Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kn ...

with its main campus in St. Louis County, and

Clayton, Missouri Clayton is a city in and the seat of St. Louis County, Missouri. It borders the independent city of St. Louis. The population was 17,355 at the 2020 census. Organized in 1877, the city was named after Ralph Clayton, who donated the land for the ...

. Founded in 1853, the university is named after

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

. Washington University is ranked among the top universities in the United States. The university's 169-acre Danforth Campus is at the center of Washington University and is the academic home to the majority of the university’s undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. The Danforth Campus features predominantly Collegiate Gothic architecture in its academic buildings and is bordered by

Forest Park A forest park is a park whose main theme is its forest of trees. Forest parks are found both in the mountains and in the urban environment. Examples Chile * Forest Park, Santiago China * Gongqing Forest Park, Shanghai * Mufushan National Forest ...

and the cities of St. Louis, Clayton and University City. The university also has a West Campus in Clayton, North Campus in the West End neighborhood of St. Louis, and Medical Campus in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis. The Washington University Medical Campus spreads over 17 city blocks and 164 acres. The center is home to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and its affiliated hospitals, clinics, patient care centers and research facilities. It has students and faculty from all 50 U.S. states and more than 120 countries. Washington University is composed of seven graduate and undergraduate schools that encompass a broad range of academic fields. To prevent confusion over its location, the university's

board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit org ...

added the phrase "in St. Louis" in 1976. Washington University has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 1923 and is

classified Classified may refer to: General *Classified information, material that a government body deems to be sensitive *Classified advertising or "classifieds" Music *Classified (rapper) (born 1977), Canadian rapper * The Classified, a 1980s American ro ...

among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

ranked the university 28th among academic institutions in the United States for

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

(R&D) expenditures. As of 2022, 26 Nobel laureates in economics, physiology and medicine, chemistry, and physics have been affiliated with Washington University, 11 having done the major part of their pioneering research at the university.

History

Early history (1853–1900)

Washington University was conceived by 17 St. Louis business, political, and religious leaders concerned by the lack of institutions of higher learning in the

Midwest The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...

. Missouri State Senator Wayman Crow and Unitarian minister William Greenleaf Eliot, grandfather of the poet T.S. Eliot, led the effort. The university's first chancellor was

Joseph Gibson Hoyt Joseph Gibson Hoyt (January 19, 1815 – November 26, 1862) was the first chancellor and a professor of Greek at Washington University in St. Louis (then named Washington Institute in St. Louis) from 1858 to 1862. Born in Dunbarton, New Hampshire in ...

. Crow secured the university charter from the Missouri General Assembly in 1853, and Eliot was named President of the Board of Trustees. Early on, Eliot solicited support from members of the local business community, including John O'Fallon, but Eliot failed to secure a permanent endowment. Washington University is unusual among major American universities in not having had a prior financial endowment. The institution had no backing of a religious organization, single wealthy patron, or earmarked government support. WGEliot

During the three years following its inception, the university bore three different names. The board first approved "Eliot Seminary", but William Eliot was uncomfortable with naming a university after himself and objected to the establishment of a seminary which would implicitly be charged with teaching a religious faith. He favored a nonsectarian university. Under pressure from Eliot, the Board of Trustees created a task force charged with naming the university, headed by

Samuel Treat Samuel H. Treat (December 17, 1815 – August 31, 1902) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Education and career Born on December 17, 1815, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, ...

. Several months later Treat's committee proposed naming the University the ''Washington Institute'', after the nation's first president

. In 1854, the board of trustees changed the name to "Washington Institute" in honor of

and because the charter was coincidentally passed on Washington's birthday, February 22. Naming the university after the nation's first president, only seven years before the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

and during a time of bitter national division, was no coincidence. During this time of conflict, Americans universally admired George Washington as the father of the United States and a symbol of national unity. The board believed that the university should be a force of unity in a strongly divided Missouri. In 1856, the university amended its name to "Washington University". The university amended its name once more in 1976, when the board voted to add the suffix "in St. Louis" to distinguish the university from the over two dozen other universities bearing Washington's name. Robert S

Although chartered as a university, for many years Washington University functioned primarily as a night school located on 17th Street and Washington Avenue in the heart of downtown St. Louis. Owing to limited financial resources, Washington University initially used public buildings. Classes began on October 22, 1854, at the Benton School building. At first the university paid for the evening classes, but as their popularity grew, their funding was transferred to the

St. Louis Public Schools Saint Louis Public School District (SLPS) is the school district that operates public schools in the City of St. Louis, Missouri (but not St. Louis County, which is an entity independent of the city). History Beginnings The act of the Uni ...

. Eventually the board secured funds for the construction of Academic Hall and a half dozen other buildings. Later the university divided into three departments: the Manual Training School, Smith Academy, and the

Mary Institute Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

. In 1867, the university opened the first private nonsectarian

law school A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, ...

west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest Drainage system (geomorphology), drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson B ...

. By 1882, Washington University had expanded to numerous departments, which were housed in various buildings across St. Louis. Medical classes were first held at Washington University in 1891 after the St. Louis Medical College decided to affiliate with the university, establishing the School of Medicine. However, by the 1890s the university was on the brink of financial collapse until Robert Sommers Brookings, president of the Board of Trustees, undertook the task of rebuilding the university's finances and acquiring land for a new campus. Brookings was instrumental in raising money for the university, since Eliot, the primary fundraiser for the university, had died. In 1896, Holmes Smith, professor of Drawing and History of Art, designed what would become the basis for the modern-day university seal. The seal is made up of elements from the Washington family coat of arms and the symbol of

Louis IX Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the House of Capet, Direct Capetians. He was Coronation of the French monarch, c ...

, whom the city is named after.

Modern era (1900–1955)

Washington University spent its first half century in downtown St. Louis bounded by Washington Ave., Lucas Place, and Locust Street. By the 1890s, owing to the dramatic expansion of the medical school and a new benefactor in Robert Brookings, the university began to move west. The university board of directors began a process to find suitable ground and hired the landscape architecture firm Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot of Boston. A committee of Robert S. Brookings,

Henry Ware Eliot Henry Ware Eliot (November 25, 1843 – January 7, 1919) was an American industrialist and philanthropist who lived in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the father of poet T. S. Eliot. Early life and education He was the son of Abigail Adams (Cranc ...

, and William Huse found a site of just beyond

, located west of the city limits in St. Louis County. The elevation of the land was thought to resemble the

Acropolis An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, ...

and inspired the nickname of "Hilltop" campus, renamed the Danforth campus in 2006 to honor former chancellor William H. Danforth. In 1899, the university opened a national design contest for the new campus. The renowned Philadelphia firm

Cope & Stewardson Cope and Stewardson (1885–1912) was a Philadelphia architecture firm founded by Walter Cope and John Stewardson, and best known for its Collegiate Gothic building and campus designs. Cope and Stewardson established the firm in 1885, and were jo ...

(same architects who designed a large part of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

and

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

) won unanimously with its plan for a row of

Collegiate Gothic Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europ ...

quadrangles inspired by

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

Universities. The cornerstone of the first building, Busch Hall, was laid on October 20, 1900. The construction of

Brookings Hall Brookings Hall is a Collegiate Gothic landmark on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The building, first named "University Hall", was built between 1900 and 1902 and served as the administrative center for the 1904 World's Fair. T ...

, Ridgley, and Cupples began shortly thereafter. The university delayed occupying these buildings until 1905 to accommodate the 1904 World's Fair and

Olympics The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...

. The delay allowed the university to construct ten buildings instead of the seven originally planned. This original cluster of buildings set a precedent for the development of the Danforth Campus; Cope & Stewardson's original plan and its choice of building materials have, with few exceptions, guided the construction and expansion of the Danforth Campus to the present day. By 1915, construction of a new medical complex was completed on Kings Highway in what is now St. Louis's Central West End. Three years later, Washington University admitted its first women medical students. In 1922, a young physics professor, Arthur Holly Compton, conducted a series of experiments in the basement of Eads Hall that demonstrated the "particle" concept of electromagnetic radiation. Compton's discovery, known as the "

Compton Effect Compton scattering, discovered by Arthur Holly Compton, is the scattering of a high frequency photon after an interaction with a charged particle, usually an electron. If it results in a decrease in energy (increase in wavelength) of the photon ...

," earned him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927. During World War II, as part of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, a cyclotron at Washington University was used to produce small quantities of the newly discovered element

plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exh ...

via

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the atomic nucleus, nuclei of atoms. Since protons and ...

bombardment of uranium nitrate hexahydrate. The plutonium produced there in 1942 was shipped to the

Metallurgical Laboratory The Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) was a scientific laboratory at the University of Chicago that was established in February 1942 to study and use the newly discovered chemical element plutonium. It researched plutonium's chemistry and m ...

