Humanities & Society

Students captured life on campus and abroad for WUSTL’s first summer photo contest. Winning images will be displayed in January Hall next month.

The Brown School is launching a new Public Health speaker series titled “Innovative Solutions in State and Local Agencies,” designed to help policy makers grapple with tough public health problems. All lectures are free and open to the public and will take place from noon-1 p.m. in Brown Lounge, Brown Hall. The series kicks off Wednesday, Sept. 11, with “The ‘Long Tail’ and Public Health: New Thinking For Addressing Health Disparities.”

To read the joint letter that WUSTL Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Timothy M. Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri System, sent last month to the 10 members of Missouri’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Rep. William L. Clay, urging their support in helping close the innovation gap, visit here.

A panel discussion, titled “Conversations on Gender and Blackness in the Age of Trayvon Martin,” will open WUSTL’s African and African-American Studies fall colloquium series at 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6, in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. WUSTL faculty will lead the discussion, which includes a coffee reception at 10 a.m.

Washington University media specialist Brian Cohen loved music festivals so much that he created one here in St. Louis. Loufest features indie rock’s top acts including Wilco, the Killers, Alabama Shakes and the National. This year’s event runs Sept. 7-8 in Forest Park.

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in the continuing series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars held biweekly on the Danforth Campus beginning Monday, Sept. 9, and running through Dec. 2. All lectures take place at noon in Seigle Hall, Room 348. The series begins with a lecture by Derek Neal, PhD, professor in economics at the University of Chicago titled “Designing Accountability Systems and Incentives Schemes for Educators.”

Rob Reich, PhD, associate professor of political science at Stanford University, has been named the 2013-14 Wells Fargo Advisors Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. An expert on political theory, he will make four visits to WUSTL over the course of the 2013-14 academic year.

Some 1,100 Washington University freshmen will paint murals, pull weeds and organize classrooms Saturday, Aug. 31, at 13 local schools for Service First, one of the university’s largest community service projects.

Mahendra R. Gupta, PhD, dean of Olin Business School and the Geraldine J. and Robert L. Virgil Professor of Accounting and Management, serves a burger to a student during the 19th annual Olin Cookout Aug. 27 at Simon Hall. The tasty tradition brings the Olin community together, with faculty and staff serving barbecued chicken, pork and hamburgers to hungry students.

The First Year Center offered free snacks and school supplies to freshmen on the first day of class. Volunteers also snapped photos to send home.