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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.

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.

After being told she should go gluten-free in 2009, Britt Royal, owner of Britt’s Bakehouse, kept baking – a favorite hobby of hers – despite her diagnosis. The doors opened at her gluten-free bakery in Kirkwood, Missouri, in November 2019, and it’s been a community favorite ever since. Although she wasn’t born here, it made sense for Royal to open her bakery in St. Louis: Her mom’s side of the family is from the area, and Royal herself attended college at Washington University in St. Louis.

More people are working in the St. Louis region than ever before, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Labor. The St. Louis region gained nearly 31,000 workers over the past year, making it the seventh-best U.S. metro area for job growth. The region broke through the top 10 for the first time since 1990. The number of people working in the 14-county region that includes the Metro East has risen 2.16% this year — surpassing the national rate of 1.7%.