WUSTL School of Arts and Sciences News

A PLAN for your career

Susan Killenberg McGinn — 2012-04-26 00:00:00

Sid Hastings

James Kolker, assistant vice chancellor for campus planning in Facilities and a member of the inaugural class of the Professional Leadership Academy & Network (PLAN), attends a work session last fall with fellow classmates. PLAN, a yearlong professional development program intended to cultivate future leaders at WUSTL, has opened the online application process to fill the second class.

The PLAN worked, and now organizers of the Washington University in St. Louis program are looking for a second group of participants, including staff from the School of Medicine.

PLAN, as in Professional Leadership Academy & Network, launched in February 2011 with an inaugural class of 27 Danforth Campus middle- and senior-level managers.

A yearlong professional development program, PLAN is intended to cultivate future leaders who can contribute to university-wide initiatives and projects.

The program, which is under the stewardship of the Office of the Provost, attracted nearly 100 applicants interested in being part of the first class that ended in December.

With overwhelmingly positive responses from those participating in the inaugural class, PLAN organizers say they hope to have an even larger pool of applicants for this year’s class and also will be opening the application process to medical school staff.

“We plan to build upon the success of the first year, incorporate feedback from the pilot participants, refine the program based on their feedback and make it an even stronger program,” says Julia Macias Garcia, PLAN steering committee co-chair with Gail V. Oltmanns and Shelley L. Milligan, EdD.

Macias Garcia said she was impressed by the participants’ enthusiasm, energy and effort and is seeing their hard work pay off, both for the university and the participants themselves.

“As we hoped, the PLAN’s curriculum and team projects have fostered collaboration among the diverse members of the group. Many have said they continue to collaborate with campus colleagues they typically haven’t interacted with before and continue to learn from each other,” says Macias Garcia, assistant director of Campus Life and assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Starting conversations

The PLAN curriculum is designed to strengthen participants’ institutional knowledge, appreciation for the importance of inclusion and core leadership skills. The university covers the participants’ cost in the program, which combines classroom sessions and “lunch & learns” to enhance the growth and productivity of staff.

The first class was broken into groups for the final class project. Each group was charged with developing strategic solutions for four different key issues at the university and presenting its findings to top administrators and school deans.

The four focus areas were: engaging faculty and staff with the WUSTL and St. Louis communities; assessing key student services; building a more diverse staff; and improving health and wellness programs for staff.

“We were pleased with how the class members researched the issues and presented strong recommendations for moving these issues forward. Their presentations sparked great ideas and started dialogue and conversations that continue across campus,” Macias Garcia says.

“It was exciting to see it all come together and to witness the energetic interactions that occurred each time the group met,” says Oltmanns, an associate dean of University Libraries. “When asked how PLAN influenced the way they perform as leaders, participants reported having gained a better understanding of Washington University.

“They became more reflective about their own behavior and the impact it has on others while refining many important leadership skills. They felt energized and valued developing new relationships and making connections with other staff at the University.”

Kimberly G. Walker, WUSTL’s chief investment officer and a member of the first cohort, agrees.

“The PLAN leadership development program brought together thought leadership from inside and outside Washington University to provide participants with the knowledge, tools and an action-oriented mindset to advance in our career paths,” Walker says. “I found the program to be challenging and engaging. Through PLAN, I learned more about myself, my fellow participants and the university.”

Harvey Fields, PhD, another member of the inaugural class, also found the program to be enlightening.

“PLAN provided me a unique opportunity to learn much more about Washington University, and myself, in an engaging, focused and productive environment. The PLAN experience was enhanced by the presence and contributions of the other talented participants,” says Fields, assistant director for academic programs for Cornerstone.

“While my multi-faceted expectations for the PLAN initiative have been, or are in the process of being met, PLAN moved me beyond my own expectations, helped me gain a clearer and broader perspective on the intricate ways in which the university functions, and inspired me to recommit to the university’s core mission and to the principles of scholarship, leadership and service.”

“Our work on diversity issues has identified leadership development as a critical tool for building and sustaining an inclusive campus community,” says Provost Edward S. Macias, PhD, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences.

“The first session of PLAN succeeded beyond our expectations,” Macias says. “I look forward to meeting the program’s second cohort of participants and learning from their experiences. I encourage faculty and administrators to nominate qualified candidates.”

Applications due May 29

Applicants, who must receive a statement of support from their supervisors, should be serving as key contributors and ready for leadership opportunities within their departments. They should also show a commitment to diversity — diversity of thought, perspective and identity.

Application forms and supporting materials, which can be accessed online at leadership.provost.wustl.edu, are due by May 29. A review committee will select approximately 25 participants for the second class, which will be announced in July.

Among the events PLAN participants are expected to attend include an opening reception in August and three subsequent three-day classroom sessions (Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday) in September, November and February.

For questions not addressed in the website’s FAQs section, e-mail leadershipacademy@wustl.edu or contact Macias Garcia at (314) 935-8379 or julia.macias@wustl.edu; Oltmanns at (314) 935-9334 or goltmanns@wustl.edu; or Milligan, associate provost, at (314) 935-6232 or shelley_milligan@wustl.edu.

Gloria Steinem visits women’s studies students

2012-05-24 00:00:00

Mary Butkus (2)

Above, from left: Gloria Steinem — a pioneering feminist, award-winning journalist and best-selling author — talks with students of the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program in Arts & Sciences May 17, the day before the Washington University in St. Louis Commencement, in the Women's Building Formal Lounge. Linda Nicholson, PhD, interim director and the Susan E. and William P. Stiritz Distinguished Professor of Women's Studies, looks on. Steinem, who received from WUSTL an honorary doctor of humane letters at Commencement, took questions from students, offered advice and discussed her own life experiences. Below, from left: Senior Ashley Brosius and Mary Ann Dzuback, PhD, associate professor in the program, talk with Steinem after the event.

Washington People: Sophia Hayes

Tony Fitzpatrick — 2012-05-11 00:00:00

David Kilper

Sophia Hayes, PhD (right), associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, adjusts a laser in her Loudermann Hall laboratory with chemistry graduate students Dustin Wheeler (left) and Erika Sesti.

It’s the stuff of great novels, movies, TV quiz shows and rational logic. Sophia Hayes, PhD, associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, faced a tough decision at the dawn of her career.

After finishing an internship at Sandia National Laboratory in 1993, the materials science group there offered her a no-strings-attached grant of about $250,000 to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

There was one sticky stipulation: She had to choose between two professors as her adviser. One was a well-known materials scientist, the other a lesser-known chemist who was doing innovative research in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a field that Hayes found particularly appealing.

Sandia made it clear that, because of a conflict of interest, they could work with one of the professors, but not the other. Thus, everything depended upon “Sophia’s Choice.”

“The Sandia people told me that they didn’t want to influence my choice of research adviser because it would be the most important one I’ll make, second only to whom I would marry,” Hayes says.

Hayes would have gotten a full ride, plus stipend, anyway, but the additional research funds to run an independent project is phenomenal. Hayes felt certain that Sandia was leaning toward the famous materials scientist, but, intellectually, she was drawn to the NMR specialist.

“I agonized for weeks,” she says. “Both professors wanted to know my decision as the deadline approached. At the end, the NMR guy, Hellmut Eckert, told me that he could see it was tearing me up, and he didn’t want me to be so conflicted.

“He said that it would be fine with him if I went with the materials scientist. I thought: ‘Wow, this man is selflessly willing to do this (giving up a huge chunk of funding). That’s it!’

“I got on the phone and told them ‘You probably want the other guy, but it’s got to be Eckert,’ and all this cheering erupted in the background. The conflict would have been with the materials scientist. I was overjoyed.”

Her own spin

That choice heralded Hayes’ extraordinary research saga in NMR, which takes the behavior of nuclear (and electron) spins in magnetic fields and uses them as probes of solid state structure and dynamics and relating these to properties of the system under study.

In medicine, a similar technique is called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the test that athletes get to determine injury extent, while NMR is the test that can elucidate enzyme behaviors, polymer and amorphous structures, semiconductor opto-electronics and the behavior and nature of gases and materials for a wide assortment of applications.

At Santa Barbara, Hayes pursued a new wave of NMR research that led to advancements in battery and composite technologies and inspired her to develop her own spin, as it were, on a developing type of NMR, called optically pumped NMR (OPNMR), in which a laser is shined on semiconductor materials held at 6 degrees Kelvin.

Today, she is building Generation III of her technique, which she advanced as a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has improved at WUSTL since coming here in 2001.

Semiconductors can conduct electricity under some conditions but not others, making them ideal for controlling electrical current. Silicon is the best-known elemental semiconductor and forms the basis of most integrated circuits in computers. A semiconductor device can perform the function of a vacuum tube — the stuff of old radios and TVs — but the vacuum tube has hundreds of times its volume.

“OPNMR is a great probe of the band structure of a semiconductor, and we are pushing the envelope in detecting the defects at very low concentrations in semiconductors (on the order of 1 in 10,000,000 atoms),” Hayes says.

“If you think of solar energy — solid-state lighting, any kind of photodetection, like a CCD camera — all are based on the process of light hitting a semiconductor that generates electrons or electricity.

“Anything that we can do to improve our understanding of these related phenomena is the aim of our research. We are getting a new laboratory built on the second floor of McMillen Hall with brand new equipment in support of the technique.”

Collaborative science

Another exciting research thrust is a collaborative effort, funded by WUSTL’s Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization, with fellow NMR aficionado Mark Conradi, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, and Philip Skemer, PhD, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences.

Courtesy photo

Sophia Hayes on a sailboat off the coast of California.

In this work, she uses her technique to study the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and test possible ways of sequestering, or storing, it in safe environments, such as the ocean.

Theoretically, it’s possible to take carbon dioxide, use chemistry to convert it into a solid, such as cement or a mineral, or catalyze it so it changes into something useful, such as methanol.

“A couple of years ago, I went to Mark, a good friend, and told him with all of his expertise in building hardware and high-pressure NMR and gas diffusion, combined with my inorganic chemistry background, we should watch what CO₂ does under pressure and briney conditions such as we’d see in underground CO₂ sequestration sites,” Hayes says.

“We are beginning to see some exciting interactions that open up intriguing possibilities. For instance, NMR allows us to actually see the balance of CO₂ coming into rock and converting to bicarbonate.

“I couldn’t do this on my own,” she says. “It’s because Phil came on board to figure out the important rocks, and, most importantly, Mark to build high-pressure probes that we’ve made the headway that we have.

“This is what I’d always hoped science would be like, highly collaborative, exactly what attracted me as an undergraduate,” Hayes says.

“I really enjoy the collaboration with Professor Hayes,” Conradi says. “Between Sophia, Phil Skemer and me, there are very different areas of expertise.

“The work on the CO₂ project is in the hands of two really talented graduate students from chemistry, Andy Surface and Jeremy Moore. I have enjoyed the collaboration and look forward to extending it.”

Hands-on solving of real-world problems

Hayes, who grew up near Pasadena, Calif., was at the University of California, Berkeley, leaning toward an economics major — her mother’s side of the family had businesses in Japan — when she stumbled into a quantum mechanics class and then a chemistry class with a collaborative research focus.

Courtesy photo

Sophia Hayes’ husband,
Chris Hagedorn, with their daughter, Marina.

Research projects were the hook, and “I crammed the chemistry major into my last two years,” Hayes says.

“I’ve encouraged undergraduate research here because of my positive experiences as an undergrad,” she says. “I loved the hands-on solving of real-world problems, where you might try 50 things and only one works. These projects all involved teams of students working with an adviser. I’m so happy to see cross-collaborations all over our campus now.”

Hayes oversees six graduate students and four undergrads in her lab and is involved locally and on-campus with the university’s Institute for School Partnership, the science outreach program for K-12 schools.

In 2011, she joined researchers at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Rutgers University to help direct the National Science Foundation’s new Center for Chemical Innovation, a five-year, $20 million program focused on the search for methods to make the next generation of electronic materials.

“NSF identified us as having great NMR instrumentation, which also is a reflection on Mark (Conradi), Jake Schaefer (PhD, the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry), Joe Ackerman (PhD, the William Greenleaf Eliot Professor of Chemistry) and others who have made landmark contributions to NMR,” Hayes says.

“I think this center is working hard for technology transfer out of universities into realizable companies and inventions. It’s terrific to be a part of it.”

Fast facts about Sophia Hayes

Family: Husband, Chris Hagedorn (who graduated from WUSTL in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering), daughter, Marina, 6. Father, Tom, was an engineer; mother, Tatiana, is an accomplished pianist, half-Japanese, half-Russian. Hayes, thus, is one-quarter Japanese.
Hobbies on vacation: scuba diving, sailing
Education: BS, chemistry, 1990, University of California, Berkeley; PhD, chemistry, 1999, University of California, Santa Barbara
Other choices: Hayes worked as an energy/environmental consultant for three years before pursuing a doctorate. She studied traditional Japanese art for a summer, living in a shrine on the outskirts of Kyoto. She played orchestral clarinet (occasionally bassoon) and contemplated music school in lieu of Berkeley.

Outstanding Graduate Cong (Lucy) Li: Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Tony Fitzpatrick — 2012-05-10 00:00:00

Kevin Lowder

Li, a native of Beijing, China, at her bench in the research lab on the School of Medicine campus. She has strong entrepreneurial instincts and believes research can lead to social value.

Cong (Lucy) Li, a native of Beijing, China, developed a research philosophy during her six years as a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis that she has very successfully implemented and enthusiastically infused among her fellow graduate students.

Li, who has a very strong entrepreneurial instinct, believes that scientific research should be considered a loop where research turns value (money or social beliefs) into knowledge and innovation turns knowledge into value. The different parts of the loop should stimulate each other and unite to produce a positive feedback.

“I’m an advocate for innovation and entrepreneurship, especially among graduate students,” says Li, who will receive a doctorate in neurosciences from the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences in Arts & Sciences May 18. “My passion is my love of science coupled with the belief that it should be implemented for the good of society.”

Li served as one of two graduate students on the university’s Board of Trustees this past year. She provided student perspective and promoted leadership and entrepreneurial spirit among graduate students.

This past academic year, she also was part of an entrepreneurship team that won a cash prize in the Olin Cup Competition, where, since 1998, winners receive seed money to help grow their innovation. Li and her team came up with a method to create a tattoo through injection via fine needles.

Through some engineering wizardry, the injected dye would find the desired body area and release the design on the skin then dissolve in three months.

Li has proven the concept in live experiments with animals, and credits her research as inspiration for the invention. “I figured that if you can use (needles) to inject DNA or draw blood, you could also use them to inject a substance without significantly damaging tissue,” she says.

At China’s Peking University, she studied biology and became attracted to neuroscience. She said she heard a stirring lecture about brain diseases and traumas and, in subsequent readings, found that neuroscience is considered the last frontier of the biological sciences in which the ultimate challenge is to understand the biological basis of consciousness.

At the beginning, life in St. Louis — nearly 7,000 miles from home — was hard. Li had never spent appreciable time away from family. Within the first week, the rigors of neuroscience classwork and the challenge of adjusting to new academic jargon told her she wasn’t in Beijing anymore. But she quickly bonded with classmates, and the camaraderie established what has become a very large network of good friends and colleagues.

Li has very strong leadership qualities, which have been cultivated with support from the graduate school and deans along the way. She has been involved with a host of impressive projects and activities, including serving as a Kauffman fellow in the Life Sciences Entrepreneurship program; president of the International graduate students association for Career development And Networking, I-CAN and co-vice president of the BioEntrepreneurship Core, in which she continued to link basic science with entrepreneurship.

Li also was project manager and human resources officer for the Biotechnology and Life Science Advising Group, an organization of graduate students and post-docs that offers consulting services to the St. Louis community.

Early in her graduate career, Li and her adviser, Naren Ramanan, PhD, assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology, discovered a new cellular signaling pathway for learning and memory with implications for both Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorder.

For this accomplishment, Li received the O’Leary Award, an honor given by the WUSTL neuroscience community.

“As my first graduate student, Lucy has been terrific to work with,” Ramanan says. “Lucy is inquisitive, meticulous and hard-working. She always maintains her cool even in the face of adversity.”

This summer, Li will begin her career in San Francisco as a consultant with inVentiv Health-Campbell Alliance, a leading pharmaceutical management consulting firm.

“My role is to bridge the gap between science and the pharmaceutical industry, leading to commercialization,” Li says. “My years at Washington University laid the perfect groundwork for this opportunity.”

The American dream still possible, but more difficult to achieve, students discover

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-05-10 00:00:00

http://youtu.be/Q1bJSiLDcMkWUSTL students in an interdisciplinary course this semester called "Economic Realities of the American Dream" were urged to consider the meaning of the American Dream and explored pathways to achieving it, including overall economic growth and rising standards of living, equality of opportunity, economic mobility and the availability and creation of jobs that will adequately provide for individuals and families.

In 1931, James Truslow Adams first defined the “American Dream” by writing that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social status or birth circumstance.

In a modern society struggling to loose the grip of a lengthy economic recession, is this dream really attainable?

The dream may still be possible, though much more difficult to achieve, say a renowned macroeconomist and one of America’s foremost experts on poverty, co-teachers of a course on the American Dream this semester at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The American Dream is really at the heart and soul of this country,” says Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School and author of One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All.

“It’s the idea of what we stand for and what we represent — the idea of being able to pursue what you are really passionate about and to have a good life,” he says.

The interdisciplinary course, “Economic Realities of the American Dream,” came out of a long friendship between Rank and his co-teacher Steven Fazzari.

“I’ve read Mark’s books and being an economist they really got me thinking about perspectives on the realities of economic life in this country and how we formulate those ideas into this concept of an American Dream,” says Fazzari, PhD, professor of economics in Arts & Sciences.

He says the class has focused on three main components — the freedom to pursue what people want to do to reach their potential, the ability to have a secure and comfortable life and a sense of hope and optimism about the future.

“Many people think the American Dream is owning a home,” Fazzari says. “That may be one way to reach economic security and a sense of hope for the future but maybe it’s more of a pathway to the dream than a component of the dream itself.”

Students in the course examined the meaning of the American Dream and explored pathways to achieving it, including overall economic growth and rising standards of living, equality of opportunity, economic mobility and the availability and creation of jobs that will adequately provide for individuals and families.

“I decided to take this course because I wanted to experience the interdisciplinary approach that both professors provide,” says Doug Griesenauer, second-year master’s of social work student. “My view of the American Dream changed dramatically throughout the course. When it began, I understood it as more of an ephemeral idea, a concept that everyone really knew but you couldn’t pin down.

"Through discussions with both professors, we have been able to give substance to that idea and really understand what made the American Dream such an aspiring thing.”

Students participated in group projects and discussions from a variety of perspectives, including economics, sociology, social work and others.

“I’ve worked a lot with Professor Fazarri on Keynesian macroeconomics but living in St. Louis has gotten me really interested in issues of poverty and social justice,” says Madeleine Dapp, a junior mathematics and economics major in Arts & Sciences.

“I saw this course as a good opportunity to combine those two perspectives,” she says. “After I graduate, I’m hoping to work in agricultural policy. I think this class has really allowed me to more closely examine the problems that prevent people from accessing the American Dream, whether it’s problems with nutrition or something more economic.”

The interdisciplinary nature of the course has been its strong suit, Rank says.

“We have students from economics, social work and several other social sciences,” he says. “Having that mix in the classroom is really dynamic and provides a lot of interesting feedback, questions and discussions that help advance all of our thinking.”

Model of mentoring

2012-05-09 00:00:00

Jerry Naunheim Jr.

Seven Washington University in St. Louis faculty were recognized with Outstanding Faculty Mentor Awards during the Graduate Student Senate’s (GSS) 13th annual awards ceremony and reception April 11 in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. The 2011-12 award recipients are (from left) Radhakrishnan Gopalan, PhD, assistant professor of finance in the Olin Business School; Steven J. Mennerick, PhD, professor in the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences in Arts & Sciences and in the departments of Psychiatry and of Anatomy and Neurobiology in the School of Medicine; Brian D. Carpenter, PhD, associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences; Roberto Civitelli, MD, the Sydney M. and Stella H. Schoenberg Professor of Medicine and professor in the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences; Julie E. Singer, PhD, assistant professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences; and Carolyn Lesorogol, PhD, associate professor of social work in the Brown School and adjunct in anthropology in Arts & Sciences. Brian Crisp, PhD, associate professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, is not pictured. The awards are based on nominations by graduate students and designed to honor faculty members whose dedication to mentoring PhD students and commitment to excellence in graduate training have made a significant contribution to the quality of life and professional development of students in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Special recognition for excellence in mentoring went to nine other faculty members at the ceremony.

Outstanding Graduate Vivian Gibson:University College in Arts & Sciences

Debbie Parker — 2012-05-08 00:00:00

David Kilper

Vivian Gibson, senior director of volunteer recruitment at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, says a master’s degree in nonprofit management from University College will give her the credentials to “go forward.”

