Humanities & Society

Matthew W. Kreuter, PhD, professor and director of the Brown School’s Health Communication Research Laboratory (HCRL), has been named associate dean for public health, according to Edward F. Lawlor, PhD. dean and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor. The appointment is effective July 1.

Read the full text of Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s speech at Washington University in St. Louis’ 152nd Commencement May 17, 2013.

Read the full text of Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton’s message to the graduates at Washington University in St. Louis’ 152nd Commencement ceremony May 17, 2013.

Washington University’s 152nd Commencement begins at 8:30 a.m. Friday, May 17, in Brookings Quadrangle. The university will award 2,873 degrees to 2,752 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. The university also will bestow honorary degrees on six individuals, including Commencement speaker Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

An executive branch Inspector General played a critical role in exposing the IRS’s practice of targeting Tea Party groups, says Kathleen Clark, JD, anti-corruption expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “As we see with the IRS controversy, an Inspector General investigation can cause heads to roll. Perhaps that’s why some government agencies have been without an Inspector General for a very long time – measured not in months, but in years.” Clark notes that the State Department has been without an Inspector General for more than five years.

Three WUSTL doctoral candidates were inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society at the annual Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education April 19-20 at Yale University. The Bouchet Society, named for the first African American to earn a doctorate in the United States, recognizes outstanding scholarly achievement and promotes diversity and excellence in doctoral education and the professoriate.

Four startup companies with ties to Washington University in St. Louis have received $50,000 each in the Arch Grants 2013 Global Startup Competition designed to stimulate and support the early stage entrepreneurial community in St. Louis.

Renowned economists will gather Monday, May 20, at the university to pay tribute to Murray Weidenbaum, founder and honorary chairman of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, in a forum tailor-made to highlight his life-long accomplishments. A highly influential economist and policy adviser, Weidenbaum has a legacy in the academic and governmental realms that began in the early 1960s.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Bowman v. Monsanto holds that farmers who lawfully obtain Monsanto’s patented, genetically modified soybeans do not have a right to plant those soybeans and grow a new crop of soybeans without Monsanto’s permission. “The Court closed a potential loophole in Monsanto’s long-standing business model, prevents Monsanto’s customers from setting up ‘farm-factories’ for producing soybeans that could be sold in competition with Monsanto’s soybeans, and it enables Monsanto to continue to earn a reasonable profit on its patented technology,” says Kevin Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis

Twitter is proving to be an effective tool for local health departments in disseminating health information — especially in promoting specific health behaviors. The latest study, led by Jenine K. Harris, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School, focused on diabetes, a disease that may affect an estimated one-third of U.S. adults by 2050. “We focused on diabetes first, both because of increasing diabetes rates,” Harris says, “and also because people living with diabetes tend to use online health-related resources at a fairly high rate and are an audience already online and on social media.”