic 
awards.  Jeff Eaton won a Marshall Scholarship.  Cecelia 
Gobin and Donna Neagle won Udall Scholarships.  Nate  
Bottman and Julia Moore won Goldwater Scholarships.  
Bryce McKibben is our new Truman Scholar.  And ViNhan 
became a Rangel fellow in public policy.  And it’s also been 
a great year for our faculty.  Indeed, we had two more 
fellows elected to the National Academy of Sciences; 
Elizabeth Thompson from statistics and Michael Bevan 
from Immunology.  
Thanks for watching this installment of Office Hours.  As 
always, I’d certainly like to hear from you and any 
comments t you might have on this or any other subjects 
that you’re interested in.  Please feel free to go to our 
website which is: Washington.edu/president or to send me 
an email directly at pres@u.washington.edu
I look forward to seeing you.  Thank you for your great 
help this year.  It’s been a wonderful one for us and enjoy 
your summer.