The charge was ambitious. Conditions were complicated. The results have been transformative.
The Lewis Collaborative, located less than a mile north of Washington University’s Danforth Campus, represents a new chapter for one of University City’s oldest and most storied sites. Over the last century, the sprawling, three-building complex originally built as an art school for women has housed a junior high, a high school, district offices and, most recently, studio and classroom space for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
Now, following a multimillion-dollar renovation, the 3.75-acre property encompasses: 93 residential units; offices and co-working spaces for TechArtista; a coffee shop and communal kitchen; and flexible classroom space, known as the studiolabs, for the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences.
April 30, 2021 SHARE
Welcome back to Class Acts, a celebration of the Class of 2021. This week, we celebrate three graduating students who are leaders in research Churchill Scholar Jessika Baral, Spencer T. Olin Fellow Chelsey Carter and U.S. Army veteran Alex Reiter.
Jessika Baral leverages her expertise in biology and computer science to advance cancer research. (Photo: Joe Angeles/Washington University)
It started back in middle school, when Jessika Baral got glasses and her dad was struggling with his cataracts.
“He suggested that we do eye exercises together,” Baral recalled. “Middle-school Jessika was not down for that.”
So she engineered a sort of sombrero festooned with LED lights. By following the blinking lights, users could strengthen their eye muscles. The results were so impressive, Baral was invited to the White House Science Fair, where she met her hero, Bill Nye.
April 23, 2021 SHARE
Welcome back to Class Acts, a celebration of the Class of 2021. Last week, we recognized The Makers. This week, we spotlight advocates Leah Wren Hardgrove, Logan Phillips and Alexis Tinoco, three seniors working to make a difference.
Leah Hardgrove, a member of the track and field team, will work at Google to make products more accessible for people with disabilities. (Photo: Joe Angeles/Washington University)
Leah Wren Hardgrove came to Washington University in St. Louis with the desire to make the world a more accessible and inclusive place for people with disabilities.
Born legally blind, Hardgrove grew up understanding that society was not built for her.
Washington University
A stack of Washington University diplomas awaits recipients at the Prison Education Project commencement in 2019 at the Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific, Missouri.
Beginning this fall, incarcerated women in Missouri will have the opportunity to work towards earning a degree from Washington University.
Wash U.
announced this week that its Prison Education Project won a $980,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to start its first women’s prison education program.
People incarcerated at the Women’s Eastern Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri can begin taking classes in August. It will be the first time an on-site college program exists at the prison. The grant also provides funding for technology to host the classes virtually as well as expanding reentry programs at the prison.
Ginkgo fruits and fall leaves. (Photo: Joe Angeles/Washington University)
Washington University’s glorious ginkgo allée, located just east of the John M. Olin Library, was part of the historic Cope and Stewardson plan for the campus. The ginkgo tree’s unique fan-shaped leaves turn brilliant golden yellow in fall.
Renner
The gingko tree is also an example of a dioecious plant: one that has either male or female flowers, not both. Such sexual specialization comes at a cost to plants. But even so, hundreds of land plant lineages have independently evolved separate sexes.
Why and how this happened has been a longstanding question for biologists. Susanne S. Renner, honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is co-author of a new review that tackles the genetic basis of sex determination in plants. The study was published in Nature Plants in March.