Impact Area

The Office of Public Scholarship helps WashU faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers share their research and creative work with audiences beyond academia. Through consultations, workshops, funding opportunities, publishing support and media collaborations, the office helps scholars translate complex ideas for broader audiences, build public visibility and extend the reach and impact of their work. It also organizes free public events for the St. Louis community to enjoy on and off of campus.

The Confluence Collaborative for Community Engagement connects WashU scholars and St. Louis community partners to advance community-engaged research, education and practice.

It centers community-identified needs and supports reciprocal, long-term partnerships through research development, community-engaged teaching and learning, partner capacity building, networking, funding resources and recognition of collaborative work. Its goal is to strengthen existing efforts, connect people across disciplines and help ensure university-community partnerships produce meaningful benefits for the region.

The Frick Initiatives invest in ambitious ideas and the people working to put them into practice. They support projects centered on four core pillars: civil discourse, free speech, free and open markets, and personal responsibility. They seek promising projects that move ideas beyond discussion and into practice, whether through education, applied research, public engagement, community partnerships or new approaches not yet imagined.

Hosted at the Missouri History Museum and sponsored by Washington University in St. Louis, this free weekly series invites families and community members to explore the vibrant culture and history of St. Louis. Each Thursday evening begins at 5 p.m. with children’s activities, local food and drink, and interactive exhibits, followed by featured programming such […]

In the months following the tornadoes that struck several St. Louis neighborhoods, Washington University researchers have been working alongside community partners to better understand the environmental health impacts facing residents. Through the Environmental Health Initiative, teams are conducting neighborhood walkthroughs, listening sessions, and field assessments to identify concerns such as mold, debris exposure, and air-quality […]

Student-led, patient-first. At the WashU Medicine Pro Bono Health Clinic, medical, occupational therapy and physical therapy students team up to provide much-needed care to uninsured community members in the St. Louis area.

In this program offered by the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging at WashU Brown School, local students learn about three neurological conditions and diseases that often interplay with the aging process — stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Students are matched with a faculty mentor and will spend eight weeks as part of their lab or center.

The Health Communication Design Studio (HCDS) at WashU Sam Fox School investigates pressing issues related to public health, particularly in underserved populations. It creates strategic design solutions to address these challenges and evaluates their impact in the St. Louis community.

This digital collection from University Libraries uses maps to explore the region’s LGBTQ communities from the end of World War II in 1945 through the passage of St. Louis’ first gay and lesbian-inclusive civil rights ordinance in 1992. The project aims to document the history of a people whose sexual and gender nonconformity has often meant that their stories have gone unheard, unrecorded, un-archived, and unremarked upon.

The St. Louis Area Brain Bee (SLABB) is an annual event for high school students that are interested in the brain and neuroscience led by WashU Arts & Sciences. Demonstrations, panels, and material come from Brain Facts, a book produced by the Society for Neuroscience. SLABB pays for the winner to compete in the US National Brain Bee competition.