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 kno ...
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 th ...
. 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 Fores ...
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
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
, and
Medical Campus in the
Central West End
The Central West End is a neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, stretching from Midtown's western edge to Union Boulevard and bordering on Forest Park with its outstanding array of free cultural institutions. It includes the Cathedral Basilica of ...
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. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...
s 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 organiz ...
added the phrase "in St. Louis" in 1976.
Washington University has been a member of the
Association of American Universities
The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 63 universities in the United States ( ...
since 1923 and is
classified 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 I ...
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
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
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
Wayman Crow (March 7, 1808 – May 10, 1885) was one of the founders of Washington University, a St. Louis businessman, and a politician.
Early life
Born in Hartford, Kentucky on March 7, 1808, Crow was the youngest of eight children. His paren ...
and
Unitarian minister
William Greenleaf Eliot
William Greenleaf Eliot (August 5, 1811 – January 23, 1887) was an American educator, Unitarian minister, and civic leader in Missouri. He is most notable for founding Washington University in St. Louis, and also contributed to the foundi ...
, grandfather of the poet
T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National B ...
, led the effort.
The university's first chancellor was
Joseph Gibson Hoyt. Crow secured the university charter from the
Missouri General Assembly
The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Missouri. The bicameral General Assembly is composed of a 34-member Senate and a 163-member House of Representatives. Members of both houses of the General Assembly are ...
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
John O'Fallon (November 17, 1791 – December 17, 1865) was a businessman, philanthropist, and military officer, a nephew of the explorer William Clark. During the 19th century he rose to become the wealthiest person in St. Louis, Missouri. The ...
, 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.
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
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 th ...
. In 1854, the board of trustees changed the name to "Washington Institute" in honor of
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 th ...
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 other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
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.
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. 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 second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
. 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
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
. 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 Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the d ...
, 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, and William Huse found a site of just beyond
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 Fores ...
, 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
William H. Danforth (September 10, 1870 – December 24, 1955) was an American businessman known for founding Ralston Purina in St. Louis, Missouri in 1894. He was a co-founder of the American Youth Foundation (AYF) and the author of the book, ...
.
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 research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
and
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
) won unanimously with its plan for a row of
Collegiate Gothic 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. ...
, Ridgley, and Cupples began shortly thereafter. The university delayed occupying these buildings until 1905 to accommodate the
1904 World's Fair
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an World's fair, international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds tota ...
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 var ...
. 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
Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radi ...
, 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
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Janu ...
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 exhibi ...
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 nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons beh ...
bombardment of
uranium nitrate hexahydrate. The plutonium produced there in 1942 was shipped to the
Metallurgical Laboratory 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
Glenn Theodore Seaborg (; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work i ...
's team used it for extraction, purification, and characterization studies of the exotic substance.
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
Gerty Theresa Cori (; August 15, 1896 – October 26, 1957) was an Austro-Hungarian and American biochemist who in 1947 was the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Me ...
, 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
William Henry Danforth II (April 10, 1926 – September 16, 2020) was a physician, professor of medicine, academic administrator, and philanthropist. He was chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1971 until 1995. He was the grandso ...
, 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
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
, established 70 new faculty chairs, secured a $1.72 billion endowment, and tripled the amount of student scholarships.
In 1995,
Mark S. Wrighton
Mark Stephen Wrighton (born June 11, 1949) is an American academic and chemist, and the current President of The George Washington University. In September 2021, Wrighton was named the Interim President of The George Washington University for an ...
, former provost at
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
, 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.
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: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...
, the third 2000 Presidential debate on October 17,
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...
, the second
2004 Presidential debate on October 8,
2004, 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, 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
Cortex Innovation Community, or Cortex is a vibrant innovation community serving as an inclusive economic engine for the St. Louis region. We create equitable economic impacts by leveraging high quality facilities, developing a portfolio of progra ...
in St. Louis's
Midtown neighborhood.
Cortex
Cortex or cortical may refer to:
Biology
* Cortex (anatomy), the outermost layer of an organ
** Cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the vertebrate cerebrum, part of which is the ''forebrain''
*** Motor cortex, the regions of the cerebral cortex i ...
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
In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...
,
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, Washing ...
,
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 an ...
,
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 product ...
, and
Centene. The innovation hub has generated more than 3,800 tech jobs in 14 years.
In the summer of 2002,
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. ...
