Month: September 2020

It looks the same, yet the 169-acre campus feels a bit different this fall. As students return, a by-the-numbers look at what has been done to make the campus as safe as possible for returning students, faculty and staff.

Washington University in St. Louis remains committed to supporting faculty and staff as they continue to manage their work-life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department of Human Resources recently opened an online portal that outlines the scope of the university’s employee benefits, including child care, elder care and also self-care.

Sophia Hayes, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, won a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support research titled “Optically Pumped NMR Enhancements Enable Studies of Semiconductor Interfaces.”

Washington University will conduct a national search for its next vice chancellor for student affairs, beginning this fall. The new vice chancellor will succeed Lori S. White, who left the university July 1 to become president of DePauw University. 

There are lots of kindly encomiums for persons of distinction: brilliant, wonderful, generous and so on. But it is a rare person who can be described as great. Dr. Danforth was such a person. He was great, truly great.

Three staff members in Medical Public Affairs at Washington University School of Medicine have received writing awards in an annual national competition sponsored by the Group on Institutional Advancement of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Lithium ion batteries that shouldn’t short circuit often do. Now researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering have figured out why, and they have devised a straightforward way to tell if and when that will happen for individual batteries.

Chancellor Emeritus William H. Danforth, MD, who served as chancellor for 24 of his more than 65 years of service to Washington University in St. Louis, died on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, at his home in Ladue, Mo. He was 94.

Working together to develop a collaborative and coordinated response to the climate crisis in the Midwestern region is the top goal of the upcoming Midwest Climate Summit, which Washington University in St. Louis developed in close partnership with many leading Midwestern organizations. The event, which is free and open to the public, is presented with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Images from on and around the Washington University campuses.