Arts & Sciences

University College — the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis — will host a Preview Night at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 11, in Holmes Lounge in Ridgley Hall on the university’s Danforth Campus. Preview Night will feature speakers who will discuss class and program offerings, admissions requirements and financial aid.

Analysis of new images of a curious “hot spot” on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and of the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon’s thermal history. The discovery has just been published in Nature Geoscience.

Dzenana Mruckovski, former public works director for the city of Crestwood, Mo., is the new director of facilities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Gary S. Wihl, PhD, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities.

Up to five PhD students from Taiwan per year will receive full-tuition and living stipend scholarships to attend Washington University because of a recent agreement signed between WUSTL and Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Tony W.T. Lin, director general of the ministry’s Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations, signed a memorandum of understanding during a ceremony June 24 in Taipei City.

The Italian government on July 14 passed an austerity package designed to balance the budget by 2014 and protect Italy from a debt crisis. Will it work? Most likely not, says an economist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Steven Mumm, PhD (left), research associate professor of medicine, works in his lab at the School of Medicine with Adela Cajic, a rising senior at Affton High School and a participant in the Students and Teachers as Research Scientists (STARS) program. STARS pairs academically talented high school juniors and seniors in the St. Louis area with scientists at five research institutions for a six-week apprenticeship in laboratories, including those on the Danforth and Medical campuses.

Washington University in St. Louis will welcome undergraduates from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, this July for the university’s inaugural five-week Fudan at Washington University Summer Program (July 17-Aug. 19). During the program, 28 Fudan students will enroll in two regularly scheduled courses in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Summer School, where they will study alongside their WUSTL counterparts.

From the land down under to the top of the world to the dusty streets of Soweto, the Edison Ovations Series presents groundbreaking performances by critically acclaimed artists from around the globe. For its 2011-12 season, Edison will visit modern India (by way of New Zealand) with Guru of Chai, revisit The Sound of Music with Brooklyn Rundfunk Orkestrata and welcome back South Africa’s inspirational Soweto Gospel Choir.  

For Robert E. Hegel, PhD, the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature in Arts & Sciences, Chinese language and literature offers ongoing opportunities to explore a fascination he has held since childhood — the universal love of storytelling.

A rare 1950s comic book, titled Negro Romance, that Gerald Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for the Humanities, bought on Ebay is the focus of a mystery in an upcoming episode of PBS’ History Detectives. Early wants to know: Did black artists create this book? Who was the intended audience? Host Gwendolyn Wright gets the answers. The episode will air locally at 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 12, on Nine PBS. It will be repeated at 1 a.m. Thursday, July 14, and 4 p.m. Sunday, July 17.