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 Forsyth may refer to:
Places Oceania
* Forsyth Island, Queensland, Australia, one of the West Wellesley Islands (aka Forsyth Islands)
* Forsyth Island, Tasmania, Australia
* Forsyth Island (New Zealand), in the outer Marlborough Sounds of South I ...
). 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
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...
, relocating hundreds of surface parking spaces underground, and creating an expansive new park.
In June 2019,
Andrew D. Martin, former dean of the
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) is the liberal arts and sciences school of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Established in 1841 with seven students and two teachers, the college is currentl ...
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 U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
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. pre ...
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,
2004, 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
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
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
Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to:
Politics
*A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people.
*A member of a Democratic Party:
**Democratic Party (United States) (D)
**Democratic ...
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 Pe ...
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 Unincorporated may refer to:
* Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality
* Unincorporated entity, a type of organization
* Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...
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 wer ...
, 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 listed ...
status on February 27, 1987.
The
Barry Flanagan
Barry Flanagan OBE RA (11 January 1941 – 31 August 2009) was an Irish-Welsh sculptor. He is best known for his bronze statues of hares and other animals.
Biography
Barry Flanagan was born on 11 January 1941 in Prestatyn, North Wales. F ...
bronze statue, "
Thinker on a Rock," 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
*
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. ...
Center for the HumanitiesCenter for Mental Health Services Research*
Center for Social Development
*
Crow Observatory
* 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 student government, ''
Student Life'' newspaper,
WUTV
WUTV (channel 29) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WNYO-TV (channel 49). Both stations share studios on Hertel ...
, a recording studio for
KWUR
KWUR is a college radio station in St. Louis, Missouri located at 90.3 MHz FM. KWUR was founded on July 4, 1976 at Washington University in St. Louis, and represents one of the last remaining independent and fully student-managed radio ...
, 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, football, and soccer teams. It i ...
Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community EngagementInternational 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
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...
*
Olin Business School
The Olin Business School is one of seven academic schools at Washington University in St. Louis. Founded in 1917, the business school was renamed for entrepreneur John M. Olin in 1988. The school offers BSBA, Master of Business Administration (M ...
* Ridgley Hall: This served as the University's first library building until the early 1960s. During the
1904 World's Fair
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an World's fair, international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds tota ...
, 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 Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...
's
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
The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts is a part of Washington University in St. Louis. The Sam Fox School was founded in 2006 by uniting the academic units of Architecture and Art with the University's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to creat ...
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 al ...
The Center for Teaching and Learning*
Washington University School of Law
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law (WashULaw) is the law school of Washington University in St. Louis, a private university in St. Louis, Missouri. WashULaw has consistently ranked among the top law schools in the country; it is c ...
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
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 ...
; 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
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...
, 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.
Washington University Medical Center
The Washington University Medical Center (WUMC), located in St. Louis, Missouri, is a large scale health-care focused commercial development located in St. Louis' Central West End neighborhood. The Washington University Medical Center Redevelopme ...
comprises spread over approximately 12 city blocks, located along the eastern edge of
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 Fores ...
within the
Central West End
The Central West End is a neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, stretching from Midtown's western edge to Union Boulevard and bordering on Forest Park with its outstanding array of free cultural institutions. It includes the Cathedral Basilica of ...
neighborhood of
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
. The campus is home to the
Washington University School of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine has 1,260 students, 604 of which are pursuing a medical degree with ...
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 of ...
and
St. Louis Children's Hospital. Many of the buildings are connected via a series of
skyway
A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclos ...
s and corridors.
Olin
Residence Hall
A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...
, named for
Spencer T. Olin
Spencer Truman Olin (August 20, 1900 – April 14, 1995) was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was an executive of the Olin Corporation, founded in 1892 by his father, Franklin W. Olin, eventually serving as first vice president of ...
, 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. ...
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
The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) was established in 2012 and is located in Bethesda, Maryland. NCATS is one of 27 institutes and centers of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the US Departmen ...
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 late ...
, 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 scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
research building which will sit at the eastern edge of the Medical Campus in the
Cortex Innovation Community
Cortex Innovation Community, or Cortex is a vibrant innovation community serving as an inclusive economic engine for the St. Louis region. We create equitable economic impacts by leveraging high quality facilities, developing a portfolio of progra ...
. Construction of the building is set to be finished in 2023.
Medical Campus Includes:
*
Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center
*
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 of ...
