Arts & Sciences

Elizabeth S. Haswell, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has been elected as a council delegate for biological sciences for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her term began Feb. 20.

Washington University in St. Louis faculty, staff and students are mourning the death of Katrina Banks, administrative coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Research and a student in University College in Arts & Sciences. She was 31.

Two U.S. retailers made moves this week to regulate their gun sales based on principle — moves that legislators failed to make in recent years despite public outcry following each incident in a line of mass-shooting tragedies. A pair of Washington University in St. Louis experts say that these actions represent “an expansion of corporate social responsibility,” even if the retailers financially may suffer amid something of a consumer backlash.

The Washington University Choirs, Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra will join forces March 2 for the 2018 Chancellor’s Concert — the university’s largest musical event of the year.

Half-century-old advice from Billy Graham, who died Feb. 21, was in line with cultural and sexual norms of the 1950s and later decades, when many of Graham’s contemporary evangelical preachers fell from grace after widely publicized extramarital affairs, says R. Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Poet Eileen G’Sell and guitarist William Lenihan will join pianist Jay Oliver and drummer Steve Davis for an evening of music and spoken word as part of the Jazz at Holmes Series.

When fading patriarch Beverly Weston goes missing, his family gathers for a reunion bordering on the apocalyptic. So begins “August: Osage County,” the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning drama by Tracy Letts. Washington University’s Performing Arts Department will present the show in Edison Theatre Feb. 23 to March 4.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced Feb. 15 that Timothy A. Wencewicz, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded a 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship. He is among 126 outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers selected as fellowship recipients this year.

Kater Murch, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named a 2018 Cottrell Scholar by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

A new study in Parasites & Vectors finds ticks in urban parks dominated by an invasive rose bush are nearly twice as likely to be infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, as compared to ticks from uninvaded forest fragments. But the trend reverses itself at a broader scale.