Arts & Sciences

Washington University in St. Louis students are helping students in Scott McClintock’s middle school science class at Maplewood-Richmond Heights use wind turbines, solar collectors and other materials to investigate ways to maximize energy from renewable sources.

City versus forest. Apollonian rationality versus Dionysian subconscious. Wayward lovers and working-class thespians versus the regal, glittering world of the fairies. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a study in contrasts, joining elegant verse and bawdy humor with cruel punishments and magical enchantments “past the wit of man.” This month, the Performing Arts Department will present the Bard’s most popular comedy — arguably the most popular ever written — as its spring Mainstage production.  

How have race relations in America evolved since the civil rights movement of the 1960s? Was the election of President Barack Obama a milestone in this regard? Did it truly serve as a turning point in America’s history of racial inequality? Later this month, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis will explore these questions and more with a symposium titled “Race in the Age of Obama.”  

At a time when the American economy needs the best and the brightest economic minds, prominent banker and philanthropist Sam B. Cook has given Washington University a critical resource to help develop the next generation of economic leaders with a gift of $1.5 million to establish a professorship in the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences.

Mark Alford, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, participated Jan. 29 in a roundtable discussion in New York about the quantum mind theory of consciousness. Quantum mind is a fashionable theory originally proposed by physicist Roger Penrose that grounds perception in the periodic collapse of quantum entangled electrons in our brain. Alford, who studies phenomenon that can only be explained by quantum mechanics nonetheless played the role of the skeptic in the discussion, which was videotaped and posted on the web.

The inaugural class has been selected for the Professional Leadership Academy & Network (PLAN), a yearlong professional development program intended to cultivate future leaders at Washington University in St. Louis. And according to PLAN committee members, it was no easy task to choose the class of 26 from the “talented staff pool” of applicants.

Poet Kathleen Peirce will ready from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, for Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Peirce is the author of four books of poetry: Mercy (1991), Divided Touch, Divided Color (1995), The Oval Hour (1999) and The Ardors (2004). 

Crop yields from India’s first genetically modified crop may have been overemphasized, as modest rises in crop yields may come at the expense of sustainable farm management, says a new study by a Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist.

In the Jan. 14 issue of Science, Washington University in St. Louis biologist Sarah C.R. Elgin, PhD, and 12 other biomedical research scientists recommend seven steps that universities can take to support the teacher-scientist, ranging in difficulty from educating faculty about research on learning or creating teaching discussion groups to creating (monetary) awards and named professorships for outstanding teachers and requiring excellence in teaching for promotion.

WUSTL has received a three-year, $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a series of five “Vertical Seminars” in the humanities. The seminars are part of a pilot program to introduce an innovative format of collaborative research, called “The Vertical Seminar,” to the humanities. “The Vertical Seminar” will include scholars of different levels — dissertation students, postdoctoral fellows and junior and senior faculty — working together to examine a series of overarching questions in the humanities.