Campus & Community

At its fall meeting Thursday and Friday, Oct. 1 and 2, the Washington University in St. Louis Board of Trustees heard special reports on the university’s endowment and the plan to transform the east end of the Danforth Campus. The board also received a report from Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton that included updates on administrative appointments, admissions, athletics and construction.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was among the most popular American composers of the 19th century. On Oct. 4, pianists Mark Tollefsen and Jae Won Kim will perform one of Gottschalk’s most enduring works in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

What is the relationship between art and activism? How should artists engage questions of racial justice? Have events in Ferguson changed those equations? On Oct. 3, four St. Louis-based artists will discuss these questions and more as part of the Greater St. Louis Humanities Festival.

Images captured in and around the Washington University campuses. Click the “i” in the upper-left corner for captions.

Watching his grandparents struggle at the end of their long lives hasmotivated Chris Carpenter, MD, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, to work countless hours to improve emergency room care for older adults and to help create a new medical subspecialty — geriatric emergency medicine.

Lori Setton, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected president of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), a leading professional society for biomedical engineering and bioengineering.​

​A task force created last fall at Washington University in St. Louis to study issues of sexual assault and relationship violence has completed its work and is recommending a number of measures that aim to create a supportive, respectful campus environment where sexual assault is a rare occurrence.

AT&T, through its signature education initiative AT&T Aspire, has committed $400,000 to the College Prep Program at Washington University in St. Louis. The program helps low-income students from across the St. Louis region connect with other talented students and prepare for success in college.

James V. Wertsch, PhD, founding director of one of the most successful and innovative global scholarship programs in the world, has been named the inaugural David R. Francis Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Wertsch is vice chancellor for international affairs and director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

Political polarization — when public opinion goes to two extremes, without moderates or a real middle ground — is the focus of a lecture series that kicks off Monday, Sept. 28, with a talk by Steven S. Smith, PhD, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.