Arts & Sciences

Alumni and longtime Washington University supporters Nick and Barrie Somers have made a significant commitment to the university for long-range capital needs. In recognition, the Psychology Building — which houses the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences — will be named Somers Family Hall.

Fueled by political rhetoric about dangerous criminal immigrants, many white Americans assume low-status immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Syria, Somalia and other countries President Donald Trump labeled “shithole” nations have no legal right to be in the United States, new research in the journal American Sociological Review suggests.

A favorite Halloween symbol leaves behind clues to what a tropical landscape looked like thousands of years ago. With support from the Living Earth Collaborative, postdoctoral scholar Rachel Reid of Arts & Sciences digs in.

Rebecca Wanzo, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences, will examine the work of artist Sanford Biggers as part of a panel discussion titled “Re: Black Visual Mourning” at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Four Arts & Sciences faculty members — Megan Daschbach, Janet Duchek, John Shareshian and Lynne Tatlock — were honored during the school’s annual faculty welcome reception, held Sept. 12 in Ridgley Hall’s Holmes Lounge.

Four Washington University staff members, Rachel Dunn, Melissa Evers, Elizabeth Fogt and Steven Rosenblum, were recognized for their exemplary service to Arts & Sciences during an Aug. 29 staff reception and awards ceremony presided over by Barbara A. Schaal, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences.

Gary Patti, the Michael and Tana Powell Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded $4.8 million in two separate National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants focused on improving the accessibility of metabolomics — the study of the biochemical reactions that underlie metabolism.

“If anyone needed visible, painful evidence of how little progress the United States has made in attaining gender parity, this senate hearing was it,” argues Mary Ann Dzuback, chair of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

People often think about multiple-choice tests as tools for assessment, but they can also be used to facilitate learning. A new paper in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition offers straightforward tips for constructing multiple-choice questions that are effective at both assessing current knowledge and strengthening ongoing learning.

The Brooksfields are determined to take a trip. Nothing will stop them — not the blizzard, not the mistress, not even the drug dealers. In “Florida,” Lucas Marschke recounts a dysfunctional family vacation for the ages. This weekend, “Florida” will receive its world-premiere staged reading at Washington University in St. Louis as part of the annual A.E. Hotchner New Play Festival.