Brown School

A unique, long-term partnership between Washington University and the Hazelwood School District is showing eye-popping, unprecedented success in elementary and middle school science test scores — and in the process providing a roadmap for other districts to follow. The district saw scores on the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) tests increase 22.4 percentage points for fifth graders, and 12 percentage points for 8th graders over a five-year period beginning in 2008, the year it began a collaboration with WUSTL’s Institute for School Partnership.

Health-care disparities will be among the topics discussed at the Midwest region’s Student National Medical Association (SNMA) annual conference this weekend on the Washington University Medical Campus. School of Medicine students Lawrence Benjamin and Lauren Martin, the university’s SNMA co-presidents, were leaders in organizing the conference for medical and premedical students.

Veteran Ian Smith barely graduated from high school. Today, he is earning his degree in global leadership and management in University College in Arts & Sciences and is leading a team of engineers to develop low-cost prosthetics using 3D printers.

The 21st century is bringing challenges to urban areas like never before, as if A Tale of Two Cities is being played out over and over again, in your neighborhood and in cities all over the world. The problems are both local and global, and so are the solutions. It’s this context that has led three Washington University in St. Louis faculty to compile an impressive array of international scholarship in a two-volume book titled Urban Ills: Twenty-first-Century Complexities of Urban Living in Global Contexts.

A new academic survey conducted by Washington University in St. Louis’ Center for Social Development and national veterans nonprofit group The Mission Continues points to community volunteerism as an effective tool for addressing veterans’ reintegration challenges.

Washington University in St. Louis law students are taking their commitment to public service to the next level through a growing partnership with Northwest Academy of Law. With the assistance of law faculty and through their own initiatives, law students are reaching out to the inner-city St. Louis high school’s students to provide mentoring and law-related educational experiences.

A groundbreaking multidisciplinary study on African-American health in St. Louis, ‘For the Sake of All,’ releases its fourth brief. This one examines the long-term effects of how segregation affects access to health-promoting resources and health outcomes such as chronic disease and death.

Two decades of research by Rumi Kato Price, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine, shows reason for optimism about the future of returning soldiers. “The notion that our soldiers deployed to conflict regions come back ‘broken’ is a one-sided story in the media,” says Price, whose research has explored trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and suicide among American military service members and veterans.

The Washington University Assembly Series and the School of Law Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series will close their fall 2013 program schedules on Thursday, Nov. 14, with an address by Catharine MacKinnon, one of the principal architects of landmark sex equality laws in the United States, and more currently known as an internationally successful litigator against sex crimes and human trafficking. MacKinnon will speak on “Trafficking, Prostitution and Inequality” at noon in the Anheuser-Busch Hall Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom.

On Saturday, Nov. 2, Washington University’s “family” will come from near and far to gather in St. Louis and celebrate its founding in 1853. The annual Founders Day dinner and ceremony, sponsored by the WUSTL Alumni Association, will feature an address by Jon Huntsman Jr., former U.S. ambassador to China. Other highlights include the presentation of Distinguished Faculty and Alumni awards and the Robert S. Brookings Awards.