Newsroom Stories

WUSTL is partnering with the St. Louis Winter Outreach Team to help the homeless. On winter nights when the temperature is predicted to drop below 20 degrees, the volunteer teams meet, drive around the city looking for those at risk, and offer blanket, coats – or transportation to those willing to go to a shelter. There are a number of ways WUSTL community members can get involved — from collecting coats or blankets to volunteering in a shelter.

Opera on the Kansas plains? Picnic, a recent work by American composer Forrest Pierce, centers on a handsome drifter whose arrival in small Midwestern town spells both liberation and catastrophe. At 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Dec. 15 and 16, the Washington University Opera Workshop will present excerpts from Picnic, which features a libretto by WUSTL’s Tim Ocel, and four other operas in the 560 Music Center Ballroom Theater.

Stephen F. & Camilla T. Brauer Hall, a new engineering building at the northeast corner of the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis, was recently honored with a Project Achievement Award by the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA). But the CMAA award is only the latest of seven honors garnered by Brauer Hall, home to the School of Engineering & Applied Science’s Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering.

Student groups collaborated to raise campus awareness of World AIDS Day Thursday, Dec. 1. The students held red balloons and formed the shape of a ribbon on Mudd Field. This was just one of several events that took place throughout the day.

Remarks made during the recently settled NBA lockout brought the subject of race and sports back into the forefront. Gerald Early’s A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports, is a series of essays that give historical perspective to the issue of race and sports through distinct personalities such as baseball’s Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood and NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb. Early, PhD, is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

An afternoon ceremony was held in Graham Chapel Saturday, Dec. 3, to recognize Washington University’s December degree candidates. There were 784 students who filed as December degree candidates for 826 degrees. Steven H. Lipstein, president and chief executive officer of BJC HealthCare, delivered remarks to the degree candidates and Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton gave the Chancellor’s Message. A reception followed in the Danforth University Center.

WUSTL co-founder William Greenleaf Eliot  (played by Jeffery Matthews, professor of practice in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences) celebrated his 200th birthday Dec. 5 with students in the William Greenleaf Eliot Residential College. Former Chancellor Wiiliam H. Danforth also joined in the fun, as he and ‘Eliot’ talked about what it means to be a university leader and how the role has changed.

Faculty Achievement Award winners Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, and Erik Trinkaus, PhD, listen before the award ceremony Dec. 3 at Simon Hall. The ceremony also honored Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship winners Jonathan S. Turner, PhD, and Jerome R. Cox Jr., ScD. The recognition ceremony was followed by the annual Chancellor’s Gala at the Danforth University Center.

Washington University’s Genome Institute has received a $114 million grant to continue its groundbreaking genomic research. The four-year grant comes from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The university’s Genome Institute is one of only three large federally funded genome centers in the United States.

Students wanting to make a significant environmental impact on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis are encouraged to sign up for the third annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition. The registration deadline is Friday, Dec. 9.