Arts & Sciences

Since Dylan Slaughter laced up his first pair of ice skates at age 3, he has wished for two miracles: he would join the NHL and his beloved St. Louis Blues would play for the Stanley Cup. This season, both dreams came true.

On May 22, the Washington University Prison Education Project (PEP) conducted its first Commencement at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific, Missouri. Joe Angeles, director of Washington University Photo Services, documented the day.

Musicologist Todd Decker, of Arts & Sciences and author of “Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound After Vietnam” (2017), examines how films such as “Platoon,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Hurt Locker” shape how audiences view soldiers, veterans and the experience of war.

Caitlyn Collins, assistant professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences, is one of 10 junior faculty nationwide selected as a 2019 Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholar by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Michael Fogarty, who graduated in May with a dual degree in political science and in economics, both in Arts & Sciences, has received the university’s Grossman-Alexander Prize.

In his message to fellow graduates at Commencement, comic book fan and Senior Class President Joey Vettiankal shared the many parallels between the Marvel universe and Washington University. Vettiankal earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Arts & Sciences.

William B. McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, is a co-investigator on the NASA New Horizons team that published the first comprehensive profile of Ultima Thule in the May 17 issue of the journal Science.

A native mosquito in Missouri has fewer parasites when it shares its waters with an interloper, according to new research from biologists at Tyson Research Center, the environmental field station for Washington University in St. Louis.

Senior Class President Joey Vettiankal abandoned his plans to be a doctor after observing the 2016 presidential debate at Washington University. “That’s when I realized that science had always been my interest, but politics and public policy are my passion,” said Vettiankal, who will pursue a career in law after graduation.

Barbara A. Schaal, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2019 National Science Board Public Service Award.