Arts Division

Burke Smithers (BDes 2024) discovered a passion for typography at UW that led to award-winning work, international experience, and the launch of his own type foundry, Nightjar Type. His designs reflect personal interests in nature and climate—showing how type can be both expressive and deeply personal.

Each of the College's 2025 medalists received a special gift — a glass bowl, handblown in the UW School of Art + Art History + Design.

Meet the four graduating students selected by the College of Arts & Sciences as 2025 Graduate Medalists for their accomplishments. 

Meet the four new graduates honored as College of Arts & Sciences Dean's Medalists for 2025. 

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the Distinguished Teaching Award, the UW’s highest teaching honor. And now, drumroll please, here are this year’s stars.

The College of Arts & Sciences celebrates undergraduate and graduate students from across all four divisions, who are recognized for making the most of their time at the UW. 

Recent recognition of the University of Washington includes an EarthLab Innovation Grant, the Best Paper Award from American Political Science Association and honorable recognition mention from the American Society for Theatre Research. UW professor Richard Watts and team awarded EarthLab Innovation Grant Richard Watts, UW associate professor of French, is part of an interdisciplinary team...

Henry Jackson-Spieker, Assistant Professor of 3D4M, is a born-and-raised Seattle artist who translates the experience of being Black by asking viewers to navigate intricate installations of glass, metal, and wood. 

Henry Jackson-Spieker, assistant professor of ceramics, glass and sculpture at the UW, is a born-and-raised Seattle artist known for his art installations. In his own work he uses a mix of material metal, glass, paracord, neon, wood to push viewers expectations of space and discernment, forcing them to rethink their physical and sociological relationship to everything around them.

Alejandro Rico Guevara is one of the foremost researchers on hummingbird bills. He has spent years studying how hummingbirds use their beaks to feed and fight. But his latest research looked at how human actions seem to be driving a high-speed example of evolution in hummingbird bills.Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is interviewed.

While at the UW, artist Kyra Wolfenbarger was a researcher, museum intern, and arts writer. What shaped her most were the people she met along the way.

Many bird enthusiasts like to hang bright red feeders filled with homemade sugar water to attract hummingbirds to their gardens. Now, new research suggests this common practice may be driving rapid evolutionary change in one species in California. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is quoted.

A new study suggests that Anna's Hummingbirds in the western United States are not only keeping up with human influence on their habitat, they're thriving. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is quoted.

Your Words Have Power is a temporary exhibition designed by a team of Design students and Studio Matthews in Partners in Print's new location in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood.

From campus to wherever you call home, we welcome you to learn from and connect with the College of Arts & Sciences community through public events spanning the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. We hope to see you this May. Innovation Month April 30 | An Evening with Christine Sun Kim (Public Lecture)...