Author: Jessica Roberts Martin

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service invites students, faculty and staff to participate in “Faces of Hope” in April, a celebration of civic engagement and community service. Student, faculty, and department-led initiatives; student groups; community-based learning and teaching courses; and service trips all are welcome to participate. Applications are due Friday, Feb. 12. 

Don’t be fooled by a company’s recent attempt to market smokeless tobacco as “harmless,” says Douglas Luke, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for Tobacco Policy Research at the Brown School. “Part of what we’re seeing here is the tobacco industry trying to position smokeless tobacco products so that they either do not come under the new Food and Drug Administration regulations or they come under weaker regulations,” Luke says.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit will hold a special session from 9-11 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9, in the School of Law’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall. The public is invited to hear three appeals cases related to a class action suit regarding organic food labeling; claims of false arrest, slander and malicious prosecution; and a dispute over a fee agreement between two law firms.

The George Warren Brown School of Social Work’s Livable Lives Initiative has awarded eight grants to faculty across the university. The selected projects investigate policies and programs designed to help those with low or moderate incomes achieve lives that are more stable, secure, satisfying and successful.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service has announced the recipients of its Community-Based Teaching and Learning Faculty Grants Program. The grants are intended to provide faculty members with financial support for curriculum development and implementation.

C.J. Larkin, J.D., senior lecturer and administrative director of the School of Law’s Dispute Resolution Program, and several law students were instrumental in helping a team-oriented mediation address issues of perceived citizen disenfranchisement in Kirkwood, Mo.

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars to be held biweekly through April 26.

Two days before the Haiti earthquake, Lora Iannotti, Ph.D., nutrition and public health expert from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, traveled to Port-au-Prince and Leogane, Haiti, to continue her research about undernutrition and disease prevention in young children. The massive tremor changed her focus from research for the future to survival, with her team helping children in the aftermath of the quake.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn campaign spending limits for corporations “strikes a serious blow against efforts to stem the dominance of corporations in our political process,” says Gregory  P. Magarian, J.D., constitutional and election law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.  “The Court overruled a longstanding decision that had struck a sensible, carefully drawn balance between the self-interest of corporations and interests of integrity and fairness in the political process.“

The School of Law’s 12th annual Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series continues Jan. 20 with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture featuring John Payton, J.D., the director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund.