Newsroom Stories

The Congressional Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest award for valor in combat. It is very hard to get. Since being signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, only 3,468 medals have been awarded — 70 percent of them posthumously. In Beyond Glory, actor and playwright Stephen Lang — perhaps best known as Colonel Quaritch in Avatar — presents eight of these stories in the words of the men who lived them.

Rich Luenemann, Washington University in St. Llouis’ head women’s volleyball coach since 1999, will not be returning to the Danforth Campus following his leave of absence, director of athletics John Schael has announced.

For just the second time in school history, the Washington University in St. Louis women’s soccer team is ranked No. 1 in the National Soccer Coaches Association Top-25 Poll, the association announced last week.

Tiny ghosts, goblins and witches enjoyed face painting and candy at Safe Trick or Treat, a Campus Y tradition.

“Over the last decade, J. Robert Lennon’s literary imagination has grown increasingly morbid, convoluted and peculiar,” writes The New York Times Book Review, “just as his books have grown commensurately more surprising, rigorous and fun.” Lennon, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, will host a pair of events Nov. 5 and 7.

Office for International Students and Scholars and the Career Center offered international students a crash course in putting and driving at Forest Park.

On the occasion of the City of Clayton’s centennial year, Washington University’s Assembly Series will present a panel discussion exploring the region’s future prospects and opportunities for growth featuring leading international authorities from our institution: William Powderly, Peter Raven and Holden Thorp. The “Innovation and Infinite Possibilities in the 21st Century” program will begin at 7 p.m Wednesday, November 6 in Simon Hall May Auditorium on the Danforth Campus.

On Saturday, Nov. 2, Washington University’s “family” will come from near and far to gather in St. Louis and celebrate its founding in 1853. The annual Founders Day dinner and ceremony, sponsored by the WUSTL Alumni Association, will feature an address by Jon Huntsman Jr., former U.S. ambassador to China. Other highlights include the presentation of Distinguished Faculty and Alumni awards and the Robert S. Brookings Awards.

The newly renovated Whittemore House has a new look, a new menu and its old chef. Jim Huber is back in the Whittemore House kitchen serving local food with an international flair. The historic club also is serving weekday breakfast, Wednesday bistro dinners and monthly wine dinners.

A small molecule called VIP, known to synchronize time-keeping neurons in the brain’s biological clock, has the startling effect of desynchronizing them at higher dosages, says a research team at Washington University in St. Louis. Neurons knocked for a loop by a burst of VIP are better able to re-synchronize to abrupt shifts in the light-dark cycle like those that make jet lag or shift work so miserable.