Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

Civil rights leader Julian Bond makes a point during a panel discussion in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge that followed his Assembly Series lecture, titled “Post Racial America: Fact or Fiction?” held April 1 in Graham Chapel. Bond’s Assembly Series talk was the keynote address for the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship Program 20th Anniversary Conference and Alumni Reunion, held on campus March 31- April 1.

Sports updates for the week of April 11, 2011.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

McDonnell International Scholars Academy members leave the U.S. Capitol and head to a tour of the Library of Congress March 15. The scholars were visiting the nation’s capital to learn more about the U.S. government.