Vivian Ross Gibson grew up as one of nine children in a three-room house with no hot water or furnace and a wood-burning stove. Many called her community — Mill Creek — a slum, and this segregated St. Louis neighborhood was razed for an urban renewal project in the 1960s.

For Gibson, home was a place where her imagination flourished. The lack of toys meant more creativity as she sifted mud pies with pieces of screen doors or built playhouses out of plywood and bricks.

As the fifth girl in the family, Gibson received hand-me-downs from her four sisters, and quickly learned to sew. “I learned to rip dresses apart and design whole new things,” Gibson says.

“I’m used to making something out of nothing. It’s informed how I live my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” says Gibson, who will receive a master’s degree in nonprofit management through University College, the professional and continuing education division of Arts & Sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis May 18.

This entrepreneurial spirit led Gibson to launch multiple businesses, including a successful hot sauce enterprise that paid tribute to her home community.

After Gibson graduated from Vashon High School, she headed to New York City, where she earned an associate’s degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1976. To fund her education, she worked part time as a receptionist and started designing and selling hats at Harlem churches.

She moved to Africa when her husband’s employer relocated him to develop a bank in Liberia. There, she began a clothing import business before fleeing with her daughter during the 1980 coup. Because people’s belongings were being raided at the airport, Gibson tightly rolled dollar bills around pencils, threading them into her thick afro.

Following a divorce, Gibson returned to St. Louis and began a 20-year stint as volunteer recruitment manager at St. Louis Public Schools. She enhanced curriculum by recruiting community members to teach mini-courses in their fields.

A gifted cook, Gibson also launched a box lunch catering business for corporations before the idea came into vogue, attracting such clients as Monsanto and Southwestern Bell. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Fontbonne University in 1994.

Before long, family and friends urged Gibson to bottle her hot sauce recipe. She formed the Mill Creek Company Inc., boasting products such as Vib’s (her nickname) Southern Heat and Vib’s Caribbean Heat.

On the bottle labels are stories of her family and home. People lined up for her hot sauce and the product sold out at “Best of Missouri Market” and “Missouri Black Expo.” She caught the attention of local grocer Schnucks, which placed its first order of 200 cases.

A Missouri History Museum curator interested in preserving lost St. Louis communities learned of Gibson’s connection to Mill Creek through a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about her hot sauce. For 12 years, the museum has displayed an exhibit in the “Reflection” section featuring a replica of the Ross family home, photographs and recordings made by Gibson and her siblings.

After retiring from the school district, Gibson stayed home one year — until she couldn’t take it any more. “I redid the house. I gardened,” she says. “I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’”

Now, as senior director of volunteer recruitment at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, she creates marketing campaigns. “I bring in people who make a difference in children’s lives,” Gibson says.

A single mother of two grown kids, Gibson is passionate about the welfare of children and plans to teach, serve on boards (she serves on the North Side Community School board) or volunteer.

Gibson is strongly motivated to “improve educational opportunities for children in the region,” says academic adviser Elizabeth Fogt.

“I thought about what I wanted to do the last third of my life,” Gibson says. “I’ve always been curious, always enjoyed watching other people and I’ve always said to myself, ‘I could do that.’ This degree has given me more confidence and the credentials I need to go forward.”

Outstanding Graduate Malcolm Foley: College of Arts & Sciences

Leslie Gibson McCarthy — 2012-05-07 00:00:00

David Kilper

Foley on the Danforth Campus, a place where it is nearly impossible for him to go unrecognized. He has a smile, says Robert Henke, PhD, professor of drama and comparative literature and chair of the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, that is the “‘smile of reason’: imaginative, tolerant and generous.”

Public affairs photographer David Kilper shoots thousands of subjects on the Washington University in St. Louis campus each year. But a spring assignment photographing Malcolm Foley proved a bit distracting.

“Everybody kept coming up to him and saying ‘hi,’” Kilper says. “I don’t think there’s a person on campus who doesn’t know him.”

That’s no surprise. Foley, who will receive bachelor’s degrees in religious studies and finance May 18, is tall and slim in build, but larger-than-life in personality.

He’s charming, effervescent and has a laugh that emanates from deep inside and becomes contagious when he lets it out – which is with disarming regularity.

He has a charisma that draws people to him, whether as an RA in Danforth House, conducting bible study classes on campus through Harambee, or as an actor on stage at Edison and Hotchner these past four years.

That charisma will come in handy in Foley’s next venture: Yale Divinity School.

“Malcolm’s considerable academic strengths are difficult to separate from his personal virtues,” says Robert Henke, PhD, professor of drama and comparative literature and chair of the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences. “He is a person of strong beliefs, but, as both a fine actor and an outstanding student, he is able to enter imaginatively and critically into alternative points of view.

“He has a magnetic personal presence, and a smile that simply lights up the room; it is also the ‘smile of reason’: imaginative, tolerant and generous,” Henke says.

Foley is a young man with concrete goals for his future: a master’s in divinity that most likely will result, he says, in ordination as a minister in the Reformed Baptist church followed by pursuit of a PhD.

“My relationship with Christ is paramount in my life,” he says. “It takes discipline; it’s a commitment that I have to work at every day, with daily bible readings and devotions.”

And acting is part of that commitment.

“The ultimate dream is to be a pastor, professor and ... .”

He pauses, laughing that deep belly laugh, “a voice actor. That will be my way to continue to do theater.”

David Kilper

Foley as Flow in Fabulation in 2010.

Among the roles Foley portrayed at WUSTL were Marcellus in Hamlet; Booker T. Washington in Ragtime; Max in Anatol; Henry in Radio Free Emerson; Flow in Fabulation and his last role: playing — against type — the brooding Jaques in As You Like It, in which he got to perform Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” soliloquy.

“I have a fixation on playing villains in plays,” he says.

Foley? A villain?

“I know!” he says, laughing.

“But acting is a way for me to release my dark side. My ultimate role would be to play Iago in Othello.”

Foley laughs that laugh again.

“But I think I would be cast as Othello if I ever tried out for it. I’d have to find some alternative casting version of it.”

It was as a 10th grader at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., when, Foley says, all his “passions” ignited. “I acted in my first play and I also took a comparative religion class.

“I had a teacher who was a really aggressive atheist, who specifically did not like Christianity. Having grown up in the church, I was like, ‘nobody’s talking in this class, so let me do some personal research.’ ”

So Foley started reading the bible and theological literature, and he and his teacher would discuss religion and trade books over the next few years. “That set me on the path to a religious studies major.”

Foley says he intends to take all that he has learned at WUSTL – especially on stage – to Yale.

“In preaching classes, all of that training will come into play when it comes to using my voice to tell a story,” he says. “Theater will be deeply integrated into my life.”

And when he gets that degree?

“There will be a lot of gratefulness, not only to God but my family for supporting me,” Foley says. “There will be nostalgia, but I know I'll be able to maintain the relationships that I have built here.

“I won’t be sad. The people I want to keep in touch with, I know I will.”

Arch Grants awards first $750,000 in grants

2012-05-07 00:00:00

Eleven Washington University in St. Louis-affiliated entrepreneurs are among the winners of $750,000 in inaugural grants from Arch Grants, the global business plan competition providing $50,000 grants to startups and taking no equity in return.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and Jim McKelvey, Square co-founder and head of the Arch Grants Advisory Board, joined Arch Grants today to announce 15 startups that will each receive $50,000 in funding to help launch and grow their business and create a more robust startup culture and infrastructure in St. Louis.

The 11 WUSTL-affiliated winners comprise five alumni, four faculty members and two students.

They are:

Jonathan T.Z. Chen earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 2008;
Patrick Crowley, PhD, is an associate professor of computer science & engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science;
Peter S. Finley is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship in the Olin School;
Daniel J. Garcia is a senior in the School of Engineering & Applied Science;
Michael J. Gidding is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and two master’s degrees, a master of engineering and a master of business administration;
Zhilin Hu, PhD, is a research associate professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science;
Kenneth R. Kline earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in Arts & Sciences and a master’s degree in finance from the Olin School, both in 2008;
Margaret S. Stohr earned an MBA from the Olin School in 1991;
Sergi G. Turabelidze earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 2008;
Melissa Walker is an adjunct instructor in the Clinical Research Management program in University College in Arts & Sciences; and
Mark T. Womer earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in Arts & Sciences in 1999.

To date, Arch Grants has secured more than $2.9 million in funding from a mix of individual, organizational and corporate donors.

“Small businesses are the biggest driver of job-creation and economic growth in our state,” Nixon said. “As governor, I am committed to helping our startups and small businesses grow, and Arch Grants is another proven tool we are using to do just that. We are extremely proud to have this diverse and innovative group of companies growing, investing and creating jobs right here in Missouri. These pioneering small-business owners will lead our economy and our state into the future.”

“We at Arch Grants are thrilled with the quality and potential of the entrepreneurs who won our international competition out of over 400 applicants,” said Jerry Schlichter, co-founder and president of Arch Grants. “This marks St. Louis as a top destination with a community of high quality startup businesses who will compete in the global economy and Arch Grants will be working hard to build that community as we move forward.”

In its inaugural year, the competition attracted 420 applicants from 12 countries. The 15 winning companies will receive $50,000 in funding as part of a year-long program. Beginning in June, the companies will locate in St. Louis and work toward the goal of attracting additional capital, including up to $100,000 of Arch Grants follow-on funding.

The WUSTL-affiliated entrepreneurs and their winning startups are:

Crowley is CEO and founder and Finley is chief operating officer of Observable Networks, which is pioneering a new approach to enterprise network security and management. Observable Networks is the recipient of the Emerson Arch Grant.

Gidding is president and Garcia is director of science of Saturnis, LLC. Saturnis is commercializing a low-cost, thermochemical process that produces liquid transportation fuels from biomass sources that can be sustainably harvested in the Midwest. Saturnis is the recipient of the Peabody Arch Grant. Himadri B. Pakrasi, PhD, WUSTL’s George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences and professor of energy in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, is Gidding and Garcia’s faculty adviser.

Hu is CEO of Pharos Scientific, which aims to deliver an innovative medical imaging component in the forefront of diagnostic medicine and related products.

Kline is CEO and co-founder with Chen, who is the chief operating officer, of Med Preps, which provides online practice tests and flashcards to help medical professionals prepare for certification exams.

Turabelidze and Giorgi Gioshvili are co-founders of Iveria TV, the “hulu of foreign TV.” Iveria TV possesses the technological infrastructure and business model to deliver foreign language TV streams to millions of immigrants living in the United States.

Walker is president and chief technology officer and Stohr is chief financial officer of Graematter Inc. Graematter developed the TERI Regulatory Intelligence System, which for the first time consolidates the data and information located in more than 100 regulatory data sources into a single, searchable database. Merle Symes is Graematter’s CEO.

Womer is chief financial officer of Labor Voices, which is crowdsourced supply chain intelligence. Labor Voices provides corporations with a real-time monitoring and risk-management tool, with data coming directly from workers in their supply chains. Kohl Gill is CEO and founder.

“If you are building a business, Arch Grants is the reason to do it in St. Louis,” said McKelvey, a St. Louis native and also a WUSTL alumnus, earning both a bachelor’s degree in economics in Arts & Sciences and a bachelor’s in computer science in 1987. He is also general partner at Cultivation Capital.

“The Arch Grants initiative is an imaginative program that will contribute significantly to the ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in our region and the revitalization of St. Louis,” said Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “I am proud that Washington University-affiliated entrepreneurs are among the first winners and look forward to following the success of all Arch Grants recipients.”

“Entrepreneurs here have worked hard to establish a strong base of innovation in the region,” said Sarah Spear, executive director of Arch Grants. “Arch Grants builds on those early efforts by both retaining entrepreneurs and attracting new entrepreneurs to St. Louis. We’re excited about building this game-changing program here in St. Louis. We look forward to grant recipients joining us downtown in June, increasing the entrepreneurial bench strength and innovation in the region.”

Support has been provided by the founders, Missouri Technology Corporation, the Community Improvement District of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, individual donors, and large corporate donors.

For a complete list of Arch Grants winners, visit http://archgrants.org.

About Arch Grants

Arch Grants is creating an entrepreneurial culture and infrastructure to increase employment growth in the St. Louis area. Launching multiple high quality, new ventures simultaneously, Arch Grants will also help build the image of St. Louis among aspiring entrepreneurs and others looking to have a formative role in building a new entrepreneurial climate in St. Louis.

Arch Grants seeks to develop an environment in St. Louis where entrepreneurs and young people want to start and grow businesses and live in a vibrant community that is affordable and where there’s a huge level of support from business and community leaders.

Greece could be broke by June, economist says

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-05-07 00:00:00

If international lenders refuse to renegotiate substantial reductions in Greek public debt, chances are that whatever government emerges in Greece in the next few weeks will run out of cash by the end of June, says an economist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Azariadis

“At that point, a suspension of interest payments will become almost inevitable, pushing Greece out of the Eurozone and back to the drachma,” says Costas Azariadis, PhD, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences.

“The repercussions from an outright default on the Euro are hard to predict and include some scary scenarios,” the Greek-born Azariadis says.

The May 6 Greek election is expected to result in weeks of financial upheaval after voters took mainstream politicians to task for months of crippling austerity measures and voted a far-right extremist group into Parliament.

“With this election, voters in Greece — and in France as well — lashed out against fiscal austerity,” Azariadis says.

“Politicians who favored the Northern European model of balanced budgets, labor market reforms and global competitiveness were sent packing,” he says. “Many voters, especially those working in the public sector, opted to preserve the European welfare state with a strong safety net, good pensions and free medical care.”

The biggest gainers from the election are fringe parties on the extreme left and extreme right of the political spectrum, he says.

“What distinguishes those parties from others is a desire to renegotiate, and possibly to abrogate, the bailout agreements made with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund by the outgoing caretaker government headed by Lucas Papademos,” Azariadis says.

Greek conservative leader Antonis Samaras was given three days to assemble a coalition from a governing body divided on whether to renege on the terms of bailout agreements negotiated in May 2010.

The conservative New Democracy party and the socialist PASOK party, which were political rivals until the Greek debt crisis made them partners in the national government in 2011, are two seats short of the 151 seats needed for a parliamentary majority.

Greek voters, who Azariadis notes must deal with a 22 percent unemployment rate and a 20 percent drop in incomes, gave a clear signal that austerity has gone too far.

“Prospects for growth continue to be dismal for them and uncertain for the rest of Southern Europe, putting enormous pressure on the Eurozone,” Azariadis says. “Can the European Union find a recipe for faster growth while it keeps public spending under control?

“That seems to be the key question posed by the May 6 vote.”

Arts & Sciences undergrads recognize five faculty for profound influence

2012-05-04 00:00:00

Undergraduate students in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have the opportunity every spring to recognize and honor outstanding Arts & Sciences faculty, deans and staff through the ArtSci Council Faculty Awards.

This spring was no different, with the exception of a new name for the award.

The ArtSci Council, the undergraduate organization and executive governing body for the College of Arts & Sciences, changed the name of the award to the James E. McLeod Faculty Recognition Award to honor the beloved dean of the college and vice chancellor for students, who died Sept. 6, 2011, after a two-year battle with cancer.

“Dean McLeod was one of the ArtSci Council’s biggest supporters. He was instrumental in this annual event and was a familiar face at the awards ceremony every year,” says Stephanie Poindexter, president of the ArtSci Council and a senior majoring in anthropology and minoring in French.

The five faculty students nominated as having “positively and profoundly influenced their educational experiences at Washington University” were recognized at an awards ceremony April 16 in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge.

The recipients of the 2011-12 James E. McLeod Faculty Recognition Award are:

Mayu Fujikawa, PhD, post-doctoral teaching fellow in the Department of Art History and Archaeology;
Annamaria Pileggi, senior lecturer in drama in the Performing Arts Department;
Amy E. Cislo, PhD, lecturer and interim associate director in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program;
Lynne Breakstone, PhD, senior lecturer in French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; and
Mohammad Warsi, PhD, lecturer in South Asian languages and culture in the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Sharon Stahl, PhD, senior associate dean in the College of Arts & Sciences, associate vice chancellor for students and dean of the First Year Center, made opening remarks at the ceremony.

The ArtSci Council solicits nominations for the awards from all Arts & Sciences students. The council’s four-member executive committee selects the winning faculty after reviewing the nominations and talking with the ArtSci Council’s departmental representatives.

One student nominator for each award recipient spoke during the ceremony about why his or her nominee made such an impact and presented the faculty with a trophy.

“This is truly a celebration for everyone in the Arts & Sciences community,” Poindexter says.

Outstanding Graduate Ashley Brosius: College of Arts & Sciences

Jessica Daues — 2012-05-02 00:00:00

David Kilper

Ashley Brosius’ “Catalysts for Change” program introduced high school girls to STEM fields.

Ashley Brosius arrived at Washington University in St. Louis as a freshman with “everything mapped out.” She would major in biology and political science with dreams of medical school.

But her passion soon rerouted her plans.

During her first semester, Brosius, of Moline, Ill., enrolled in a “Women in Science” first-year FOCUS program, which examined the challenges faced by women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Brosius also took the companion course, “Introduction to Women and Gender Studies.”

Both courses “swept me off my feet,” Brosius says, prompting her to rethink and ultimately alter her academic plans.

“I hadn’t really had much exposure to feminist discourse,” says Brosius, who will graduate May 18 with a bachelor’s degree in women, gender, and sexuality studies, anthropology and political science, all in Arts & Sciences. “During those classes, I saw connections in the classroom to anything I might want do in the future.”

Despite the change in major, Brosius’ enthusiasm for science never faded. In 2010, she found a way to blend both interests. During her junior year, Brosius co-wrote and received a grant from the American Association for University Women to design and implement a program called “Catalysts for Change,” which aimed to introduce local female high school students to STEM fields.

Through Catalysts for Change — which was co-organized by Brosius and took place on campus on consecutive spring Saturdays in 2011 and ’12 — WUSTL faculty and students led high school students in interactive experiments, including launching egg rockets, making liquid nitrogen ice cream, and using forensic science to solve a “mystery.”

“The high school students were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the program,” says Barbara Baumgartner, PhD, a senior lecturer in women, gender, and sexuality studies who helped coordinate Catalysts for Change.

“Because of Ashley’s initiative, 50 high school girls, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, were exposed to a vibrant college campus, fascinating science experiments and an impressive array of women scientists.”

According to Brosius, the experience was rewarding for the WUSTL students who participated, too.

“It was exciting for us to develop leadership and mentoring skills and interact with individuals outside of the campus community,” she says.

In addition to Brosius’ activities on campus — including serving as a student representative to the Board of Trustees and member of the First-Year Center Executive Board — she also immersed herself into the St. Louis community.

Through a service-learning component of the course “Violence Against Women,” Brosius volunteered as an advocate at the St. Louis County Domestic Violence Court. She continued to volunteer after the class ended and was named the court’s Advocate of the Year for 2010-11. Brosius’ senior thesis focused on the impact of gender on domestic violence court outcomes.

As a volunteer advocate, Brosius assisted domestic violence victims/survivors filing for orders of protection. She also provided resources and safety planning and conducted follow-up calls.

“It’s obviously challenging to hear the experiences some individuals in the community have had,” Brosius says, “but it’s very rewarding to have the opportunity to help connect people with resources to continue to enhance their safety.”

Jami Ake, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and Brosius’ thesis adviser, says that Brosius’ focus is more than academic — Brosius is committed to social justice.

“Her studies are more than abstract intellectual exploration, but rather part of an ongoing effort to find ways to remove barriers to people’s health, safety and freedoms,” Ake says.

“Ashley always approaches her work with the greatest humility and compassion,” Ake says. “She isn’t someone who thinks she already has all of the answers — or even all of the questions — a quality that will serve her well in her future work.”

This fall, Brosius will begin law school at the University of Iowa and plans to focus on family and child law. Brosius credits the opportunities she has had at WUSTL with helping her find and pursue what she’s truly passionate about.

“I’ve learned a lot inside the classroom, but it’s my experiences outside the classroom that helped to shape my time here — hearing the stories and experiences of other students, faculty and individuals in the community,” she says.

“Being engaged on campus and in the community helped me grow as an individual and discover what I really wanted to do.”

Lecture, symposium honors Sam Weissman’s 100th birthday

2012-05-02 00:00:00

June 25 marks the 100th birthday of Samuel “Sam” Issac Weissman, PhD, beloved professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis who died at 94 in 2007.

To recognize the birth 100 years ago of this Manhattan Project scientist and beloved teacher, who developed the technique of electron spin resonance (ESR) to probe the structure of molecules, WUSTL’s Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences is hosting a poster session, lecture and symposium Thursday and Friday, May 10 and 11.

The poster session will kick off the festivities at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10 in Room 461, Louderman Hall.

