Author: Michael Smick

H. Holden Thorp, PhD, provost of Washington University in St. Louis, led a National Research  Council committee that published a report July 31 on lab safety in academic research. He says the most important takeway is that a holistic approach is needed.

WUSTL and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have announced a joint Executive MBA program aimed at the international executive. The new program is the first of its kind to confer an MBA degree from both an Indian and an American university and will be modeled after WUSTL’s highly ranked Executive MBA in China and the United States.

As construction continues on the new Sumers Recreation Center, WUSTL students, employees and visitors are asked to note changes to area walkways and roadways. The new center will debut in August 2016.

Some clover species have two forms, one of which releases cyanide to discourage nibbling by snails and insects and the other of which does not. A scientist at Washington University in St. Louis found that this “polymorphism” has evolved independently in six different species of clover, each time by the wholesale deletion of a gene. The clover species are in a sense predisposed to develop this trait, suggesting that evolution is not entirely free form but instead bumps up against constraints.

1 | 2 | 3 Feb. 4, 2014: Each year during the summer, the ice near the bases melts away, but how quickly this happens varies from year to year. Scott Base, which it lies just seaward of the boundary between the transient ice shelf and the permanent ice, claims to be 98 percent iced-in. […]

1 | 2 | 3  One day, I got to tag along with another team to do a test installation of posthole seismometers (seismometers directly buried in the snow with no vault). This involved taking a piston-bully (a huge beast of a machine with big tracks instead of tires that travels at whopping speeds of […]

If you were unable to attend one of the recent WUSTLnomics forums or if you would like to watch the presentations made by Hank Webber, executive vice chancellor for Administration, and Barb Feiner, vice chancellor for Finance, again, visit http://wustl.edu/efficiency/forums.html for a video of the forum. Visit wustl.edu/efficiency for more information about the university’s efficiency efforts.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service maintains the Community Counts database to track community service activities by WUSTL schools and organizations. It’s time to submit initiatives from the 2013-14 academic year. The deadline is June 30. Each submitted initiative will be entered into a drawing for $500 to support the project.

WUSTL faculty and staff are invited ti discuss “Covering” by New York University law professor Kenji Yoshino. Both a poetic memoir and a powerful legal analysis, “Covering” argues that all of us “cover,” ordownplay traits society frowns upon, to better blend into the mainstream.

Washington University in St. Louis faculty, staff, students and alumni are invited to march in this year’s St. Louis PrideFest Parade at 11 a.m. June 29. WUSTL participants will meet at the parade staging area in Kiener Plaza, located at Seventh and Market streets.