Compton had established at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

where Glenn Seaborg's team used it for extraction, purification, and characterization studies of the exotic substance. WashU Graham Chapel

After working for many years at the University of Chicago, Arthur Holly Compton returned to St. Louis in 1946 to serve as Washington University's ninth chancellor. Compton reestablished the Washington University football team, making the declaration that athletics were to be henceforth played on a "strictly amateur" basis with no athletic scholarships. Under Compton's leadership, enrollment at the university grew dramatically, fueled primarily by World War II veterans' use of their GI Bill benefits. In 1947, Gerty Cori, a professor at the School of Medicine, became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Professors Carl and Gerty Cori became Washington University's fifth and sixth Nobel laureates for their discovery of how glycogen is broken down and resynthesized in the body. The process of desegregation at Washington University began in 1947 with the School of Medicine and the School of Social Work. During the mid and late 1940s, the university was the target of critical editorials in the local African American press, letter-writing campaigns by churches and the local

Urban League The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Am ...

, and legal briefs by the NAACP intended to strip its tax-exempt status. In spring 1949, a Washington University student group, the Student Committee for the Admission of Negroes (SCAN), began campaigning for full racial integration. In May 1952, the board of trustees passed a resolution desegregating the school's undergraduate divisions.

Recent history (1955–present)

During the latter half of the 20th century, Washington University transitioned from a strong regional university to a national research institution. In 1957, planning began for the construction of the "South 40", a complex of modern residential halls which primarily house freshmen and some sophomore students. With the additional on-campus housing, Washington University, which had been predominantly a "streetcar college" of commuter students, began to attract a more national pool of applicants. By 1964, over two-thirds of incoming students came from outside the St. Louis area. In 1971, the board of trustees appointed Chancellor William Henry Danforth, who guided the university through the social and financial crises of the 1970s and strengthened the university's often strained relationship with the St. Louis community. During his 24-year chancellorship, Danforth significantly improved the School of Medicine, established 70 new faculty chairs, secured a $1.72 billion endowment, and tripled the amount of student scholarships. In 1995, Mark S. Wrighton, former provost at MIT, was elected the university's 14th Chancellor. During Chancellor Wrighton's tenure undergraduate applications to Washington University more than doubled. Since 1995, the university has added more than 190 endowed professorships, revamped its Arts & Sciences curriculum, and completed more than 30 new buildings. WUSTL Danforth Campus

The growth of Washington University's reputation coincided with a series of record-breaking fund-raising efforts during the last three decades. From 1983 to 1987, the "Alliance for Washington University" campaign raised $630.5 million, which was then the most successful fund-raising effort in national history. From 1998 to 2004, the "Campaign for Washington University" raised $1.55 billion, which was applied to additional scholarships, professorships, and research initiatives. The campus was the venue for four Presidential debates, and one Vice-Presidential debate: the first 1992 Presidential debate on October 11,

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engin ...

, the third 2000 Presidential debate on October 17, 2000, the second 2004 Presidential debate on October 8,

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight ...

, the 2008 Vice-Presidential debate on October 2, and the second 2016 Presidential debate on October 9, 2016. The University was scheduled to host a debate in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone o ...

, but that debate was cancelled when the number of scheduled debates was scaled back to two. In 2002, Washington University co-founded the Cortex Innovation Community in St. Louis's Midtown neighborhood. Cortex is the largest innovation hub in the

midwest The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...

, home to offices of Square,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

Aon Aon or AON may refer to: * Aon (mythology), son of Poseidon in Greek mythology * ''Aon'' (moth), a genus of moths in the family Erebidae * Aon (trigraph), a Latin trigraph * "Aon", a composition by jazz pianist Harold Mabern, 1968 Business and ...

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

, and Centene. The innovation hub has generated more than 3,800 tech jobs in 14 years. In the summer of 2002,

Room 300 was transformed into the Mission Control center for Steve Fossett's sixth and ultimately successful attempt to circumnavigate the planet in a balloon—the Spirit of Freedo

In 2005, Washington University founded the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, an international network of premier research universities, with an initial endowment gift of $10 million from John F. McDonnell. The academy, which selects scholars from 35 partner universities around the world, was created with the intent to develop a cohort of future leaders, strengthen ties with top foreign universities, and promote global awareness and social responsibility. At the start of the Fall 2006 semester, the St. Louis Metro opened the Cross–County extension of its light rail MetroLink system. Three of the nine new stations directly serve the University ( Skinker, University City-Big Bend, and Forsyth). On July 1, 2006, the University began offering free Metro passes—the U Pass—to all full-time students, benefits-eligible faculty and staff, and full-time employees of qualified service providers . In 2019, Washington University unveiled a $360 million campus transformation project known as the "East End Transformation". The transformation project, built on the original 1895 campus plan by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, encompassed 18 acres of the

Danforth Campus The Danforth Campus is the main campus at Washington University in St. Louis. Formerly known as the Hilltop Campus, it was officially dedicated as the Danforth Campus on September 17, 2006, in honor of William H. Danforth, the 13th Chancellor of t ...

, adding five new buildings, expanding the university's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, relocating hundreds of surface parking spaces underground, and creating an expansive new park. In June 2019,

Andrew D. Martin Andrew D. Martin (born July 25, 1972) is chancellor and professor of political science and law at Washington University in St. Louis. As an academic, Martin has contributed widely to the areas of judicial politics, quantitative political methodo ...

, former dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, was elected the university's 15th chancellor. On the day of his inauguration, Chancellor Martin announced the "WashU Pledge", a financial aid program allowing full-time Missouri and southern

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

students who are Pell Grant-eligible or from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less to attend the university cost-free. In October 2021, Washington University announced it would invest an additional $1 billion in financial aid for students. That investment allowed Washington University to adopt a need-blind undergraduate admissions policy, effective immediately. The new financial aid initiative, called Gateway to Success, will include $800 million in endowed funding to support need-blind undergraduate admissions, meaning the university will not consider an applicant's financial situation when making admissions decisions while still meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need for admitted undergraduates. Another $200 million will be designated for financial aid for graduate and professional students in the university's Brown School, the School of Law and the School of Medicine, as well as in business, engineering, art and architecture, and Arts & Sciences. In 2022, Washington University was one of 10 universities picked to join the Kessler Scholars National Collaborative, which provides support for selected first-generation and Pell-Grant eligible STEM students who hope to improve society. The program aims to recruit 20 fully-funded Kessler scholars per year and provide additional opportunities to close the wealth gap. Also, in 2022, Washington University developed a needle-free nasal vaccine to combat COVID-19.

U.S. presidential and vice-presidential debates

Washington University has been selected by the

Commission on Presidential Debates The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a nonprofit corporation established in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the Democratic and Republican political parties in the United States. The CPD sponsors and produces debates for U.S. ...

to host more presidential and vice-presidential debates than any other institution in history.

United States presidential election debates During presidential election campaigns in the United States, it has become customary for the candidates to engage in a debate. The topics discussed in the debate are often the most controversial issues of the time, and arguably elections hav ...

were held at the Washington University Athletic Complex in 1992, 2000,

, and 2016. A presidential debate was planned to occur in 1996, but owing to scheduling difficulties between the candidates, the debate was canceled. The university hosted the only 2008 vice presidential debate, between Republican

Sarah Palin Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...

and Democrat Joe Biden, on October 2, 2008, also at the Washington University Athletic Complex. The university hosted the second 2016 presidential debate, between Republican Party candidate

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

and Democratic Party candidate

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

, on October 9, 2016. Although Chancellor Wrighton had noted after the 2004 debate that it would be "improbable" that the university will host another debate and was not eager to commit to the possibility, he subsequently changed his view and the university submitted a bid for the 2008 debates. "These one-of-a-kind events are great experiences for our students, they contribute to a national understanding of important issues, and they allow us to help bring national and international attention to the St. Louis region as one of America's great metropolitan areas," said Wrighton. The university decided not to host a 2020 presidential debate, against the majority opinion of the student body.

Geography and campuses

Danforth Campus

The main, or Danforth Campus (formerly known as the Hilltop Campus) is mostly between Forest Park Parkway, Wydown Boulevard, North Big Bend Boulevard, and North Skinker Boulevard. Although the school includes "St. Louis" in its name, the majority of the school's main campus is located in unincorporated St. Louis County and suburban Clayton. A large portion of the Danforth Campus is recognized as the

Washington University Hilltop Campus Historic District The Washington University Hilltop Campus Historic District was the site of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the 1904 Summer Olympics. Many of the exposition buildings were temporary in nature, but a number of permanent structures were ...

