Olin Business School

Washington University engineering students Nalin Katta and Matthew MacEwan, who also is a School of Medicine student, won the Olin Cup business plan competition Feb. 3 and $50,000 in seed investment for an invention that can replace the protective covering of the brain. With 49 entrants, this year’s competition was the largest group of ventures yet.

Commercials during the Super Bowl may be some of the most watched ads on broadcast T.V., but Olin marketing professors say social media has changed the game. Advertisers need to engage the audience before, during and after the game with strategies that include everything from smartphones to Twitter.

Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and former deputy secretary of state from 1994-2001, will present “Angels of Our Nature: Polarization in America and Its Challenge to Universities and Think Tanks” at 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 7, in Whitaker Hall Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis. Talbott’s policy address will focus on the challenge of polarization in American politics, considered by many to be at its worst level since the late 19th century. He will reflect on the role of universities and think tanks, bastions of fact-based research and academic freedom, as antidotes to the current maladies of America’s political climate.

Undergraduate tuition at Washington University in St. Louis will be $40,950 for the 2011-12 academic year — a $1,550 (3.9 percent) increase over the 2010-11 current academic tuition of $39,400. The required student activity fee will total $410, and the student health fee will be no more than $632. Barbara A. Feiner, vice chancellor for finance, made the announcement. 

The record-breaking $380 million Mega Millions multistate lottery jackpot drawing this week had two winners and may inspire more people to take a chance on being a millionaire. But Romel Mostafa, visiting professor of strategy at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, cautions lottery players on the odds of winning in an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, broadcast Jan. 4.

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 18 on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. The series begins Monday, Jan. 24, with a lecture by Juan Pantano, PhD, assistant professor of economics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, on “C-Sections and Fertility.”

What do beer industry giant Tsingtao and the midwest’s handcrafted Schlafly brewery have in common? Hops, barley and business school.  Schlafly’s brewmaster and Tsingtao’s president are recent graduates of Olin Business School’s Executive MBA program that provides a unique experience for students to network with peers around the globe and share stories from the executive suite over a glass of beer.

Plan your exit before you enter a new business market may sound like strange advice, but it comes from an expert in entrepreneurship with experience to prove it. Olin professor Clifford Holekamp shares his expertise in the December issue of Octane, the award winning magazine of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization.

Should weather conditions create potentially hazardous travel conditions, Washington University will evaluate the situation and take into consideration the safety of the faculty, staff and students as well as the services that must be provided despite the inclement weather.

Try to imagine an environmentally friendly science lab that reduces, reuses and recycles. That’s the challenge posed by the second annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition at Washington University in St. Louis. Students who devise the best plan for green labs will be seeing green — a $5,000 first prize — when the winners are announced in February.