Arts & Sciences

Phil Valko, a WUSTL alumnus, has been named director of sustainability at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Steven P. Hoffner, associate vice chancellor for operations. The director of sustainability is responsible for providing leadership, vision and strategy to advance WUSTL’s sustainability efforts.

Biologist Alan R. Templeton fell in love with the eastern collared lizard that lives in the hot, dry Ozark glades when he was 13. By the time he returned from  postgraduate work, 75 percent of the lizard populations had vanished. Over the next 30 years, he reintroduced lizards to a few glades and then sought to establish the disturbance regime that had once sustained them by advocating for the highly controversial process of landscape-scale burning. The cover article in the September issue of Ecology celebrates the success of this prolonged effort.

He may not run with scissors, but Mark Nizer is the juggler your mother always warned you about. Buzzing chainsaws, electric carving knives, 16-pound bowling balls, even a flaming propane tank — all are tossed aloft and twirled about with gleeful abandon. On Sept. 17, Nizer will launch Edison’s ovations for young people series with 3-D, his latest draw-dropping one-man show. 

Discussion of the federal debt ceiling has dominated the front page recently. Several Washington University in St. Louis faculty experts, all members of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, have offered their opinions to the news media on the history of the debt ceiling and what may happen if a deal is not reached.

After a yearlong renovation, Cupples II is now home to the College of Arts & Sciences, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Office of Undergraduate Research, as well as eight state-of-the-art pooled classrooms.

University College — the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis — will host a Preview Night at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 11, in Holmes Lounge in Ridgley Hall on the university’s Danforth Campus. Preview Night will feature speakers who will discuss class and program offerings, admissions requirements and financial aid.

Analysis of new images of a curious “hot spot” on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and of the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon’s thermal history. The discovery has just been published in Nature Geoscience.

Dzenana Mruckovski, former public works director for the city of Crestwood, Mo., is the new director of facilities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Gary S. Wihl, PhD, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities.

Up to five PhD students from Taiwan per year will receive full-tuition and living stipend scholarships to attend Washington University because of a recent agreement signed between WUSTL and Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Tony W.T. Lin, director general of the ministry’s Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations, signed a memorandum of understanding during a ceremony June 24 in Taipei City.

The Italian government on July 14 passed an austerity package designed to balance the budget by 2014 and protect Italy from a debt crisis. Will it work? Most likely not, says an economist at Washington University in St. Louis.