Olin Business School

As the financial crisis in America persists, government positions are being cut, causing motivation to spiral downward. How can worker motivation in government positions not hit bottom? Jackson Nickerson, PhD, the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy at Washington University’s Olin Business School, suggests employee motivation comes from three different sources: economic, social and emotional and ideological.

Faculty and graduate students 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 on the Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis beginning Monday, Feb. 4. In its 17th year, the Work, Families and Public Policy series features one-hour presentations on research interests of faculty from local and national universities. Presentations will be from noon-1 p.m. in Seigle Hall, Room 348.

Nominations are being accepted for Washington University’s annual Faculty Achievement Awards, known as the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award and the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award. The Compton Award is given to a distinguished member of the faculty from one of the six Danforth Campus schools and the Cori Award to a faculty member from the School of Medicine.The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, Feb. 15.

Panera Bread Co. has rolled out a new “hidden menu” featuring protein-rich power foods. While this kind of marketing may make big fans of the chain feel special, it also increases the likelihood that the hidden items fail to take off, says a marketing expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University’s business, engineering, and law schools are collaborating on a new course in 2013 that will embed students in the center of the thriving entrepreneur community in downtown St. Louis. Students will trade their campus classroom for working space at T-REx, a new St. Louis tech incubator that offers startup companies affordable offices in the historic Railway Exchange Building.

Steven J. Malter, PhD, has been named associate dean and director of the undergraduate program at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School.

If Congress and President Obama don’t reach a compromise before the end of the year to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” it will have major consequences on Washington University in St. Louis as well as other universities and colleges across the country, say WUSTL administrators​​.

Coming up with creative, fresh ideas does not necessarily imply that theywill ultimately be put into practice. However, the odds of one’s ideas making it into practice are better when people are driven to push their ideas through the organization and are savvy networkers, finds new research from Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

You try doing homework in the dark. For school-aged children across the developing world, access to electrical lighting remains precarious. Enter the Little Sun, a solar-powered lamp designed by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Now Little Sun is at the center of two projects involving WUSTL students and faculty, which stretch from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to the villages of Madagascar.

Today, a group of the nation’s leading universities announced plans to launch a new, innovative program that transforms the model of online education. The new online education program, Semester Online, will be the first of its kind to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous, online courses for credit from a consortium of universities. The program is delivered through a virtual classroom environment and interactive platform developed by 2U, formerly known as 2tor.