Newsroom Stories

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education will name Washington University in St. Louis as the winner of its “Best Lessons Learned Case Study Award” on Tuesday, Oct. 11, during the AASHE 2011 Conference in Pittsburgh. The award, for the case study, “Getting to Net-Zero: Lessons Learned from a Living Building Challenge,” which outlined “the mistakes, corrections, and lessons learned that ultimately led to successful certification” of WUSTL’s Living Learning Center at Tyson Research Center as one of the first net zero energy “living buildings.”

Through the Social Change Grant program, students are encouraged to use their creativity and knowledge to find solutions to world problems. The program provides $5,000-$6,000 in funding for a summer service project. The many projects — from water purification in Uganda to family planning in India — will be highlighted during an Oct. 12 showcase in Danforth University Center. 

Interest in social entrepreneurship — using innovation and enterprise to address social problems — has exploded, but training has always been from a business perspective. This fall, the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis will be home to the first social entrepreneurship program based in a social work setting.

The No. 2 volleyball team set a new Division III record for consecutive set victories in a 3-0 win over Lindenwood University (25-13, 25-17, 25-16) at the Washington University Invitational Oct. 8. Updates also included in football, men’s and women’s soccer, golf and swimming & diving.

Nationally acclaimed poet Lucie Brock-Broido will present a talk on the craft of poetry at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 11, for the Writing Program Reading Series. Brock-Broido is the author of three books of poetry: Trouble in Mind (2004), The Master Letters (1995) and A Hunger (1988). Her work often explores obsessions and anxieties — of influence, ritual, mortality and modernity — using shifting syntax and diction to create vivid, and sometimes disorienting, portraits of mind.

The Charles F. Knight Executive Education & Conference Center was feted for its 10th anniversary Oct. 5 with a celebration in the building’s Anheuser-Busch Dining Room.

First-year MBA student Katie Coco (center) packs energy bars into a care package during the Olin Cares kickoff event Oct. 1 in Simon Hall. More than 40 Olin Business School students assembled care packages for service men and women overseas and for children with cancer. Olin Cares is the school’s graduate volunteer organization that sponsors several community service projects throughout the year.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will celebrate Campus Sustainability Week Oct. 17-21 with various speakers and information stations around the campus.

The VERITAS array of telescopes has detected pulsed gamma rays from the pulsar at the heart of the Crab Nebula that have energies far higher than the common theoretical models can explain. The finding is one of the most exciting in the telescope’s history, according to consortium members at Washington University in St. Louis.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton cuts the ribbon during a ceremony Sept. 28 to celebrate the Campus Store’s recent reopening after an extensive renovation. The renovation, which was completed this past summer, expanded the store; updated the interior space with new carpeting, lighting, fixtures and more; created a more open floor plan; and added a new glass entrance off of Forsyth Boulevard.