Brown School

The Brown School’s “Evaluation for Social Impact: A St. Louis Summit” Oct. 16 and 17 was an innovative conference designed to elevate understanding of evaluation techniques for agencies and nonprofits throughout the St. Louis region. It featured top national experts giving keynotes, spark talks and breakout sessions.

Ross Brownson, PhD, professor of medicine and social work at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named president-elect of the American College of Epidemiology.

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis commemorated World Food Day Oct. 16 by holding a lunch in Goldfarb Commons with a discussion following. Students were given “money” base on their random selection as being from rich, poor or moderate-income countries, and were given the opportunity to join with others to receive additional funds to pool cooperatively which they could then use to purchase food reflective of items available in those countries.

Smoking is both a physical addiction to nicotine and a learned psychological behavior, so the best way to quit is to attack it from both sides, says Sarah Shelton of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. And help may be right at your fingertips in the form of your smartphone.

Just two weeks before the presidential election, the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis puts the Affordable Care Act front and center with a policy forum on the signature legislation of Barack Obama’s presidency. “Affordable Care Act-the Evolution Continues” takes place at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23, in Brown Hall Lounge on the Danforth Campus. Keynoting Jay Angoff, senior advisor at the U. S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Angoff is an expert on insurance law and insurance-related issues at both the national and state levels.

Gail Hillebrand, JD, of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will visit the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis on Thursday, Oct. 25, as part of the Center for Social Development’s Financial Capability Lecture series. Hillebrand’s talk, “Financial Capability Across the Life Course: The Role of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” will focus on the financial issues of older adults. This lecture is in collaboration with the Freidman Center for Aging. It is free and open to the public.

Interdisciplinary faculty collaboration is fast becoming a hallmark of Washington University in St. Louis. To help support interdisciplinary teaching, the Office of the Provost announces the second round of the Interdisciplinary Teaching Grant Program. The application deadline for the teaching grants is December 1. In order to assist prospective applicants in putting together proposals, the Provost will hold a workshop from 3:30-5 p.m. in DUC 234 on October 23 facilitated by faculty who were successful in the previous round. Please RSVP for the workshop to Marion G. Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law and vice provost at WUSTL, at mgcrain@wulaw.wustl.edu.

The most vulnerable and marginalized groups in this country stand to lose the most in this campaign, says Jason Q. Purnell, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, and all the rhetoric directed at the middle class fails to take into account the very real struggles of the poor and the working class in this country. It’s one of the issues that is being overlooked as the presidential campaign heads into the home stretch with the election just four weeks away. “I do believe this election is a stark choice between a vision in which government has a constructive role to play in enhancing people’s life choices and one in which individuals are largely on their own,” he says.

Washington University in St. Louis has been ranked among the top schools in the nation for entrepreneurship by Entrepreneur magazine’s annual Princeton Review report. The annual survey names the schools with the top 25 undergraduate and top 25 graduate entrepreneurship programs in the nation.

Chelsea Clinton announced during the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York on Sept. 25 that Washington University in St. Louis will serve as the host of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), April 5-7, 2013, on the Danforth Campus.  President Bill Clinton launched CGI U in 2007 to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses around the world. Each year, CGI U hosts a meeting where students, youth organizations, topic experts, and celebrities discuss solutions to pressing global issues.