Newsroom Stories

Charles F. Kennel, PhD, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Studies Board, will deliver the fourth annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in Room 100, Whitaker Hall, at Washington University in St. Louis. Kennel will discuss “Managing Climate Risk: Precarious Decades Ahead” during the free lecture that is open to the public.

Faculty and administrators are invited to submit proposals for program initiatives that strengthen and promote diversity and inclusion at Washington University. Projects aimed at improving the university environment for women and members of underrepresented minority groups can receive up to $30,000 through Washington University’s Diversity and Inclusion Grant program. The deadline for submission of 2011-12 proposals is Saturday, Nov. 5.

The White House announced Sept. 27 that Lan Yang, PhD, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science of Washington University in St. Louis has been named a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.The early career award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

Following the Sept. 6 death of James E. McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton has announced a transitional leadership plan for the College of Arts & Sciences. Sharon Stahl, PhD, associate vice chancellor for students and dean of the First Year Center, and Wayne Fields, PhD, the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts & Sciences, have agreed to take on the additional responsibilities of leading the College of Arts & Sciences on an interim basis.

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.

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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.