Campus & Community

WashU Medicine construction projects will temporarily affect pedestrian traffic around Hope Plaza and Wohl Circle. Also, the Bridge Renewal project to repair water infiltration in the tunnels and utilities below campus enters a new phase.

More than 6,400 historic images of WashU’s buildings, events and people are now available to view. The newly digitized photos run from the university’s founding in 1853 to 2007 and include valuable metadata, some of it pulled from handwritten notes scribbled on the back of the original photographs.

As part of its ongoing mission to strengthen the undergraduate experience, WashU plans to build a new South 40 residence hall along Forsyth Boulevard. The new building will accommodate 600 first-year students and sophomores and feature a large courtyard and multipurpose room for events and gathering. Construction is anticipated to start this summer and is expected to be complete in time for the 2028-29 academic year. 

As part of WashU’s ongoing work to transform undergraduate STEM education and support low-income and first-generation STEM students, the Office of the Provost is launching the WashU STEM Exchange, a new community where STEM educators, advisers and researchers can share strategies and interventions and track outcomes. 

Celebrated editor, publisher and art collector Larry Warsh recently gifted 56 works of Chinese photography to the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. This spring, the museum will publicly display 43 of those works, all made between 1993 and 2006, for the first time in “Looking Back Toward the Future: Contemporary Photography from China.”

Senior Ella Elizabeth Johnson of Belmont, Mass., died Jan. 14 after a difficult struggle with mental health challenges. Johnson, 21, was studying psychological and brain sciences and Spanish in Arts & Sciences.

Samuel Klein, MD, the William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Science at WashU Medicine, has received the Endocrine Society’s Outstanding Clinical Investigator Award.

Recent graduates, and undergraduate students who are close to graduating, can apply to be part of a two-year post-baccalaureate neuroscience program at WashU. Applications are due by March 9.

Mark Rank, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare, won the 2026 Independent Press Award in the category of sociology for his book “The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us.” 

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis will fully fund practicum internship experiences and provide living stipends to students in its Master of Social Work program beginning in fall 2026, Dorian Traube, the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School, announced.