UW Tacoma Faculty Assembly

May 3, 2025

Connecting with our ASUWT Student Leaders and UW Faculty Senate colleagues

One of the many leadership initiatives of the 2024-2025 UW Faculty Senate team (Louisa Mackenzie, Aarti Bhat, Cindy Dougherty, Gautham Reddy, and Program Coordinator Jordan Smith) has been to strengthen ties between the UW Seattle, UW Bothell, and UW Tacoma campuses, and in particular among our elected faculty leaders.

On Monday April 28 the UW Faculty Senate graciously hosted a luncheon event here at UW Tacoma in the Snoqualmie Library Powerhouse.

In addition to the opportunity to talk with one another, in-person, ahead of the afternoon’s Senate Planning and Budgeting Committee (SPBC) and Senate Executive Committee (SEC) meetings, also hosted and held in-person here at UW Tacoma, we had the pleasure of hearing from ASUWT student leadership about the data profile and characteristics of our student body here at UWT.

ASUWT member Bryce Scholten, speaking from a summary document and graphics developed collaboratively with ASUWT President Holly Wetzel, described some of the key findings of the ASUWT Task Force on Food Equity and Basic Needs.

A good reminder of the very real conditions facing our UWT students, even before the current conditions that many experience as threatening to public universities such as ours:

  • Nearly 1 in 2 students at UWT struggles with food insecurity, unsure where their next meal will come from.
  • More than 2 out of 3 students are working while going to school.
  • 3 out of 5 students commute to campus; more than 1 in 3 say transportation costs are a barrier, and 1 in 4 students have intentionally skipped coming to campus because they couldn’t afford gas or transportation.
  • 1 in 7 students said they’ve considered leaving UW Tacoma because meeting basic needs became too difficult.

These are our students here at UW Tacoma.

7 out of 10 students say that supportive faculty are what keep them connected to UW Tacoma.

We are grateful and honored to be able to support the leadership of our students, as well as our UW Senate colleagues. We are all concerned about the future of our campuses and public universities in the US. Please continue to invest in the day to day work of delivering value and care to our students: it matters, it makes a difference, and we are in this together.