Campus & Community

Washington University in St. Louis will award five honorary degrees during the university’s 154th Commencement May 15. During the ceremony, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus, the university will bestow academic degrees on approximately 2,800 members of the Class of 2015.

The Department of Mathematics has announced that a Washington University team, consisting of junior Anthony Grebe, senior Alan Talmage and sophomore Jongwhan Park, placed 16th out of 431 teams in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition, the most difficult mathematics competition for undergraduates in the country. Washington University teams also took first and second place in the Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition.​

Five teams focused on serving children and youth recently won the 10th annual YouthBridge Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition (SEIC). Hosted by the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis in partnership with the YouthBridge Community Foundation, the competition also receives support from the Lutheran Foundation of St. Louis and the Daughters of Charity Foundation of St. Louis.

John W. Olney, MD, the John P. Feighner Professor of Psychiatry and professor of pathology and immunology, died Tuesday, April 14, 2015 at his home in St. Louis after a battle with lung cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He was 83.

Amy French, a junior majoring in economics in Arts & Sciences, is a goalkeeper for the Bears varsity team. She is also an accomplished jazz singer, and keeps busy accompanying Provost Holden Thorp, a jazz pianist in his free time, at events around the country.

Student musicians on the Medical Campus brought their voices, instruments and musical prowess to the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center for a Coffeehouse performance Tuesday, April 7.

The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will honor professor emeritus Harold Blumenfeld, who died last fall at he age of 91, with a Memorial Concert in Graham Chapel April 19. The performance will feature Blumenfeld’s settings of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and Arthur Rimbaud as well as works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Paul Hindemith and Franz Schubert.

Lee Epstein, PhD, was installed as the Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis in a campus ceremony March 17.

Following a four-month rigorous training and selection process among 46 exceptional applications to the Bear Cub Challenge at Washington University in St. Louis, grants have been awarded to the top applicants. 

The Teaching Center at Washington University in St. Louis is ramping up its efforts and programs on inclusive teaching and learning. One goal is to better engage, include and challenge all students. The effort includes workshops, a faculty fellowship and a faculty institute.