, which achieved

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...

status on February 27, 1987. The Barry Flanagan bronze statue, "

Thinker on a Rock ''Thinker on a Rock'' is a bronze sculpture by Barry Flanagan. Brian Ferriso, executive director of the Philbrook Museum of Art, said:"The playful subject matter clearly references several art historical traditions, including that of Rodin. In ad ...

," widely known, simply, as "The Bunny", is currently on permanent loan to Washington University and features prominently near Olin Library, Graham Chapel and Mallinckrodt. Danforth Campus includes * Arts and Sciences *

Center for the Humanities

Center for Mental Health Services Research
*

Center for Social Development The Center for Social Development (CSD) is a research center at Washington University's George Warren Brown School of Social Work The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis is a school for the training of social science researchers. ...

Crow Observatory Crow Observatory is a historic observatory housed in the Crow Hall in the Physics Department on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The historic telescope is still in use, and the observatory is open to the public. Telesco ...

* Danforth University Center (DUC): Completed in 2008, it occupies the space where Prince Hall once stood and is the main student center on campus. The three-story, 116,000sqft building features dining areas, lounges, meeting rooms, and offices for student leaders and student services professional staff. Housed in the DUC is the Career Center, the

Student Union A students' union, also known by many other names, is a student organization present in many colleges, universities, and high schools. In higher education, the students' union is often accorded its own building on the campus, dedicated to social ...

student government, '' Student Life'' newspaper, WUTV, a recording studio for KWUR, the Graduate Center, and other on-campus groups. *

Francis Olympic Field Francis Olympic Field is a stadium at Washington University in St. Louis that was used as the main venue for the 1904 Summer Olympics. It is currently used by the university's track and field, Cross country running, cross country, American footba ...

Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement

International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability
* Mallinckrodt Center: The central student center on the Danforth Campus. It houses the Campus Book Store, Computer Store, Dining Services, th
Edison Theatre
the Division of Drama, the Division of Dance, and the Department of Performing Arts. WUTV is also housed inside. *

McKelvey School of Engineering The James McKelvey School of Engineering is a part of Washington University in St. Louis. Founded in 1854, the engineering school is a research institution occupying seven buildings on Washington University's Danforth Campus. Research emphasis ...

* Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum * Olin Business School * Ridgley Hall: This served as the University's first library building until the early 1960s. During the 1904 World's Fair, Ridgley housed an exhibit of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...

Diamond Jubilee A diamond jubilee celebrates the 60th anniversary of a significant event related to a person (e.g. accession to the throne or wedding, among others) or the 60th anniversary of an institution's founding. The term is also used for 75th anniver ...

gifts. The former library reading room was transformed into an ornate lounge space, which today is known as Holmes Lounge. Ridgley Hall is also the home of several language departments, the Committee on Comparative Literature and the Language Lab. * Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship
*

The Brown School The J. Graham Brown School, usually called The Brown School, is a small magnet school located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It has approximately 750 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and attracts students from ...

The Center for Teaching and Learning
* Washington University School of Law
Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy
*

Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute The Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, established in 2000 as the Institute for Global Legal Studies, serves as a center for instruction and research in international and comparative law. Background ...

In 2019, a $360 million renovation project, the "East End Transformation", was unveiled on the Danforth Campus, building on the original 1895 campus plan by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot. The project included the creation of the Gary M. Sumers Welcome Center, which now houses undergraduate admissions; the Craig and Nancy Schnuck Pavilion, which houses a café, the Environmental Studies program and the Office of Sustainability; the Henry A. and Elvira H. Jubel Hall, which houses the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science in the

; and the James M. McKelvey, Sr. Hall, which will be completed in 2020 and open in 2021 and will house the McKelvey School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science & Engineering. All new buildings on the east end have been designed to achieve LEED-Gold certification, and include

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

s located on many of the roofs to generate renewable electricity. In addition to the five new buildings, the project relocated 6 acres of parking lots underground, renovated and expanded the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, and created the Ann and Andrew Tisch Park. In 2020, the Princeton Review ranked the Danforth Campus among the top 10 "Most Beautiful Campuses" in the United States.

Medical Campus

The Medical Campus is accessible via the Central West End MetroLink station, which provides a quick link to the Danforth, North, and West Campuses. All full-time Washington University students and employees are eligible for a Metro Transit U-Pass, which grants access to use the MetroLink and Metro buses for free. JeffersonLake BJC

Washington University Medical Center comprises spread over approximately 12 city blocks, located along the eastern edge of

within the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis. The campus is home to the Washington University School of Medicine and its associated teaching hospitals,

Barnes-Jewish Hospital Barnes-Jewish Hospital is the largest hospital in the U.S. state of Missouri. Located in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, it is the adult teaching hospital for the Washington University School of Medicine and a major component ...

and

St. Louis Children's Hospital St. Louis Children's Hospital is a dedicated pediatric hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and has a primary service region covering six states. As the pediatric teaching hospital for Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis Children's Ho ...

. Many of the buildings are connected via a series of skyways and corridors. Olin Residence Hall, named for Spencer T. Olin, provides residential services for 200 medical and graduate students. The School's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also serve as the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, which are part of BJC HealthCare. Washington University and BJC have taken on many joint venture projects, such as the Center for Advanced Medicine, completed in December 2001. In 2019, Washington University was awarded a $7.6 million grant from the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. T ...

to create the Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control to address disparities in cancer care in parts of Missouri and Illinois. In 2022, Washington University's Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences was awarded a five-year $61 million grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...

, to focus on precision medicine, health equity, and diversity. BJC Institute of Health at Washington University is the newest research building with . In 2020, Washington University announced the construction of a new $616 million, 11 story, 609,000-square-foot

neuroscience Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...

research building which will sit at the eastern edge of the Medical Campus in the Cortex Innovation Community. Construction of the building is set to be finished in 2023. Medical Campus Includes: *

Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine is a cancer treatment, research and education institution with six locations in the St. Louis area. Siteman is the only cancer center in Mis ...

*Center for Advanced Medicine
Center for Cancer Genomics
*

Central Institute for the Deaf Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) is a school for the deaf that teaches students using listening and spoken language, also known as the auditory-oral approach. The school is located in St. Louis, Missouri. CID is affiliated with Washington Univ ...

Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center
*Eric P. Newman Education Center (conference and convention center) *

Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology The Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR), established 1931, is an academic radiology center associated with the Washington University School of Medicine, located within the Washington University Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri. In additi ...

* McDonnell Genome Institute *Rehabilitation Institute of St. Louis *

*Women & Infants Center

North and West Campuses

Washington University's North Campus and West Campus principally house administrative functions that are not student focused. North Campus lies in St. Louis City near the

Delmar Loop The Delmar Loop, often referred to by St. Louis residents simply as The Loop, is an entertainment, cultural and restaurant district in University City, Missouri and the adjoining western edge of St. Louis near Washington University in St. Louis ...

. The university acquired the building and adjacent property in 2004, formerly home to the Angelica Uniform Factory. Several university administrative departments are located at the North Campus location, including offices for Quadrangle Housing, Accounting and Treasury Services, Parking and Transportation Services, Army ROTC, and Network Technology Services. The North Campus location also provides off-site storage space for the

Performing arts The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfo ...

Department. Renovations are still ongoing; recent additions to the North Campus space include a small eatery operated by

Bon Appétit Management Company Bon Appétit Management Company is a Palo Alto, California-based on-site restaurant company, that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges, and universities. The company is a subsidiary of the British multinational corporat ...

, the university's on-campus food provider, completed during spring semester 2007, as well as the Family Learning Center, operated by Bright Horizons and opened in September 2010. The West Campus is located about to the west of the Danforth Campus in

, and primarily consists of a four-story former

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appe ...

building housing mostly administrative space. The West Campus building was home to the Clayton branch of the Famous-Barr department store until 1990, when the university acquired the property and adjacent parking and began a series of renovations. Today, the basement level houses the West Campus Library, the University Archives, the Modern Graphic History Library, and conference space. The ground level still remains a retail space. The upper floors house consolidated capital gifts, portions of university advancement, and

information systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

offices from across the Danforth and Medical School campuses. There is also a

music rehearsal room A music rehearsal space is a room or number of rooms dedicated to music-making. A professionally soundproofed practice room(s) is an acoustic environment defined by its purpose and layout, designed to keep sound inside and unwanted sound out. Spac ...

on the second floor. Both the North and West Campuses are accessible by the St. Louis MetroLink, which, with the

and Forsyth MetroLink Stations directly adjacent to these campuses, provides easy travel around the St. Louis metropolitan area, including all of Washington University's campuses.

