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Dr. Lannis Hall faces an auditorium full of young women at Hazelwood East High School. She’s there to talk about health – breast health. As a radiation oncologist from Washington University in St. Louis, Hall is aware these high school students are likely years away from needing mammograms or other breast screenings. However, she wants them to begin understanding how they can start reducing their cancer risk now and to encourage them to share this knowledge with their loved ones. Such was the inspiration for the “Go Tell Your Momma” initiative, through which Hall presents at Hazelwood School District’s East, Central and West high schools.

GeoFutures – the initiative of Greater St. Louis, Inc. working to advance St. Louis’ geospatial technology sector – announced today that Ritika Tejwani, a Business and Computer Science Major at Washington University in St. Louis, is the winner of this year’s GeoFutures STL Scholarship, funded through the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.  

In Missouri, women hold only two of the 10 seats in the U.S. House and Senate (20%), 55 state legislature seats (28%) and no statewide elected executive seats, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Illinois fares somewhat better, with seven women among the 19 seats in the U.S. House and Senate (37%), 76 women in state legislature seats (43%) and two women among the six statewide elected executive seats. While both states are in line with nationwide averages, they still have a long way to go to achieve equity in women’s representation. A new program offered at Washington University in St. Louis aims to change that.

Early in the morning of a summer day, high school students Hope Jett and Kari Koerner are counting mosquitoes in a tree-canopied clearing of Tyson Research Center, Washington University in St. Louis’ sprawling environmental field station in west St. Louis County. They are part of the Mosquito Team, a WashU research project to better understand the ecology and evolution of mosquitoes.

This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s.” With nearly 300 architectural drawings, models, photographs, films, digital maps and artworks, “Design Agendas” is the first major exhibition to examine how interlocking civic, cultural and racial histories, as well as conflicting ideological aims, reshaped the city.

A group led by BioSTL and Washington University recently applied for $160 million in grant funding to boost the region’s neuroscience and neurotech ecosystems.

When Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black teenager, was fatally shot in 2014 by a white police officer and his body left in the street under the August sun, the small St. Louis suburb of Ferguson roiled and plunged into crisis. The protests drew activists from across the nation, amplified the national Black Lives Matter movement and fueled larger questions about race in America. And at a more grass-roots level, it created a political incubator of emerging local leaders: A new generation of young protesters who came of age during the Ferguson uprising have found ways to chip away at the racial disparities in Ferguson and nearby St. Louis, shifting from protests to politics and policies.

Sometimes life has a way of coming around full circle and during a recent college visit for our daughter, I was reminded of just what a great city St. Louis is. We stayed in the Cortex district, had dinner in the Central West End and were struck by how great the city looked. If you drew a straight line from Wash U, through Forest Park, continued through BJC’s campus, through Cortex and ended up at Union Station you would see a city on the upswing.

Washington University recently announced that Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH — one of the world’s most influential public health leaders — will become inaugural dean of its planned School of Public Health, effective Jan. 1, 2025. In this critical role, Galea will help shape WashU’s first new school in 100 years. The school is part of “Here and Next,” WashU’s 10-year strategic plan to make both the university and St. Louis a global hub for solving society’s deepest challenges.

The WashU & Slavery Project is an initiative started in spring 2021 to advance scholarship around WashU’s history with slavery. But the project is also reshaping public history in the St. Louis region by striving to add or improve information around slavery and racial discrimination at area historical sites, including the General Daniel Bissell House and the Missouri Botanical Garden.