Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

Sports updates for the week of April 11, 2011.

This year, for the first time, all Washington University campuses will join forces for the PB&Joy Food Drive. The food roundup, which begins Wednesday, April 13, and runs through Sunday, April 24, aims to feed area children — enough to fill Busch Stadium three times — who are at risk of hunger this summer when there’s no school or free lunch and breakfast.

Students dance on a new LED dance floor at the dance party Vertigo April 2. The floor was built by WUSTL engineering students and has over 1,000,000,000 colors and 32,000 lumens of LED lights. The wireless computer-controlled modular dance floor includes interactive animations based on music synchronization and pressure sensors.

High school student Isabella Kanak (left) shares a few laughs about the dark side of the universe with Edward W. “Rocky” Kolb, PhD, a cosmologist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a professor at the University of Chicago. Kanak and other members of the Junior Academy of Science had an opportunity to visit with Kolb March 31 in Whitaker Hall after he delivered the 2011 McDonnell Distinguished Lecture about the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and human rights activist, has been selected to give the 2011 Commencement address at Washington University in St. Louis, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. The university’s 150th Commencement will begin at 8:30 a.m. May 20 in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus. Wiesel will address approximately 2,800 members of the Class of 2011 and their friends and family members.

Four past and current deans of architecture from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, including Bruce Lindsey and Jerry Sincoff, gathered in Steinberg Hall April 2 for a roundtable discussion about the challenges and achievements of their respective tenures. The talk was part of a larger event titled “Architecture at 100: Architectural Education at Washington University in St. Louis.”

Students, faculty, staff and members of the St. Louis community are invited to the fourth annual Faces of Hope, a celebration of civic engagement and community service, at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in Whitaker Hall Atrium and Auditorium. The event is sponsored by the Gephardt Institute for Public Service.

WUSTL sports updates for the week of April 4, 2011.

Broadcast journalist Soledad O’Brien will present “State of Race: On TV, Behind the Scenes and in Our Lives” for the Assembly Series and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, in Graham Chapel.

“Opening Doors to the Future: The Scholarship Initiative for Washington University” has received a big boost by alumnus John D. Beuerlein and his wife, Crystal, with a pledge of $1 million to establish an endowed scholarship for Washington University graduate students.