Newsroom Stories

Missouri’s first Family Impact Seminar, a national program aimed at educating lawmakers on family policy issues, was held Jan. 17 in Jefferson City for legislators and aides, and the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis took a lead role in bringing the forum to the state.

As a young man, Oedipus outwitted the deadly Sphinx but also committed terrible sins — slaying his natural father, marrying his widowed mother. Now the former king of Thebes wanders Greece a beggar, blinded by his own hand. But in Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles’ melancholy meditation on age and loss, this once-great hero finally concludes his tortured, penitent journey.

Two faculty members have been named Faculty Fellows in the Office of the Provost: Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, PhD, professor and associate chair of biomedical engineering, and Heather Corcoran, MFA, associate professor of communication design. They are working on important university initiatives with Edward S. Macias, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs.

The Obama administration has proposed letting religiously affiliated non-profit businesses and institutions opt-out of the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. “The Obama administration has bent over backward to accommodate the concerns of some religiously affiliated businesses,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and professor of law at Washington University In St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis this week obtained final approval for the school’s $80 million student apartment and retail project in the Delmar Loop in University City and the city of St. Louis. The construction phase is expected to begin next week as the project moves from plan to action.

Mark W. Smith, JD, assistant vice chancellor and director of the Career Center, has been promoted to associate vice chancellor for students and will continue as director of the Career Center, announced Sharon Stahl, vice chancellor for students. In his new role, he will also oversee the Office for International Students and Scholars.

The Refund to Savings Initiative, the largest savings experiment ever conducted in the United States, begins with this tax season and is expected to reach almost 1.2 million households within the next few months. The project is a novel collaboration of university researchers, led by Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, and corporate partner Intuit Inc., the maker of TurboTax software, Quicken Books and Mint. This groundbreaking project is ushering in a new way of doing research.

Severely malnourished children are far more likely to recover and survive when given antibiotics along with a therapeutic peanut-butter based food than children who are treated with the therapeutic food alone, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. Indi Trehan, MD, the study’s lead author, shows parents in Malawi how to measure medication.

Eric Hoffman, professor of practice in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has won a national 2013 Young Architects Award from the American Institute of Architects. Hoffman is both the first Sam Fox School faculty member and the first Sam Fox School alumnus to receive the honor, among the highest available to architects in the early stages of their careers.

A study of young twins in Malawi, in sub-Saharan Africa, finds that bacteria living in the intestine are an underlying cause of a form of severe acute childhood malnutrition.