Newsroom Stories

Mark S. Weil, PhD, the E. Desmond Lee Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences and one of Washington University’s most prominent and long-serving professors, is providing the institution with a gift of $2,525,000 to support Arts & Sciences and programs in the humanities. From this gift, an endowed fund of $250,000 will be established to support the University Libraries.

Youngjee Choi’s undergraduate degrees in psychology and philosophy–neuroscience–psychology paired with summer research experiences prepared her well for her interest in academic medicine. Choi will graduate May 20 with a medical degree from the School of Medicine.

Local high school students will launch hand gliders designed over the course of the spring semester in the final flight of the Boeing Engineering Challenge at Washington University in St. Louis. Some 120 students will compete from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Friday, May 6, in the university’s Athletic Complex Field House.

Washington University faculty, staff and students are encouraged to donate gently used and new shoes to raise funds for clean water in Africa.

From organizing a kitchen that prepares weekly meals for underserved populations in St. Louis to providing private music instruction to under-resourced youth in the area, the five outstanding individuals who received Washington University’s 2011 Gerry and Bob Virgil Ethic of Service Award exemplify a character of service and giving to the St. Louis region.

Ravi Chockalingam, MD, will take what he has learned as a member of WUSTL’s inaugural Master of Public Health Program in the Brown School and apply it to public health programs locally, in his native India, and beyond. At the Brown School, Chockalingam worked his community health care worker model into his class work.

Social Security’s yearly cost-of living adjustments (COLA) are targeted for reduction through a proposed “chained COLA” formula, and that could be a huge problem for those dependent on Social Security income. “COLA is an invaluable feature of Social Security,” says Merton C. Bernstein, LLB, a nationally recognized expert on Social Security. According to Bernstein, Republican “reformers” propose to reduce COLA claiming that the current method of calculating it overstates inflation. “This unrealistically assumes that people have the opportunity to buy lower priced substitutes when millions of people lack access to markets that offer such choices,” he says.

Richard J. Smith, PhD (left), dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, visits with Arts & Sciences PhD student Rajbir Purewal and other teaching assistants after he presented them with the Arts & Sciences’ Graduate Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence during an April 25 ceremony in the Danforth University Center. The award recognizes exemplary performance by graduate teaching assistants.

Four students have been named winners of the 24th annual Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition, sponsored by Washington University Libraries. The competition offers prizes to two undergraduate students and two graduate students who write short essays about their personal book collections.

Tim Bono, who will receive his doctorate in psychology at the May 20 Commencement, could very well be the model of an engaged WUSTL student as both an undergraduate and a graduate student. He has served the university in a myriad of roles, including most notably as the graduate student representative to the Board of Trustees and to the search committee for the dean of Arts & Sciences.