Newsroom Stories

WUSTL’s first all-campus food drive set a cash donation record and collected nearly 3 tons of food, much of which will go to the 135,000 St. Louis-area children at risk for hunger this summer. “This amount from the Washington University PB&Joy Food Drive was the second-largest amount collected in the virtual food drive’s five-year history,” says Gary Wells, Operation Food Search general manger.

Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal, PhD, will preside over the 93rd annual Army ROTC Commissioning Ceremony at Washington University at 2 p.m. Friday, May 13. The ceremony in which 17 cadets will become commissioned officers in the U.S. Army, Army Reserve or Army National Guard will be held at Tisch Commons in the Danforth University Center, 6475 Forsyth Blvd., on WUSTL’s Danforth Campus. Westphal will also deliver a talk on leadership and the future of the Army and attend a reception for the new lieutenants and their families.  

Three School of Medicine nurses received the 2011 Excellence in Nursing Award from St. Louis Magazine April 20. The award winners were Jeane Kuensting, nurse practitioner in the Department of Internal Medicine’s Bone Marrow Transplant division; Jennifer Seigel, nurse practitioner in the Department of Surgery; and Lori Watkins, head nurse in the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases.

Jeryl Hayes, Outstanding Graduate in the School of Law, learned at an early age to speak up for her gender, and now she intends to devote her legal career to women’s issues. “Jeryl is passionate, quick, kind, organized, diligent and wholly committed to engagement with issues of power and privilege,” says Laura Rosenbury, JD, professor of law and associate dean for research and faculty development.

Srinivasan Sridharan, PhD, professor of civil engineering at Washington University in St. Louis since 1980, died April 24, 2011, at St. Johns Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis from complications of treatment for leukemia. He was 69.

Nutrition and longevity researchers, including Luigi Fontana, MD, PhD, have found more evidence that eating less may help people live longer. They report that individuals who significantly reduce their calorie intake have lower core body temperatures. Mice and rats consuming fewer calories also have lower core body temperatures, and they live significantly longer than littermates eating a standard diet. 

President Barack Obama released his birth certificate on April 27, but “birther” arguments continue. Election and constitutional law expert Gregory Magarian, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, says that Obama clearly meets the constitutional qualifications to hold his office. Magarian discusses various situations where “natural born citizen” (as required by Art. II, sec., 1 cl. 4 of the Constitution) may come into question during a presidential election.

Washington University’s renowned Genome Center has been renamed the Washington University Genome Institute. With the name change comes a new focus on multi-disciplinary, genome-based investigations to uncover the genetic underpinnings of human diseases. 

Matthew C. Spitzer, MD, president of the board of directors for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders USA, will be the keynote speaker at Washington University School of Medicine’s 2011 Commencement.

In the first large trial of its kind in the United States, researchers have shown that estrogen-lowering drugs can shrink tumors and reduce mastectomy rates for patients with stage 2 or 3 breast cancer.