SEFS students, faculty, alumni and friends gathered in the Anderson Hall courtyard in early October for the annual and much anticipated salmon BBQ. There were many familiar faces in the crowd and some new ones too – SEFS welcomed three new faculty members to its cohort this fall – Julie Larson, Gaj Sivandran and Mutian Hua. We also greeted many members of the UW Farm team who biked up from the Center for Urban Horticulture to join us for the evening.

We kicked off the festivities with a few words from Dean Maya Tolstoy and SEFS’ Acting Director Clare Ryan. They donned hard hats and wielded golden shovels in honor of Anderson Hall’s “groundbreaking” – the building is currently undergoing renovation efforts to bring the historic building up to code, make it ADA accessible and introduce new and much needed technological advances. 

A huge thank you is in order to the team who cooked the Columbia River Steelhead over an open flame fire pit! This year’s salmon was caught at the base of the John Day Dam using a traditional hoop technique by CFR alumni Phil Rigdon and other Yakama Tribe members. Special thanks to Phil Hurvitz, Luke Rogers, Jeff Comnick, Andrew Cooke, Eric Snoozye and Alexander Macgregor – the small but mighty team who procured, prepared and cooked the salmon!

We’d also like to thank all of the volunteers who helped plan the BBQ and make it a huge success. Thank you again for all of your hard work. 

Thank you to all of the staff and students who organized the event, served food and drinks and helped with everything behind the scenes! 

• Kaylin Harkness 
• Luciana Calle 
• Eli Kitterman 
• Kira Miller 
• Gracie Rogers 
• Nicholas Yin 
• Badger Dorrington 
• Nijah Coleman 
• Andrea Larson 
• Ed Draper 
• Tricia O’Hara 
• Mary Keyes
• Nancy Kwasinski
• Jennifer Weiss 
• Wanjiku Gitahi 
• Jeff Alfred-Sanford 
• Riley Warner 
• Matt Gray