At 4 p.m. the second annual Weissman Lecture will begin in Room 458 in Louderman Hall. Charles Slichter, PhD, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Illinois, will speak on nuclear magnetic resonance, a powerful analytical technique to whose sibling technique ESR made pioneering contributions.

Slichter will describe the burst of creativity that followed the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in 1946 and the many uses to which the new technique was put. Invented to study the properties of the nuclei of atoms, it moved first into condensed matter physics, then into chemistry, biology, and lastly into medicine, where it became the basis for Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

The talk is free and open to the public, as is the symposium the following day.

The following day, a scientific symposium will be held in Room 458 Louderman Hall, beginning at 9 a.m. The symposium will be a homecoming for Weissman’s former students, postdocs and friends.

In addition to Slichter and Weissman’s son Michael B. Weissman, PhD, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, symposium participants will include faculty from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tohoku University in Japan, the Freiberg University in Germany, Stanford University, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and Loyola University Chicago.

About Sam Weissman

Weissman’s career is inextricably entwined with the history of the chemistry department and of WUSTL.

Herb Weitman

Sam Weissman, then an assistant professor of chemistry, and Jonathan Townsen, then an assistant professor of physics, examine magnetic resonance data in Crow Hall about 1962. Townsend built the early ESR spectrometers that Weissman worked with.

This history is elegantly described in the Rettner Gallery of the Lab Sciences Building, where portraits of the six scientists who founded the modern chemistry department hang.

The captions for the portraits were written by Alfred M. Holtzer, PhD, emeritus professor of chemistry, who was a student of five of the six chemists before becoming their fellow scientist and colleague.

Holtzer wrote:

Just after WW II, the Washington University Chemistry Department comprised only three members, none active in research. The Board of Trustees decided to raise the University’s scholarly level to include research as well as teaching. To that end, they appointed physics Nobel Laureate Arthur Holly Compton, a former WU faculty member, as Chancellor. Compton had been an important figure in the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bombs. In 1946, he recruited to WU from the Los Alamos campus of the Manhattan Project, the six chemists whose portraits are hung in this Rettner Gallery.

They brought with them from Los Alamos, not only outstanding scientific gifts,” Holtzer continued, “but also a spirit and an attitude, featuring irreverence toward entrenched authority, fierce devotion to academic freedom, uncompromising intellectual honesty, and a love of science that soon pervaded the atmosphere. Together, the six created the modern, teacher-scientist Chemistry Department that still flourishes at WUSTL today.

Educated in Chicago’s public schools, Weissman earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in physical chemistry at the University of Chicago. He then moved to the University of California-Berkeley to work in the laboratory of Gilbert Newton Lewis (familiar to chemistry students everywhere as the author of the Lewis dot diagram shorthand used to figure out the bonds between atoms in molecules).

In Lewis’ lab, Weissman studied the optical properties of the rare earth metals, laying the foundation for certain lasers.

During 1942-43, he worked on isotope separation techniques needed to prepare fissionable material for a uranium bomb at Berkeley’s Radiation Laboratory, moving to Los Alamos in 1943 where he was a group leader in the Manhattan Project and worked on the design of a plutonium bomb.

In an article about the Manhattan Project that ran in the Washington University Magazine, the five surviving chemists discuss their ambivalence about the bomb.

They were under the impression the German bomb program was quite advanced and were shocked when they later learned how little progress the Germans had actually made. They were also aware that fighting island to island in the South Pacific was taking a horrific toll in lives.

But they still had misgivings, perhaps Weisman more than the others. “I think we would all have been relieved it had been demonstrated that it couldn’t possibly work,” he said of the bomb.

He was the only one of the six who didn’t witness the first atomic bomb test at Trinity. He stayed at home with what he called “a psychogenic bellyache.”

After he moved to WUSTL, Weisman focused on ESR, a technique related to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in which transitions between electronic rather than nuclear spin levels are detected.

Although nuclear magnetic resonance is familiar to most of us as a medical imaging technique, NMR and ESR can also be used to obtain information about the structure of molecules and to measure the rates of very fast reactions, and it was these spectroscopic applications Weissman explored.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences a member of the National Academy of Sciences, both in 1966.

Weissman remained a regular presence in the department even after his retirement in 1980, discussing research and planning experiments with colleagues and students up until just before he died.

For more information about the lecture and symposium, contact Tom Lin at Lin@wustl.edu.

Arts & Sciences unveils new undergraduate curriculum, planner

Susan Killenberg McGinn — 2012-05-02 00:00:00

While “discovery” still will be a key element in the academic experience of Arts & Sciences undergraduate majors at Washington University in St. Louis, the Discovery Curriculum, introduced in 2001, is moving aside for a newly revised curriculum, called Integrated InQuiry (IQ).

The College of Arts & Sciences will introduce the IQ curriculum, developed over a four-year process with input from students, faculty and administrators, to new undergraduates arriving this fall.

Current Arts & Sciences students will continue using the Discovery Curriculum until they graduate.

Along with the revised Arts & Sciences undergraduate curriculum, there will be a new, more user-friendly online planner, called the PlanIT. Both current and new students will use the new planner application in the fall.

The process of reviewing the Arts & Sciences curriculum and revising it started in 2008. Mark Rollins, PhD, professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences, chaired the New Curriculum Review Committee comprising 16 faculty, two students and an administrator.

When the current curriculum was implemented 10 years ago, its architects mandated a review after five years. For a number of reasons, it took a few years longer for the review process to begin, but once started, research from focus studies, surveys and town hall meetings showed some student dissatisfaction, particularly with the cluster requirements.

“There was also some evidence that the system wasn’t succeeding as well as we would like in improving skills — such as writing — and in engaging the students intellectually,” Rollins says.

Engaging students’ natural curiosity, drive

Rollins says his committee aimed for a set of requirements that was “more flexible and acknowledged students’ natural interest in new lines of research that crossed traditional disciplinary boundaries.”

“We were guided by the goal of developing a curriculum that engages the natural curiosity and drive of our students, that reflects the growth of knowledge and important changes in the nature of faculty research in the past 10 years, and that includes requirements that are well-coordinated and work together interactively,” Rollins says.

His committee presented a report in April 2009 that outlined proposed curriculum changes to the ArtSci Council, which represents the Arts & Sciences student body.

For a new curriculum to go into effect, the ArtSci Council has to vote on it. The council approved the proposed curriculum changes. The Arts & Sciences faculty then voted on the new curriculum and approved it on May 1, 2009.

A 17-member Curriculum Implementation Committee (CIC) was created in November 2009, headed by Matt Erlin, PhD, associate professor of German in Arts & Sciences.

The CIC, which comprised faculty members, students and administrators, met regularly for a year fine-tuning the curriculum and working on a range of logistical and technical issues related to its implementation.

Exploring variety of options

One of the major changes to the curriculum involves the “cluster” system that groups closely related courses linked by a subject focus or by a method of analysis. Clusters are being replaced by Integrated Inquiries (IQs), reducing the number of clusters from 300 to less than 25 linked courses across multiple disciplines.

Erlin says that both the Discovery Curriculum and the revised IQ Curriculum emphasize the need for integrated learning.

“Students should be encouraged to combine coursework in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” Erlin says. “The IQ Curriculum is different in that it recognizes a wide variety of ways to achieve this kind of integration. Previously, students focused above all on the clusters; now, they can choose from a variety of options.”

These options include the Integrated Inquiries, which explore an enduring question from different disciplinary perspectives; FOCUS and other special freshman programs, which are yearlong linked seminars that address a particular object of inquiry such as the Literary Culture of Modern Ireland or the Argentinean Experience; and study abroad programs. Major and minor programs remain another method for completing an Integration.

“The new Integrated Inquiries are intended to play a role that is similar to that of the clusters, but they are more broadly conceived, offer students a greater variety of courses to choose from, and place a greater emphasis on combining courses from different departments and programs,” Erlin says.

“Our hope is that the changes will make it easier for students to fulfill their integrated learning requirements while at the same time encouraging them to think about big issues and providing them with a truly interdisciplinary perspective on a given topic.”

Developing cultural fluency

Another significant change in the revised curriculum is an increased emphasis on developing cultural fluency, whether through language study or through courses focusing on cultures outside of Britain and English-speaking North America, says Jennifer L. Romney, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and a member of the Implementation Committee.

With the current curriculum, students can fulfill their “Language and Arts” requirement by taking just two semesters of a single foreign language and the “Cultural Diversity’’ requirement by taking just one related course.

The IQ curriculum will combine “Language and Arts” and “Cultural Diversity” into “Language & Cultural Diversity,” while “Arts” has joined with the “Humanities” area.

While a foreign language requirement still will not be required in the new curriculum, students must take either at least three courses in a single foreign language or four cultural diversity courses.

Romney says that the discrepancy between the required number of courses in the two different areas is because foreign language courses are often five units each while cultural diversity courses are typically three units.

“Because we are encouraging language study, we’ll be adding a session to Orientation on ‘How to Choose a Language, and Why,’” says Romney, who has held “Clusterama” sessions and Planner workshops every academic year to introduce students to the Discovery Curriculum and how to fulfill degree requirements.

Augmenting this increased emphasis on cultural fluency, students will be able to fulfill one of their “Integrations” requirements by completing one of 12 faculty-led study away programs. Previously, such programs were not included among the possibilities for students to fulfill distribution requirements.

Nine of these programs are summer-long, with many focusing on intensive language and culture study in places such as France, Senegal and Spain, or on a particular topic, such as the “MADE in France” program for dance and performing arts students; the “Pluralism, Politics, and Religion” program in Paris; or “Shakespeare at the Globe,” a theater program in London.

The three other programs are semester-long and offer study in Chile, Shanghai or Washington, D.C.

“As they explore our new IQ curriculum, incoming freshmen will have an increased flexibility to discover and develop their intellectual passions while still achieving a depth of study that will prepare them for their future endeavors,” says Jen Smith, PhD, who becomes dean of the College of Arts & Sciences July 1.

“We hope the focus on cultural fluency in the new curriculum will foster our students’ sense of themselves as global citizens,” says Smith, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences and of environmental studies, both in Arts & Sciences, and a four-year adviser.

Exploring the curriculum through PlanIt

To help students navigate the new curriculum and select the range of courses to meet their educational goals, they will work with their four-year advisers in the college as well as PlanIt.

The current Planner, a web-based curriculum planning software that was built in-house some 10 years ago, also has been reviewed and gone through a thorough overhaul, says Trevor M. Bilhorn, College of Arts & Sciences registrar and a member of the Implementation Committee.

He said the PlanIt will do all of what the current Planner does, including help students explore the curriculum, revise and track a course of study across all four years, and identify which courses will help them fulfill their distribution requirements.

It also will augment students’ dialogue with their advisers and be a practical tool for registration and identifying course favorites.

“The Planner has been given a facelift, providing students with a more interactive, intuitive way to access the material that comprises their course of study and explore the multitude of opportunities within Arts & Sciences,” Bilhorn says.

Arts & Sciences advisers are training on PlanIT this semester as it undergoes a testing period. PlanIT is expected to be accessible to students, both current and incoming, by the end of May.

“You can learn what you love” was a favorite expression of the late James E. McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

“Those words have been the overriding theme throughout the implementation process,” Bilhorn says. “We’re all driven to help students achieve that goal.”

Washington People: Guillermo Rosas

Deb Parker — 2012-04-27 00:00:00

David Kilper

Guillermo Rosas, PhD, associate professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, teaches a statistics class in Seigle Hall. Rosas is one of the “best applied political methodologists in the world,” says Andrew Martin, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law at the School of Law and professor of political science. Rosas is developing statistical models to solve problems unique to political science, Martin says.

Social norms in Mexico City in the 1970s suggested that Guillermo Rosas would grow up and spend his entire life in his hometown.

Today, Rosas, PhD, associate professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, is grateful for enabling factors that pushed him to leave his native country and pursue a graduate degree in the United States.

Much of Rosas’ research hearkens back to his homeland as he strives to infuse careful political science analysis into the public dialogue. He has a strong desire to mold young Mexican scholars, returning there to teach mini-courses and lead conferences.

“Maybe it will bear fruit,” he says. “That’s my hope. In Mexico, public discourse is so ill-informed. It is not supported by carefully thought-out analysis.

“In assessing the effects of public policy, we can say, ‘A was caused by B,’ but how can we be certain of that?” he asks. “We have to make sure we take the right steps to reach conclusions and to inform public opinion about what consequences can be attributed to government action and which ones may not.

“As academicians, it’s our responsibility to provide informed research about topics of public interest.”

Specializing in comparative politics, political economy and Latin American politics, Rosas focuses on a variety of issues from banking crises to voting dynamics to drug-trafficking-related deaths.

“Professor Rosas is one of the best applied political methodologists in the world,” says Andrew Martin, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law at the School of Law and professor of political science.

“Today, he is developing statistical models to solve problems unique to political science, including strategic abstention in legislatures and measuring the robustness of banks in Latin America over time,” Martin says.

Making a compelling case

One of his most important contributions is the 2009 book Curbing Bailouts: Bank Crises and Democratic Accountability in Comparative Perspective. Sparked by his personal knowledge of the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, Rosas wanted to understand if democratic governments and authoritarian regimes responded to banking crises in the same way.

“It would be hard to imagine more timely work,” says Brian F. Crisp, PhD, associate professor of political science.

“He makes a compelling case for why democratic governments are constrained in their ability to pump resources into insolvent banks — constraints that don’t apply to regimes that are less responsive to a voting constituency.”

Nathan Jensen, PhD, associate professor of political science who has co-authored book chapters and journal articles with Rosas, says he has learned new research methods through the collaboration.

“Guillermo’s attention to detail, care in empirical analysis and ability to think creatively about complex problems is something I attempt to model in my own work,” Jensen says.

Curious and resourceful

Naturally curious, Rosas has worked hard to develop the statistical methods needed to examine complicated questions in a credible way.

Because he was interested in determining whether a nine-member, nonpartisan Mexican electoral management body truly was voting in a nonpartisan way, Rosas embraced tools of Bayesian statistical analysis to test the theory.

But Rosas’ education to that point had not included critical training in statistical methods. When Rosas first came to WUSTL as a visiting professor in 2003, he enrolled in courses alongside his students.

He credits Martin and Jeff Gill, PhD, professor of political science, for helping him take his work to the next level.

“To be clear, Professor Rosas wrote an excellent dissertation and was very active with research,” Martin says. “Nonetheless, he realized that he needed to deploy state-of-the-art statistical methods.

“At that point, he began a rigorous course of study, including sitting through two of my graduate-level methodology courses, taking summer coursework at the University of Michigan and embarking on a two-year project of self-study. This was an incredibly ambitious task and risky; any time not devoted to scholarship or teaching is ‘time lost’ on the tenure track.”

Nowadays, Rosas uses modern methodological tools to underpin his research and teaches rigorous doctoral-level statistics courses.

Colleagues agree that Rosas is an exceptional teacher and mentor.

“What impresses me most is his steadfast patience,” Crisp says. “I have seen Guillermo display a level of patience that very few instructors could match.”

Rosas says he believes it’s a disservice to be curt with students. “Sometimes, when I was in school, I got the feeling classmates would bring good ideas to the professor — ideas that they wanted to develop — but I felt they were intimidated.”

It was Rosas’ own quest for knowledge that put him on a completely different trajectory than many of his childhood peers.

“In Mexico, most people go to the college in the city where they grew up and follow a traditional pattern,” Rosas says. “Even these days, it’s not uncommon for people to live with parents even after finishing college.

“I was very fortunate that my parents were able to provide a very solid middle-class upbringing for me and my siblings in a country where opportunity is still not plentiful for a majority.”

The road less followed

When Rosas was a boy, his father, an accountant for a Mexican airline company, took the family to New York City. There, Rosas visited the United Nations headquarters.

“I was very doe-eyed,” Rosas says. “I thought it was very glamorous.”

After graduating from an all-male Catholic high school, Rosas opted — perhaps because of the seed planted years earlier — to attend El Colegio de Mexico. This small, prestigious public school educates people to become Foreign Service diplomats.

Rosas earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from El Colegio de Mexico in 1995. Because of the college’s more narrow vocational focus, however, Rosas received no math instruction during his undergraduate years.

Rosas forged ties with several agencies that were encouraging undergraduates to pursue U.S. graduate studies in the hope that they would return to the Mexican professoriate. Leaning now toward a career in political science, Rosas ended up at Duke University, which boasted one of the top political science departments in the United States.

Courtesy Photo

Guillermo Rosas with his wife, Tabea Alexa Linhard, and two children — daughter, Aitana, and son, Emilio.

While at Duke, Rosas met Tabea Alexa Linhard, PhD, who would become his wife. Linhard, who grew up in Germany and Spain, is now an associate professor of Spanish, of comparative literature and of international and area studies, all in Arts & Sciences.

By 2001, the now-married couple was expecting their first child when Rosas accepted an offer to teach at Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, considered by some to be the best private university in Mexico. There, Rosas served as an assistant professor of political science while finishing his doctoral dissertation for Duke.

The institute, however, was not a good fit for Linhard.

“The academic environment in Mexico regarding the humanities is very insular,” Rosas says. “It became clear that she could not pursue a career in humanities, and we were convinced we had to come back to the U.S. job market.”

‘The academic American dream’

Rosas’ wife was the first to accept an offer at WUSTL in 2003, and Rosas was invited as a visiting professor of political science. A year later, Rosas was offered a tenure-track position.

“Even landing a job in the same city is a dream come true, let alone the same university,” Rosas says.

Santiago Olivella, a political science doctoral student, says Rosas is an inspiration.

“After going back to Mexico for two years, Guillermo was able to return to the U.S. market with a strong enough profile to get a tenure-track job at one of the top political science departments in the nation,” Olivella says.

“He earned recognition of his peers for his expertise in the use of quantitative methods in a department nationally recognized for these methods — all after coming here with a basic understanding of statistics. If there is anything like the academic American dream, Guillermo truly embodies it.”

Fast facts about Guillermo Rosas

Born: Mexico City
Outside interests: Coaches a children’s soccer team; plays violin in a quartet with faculty and graduate students in political science; formerly played in Cuicacalli, WUSTL’s student-run mariachi band
Changes ahead: Rosas and Linhard recently were named Faculty Fellows and soon will move with their kids into their new home, Lien Hall on the South 40. Sponsored by the Office of Residential Life, the program encourages significant faculty-student interaction outside the classroom.

Dynamo Theatre at Edison May 5

2012-04-27 00:00:00

Montreal’s Dynamo Theatre returns to Edison May 5 with Mur Mur (The Wall). Photo © Robert Etcheverry. Hi-res version available upon request.

Covered in both graffiti and secrets, a simple brick wall alternates between playground and refuge from the world.

On Saturday, May 5, Montreal’s Dynamo Theatre will return to St. Louis with Mur-Mur (The Wall), an acrobatic exploration of friendship and young love, as part of Edison’s ovations for young people series.

Tickets to the performance, which begins at 11 a.m., are $12 and are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543 or email edison@wustl.edu.

Dynamo Theatre was founded in 1981 by a group Montreal artists whose varying backgrounds ranged from gymnastics to mime to juggling. The group's vision was to create a dynamic theatrical experience that combined all of these movements with the depth of drama — a style they now call the “Theatre of Acrobatic Movement.”

Mur-Mur (The Wall), their latest show, centers on the friendships between two teenage couples and a pesky and incorrigible younger brother. With exuberant humor and acrobatic virtuosity, these five characters tell of quarrels, shared schemes and stolen kisses, capturing the moving and sweetly poignant world of young love and discovery.

"(Dynamo Theatre) tells stories using bodies and few words,” says Le Soleil. “Evocation and suggestion are key to its art while poetry and images give it wings ... Their muscles are eloquent and their precise movements and actions bring up striking images.”

“This brand of acrobatic theater is still theater, with plots, themes, and characters,” adds the New Times of Palm Beach. Dynamo “simply drives its narratives with back flips and cartwheels more than with dialogue.”

Edison Ovations Series

Founded in 1973, the Edison Ovations Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

Edison programs are made possible with support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and private contributors. The Ovations season is supported by The Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

Poster perfect

2012-04-26 00:00:00

Jon Furst

Sophomore Marnie Abeshouse (left), an anthropology major in Arts & Sciences, explains her research project on the Israeli pharmaceutical industry to (from left) Phylllis Markus, vice president of the Social Injustice Initiative at the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis, Benjamin Cedargreen and Hilary Cedargreen during a poster presentation April 24 for the Olin Business School course "Business, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Israel." The course, taught by Steve Malter, PhD, assistant dean for student development and stratetic initiatives at Olin, focuses on business innovation in Israel and includes a 10-day immersion in various aspects of the Israeli economy. For more information, visit news.wustl.edu/news/pages/23520.aspx.

WUSTL English professor Carl Phillips wins LA Times Book Prize

2012-04-25 00:00:00

Carl Phillips, professor of English in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry for Double Shadow, his most recent book of poetry.