Tyson Research Center

Tyson Research Center Tyson Research Center is a environmental field station owned and operated by Washington University in St. Louis in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area east of Eureka. It is part of the Henry Shaw Ozark Corridor which consists of over of pr ...

is a field station located west of St. Louis on the

Meramec River The Meramec River (), sometimes spelled Maramec River, is one of the longest free-flowing waterways in the U.S. state of Missouri, draining Blanc, Caldwell, and Hawk. "Location" while wandering Blanc, Caldwell, and Hawk. "Executive Summary" f ...

. Washington University obtained Tyson as surplus property from the federal government in 1963. It is used by the university as a biological field station and research/education center. In 2010, the Living Learning Center was named one of the first two buildings accredited nationwide as a "living building" under the Living Building Challenge, opened to serve as a biological research station and classroom for summer students.

Academics

Arts and Sciences

Arts & Sciences is home to the College of Arts & Sciences as well as graduate programs across its many departments. Feng Sheng Hu is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. * The College of Arts & Sciences is the central undergraduate unit of the university with 330 tenured and tenure-track faculty along with over 100 research scientists, lecturers,

artists in residence Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space a ...

, and visitors serving more than 3,700 undergraduates in 40 academic departments divided into divisions of Humanities,

Social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

, and

Natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

s and

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. The College of Arts & Sciences has an average class size of 18 students, with over 80% having fewer than 24. Almost one-half of the undergraduate classes have fewer than 10 students. The student-faculty ratio is 7:1. * The College of Arts & Sciences offers courses in over a dozen languages, including

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, Spanish, German, French, Swahili, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Greek, Italian,

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

, Portuguese, and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

. University College in Arts & Sciences also offers course work in Swedish, Vietnamese, Irish, and Czech.

Business

Founded as the School of Commerce and Finance in 1917, the Olin Business School was named after entrepreneur John M. Olin in 1988. The school's academic programs include BSBA, MBA, Professional MBA (PMBA), Executive MBA (EMBA), MS in finance, MS in supply chain management, MS in customer analytics, Master of Accounting, Global Master of Finance Dual Degree program, and Doctorate programs, as well as non-degree Executive Education. In 2002, an

Executive MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

program was established in Shanghai, in cooperation with Fudan University. Olin Business School

Olin has a network of more than 16,000 alumni worldwide. Over the last several years, the school's endowment has increased to $213 million (2004) and annual gifts average $12 million per year. Simon Hall was opened in 1986 after a donation from John E. Simon. On May 2, 2014, the $90 million conjoined Knight and Bauer Halls were dedicated, following a $15 million gift from Charles F. Knight and Joanne Knight and a $10 million gift from George and Carol Bauer through the Bauer Foundation. The two buildings are joined by a three-story-high atrium and include spaces for lectures, faculty offices, and classrooms. The café at Bauer Hall includes the only on-campus

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 cou ...

. In October 2019, Olin Business School ranked #1 on Inc.com's Best Business Schools for Entrepreneurship. In January 2020, Olin was named the Poets&Quants MBA Program of 2019. Undergraduate BSBA students take 40–60% of their courses within the business school and are able to formally declare majors in eight areas: accounting, entrepreneurship, finance, healthcare management, marketing, managerial economics and strategy, organization and

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms includ ...

International Business International business refers to the trade of goods, services, technology, capital and/or knowledge across national borders and at a global or transnational scale. It involves cross-border transactions of goods and services between two or mor ...

, and operations and

supply chain management In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services including all processes that transform raw materials into final products between businesses and locations. This can include the movement and st ...

. Graduate students are able to pursue an MBA either full-time or part-time. Students may also take elective courses from other disciplines at Washington University, including law and many other fields.

Mark P. Taylor Mark P. Taylor is the dean of the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, where he is also the Donald Danforth, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Finance. Previously, he was the dean of Warwick Business School (WBS) at the ...

is the Dean of the Olin Business School.

School of Design and Visual Arts

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts was founded in 2006, merging the existing academic units of Architecture and Art with the University’s museum. The School comprises: *College of Architecture *Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design *College of Art *Graduate School of Art * Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, considered one of the most distinguished university art collections in the country Architecture offers BS and BA degrees at the undergraduate level, as well as the Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, Master of Urban Design, MS in Advanced Architectural Design, and MS in Architectural Studies. There are also joint degree programs at the graduate level in conjunction with other divisions of the university. Art offers BFA and BA degrees at the undergraduate level, as well as the MFA in Visual Art and MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture. Art offers BFA and BA degrees at the undergraduate level, as well as the MFA in Visual Art and MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture. In October 2006 the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum moved into new facilities designed by

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

-winning architect, and former faculty member, Fumihiko Maki. The art museum was first established in 1881 and was the first art museum west of the Mississippi River. It houses most of the University's art and sculpture collections, including pieces by

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splas ...

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

, Jenny Holzer,

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, Max Ernst, Willem de Kooning,

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prim ...

, Joan Miró, and

Rembrandt van Rijn Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...

, among others. Carmon Colangelo is the Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Heather Woofter is director of the College of Architecture and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design. Amy Hauft is the director of the College of Art and Graduate School of Art.

McKelvey School of Engineering

Cupples I Building at Washington University in St

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU Engineering) is a school with 88 tenured and tenure-track professors, 40 additional full-time faculty, 1,300 undergraduate students, 560 master's students, 380 PhD students, and more than 20,000 alumni. Aaron Bobick serves as dean of the school. With approximately $27million in annual research awards, the school focuses intellectual efforts on medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship, and security. The school is ranked among the top 50 by the magazine U.S. News & World Report, and the biomedical engineering graduate program was ranked 12th by '' U.S. News & World Report'' in 2012–2013. On January 31, 2019, the School of Engineering & Applied Science was renamed the James McKelvey School of Engineering, in honor of trustee and distinguished alumnus Jim McKelvey Jr., the co-founder of Square, after his donation of an undisclosed sum that the school's dean, Aaron Bobick, said has been the largest in the school's 162-year history. Departments include: *

Biomedical Engineering Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic). BME is also traditionally logical sciences ...

* Computer Science & Engineering * Electrical &

Systems Engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinki ...

Energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of ...

Environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scal ...

Chemical Engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

& Materials Science

School of Law

Washington University School of Law offers joint-degree programs with the Olin Business School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Medicine, and the School of Social Work. It also offers an LLM in Intellectual Property and Technology Law, an LLM in Taxation, an LLM in US Law for Foreign Lawyers, a Master of Juridical Studies (MJS), and a Juris Doctoris (JD). The

offers 3 semesters of courses in the Spring, Summer, and Fall, and requires at least 85 credit hours of coursework for the JD. In the 2022 and 2021 ''U.S. News & World Report'' rankings, the law school ranked 16th nationally. The law school offers a

full-time Full-time or Full Time may refer to: * Full-time job, employment in which a person works a minimum number of hours defined as such by their employer * Full-time mother, a woman whose work is running or managing her family's home * Full-time fa ...

day program, beginning in August, for the J.D. degree. The law school is located in

Anheuser-Busch Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV ( AB InBev), now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple ...

Hall (opened in 1997). Russell Osgood is the Dean of the School of Law. WashUABhall

Medicine

The Washington University School of Medicine was founded in 1891. In the 2021 ''U.S. News & World Report'' rankings of U.S. medical schools, it was ranked sixth for research and tied for 31st for primary care. The McDonnell Genome Institute (directed by

Richard K. Wilson Richard K. Wilson (born March 23, 1959) is a leading American molecular geneticist. He is the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at the Ohio State Uni ...

) is housed within the Washington University School of Medicine; it is one of three NIH-funded major

DNA sequencing DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. T ...

centers in the U.S. and played a significant role in the

Human Genome Project The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both ...

. In 2019, the Washington University School of Medicine was the fourth medical school in the United States that received the most NIH funding.

Washington University School of Medicine2

The medical school partners with

and

(part of BJC HealthCare), where all physicians are members of the school's faculty.

Social Work and Public Health

With roots dating back to 1909 in the university's School of Social Economy, the

George Warren Brown School of Social Work The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis is a school for the training of social science researchers. The Brown School offers a Master of Social Work (MSW), a Master of Public Health (MPH), a Master of Social Policy, a PhD in Social ...

(commonly called GWB, the Brown School, or Brown) was founded in 1925. Brown's academic degree offerings include a Master of Social Work (MSW), a

Master of Public Health The Master of Public Health or Master of Philosophy in Public Health (M.P.H.), Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH), Master of Medical Science in Public Health (MMSPH) and the Doctor of Public Health (Dr.P.H.), International Masters for Healt ...

