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The fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, on Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo., sent a shockwave through the country. Seemingly overnight, the phrase #BlackLivesMatter became a part of everyday conversation, and communities around the country were forced to have difficult conversations about racism within the justice system. The ripple effect of that moment has continued over the last decade. Clarissa Rile Hayward, a professor of political science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on political power and social movements, explains why this particular moment was so powerful and how it inspired a generation of activists and political leaders.

While some some progress has been made in the 10 years since Michael Brown’s death on Aug. 9, 2014, in many ways we have regressed as a nation, said Kimberly Norwood, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis and editor of, and contributor to, the 2016 book “Ferguson’s Fault Lines: The Race Quake That Rocked a Nation.” The reverberations from Brown’s shooting death manifested in the form of worldwide protests and contrite promises of investigations, reform and racial reckoning, Norwood said.

Food Outreach has partnered with Dan Ferris, an assistant professor of practice at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, to conduct a study to evaluate the effect of Food Outreach’s type II diabetes pilot program. Ferris’s study, titled “From Translation to Transformation: Medically Tailored Meals and Food-is-Medicine Approaches for Reducing Health Disparities in Diabetes Management,” aims to evaluate how a comprehensive Medically Tailored Meals program in St. Louis can improve outcomes for adults with type 2 diabetes.

Through more than 100 maps analyzing racial, socioeconomic, tax incentive, and urban planning, the new book from WashU professor Patty Heyda reveals how the physical environment impacts Americans’ lives.

The Center for the Literary Arts is a transformational hub for creative writing and translation, as well as different forms of literary arts and creative practice across Washington University and the St. Louis community. As an initiative of the Arts & Sciences Strategic Plan, the Center explores all the ways in which literary art and creative practice can change the world around us. It seeks to unite communities within and beyond academia by reimagining vital literary art-making for the 21st century locally and globally.

Experiencing the nuances of local leadership and judicial impacts are an important part of student civic learning. In the Gephardt Institute’s St. Louis Fellows Program, the Fellows engage in summer weekly seminars centered on civic engagement. While most of their sessions are at Stix House, two of the seminars took place off campus at the Delmar DivINe and the Eagleton Federal Courthouse in Downtown St. Louis. 

At St. Louis ArtWorks in University City, St. Louis Fellow Duaa Mohamed ’26 works in communications, helping the nonprofit make the community aware of the ways that they bring the arts to underserved people.

This spring, WashU Philanthropy Lab students granted a total of $68,000 to nine St. Louis community nonprofit organizations, including $10,000 to A Red Circle. The strength of the organization—along with the advocacy work led by one student in the class, St. Louis Fellow Mason Shaver—resulted earlier this month in the nonprofit being granted an additional $50,000 by The Philanthropy Lab, a national organization.

Mary and Tom Stillman are the recipients of the 2024 Jane and Whitney Harris St. Louis Community Service Award. Chancellor Andrew D. Martin presented the Stillmans with the award at a June 5 luncheon at the Whittemore House. Mary McKay, vice provost for interdisciplinary initiatives at Washington University in St. Louis, hosted the event. The Harris Award committee selects a couple to receive the annual award, which was established in 2000 in honor of the late Jane and Whitney Harris to recognize couples who contribute to the betterment of the greater St. Louis community.

The United States and the world have learned a lot about the lunar surface since the crew of Apollo 11 landed back on Earth 55 years ago Wednesday. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have been studying the Moon ever since the time of the Apollo missions. Researchers at Washington University are currently preparing for NASA’s planned Artemis III mission, which will return astronauts to the lunar surface. The mission seeks to land on a part of the Moon that has not been explored before, specifically the south pole.