Newsroom Stories

Federal appellate judge Bernice Donald, JD, president of the American Bar Foundation, and Thomas Saenz, JD, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will be the next speakers for the 16th annual School of Law Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series.

President Barack Obama signed a memorandum Jan. 15 directing agencies to allow federal workers to take six weeks of paid sick leave to help with a new child or a sick relative. The president also asked Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act, which would grant Americans seven days a year of paid sick time. Augmenting the Family and Medical Leave Act is one place Congress might start if it wants to combat sex-role stereotypes and advance women’s equal employment opportunity, as well as supporting families in times of illness, say experts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The AIDS Clinical Trials Site at the School of Medicine has been awarded a National Institutes of Health grant that supports testing of treatments for HIV, AIDS and the many complications they cause. Pictured is the principal investigator, David Clifford, MD.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have shown that two major pools of immune cells are at work in the heart. Both belong to a class of cells known as macrophages. One appears to promote healing, while the other likely drives inflammation, which is detrimental to long-term heart function.

Washington University School of Law alumni Joseph E. and Yvonne L. Cordell have made a $1 million gift commitment to establish and endow the Cordell & Cordell Visiting Professorship in the law school.

Washington University in St. Louis and Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea are partnering to offer a unique learning experience to master the complex world of business by earning two degrees on two continents in their new Global Master of Finance Dual Degree program.

Virginia Terpening was an accomplished painter and an important regional artist. Yet by the time of her death, in 2007, Terpening’s work had been largely forgotten; hundreds of paintings languished in a rusty trailer in northeastern Missouri. Yet now a reappraisal is underway, thanks in large part to The Hinge, a nonprofit gallery cofounded by Eileen G’Sell, lecturer in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton shares with the WUSTL community some important developments in the university’s continuing efforts to create more socioeconomic diversity within our talented student body.

The 27th annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration at Washington University in St. Louis will include a number of events on campus, all free and open to the public. Michel Martin, host of Tell Me More, National Public Radio’s one-hour daily news and talk show, will deliver the School of Medicine’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture Monday, Jan. 20.

The St. Louis region is experiencing widespread flu activity with some deaths, but Washington University physicians say it’s not too late to get a flu shot. The deaths primarily were of otherwise healthy young and middle-aged adults not vaccinated against influenza.