(MPH), a PhD in Social Work, and a PhD in Public Health Sciences. It is currently ranked first among Master of Social Work programs in the United States. The school was endowed by Bettie Bofinger Brown and named for her husband, George Warren Brown, a St. Louis philanthropist and co-founder of the

Brown Shoe Company Caleres Inc. is an American footwear company that owns and operates a variety of footwear brands. Its headquarters is located in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.John F. McDonnell, who provided an initial $10 million gift to establish the academy in 2005. MISA features a graduate-level endowed scholarship program for international students to study at Washington University. Founded in 2005, the academy's core mission is to develop a community of future global leaders from partner institutions worldwide. The program is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States.

Former dental school

Founded as the Missouri Dental College in 1866, the Washington University School of Dental Medicine was the first dental school west of the Mississippi River and the sixth dental school in the United States. The first dean of the school was Homer Judd. The school closed in 1991.

Rankings and reputation

Washington University's undergraduate program is ranked 14th in the nation in the 2022 '' U.S. News & World Report'' National Universities ranking, and 11th by ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' in their 2018 rankings. The university is ranked 22nd in the world for 2019 by the ''

Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...

''. Undergraduate admission to Washington University is characterized by the Carnegie Foundation and '' U.S. News & World Report'' as "most selective". The ''

Princeton Review The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4,0 ...

'', in its 2020 edition, gave the university an admissions selectivity rating of 99 out of 99. The acceptance rate for the class of 2026 (those entering in the fall of 2022) was 10.0%, with students selected from more than 36,000 applications. Of students admitted, 94 percent were in the top 10 percent of their class. WashU Danforth Campus

The Princeton Review The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4 ...

'' ranked Washington University first for Best College Dorms and third for Best College Food, Best-Run Colleges, and Best Financial Aid in its 2020 edition. In its 2022 edition, Princeton Review also ranked Washington University as number 2 for "Top Entrepreneurship Under Ten Thousand Students", #1 for "Top Midwest Entreprenuerships", as a "Colleges That Create Futures" and of having a great quality of life. ''Niche'' listed the university as the best college for

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

and the second-best college campus and college dorms in the United States in 2020. The Washington University School of Medicine was ranked sixth for research by '' U.S. News & World Report'' in 2020 and has been listed among the top ten medical schools since the rankings were first published in 1987. Additionally, ''U.S. News & World Report'' ranked the university's

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...

and

physical therapy Physical therapy (PT), also known as physiotherapy, is one of the allied health professions. It is provided by physical therapists who promote, maintain, or restore health through physical examination, diagnosis, management, prognosis, pat ...

as tied for first place. ''

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for th ...

'' ranked Washington University sixth in the world for

anatomy and physiology Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

in 2020. In January 2020, Olin Business School was named the Poets&Quants MBA Program of 2019. Washington University has also been recognized as the 12th best university employer in the country by

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

. Washington University was named one of the "25 New Ivies" by ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...

'' in 2006 and has also been called a "Hidden Ivy". Ridgley Hall - West Brookings Quadrangle at Washington University in St

A 2014 study ranked Washington University #1 in the country for income inequality About 22% of Washington University's students came from the top 1%, while only about 6% came from the bottom 60%. In response to this, in 2015, university administration announced plans to increase the number of Pell-eligible recipients on campus from 6% to 13% by 2020, and in 2019 15% of the university's student body was eligible for Pell Grants. In October 2019, then newly inaugurated Chancellor

announced the "WashU Pledge", a financial aid program that provides a free undergraduate education to all full-time Missouri and Southern Illinois students who are Pell Grant-eligible or from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less. The American Talent Initiative found Washington University had the highest Pell growth rate among 130 major universities between the 2015–16 and 2019-20 academic years.

Research, research centers, and institutes

Virtually all faculty members at Washington University engage in academic research, offering opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students across the university's seven schools. Known for its interdisciplinarity and departmental collaboration, many of Washington University's research centers and institutes are collaborative efforts between many areas on campus. More than 60% of undergraduates are involved in faculty research across all areas; it is an institutional priority for undergraduates to be allowed to participate in advanced research. According to the

Center for Measuring University Performance The Center for Measuring University Performance is a research center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. ''The Center'' is best known for an annual report it produces, The Top American Research Universities, that ranks American univers ...

, it is considered to be one of the top 10 private research universities in the nation. A dedicated Office of Undergraduate Research is located on the

and serves as a resource to post research opportunities, advise students in finding appropriate positions matching their interests, publish undergraduate research journals, and award research grants to make it financially possible to perform research. Brown Hall

According to the

, Washington University spent $920 million on research and development in 2020, ranking it 28th in the nation. The university has over 150

funded inventions, with many of them licensed to private companies. Governmental agencies and non-profit foundations such as the NIH,

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national sec ...

, and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

provide the majority of research grant funding, with Washington University being one of the top recipients in NIH grants from year-to-year. Nearly 80% of NIH grants to institutions in the state of Missouri went to Washington University alone in 2007. Washington University and its Medical School play a large part in the

, where it contributes approximately 25% of the finished sequence. The Genome Sequencing Center has decoded the genome of many animals, plants, and cellular organisms, including the platypus, chimpanzee, cat, and corn. NASA hosts its Planetary Data System Geosciences Node on the campus of Washington University. Professors, students, and researchers have been heavily involved with many unmanned missions to Mars. Professor Raymond Arvidson has been deputy principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover mission and co-investigator of the Phoenix lander robotic arm. Washington University professor Joseph Lowenstein, with the assistance of several undergraduate students, has been involved in editing, annotating, making a digital archive of the first publication of poet

Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for '' The Faerie Queene'', an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen o ...

's collective works in 100 years. A large grant from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

was given to support this project centralized at Washington University with support from other colleges in the United States. In 2019, Folding@Home, a

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

project for performing

molecular dynamics Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of th ...

simulations of protein dynamics, was moved to Washington University School of Medicine from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. The project, currently led by Greg Bowman, uses the idle CPU time of personal computers owned by volunteers to conduct

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reproduc ...

research. Folding@home's research is primarily focused on biomedical problems such as

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As ...

Cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

Coronavirus disease 2019 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...

, and

Ebola virus disease Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...

. In April 2020, Folding@home became the world's first exaFLOP computing system with a peak performance of 1.5 exaflops, making it more than seven times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer,

Summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for a m ...

, and more powerful than the top 100 supercomputers in the world, combined.

Museums and library system

With 12 libraries, the Washington University library system is the largest in the state of Missouri, containing over 4.2 million volumes. The main library, Olin Library, is centrally located on the Danforth Campus. In 2020, the Princeton Review ranked the Olin Library among the top 10 "Best College Libraries" in the United States. Other libraries in the system include: Olin Library wide

* Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library * Business Library * Chemistry Library * East Asian Library * Law Library * Kenneth and Nancy Bernard Becker Medical Library * Music Library * Physics Library * Social Work Library * Special Collections & Archives * West Campus Library WashU Law Library

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, established in 1881, is one of the oldest teaching museums in the country. The collection includes works from 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century American and European artists, including George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Cole,

, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder,

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...

, Barbara Kruger, and Christian Boltanski. Also in the complex is the Newman Money Museum exhibiting the collection of American numismatist Eric P. Newman. In October 2006, the Kemper Art Museum moved from its previous location, Steinberg Hall, into a new facility designed by former faculty member Fumihiko Maki. The new Kemper Art Museum is located directly across from Steinberg Hall, which was Maki's first commission in 1959.

Campus life

Student organizations

Washington University has over 300 undergraduate student organizations on campus. Most are funded by the Washington University Student Union, which, as of fiscal year 2020, has an annual budget of $3.6 million that is completely student-controlled and is one of the largest student government budgets in the country. Known as SU for short, the Student Union sponsors large-scale campus programs including

WILD Wild, wild, wilds or wild may refer to: Common meanings * Wild animal * Wilderness, a wild natural environment * Wildness, the quality of being wild or untamed Art, media and entertainment Film and television * ''Wild'' (2014 film), a 2014 A ...

(a semesterly concert in the quad) and free copies of the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

'', and the '' St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' through The Collegiate Readership Program; it also funds the campus television station, WUTV, and the radio station, KWUR. KWUR was named best radio station in St. Louis of 2003 by the Riverfront Times despite the fact its signal reaches only a few blocks beyond the boundaries of the campus. There are 11 fraternities and 9 sororities, with approximately 14% of the student body being involved in Greek life. The Congress of the South 40 (CS40) is a Residential Life and Events Programming Board, which operates outside of the SU sphere. CS40's funding comes from the housing activities fee of each student living in the South 40. Many of these organizations and other campus life amenities are housed in the $43 million Danforth University Center on the

, also dedicated in honor of the Danforth family. The building opened on August 11, 2008, and earned

LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction ...

