Campus & Community

Launching this month, Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls will offer sixth and seventh-grade girls a rigorous education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Washington University in St. Louis is both Hawthorn’s sponsor and its partner. Educators with the university’s Institute for School Partnership have been working closely with Hawthorn leaders for more than a year to develop the school’s project-based curriculum and real-world philosophy.

The Black Rep will launch its 2015-16 season with “Tell Me Somethin’ Good” at Washington University Sept. 2-20. The decades-spanning musical revue, one of the company’s most popular shows, is the first of three productions The Black Rep will present this year in the university’s Edison Theatre.

Mary Dell Olin Pritzlaff, a trustee emerita of Washington University in St. Louis, died Saturday, July 18, 2015, surrounded by family at her home in Santa Barbara, Calif. She was 85.

​Next week marks the one-year anniversary of events in Ferguson that have since reverberated across the entire St. Louis community and the nation. The tragedy in Ferguson and subsequent events across the country have affected all and raised consciousness to major challenges that must be met. This special issue of the Record includes perspectives and updates intended to give us the opportunity not only to look back, but also to learn, engage and think about the road ahead.​

The Center for Diversity and Inclusion, which launched last fall, has given students and the broader university community a place to connect around the issues of diversity and inclusion both on and off campus. Director LaTanya N. Buck, PhD, outlines the center’s five strategic priorities and provides an update on some significant progress on these initiatives.

The Institute for School Partnership (ISP) is partnering once again with the Monsanto Fund to bring high quality science education to students in St. Louis through its MySci program. This month, the Monsanto Fund awarded ISP with a $1,935,000 grant to create, over the course of a three-year grant period, a hands-on, inquiry and project-based science curriculum for middle school students that integrates elements of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

As a member of the Ferguson Commission, Rose Windmiller traveled across the region to learn more about the issues that divide St. Louis. Next, the commission will find ways to put its ideas into action. “This is where the rubber hits the road,” Windmiller says.

The city is filled with stories and tells stories of its own. Last fall, the Center for the Humanities and the Sam Fox School — with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation — launched The Divided City, an urban humanities initiative exploring historical and contemporary segregation across the globe and in St. Louis. Funded projects include an oral history of the Ferguson movement, launched this summer by Jeffrey McCune, PhD, Clarissa Rile Hayward, PhD, and Meredith Evans, PhD.

Two Washington University seniors and one 2015 alum (David Dwight, pictured) are assisting the Ferguson Commission to create and write its recommendations to improve education, municipal courts and governments, economic opportunities and the relationship between residents and law enforcement. 

​​Brittany Packnett, a 2007 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, has received the 2015 Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership​ from Teach For America.​