Phillips

Phillips was one of 12 winners recognized during a ceremony April 20 at the University of Southern California. The 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony honors the best books of 2011.

Double Shadow is Phillips’ 11th poetry collection and was published in March 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It also was nominated for the 2011 National Book Award.

Phillips, also a professor of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences, is a four-time National Book award nominee and winner of numerous other prizes in poetry.

The highly acclaimed poet was a National Book Award finalist in 2009 for his 10th collection of poetry, Speak Low; in 2004 for his seventh collection, The Rest of Love: Poems; and in 1998 for his third collection, From the Devotions.

http://youtu.be/3sESR5DruuoCarl Phillips discusses Double Shadow.

His first book, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and was heralded as the work of an outstanding newcomer in the field of contemporary poetry.

His other books of poetry are Cortege (1995), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry; Pastoral (2000), winner of the Lambda Literary Award; The Tether (2001), winner of the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Rock Harbor (2002); Riding Westward (2006); and Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006 (2007).

He won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry for The Rest of Love.

Phillips earned a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in Greek and Latin in 1981 from Harvard University, a master’s degree in Latin and classical humanities in 1983 from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s degree in creative writing in 1993 from Boston University.

For more information on the prize, visit events.latimes.com/bookprizes.

‘Bridging gaps’ between graduate and professional students

Susan Killenberg McGinn — 2012-04-24 00:00:00

Sid Hastings

Brooke B. James (center), an MBA student in Olin Business School, accepts congratulations for winning the Community Service Individual Award during the Graduate Professional Council’s 2011-12 Bridging GAPS awards ceremony, held April 9 in the Danforth University Center. At right is her father, Bill James.

Graduate student groups and individual leaders at Washington University in St. Louis who help “bridge the gaps” between graduate and professional students from diverse areas of study throughout WUSTL’s seven schools were recognized during a recent awards ceremony and reception.

The Graduate Professional Council’s (GPC) Bridging GAPS (Graduate and Professional Students) Awards Ceremony was held April 9 in the Danforth University Center’s Goldberg Formal Lounge.

The GPC holds the annual ceremony to recognize the important role that graduate student leadership plays in enhancing interdisciplinary endeavors and strengthening the graduate student community on campus.

The awards also recognize exceptional work in bringing people together not only from across the university, but also throughout the St. Louis community.

The awards include the Community Service Award for outstanding commitment through service events or projects; the Diversity Award for furthering the diversity initiative at the university; the Professional Development Award for promotion through research, professionalism or career development; and the Sustainability Award for development of programs or projects that promote sustainability.

Leadership Awards also are given to a faculty or staff leader for promoting the ideals of Bridging GAPS through interschool communication and collaboration and to a graduate student leader for outstanding commitment to leadership in the graduate student community.

“It is difficult enough for graduate students to keep up with their classes and conduct their research thoroughly, so when students go outside of their classrooms or labs to participate in community service activities or professional development organizations, they deserve to be commended,” says Peggy P. Ni, GPC treasurer and a member of the Bridging GAPS Committee.

“Furthermore, the graduate students and student groups that are honored in the Bridging GAPS Awards Ceremony have even gone above and beyond that, actively engaging in cross-campus collaboration with individuals and groups in schools other than their own to make this campus a more interactive and better place,” says Ni, who is a PhD candidate in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

The 2011-12 Bridging GAPS award winners are:

Community Service Individual Award: Brooke B. James, an MBA student in Olin Business School
Community Service Group Award: Olin Cares, a graduate organization in the Olin Business School
Diversity Individual Award: Emily J. Squires, a master’s student in the Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Diversity Group Award: I-CAN (International Graduate Student Association for Career Development and Networking), a university-wide graduate student group
Professional Development Individual Award: Maggie S. Majors, a PhD candidate in Germanic languages and literatures in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and Jennifer C. Greenfield, a PhD student in the Brown School
Professional Development Group Award: Association for Women in Science, St. Louis chapter, WUSTL PhD Student Leadership
Sustainability Invidividual Award: Dan K. Conner, an MBA student in Olin Business School
Sustainability Group Award: Office of Sustainability Graduate Student Intern Group
Faculty/Staff Award: J. Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor in the Brown School
Graduate Student Leader Award: Teresa L. Ai, a PhD student in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Richard J. Smith, PhD, dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Ralph E. Morrow Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, spoke during the awards ceremony.

Nick E. Miller, GPC president and a PhD candidate in English in Arts & Sciences, and Nina M. Parikh, Bridging GAPS chairperson and a master’s student in public health in the Brown School, also spoke during the event.

Nominations for Bridging GAPS awards are accepted from across the graduate community.

For more information about the Graduate Professional Council or the Bridging GAPS awards, visit gpc.wustl.edu.

Diversity and Inclusion Grants awarded

Susan Killenberg McGinn — 2012-04-24 00:00:00

A project to support Washington University in St. Louis faculty and staff who work with students from underrepresented minority groups and an internship program for underrepresented minorities that could lead to a career in a technology field are among the winning proposals of the university’s Diversity and Inclusion Grants program for 2011-12.

The Advisory Committee for the Diversity and Inclusion Grants has awarded eight grants totaling nearly $174,000 to Washington University faculty and administrators for initiatives that improve the university environment for women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

Faculty and administrators submitted 16 proposals for program initiatives that strengthen and promote diversity and inclusion at WUSTL. Diversity includes differences in gender, race, ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic status, age, politics, philosophy, disability and sexual orientation.

The Office of the Provost funds the Diversity and Inclusion Grant program. Now in its third year, the program has awarded almost $600,000 in grant money for 29 projects.

Funding for the selected projects is one-time only, and awards range in size up to a maximum of $30,000.

“We are continuing to get innovative and ambitious proposals that themselves reflect the diversity of interests in making our campus more inclusive,” says Adrienne D. Davis, JD, vice provost and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and co-chair of the Advisory Committee for the Diversity and Inclusion Grants. “I think of the grants as democratizing diversity.”

“The quality of the proposals was impressive, and I am hopeful that these grants have the potential to significantly enhance diversity on campus,” says Kathleen B. McDermott, PhD, professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and the advisory committee’s co-chair.

The project team leaders of the winning proposals, amounts awarded and project titles are:

Timothy J. Bono, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and lecturer in the Department of Psychology, $22,000 for “Supporting Faculty and Staff Who Work With Students of Color.”

Koong-Nah Chung, PhD, associate dean and director of medical student research in the School of Medicine, $30,000 for “Training of Meharry Medical College Medical Students in the Washington University School of Medicine’s Summer Research Program.”

Heather L. Hageman, director of educational planning and program assessment and director of the standardized patient program in the Office of Education at the School of Medicine, $19,450 for “Train-The-Trainer Program on Inclusion.”

Denise R. Hirschbeck, assistant vice chancellor for Information Services and Technology, $30,000 for “Expanding Diversity in Technology: Internship Program for Staffing Technology Positions on Campus.”

Panos Kouvelis, PhD, the Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management, senior associate dean and director of executive programs, and director of the Boeing Center for Technology, Information & Manufacturing at the Olin Business School, $30,000 for “Olin Business School Women’s Leadership Forum.”

Peter B. MacKeith, associate dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and associate professor of architecture, $12,350 for “Empowering Faculty, Staff, and Administrators to Support the Integration of International Graduate and Professional Students into Departmental Communities.”

Leah A. Merrifield, executive director for academic-civic engagement in the Office of Government and Community Relations, $12,000 for “Community Guide to Washington University AND the St. Louis Region.”

Michael W. Sherraden, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and director of the Center for Social Development, and Molly Tovar, EdD, director of the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies, both at the Brown School, $18,113 for the “Interdisciplinary Leadership Summit for Faculty, Staff, and Students at Washington University.

Hageman and MacKeith were winning project leaders last year as well.

Bono, who is collaborating on “Supporting Faculty and Staff Who Work With Students From Underrepresented Backgrounds” with Diana Hill, PhD, an assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and lecturer in the Department of Psychology, says their project is intended to provide insight into the experiences of minority students so that faculty and staff who work with them can have a greater understanding of the most appropriate kinds of support they can offer their students as well as the particular times during the semester when that support is most needed.

“The findings have the potential to benefit academic advisers, program managers in the First Year Center, and student group advisors in Campus Life,” Bono says.

“For example, there are faculty and staff advisers for the Association of Black Students and Association of Latin American Students. However, there has been relatively little research conducted to govern the work of faculty and staff who work with these populations. We hope to provide that,” Bono says.

Hirschbeck’s project proposal includes recruiting and training talented individuals in underrepresented groups to learn and use technology skills in a structured business environment.

She says that the goal of her team’s project is to create a framework for on-the-job training and employment of individuals who either have traditionally found it difficult to enter the technology field or for whom a career in technology was not presented to them as an option.

“The Diversity and Inclusion Grant program is an important way for Washington University faculty and administrators to make a difference in promoting diversity and inclusion on campus,” Hirschbeck says.

“Our team feels very fortunate to have been selected to receive this grant. By reaching out to high school graduates and members of the WU community, we will provide a path for individuals who may feel that a career in technology is unattainable,” Hirschbeck says.

“A successful program will result in the recruitment and retention of a diverse group of employees and the delivery of university applications that employ the use of newer technology, including mobile friendly web pages and ‘apps.’”

Other members of the Advisory Committee for the Diversity and Inclusion Grants are:

Iver Bernstein, PhD, professor of history, of African and African-American studies and of American culture studies, all in Arts & Sciences;
Naomi Daradar Sigg, assistant director of student involvement and leadership in the Office of Student Activities;
Dayna Early, MD, professor of medicine in the School of Medicine;
Robert G. Hansman, associate professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts;
Vetta L. Sanders-Thompson, PhD, associate professor of public health in the Brown School; and
Jay R. Turner, PhD, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

For more information, visit diversity.wustl.edu.

Math students score in Putnam, win and show in Missouri math competition

2012-04-24 00:00:00

Hang Chen

WUSTL contestants debrief after the Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition with their sponsor Ron Freiwald, PhD, professor of mathematics. They are (clockwise from lower left) Josh Levin, Tom Morrell, Alan Talmage, Matt Halpern, Freiwald, Ari Tenzer and Jason Zhang.

The Department of Mathematics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has announced the results of the 72nd William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition.

The university fielded 16 students in the competition, which was held on the first Saturday in December 2011. Altogether, 572 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada took part.

Three students must be designated in advance as the school team, and the team score is based on the three individual scores.

This year, the WUSTL team, consisting of senior Alex Anderson and juniors Tom Morrell and Ari Tenzer, placed 28th out of 460 teams.

"My toughest task is picking the students for the team,” says Victor Wickerhauser, PhD, professor of mathematics and this year’s Putnam coach. "It’s not really possible to predict how students will perform,” he says, “but we convince ourselves each year that we can.

Individual performances also are ranked. Anderson earned an honorable mention with a rank of 26 out of 4,440 contestants. Two other students ranked in the top 200 and one more in the top 250.

Hang Chen

Anderson

Anderson will be awarded the Putnam Exam Prize this year. The prize is given to a graduating senior who has done exceptionally well on the Putnam exam during his or her time at WUSTL.

The exam consists of two three-hour sessions during which contestants work individually on 12 problems.

“It’s a very hard test,” says Wickerhauser. “The median score is zero. More than half the people who try it make no progress on any of the 12 problems and get a zero.”

The problems are famous for testing ingenuity and cleverness rather than profound mathematical insight. “Typically,” Wickerhauser says, “they belong to a class of problems that are not solvable, but the one selected for the Putnam has some special properties that make it solvable.

“So those who are good at the Putnam exam are those who are quick to locate the central difficulty of a problem and quick to realize this problem doesn’t have the central difficulty because of some quirk or a particular choice of numbers.”

The exam is based in part on the famous tripos, the competition held at the University of Cambridge in England that also rewards cleverness and thinking on one’s feet, says Wickerhauser. Those who gain ‘first-class’ degrees in this competition are called Wranglers and the highest scorer is the Senior Wrangler.

“The students who take the Putnam really enjoy it,” Wickerhauser says. “For the real Wranglers like Alex, this is a very pleasant activity.”

“My goal was pleasure,” Anderson says. He explains that he was tired of grinding through problem sets in the three physics courses he was taking that term, and was looking forward to “using a limited set of ideas in clever ways rather than learning a breadth of new concepts.”

This doesn’t mean there is never any grousing. Between the morning and the afternoon sessions this year, Wickerhauser took the students to lunch where they pronounced one of the morning’s problems as ‘evil.’

“You were supposed to find all of the numbers for which some property held,” Wickerhauser says, “and there were eight solutions. The first seven you could find by elegant thinking, and to get the eighth you had to work out a whole bunch of cases to convince yourself it was true.”

Elizabeth Lowell Putnam established the William Lowell Putnam Intercollegiate Memorial Fund in memory of her husband, who graduated in mathematics from Harvard. The first competition was held in 1938 and the contest has been sponsored since then by the Mathematical Association of America.

Students prepare for the Putnam during Friday afternoon practice sessions in the fall semester. The practices featured free pizza, paid for by the mathematics department from money won by past Putnam teams. (The top team can win as much as $25,000.)

An archive of Putnam problems can be found at the Putnam Competition Directory.

Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition

Hang Chen

A WUSTL team took first place in the competition. The winning team members, here consulting on a problem, were (from left), freshman Alan Talmage, and juniors Tom Morrell and Ari Tenzer.

WUSTL math students also did well in the 17th annual Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition, held April 12 and 13 on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Forty-one teams from colleges and universities across Missouri took part.

The two WUSTL teams took first and third place. A team consisting of freshman Alan Talmage and juniors Morrell and Tenzer captured first place. The second team consisting of sophomore Jason Zhang and juniors Matt Halpern and Josh Levin took third place.

“It was a little scary going into the competition as the only freshman,” Talmage says, “but after making it through both sessions, I think that I have gained valuable experience — it was grueling, but it was also fun.”

Wickerhauser notes that several freshmen did well on the Putnam, which means the department should be able to field strong teams in the next three years.

The competition consists of two sessions, in each of which teams work collaboratively on five problems for two-and-a-half hours. It is sponsored by the Missouri section of the Mathematical Association of America and began in 1996. Since then, a WUSTL team has captured first place 11 times.

The faculty sponsors for the competition were Russ Woodroofe, PhD, the Chauvenet Postdoctoral Lecturer in Mathematics, and Edward Wilson, PhD, professor emeritus of mathematics.

To view this year’s problems from the state competition, visit the competition’s site.

Spector Prize goes to Fahey

2012-04-24 00:00:00

Each year, the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis awards a prize to a graduating senior in memory of Marion Smith Spector, a 1938 WUSTL graduate who studied zoology under the late Viktor Hamburger, PhD.

Fahey

Hamburger was a professor of biology and a prominent developmental biologist who made many important contributions while a WUSTL faculty member.

The Spector Prize, first awarded in 1974, recognizes academic excellence and outstanding undergraduate achievement in research. Students are nominated by their research mentors for outstanding research that has made substantial contributions to a field.

This year, the prize has been awarded to Paul Fahey, who graduated in December 2011 summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Fahey worked in the lab of Karen O’Malley, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the School of Medicine. His thesis focused Fragile X syndrome, the most common form of inherited mental retardation.

Fragile X syndrome is caused by a deficiency of a protein called FMRP, and FMRP is known to oppose the functions of a receptor called mGluR5. One of the hallmarks of Fragile X syndrome is exaggerated mGluR5 signaling in the absence of FMRP. Blocking mGluR5 protects mice against the effects of the missing protein, and thus mGluR5 is an important therapeutic target for Fragile X syndrome.

In O’Malley’s lab, Fahey studied the role of intracellular mGluR5 in opposing FMRP function. A better understanding of this role will help unravel signaling pathways associated with Fragile X syndrome and related disorders.

Fahey plans to enter a dual-degree MD/PhD program at Baylor Medical School in the fall.

As part of the biology department’s recognition of his outstanding work, Fahey will be recognized at the Biology Honors Reception at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 16, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162.

Prestigious national scholarships awarded to five WUSTL juniors

2012-04-23 00:00:00

Five juniors at Washington University in St. Louis have been awarded prestigious national scholarships.

Three students received the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and two students received the Morris K. Udall Scholarship for the 2012-13 academic year.

Winners of the Goldwater Scholarship are Rachel Greenstein, a biology major; Jennifer Head, who is majoring in chemical engineering; and Jenny Liu, who is majoring in electrical and biomedical engineering.

Madeleine Daepp, majoring in economics and mathematics, and Jeremy Pivor, majoring in environmental biology with a minor in public health, won the Udall Scholarship.

Daepp recently learned that she has also won a Truman scholarship.

“I believe the success of our students in winning these extremely competitive national awards is really grounded in the excellent faculty mentoring each of these students has received from very early on in their undergraduate careers,” says Joy Z. Kiefer, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and director of the Office of Undergraduate Research.

“This in-depth faculty mentoring is a hallmark of the undergraduate experience here at Washington University, and I am very happy to have us represented so well on the national stage,” says Kiefer, the campus fellowship adviser for current students and recent alumni interested in competitive fellowship and scholarship programs.

The Goldwater Scholarship is considered one of the most prestigious awards for undergraduates planning careers in the sciences, engineering or math. It covers as much as $7,500 annually toward tuition, fees and books for either one or two years.

The U.S. Congress established the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation in 1986 to honor Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, who served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years.

The Goldwater Foundation, a federally endowed agency, awarded 282 scholarships for the 2012-13 academic year, selecting recipients on the basis of academic merit from a pool of 1,123 undergraduate sophomores and juniors nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide.

Udall scholarships are granted to those who demonstrate a commitment to fields related to the environment or to Native American or native Alaskan students in fields related to health care and tribal public policy.

It covers tuition, fees, books and room and board to a maximum of $5,000 per year.

The U.S. Congress established the Morris K. Udall Foundation in 1992 to honor Morris K. Udall, who served in the House of Representatives for 30 years, and renamed it in 2009 to include Stewart L. Udall in recognition of his public service.

The Udall Scholarship program is administered by the Morris K. Udall and Stuewart L. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation.

A total of 80 Udall Scholars were selected from 585 candidates nominated by 274 colleges and universities this year.

Goldwater Scholars

Greenstein is majoring in biology with a concentration in the areas of molecular biology and biochemistry in Arts & Sciences.

She has worked in the laboratory of Douglas Chalker, PhD, associate professor of biology, since 2010. Under his mentorship, she is studying the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, an organism that eliminates 30 percent of the DNA from its functional genome during development. The goal of Chalker’s lab is to understand how this massive genome reorganization is regulated and how it is related to DNA packaging in organisms with membrane-bound nuclei.

Greenstein’s contribution was to tag one of the genes suspected of playing a role in the reorganization with a fluorescent protein. She says she felt pure elation when she flipped off the light on her microscope, opened the filter and saw brilliant red dots in the nuclei of the cells, indicating the tagged protein was indeed localized to sites of DNA rearrangement.

She won a research fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to continue her research during the summer of 2011. Working fulltime, she added other tags to serve as handles for biochemical analyses and worked on a "knockout" strain that would be missing the gene she had earlier tagged. (Knocking out a gene can show whether it is essential for cell survival or clarify its role in cellular processes.)

Greenstein, who is motivated in part by the early death of her mother from breast cancer, plans to earn a doctorate in molecular cell biology with the goal of teaching at the university level, a goal only reinforced by her experiences as a teaching assistant and peer tutor for the introductory biology courses at the university.

Head, a Danforth, Ervin and McKelvey Research scholar, is majoring in chemical engineering with minors in environmental engineering and Spanish in Arts & Sciences. McKelvey Scholars, selected from incoming engineering students, each receive an award to conduct research with a WUSTL faculty member in engineering, medicine or the sciences.

Head

Head worked with Yinjie Tang, PhD, the Francis Ahmann Career Development Assistant Professor in Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering. In his lab, she measured the toxicity of nanoparticles by their effects on seed germination and root elongation.

In summer 2010, as part of the International Experience Program offered by the Department of Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering, Head studied environmental engineering at the Institute of Technology in Mumbai, India. During the program, she completed independent research projects on generating water from the atmosphere and microbial fuel cells.

The past two summers, Head has worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati. Under the guidance of Todd Luxton, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the EPA lab, she studied the use of iron nanoparticles from welding fumes to absorb and reduce hexavalent chromium in groundwater.

She also analyzed soil from a superfund site in North Carolina for arsenic and lead. At the EPA’s Experimental Stream Facility, she assisted in experiments to determine the effect of mountaintop mining on water systems.

This summer, Head plans to work with Daren Chen, PhD, professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering, to generate nano-sized controlled-release cancer drugs by the electrospray technique Chen has perfected.

Head is the fundraising officer for the WUSTL chapter of Engineers Without Borders and will be the project leader for the chapter’s Ethiopia project in the upcoming school year. The group plans to rebuild a water tower for the Mekelle School for the Blind in Ethiopia.

