Alumni Awards

The School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences honors the achievements and contributions of its alumni through the Hall of Alumni Excellence.  Recipients join the IAS Circle of Recognition, a collective of alumni, students, faculty, staff, and partners who have notable impact on our campus, region, and world.

The Hall of Alumni Excellence recognizes alumni at varying stages of career who are established or emerging leaders in their fields, policy changing public servants, and/or devoted and inspiring mentors. They are extraordinary alumni who embody IAS’s Mission, Values, and Goals and demonstrate equity and inclusion in their work and lives.

Call for Nominations!

Do you know an alum who exemplifies the mission and values of IAS?  Review the awards criteria and submit  nominations.

Deadline: February 28

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2021 Recipients

Hall of Alumni Excellence

Woogee Bae (MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics ’19) is a poet and founding editor with Snail Trail Press, an ecopoetics journal focused on the hope and resilience that the smallest creatures can teach us in the face of climate disaster. She writes on translingualism and waste, and her work can be found in P-QUEUE, Peach Mag, Poetry Northwest, Tagvverk, and elsewhere.

Bae received an M.A. in poetry from SUNY Buffalo before earning her MFA at UW Bothell. She is deeply engaged in the Seattle literary community as a freelance project organizer and Donor Relations Associate for Seattle Arts & Lectures. Bae has played a vital role within the MFA community by building bridges between the program and larger literary world. She is co-founder of the Gamut reading series, which provides a space for current MFA students and alumni to share work both online and at Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle. Bae was also instrumental in coordinating the 2019 &Now Festival of Innovative Writing, a major international conference of experimental literature hosted at UW Bothell.

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Maximilian Dixon (Environmental Studies ’11) is the Hazards and Outreach Program Supervisor for the Washington State Military Department’s Emergency Management Division (WA EMD). He manages the Earthquake, Tsunami, Volcano, Public Education, Preparedness and Outreach Programs and represents WA EMD as the subject matter expert and policy advisor on geological hazards, preparedness and outreach issues. Dixon is responsible for coordinating geological hazard risk reduction efforts between international, federal, state, tribal, and local partners. He is on the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program Coordinating Committee and the Advanced National Seismic System Steering Committee. Dixon is a Certified Emergency Manager and a recipient of the Governor’s Award for Leadership in Management. He received his bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees from the University of Washington.

Dixon maximized opportunities at UW Bothell, serving as founder and president of the Sustainability Organization of UW Bothell and Cascadia College and as a founding member of the UWB and Cascadia College Commuter Services Task Force. Other notable service roles include co-founding the Shoreline Farmers Market Association and being a founding member for Friends of North Creek Forest.

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Morgan Mentzer (Global Studies '04) is co-founder of Lavender Rights Project, a by-and-for legal services and community organizing nonprofit. Lavender Rights Project provides low-cost civil legal services and community programming centered in values of social justice for trans and queer low-income people and other marginalized communities. As a lead attorney, Mentzer specializes in employment law and family law focusing on intersections of gender identity and racism.

Prior to pursuing a career in law, Mentzer was an auto mechanic. Rooted in the trades, she is the co-founder of the Reckoning Trade Project, an organization committed to increasing representation and retention of QTIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) tradesworkers.

Community Lawyering is a critical element of Mentzer 's practice. In New York, she worked directly with homeowners facing foreclosure during the Subprime Mortgage Crisis in community clinics, while interrupting courthouse foreclosures through song. Mentzer 's legal practice and community organizing prioritizes introspection as to how her identity as a white, cis, queer femme intersects with her organizing, knowledge and pedagogy.

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Alejandra Pérez (American & Ethnic Studies; Society, Ethics & Human Behavior ’16) is the College & Career Manager at Community Center for Education Results, where she leads college and career readiness initiatives through the Road Map Project. Pérez’s passion for educational equity comes from her advocacy with and for undocumented students and their families in Washington State and around the nation. Pérez served as Co-Director for the Beyond HB 1079 Conference, a member of the Dream Educational Empowerment Program (DEEP) National Advisory Council, and is a community organizer with the Washington Dream Coalition (WDC).

Through WDC, Pérez is a co-founder of the COVID-19 Relief Fund for Undocumented Individuals in Washington State, a grassroots effort that raised $7.1 million and played an essential role in advocating for the Washington COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund.

While at UW Bothell, Pérez served as a Social Justice Organizer and President of the Latinx Student Union. She was a key advocate for the creation of the Diversity Center and selected as an inaugural member of the Husky 100 in 2016. Pérez also holds a master’s in Education from UW Bothell.

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Ben Wiselogle (Global Studies ’12) is a Foreign Affairs Officer with Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State where he is responsible for developing anti-human trafficking policies for 13 Sub-Saharan African nations.

Wiselogle’s passion for global service was cemented by his experience as a disaster response volunteer in Haiti following a devastating earthquake in 2010. Since then, he has worked with various international non-profits, including the microfinance organizations, Fonkoze (Haiti) and SEWA (India), and served for three years as co-lead of Oxfam America’s Seattle Action Corps. Wiselogle is also a board member for the Congolese Integration Network and a member of the Truman National Security Project Defense Council.

Wiselogle is a six-year veteran who served as president of UW Bothell’s Student Veterans Association and co-chaired the campaign to fund the Veterans Archway. In 2016, he earned a master of public administration degree from the UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance and was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow, which became the portal to his work at the State Department.

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Past Recipients