Author: Ken Duenke

Gerald Boyd, former managing editor of The New York Times, will deliver the Greg Freeman Legacy Lecture at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21 in Graham Chapel at Washington University. The talk is free and open to the public. Graham Chapel is located just north of Mallinckrodt Center (6445 Forsyth) on the University’s main campus. Boyd’s talk is titled “Journalism 2003: Meeting Challenges from Race to Credibility.”

Wayne M. Yokoyama, M.D., gives that advice to medical students and postdoctoral fellows aiming to become independent researchers. “Work hard, exceed people’s expectations and you’ll be successful,” he continues. “We are often limited most by constraints we place on ourselves.” That philosophy helped Yokoyama become a two-time Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, the Sam J. […]

Carol S. North was camping in rural Missouri with her two Great Danes on Sept. 11, 2001. Shortly after the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, reporters started calling. Soon she had been tracked down and brought back to town. To understand why the media immediately went looking for North […]

School of Medicine researchers have published one of the first studies to track driving performance over time in older adults. More: Alzheimer’s research at WUSTL leads to better treatment of the disease.

Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner will deliver the annual Arthur Holly Compton Memorial Lecture for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. Tues, Oct. 14. The lecture,”Humanity’s Genes,” is free and open to the public and will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the Washington University campus. Brenner’s lecture will discuss some of the questions raised by the completion of the Human Genome Project. He will talk about both the benefits and the fears raised by recent breakthroughs in genetic research, and his belief that the brain is mightier than the genome.

Harvard’s chaplain, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, will deliver the Assembly Series lecture at 11 a.m. Wed., Oct. 15. The talk will be based on his most recent book, The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need, and is sponsored by Washington University’s Campus Y. All Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public and held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the university’s main campus.

Mary Butkus/WUSTL PhotoFoster care teens have a desire to attend college, study shows.A solid education is considered the foundation for a productive future, but for teens in foster care, education beyond high school is rarely a reality. In fact, a Westat study found that only 44 percent of 18-year-olds leaving the independent living program of the foster care system completed high school. But despite common thought, this dismal percentage is not due to a lack of educational aspirations among teens in foster care. According to a recent study at the George Warren Brown (GWB) School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, a surprisingly high percentage — 70 percent — of teens in the foster care system have a desire to attend college.

KouvelisThe concept of hiring another company to handle “non-core” functions has been around since companies began. But it’s only been in the last several decades that the term “outsourcing” has been coined. Selecting which functions to be outsourced is as individual as each company and the goods and services it provides. Panos Kouvelis, a professor of operations and manufacturing management at the Olin School of Business at Washington University, says that it is often argued that outsourcing helps share risks with suppliers, but new risks enter the picture. “Often difficult tasks, if not appropriately managed, can get out of control,” Kouvelis says. “However, these are the tasks in which a firm can build competency and appropriate market value.” Kouvelis explains the pros and cons of outsourcing.

Troubling new evidence on corporate governance and CEO pay.In 1980, the average CEO was paid around 40 times as much as the average worker, but the multiple is now above 400 for the largest U.S. companies. With such increases in top executive pay, including New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso’s $139.5 million retirement-pay package, an expert on executive compensation says that corporate governance practices should come under even greater scrutiny. Todd Milbourn, Ph.D., a professor of finance at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, has recently documented other troubling evidence with regard to the efficacy of corporate governance and CEO pay.

The recent decisions by Oklahoma and Colorado federal courts invalidating the Federal Trade Commission’s “Do Not Call List” were major victories for telemarketing companies, “but a tragedy for the rest of us,” says Neil M. Richards, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Even with the quick reversal of the Oklahoma decision by Congress and President Bush, the Colorado decision remains a major roadblock for the List,” notes Richards. “The FTC and the Federal Communications Commission have been warned by Judge Harrington in Colorado not to go against his order, and Congress has no power to overrule the judge’s decision- they cannot change the meaning of the First Amendment as interpreted by the Courts.”