Humanities & Society

As the City of St. Louis marks the 250th anniversary of its founding with a yearlong series of events, scholars from across the nation will provide their perspectives on the city’s historical significance during a daylong symposium Friday, Feb. 14, at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park.

Last year, almost 900,000 low- and moderate-income tax filers participated in a unique tax preparation savings intervention program, depositing approximately $5.9 million more into savings accounts than they would have without the intervention. As the 2014 tax season opens, the Refund to Savings initiative continues with adjustments designed to help more Americans build savings. “The intervention is promising,” says Michal Grinstein-Weiss PhD, associate director of the Center for Social Development, which helped develop the program.

Peter Hovmand, PhD, associate professor of practice at the Brown School and founding director of the Social System Design Lab, has published “Community Based System Dynamics” (Springer 2013) for anyone interested in making communities around the world a better place using system dynamics.

A college savings account in a child’s name not only gives parents hope for the future, it also results in improved social-emotional health for their children. That’s the result of a new study released Jan. 27 online in JAMA Pediatrics. The study, led by Washington University in St. Louis’ Center for Social Development in collaboration with the state of Oklahoma, began in 2007 as SEED for Oklahoma Kids, an innovative policy experiment to invest in children at birth. The program automatically opened and deposited $1,000 in an Oklahoma college savings plan account for 1,360 newborns.

Commercials for the commercials? Arnold Schwarzenegger in tennis gear? A “Full House” reunion? Must be Super Bowl time. “It’s interesting to see the experience of the Super Bowl ads lasting eight to 13 weeks on average today compared to one day of viewing the ads years ago,” says Carol Johanek, adjunct professor of marketing at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School.

Lunar New Year festivities kicked off on campus last weekend with fireworks at Mudd Field. Celebrations continue this weekend, when the annual Lunar New Year Festival offers a student showcase of Asian dance and music.

The WUSTL Assembly Series turned 60 in 2013, and to mark the anniversary, we revisit why the lecture series was conceived in the first place. The Assembly Series launched during the institution’s centennial celebration in 1953 as a way to involve the broader St. Louis community in the robust intellectual life on campus.

Happiness will be the focus of Washington University’s Master of Liberal Arts Saturday Lecture Series that runs throughout February. Free and open to the public, the series is sponsored by University College, the professional and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences. All talks are set for 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in January Hall, Room 110, on the Danforth Campus.

Washington University Libraries has created a fully searchable digital resource that brings invaluable oral history about the Great Depression within reach. Authors Maya Angelou and Gore Vidal, longtime New York Times political reporter Warren Moscow and the grandson of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt are among those interviewed.

WUSTL’s Institute for School Partnership is committed to evolution education as part of a sound K-12 science curriculum, and it kicks off its second annual Darwin Day celebration Friday and Saturday, Feb. 7 and 8, with workshops for teachers and students. Darwin Day is celebrated internationally on or around Feb. 12, Darwin’s birthday, as a celebration of science and humanity. Highlighting the weekend on the WUSTL campus: a visit from alum Sean B. Carroll, PhD, vice president for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.