Liu, an Alexander S. Langsdorf Fellow and a McKelvey Research Scholar, is majoring in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering.

Liu

The McKelvey scholarship, she says, allows her to work in a lab while attending school.

Recently, she studied the thermodynamics of a membrane protein in the bacterium E. coli under the guidance of Katie Henzler-Wildman, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the School of Medicine. The protein is a multidrug transporter that can recognize and expel multiple compounds, many of which are antibiotics, such as tetracycline.

Liu says she became interested in drug resistance during a summer internship in a pathology department while she was in high school. “Reading through patient charts describing infection from bacteria strains resistant to pretty much everything available, resulting in amputation or death, was heartbreaking,” she says.

Last May, Liu joined a completely student-run lab started by Sam Fok, who has since graduated, and advised by Eric C. Leuthardt, MD, assistant professor of neurosurgery, of biomedical engineering and of neurobiology in the School of Medicine.

The primary goal of the group is to work on the Ipsihand, a stroke rehabilitation therapy device that uses signals from motor neurons that survived the stroke to move the patient’s hand.

Outside the classroom, Liu builds combat robots with the student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, for which she is co-secretary. She is also an officer for the International Pre-health Society, a WUSTL group that supports international students in their pursuit of health careers.

Udall Scholars
Daepp, who is majoring in economics and in mathematics, both in Arts & Sciences, plans to earn a law degree before embarking on a joint master’s degree program in agricultural law and economics, with the expectation of working in agricultural policy. Daepp was also named a Truman Scholar.

Daepp

“I would really like to mediate between farmers, researchers and policymakers to encourage the innovation and implementation of more sustainable food production practices,” she says.

As co-president of Burning Kumquat, a student-run garden, Daepp has led many efforts on campus and in the St. Louis community to raise awareness about the economic and environmental issues surrounding food production. She worked with members of the university administration and food service to supply produce from the student garden to the dining facilities and to facilitate a university farmer’s market for the campus community during the growing season.

She also secured the competitive Gephardt Institute for Public Service Civic Engagement grant to fund an environmental education and gardening project for inner-city youth in St. Louis.

She attributes her interest in sustainable food to her father. Both of her parents are mathematicians at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., but her father, who is from Bern, Switzerland, was raised in a culture where produce was eaten fresh and only in season.

Pivor plans to pursue advanced degrees in ocean policy and international environmental law with the goal of becoming an advocate for the sustainable conservation and management of the world’s oceans.

Pivor

A Florence Moog Scholar, Pivor is also a member of the WUSTL’s Pathfinder Program in Environmental Sustainability, a four-year educational program that allows students to examine the issues surrounding environmental sustainability through case studies and field trips.

Pivor has also studied the ecosystems of caves in Missouri, oyster reefs in North Carolina, and coral reefs in Madagascar.

Pivor co-founded Washington University Students for International Collaboration on the Environment (WUSICE). Through WUSICE, he organized WUSTL’s first U.S.-China Undergraduate Conference on Climate Change and Sustainability, inviting students from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, to St. Louis to discuss climate change.

Last fall, Pivor organized the university’s first delegation to the United Nations COP17 climate-change conference in Durban, South Africa, where he also served as the Sierra Club’s student coalition’s international youth delegate. (COP17 stands for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.)

Washington University Opera April 24 and 26

2012-04-19 00:00:00

Take three parts standard operatic repertoire, add two contemporary masterpieces, one not-so-standard bel canto and a dash of musical theatre.

The result is Opera Scenes, the semester-end program by Washington University Opera. This year's performances will take place at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, April 24 and 26, in the Ballroom Theatre of the 560 Music Center.

Ocel

“The Opera Scenes program is an informal event that is taken quite seriously,” says Tim Ocel, lecturer in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, who directs the performance.

Ocel notes that the ballroom setting, in which performers are surrounded by audience on three sides, “forces the student singers to create a complete and thorough characterization and to be as musically precise as possible.”

The program will include excerpts from Jules Massenet’s Manon, Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth and Giacomo Puccini's La Rondine as well as from two contemporary works, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah and Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco.

Rounding out the program will be scenes from The Secret Garden, the musical by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon; and from Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell.

The latter, Ocel notes, “is rarely performed because of its length and difficulty. The trio for three female voices is a stunning example of bel canto musicianship and will interest opera devotees who look for an opportunity to hear live a small portion of Rossini's final operatic work.”

The six performers include four master’s candidates — Keith Boyer, Anthony Heinemann, Kathleen Redmon and Kate Reimann — as well as two undergraduates: junior Colleen Batty and senior Rush Dorsett.

Pianist is Sandra Geary, teacher of applied music and co-director of the opera program. Musical direction is by senior lecturer Christine Armistead.

The performance is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Department of Music. The 560 Music Center is located in University City at 560 Trinity Ave.

For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email susan_wetzel@aol.com.

Elgin, Templeton elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

2012-04-19 00:00:00

Two Washington University in St. Louis professors have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The new fellows are Sarah C.R. Elgin, PhD, the Viktor Hamburger Professor of Arts & Sciences; and Alan R. Templeton, PhD, the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences.

“I am delighted to have two of our outstanding faculty receive this tremendous honor,” says Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “Professors Elgin and Templeton are two dedicated scholars, and this recognition is well-deserved. This achievement symbolizes the good fortune we have had at Washington University in attracting premier faculty.”

Elgin and Templeton are among 220 American men and women elected as fellows this year by the academy, an organization formed in 1780 to cultivate the arts and sciences and to recognize leadership in scholarship, business, the arts and public affairs.

The academy’s current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. Fellows are selected through a competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made pre-eminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.

This year’s new fellows and foreign honorary members will be welcomed during an Oct. 6 induction ceremony at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

Elgin

James Kegley for HHMI

Elgin

Elgin joined the Department of Biology in 1981 and became a full professor in 1984. She was installed as the inaugural Viktor Hamburger Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences in 2006.

Besides her primary appointment in biology, Elgin holds joint appointments as professor of education in Arts & Sciences; and as professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and professor of genetics in the School of Medicine.

Her research focuses on the role of chromatin structure in regulating fruit fly (Drosophila) genes. (Chromatin is the complex of DNA and proteins that coil into chromosomes at some stages of the cell cycle.)

Her laboratory has developed a number of approaches that have contributed to the understanding of how DNA is packaged in the nucleus, including how critical regulatory regions are maintained in an accessible form.

Her current focus is on heterochromatin structure and gene silencing. (Heterochromatin is a tightly packed form of DNA that is largely inaccessible to the machinery of the cell needed for gene expression.) Her lab identified HP1, a critical protein for heterochromatin formation that has been conserved from the yeast S. pombe to man.

Studies of the small fourth chromosome in the Drosophila genome have highlighted the importance of repetitious elements (fragments of retroviruses and DNA transposons that invade our genomes) in determining which regions of the genome should be silenced and have suggested that an RNAi-based mechanism is critical for HP1 deposition and silencing of the repeats.

In the late 1980s, Elgin started working with the University City School District in a science education partnership, which has since expanded to create the Office of Science Outreach, whose mission is to serve K-12 students and their teachers through creative curriculum development and teacher professional development activities. The office now is part of the Institute for School Partnership, directed by Victoria May.

In 2002, Elgin became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor with the ambition of developing core curriculum that would integrate primary research in genomics with a college course. This project has been expanded and disseminated as the Genomics Education Partnership, a consortium of more than 80 college and university faculty who are engaging their students in sequence improvement and annotation projects with the goal of publishing the results in primary research journals.

Elgin got off to a flying start, studying fallout in Oregon rainwater from Soviet nuclear weapons tests while still in high school. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Pomona College in 1967. While at Pomona, she participated in a summer research program at the University of Leeds characterizing the egg stalk of the green lacewing fly Chrysopa vittata.

Elgin earned a doctorate in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1971, where her thesis concerned nonhistone chromosomal proteins, examining primarily rat tissues.

After postdoctoral work at Caltech, Elgin joined the faculty at Harvard University, where her lab pioneered immunostaining of polytene chromosomes from Drosophila larval salivary glands and the use of nuclease digestion assays to analyze chromatin structure at specific genes. (Polytene chromosomes are giant chromosomes produced when DNA is replicated but the cell doesn’t divide.) She moved from Harvard to WUSTL eight years later.

Elgin has served on the editorial boards of many of the distinguished journals in her field. She also was founding co-editor in chief of CBE-Life Science Education, where she remains a senior editor.

She has been named an "Outstanding St. Louis Scientist" by the St. Louis Academy of Science and was presented with WUSTL’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1993.

Elgin has received numerous awards for her outstanding service to students.

In 2004, then-Missouri Governor Bob Holden presented her with a Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Arts & Sciences students have twice presented her with a faculty award for her involvement in fostering students’ academic development and research opportunities.

In December 2006, she received the Bruce Alberts Science Education Award from the American Society for Cell Biology; in May 2007, she received the Award for Exemplary Contributions to Education from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; and in 2009, she received the Genetics Society of America’s Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education.

Templeton

Templeton

Templeton joined the WUSTL faculty in 1977 as an associate professor in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences and in the Department of Genetics in the School of Medicine. He soon became a professor both of biology and of genetics and, in 2001, he was named the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology.

In addition to his primary appointment as professor of biology, he currently is a research associate of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a professor of biomedical engineering in WUSTL’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, a visiting professor at the Technion in Israel, a professor in the division of statistical genomics at WUSTL’s School of Medicine, and a professor (part-time) at the University of Haifa in Israel.

Templeton’s work involves the application of molecular genetic techniques and statistical population genetics to a variety of evolutionary problems, both basic and applied.

He takes an evolutionary approach to clinical genetics, including the study of the genetics of complex diseases, such as coronary artery disease and end-stage kidney disease.

He also applies evolutionary genetics to conservation biology, one focus being the impact of managed forest fires at the landscape level on the population structure of Ozark species, such as the Eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris collaris) and lichen grasshoppers (Trimerotropis saxatilis).

He also is studying the impact of human activities upon dispersal of the endangered fire salamander (Salamandra infraimmuculata) in Northern Israel and the wild ass in Southern Israel.

He is interested in basic questions about evolution, such as the meaning of "species" and the mechanisms by which new species evolve, and human evolution over the past two million years.

He is particularly well-known for work demonstrating that the genetic differences between humans populations are insufficient to define them as different races, using defintiions of race that are applied to other species.

According to Templeton’s research, perceived differences in races are more related to cultural perceptions and biases than any underlying genetic reality. For example, Templeton’s statistical analysis of the human genome shows that much greater genetic diversity exists between populations of chimpanzees than of humans.

Templeton earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology at WUSTL in 1969. He earned a master’s degree in statistics and a doctoral degree in human genetics at the University of Michigan, both in 1972.

He held positions at the University of Michigan, University of Hawaii, University of Texas at Austin and Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil before returning to St. Louis.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, he has served as the editor or associate editor of many of the journals in his field, and his own articles have often been among the most highly cited for a given year.

He is perhaps proudest, however, of the awards he has received for helping protect endangered species. The St. Louis Zoological Garden twice won the Edward Bean Award for management programs he helped design, first for the Speke’s gazelle and then for the banteng/guar.

The Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Forest Service have recognized his work in the Missouri Ozarks, which helped a number of endemic species as well as the collared lizard.

Burton Wheeler memorial set for April 24

2012-04-18 00:00:00

A memorial for Burton M. Wheeler, PhD, will take place at 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, in Holmes Lounge, Ridgley Hall, on the Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis.

Wheeler, professor emeritus of English and of religious studies, both in Arts & Sciences, and a beloved teacher and former dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, died Friday, Feb. 17, at his home in Warson Woods, Mo., after a long battle with cancer. He was 84.

A reception will immediately follow. For more information, contact Kathy Zeller at (314) 935-5277 or email kathy_zeller@wustl.edu.

To read the obituary that appeared in the Record, click here.

96 Minutes by alumna Aimee Lagos April 23

Liam Otten — 2012-04-18 00:00:00

Brittany Snow as Carley in 96 Minutes, the debut feature film by WUSTL alumnus Aimee Lagos. A free screening will take place in College Hall April 23.

As a Washington University undergraduate — studying social thought and analysis as well as legal studies in Arts & Sciences — Aimee Lagos tutored kids from East St. Louis and later interned with a neighborhood stabilization project.

Now a film director based in Los Angeles, Lagos will return to campus Monday, April 23, for a free screening of 96 Minutes, her feature-length debut. Loosely inspired by true events, the film centers on four teenagers from two different worlds, starkly divided by class — until those worlds slam together in the course of a carjacking.

“You tell the stories you know,” Lagos writes in her production notes. “Or at least the ones you know you must tell. This film is a tapestry of stories that have touched my life — people I’ve known, places I’ve been, truths that have rocked me and moved me to want to expose them in a new light.

“Everyone has a passion project, one that they work for years to get made,” she says. “96 Minutes was mine.”

Henry Schvey, PhD, professor in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, remembers Lagos as a talented actor who starred in his production of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, aka the “Yiddish Romeo and Juliet.”

“Aimee played the lead role of Leah, who was betrothed to a young scholar in early childhood,” Schvey remembers. “When her father reneges on this promise, the young man dies, brokenhearted, and Leah becomes possessed by a Dybbuk, or demonic spirit. Her performance was simply unforgettable.”

Schvey and Lagos kept in touch, and last fall Schvey attended a screening of 96 Minutes as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival, where it was named best debut feature.

The film begins moments after the carjacking but unfolds in non-linear fashion, interweaving scenes in the car with scenes from earlier in the day. Audiences witness the harrowing mayhem of abduction, but also learn the characters’ individual stories — where they come from, who they are and how they ended up together on that fateful night.

“I was stunned by the film's nuanced acting and brilliant writing and directing,” Schvey says. “I have never seen a more powerful film on the subject of race relations in America.

“It is that good.”

96 Minutes will begin at 7 p.m. in College Hall in the South 40 House. Lagos will be on hand to introduce the film and take questions afterward.

The event is sponsored by the PAD, the Office of Residential Life and the Film and Media Studies Program in Arts & Sciences.

For more information, call (314) 935-5858.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8aN9cyVa38

Celebrating 25 years of service

2012-04-17 00:00:00

Sid Hastings

Paul Dowkontt (left), research associate/electrical engineer in the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences, is congratulated by Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton April 11 as he receives a wrapped silver platter in recognition of his 25 years of service to Washington University. The 2012 25th Anniversary Reception, which was held at Harbison House, honored Dowkontt and 107 other faculty and staff members for their quarter-century of dedication to Washington University.

Exploring the American Dream

2012-04-17 00:00:00

What is the American Dream’s role in today’s society? Experts from Washington University in St. Louis will explore this question in a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, in Brown Hall Lounge on the Danforth Campus.

Panelists are:

Steven Fazzari, PhD, professor of economics in Arts & Sciences;
Carter W. Lewis, playwright-in-residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences; and
Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School.

Fazzari, an expert on macroeconomics, and Rank, an expert on poverty, are currently teaching the popular course “The Economic Realities of the American Dream.”

Over the past few years, Rank has interviewed people from all walks of life for an upcoming book on the tenuous nature of the American Dream in today’s society. Lewis is working with Rank to adapt some of these interviews for the stage.

Following comments from the panel, Edward F. Lawlor, PhD, dean of the Brown School and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor, will lead a discussion with the audience.

The Brown School Alumni Association is hosting the event, which is free and open to the public.

To register, email reism@wustl.edu or (314) 935-4780.

Chancellor’s Concert April 22

2012-04-17 00:00:00

The 2012 Chancellor's Concert will feature more than 100 musicians from the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Choirs.

Ah, spring. The rains rain, the flowers bloom, and the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences presents its annual Chancellor’s Concert.

The performance — which will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22, in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall — is among the largest-scaled of the year, featuring more than 100 musicians from the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Choirs.

Ward Stare

It also marks the first Chancellor’s Concert for the ensembles’ respective directors: Ward Stare, resident conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, and Nicole Aldrich, director of choral activities. Both joined the music department last summer.

The 2012 program will open with Symphony No. 96 “Miracle,” one of Franz Joseph Haydn’s 12 “London” symphonies. Written in 1791, during the composer’s wildly successful London debut, the piece gained its subtitle thanks to a memorable event and a case of mistaken attribution.

According to Albert Dies, an early 19th-century biographer, the audience at the premiere leapt to its collective feet and crowded the stage in applause — thus narrowly avoiding a falling chandelier that crashed to the empty seats below. Though subsequent scholars have shown that the incident occurred in 1795, not 1791, Symphony No. 96 continues to be known as Haydn’s “Miracle.”

The Chancellor’s Concert will continue with Franz Liszt’s Symphonic Poem No. 2, Tasso: lamento e trionfo (“Tasso, Lament and Triumph”). Begun as rough sketches and initially completed by Liszt’s assistant, August Conradi, the piece debuted in 1849 as the overture to Torquato Tasso, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's drama about the 16th century Italian poet.

Nicole Aldrich

Liszt, however, revised and expanded the work several times over the next several years. The Chancellor’s Concert will feature Liszt’s final version from 1856. The lament in the subtitle, as the composer explained in the score’s preface, invokes not only Goethe’s play but also the poem Lament of Tasso by Lord Byron.

Next will be Fern Hill (1960), an early work by the contemporary American composer John Corigliano. Based on the poem by Dylan Thomas, it was originally scored for mezzo-soprano, chorus, harp and strings. The April 22 program will feature a version reorchestrated for chamber orchestra by the composer in 1999.

Concluding the Chancellor’s Concert will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region (1905), a setting of Walt Whitman’s poem Darest Thou Now O Soul.

Conceived as part of an informal competition with fellow composer Gustav Holst (who set his own version of the same poem), Toward the Unknown Region premiered in 1907 and marked one of Vaughan Williams’ first major compositional successes.

The 560 Music Center is located at 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard. For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email susan_wetzel@aol.com.

Can behavior be controlled by genes? The case of honeybee work assignments

Diana Lutz — 2012-04-16 00:00:00

Travis Mohrman

Nurse bees tending to brood in cells both open and capped with beeswax. Recent work at Washington University in St. Louis suggests that the division of labor in honeybee colonies is controlled by small segments of noncoding RNA called micro-RNAs, or miRNAs.

What worker bees do depends on how old they are. A worker a few days old will become a nurse bee that devotes herself to feeding larvae (brood), secreting beeswax to seal the cells that contain brood and attending to the queen.

After about a week, she will progress to other tasks, such as grooming nest mates, ventilating the nest and packing pollen. Only at the end of her life will she become a forager, venturing forth to collect nectar and pollen for the colony.

Yehuda Ben-Shahar, PhD, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, wondered if this highly stereotyped system of task allocation wasn’t somehow under genetic control.

In an article published in the advance online edition of Genes, Brain and Behavior April 6, he and colleagues from Washington University, the University of Delaware, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Institute for System Biology in Seattle, demonstrate that the division of labor among honeybees coincides with the presence in their brains of tiny snippets of noncoding RNA, called micro-RNAs, or miRNAs, that suppress the expression of genes.

Forager bees that venture out to collect nectar and pollen have higher levels of some miRNAs in their brains than nurse bees that are devoted to tending to brood.

By comparing honeybee miRNAs to those of wasps, bees and ants, the scientists also showed that eusocial insects share many miRNAs that are absent in solitary insects. (Eusociality is an extreme form of social organization in which organisms care for young communally and give up reproductive rights to a queen.)

The pattern of conservation across species suggests that miRNAS, are important regulators of social behavior not just during the bee’s lifetime but also over evolutionary time.

Working for a living

Travis Mohrman

Worker bees become foragers only at the very end of their lives, after making their way through a list prescribed tasks from feeding brood to ventilating the nest. The forager in this photo is recognizable by her saddlebags, which are stuffed with yellow pollen.

Ben-Shahar chose the honeybee (Apis mellifera) as his model organism for the genetic control of behavior because the worker bees display such well-characterized division of labor.

Task allocation in honeybees is highly scripted, and yet the script is flexible enough to respond to labor shortages. If there aren’t enough nurse bees in the colony, nurses will stick with their tasks past the usual age limit, becoming what are called overage nurses. And if there aren’t enough foragers, bees too young for that role will rush to take it on, becoming precocious foragers.

For the scientists this plasticity makes bees a very powerful behavioral model. By comparing overage nurses to precocious foragers it is possible to compare gene expression in different behavioral states without the confounding factor of age.

A tiny off-switch

Ben-Shahar was curious about the role newly discovered molecules called miRNAs might play in the control of behavior.

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, said in 1956 that the central dogma of biology is that DNA makes RNA makes protein — and protein then does the cell’s work, including activating other genes.

The central dogma still holds, but in the past 50 years it has been enormously complicated by the discovery of many mechanisms for regulating gene expression, including a proliferation of regulatory RNAs.

