Newsroom Stories

Washington University employees may attend one of many sessions that will go over changes to the benefit plans for 2011.

Alan C. Braverman, a Washington University cardiologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, has been named Alumni Endowed Professor in Cardiovascular Diseases.

Elizabeth Fogt (left), director of advising and student services at University College, and Wendy Verhoff, adjunct professor of history, enjoy the laid-back groove at M.I.L.D. (Mosey In, Lie Down) Oct. 14 at Holmes Lounge. M.I.L.D. — an annual event sponsored by University College, the continuing education and professional studies division in Arts & Sciences — is a takeoff of the student event W.I.L.D. (Walk In, Lay Down).

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences will host the Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 28-30. Titled “The Past in the Present: Revolutions, Reactions, Transgressions,” the conference, co-hosted with the Office of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, will take place at the Crowne Plaza St. Louis-Clayton Hotel and in Eads and Wilson Halls on the Danforth Campus.

Hourly rates for the WUSTL WeCar program will be reduced beginning Monday, Nov. 1, 2010. The WeCar program allows WUSTL students, faculty, staff and employees of qualified service providers to rent vehicles on campus at an hourly rate. The new rates, as of Nov. 1, are $5 per hour for a sedan and $8 per hour for an SUV.  

An international team of researchers based at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, including a physical anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered well-dated human fossils in southern China that markedly change anthropologists perceptions of the emergence of modern humans in the eastern Old World.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Marion Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law at Washington University In St. Louis, looks at the act’s history and says changes in the American workplace and other factors raise the question of how the NLRA will adapt in the future.

Washington University in St. Louis will offer a master of science in biology degree specifically for in-service teachers through University College, its adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences. Faculty created and piloted the degree with 90 biology teachers nationwide as a National Science Foundation teacher institute.

Richard Heinzl, M.D., founder of Doctors without Borders, Canada, will present a talk, “Lessons from Abroad: The Opportunities of a Borderless World” at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 8 at Graham Chapel on the Danforth Campus.The event is co-sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy, the Gephardt Institute for Public Service and the School of Medicine

NASA astronaut Robert L. Behnken, PhD, presents to Chancelllor Mark S. Wrighton a photograph of James S. McDonnell, a.k.a. “Mr. Mac,” that had traveled into space and been signed by his fellow astronauts. Behnken presented the photograph at the end of the third annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture Oct. 21, during which he described his experiences as a space shuttle crewmember and life on the International Space Station.