Newsroom Stories

Sports updates for week of Nov. 15, 2010.

What happens when great classical music falls into the hands of complete, if talented, idiots? Find out when Pluck, the world’s funniest string trio, descends upon Washington University’s Edison Theatre with Musical Arson, a slapstick spoof of concert hall decorum. 

WUSTL’s University College will host “The Future of Sports,” a panel discussion featuring Bob Costas, Bill James and other sports experts and historians, at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 29, in Graham Chapel. The panel discussion is free and open to the public. The panelists will discuss topics ranging from performance-enhancing drugs to the collective-bargaining negotiations in the National Football League to the potential rise of soccer in the United States.  

Before Google became a household word, engineers like Anna Patterson (EN ’87, EN ’87) were figuring out how to search the Internet and find the most relevant answers to random queries. The director of Google Research returns to campus at 8 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, as guest speaker co-sponsored by Olin Business School and the School of Engineering & Applied Science. She will talk about her experience in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and member of the Google team.

Mark Alford, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is a co-recipient of five-year, $150,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for research titled “Neutrinos and Nucleosynthesis in Hot Dense Matter.” … Brian D. Carpenter, PhD, associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, has received a one-year, $1,980 grant from the Missouri […]

Members of the Alpha Omega Pi sorority let loose on the dance floor in the Field House of the Athletic Complex during the annual 12-hour Dance Marathon Nov. 6. More than 1,000 students from WUSTL and local colleges and high schools helped raise $166,807.65 for the Children’s Miracle Network, bringing the event’s 12-year fundraising total to more than $1 million.

CNN International / Health.com Aging workforce means dementia on the job could rise 11/12/2010 Given the aging population and the weak economy – which is prompting older people who do have jobs to stay in them – the problem of Alzheimer’s Disease in the workplace is likely to get worse. The warning signs may differ […]

Washington University in St. Louis has received a $1 million grant over the next four years from the Amgen Foundation to provide hands-on laboratory experience to approximately 100 undergraduates through the Amgen Scholars Program.

The American dream is a fragile thing. Just ask the Tate family, a bickering, dysfunctional clan struggling to retain its dilapidated farmhouse on the edge of an unforgiving Western desert. Welcome to Curse of the Starving Class, Sam Shepard’s bitterly funny — and disturbingly prescient — family drama. This month, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present the play for five performances in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. 

Students in various disciplines throughout universities receive hands-on training through service-learning programs such as law school clinics. But that type of academic training is under attack from both big business and legislative bodies, say two professors from the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “Recent legislative and corporate efforts to interfere in the operations of law clinics indicate that academic freedom is at risk when hands-on student learning bumps up against ‘real-world’ disputes,” write Robert Kuehn, JD, and Peter Joy, JD, in “‘Kneecapping’ Academic Freedom,” the recent lead article for “The Conflicted University,” a special edition of Academe, the publication of the American Association of University Professors.