Arts & Sciences

McLeod’s Way, a new landscaped gathering place on the South 40 that honors the late James E. “Jim” McLeod, WUSTL’s beloved vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, was dedicated Sept. 15 at Graham Chapel. Shaun C. Koiner, a 2004 WUSTL alumnus and one of McLeod’s former students, speaks during the ceremony.

Two topics often avoided in “polite conversation” will be the buzz in the room as the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics hosts an open house from 5-7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24, in its new Umrath Hall location. The celebration offers the community a chance to meet new faculty, mingle with center staff and get an update on recent progress.

The employees are getting restless. Trapped in a nameless, New York company, they are buffeted by Orwellian management-speak, inter-office sabotage and inappropriate contact. And then the Firings begin. Welcome to Personal Days, the acclaimed corporate satire by fiction writer Ed Park, who will read from his work Thursday, Sept. 20, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Pianist and conductor William Schatzkamer, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, died Wednesday, Sept. 12, of congestive heart failure at his home in Olivette. He was 96.

No Child Left Behind was the signature education bill of the Bush administration. No Child… is an award-winning one-woman play by Nilaja Sun, who spent eight years teaching in the New York City public schools. From Sept. 21-30, The Black Rep will revive its acclaimed production of this Obie Award-winning play in WUSTL’s Edison Theatre.

Developing new and innovative approaches for the teaching of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is the primary goal of an interdisciplinary conference to be held Sept. 27-28 at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education & Conference Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University’s John B. Ervin Scholars Program, considered a nationally pre-eminent program that fosters and enhances the overall quality and diversity of WUSTL’s student body, is recognizing its 25th anniversary this weekend. More than 1,000 alumni, family and friends of the Ervin program are expected to be on campus Sept. 14-16 to participate in “Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence: Our Names and Our Stories.”

Election turnout among young people of color, including African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, may drop by nearly 700,000 voters in states with new photo ID laws, a decline that could impact presidential contests in battleground states, a new study suggests.

Tenor Kyle Erdos-Knapp, whose recent performance as Tobias in Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ production of Sweeney Todd “nearly stole the evening” (KMOX), will return to St. Louis to present Franz Schubert’s beloved song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. The performance, which begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, is the annual Liederabend sponsored by WUSTL’s departments of Music and Germanic Languages and Literatures, both in Arts & Sciences.

F=Gm1m2/d2. Well. Of course it does. Newton’s Universal Law of Gravity is a pillar of physics, a monument of mathematics, a timeless, unchanging tribute to scientific reasoning. Tell it all to Leo, when his world goes suddenly, inexplicably topsy-turvy. On Oct. 5 and 6, Edison will present Leo, the newest creation from Berlin’s Circle of Eleven, as part of its fall Ovations Series.