Newsroom Stories

Arts & Sciences students will have to look in a new place this year to find their advisers and other administrative services. The College of Arts & Sciences moved its offices over the summer to the first floor of Cupples II Hall, which has been renovated over the past year. In addition, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Office of Undergraduate Research have new homes in Cupples II.

The Department of Neurological Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine celebrates its 100th anniversary this month. Over the past century, it has become internationally known for its groundbreaking basic and clinical research, dedication to patient care and outstanding training of residents. The department’s origins can be traced to the 1911 arrival at the School of Medicine of Ernest Sachs, MD, who became the world’s first professor of neurological surgery in 1919.

Lace up your walking shoes – Tread the Med, Washington University School of Medicine’s walking program, launches Sept. 28 in Hudlin Park. “We are launching this program because we want to help our employees get healthier and to encourage a healthy habit like walking,” says Gregg Evans, human resources consultant.

Members of the Washington University community, including Lauren Yang, a second-year medical student, turned out Sept. 13 to give blood at the university-wide blood drive. In the past four years, the WUSTL community has donated enough blood to save nearly 20,000 lives, says Stephanie N. Kurtzman, director of the Community Service Office and associate director of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service.

A new study by a finance professor at Washington University in St. Louis finds that the amount of stock options in a CEO’s compensation package can result in an increase in risk-taking by company leaders. Such a finding seems obvious at first blush, but uncovering clean empirical evidence always has been illusive.

On the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, more than 400 gathered in Edison Theatre for “Ten Years Later,” a program of reflection, music and speeches about what the legacy of 9/11 means for this generation of college students.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “Ponzi scheme” charge and Florida Sen. Mark Rubio’s assertion that Social Security is unsustainable recycle baseless attacks that go back as far as the 1930s, says Merton C. Bernstein, LLB, a nationally recognized expert on Social Security. “These are attempts to muster political support by appealing to long-held prejudices to satisfy those who never accepted Social Security,” Bernstein says. “To use them as guides to public policy would undermine our country’s most successful family protection program.”

The estimates of the population without health insurance in the U.S. remained unchanged in 2010, as compared to 2009, reflecting the counteracting effects of not only the sluggish economic recovery but also the preliminary benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), says Timothy McBride, PhD, leading health economist and associate dean of public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sports medicine specialists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Rick Wright, MD, and Corey Gill, MD, are leading a national study analyzing why a second surgery to reconstruct a tear in the knee’s anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) carries a high risk of bad outcomes. Between 1 percent to 8 percent of ACL repairs fail. Most patients then opt to have a second operation, but the failure rate for those subsequent surgeries is almost 14 percent.

Jeremy Courtney, founder of the Preemptive Love Coalition that provides medical care to children in Iraq, will give a presentation on “Reconciliation through Healing” for the Washington University in St. Louis Assembly Series at 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 19, in May Auditorium, located in Simon Hall on the Danforth Campus. The talk is free and open to the public.