Arts & Sciences

Jacob Schaefer, the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was honored at a symposium and banquet organized by the St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society and held Jan. 6.

America spoke in November, one month after the candidates collided in the presidential debate held Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis. In the days that followed the historic 2016 election, faculty experts across campus offered their perspectives on the economy, the legislative responses, the cultural and global ripple effects.

Rebecca Wanzo, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences, discusses culture, cartooning and the Comics Studies Society, of which she is a founding board member.

John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been elected to serve on the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Ryan Mikkelsen, AB ’16, is the first Washington University graduate to attend the prestigious Yenching Academy at Peking University in China. The academy selects students it believes will be future global leaders and teaches them new ways to think about China.

Betsy DeVos is arguably the most controversial figure ever nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Education. Yet in covering her nomination, many journalists have conflated valid concerns about experience, temperament and political beliefs with questionable assumptions about her religious background, argues Abram Van Engen, associate professor of English.

John E. McCarthy, chair of mathematics and the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2016 G. de B. Robinson Award in December — along with co-author Jim Agler of the University of California, San Diego — for an outstanding paper contributed to the Canadian Journal of Mathematics.

Acclaimed pianist Jonathan Biss will launch Washington University’s new Great Artist Series with a solo recital Feb. 9 in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. The program will feature late works by Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and György Kurtág.

Jonathan Barnes, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, co-wrote profiles of Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa, the 2016 Nobel laureates in Chemistry, for a series in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) highlighting the discoveries of the award winners.

Six faculty members in Arts & Sciences have received semester-long fellowships for fall 2017 or spring 2018 from the Center for the Humanities. They are: Jeffrey McCune, Sowande’ Mustakeem and Christopher Stark (fall); Caroline Kita, Long Le-Khac and Anika Walke (spring).