Arts & Sciences

Washington University in St. Louis senior Kenneth Sng is president of Student Union, a gifted student in mathematics and economics in Arts & Sciences and a residential advisor. But he also knows failure. He failed his driver’s test six times before passing on the seventh try. “My father always says, ‘Pick yourself up where you fall.’ That’s what I did.”

Edward Greenberg, professor emeritus of economics who taught and conducted research at Washington University in St. Louis for more than five decades, died Aug. 24, 2016, at his home in University City. He was 80.

The class of 2020 was chosen among a field of 29,200 applicants and represents the largest class in Washington University’s 163-year history. It also is the most diverse. Some 231 students — 13 percent — are Pell grant-eligible, and 123 are the first in their families to attend college.

Adrienne Strong, a doctoral candidate in anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has researched maternal health and mortality in Tanzania for years. Along the way, for and through her work, she has learned Swahili, become a doula and raised funds for a boat to improve access to medical care.

Adia Harvey Wingfield, professor of sociology, discusses what you can do to make your workplace more inclusive. Hint: Hosting another diversity training is not the answer.

Moving beyond the bench, alumna Tina Hesman Saey turned a strong interest in science and a love of language into a new career: science writing.

Botanists have organized to try to stem the frightening loss of plant species across the globe. How well are they doing? They recently met in St. Louis to exchange stories from the botanical front lines.

Seth Carlin, an internationally renowned pianist who taught at Washington University for 37 years, died Thursday, July 28, following a swimming accident in France. He was 71.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carl Wieman will discuss how to transform undergraduate science education at a lecture Monday, Aug. 22, launching a new initiative of the Office of the Provost. The effort will focus on methods of teaching science, technology, engineering and math.

“Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation,” the most recent book by Leigh Eric Schmidt, the Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities, has been named by Publishers Weekly to its list of most anticipated books of fall 2016.