Speed mentoring event celebrates first woman law graduate

Law students and women lawyers, judges and faculty members gathered Sept. 20 to celebrate the anniversary of WUSTL’s first woman law graduate, Phoebe Couzins, who earned a degree in 1871. The special event featured “speed mentoring” and networking sessions with law students and women attorneys.

BioEntrepreneurship Core launches inaugural IdeaBounce competition​

The inaugural BioEntrepreneurship Core IdeaBounce elevator pitch competition will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16, at the Holden Auditorium at the Farrell Learning & Teaching Center at the Medical School. All members of the university community are encouraged to attend and to pitch ideas for new products or businesses for a chance to win prizes.

Mid-autumn show celebrates unity​

The first Mid-Autumn Celebration Show, sponsored jointly by the Chinese Students & Scholars Association and the Taiwanese Graduate Students Association, was held Sunday, Sept. 30, in Graham Chapel. “Mid-Autumn Day” is a festival akin to American Thanksgiving and widely celebrated by people across the Taiwan Strait.

Video: Renovated Umrath Hall opens, ready for next generation of WUSTL scholars

A newly renovated Umrath Hall opened for the fall semester on the Danforth Campus. Umrath Hall originally was built in 1902 as a men’s dormitory and featured small rooms, narrow hallways and limited entrances and exits. The yearlong renovation, which began in June 2011, retained Umrath’s historic exterior but included a complete reconstruction of the building’s interior and a new roof.

Media Adivsory: Celebrate MBA student’s record-breaking hike

WHAT: Celebration of Mike McLaughlin, Olin Business School MBA student who recently completed a 2,500-mile hike for charity, becoming what is believed to be the first person to through-hike the Appalachian and Ozark Trails back-to-back.

‘Terezin, Land of Invisible Texts’ Oct. 8

Can instrumental music communicate specific information? The question is not only academic, says Michael Beckerman, professor of music at New York University, who has studied music at the Terezin concentration camp. On Oct. 8, Beckerman will discuss “Terezin, Land of Invisible Texts” for the Department of English in Arts & Sciences. The talk is held in memory of Richard Stang, professor emeritus in English, who passed away last year.

New book clarifies free speech problems of sign laws​

Signs, billboards, and placards are such a familiar part of the landscape that we often don’t notice them. However, even the humblest “on premise” sign is protected by the highest law of the land, the U.S. Constitution’s free speech clause. Daniel R. Mandelker, the Howard A. Stamper Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, has set out to help local governments and municipalities appreciate that fact with his new book, Free Speech Law for On Premises Signs. Published online at ussc.org and landuselaw.wustl.edu, the book will be released in hard copy later this year by the United States Sign Council.

Obituary: Barry Commoner, ‘founder of modern ecology’ and former WUSTL biologist, 95

Barry Commoner, a biologist at WUSTL from 1947-1981, died Sept. 30, 2012, in Manhattan. He was 95. Commoner was a professor of plant physiology and of environmental studies, both in Arts & Sciences. According to The New York Times, Commoner was “a founder of modern ecology and one of its most provocative thinkers and mobilizers in making environmentalism a people’s political cause.”