Campus & Community

Washington University’s 161st Commencement ceremony, celebrating the approximately 3,800 undergraduate, graduate and professional students earning degrees, begins at 9 a.m. today in its new location on Francis Olympic Field. And for the first time, the ceremony will be followed by a Commencement festival. Mae Jemison, MD, the first woman of color to become a NASA astronaut and to travel into space, will deliver the Commencement address.

The Record has followed five first-year students who happened to sit near each other at a preseason game during Bear Beginnings orientation in August. Here, we check in with them as they wrap up the year.

Washington University in St. Louis has admitted 50 rising high school sophomores to its innovative College Prep Program, a multiyear initiative that prepares high-achieving students with limited financial resources for college.

Christopher Stark, associate professor of composition and director of undergraduate studies in music in Arts & Sciences, has won the Elliott Carter Rome Prize in musical composition from the American Academy in Rome.

Michael A. Kass, MD, and Mae O. Gordon, PhD, at the School of Medicine, are the recipients of the 2022 Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research.

McKelvey School of Engineering undergraduate student Caitlind Walker has received several prizes, including the 2022 Ralph S. Quatrano Prize.

The Women’s Society of Washington University announced the winners of the Harriet K. Switzer Leadership Award and the Elizabeth Gray Danforth Scholarships during its annual membership meeting in April. 

Commencement student speakers Bryanna Brown, of Atlanta, and Noor Ghanam, who has lived in cities across the globe, took different journeys to Washington University in St. Louis, but on Friday, May 20, both will converge on the stage at Francis Olympic Field to address their fellow members of the Class of 2022.

The winners of the Big Ideas Competition, which supports novel and innovative projects in informatics and health-care delivery, were announced May 16.

University employees are encouraged to donate food items for kids to Operation Food Search next week. Collection sites will be available Tuesday, May 24, on both the Danforth and Medical campuses.