Humanities & Society

A program designed by the Weight Management Center at the School of Medicine and the YMCA of Chesterfield has helped the Garcia family from Chesterfield lose roughly 105 pounds. The Family Lifestyle Intervention Program (FLIP) is designed to show families how to get healthy together through supervised exercise, counseling and education.

Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, will talk about the need to correct disparities in America’s public school system for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m., Wednesday, March 8 in Graham Chapel. The program is free and open to the public.

At a panel discussion for the Assembly Series to be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 1, five individuals will try to assess “The Future of the Democratic Party.” The program, which is co-sponsored by the College Democrats at Washington University, is free and open to the public.

“It is vitally important to the entire St. Louis region that we support the learning of science and mathematics in our school districts,” says education Chair William Tate.

The University will host a group of Japanese activists, filmmakers and scholars touring the nation to promote the documentary film project.

Sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, the event will open with a keynote address by Debbie Walsh.

Embargoed for 9 a.m. (CST), Monday, Feb. 20, 2006 Earthquakes are a common part of life in California. Towns are prepared for major seismic events and most residents consider earthquake safety an important issue. But in the Midwest, people rarely think of the large New Madrid fault zone underneath their feet. According to seismologists, major New Madrid earthquakes are rare, but when one eventually occurs, it can be catastrophic. So how do small towns that line the New Madrid fault zone improve earthquake preparedness when immediate risk and awareness are low and town budgets are stretched? “Unfortunately earthquake safety in the Midwest is event driven — most people will not begin to care about the risk until an earthquake happens,” says David Gillespie, Ph.D., disaster preparedness expert and professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. “Town leaders need to think long-term – 25 or 50 years out — about incremental improvements in safety measures that can be sustained. This is a different kind of planning, but it is necessary to be ready for the eventual catastrophic quake that will strike.”

Biotech innovations pop up every day. From medicines developed by large companies to ingenious solutions worked out by individuals in university labs, new technologies are poised to enter the marketplace. The question is, are patents helping or hurting this process? “Patents are essential to bring biotechnology innovations from everyone — not just well-funded corporations — to the people,” says F. Scott Kieff, J.D., associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Without patents, the biotech marketplace in basic science takes on the nature of something like an old boys’ club in which personal attributes such as fame, prestige, and even gender and race, govern what exchanges take place; and the addition of patents gives many more people a way to play in that game.”

Washington University has a long tradition of undergraduate participation in research, one developed further by programs created by Sarah Elgin, Ph.D., professor of biology; biochemistry and molecular biophysics; and education in Arts & Sciences with financial support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

There is a good story behind science, but no one is telling it in American classrooms. According to Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, science continues to be taught from K-12 to the college and university levels, in fragmented, incoherent bits and pieces rather than a coherent narrative, a history of nature.