Newsroom Stories

Business professionals looking to take their careers to the next level and sharpen their leadership skills will welcome the arrival of a top-ranked Executive MBA program in Denver that promises a rigorous and relevant deep dive graduate degree in management. Washington University in St. Louis will offer its 20-month Executive MBA program, ranked number two worldwide by The Wall Street Journal, in Denver beginning in September 2013.

Brittni D. Jones, a PhD student in the Department of Education in Arts & Sciences, explains her research on geographic disparities in science achievement, to Ganesh M. Babulal, a PhD student in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ RAPS program, during the 18th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium, held Feb. 16. The symposium offers an opportunity for graduate and professional students to present their research to an audience of non-specialists and allows them to hone communication skills necessary for grant and proposal writing as well as job interviews.

Washington University in St. Louis administrators are urging Congress and the White House to reach a compromise to avoid wide-ranging, across-the-board federal spending cuts that would take effect March 1.

Olin Business School’s fourth annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition challenged students to propose plans for developing more than 10,000 vacant properties in St. Louis. From solar panels to community service projects, students came up with creative ideas to combat “Blight, Plight, and Urban-Flight: Stimulating the Sustainable Development of Vacant Land in the City of St. Louis.

More than 150 students performed in this year’s Lunar New Year Festival, making it one of the largest cultural shows on campus. The student performances ranged from juggling to water sleeves (pictured) to a memorable Chinese Lion Dance. All proceeds from the show will go toward covering surgeries for orphans, including reconstructing unilateral cleft lips and palates.

It’s hard to wave when your elbow can’t bend. In Beauty, choreographer Jane Comfort deploys the robotic, stiff-jointed movements of Barbie and Ken dolls to withering satirical effect. On Friday and Saturday, March 1 and 2, Jane Comfort and Company will perform Beauty—as well as the BESSIE Award-winning Underground River — as part of the Edison Ovations Series.

The most common inherited form of mental retardation and autism, fragile X syndrome, turns some brain cells into chatterboxes, scientists at the School of Medicine report. The extra chatter may make it harder for brain cells to identify and attend to important signals, potentially establishing a parallel at the cellular level to the attention problems seen in autism.

A new study, led by Jenine K. Harris, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, examined the use of social media by state health departments in the United States. The study, published Feb. 7 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research, found use of web-based sites such as Facebook and Twitter a growing trend.

In the weeks, months and years after a severe head injury, patients often experience epileptic seizures that are difficult to control. A new study in rats suggests that gently cooling the brain after injury may prevent these seizures.

Robert Mecham, PhD, has been named interim head of the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.