Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Washington University in St. Louis has taken a leadership role in helping to shape the future of online education by being a catalyst to bring together a consortium of the nation’s leading colleges and universities that plans to launch Semester Online. This program is a transformative new model for online education, offering undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous, online courses for credit from consortium schools.

In the United States, packaging makes up one third of municipal solid waste. But rather than merely recycling such materials, a recent student-led project — involving the School of Medicine, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Environmental Health & Saftey area — is working to transform them into art.

Sandra Brennan, longtime assistant to the dean of the Sam Fox School Design & Visual Arts, died at her home in Webster Groves Monday, Oct. 29, following a long illness. She was 73. 

The world is getting smaller, but cities are getting bigger. That growth represents a key challenge and a key opportunity for 21st century sustainability. In November, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will present URBANISM(S): Sustainable Cities for One Planet, an international symposium exploring the future of global urban design. The two-day event will feature a range of talks on the ecology, infrastructure and social life of cities, as well as keynote address by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne.

A series of application workshops will be held for students interested in the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7, 2013. The workshops will focus on application criteria and developing the required Commitment to Action. A Commitment to Action is a concrete plan that addresses a pressing challenge in one of CGI U’s five focus areas: education, environment and climate change, peace and human rights, poverty alleviation, or public health. The first workshop will be held from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1, in Brown Hall, Room 118. 

For decades, author, educator, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben has been telling us things we don’t want to hear — presenting scary scorched Earth scenarios due to carbon emissions in the atmosphere. He also leads a global initiative — 350.org — to try to solve the climate crisis. McKibben will give the keynote address for the Sustainable Cities Conference Thursday, Nov. 1, on campus. 

James Siena is a New York-based artist whose complex, rule-based linear abstractions, or “visual algorithms,” result in intensely concentrated, vibrantly colored, freehand geometric patterns. This fall, Siena served as the Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Visiting Artist at Island Press, the nationally known print shop in WUSTL’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES, now on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, collects dozens of smart, problem-solving projects from around the globe. On Saturday, Oct. 20, six St. Louis not-for-profits will present their own “Community Design Challenges” as part of the museum’s fall Community Day. The free, all-ages event also will feature art-making, scavenger hunts and other activities.

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.

Over the last century, nearly 1,900 square miles of Louisiana wetlands — an area approximately the size of Delaware — have disappeared. Now the Sam Fox School’s John Hoal is leading STUDIO MISI-ZIBBI, one of three finalist teams in the international competition “Changing Course: Navigating the Future of the Lower Mississippi River Delta.”