Among these are miRNAS, tiny snippets of noncoding RNA typically only 22 nucleotide units long that bind to RNA transcripts of a gene, reducing protein production and, in effect, silencing the gene.

Micro-RNAs are known to regulate development and disease processes such as cancer, Ben-Shahar says.

“We wondered if they weren’t playing a role in regulating social behaviors,” he says, “because recent studies have implicated them in complex nervous-system functions such as neurodevelopment, psychiatric disease, and circadian clocks.”

A library of possibilities

Because nobody knew much about the miRNAs in bees, Ben-Shahar and the paper’s first author, undergraduate student Jacob Greenberg (now a medical student at WUSTL's School of Medicine), decided to make a grand survey of the miRNA “library” in a bee’s head.

They ground up heads, extracted the RNA from the tissue, sorted out the small RNA fragments, and sent those to a company that sequences DNA (or RNA, which is a similar molecule).

Because the entire honeybee genome has been sequenced, the short sequences the company supplied could be compared with the bee genome and non-matching sequences discarded as junk.

Various criteria were applied to the remaining sequences to whittle the candidates down to true miRNAs.

All of this sorting and sifting was done in collaboration with Weixiong Zhang, PhD, professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, who is an expert in computational biology.

“Zhang’s lab has a lot of experience doing the bioinformatics part, which is important because not every little snippet of RNA is a miRNA; there are certain criteria they use to prove it’s an miRNA,” says Ben-Shahar.

At the end of this monumental cataloguing effort, the scientists had a list of 97 miRNAs that are expressed in the heads of honeybees, including 17 that had never been identified before, and many others that had been found in flies and mammals but not in bees.

Five prime suspects

To design a manageable behavioral experiment, the scientists then selected five of the 97 miRNAs for closer inspection. These five were either very abundant or had been implicated in neural function in other organisms.

The scientists then manipulated two colonies of bees to produce cohorts of nurse and forager bees that were the same age, either young for foragers or old for nurses.

They dissected out the brains of their precocious foragers and overage nurses and measured the level of expression of the miRNAs in the brains with a sensitive test called the Northern Blot.

“We found that the level of expression of four of these miRNAS correlated with the task the bee was performing. Four of them were expressed at higher levels in foragers than in nurses. Because miRNAs typically suppress gene expression, this means genes actively transcribed in nurses were silenced in foragers,” Ben-Shahar says.

“There is clearly a task-related difference, but we don’t yet know what the gene targets of the miRNAs are,” he says.

An ancient regulatory system

Could miRNAs be playing a much broader role in the behavior of bees, not just regulating the tasks workers performed but also their social behavior more generally?

Honeybees are eusocial insects, meaning that a colony behaves more like a superorganism than a gathering of individuals. The scientists knew that the genomes of several other eusocial insects had recently been sequenced.

Did the eusocial insects share miRNAs, they wondered?

The grand survey of miRNAs had identified 20 miRNAs that seemed to be honeybee-specific. To test their idea, they looked for these miRNAs in the genomes of four other eusocial insects within the hymenoptera (an order of insects that consists of ants, bees and wasps) and in that of a solitary wasp.

A total of 19 out of the 20 miRNAs that had initially appeared to be honeybee-specific were also identified in the genomes of the other eusocial insects. Moreover, five found in all the eusocial hymenoptera were found in no other species. And none of the 20 miRNAS found in the eusocial insects were found in the genome of the solitary wasp.

Ben-Shahar

Twenty miRNAs the scientists originally thought to be specific to honeybees turned out to be common to other eusocial insects as well, a pattern consistent with the idea that miRNAs played a role in the evolution of eusociality. The honeybee miRNAs (green) are also found in: Apis floria, the Asian dwarf bee; Bombus terrestris, the bumble bee; Atta cephalotes, the leaf cutter ant; and Camponotus floridanus, a carpenter ant. All of these are social insects, although the last three are considered to be “primitive social.” In contrast the miRNAs are completely absent in Nasonia longicornis, a solitary wasp. (Yellow indicates an imperfect match.)

Once a miRNA assumes a functional role it is rarely lost from an animal’s genome, Ben-Shahar says, because it typically regulates multiple genes and is too thoroughly enmeshed in the cell’s regulation to be easily extracted. This makes miRNAs a valuable marker for evolutionary relationships among species.

The relationships among eusocial species could do with clarification. Ants and bees diverged a long time ago, and all ant species are eusocial, but bee species run the gamut from solitary to eusocial.

That pattern makes sense, Ben-Shahar says, only if the eusocial trait evolved more than once as new species evolved. Something in hymenoptera DNA may have made that group of animals more sensitive than others to whatever evolutionary pressures led to social behavior, he says.

Genetic control of human behavior is undoubtedly more complicated, Ben-Shahar says, but he points out that the human genome encodes close to 2,000 miRNAS, including two of the five he studied in bee brains, and these 2,000 miRNAs are thought to target roughly 60 percent of our genes.

Bowen selected for prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

2012-04-13 00:00:00

John R. Bowen, PhD, a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected for a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Bowen

Bowen, the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, was among the 181 Guggenheim Fellows chosen in 2012 from nearly 3,000 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada. The Guggenheim Fellowship is awarded on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.

Bowen’s research focuses on problems of pluralism, law and religion — and in particular on contemporary efforts to rethink Islamic norms and civil law — in France, England and North America. He also studies Islam and society in Indonesia.

During the year of Bowen’s fellowship, which begins in July, Bowen will continue his work on his book Shariah and Law in Britain. The book will examine how Islamic shariah councils in Britain — the first to be established in Western Europe — function both socially and legally and the councils’ relationships with different publics in Britain and elsewhere.

Bowen’s selection marks the second consecutive year a WUSTL faculty member in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences has been named a Guggenheim Fellow. Pascal Boyer, PhD, the Henry Luce Professor of Collective and Individual Memory, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2011.

“Of course, I feel great that our department has had Guggenheim Fellows two years running,” Bowen says.

“This award is a confirmation of John’s remarkable stature in the field, and we are exceptionally proud of his accomplishments,” says T.R. Kidder, PhD, professor and chair of anthropology.

Bowen is the author of numerous books, including Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton University Press, 2007); Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State (Princeton University Press, 2009) and, most recently, Blaming Islam (MIT Press, 2012).

In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, Bowen has received grants or fellowships from organizations such as the French National Research Agency, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation. He was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corp. in 2005.

Bowen earned a bachelor’s degree in 1973 from Stanford University and a master’s degree in 1977 and a doctorate in 1984, both in anthropology, from the University of Chicago.

Since its establishment in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted more then $298 million in fellowships to more than 17,300 individuals.

For a full list of 2012 Guggenheim Fellows, visit gf.org/news-events/2012-Fellows-in-the-United-States-and-Canada.

Most Americans, including Romney supporters, favor higher tax on rich, survey finds

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-04-13 00:00:00

President Barack Obama lately has been arguing for increased taxes on the rich through his proposed “Buffett Rule,” which would ensure that millionaires and billionaires pay a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent on their income.

But how do Americans view raising taxes on the rich? It turns out most support such a move, finds a new Washington University in St. Louis survey.

The American Panel Survey (TAPS), a random sample of 1,370 adults, finds that 93 percent of those who consider themselves Obama supporters favor increasing taxes on households making more than $1 million a year.

More than 66 percent of those who consider themselves Mitt Romney supporters would be in favor of such increases.

“While our survey did not ask in detail about the Buffett rule, the American public clearly favors higher taxes on high-income taxpayers,” says Steven S. Smith, PhD, the Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Science and director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, which coordinates the TAPS survey.

“This is true even of a majority of Romney supporters,” Smith says. “Democrats in the Senate realize this. They want to put Republicans in a position of casting an unpopular vote, even if it is procedural vote to take up the issue.”

The TAPS results indicate that Americans oppose increases in their own taxes and the taxes of small business whether they are Obama or Romney supporters.

While a majority favor increasing taxes on upper income households and corporations, there are large differences between Obama and Romney supporters on most tax issues.

“The results for individual spending and tax questions can be misleading and are difficult to summarize,” Smith says. “To gain a better overview we have developed scales for domestic spending and tax policy. These yield a general measure of each respondent’s views of the issues and can be compared across Romney and Obama supporters.”

On domestic spending, Smith says, the differences between the Obama and Romney supporters are apparent, though there is a substantial number of Americans who fall in the middle of the spectrum in the overlap between the two groups. (See Figure 1)

On taxation, Obama supporters are considerably more supportive of tax increases than Romney supporters. Obama supporters are substantially more unified in their views about taxes than Romney supporters, Smith says. (See Figure 2)

Neither set of partisans favors changes in most tax deductions and credits. Romney supporters are somewhat more in favor than Obama supporters of keeping or expanding these tax breaks. (See Figure 3)

TAPS is based on a national probability sample. It launched in fall 2011 and published its first finding in January 2012. As a panel, the survey returns to the same respondents each month, which allows for measuring change in attitudes among individuals over time and results in the accumulation of more data about the respondents than in most surveys.

The typical monthly survey includes about 1,600 respondents from a larger panel of 2,100.

TAPS is implemented by Knowledge Networks of Palo Alto, Calif.

For more information on the project or other data from this month’s survey, email Smith at taps@wustl.edu.

More information about TAPS is available at taps.wustl.edu.

PAD presents As You Like It April 20-29

Liam Otten — 2012-04-13 00:00:00

Sasha Diamond as Celia in the PAD's new production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It. Download hires image.

It is a moment of rising inequality. The widening gap between aristocratic haves and discontented have-nots threatens to replace the social contract with a powder keg.

As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, an homage to rural life filled with clowning, comically mannered royals and convoluted gender reversals.

But the play is more than just a pastoral romance. So says Annamaria Pileggi, senior lecturer in drama in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, who will direct the show beginning Friday, April 20, in Edison Theatre. (Performances run through Sunday, April 29.)

Malcolm Foley as Jaques. Download hires image.

Though Shakespeare set As You Like It in 15th-century France, “There is something about the greed and corruption of the world of the court, and the simplicity but also the poverty of the forest, that suggests the French Revolution,” Pileggi says.

On the other hand, Pileggi notes that the character of Corin, a tenant shepherd who attempts to sell his master’s farm, recalls the current foreclosure crisis.

“There are a number of elements that feel very contemporary,” she says.

So. The Bastille, or Zuccotti Park?

To square that production design circle, Pileggi and dramaturg Gabriela Schneider have taken a cue from the Steampunk movement, adopting a basically 18th-century look but including a few comically anachronistic touches from our own time: whistles, air horns, picketing protestors and rolling suitcases, to name a few.

The story centers on Rosalind, a young French noblewoman whose father, Duke Senior, was usurped and banished by his power-hungry brother, Duke Ferdinand.

Though Ferdinand resents his niece’s continued popularity among the people, Rosalind remains at court thanks to her friendship with Ferdinand’s daughter, Celia — until, that is, she falls in love with Orlando, the neglected youngest son of a rival clan.

Banished by her uncle, Rosalind disguises herself as a man and flees with Celia to the Forest of Arden, where, unbeknownst to her, a disguised Orlando takes shelter from his own bloodthirsty brother.

“What really drew me to As You Like It was the theme of mirroring,” Pileggi says. “In terms of gender, in terms of court versus forest, in terms of certain characters. There are two Dukes, two Jaques, two courts, two sets of brothers.”

Pileggi carries the theme through much of the show’s casting. Both Dukes are played by Eric Gustafson, while Mitch Eagles pulls double-duty as the noble Le Beau and the shepherd Silvius. Local equity actor Whit Reichart is Corin as well as Orlando’s servant, Adam. And, in a mirroring of Rosalind’s cross-dressing disguise, both the lords of Frederick’s court and the men of Senior’s forest are played by female actors in drag.

The spare stage design, by guest artist Otis Sweezey, professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, mimics the open platform of Shakespeare’s own Globe Theatre, with one Baroque addition: a set of vertical mirrors that serve as columns during court scenes and as trees during those set in the forest.

“I’ve added a prologue, in which we see peasants with ‘99 percent’ signs,” Pileggi says with a smile.

“With the mirrors on stage, the audience is literally going to see its own reflection.”

Artem Kreimer as Touchstone. Download hires image.

Additional cast and crew

Leading the cast of 22 are Selena Lane as Rosalind and Mike Kastelein as Orlando, with Sasha Diamond as Celia, Artem Kreimer as court fool Touchstone and Malcolm Foley as the melancholy lord Jaques.

Anna Constantino and Megan Lacerenza are the shepherdesses Phoebe and Audrey. Adam Strobel plays both the wrestler Charles and the shepherd William.

Se-in Kim is Sir Oliver Martext as well as Hymen, the Greek god of marriage. Yasmin Kuyumcu plays the second Jaques, Orlando’s brother. Ariel Saul is both Dennis, Oliver’s servant, and the musician Amiens, with Hayley Flagg accompanying on guitar.

Costumes are by Diana Chu, a junior in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Original music is composed and performed by Daniel Sarfati, a graduate student in music in Arts & Sciences.

Lighting is by senior Ben Lynford. Choreography is by Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal, professor of the practice of dance in Arts & Sciences. Prop master is Emily Frei.

Tickets and performances

Performances of As You Like It will take place in Edison Theatre at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22.

Performances continue the following weekend, at 8 p.m. April 27 and 28; and at 2 p.m. April 29.

Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. Tickets are $15, or $12 for Washington University faculty and staff and $10 for children, students and seniors. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and through all MetroTix outlets.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543 or visit padarts.wustl.edu.

MacMahon to receive 2012 Stalker Award

2012-04-12 00:00:00

Mara MacMahon has been selected to receive the 2012 Harrison D. Stalker Award from the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The award is named in honor of the late Harrison D. Stalker, PhD, who was a member of the biology faculty from 1942-1982, a world-renowned evolutionary biologist, an inspired teacher and an enthusiastic supporter of the fine arts.

whitney curtis

MacMahon with some of her creations.

The award is given annually to a graduating biology major whose undergraduate career has been marked by outstanding scientific scholarship and contributions to the university in the areas of artistic expression or community service.

MacMahon exemplifies the spirit of the Stalker Award exceptionally well: as a five-year, combined-degree candidate, she is earning both a bachelor of arts in biology (with an emphasis on human and comparative anatomy) and a bachelor of fine arts in communication design (with an emphasis on 3D computer animation). Throughout her course of study, she has been a fixture on the Sam Fox School’s dean’s list.

She also has combined her scientific and artistic skills in creative ways on her own initiative. In an independent study with Jane Phillips-Conroy, PhD, professor of physical anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences and of anatomy and neurobiology in the School of Medicine, she shadowed medical students in the human anatomy lab, observing and sketching during dissections, paying particular attention to the bones and muscles that move limbs.

MacMahon went on to serve as a teaching assistant in the vertebrate structure course in the biology department, supplementing the students’ study guides with her own sketches.

Meanwhile, she also served as a teaching assistant in the Sam Fox School for students studying 3D animation at both the introductory level and as advanced, independent-study participants.

Her unusual combination of scientific and artistic skills won her two exceptionally competitive summer internships: one at Pixar Animation Studios in 2010, and the other at the Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2011. In these internships, she was able to use her knowledge of anatomy to “rig” characters to move in realistic ways.

For her senior seminar in art, she produced a short film illustrating one of the classic tales of Greek mythology: the hunt for the fearsome Caledonian boar.

In addition to English (her native tongue), MacMahon is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, conversational Italian and elementary Spanish. And throughout her time at WUSTL, she has been associated with Women’s Club Soccer, the university's women’s club soccer team, serving as an assistant manager, student trainer and treasurer. Soccer, she says, has been a welcome release from her studies. She also worked with varsity athletes as a student trainer.

Following graduation, MacMahon hopes to establish a career in the film industry, either in computer animation or in special effects.

German department says Guten Tag to 800 high school students

2012-04-10 00:00:00

Nearly 850 high school students and their teachers from Missouri and Illinois will be on Washington University in St. Louis campus, Thursday, April 12, for the 36th annual German Day.

After arriving at Brookings Hall steps, the visitors will be escorted to Graham Chapel for an introductory program. From there, the students will compete in a variety of activities throughout the day, including a Declamation Contest (poetry recitation), spelling bees, skits, student videos, poster contests and a Schnitzeljagd (scavenger hunt) before enjoying lunch on campus. WUSTL professors and graduate students are serving a judges.

The annual event is sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences. For more information, visit german.wustl.edu/events/german_day.

Arts & Sciences junior named Newman Civic Fellow

2012-04-02 00:00:00

Tej Azad, a junior in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was among 162 students from across the country named a Newman Civic Fellow for 2012 by Campus Compact.

Azad

The Newman Civic Fellows Awards recognize inspiring college student leaders who have demonstrated an investment in finding solutions for challenges facing communities throughout the country and the world.

“Azad is an outstanding example of a civic leader,” says Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton, who nominated him for the award.

“He analyzed the needs of the community, was committed to raising awareness of those needs through the power of education and inspired others to join him in seeking solutions. I believe he exemplifies all that this prestigious honor represents.”

Azad was selected as a Newman Civic Fellow for his dedication to addressing health disparities through education. As a leader for WashU H.O.P.E. (HIV/AIDS Outreach, Prevention, and Education), he strives to address the stigma surrounding HIV.

In this role, he has tutored children living in an alternative housing facility for families affected by HIV. Under his leadership, the number of volunteers for WashU H.O.P.E. increased five-fold.

Azad also partnered with a medical student group, S.T.A.T.S. (Students Teaching AIDS to Students), to teach high school students about HIV biology and prevention, again encouraging much-increased participation in the program.

He was a co-organizer for World AIDS Day 2011 on the WUSTL campus and is a member of the local HIV Youth Advocacy Committee that seeks to allow the voice of young people in St. Louis to be heard in the dialogue on HIV.

Through WUSTL’s Social Justice Center, Azad developed an interest in urban nutrition and learned about urban “food deserts.”

Azad plans to work with a national organization to bring a mobile produce market to St. Louis. In this model, the mobile market would transport fresh produce to areas in St. Louis with limited access to these foods. The issue of food disparities has become a passion for him, and he intends to work on the mobile market initiative beginning this summer.

A John B. Ervin Scholar, Azad is majoring in biology-neuroscience with a minor in philosophy-neuroscience-psychology.

He has helped recruit participants in an imaging study to assess the effects of chronic HIV on cognitive abilities for in the laboratory of Beau Mark Ances, PhD, assistant professor of neurology in the School of Medicine, and has done research on the molecular biology of stroke in the laboratory of Gregory Joseph Zipfel, PhD, associate professor of neurological surgery, also in the School of Medicine. He plans to pursue a career in medicine.

The 2012 Newman Civic Fellows were nominated by college and university presidents from 32 states across the country. Through the Newman Civic Fellows Awards, college and university presidents acknowledge students with the ability and motivation to create lasting change through service, research and advocacy.

“These students represent the next generation of public problem solvers and civic leaders,” says Campus Compact Board Chair James B. Dworkin, chancellor at Purdue University North Center. “They serve as national examples of the role that higher education can — and does — play in building a better world.”

Through service-learning courses and other opportunities for community engagement, colleges are developing students’ critical public problem-solving skills, such as the ability to analyze community needs, a willingness to participate in public processes and debate, the commitment to raise awareness about challenges and the ability to inspire people to become part of solutions.

Campus Compact is a national coalition of almost 1,200 college and university presidents — representing some 6 million students — who are committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility.

The award is named after Frank Newman, PhD, a founder of Campus Compact who had an impact on American education and its role in the development of citizens who are eager and prepared to make a difference. He dedicated his life to creating systemic change through education reform.

For more information about the Newman Civic Fellows, visit compact.org.

WUSTL film scholar Gaylyn Studlar discusses Titanic

2012-04-09 00:00:00

http://youtu.be/NZIC0jDO1eE

As the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic draws near, Gaylyn Studlar, PhD, director of Film and Media Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses film adaptations of the event and why James Cameron’s Titanic has become the iconic version of the tragedy.

Studlar also discusses the changing tastes of movie-goers and how they may impact the 3D re-release of Cameron’s film.

Studlar, the David May Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, is co-editor of Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, a collection of 13 essays exploring what made Titanic such a popular movie and analyzing its representations of class, sexuality, gender, history, celebrity and contemporary social and economic concerns.

Cheryl Strayed to read April 12 for Writing Program

2012-04-09 00:00:00

At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything. Her mother died of cancer, her family scattered in grief, her marriage was soon destroyed and her life spun slowly out of control.

Cheryl Strayed

Four years later, feeling she had nothing more to lose, Strayed made an impulsive decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Alone.

The story of that journey, from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State, is told in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Strayed’s New York Times bestselling memoir.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, April 12, Strayed will read from her work for Washington University in St.Louis’ Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

The talk — presented as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

In addition to Wild, Strayed is the author of the novel Torch (2006) and the forthcoming Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of her "Dear Sugar" columns for TheRumpus.net. Her writing also has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Allure, Self, The Missouri Review, Brain, Child and The Sun, among others.

