Arts & Sciences

Akhila Narla, a junior in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was among 135 students from across the country named a Newman Civic Fellow for 2011 by Campus Compact. The Newman Civic Fellows Awards recognize inspiring college student leaders who have demonstrated an investment in finding solutions for challenges facing communities throughout the country and the world.

Jennifer Hoefert always knew she wanted to spend her career helping people. It’s the “how” that changed. Hoefert, 26, a former deaf education specialist and second-grade teacher, will receive a post-baccalaureate certificate in premedical studies at Commencement May 20. The post-baccalaureate program in University College in Arts & Sciences helps adult students who lack an undergraduate background in the sciences earn the requirements needed for medical school.

Since childhood, Lucy Gellman has been entranced by the world around her. She brought that natural curiosity, and a deep sense of learning through the visual, with her to WUSTL. She already has made a significant impact in art historical research and as a leader both on campus and in the St. Louis community, and now Gellman, Outstanding Graduate in the College of Arts & Sciences, is ready to take what she’s learned and begin to carve out a life and career of impact and meaning.

Her nose habitually buried in a Nancy Drew mystery, little Kathy Miller spent much of her girlhood trying to crack the case. Today, Kathryn G. Miller, PhD, professor and chair of biology in Arts & Sciences, still is playing detective. With Sherlock Holmes-like intensity, Miller studies cells the way a special agent scrutinizes a crime scene.

Jessica Davie, one of the Record’s three Outstanding Graduates in the College of Arts & Sciences, took her experiences as an inner-city high school student and began a program called Learning to Live at WUSTL. She graduates May 20 with a degree in educational studies with a minor in drama from the College of Arts & Sciences, but the Learning to Live program endures.

Steven Perlberg, a sophomore in Arts & Sciences, and other students from the “Just Do It! Turning Your Passion into Policy” class at Washington University answer questions from John Hancock, former head of the Missouri Republican Party in the St. Louis County Council Chambers in Clayton, Mo., May 2. The students offered mock testimony on a range of issues from puppy mills to local control of the city police force to a group of civic leaders posing as a committee of the Missouri Senate.

Washington University in St. Louis is hosting the Midwest Several Complex Variables (SCV) May 11-14 in honor of Steven Krantz, PhD, professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL and John Erik Fornaess, PhD, professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan.The conference is expected to bring to campus more than 80 mathematicians from around the country and the world.

Mark S. Weil, PhD, the E. Desmond Lee Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences and one of Washington University’s most prominent and long-serving professors, is providing the institution with a gift of $2,525,000 to support Arts & Sciences and programs in the humanities. From this gift, an endowed fund of $250,000 will be established to support the University Libraries.

Richard J. Smith, PhD (left), dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, visits with Arts & Sciences PhD student Rajbir Purewal and other teaching assistants after he presented them with the Arts & Sciences’ Graduate Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence during an April 25 ceremony in the Danforth University Center. The award recognizes exemplary performance by graduate teaching assistants.

Erik Trinkaus, PhD, considered by many to be the world’s most influential scholar of Neandertal and early modern human biology and evolution, and Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, an internationally renowned immunologist and arthritis researcher, will receive Washington University’s 2011 faculty achievement awards, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced.