Humanities & Society

The Community Service Office will hold a brown-bag session at noon Monday, April 28, in Danforth University Center, Room 233, to discuss ways to expand the K-12 Connections program.

The Green Machine designed by undergraduates at Washington University in St. Louis won the People’s Choice, second place and Best Single Step awards at the 2014 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The national competition was held at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, earlier in April. Several of the students were also on the team that won first place last year.

“Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” offers students of all ages a clear and compelling primer on the best and worst ways to store and retrieve new knowledge. The book is co-authored by psychologists Henry L. “Roddy” Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel, leading experts on human learning and memory at Washington University in St. Louis, along with nonfiction writer and novelist Peter C. Brown. 

Robyn I. Stone, PhD, noted researcher and leading international authority on aging and long-term care policy, will deliver the annual Friedman Lecture Thursday, May 8, in Brown Hall on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. A panel discussion will follow. The event will take place from 8:30 a.m. to noon and is free and open to the public. For details and to register, visit here.

In the new health-care climate of the Affordable Care Act and efforts to expand Medicaid to accommodate more individuals and children, the need to closely examine ways to best use government funding is becoming increasingly evident. A new study from the Brown School examines racial and ethnic differences in Medicaid expenditures for children in the welfare system who use psychotropic drugs.

As a prequel to the World Cup this summer, University College and the Summer School, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, are sponsoring a panel discussion May 5 titled “Is The USA Becoming a Soccer Country?”

The annual Mr. Wash. U. event at Edison Theatre was held April 17. It supports City Faces, which provides art classes to children and young adults living in St. Louis public housing. The charity was founded by Bob Hansman, associate professor of architecture and urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

Students at the School of Medicine will perform “Young Frankenstein” April 24-26 in Whelpley Auditorium at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, which abuts the Medical Campus. The performance is the school’s ninth annual completely student-run musical.

Joseph Loewenstein, PhD, director of the Humanities Digital Workshop, is leading a vertical seminar for faculty, staff and graduate students in the digital humanities. The burgeoning field gives scholars new methods to analyze literature and history and encourages a new kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration.

WUSTL senior Alaina Smith works as a court advocate with the St. Louis County Domestic Violence Court and as a facilitator at RAVEN, a batterer intervention program. Smith is among this year’s Gerry and Bob Virgil Ethic of Service Award winners.