Strayed’s essays and stories have been anthologized in The Best American Essays and The Best New American Voices. Torch was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top 10 books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest.

Other honors include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Strayed holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota.

She is a founding member of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, and serves on its board of directors. Raised in Minnesota, she now lives in Portland, Ore., with her husband, filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, and their two children.

Senior Daniel Rubin named one of 18 Luce Scholars nationwide

2012-04-06 00:00:00

Senior Daniel Rubin, a political science and history major in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is among 18 students nationwide to be selected as Luce Scholars.

Rubin

Rubin is the sixth student in WUSTL’s history to win the award. He was selected from a pool of 143 candidates nominated by 62 colleges and universities. Selection is determined after a rigorous interview process.

The Henry Luce Foundation launched this nationally competitive fellowship program in 1974 to enhance understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society. Each year, the program provides stipends, language training and individualized professional placement in Asia. The scholars gain new perspectives and cultural insights through immersive living and working experiences.

The foundation welcomes applications from college seniors, graduate students and young professionals who have had limited exposure to Asia. The program is unique in that it is intended for young leaders who might not otherwise have an opportunity to experience Asia in the normal course of their careers. Those with significant experience in Asia are not eligible. Luce Scholars have backgrounds in virtually every field.

Asia placements are confirmed in May. Scholars can be placed in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand or Vietnam. The scholar year runs slightly more than 12 months, from late June to mid-July.

“For the first couple of months, I will be focused on learning a bit of Hindi,” Rubin says. “While I have not officially received my assignment, it looks as though I will be working at a foreign policy-focused think tank in Delhi, India.

“I hope to get the Indian government perspective on engaging with China and the United States, combating international terrorism, and managing relations with Afghanistan/Pakistan. More broadly, I hope to learn about Indian culture through work, extensive travel and even more extensive eating.”

At the university, Rubin has focused on U.S. politics and international relations, taking classes on such diverse subjects as multinational corporations, the origins of international conflict and the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

His passion for politics and public service has led him to pursue various internships. With the International Trade Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce, he researched and wrote on the liberalization of the Costa Rican Information and Communications Technology sector.

While working for Stewart Jackson, a member of Parliament in the U.K. House of Commons, he assisted with constituency work and researched the pupil premium, legal aid, sustainable local transport and the annual budget.

Finally, at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., last summer, he monitored state-level legislation to prepare for possible litigation related to redistricting and Voter ID laws under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“While I have done a decent number of internships, I am excited to potentially be working on foreign policy issues for the first time,” Rubin says. “Specifically, it will be interesting to learn about such consequential topics from the perspective of a rising democracy, rather than that of a superpower.”

Outside of the classroom, Rubin has tutored middle school students since his freshman year and contributes editorials to the Washington University Political Review. He plans to attend law school in the near future.

“Daniel is a stellar candidate academically, but what sets him apart is his genuine leadership skill and potential to greatly contribute to the goals of the Luce Scholars program,” says Joy Z. Kiefer, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and director of undergraduate research.

Rubin is the second WUSTL student to be selected since 2010. Kiefer attributes the success, in part, to a strong internal nomination process and full involvement from the university’s Career Center, which helps nominees prepare for the rigorous interviews.

“This particular scholarship program looks for candidates with leadership potential and clearly defined career goals,” Kiefer says. “Amy Heath-Carpentier (career development specialist), my Career Center partner in this process, is an expert at helping the students articulate their intended career path and our recent positive results reflect her contribution.”

Two WUSTL students named Truman Scholars

Deb Parker — 2012-04-04 00:00:00

Whitney Curtis

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton makes a presentation to Truman Scholar Madeleine Daepp (right) as Joy Z. Kiefer, PhD, WUSTL’s Truman scholarship representative, looks on. The chancellor gave Daepp a book by faculty member William Wallace, PhD: Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and His Times.

Two Washington University in St. Louis students have been selected as 2012 Truman Scholars. Junior Arts & Sciences majors Madeleine Daepp and Ethan Lynch both will receive $30,000 in funding, including $3,000 for their senior year and $27,000 for two or three years of graduate study.

This highly competitive federal scholarship is awarded to U.S. juniors based on academic performance, leadership and dedication to public service.

The 54 scholars in the 2012 class were selected from among 587 candidates nominated by 292 colleges and universities. Candidates are selected after an arduous application process. WUSTL is one of six institutions nationwide to have multiple Truman Scholars. (View the entire list at http://www.truman.gov/meet-our-scholars.)

“This is such a great accomplishment for our students and an honor for the university given these very stiff odds,” says Joy Z. Kiefer, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences, director of undergraduate research and WUSTL’s Truman scholarship representative.

Truman Scholars receive priority admission and supplemental financial aid at some premier graduate institutions, along with leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and special internship opportunities within the federal government.

Traditionally, when WUSTL students are named Truman Scholars, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton invites them into his office to share the good news. Keeping with tradition, Wrighton told Daepp in his office. Because Lynch is studying abroad in Jordan, Wrighton used Skype to make the special announcement.

Madeleine Daepp

Daepp, a native of Lewisburg, Pa., is majoring in economics and in mathematics.

Both of her parents are mathematicians at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. Growing up, dinner conversations in her home centered on abstruse mathematical concepts mixed with ideas about the importance of living and eating in a locally sustainable way.

Her father, from Bern, Switzerland, was raised in a culture where fresh, seasonal foods are a priority. Daepp spent summers in Switzerland and, as a result, she is fluent in Swiss German, German and French.

Daepp came to WUSTL as a Lien Scholar. Based on academic merit, this scholarship is offered to 15 incoming freshmen. At the university, Daepp has earned an astounding 13 A-plus grades (typically reserved for only the most exceptional performances) in rigorous math and economics curricula.

As co-president of Burning Kumquat, a student-run garden, Daepp has led many efforts on campus and in the St. Louis community to raise awareness about the economic and environmental issues surrounding food production. She worked with members of university administration and food service to include produce from the student garden in the dining facilities and to facilitate a university farmer’s market for the campus community during the growing season.

She also secured the competitive Gephardt Institute for Public Service Civic Engagement grant to aid in the implementation of an environmental education and gardening project for inner-city youth in St. Louis.

Daepp is tentatively planning to earn a law degree before embarking on a joint master’s degree program in agricultural law and economics.

“I’m hoping to work in agricultural policy,” she says. “I would really like to mediate between farmers, researchers and policymakers to encourage the innovation and implementation of more sustainable food production practices.”

Kiefer, who advises scholars through the application process, says she has no doubt that Daepp will make important and lasting contributions.

“As Madeleine continues to combine her commitment to advocacy and her passion for developing sustainable agricultural policies, there is every reason to believe that she will accomplish her goal of shifting the culture of food production in the United States,” Kiefer says. “You will not find a person who is more devoted to the realization of her dream.”

Ethan Lynch

Whitney Curtis

‪Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton uses Skype, under the watchful eyes of Joy Kiefer, PhD, to tell Ethan Lynch he was named a Truman Scholar. Lynch is studying Arabic in Amman, Jordan.‬

Lynch, a native of Louisville, Ky., is majoring in international and area studies with a second major in Arabic language and literature and a minor in political science.

He is studying Arabic this spring in Amman, Jordan. Living with a Jordanian family, he is required to speak Arabic at all times.

“I was on a rural retreat with my Arabic program in Jordan when I found out,” Lynch says. “Chancellor Wrighton and Dean Kiefer Skyped me and told me the news. I can’t say how stunned and honored I am to become a Truman Scholar; I’m so happy to win it for both Wash. U. and my home state of Kentucky, and I can’t wait to see where this scholarship will take me.

“The $30,000 for grad school, the extensive network of past scholars and the government internships are all fantastic — but perhaps the coolest and most surreal part was simply getting to Skype with Chancellor Wrighton and hear the happy news from a tent in the middle of the Jordanian wilderness!”

Lynch is studying abroad, courtesy of a David L. Boren Scholarship. Sponsored by the National Security Education Program, the national award is presented to distinguished undergraduates seeking to pursue a career promoting U.S. national security.

Lynch next will head to Morocco for a summer 2012 internship with the U.S. Department of State’s Consulate in Casablanca. (In the summer of 2010, he studied abroad in Morocco to develop his language skills; last fall, he interned with the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C.)

Lynch plans to earn a master’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University and eventually work as a diplomat for the United States Foreign Service. Fluent in French as well as Arabic, Lynch hopes to use his language skills and education to serve in the Middle East and North Africa. “I’d like to work in the public diplomacy sphere, strengthening and repairing our often-troubled relations with Arabs in the region,” he says.

Kiefer says Lynch is able to command the respect of his peers on campus as well as of faculty and global partners through his mature presence and keen intellect.

“From the moment I met Ethan, I was struck by his passion and commitment to make a change in the area of public diplomacy,” Kiefer says. “Ethan is a born leader: charismatic and hard-working with strong values and a remarkable ability to coalesce people around a common goal.

The 2012 Truman Scholars will assemble Tuesday, May 22, for a leadership development program at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo., and receive their awards in a special ceremony at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., on Sunday, May 27.

Congress established the Truman Scholarship Foundation in 1975 as the federal memorial to the 33rd president. The foundation awards scholarships for college students to attend graduate school in preparation for careers in government or elsewhere in public service.

The activities of the foundation are supported by a special trust fund in the U.S. Treasury. There have been 2,844 Truman Scholars elected since the first awards were made in 1977.

Weltin religious studies lecture April 9

2012-04-04 00:00:00

Burrus

Virginia Burrus, PhD, professor of early church history and chair of the Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University in Madison, N.J., will give the Weltin Lecture in Religious Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis Monday, April 9.

Her lecture, “St. Helia Talks Back:  Christianity and the Feminization of Rhetorical Voice,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Burrus’ teaching and research interests in the field of ancient Christianity include: gender, sexuality and the body; martyrdom and asceticism; ancient novels and hagiography; constructions of orthodoxy and heresy; and histories of theology and historical theologies.

Burrus, who earned a doctoral degree in the history of Christianity from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., has taught in Drew University’s Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion since 1991.

She is the author of six books: Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions (written with Mark Jordan and Karmen MacKendrick); Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints and Other Abject Subjects; The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (which has been translated into French and Italian); Begotten, Not Made: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity; The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority and the Priscillianist Controversy; and Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts.

Burrus is editor of Late Ancient Christianity: A People’s History of Christianity, Vol. II and co-editor of Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (with Catherine Keller).

She is past president of the North American Patristics Society, associate editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies and co-editor of the University of Pennsylvania Press series Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion.

The late Edward G. Weltin retired from full-time teaching at WUSTL after a long, distinguished career as professor of Greek and Roman history and director of the Program in Religious Studies, for which he was instrumental in developing. A lectureship in early Christian history was established in 1986 in his honor with gifts from his students and colleagues.

For more information, contact Sarah O’Donnell at relst@artsci.wustl.edu or (314) 935-8677.

St. Louis Humanities Festival April 13 and 14

Liam Otten — 2012-04-03 00:00:00

Reluctant community activist Daniel Goldstein fights New York’s massive Atlantic Yards project in Battle for Brooklyn. The controversial documentary will be screened April 14 as part of the first annual St. Louis Humanities Festival.

In 1990, the Illinois Humanities Council presented a daylong event on the theme “Expressions of Freedom.” And so was born the Chicago Humanities Festival, today one of the nation’s premier celebrations of the liberal arts.

Novelist and Yosemite National Park ranger Shelton Johnson will speak April 13 on "Gloryland: Literature and Interpretive History as Tools for Social Change."

Now, it’s St. Louis’ turn.

Later this month, the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis — in partnership with the Missouri Humanities Council, Webster University and University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) Center for the Humanities — will present the first St. Louis Humanities Festival. Organizers plan to make it an annual event.

The two-day event, which takes place Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14, will feature talks by Shelton Johnson, a novelist and Yosemite park ranger, who is featured in Ken Burns' film series The National Parks; and Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran-turned-poet.

Rounding out the schedule will be a screening of the controversial documentary Battle for Brooklyn, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Michael Galinsky.

“The Chicago Humanities Festival, which we are trying to emulate, started out in just this modest way,” says Gerald L. Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for the Humanities. “But I think this is a pretty important effort of bringing institutions together to do something for the good of the city and region.”

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, call (314) 935-5576; email cenhum@artsci.wustl.edu or visit cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=575Vh3zgGDI&feature=player_embeddedShelton Johnson

The festival will begin at 10 a.m. Friday, April 13, with a lecture by Johnson in the Century Rooms of UMSL’s Millennium Student Center.

Titled “Gloryland: Literature and Interpretive History as Tools for Social Change," the talk will feature a reading from Gloryland, Johnson’s 2009 novel about 19th-century “Buffalo Soldiers” — African-American members of the U.S. Calvary. Published by the Sierra Club, the book is largely based on Johnson’s research at Yosemite, where he has worked since 1984.

In addition, Johnson, who was born and raised in Detroit, will discusses his concerns about the low numbers of minority visitors to the National Parks and why we need to work to ensure that all Americans feel welcome and at home in the parks and other natural areas of America.

Soldier-turned-poet Brian Turner will read from his work April 13. Photo by Kim Buchheit.

Brian Turner

Events will continue at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 13, with a reading by Turner in Room 253 of Webster University’s East Academic Building.

The author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005), Turner served seven years in the U.S. Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division.

Turner’s poetry has been featured in numerous journals and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology, published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner also was featured in Operation Homecoming, a documentary collecting firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women in their own words.

Also on the program will be poetry readings by veterans who have participated in a project, sponsored by the Missouri Humanities Council, to teach creative writing to veterans as a part of their re-acclimation process. Missouri poet laureate and Webster professor David Clewell will be master of ceremonies.

Battle for Brooklyn

Events will conclude at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 14, with a screening of Battle for Brooklyn in Washington University’s Brown Hall.

Exploring the erosion of individual rights amidst corporate and political maneuvering, Battle for Brooklyn relates the very public and very passionate fight between residents of Brooklyn’s historic Prospect Heights neighborhood and developers behind Atlantic Yards, a massive plan encompassing 16 skyscrapers and a basketball arena for the NBA's New Jersey Nets.

The film focuses on graphic designer Daniel Goldstein, a reluctant activist whose apartment sits at what would be center court of the new arena.

Battle for Brooklyn is produced and directed by Galinsky and Suki Hawley, who previously collaborated on the documentaries Horns and Halos (2002), Radiation (1999) and Half-Cocked (1994).

In attendance will be Galinsky and Bruce Lindsey, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration and dean of architecture in WUSTL's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

‘Crazy’ offshoots of Einstein’s theories topic of 2012 McDonnell Distinguished Lecture

2012-04-02 00:00:00

Credit: NASA E/PO, Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet

Artist's conception of a black hole pulling gas off a nearby star.

Clifford M. Will, PhD, the James S. McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences in Arts & Sciences, will deliver the McDonnell Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in Room 100, Whitaker Hall, at Washington University in St. Louis.

Will plans to discuss “Black Holes, Waves of Gravity and Other Warped Ideas of Dr. Einstein.” WUSTL’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, which sponsors the lecture series, invites the St. Louis community to attend.

Einstein and his ideas are thoroughly embedded in popular culture, Will says. The wrinkles around Yoda’s eyes were based on Einstein’s, Disney has a line of baby products called Baby Einstein and the cartoon character Dexter of Dexter’s Laboratory apologizes to a photo of Einstein in his locker every time he gets a B on a science test.

Will

One of the most famous movie songs ever (which Will plans to sing) also talks about Einstein.

Although Einstein’s ideas apply mostly to the astronomical domain or the domain of the ultra-small, they do have some practical consequences. GPS systems give accurate coordinates only because Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity are taken into account in their computations.

The clocks in GPS satellites are moving at 14,000 km/hr in orbits that circle the Earth twice per day, much faster than clocks on the surface of the Earth, so Einstein's theory of special relativity applies to them.

But the satellite clocks also experience gravity four times weaker than that on the ground, so Einstein's general relativity theory also comes into play.

The way the time correction works will be revealed at the lecture.

Will plans to devote most of the evening, however, to two of the “crazier” ideas that came out of Einstein’s theories. One is that the interaction of two compact masses, such as orbiting neutron stars, can produce ripples in the curvature of spacetime called gravitational waves. Several gravitational wave detectors have been built, but so far there have been no detection events.

The other is that there are bottomless wells in spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Because they are invisible by definition, it is also difficult to prove black holes exist, although scientists have begun to build a very strong circumstantial case.

International teams of scientists have embarked on a quest to verify that both gravitational waves and black holes exist, Will says. Building and operating large-scale detectors on the ground, and designing space-based detectors for the future, they hope to detect and measure the waves, and to use those wave signals to reveal the hidden secrets of black holes.

Will’s 1986 book, Was Einstein Right? was reviewed in The New York Times and also made the newspaper’s “Christmas Books” list that year. The book, which focuses on Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the experiments designed to test it, won the highly coveted American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, which is given annually to the best popular science book.

A second edition was published in 1993, and at last count, it has been translated in 10 languages.

Will’s Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics (1981) is considered the bible of the field. It was revised in 1993. His latest book, Gravity: Newtonian, Post-Newtonian, Relativistic, with co-author Eric Poisson, is expected to be completed by late 2012.

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 2002 and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences since 2007, Will has received many honors and awards. In 1986, the American Association of Physics Teachers selected Will as its 46th annual Richtmyer Memorial Lecturer.

In 1989, Will was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 1996-97, he was named both a J. William Fulbright Fellow and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow.

Will, who has been referred to as one of the best lecturers in physics, received the 2004 Fellows Award from the Academy of Science of St. Louis for making Einstein’s theory accessible to the public and for making a significant impact on the public understanding of science.

A frequently invited lecturer worldwide, in 2005, Will participated in a 20-city public lecture tour of his native Canada in recognition of the World Year of Physics. He also has given public lectures in French in Paris, Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke.

Will earned a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics in 1968 from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, followed three years later by a doctorate in physics from California Institute of Technology.

Will came to WUSTL in 1981 as an associate professor of physics after seven years at Stanford University.

He became a full professor in 1985 and served two terms as department chair (1991-96 and 1997-2002).

Will also will deliver a colloquium, titled “Testing General Relativity in the Strong-Field Regime,” as part of the lecture series, at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 11, in Room 204, Crow Hall. The colloquium is also free and open to the public.

The McDonnell Center, which was established in 1975 through a gift from the aerospace pioneer James S. McDonnell, is a consortium of WUSTL faculty, research staff and students coming primarily from the departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Physics, both in Arts & Sciences, who are working on the cutting edge of space research.

For more information on the talks, contact Trecia Stumbaugh at trecia@wustl.edu or (314) 935-5332.

Trustees grant faculty promotions, tenure

2012-04-02 00:00:00

At recent Board of Trustees meetings, the following faculty members were appointed with tenure, promoted with tenure or granted tenure effective July 1, 2012, unless otherwise noted.

Promotion with tenure

Peter Benson, PhD, to associate professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences

David L. Brody, MD, PhD, to associate professor of neurology, effective Jan. 1, 2012, with tenure effective March 2, 2012

Jacob M. Buchowski, MD, to associate professor of orthopaedic surgery, effective July 1, 2011, with tenure effect Dec. 2, 2011

Rowhea M. Elmesky, PhD, to associate professor of education in Arts & Sciences

Rebecca E. Hollander-Blumoff, JD, PhD, to professor of law

Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, to professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, effective Dec. 2, 2011

Eric C. Leuthardt, MD, to associate professor of neurological surgery, effective Oct. 7, 2011, with tenure effective Dec. 2, 2011

Jr-Shin Li, PhD, to associate professor of systems science and engineering

Lori Markson, PhD, to associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences

Jason C. Mills, MD, PhD, to associate professor of medicine, effective July 1, 2011, with tenure effective Jan. 1, 2012

Anca E. Parvulescu, PhD, to associate professor of English in Arts & Sciences

Nancy Y. Reynolds, PhD, to associate professor of history in Arts & Sciences

Thomas L. Rodebaugh, PhD, to associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences

Jessica A. Rosenfeld, PhD, to associate professor of English in Arts & Sciences

Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, PhD, to associate professor of Spanish in Arts & Sciences

Yongseok Shin, PhD, to associate professor of economics in Arts & Sciences

Simine Vazire, PhD, to associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences

Amy L. Waterman, PhD, to associate professor of medicine, effective Jan. 1, 2012

Lan Yang, PhD, to associate professor of electrical and systems engineering

Qin Yang, MD, PhD, to associate professor of radiation oncology, effective July 1, 2011, with tenure effective Dec. 2, 2011

Gregory J. Zipfel, MD, to associate professor of neurological surgery, effective June 1, 2011, with tenure effective Dec. 2, 2011

Appointment with tenure

Ronald J. Mallon, PhD, as associate professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences, effective July 1, 2011, with tenure effective Dec. 2, 2011

Gwendalyn Jan Randolph, PhD, as professor of pathology and immunology, effective Sept. 1, 2011, with tenure effective March 2, 2012

Granting of tenure

Venkat Subramanian, PhD, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering

Ten WUSTL faculty to receive Outstanding St. Louis Scientists Awards

Beth Miller and Diana Lutz — 2012-04-02 00:00:00

The Academy of Science of St. Louis will honor 10 faculty members from Washington University in St. Louis for their contributions and leadership in science and medicine.

