Business & Entrepreneurship

The small increase in take-home pay that began in April 2009 through the Making Work Pay Credit (MWPC) could mean an unexpected bump in your tax bill says Cheryl Block, tax law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. The problem, according to Block, is that the Treasury Department’s new withholding tables do not take several individual employment circumstances into account. Some joint filers, college students and retirees, among others, may end up repaying all or part of the credit this tax season.

OUTlaw, the student- run LGBT awareness, advocacy, support, and social group at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, will host “Queer in the Midwest,” the annual Midwest LGBT law conference Feb. 25-27

The intricately intertwined relationship between the global economy and politics will be the focus of a public forum titled “Politics and the Global Recession” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25 in the Knight Center. The program is being sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy.

Washington University in St. Louis has more than 12,000 students, 4,500-plus faculty and staff and only 5,168 parking spaces on its Danforth Campus.Students at the Olin Business School saw this problem as a real world business case and decided to tackle it head-on with a competition to inspire innovative solutions to the campus parking challenge with an emphasis on keeping it green. 

The Center for Social Development at the Brown School is advising and helping to test innovations in asset building — strategies that increase financial and tangible assets for families and businesses — in several countries in East and Southeast Asia.

Top experts in Chinese law will gather at School of Law Thursday, Feb. 25, for a panel discussion and open public forum. The event, co-sponsored by the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. A live webcast also will be available through the program.

Before athletes grabbed the limelight at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Olin MBA student Shaun Hudson found glory in hot wings at the “OLINpics” Feb. 11 in the Knight Center. The OLINpics continue at 5 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 18, at Brandt’s Cafe in the University City Loop with an Olympic trivia contest.

Marketing students at Olin Business School are gearing up for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games with a series of events to educate, entertain and raise funds for an adventure camp sponsored by Variety the Children’s Charity of St. Louis. The kick-off event for “OLINpics” begins at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, in the Knight Center on the Danforth Campus. 

The Danforth Campus has more than 12,000 students, 4,500-plus faculty and staff and 5,168 parking spaces. Teams of Olin Business School students have been crunching the numbers since December in hopes of solving the campus parking challenge and winning the grand prize of $5,000 in the first Olin Sustainability Case Competition. Four teams compete in the final round Friday, Feb. 12. 

Creativity at the World Economic Forum? That may seem like a bit of stretch. But according to Keith Sawyer, PhD, associate professor of education and of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, the two go hand-in-hand. Sawyer moderated two sessions at last month’s forum in Davos, Switzerland.