Newsroom Stories

Executive Vice Chancellor Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., dean of Arts & Sciences and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been named provost, effective Jan. 1, 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced. Macias will relinquish his duties as dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences on June 30, 2008, and will take on expanded leadership responsibilities as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs following a six-month sabbatical.

One mark of a great novel, it’s been said, is its ability to stand the “test of time” — to remain captivating to readers from generation to generation. Washington University will honor such a novel on April 18 with two campus events celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of the Tale of Genji, a central pillar of the Japanese literary canon often hailed as the world’s first novel.

Theatre, dance, carnival rides, dog adoptions, poetry and a capella music are just some of the attractions to be featured at Thurtene Carnival, scheduled 11 a.m.-8 p.m. April 12-13 on the Washington University Danforth Campus.

MaciasExecutive Vice Chancellor Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., dean of Arts & Sciences and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been named provost, effective Jan. 1, 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced.

In the first comprehensive study of the genetic basis of psoriasis, researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered seven new sites of common DNA variation that increase the risk of the troublesome skin condition.

ReissCraig Reiss has been named the Sam and Marilyn Fox Distinguished Professor in Medicine at the School of Medicine. Reiss, a cardiologist, directs the Washington University Cardiology Consultants and the Heart Care Institute at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital.

Current medications for seizures are comparable to over-the-counter cold and flu remedies: They block symptoms, but don’t significantly affect the underlying illnesses that cause them. Now scientists at the School of Medicine have taken the first step toward developing another option. They’ve used a drug to prevent the brain abnormalities that lead to seizures in mice with an inherited form of epilepsy.

Photo by Robert BostonGraduating medical students learn where they will do their residencies at Match Day March 20 in Moore Auditorium.

Jules Dupré, *The River* (c.1850)Between 1830 and 1880 a loosely associated group of landscape painters lived and worked in the small farming village of Barbizon, France. Rejecting the traditional artistic conventions of academic landscape painting, such as the Ideal, the Pastoral, and the Heroic, they strived instead to depict an unmediated version of nature — an approach that would prove central to later avant-garde movements such as Impressionism. In May the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present *The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape,* an exhibition of close to 40 works by leading Barbizon figures and by later French and American artists who were influenced by the school.

The Pow Wow draws crowds from all over the Midwest to experience American Indian dancing, singing, drumming, arts, crafts and food.