School or Unit

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.

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.

Cancer Research Inspiring Future Scientists Program (CRISPr) provides St. Louis area high school students an entry into academic research. Participants receive a generous stipend, mentorship, training, and access to a world-class community and environment. No previous research experience is required. Students from historically underrepresented backgrounds are particularly encouraged to apply.

To connect with communities locally and globally, the Brown School created Open Classroom – a series of free, one-hour webinars on a wide range of social work, public health, and social policy topics. The Open Classroom library now includes more than 250 programs, with new webinars offered every month.

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.