Brown School

The Brookings Institution and Washington University in St. Louis announce the first recipients of grants from the Academic Venture Fund, the purpose of which is  to support collaboration between the two institutions, particularly long-term projects that impact research, education and policy. Grants are available in amounts from $20,000 to $50,000. Interested fellows, faculty, staff, centers, institutes and programs can submit proposals by June 1 for review in July 2010. 

The Center for Social Development at the Brown School is advising and helping to test innovations in asset building — strategies that increase financial and tangible assets for families and businesses — in several countries in East and Southeast Asia.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service invites students, faculty and staff to participate in “Faces of Hope” in April, a celebration of civic engagement and community service. Student, faculty, and department-led initiatives; student groups; community-based learning and teaching courses; and service trips all are welcome to participate. Applications are due Friday, Feb. 12. 

Don’t be fooled by a company’s recent attempt to market smokeless tobacco as “harmless,” says Douglas Luke, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for Tobacco Policy Research at the Brown School. “Part of what we’re seeing here is the tobacco industry trying to position smokeless tobacco products so that they either do not come under the new Food and Drug Administration regulations or they come under weaker regulations,” Luke says.

The George Warren Brown School of Social Work’s Livable Lives Initiative has awarded eight grants to faculty across the university. The selected projects investigate policies and programs designed to help those with low or moderate incomes achieve lives that are more stable, secure, satisfying and successful.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service has announced the recipients of its Community-Based Teaching and Learning Faculty Grants Program. The grants are intended to provide faculty members with financial support for curriculum development and implementation.

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars to be held biweekly through April 26.

Undergraduate tuition at Washington University in St. Louis will be $39,400 for the 2010-11 academic year — a $1,600 (4.2 percent) increase over the 2009-10 current academic tuition of $37,800. The required student activity fee will total $394, and the student health fee will be no more than $580. Barbara A. Feiner, vice chancellor for finance, made the announcement.

Two days before the Haiti earthquake, Lora Iannotti, Ph.D., nutrition and public health expert from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, traveled to Port-au-Prince and Leogane, Haiti, to continue her research about undernutrition and disease prevention in young children. The massive tremor changed her focus from research for the future to survival, with her team helping children in the aftermath of the quake.

In remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Society of Black Student Social Workers at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work will host the fourth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Tying Loose Ends—Becoming Financially Secure,” from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 23, in Brown Hall, Room 100.