Gold certification for its environmentally friendly design. WashU McMillan Hall

Washington University has a large number of student-run musical groups on campus, including 12 official

a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...

groups. The Pikers, an all-male group, is the oldest such group on campus. The Greenleafs, an all-female group is the oldest (and only) female group on campus. The

Mosaic Whispers Mosaic Whispers (also known as "The Whispers") is a Washington University all-gender a cappella group that performs music from a variety of genres. The group has performed on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews as well as on local radio station ...

, founded in 1991, is the oldest co-ed group on campus. They have produced 9 albums and have appeared on a number of compilation albums, including Ben Folds' Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella! The Amateurs, who also appeared on this album, is another co-ed a cappella group on campus, founded in 1991. They have recorded seven albums and toured extensively. After Dark is a co-ed

group founded in 2001. It has released three albums and has won several Contemporary A Capella Recording (CARA) awards. In 2008 the group performed on

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

during coverage of the vice presidential debate with specially written songs about Joe Biden and

. The Ghost Lights, founded in 2010, is the campus's newest and only Broadway, Movies, and Television soundtrack group. They have performed multiple philanthropic concerts in the greater St. Louis area and were honored in November 2010 with the opportunity to perform for Nobel Laureate Douglass North at his birthday celebration. More Fools than Wise is a chamber jazz group, and The Aristocats feature Disney songs. The campus newspaper is Student Life. The paper is published twice a week under the auspices of Washington University Student Media, Inc., an independent not-for-profit organization incorporated in 1999. The paper was first founded in 1878, making it one of the oldest student newspapers in the country. Washington University also boasts a successful

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually someth ...

team, and in fact has the largest bridge club of all colleges in the country. The university currently ranks second nationally in collegiate bridge after reaching the finals of the Collegiate Bridge Bowl at the 2022

North American Bridge Championships North American Bridge Championships (NABC) are three annual bridge tournaments sponsored by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). The "Spring", "Summer", and "Fall" NABCs are usually scheduled in March, July, and November for about eleven d ...

Greek life

Washington University has eleven fraternities and nine sororities on campus. In 2012, the chapter of Sigma Alpha Mu was closed following violations of drug and alcohol policies among students. In 2020, a large number of Greek life members, primarily from sororities permanently deactivated from their chapters as a result of perceived systematic oppression, racism, and sexism. Some students called for the total abolition of Greek Life on campus. As of Spring 2021, approximately 14% of the student body participated in Greek Life. ;Washington University Interfraternity Council *

Alpha Delta Phi Alpha Delta Phi (), commonly known as Alpha Delt, ADPhi, A-Delt, or ADP, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. Alpha Delta Phi was originally founded as a literary society by Samuel Eells in 1832 at Hamilton College in C ...

* Alpha Epsilon Pi *

Beta Theta Pi Beta Theta Pi (), commonly known as Beta, is a North American social fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. One of North America's oldest fraternities, as of 2022 it consists of 144 active chapters in the Uni ...

Delta Chi Delta Chi () is an international Greek letter collegiate social fraternity formed on October 13, 1890, at Cornell University, initially as a professional fraternity for law students. On April 30, 1922, Delta Chi became a general membership soc ...

* Kappa Sigma * Sigma Alpha Epsilon * Sigma Chi *

Sigma Nu Sigma Nu () is an undergraduate college fraternity founded at the Virginia Military Institute on January 1, 1869. The fraternity was founded by James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles and James McIlvaine Riley shortly after Hopkins witnessed w ...

* Sigma Phi Epsilon *

Tau Kappa Epsilon Tau Kappa Epsilon (), commonly known as or Teke, is a social college fraternities and sororities, fraternity founded on January 10, 1899, at Illinois Wesleyan University. The organization has chapters throughout the United States and Canada, maki ...

* Theta Xi *

Zeta Beta Tau Zeta Beta Tau () is a Greek-letter social fraternity based in North America. It was founded on December 29, 1898. Originally a Zionist youth society, its purpose changed from Zionism in the fraternity's early years when in 1954 the fraternity be ...

;Washington University Panhellenic Council * Alpha Epsilon Phi *

Alpha Omicron Pi Alpha Omicron Pi (, AOII, Alpha O) is an international women's fraternity founded on January 2, 1897, at Barnard College on the campus of Columbia University in New York City. The main archive URL iThe Baird's Manual Online Archive homepage "AOI ...

* Alpha Phi *

Chi Omega Chi Omega (, also known as ChiO) is a women's fraternity and a member of the National Panhellenic Conference, the umbrella organization of 26 women's fraternities. Chi Omega has 181 active collegiate chapters and approximately 240 alumnae chap ...

* Delta Gamma * Gamma Phi Beta * Kappa Delta *

Kappa Kappa Gamma Kappa Kappa Gamma (), also known simply as Kappa or KKG, is a collegiate sorority founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, United States. It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States ...

Residences

Washington University is number one on the Princeton Review's "Best College Dorms" list for 2020. Over 50% of undergraduate students live on campus. Most of the residence halls on campus are located on the South 40, named because of its adjacent location on the south side of the

and its size of . It is the location of all freshman buildings as well as several sophomore buildings, which are set up in the traditional residential college system. All of the residential halls are co-ed. The dormitories on the South 40 have grown national recognition for their large size and large number of amenities. The South 40 is organized as a pedestrian-friendly environment wherein residences surround a central recreational lawn known as the Swamp. Bear's Den (the largest dining hall on campus), the Habif Health and Wellness Center (Student Health Services), the Residential Life Office,

University police Campus police or university police in the United States and Canada are sworn police or peace officers employed by a college or university to protect that private property of the campus and surrounding areas and the people who live, work, and ...

Headquarters, various student-owned businesses, and the baseball, softball, and intramural fields are also located on the South 40. Another group of residences, known as the Village, is located in the northwest corner of

. Only open to upperclassmen and January Scholars, the North Side consists of Millbrook Apartments, The Village, Village East on-campus apartments, and all fraternity houses except the Zeta Beta Tau house, which is off campus and located just northwest of the South 40. Sororities at Washington University do not have houses by their own accord. The Village is a group of residences where students who have similar interests or academic goals apply as small groups of 4 to 24, known as BLOCs, to live together in clustered suites along with non-BLOCs. Like the South 40, the residences around the Village also surround a recreational lawn. In addition to South 40 and North Side residence halls, Washington University owns several apartment buildings within walking distance to Danforth Campus, which are open to upperclassmen.

Student media

Washington University supports four major student-run media outlets. The university's

student newspaper A student publication is a media outlet such as a newspaper, magazine, television show, or radio station produced by students at an educational institution. These publications typically cover local and school-related news, but they may also rep ...

, ''Student Life'', is available for students. KWUR (90.3 FM) serves as the students' official radio station; the station also attracts an audience in the immediately surrounding community due to its eclectic and free-form musical programming. WUTV is the university's closed-circuit

television channel A television channel is a terrestrial frequency or virtual number over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the terrestrial or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with ...

. The university's main student-run political publication is the Washington University Political Review (nicknamed "WUPR"), a self-described "multipartisan" monthly magazine. Washington University undergraduates publish two literary and art journals, The Eliot Review and Spires Intercollegiate Arts and Literary Magazine. A variety of other publications also serve the university community, ranging from in-house

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

s to glossy alumni magazines to ''WUnderground'', the student-run satirical newspaper.

Athletics

Washington University's sports teams are called the Bears. They are members of the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

and participate in the

University Athletic Association The University Athletic Association (UAA) is an American athletic conference that competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division III. Member schools are highly selective universities located in Georgia, Illinois, M ...

at the Division III level. The Bears have won 23 NCAA Division III Championships— two in women's cross country (2011, 2018), one in women's indoor track and field (2017), one in women's outdoor track and field (2017), one in men's tennis (2008), two in men's basketball (2008, 2009), five in women's basketball (1998–2001, 2010), ten in women's volleyball (1989, 1991–1996, 2003, 2007, 2009), and one in women's soccer (2016) – and 217 UAA titles in 16 different sports. The Athletic Department was headed by John Schael for 34 years, who served as director of athletics in the period 1978–2014. The 2000 Division III Central Region winner of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics/Continental Airlines Athletics Director of the Year award, Schael helped orchestrate the Bears athletics transformation into one of the top departments in Division III. Schael was succeeded by Josh Whitman, 2014–2016. The department is now led by Anthony J. Azama. Washington University also has an extensive club sports program, with teams ranging from men's volleyball to women's Ultimate Frisbee. The Washington University men's club water polo team has been particularly successful, capturing the Collegiate Water Polo Association Division III Club National Championship title in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Funding for club sports comes from the Student Union budget, as each club is deemed a campus group. Washington University is home of Francis Field, site of the

1904 Summer Olympics The 1904 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the III Olympiad and also known as St. Louis 1904) were an international multi-sport event held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from 29 August to 3 September 1904, as part of an extended ...

