Newsroom Stories

It was an historic afternoon for the No. 2 volleyball team as the Bears picked up a 3-0 victory over New York University at the first University Athletic Association (UAA) round robin of the season at the Washington University Field House Oct. 2. Updates also available on men’s and women’s socer, women’s tennis, cross country and swimming and diving.

President Barack Obama is calling for a more modernized and concentrated hiring process in the federal government as more of its workers retire. While the government attracts many excellent candidates, the recruitment process remains bureaucratic, cumbersome and complex, leading many talented workers to be turned away. “The federal government is facing a war for talent and its competitors are winning,” says Jackson A. Nickerson, PhD, professor of strategy at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Arts & Sciences starts the fall semester with a new program director and four new departmental chairs, two of whom are heading newly created and reorganized departments.The Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (ANELL) and the programs in East Asian Studies (EAS) and Jewish and Islamic Studies (JINES) have been reorganized into two full-fledged departments.

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;} .MsoChpDefault {font-family:Cambria;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in;margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} Rick W. Wright, MD, has been named the Dr. Asa C. and Mrs. Dorothy W. Jones Professor in Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. An author of more than 100 scientific publications, Wright joined the Washington University faculty as an instructor in 1994 and became a full professor in 2010. He is a frequently invited lecturer, nationally and internationally. 

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:’Times New Roman’;} .MsoChpDefault {;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in;margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} The university’s Genome Institute is laying off 54 employees due to a reduction in funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute for large-scale genome centers.

With its poodle skirts, bouffant hairdos and withering irony, John Waters’ Hairspray (1988) feels almost timeless. It could be set at any point after which the 1950s had ceased to be cool. It is actually set in 1962, the year James Meredith became the first African-American admitted to the University of Mississippi. That historical grounding is at the center of a new staging of Hairspray: The Musical, the 2002 Broadway extravaganza based on Waters’ film, by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its 2011 Faculty Creative Activity Research Grants. Four art and architecture faculty members will each receive between $1,000 and $8,000 to support a variety of projects. These range from research about the Elizabethan “Lost Colony” of North Carolina and a monograph on Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck to a mobile art studio traveling the Gulf Coast and new methods of architectural fabrication in Jakarta, Indonesia.

About 1,500 School of Medicine employees took a walk in Hudlin Park Sept. 28 to kick off Tread the Med, the school’s walking campaign. More than 120 teams and nearly 1,900 employees have registered for the program, which encourages walking 10,000 steps a day.

A chance encounter with James McLeod by Jazz at Holmes series organizers beneath the Brookings Hall archway in 1998 would lead to the continuation of the popular series, which has become a local instituion in its 13th season. On Oct. 6, Jazz at Holmes will honor McLeod, who died Sept. 6, with a concert by legendary St. Louis saxophonist Freddie Washington.

Tomás Saraceno creates spectacular, gravity-defying installations and visionary sculptural models inspired by clouds, bubbles, spider webs and other natural structures. On Oct. 5, Saraceno — who was born in Argentina and now lives and works in Germany — will discuss his work as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series. The talk, which begins at 6:30 p.m. in Steinberg Hall, is held in conjunction with the exhibition Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific, on view through Jan. 9 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.