Eight faculty from the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will present a showcase recital in conjunction with the Missouri Music Teachers Association’s (MMTA) annual instrumental and vocal competitive auditions. The annual competition — hosted this year by the Department of Music — will take place Nov. 6 to 9 in the department’s 560 Music Center. The faculty concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8.
Courtesy photoOlympia DukakisLegendary actress Olympia Dukakis, the Academy Award-winning star of Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias, will present a concert reading of Rose, her hit one-woman Broadway show, as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series. Written by celebrated playwright Martin Sherman, the drama centers on an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor whose epic story spans the history of the 20th century.
A groundbreaking ceremony for a new building devoted to state-of-the-art teaching and research in energy and environmental engineering at Washington University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008, on the parking lot adjacent to Whitaker Hall, near the corner of Skinker Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway. The building, which will be named in honor of Stephen F. and Camilla T. Brauer, will be east of and adjoining to Whitaker Hall, home of the biomedical engineering department.
World Diabetes Day, the global awareness campaign for diabetes, will be celebrated on Nov. 14, 2008. The International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization introduced the campaign in 1991 in response to the alarming rise in diabetes prevalence. The date marks the birthday of Frederick Banting who, along with Charles Best, conducted pioneering research that led to the discovery of insulin in 1922.
Drugs widely used to treat type 2 diabetes may be more likely to keep working if they are used in moderation, researchers at the School of Medicine have found in a study using an animal model. The drugs, sulfonylureas, help type 2 diabetics make more insulin, improving control of blood sugar levels. But in most patients the effects of sulfonylureas are lost after several years of use, causing insulin secretion to shut down.
Allyson Gibson, a doctoral student in physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a prestigious P.E.O. Scholar Award for the 2008-09 academic year. She was one of 85 recipients selected from more than 640 applicants from the United States and Canada. The $15,000 merit-based award is given to women who are either pursuing a doctoral-level degree or engaged in postgraduate study or research who show potential to make significant contributions to their fields of study.
Rendering of renovated children’s theater.A team of six graduate and undergraduate architecture students — led by graduate teaching assistant Ellen Leuenberger and including Denny Burke, Alexander Harner, Michael Heller, Rachel Kerr and June Kim — has won the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Community Service Competition. The competition, which includes a $300 cash prize, centered on an abandoned 8,000-square-foot children’s theater located on the campus of St. Francis de Sales church, 2653 Ohio Ave. (63118), popularly known as “the Cathedral of South St. Louis.”
Frank FlinnDemocratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is telling the Catholics in his audiences that St. Thomas Aquinas had a different teaching on abortion than the current pope and his immediate predecessors. He’s right, says Frank K. Flinn, Ph.D., adjunct professor of religious studies in Arts & Sciences. Flinn is author of the Encyclopedia of Catholicism (2007).
Dancer, choreographer, and creative/performance artist Liz Lerman, together with WUSTL faculty, will participate in a panel discussion on the intersection of art and community. The Assembly Series program, “Still Crossing: Expressing Identities, Building Communities” begins at 4 p.m. October 30 in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge.
Magarian”No evidence exists of any serious threat of voter fraud, at present or in any recent election cycle,” says Greg Magarian, J.D., election law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. The current cries of ‘fraud’ focus on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a public interest organization that advocates for low- and moderate- income and minority citizens. “Filing false registration forms does not constitute voter fraud,” he says. “Voter fraud requires voting by a person who is not legally entitled to vote. That is a difficult trick to pull off, and simply turning in a registration form for ‘Captain Crunch’ does almost nothing to enable it.”