Arts & Sciences

University College, the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed three new degree programs, including a master’s in statistics that is the only one offered in the St. Louis area. The other two new  programs are a bachelor’s in communications and a bachelor’s in journalism. University College will offer the new programs this fall semester, which begins Aug. 27.

Washington University in St. Louis chemist D. André d’Avignon, who manages the university’s high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance facility, has been named the winner of the 2013 Saint Louis Award. The Saint Louis Award, administered by the St. Louis section of the American Chemical Society, is given to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the profession of chemistry and demonstrated the potential to further the advancement of the chemical profession.

With the help of modern genetic technology and the resources of the International Rice GeneBank, which contains more than 112,000 different types of rice, evolutionary biologist Kenneth Olsen has been able to look back in time at the double domestication of rice (in Asia and in Africa) and its double “de-domestication” to form two weedy strains. Olsen predicts the introduction of pesticide-resistant rice will drive ever faster adaptation in weedy rice.

An Olin Library exhibition, titled William H. Gass: The Soul Inside the Sentence, ends July 31. But a newly launched digital version of the exhibit allows for ongoing exploration of a wide-ranging selection of the esteemed writer’s drafts, interviews, photographs and more. A gallery talk will be held at 9 a.m. Friday, July 19, in Olin Library’s Ginkgo Reading Room, providing a guided tour of the in-person exhibition.

Archaeologists tunneling beneath the main temple of the ancient Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ in northern Guatemala have discovered an intricately carved stone monument with hieroglyphic text detailing the exploits of a little-known sixth-century princess whose progeny prevailed in a bloody, back-and-forth struggle between two of the civilization’s most powerful royal dynasties, Guatemalan cultural officials announced July 16.

Piano prodigy, social activist, folksinger and chart-topping recording artist — Judy Collins has done it all. This fall, “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” will launch WUSTL’s 2013-14 Edison Ovations Series. Featuring almost a dozen events by nationally and internationally known artists, the season will range from athletic contemporary dance and incisive one-man shows to hip-hop violin and the world’s first live-action graphic novel.

Ovations 2013-14

On their recent album You’re Everything, jazz vocalist Feyza Eren and drummer Steve Davis swing through a range of jazz and pop standards. On July 11, the pair will launch WUSTL’s Jazz in July series with a free concert in Holmes Lounge.

Leslie Heusted, director of the Danforth University Center & Event Management Office, sits down to discuss students, nerf guns and the structured aimlessness of afternoon tea.

WUSTL biologist Alan Templeton and colleagues in Israel and Germany received $2 million to look at the shifting patterns of gene expression, called the transcriptome, in two remarkably versatile species of fire salamander, one native to Israel and the other to Germany. The work may explain why this genus of salamanders is able to adapt to a wide variety of habitats when most salamander species live in one.