. Francis Field is also home of the Washington University football, soccer, and track and field teams.

Traditions

– Walk In, Lay Down, the semesterly concert in the Quad which brings in popular musical acts. *

Thurtene Carnival ThurtenE Carnival is the oldest and largest student-run carnival in the United States of America.Swiss, Zach"Cornell, Vanderbilt host similar spring weekend celebrations" ''The Dartmouth'', May 19, 2006. Founded in 1908, it is held annually in the ...

– The oldest and largest student-run carnival in the nation, run by Thurtene Honorary. * Vertigo – A dance party put on by the Engineering School Council (EnCouncil), featuring an innovative computer-controlled modular LED

illuminated dance floor An illuminated dance floor, LED dance floor or disco dance floor is a floor with panels or tiles that light up with different colours. They are used for dance. They were popularised for disco by the 1977 film ''Saturday Night Fever,'' which had go ...

built by students. * Cultural shows – Each year Washington University student groups put on several multicultural shows. Ashoka, the South Asian student association, puts on a performance for

Diwali Diwali (), Dewali, Divali, or Deepavali ( IAST: ''dīpāvalī''), also known as the Festival of Lights, related to Jain Diwali, Bandi Chhor Divas, Tihar, Swanti, Sohrai, and Bandna, is a religious celebration in Indian religions. It is ...

, the Indian festival of lights, that includes a skit and dances. Black Anthology is a student-run performance arts show celebrating black culture. Lunar New Year Festival is a collaboration between the many East and Southeast Asian organizations on campus culminating in a show to celebrate the Asian and Asian American experience with a skit and performances from Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures among others. Africa Week and the African Film Festival are annual events hosted by the African Students Association. Finally, the Association of Latin American Students showcases various forms of Latin and Spanish dances during their performance, Carnaval. *

– A superstition among students to never step on the university seal at Brookings Hall. It is said that doing so will prevent one from graduating on time. *Convocation – A large gathering for new students and their families intended to welcome them to the university. Among others, it includes speeches from seniors and university leadership. *DUC N’ Donuts – Taking place on the first Friday of every month at the Danforth University Center (DUC), this tradition allows students to learn about monthly events while enjoying free coffee and donuts. *Art Prom – Every Spring, students from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts host a “formal” dance with a creative twist. *Underpass Panels – A series of panels along the walls of the underpass connecting the South 40 to the main

. Tradition involves the painting of each panel by students and clubs to advertise upcoming events. Located adjacent to the underpass is a large concrete ball, also painted to advertise student events.

Notable People

Washington University counts more than 156,000 living alumni, 29

Rhodes Scholars The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

, and 26 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students.

Alumni

*Notable recent graduates of the college include: Jim McKelvey, co-founder and director of Block, Inc.; Avram Glazer, chairman of

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

; Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate Films; Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI;

George Zimmer George Zimmer (born November 21, 1948) is an American businessman. He is the founder, former executive chairman (1973–2013) and former CEO (1973–2011) of the Men's Wearhouse, a clothing retailer with more than 1,200 stores in the US and Canad ...

, founder of

Men's Wearhouse Tailored Brands, Inc. is an American retail holding company for various men's apparel stores, including the Men's Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank brands. The company is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with additional corporate offices in Fremont, ...

;

Phil Radford Philip David Radford (born January 2, 1976) is an American activist who served as the executive director of Greenpeace USA. He is the founder and President of Progressive Power Lab, an organization that incubates companies and non-profits that b ...

, CEO of

Greenpeace Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth t ...

; Michael L. Riordan, founder of Gilead Sciences; Siniša Mali, Serbian Minister of Finance;, Broadway Playwright and lyricist, Steven Sater; former Missouri Senator Jim Talent; Nevada Senator

Chic Hecht Mayer Jacob Hecht (November 30, 1928 – May 15, 2006) was an American Republican politician and diplomat who served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 1983 to 1989, and as U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas from 1989 to 1993. Early li ...

; former Nebraska Congressman Hal Daub; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Ken Cooper and

Hank Klibanoff Hank Klibanoff (born March 26, 1949 in Florence, Alabama) is an American journalist, now a professor at Emory University. He and Gene Roberts won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History for the book '' The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Str ...

; Leana Wen, former President of

Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...

; actor and director Harold Ramis ('' Ghostbusters'', '' Caddyshack,

Animal House ''National Lampoon's Animal House'' is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller. It stars John Belushi, Peter Riegert, Tim Matheson, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Thomas Hulc ...

, National Lampoon's Vacation (film series)''); baseball player

Dal Maxvill Charles Dallan Maxvill (born February 18, 1939) is a retired shortstop, coach and general manager in Major League Baseball (MLB). During his career, Maxvill played, coached, or was an executive for four World Series winners and seven league champ ...

; science-show host

Deanne Bell Deanne Olivia Bell is an American television personality and engineer. Career Prior to her media career, Deanne designed optomechanics for military aircraft sensors in Los Angeles and worked as a senior application engineer for a software start ...

('' Design Squad''); NASA astronaut Bob Behnken;, Stephanie Dawkins Davis, the first Black woman from Michigan to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, New York Times best-selling author Susannah Cahalan; sociologist

Pepper Schwartz Pepper Schwartz (born May 11, 1945) is an American sexologist and sociologist teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, magazines, and website columns, and ...

; CDC director Rochelle Walensky;, television actor Johnny Kastl; and

Paralympic The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...

Gold Medalist Kendall Gretsch *Earlier undergraduate alumni include

J. C. R. Licklider Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologistMiller, G. A. (1991), "J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist", ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of Am ...

, pioneer in artificial intelligence;

Charles Nagel Charles Nagel (August 9, 1849 – January 5, 1940) was a United States politician and lawyer from St. Louis, Missouri. He was Secretary of Commerce and Labor during President William Howard Taft's administration (1909–1913) and was one of the ...

, founder of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce;

Julian W. Hill Julian W. Hill (1904-1996) was an American chemist who helped develop nylon. Early life Julian W. Hill was born in 1904, and he grew up in Warrenton, Missouri. He graduated from the Washington University in St. Louis in 1924, where he earned a b ...

, co-inventor of nylon; Clyde Cowan, co-discoverer of the neutrino; James R. Thompson, Governor of Illinois; David R. Francis, Governor of Missouri; William H. Webster, former Director of the FBI and

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

; U.S. Ambassador to Belgium

Sam Fox Sam Fox (born May 9, 1929) is an American businessman in St. Louis, and the owner of Harbour Group Industries. He was the United States Ambassador to Belgium from April 11, 2007 until January 2, 2009. President George W. Bush appointed Fox t ...

; Edward Singleton Holden, president of the University of California; Thomas Lamb Eliot, founder of Reed College; and Abram L. Sachar, founding president of Brandeis University. Graduates of the College of Architecture include George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and

George Kassabaum George E. Kassabaum (December 5, 1920 – August 14, 1982) was an American architect, and one of the co-founders of the HOK architectural firm. Early life George Edward Kassabaum was born in Atchison, Kansas. He was the only child of George Ka ...

, founders of HOK, the world's fourth-largest architectural firm. *The School of Medicine graduated Nobel laureates

Earl Sutherland Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. (November 19, 1915 – March 9, 1974) was an American pharmacologist and biochemist born in Burlingame, Kansas. Sutherland won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971 "for his discoveries concerning the mechanis ...

, Edwin Krebs, and Daniel Nathans. Businessman and adventurer Steve Fossett earned his MBA from the business school. Law school graduate,

Joseph Poindexter Joseph Boyd Poindexter (April 14, 1869 – December 3, 1951) was the eighth Territorial Governor of Hawaii and served from 1934 to 1942. Early life Joseph Boyd Poindexter was born in Canyon City, Oregon to Thomas W. and Margaret Pipkin Poind ...

was governor of Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attack. Doctoral alumni include the former presidents of Johns Hopkins, Clemson, Wake Forest, Morehouse, Mount Union, Yonsei, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. An alumnus of the Graduate School of Architecture, C. P. Wang (March 1973), designed

Taipei 101 Taipei 101 (; stylized as TAIPEI 101), formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a supertall skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. This building was officially classified as the world's tallest from its opening in 2004 until the 2009 ...

, the world's second-tallest building. *Notable students who dropped out:

Charles Eames Charles Ormond Eames Jr. (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) was an American designer, architect and filmmaker. In professional partnership with his spouse Ray Kaiser Eames, he was responsible for groundbreaking contributions in the field of a ...

