Arts & Sciences

The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has appointed new directors for its two largest ensembles. Ward Stare, resident conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, will assume thel role of conductor for the 75-member Washington University Symphony Orchestra. Nicole Aldrich, who recently earned a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Maryland, will become the department’s director of choral activities, conducting the 65-member Washington University Concert Choir. 

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will launch its 48th season of free Sunday-evening concerts July 10 with Various Variations, a program exploring the use of variations by a handful of composers from the Baroque period through the 20th century. Subsequent performances will take place July 17, 24 and 31.

Kevin Moeller, PhD, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is working to find ways to use clean energy in clean chemistry. “We can make the oxidation reactions used in the synthesis of organic molecules cleaner by hitching photovoltaics to electrochemistry,” Moeller says. It’s not a new idea, but one Moeller and his colleagues hope catches on.

The Young Scientist Program (YSP) will mark its 20th anniversary with a day-long symposium at 8:30 a.m. Monday, June 6, at Washington University School of Medicine.

Washington University in St. Louis will host the 2011 North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society June 9-12. The Econometric Society, which has a worldwide membership, is the most prestigious learned society in the field of economics.

Hannah Highfill, a master’s degree student in Islamic studies in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a 2011 U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study Persian in Tajikistan this summer. Highfill is among approximately 575 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students from more than 5,200 applicants selected to receive a CLS scholarship.

Nancy Reynolds, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of History in Arts & Sciences, has received an American Council of Learned Societies’ fellowship to study the impact of Egypt’s construction of the High Dam on its culture and society.

William F. Tate, PhD, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences and chair of the Department of Education in Arts & Sciences, has been named a fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Washington, D.C. Tate is one of 31 scholars named by the AERA for 2011. He was inducted April 9, at the AERA annual conference in New Orleans, where he presented a paper titled Epidemiology and Education Research: Dialoging about Social Disparities.

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis recently launched a formal alliance with Fudan University, one of the leading universities in China. As part of this growing relationship, Fudan and the Brown School will hold a summer institute in Shanghai to develop policy and management skills for the first generation of social work leaders, NGO leaders and government officials.  

A new online service designed to “match” law students with potential employers is backed by a proprietary algorithm written by Andrew Martin, PhD, professor of law and director of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL) at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, and Kevin Quinn, PhD, professor at the University of California at Berkeley. JD Match, the brainchild of law firm consultants Bruce MacEwen and Janet Stanton, is loosely based on a medical school model, which is operated by the National Residency Matching Program and links medical students to available residency opportunities annually on Match Day.