Author: Julie Kennedy

Mark Valeri, PhD, widely regarded as one of the most eminent scholars of American religion during the Revolutionary War era, was installed Feb. 24 as the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics.

Five staff members of Washington University in St. Louis will travel to South Korea in June 2015 through the Global Diversity Overseas Seminar, a professional development opportunity for staff that looks at diversity from a global perspective.

​Washington University in St. Louis is launching a new pre-college program designed to help talented but underserved St. Louis high school students prepare for and complete a college education at a selective four-year college or university​. Pictured is Leah Merrifield, who will head the program.

Nineteen students took part in the Summer Associates Program, which offered WUSTL students on-campus internships and built on theory and skills learned in the classroom. The program also offered professional development seminars on subjects such as networking, interviewing and résumé building. The pilot program may be expanded next year.

​Every year, the late James E. “Jim” McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, delivered a talk called “Habits of Achievement” to incoming Ervin Scholars in his role as director of the Ervin Scholars Program. This fondly remembered speech has been published for the first time in a book titled Habits of Achievement: Lessons for a Life Well-Lived, which weaves Ervin alumni recollections of McLeod with his speech. It also includes a short biography of McLeod’s life.​

​Notes from No Man’s Land, the book selected for Washington University’s 2013-14 First Year Reading Program, examines race in America through the unique perspective of author Eula Biss. Biss weaves her own experiences through essays about mixed families, lynchings, Americans behaving badly in Mexico, being a white reporter at an African-American newspaper, teaching at an inner city school and much more.​

​Susan Rotroff, PhD, a classical archaeologist, and Leigh Schmidt, PhD, historian of American religion, are the latest Washington University scholars to be selected for prestigious fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Rotroff and Schmidt were among 175 Guggenheim Fellows chosen in 2013 from almost 3,000 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada. The Guggenheim fellowship is awarded on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.​

​Rebecca Messbarger, PhD, professor of Italian, has a great start to her next book. Not only did she win two awards for an article summarizing her book idea, next fall she will have more time and resources to devote to writing thanks to her faculty fellowship in the Center for Humanities.

​The 18th annual Summer Writers Institute will be held on Washington University’s Danforth Campus this July, giving writers of varying experience levels the opportunity to join a diverse and energetic writing community. Evening sessions this year meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday instead of Monday through Friday. Also, the weekend sessions will be afternoons only instead of daylong seminars. The institute begins Friday, July 12, and runs through Friday, July 26.​

​Doctoral students who are interested in developing their entrepreneurial skills now have the option of earning the new Entrepreneurship Citation offered by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.