The academy will present the Outstanding St. Louis Scientists Awards at its 18th annual dinner Thursday, April 19, at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel.

The awards are designed to focus attention on St. Louis individuals and institutions known around the world for scientific contributions to research, industry and quality of life.

The WUSTL winners:

Michael W. Friedlander, PhD, professor emeritus of physics in Arts & Sciences, will receive the Science Educator Award.

For more than four decades, Friedlander has played a major role in science education both locally and nationally. Each semester since 1994, he has organized a series of four “Saturday Science” public lectures in Department of Physics. The 200-seat lecture hall is often filled.

Beyond the region, Friedlander has been an influence for science understanding with his five books written for the general public. The two published by Harvard University Press describe the history of the study of cosmic rays and what is now known about these energetic particles — an area of astrophysics to which he has contributed significant original research.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, the Robert J. Glazer Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology and founding director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, will receive the Peter H. Raven Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gordon is recognized for his leadership in “establishing the field of human microbiome research.”

His work and this field are providing new understanding of the origins of our biological differences, new approaches for understanding how changes in our cultural traditions and lifestyles are impacting our health and risk for various diseases and new therapeutic approaches to illnesses previously thought to have a microbial component.

A central focus of his lab is the relationship between gut microbial communities and the nutritional status of infants, children and adults living in Westernized and non-Westernized societies.

Scott J. Hultgren, PhD, the Helen Lehbrink Stoever Professor of Molecular Microbiology and director of the Center for Women’s Infectious Disease Research, will receive the Fellows Award.

Hultgren, one of the world’s most accomplished microbiologists, studies urinary tract infections, the most common infectious complaint of women in primary outpatient clinics.

His research has changed scientists’ understanding of the molecular basis of chronic and recurrent urinary tract infections. In addition, he is developing new antibiotics and vaccines to prevent and treat the infections.

Also active in women’s health policy, Hultgren contributed to the strategic plan developed by the Office of Research in Women’s Health to set priorities for research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Hultgren was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2011.

Timothy J. Ley, MD, the Lewis T. and Rosalind B. Apple Chair in Oncology, professor of medicine and of genetics, and associate director of The Genome Institute; Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, professor of genetics and of molecular microbiology, co-director and director of technology development of The Genome Institute; and Richard K. Wilson, PhD, professor of genetics and director of The Genome Institute, will share the George Engelmann Interdisciplinary/Collaborative Science Award, a new award that recognizes outstanding achievement in science, engineering or technology that results from collaboration among two or more individuals across disciplinary and/or institutional boundaries.

Ley, Mardis and Wilson are recognized for collaborative work that has helped to lay the foundation of cancer genomic research, diagnostics and therapeutics. The academy recognizes them for their unique look at cancer, which has helped to bring in a new era of personalized medicine.

The academy also commended them for their participation in a $65 million partnership with St. Jude Children’s Hospital to define the gene mutation spectrum in pediatric cancer. That work is creating a public database that will be shared with the international scientific community to speed progress toward fighting childhood cancers.

Audrey R. Odom, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics and of molecular microbiology, will receive the Innovation Award.

Odom is dissecting a key metabolic pathway in malaria that is not found in humans and provides a novel target for drug development.

Worldwide, there is an urgent need for new drugs to treat malaria, which causes more than a million deaths per year, mostly in young children. Odom’s lab focuses on improving the fundamental understanding of the basic molecular and cellular biology of the malaria parasite to identify new antimalarial drug targets.

Mabel L. Purkerson, MD, professor emerita of medicine, will receive the Trustee Award.

For more than 40 years, Purkerson served as a clinician, teacher, investigator and administrator at the School of Medicine. The academy recognizes her as a physician/scientist, leading by example, focusing on excellence and being open to new opportunities and techniques.

She used an interdisciplinary approach to find new strategies and tools to further her research, allowing her to make substantial contributions in the field of kidney physiology. These achievements led to her becoming the first female full professor in the Department of Medicine.

Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, will receive the academy’s individual Science Leadership Award.

The academy recognizes Shapiro for his accomplishments in transforming the medical school’s research enterprise to focus on clinical and translational research, interdisciplinary teams, visionary genomics and regional partnerships. The academy commended him for implementing BioMed 21, the university’s initiative to facilitate multidisciplinary, collaborative research and rapidly apply breakthroughs to patient care.

Stuart A. Solin, PhD, the Charles M. Hohenberg Professor of Experimental Physics, will receive the James B. Eads Award.

Solin is recognized for significant discoveries and initiatives in the fields of condensed matter physics and nanosciences. Most recently, as inventor of the EMR (Extraordinary MagnetoResistance) sensor device concept, he has seeded a hugely important area of research, which has now been taken up extensively by industry around the globe.

His work has the capacity to revolutionize data storage and retrieval in computers. Stuart has already started work on the biological and medical application of his new class of sensors. Indications are that EMR and EEC (Extraordinary Electroconductance) nanoscale sensors can be used for cancer detection.

Arts & Sciences recognizes six alumni at awards dinner

2012-04-03 00:00:00

Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis recognized the achievements of six alumni during the 15th Annual Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumni Awards ceremony, held March 22 at the Crowne Plaza Clayton.

Gary S. Wihl, PhD, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, and the Arts & Sciences National Council, led by Chair Barbara Schaps Thomas (AB ’76), hosted the awards dinner.

Five alumni received the Distinguished Alumni Award, which recognizes graduates who have exemplified the ideals embodied by an Arts & Sciences education and have brought honor to Washington University through their lives, work and service.

National Council members who are previous Distinguished Alumni Award recipients introduced this year’s awardees.

Wihl presented the Dean’s Medal to Robert L. Virgil, (MBA ’60, DBA ’67, honorary doctor of laws ’09), dean emeritus of Olin Business School and a Washington University emeritus trustee. The Dean’s Medal is awarded to a person who has made an exceptional contribution to the advancement of the ideals of an Arts & Sciences education.

During the ceremony, the six honorees shared personal stories about the impact of their educational experiences on their lives and accomplishments.

Distinguished Alumni

Robert A. Ansehl (AB ’76), introduced by Schaps Thomas (AB ’76), 2001 Distinguished Alumna

Ansehl Download hi-res image

A partner at Clyde & Co, transactional lawyer Ansehl has been involved in some of the most significant insurance transactions in the international insurance world. His representation of U.S. and international insurance and reinsurance companies, commercial and investment banks, private equity and hedge funds, and derivative and financial products companies involves decisions that help determine the organizations’ immediate direction.

Among his challenges is being knowledgeable about exceedingly complicated developments ranging from potential industry impacts of a European Union breakdown (or the consequences of survival and growth) to the effects of events in Asia and the Middle East.

Ansehl, who has been a partner in four major law firms, has been recognized by EuroMoney Institutional Investor and as a Super Lawyer.

At WUSTL, he has endowed a scholarship in Arts & Sciences and served on the New York Regional Cabinet.

Among the other institutions he supports are Columbia University’s School of Nursing; the University of Chicago, his daughter Jessica’s alma mater; the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and a fund for cancer research.

He and Amy Ansehl (AB ’78), assistant professor at New York Medical College School of Health Sciences, also have a son Larry, a WUSTL senior, and William, an 8th grader.

Samuel Halperin, PhD (AB ’52, MA ’52, PhD ’56), introduced by John Michael Clear (AB ’71), 2001 Distinguished Alumnus

Halperin Download hi-res image

A respected leader in academia, government and nonprofit organizations during his career of more than 50 years, Halperin has devoted his life to serving disadvantaged children and non-college-bound youth. In the practical world of education politics, he helps policymakers bridge research, policy and practice in education, youth development and career readiness.

During the 1960s, he was director of the U.S. Office of Education’s Office of Congressional Relations and assistant U.S. commissioner of education for legislation. He helped develop the flagship Elementary and Secondary Education and Higher Education Acts of 1965, the Adult Education Act and student aid programs.

All remain bulwarks of the federal role in education and youth development. Then as deputy assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the drive for the Great Society, he helped pass myriad educational and social service legislation.

From 1969-1981, Halperin led the Ford Foundation-established Institute for Educational Leadership. A prolific writer, he co-authored the groundbreaking studies The Forgotten Half: Non College Youth in America and The Forgotten Half: Pathways to Success for America’s Youth and Young Families.

The recipient of major awards, Halperin is senior fellow at the American Youth Policy Forum, which he founded in 1993 with underwriting from seven foundations.

Naomi G. Lebowitz, PhD (MS ’55, PhD ’62), introduced by William B. Pollard III (AB ’70), 2005 Distinguished Alumnus

Lebowitz Download hi-res image

During a 2000 Department of English retirement party for Lebowitz — the Hortense and Tobias Lewin Professor Emerita in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences — colleague Daniel Shea, PhD, referred to her as “their teacher, their prophet and their chanteuse.”

Among other English professors paying tribute were Joseph Lowenstein, PhD, who spoke of Lebowitz’ “utterly miraculous personhood,” and Wayne Fields, PhD, who talked of the “profound knowing that made her work so urgent.” He also described how she “went into class with books in shreds from her repeated and obviously violent readings and with sheets of notes.”

Appreciative students included her dissertation advisee Brian Walter, who noted that each semester, Lebowitz designed two new courses — which covered “the full historical, philosophical and cross-cultural foundations of modern narrative.” Doctoral candidate Lisa Eck praised “a personality made mammoth by wisdom,” and marveled at the number of students who had regularly packed Lebowitz’ office, even as a line grew outside her door.

A voracious reader since childhood, Lebowitz keeps up her French, German, Danish, Italian and Spanish for her work in comparative literature. She has published nine books and many scholarly articles.

Lebowitz and her husband, Albert, a novelist and attorney, have two adult children.

Susan Fisher Sterling, PhD (AB ’77), introduced by Diane DeMell Jacobsen (MLA ’95, MA ’00, PhD ’03), 2005 Distinguished Alumna

Sterling Download hi-res image

Director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., Sterling has built her career and the stature of the museum around the message of equity for women through the example of excellence in the arts.

When she signed on as associate curator of the new museum in 1988, she had just graduated from Princeton University with a master’s and PhD in art history, specializing in modern and contemporary art. During her 24-year tenure, the museum has flourished, showcasing key American and international women artists in a stream of major exhibitions, while its collection has grown to include more than 4,000 artworks.

Among Sterling’s honors are Orders of Merit from Brazil and Norway, the President’s Award of the Women’s Caucus for Art, and selection in 2011 as one of ArtTable’s 30 most influential professional women in the visual arts.

Under Sterling’s leadership, NMWA marks its 25th anniversary in 2012 as the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to advancing women in the arts. Among her recent initiatives is Great Washington Museums Celebrate Great Women Artists.

Sterling, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, met her husband, Scott A. Sterling (AB ’77 psychology) at WUSTL. They have two daughters, Pamela and Leslie.

Mark Steinberg Weil, PhD (AB ’61), introduced by Mark E. Mason (AB ’51), 2003 Distinguished Alumnus

Weil Download hi-res image

Weil grew up on Forsyth Boulevard, across the street from the Danforth Campus, as part of a family whose philanthropy strengthens Washington University’s art collection and its academic programs today.

Now the E. Desmond Lee Professor Emeritus, Weil first studied art history with noted scholars ranging from George Mylonas (classical archaeology; an excavator of Mycenae) to Frederick Hartt (Italian Renaissance) and Norris K. Smith (architectural history and medieval art).

Weil, who was recruited to WUSTL following completion of his PhD degree at Columbia University, is an expert in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture and art connoisseurship.

He was chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology for 10 years and directed the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and the multidisciplinary center that became the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Among his contributions to his profession, WUSTL and St. Louis, he led interdisciplinary efforts in the humanities on campus; he helped found the Center for Archaeometry, which drew scholars across departments; he organized a national baroque festival; and he helped orchestrate a significant Japanese festival.

In 2011, in celebration of his 50th Class Reunion, Weil provided WUSTL $2,525,000 to support Arts & Sciences and programs in the humanities.

Dean’s Medalist

Robert L. Virgil, PhD (MBA ’60, DBA ’67, honorary doctor of laws ’09)

Business school dean during 16 years of growth and rising national recognition, Virgil has spearheaded memorable university initiatives ever since.

Virgil Download hi-res image

In October 1992, he chaired the group that organized the first nationally televised three-person presidential debate, held in the Athletic Complex — with only one week’s advance notice. He also chaired the commission that planned the university’s Sesquicentennial year as well as the campaign for the Danforth University Center.

Virgil currently chairs “Opening Doors to the Future: The Scholarship Initiative for Washington University,” which addresses a crucial need he heard every WUSTL school dean articulate before the trustees.

Virgil’s honors from Washington University include the Eliot Society’s “Search” award, Olin Business School’s dean’s medal, and the honorary doctor of laws degree.

In 2010, Virgil and his wife, Gerry, received the Jane and Whitney Harris St. Louis Community Service Award, recognizing their contributions to the St. Louis region. The Gerry and Bob Virgil Ethic of Service Award, now in its ninth year, is given to WUSTL community members who exemplify a character of service to the St. Louis region.

From 1993–2006, Virgil was general partner of Edward Jones, responsible for management development.

The Virgils have four children and nine grandchildren, with the 10th grandchild due in July.

Can the Supreme Court survive a health-care decision?

Neil Schoenherr — 2012-03-30 00:00:00

After it rules on the highly contested health-care debate and makes other momentous decisions this term, will the U.S. Supreme have sufficient stores of legitimacy to weather the inevitable backlash? Yes, but barely, says a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

James Gibson

"The Supreme Court may make the 'wrong' decisions on health care and other issues this spring. But as a widely legitimate institution, the court will be able to make these decisions with impunity," writes James L. Gibson, PhD, in Miller-McCune. "As it stands today, the U.S. Supreme Court is in fact nearly invincible. For better or for worse."

Still, the Court's decisions this year on the constitutionality of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and other blockbuster cases are likely to have vast political consequences, perhaps well beyond health care itself, writes Gibson, director of the Program on Citizenship and Democratic Values at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy and the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in political science in Arts & Sciences.

A key question for 2012, he suggests, is whether there is partisan advantage in attacking the Supreme Court. The Republican candidates are already stumbling over themselves to question the authority of the Supreme Court, and Obama has not been reticent about criticizing the court for its decisions. Will attacks on the court resonate with partisans of different stripes?

The answer, according to a Weidenbaum Center survey, is no — attacks on the Supreme Court are unlikely to generate partisan advantages. Attitudes toward the court’s legitimacy are simply not connected to partisanship, at least among ordinary Americans.

“Undoubtedly, fierce criticism will be leveled against the decision by the losers. But, as with Bush v. Gore, efforts to transform this criticism into a successful attack on the court as an institution will be highly unlikely to succeed,” Gibson writes.

To read the rest of his piece, visit miller-mccune.com/legal-affairs/can-the-supreme-court-survive-a-health-care-decision-40598.

'Brazil Rising' symposium at WUSTL April 4-6

2012-03-29 00:00:00

A symposium focusing on culture, law and development in Brazil will be held April 4-6 at Washington University in St. Louis. Events include a film, a dance and percussion workshop and keynote lecture.

The symposium is being held not only to have fun celebrating Brazilian culture, but also to investigate development in Brazil, an urgent and controversial topic both local and global in scope, says symposium organizer Derek Pardue, PhD, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

Stock Exchange

The flag of Brazil. Brazil, the largest country in South America, is gaining increased attention as a world power.

“Brazil has attracted spectators and scientists from around the world for decades due to its Carnival festivals, soccer players, groovy infectious pop music, Brazilian ideas and practices of racial mixture, and the art and danger of shantytown life,” says Pardue, also assistant professor of international and area studies in Arts & Sciences.

“Since the turn of the 21st century, Brazil has gone to another level and gained increasing attention as a major player in geopolitics and global economics,” Pardue says. “Brazil deserves critical inquiry.”

All events are free and open to the public, with the exception of the April 6 book discussion, which is open only to WUSTL faculty and graduate students.

The symposium schedule:

Wednesday, April 4

Film Toxic Amazon (2011) and discussion, 4 p.m. Busch 100
Brazilian journalist and environmental activist Felipe Milanez will participate in a conversation about the violence associated with development and law in the Amazon. Milanez was named a “Forest Hero” by the United Nations in 2012.

Dance & Percussion Workshop, 7 p.m. the Gargoyle in Mallinckrodt Center
Attendees can learn to dance and play samba with instructor Eliana Oliveira and percussionist Moacyr Marchini. This event is limited to the first 20 people who sign up to svital@wustl.edu by Monday, April 2.

Thursday, April 5

Keynote talk “The Dirty Politics of Shantytown Radicalism: Murder, Slander and Associational Life in Mid-Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro,” 6 p.m. Women’s Building Formal Lounge
This lecture, by Brodwyn Fischer, PhD, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, focuses on Rio de Janeiro’s first favela (slum) association in the 1950s, the leader of which later was credibly accused of the sort of land-grabbing and violence the association fought against. The talk also will examine the problems of idealization of grassroots lawmaking and associations and of plural sources of power/rights/law when they are not constrained by any baseline societal consensus.

Friday, April 6

Discussion of book A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro (2008), 10 a.m.
Faculty and graduate students can participate in the African Diaspora Reading Group discussion of the award-winning book A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro with the book’s author, Brodwyn Fischer (also the keynote speaker). For more information, email ymiki@wustl.edu.

Refreshments will be available at all events except the Dance & Percussion Workshop.

Organizers of the event, along with Pardue, are Selma Vital, PhD, lecturer in Portuguese in Arts & Sciences; Yuko Miki, PhD, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences; and freshman Theresa Jahl.

The events are sponsored by International and Area Studies, the departments of Anthropology and of History, and the Association of Latin American Students.

For more information, visit artsci.wustl.edu/%7Edpardue/web_pardue/BRising2012.html or email Pardue at dpardue@wustl.edu.

Young Choreographers Showcase April 6-8

2012-03-29 00:00:00

Marleigh Stern's R.E.M. will be one of 10 original dances featured in the 2012 Young Choreographers Showcase April 6-8. Pictured are dancers Brianna Coppersmith, Andrea Roberts, Lauren Abadie, Zoe Roberts and Amanda Matheson. Photo by David Marchant. Hires version available upon request.

Washington University in St. Louis' Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present its fifth biennial Young Choreographers Showcase Friday through Sunday, April 6-8, in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio.

The concert will feature more than a dozen dancers in 10 original works created by student choreographers in the PAD's Dance Program.

Performances begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 6 and 7; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 8.

Tickets are $15, or $10 for students, seniors and WUSTL faculty and staff. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office and all MetroTix outlets. The Annelise Mertz Dance Studio is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

‘The strongest version of itself’

“Young Choreographers Showcase represents the full spectrum of our dancers’ interests and activities,” says David W. Marchant, professor of the practice in dance, who serves as co-artistic director for the showcase, along with senior Brianna Coppersmith.

Dances are chosen by a jury comprising Coppersmith, Marchant and three other members of the dance faculty: Mary-Jean Cowell, associate professor of dance; Christine Knoblauch-O'Neal, professor of the practice in dance; and Cecil Slaughter, senior lecturer in dance.

"Once works are selected by the panel, virtually all aspects of the show, both onstage and behind the scenes, are managed by the students themselves,” Marchant says, “though faculty continue to provide feedback to help choreographers realize their works.”

Coppersmith adds that, “In terms of choreography, concept and lighting, instructors ask us the sorts of questions that allow a piece to become the strongest version of itself. However, much of the show's success depends on students collaborating with students — student choreographers and dancers collaborating with student lighting designers and tech crew.

“None of us began YCS totally green, but I've noticed this freshness, this thrilling uncertainty, to what each student is doing,” Coppersmith says. “We're all curious artists and our eyes are wide open. We're eager to learn as much as we can from one another.”

Still, few things focus the mind and body like an impending performance.

“In rehearsal, we're all dancers and we share a movement vocabulary that makes a common sense,” Coppersmith says. “But there is something unfamiliar about anticipating an audience and an audience review. It's hard not to speculate how it will be understood or perceived.

“It's a privilege to present at YCS, and none of us want to disappoint our dancers, the faculty, the department or the audience,” she says.

“I think we’re all learning that it’s a demanding art, to compose an ‘interesting’ dance.”

See accompanying slideshow for program details as well as choreographers' descriptions of their works. All photos by David Marchant.