(who was expelled for defending modernist architecture); actor Peter Sarsgaard ('' Boys Don't Cry'', '' An Education'', ''

Flight Plan Flight plans are documents filed by a pilot or flight dispatcher with the local Air Navigation Service Provider (e.g. the FAA in the United States) prior to departure which indicate the plane's planned route or flight path. Flight plan forma ...

'');

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thr ...

(who left in protest at not winning a playwriting prize);

Enterprise Rent-a-Car Enterprise Rent-A-Car is an American car rental agency headquartered in Clayton, Missouri, in Greater St. Louis. Enterprise is the flagship brand of Enterprise Holdings, which also owns other agencies including Alamo Rent a Car and National ...

founder

Jack C. Taylor Jack Crawford Taylor (April 14, 1922 – July 2, 2016) was an American businessman and billionaire who founded the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company. Taylor also was a fighter pilot for the United States Navy during World War II. Early life and e ...

(who withdrew to fight in World War II); actor

Robert Guillaume Robert Guillaume (born Robert Peter Williams; November 30, 1927 – October 24, 2017) was an American actor and singer, known for his role as Benson DuBois in the ABC television series ''Soap'' and its spin-off, '' Benson'', as well as for voi ...

(who withdrew to study opera); Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author

Bill Dedman Bill Dedman (born 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, an investigative reporter for '' Newsday'', and co-author of the biography of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, '' Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark ...

(who left to become a newspaper reporter); and IQ-record holder Marilyn vos Savant (to help with a family investment business). File:Tennessee Williams NYWTS.jpg,

, 20th-century Playwright of

American drama Theater in the United States is part of the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. The central hub of the American theater scene is Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and ...

File:Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director (cropped).jpg, Rochelle Walensky, 19th Director of the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georg ...

File:Andrew McCabe official portrait.jpg, Andrew McCabe Former Deputy Director of the FBI File:Dr Leana Wen Jan 2013.jpg, Leana Wen, Former President of

File:Jim Studio Headshow.jpeg, Jim McKelvey, Co-founder and director of Block, Inc File:Stephanie Davis (Judge) (cropped).jpg, Stephanie Davis, First Black woman from Michigan to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit File:Robertbehnkenv2.jpg, alt=Bob Behnken is a NASA Astronaut and Test Engineer., Bob Behnken,

Astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

Test engineer A test engineer is a professional who determines how to create a process that would best test a particular product in manufacturing and related disciplines, in order to assure that the product meets applicable specifications. Test engineers are a ...

File:Clyde Cowan.jpg, Clyde Cowan, Co-discoverer of the Neutrino File:Charles Nagel, 1849–1940.jpg,

, Founder of the United States Chamber of Commerce File:J. C. R. Licklider.jpg,

, Pioneer in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

and the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

File:Sarsgaard at WUSTL 2007.jpg, Peter Sarsgaard, Award-winning actor File:Phoebe W Couzins.jpg, Phoebe Couzins, First woman U.S. Marshal File:Steven Sater.jpg, Steven Sater, Broadway lyricist and playwright ( Spring Awakening) File:Phil Radford.jpg,

, Cofounder of the

Democracy Initiative The Democracy Initiative is a progressive coalition formed in late 2012 which had goals of restricting the unlimited monetary donations by corporations and the wealthy to political campaigns and causes permitted by the United States Supreme Court d ...

and Former Executive Director of

Faculty

Economist and Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Douglass North Douglass Cecil North (November 5, 1920 – November 23, 2015) was an American economist known for his work in economic history. He was the co-recipient (with Robert William Fogel) of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. In the wo ...

; husband and wife biochemists and co-Nobel Prize winners

Carl Carl may refer to: * Carl, Georgia, city in USA * Carl, West Virginia, an unincorporated community *Carl (name), includes info about the name, variations of the name, and a list of people with the name * Carl², a TV series * "Carl", an episode of ...

and Gerty Cori;, cofounder and first executive director of the ACLU Roger Nash Baldwin, physicist and Nobel Prize winner Arthur Holly Compton; novelists Stanley Elkin and William Gass; poets Carl Phillips and Mary Jo Bang; architect Fumihiko Maki; neurologist and Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini; notable artist Max Beckmann; sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson; Poets Laureate Howard Nemerov and Mona Van Duyn; sociologist and "outlaw

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

Alvin Ward Gouldner Alvin may refer to: Places Canada *Alvin, British Columbia United States *Alvin, Colorado *Alvin, Georgia *Alvin, Illinois * Alvin, Michigan *Alvin, Texas *Alvin, Wisconsin, a town *Alvin (community), Wisconsin, an unincorporated community Other ...

; attorney, former Counsel to Vice-president

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic ...

and former Tennessee Attorney General

Charles Burson Charles Wainman Burson (born August 28, 1944) is a former legal counsel and Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States under Al Gore. He assumed the position of legal counsel from Kumiki Gibson in February 1997 after serving almos ...

; writer and culture critic Gerald Early; economist, and former Chair of President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

's Council of Economic Advisors,

Murray Weidenbaum Murray Lew Weidenbaum (10 February 1927 – 20 March 2014), was an American economist and author. He was the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor and Honorary Chairman of the Murray Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, an ...

; chemist Joseph W. Kennedy, co-discoverer of the element

; computer scientist

Jonathan S. Turner Jonathan Shields Turner is a senior professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests include the design and analysis of high performance routers and s ...

, internationally renowned expert in computer networking; computer scientist

Raj Jain Raj Jain (born 17 August 1951) is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Education Dr. Jain obtained a Ph.D. in ...

, pioneer in the field of network congestion; Law Professor

Troy A. Paredes Troy A. Paredes served as a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from August 1, 2008 to August 3, 2013. Commissioner Paredes was appointed to the SEC by President George W. Bush on June 30, 2008 to replace Paul S. A ...

, currently on leave as a commissioner of the SEC; sociologist

Adia Harvey Wingfield Adia Harvey Wingfield is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and the 2018 President of Sociologists for Women in Society. She is the author of several books, including ''No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's ...

; former vice president of the National Academy of Sciences, Barbara Schaal, first woman Director of both the National Gallery of Canada and the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin ...

Jean Sutherland Boggs Jean Sutherland Boggs (June 11, 1922 – August 22, 2014) was a Canadian academic, art historian and civil servant. She was the first female Director of both the National Gallery of Canada and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.Salisbury, Stephan"Jean ...

; chemist Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of ''Science Magazine'', and Law Professor

Peter Mutharika Arthur Peter Mutharika (born 18 July 1940) is a Malawian politician and lawyer who was President of Malawi from May 2014 to June 2020. Mutharika has worked in the field of international justice, specialising in international economic law, inter ...

, president of

Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northe ...

. File:Roger Nash Baldwin.jpg, Roger Nash Baldwin, Cofounder of the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

File:Gerty Theresa Cori.jpg, Gerty Cori, First woman to be awarded the

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accordi ...

File:Arthur Compton 1927.jpg, Arthur Holly Compton, Discoverer of the

Compton effect Compton scattering, discovered by Arthur Holly Compton, is the scattering of a high frequency photon after an interaction with a charged particle, usually an electron. If it results in a decrease in energy (increase in wavelength) of the photon ...

File:Mona Van Duyn.jpg, Mona Van Duyn,

United States Poet Laureate The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

File:Douglass North.jpg,

Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make o ...

Economist File:Alfred Hershey.jpg,

Alfred Hershey Alfred Day Hershey (December 4, 1908 – May 22, 1997) was an American Nobel Prize–winning bacteriologist and geneticist. He was born in Owosso, Michigan and received his B.S. in chemistry at Michigan State University in 1930 and his Ph.D. i ...

, List of Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Laureate bacteriologist known for the Hershey–Chase experiment File:Arthur Peter Mutharika 2014 (cropped).jpg,

, former President of

File:Barbara Schaal.jpg, Barbara A. Schaal, Barbara Schaal, First woman to be elected vice president of the National Academy of Sciences File:Joseph W. Kennedy Los Alamos ID.png, Joseph W. Kennedy, Co-discoverer of Plutonium File:Mary Jo Bang 2015.jpg, Mary Jo Bang, Pushcart Prize (2003) File:Fumihiko Maki 2010 alt.jpg, Fumihiko Maki, United Nations' new building architect File:SEC Troy A Paredes.jpg, Troy A. Paredes, Troy A. Peredes, Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission File:Jain8cr.jpg,

, internationally renowned expert in computer networking

References

External links

*
Washington University Athletics website
* * {{Authority control Washington University in St. Louis, Educational institutions established in 1853 1853 establishments in Missouri Gothic Revival architecture in Missouri Collegiate Gothic architecture in Missouri Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certified buildings Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certified buildings Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design basic silver certified buildings Private universities and colleges in Missouri Universities and colleges in St. Louis Universities and colleges in St. Louis County, Missouri Glassmaking schools