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Mary Jo Bang, a professor of English in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will receive the 2024 Tradition of Literary Excellence Award from the University City Municipal Commission on Arts & Letters. Created in 2014, the award honors “the work of a living local author whose literary achievement has won national and international acclaim and, in so doing, has contributed to the distinction of the St. Louis area, upholding its tradition as a center of literary excellence.”

The Washington Post recently named the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) as one of the top art museums in the nation. The Post’s art critics ranked SLAM as #12, citing its geography in the “huge, gorgeous” Forest Park and calling its art collection “broad and deep.”

An initiative co-led by Diana Parra Perez, an instructor in WashU Art & Sciences’ new Program in Public Health & Society and assistant professor at the Brown School, aims to improve the health and lives of residents in the St. Louis Promise Zone that includes parts of North St. Louis City and North St. Louis County. 

St. Louis has a long history of welcoming refugees from across the globe. For people escaping war or political turmoil, the region can be a place of safety and opportunity. While migrants often encounter obstacles as they try to remake their lives, they also manage to hold on to personal goals, ambitions, and measures of success in their new homes, said Margot Moinester, assistant professor of sociology. Moinester helped conduct a unique study gathering interviews from 36 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iraq who settled in St. Louis and Denver.

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.

Joi Riley is one of three female business owners selling products in Park Central Development’s Eric Outlaw Business Center at 4256 Manchester Ave. The Grove neighborhood’s business incubator, which opened Oct. 10, helps women in the St. Louis region develop their businesses online and in store.

The Center for Dissemination and Implementation announces the launch of a new Midwest Developmental Center for AIDS Research (D-CFAR) in Missouri, which brings together researchers from across the translational spectrum to address the HIV epidemic. This D-CFAR is part of a national network of 20 NIH-funded centers, and it is the first of its kind in the Midwest. The center is a collaboration between Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis University, and Harris-Stowe State University.

The best teachers never stop learning. That is why the School of Continuing & Professional Studies (CAPS) at Washington University in St. Louis, in collaboration with partner Teach St. Louis, has opened its Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning (MATL) program to veteran teachers who work in high-need classrooms. Initially designed for novice teachers in the Teach St. Louis Residency, now known as Teach St. Louis, the MATL program introduces educators to instructional strategies that accelerate better learning outcomes. CAPS also is introducing a new certificate for educators who already have a master’s degree but want to further their skills. 

BioSTL, the biosciences economic development organization, has named a new leader for its investment arm. The organization said this week that Dr. James McCarter, a Washington University-trained physician and biologist, has been named a senior vice president of BioSTL and senior managing director of BioGenerator Ventures.

Dr. Katherine Weilbaecher was concerned about the trends. As an oncologist at WashU Medicine specializing in metastatic breast cancer, she noticed Black patients from North County were coming to her office with more advanced cancers. She recently created a mammography clinic targeted to the high-risk population to find those cancers earlier and ensure patients receive follow-up care.