*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
McDonnell Genome Institute (The Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Genome Institute) at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is one of three Nih, NIH funded large-scale sequencing centers in the United States. Affiliated with Washing ...
*Rehabilitation Institute of St. Louis
*
St. Louis Children's Hospital
*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 an ...
. 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
The Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (AROTC) is the United States Army component of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. It is the largest Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program which is a group of college and university-based offic ...
, 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. Perform ...
Department. Renovations are still ongoing; recent additions to the North Campus space include a small eatery operated by
Bon Appétit Management Company, 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
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 ...
, 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 app ...
building housing mostly administrative space. The West Campus building was home to the Clayton branch of the
Famous-Barr
The Famous-Barr Co. (originally Famous and Barr Co.) was a division of Macy's, Inc. (formerly Federated Department Stores). Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, in the Railway Exchange Building, it was the flagship store of The May Department S ...
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, information storage, store, and information distribution, distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems a ...
offices from across the Danforth and Medical School campuses. There is also a
music rehearsal room on the second floor.
Both the North and West Campuses are accessible by the
St. Louis MetroLink
MetroLink is the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan mass transit system serving Missouri and the Metro East area of Illinois. The system consists of two rail lines (Red Line and Blue Line) connecting St. Louis Lambert International Airport and ...
, which, with 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 an ...
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
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
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" fr ...
. 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
Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...
-track faculty along with over 100 research scientists, lecturers,
artists in residence, 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 soci ...
, 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 languages, 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 ...
,
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 de ...
, Portuguese, and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the 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 the power of the ...
. University College in Arts & Sciences also offers course work in Swedish,
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
, Irish, and Czech.
Business
Founded as the School of Commerce and Finance in 1917, the
Olin Business School
The Olin Business School is one of seven academic schools at Washington University in St. Louis. Founded in 1917, the business school was renamed for entrepreneur John M. Olin in 1988. The school offers BSBA, Master of Business Administration (M ...
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
Executive education (ExEd or Exec. Ed) refers to academic programs at graduate-level business schools for executives, business leaders and functional managers globally. These programs are generally non-credit and non-degree-granting, but sometime ...
. 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 accoun ...
program was established in Shanghai, in cooperation with
Fudan University
Fudan University () is a national public research university in Shanghai, China. Fudan is a member of the C9 League, Project 985, Project 211, and the Double First Class University identified by the Ministry of Education of China. It is als ...
.
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 c ...
.
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
Managerial economics is a branch of economics involving the application of economic methods in the managerial decision-making process.• Trefor Jones (2004). ''Business Economics and Managerial Decision Making'', WileyDescriptionand chapter-pre ...
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 include m ...
,
International Business, 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 stor ...
. 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
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...
, 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
is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
Early life
Maki was born in Tokyo. ...
. 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 expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
,
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
Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, ...
,
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
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism ...
,
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
,
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 prima ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
, 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 consi ...
, 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
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
Aaron F Bobick is dean of the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
Bobick’s research is in the field of artificial intelligence and computer vision. He has chaired and published papers in top-tier academic con ...
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
In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...
, after his donation of an undisclosed sum that the school's dean,
Aaron Bobick
Aaron F Bobick is dean of the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
Bobick’s research is in the field of artificial intelligence and computer vision. He has chaired and published papers in top-tier academic con ...
, 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
Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) is an academic program at many universities which comprises scientific and engineering aspects of computing. CSE is also a term often used in Europe to translate the name of engineering informatics academic ...
*
Electrical
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...
&
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 enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...
*
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 heat a ...
,
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 scale f ...
&
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 int ...
*
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, and ...
&
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
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, ...
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 fat ...
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 glo ...
Hall (opened in 1997).
Russell Osgood is the Dean of the School of Law.
Medicine
The
Washington University School of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine has 1,260 students, 604 of which are pursuing a medical degree with ...
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
Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare given by a health care provider. Typically this provider acts as the first contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates other specialist care t ...
. The
McDonnell Genome Institute
McDonnell Genome Institute (The Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Genome Institute) at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is one of three Nih, NIH funded large-scale sequencing centers in the United States. Affiliated with Washing ...
(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
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 late ...
-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. Th ...
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 a ...
. In 2019, the Washington University School of Medicine was the fourth medical school in the United States that received the most
NIH
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 late ...
funding.
The medical school partners with
St. Louis Children's Hospital and
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 of ...
(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 Socia ...
(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 (MPH), a PhD in Social Work, and a PhD in Public Health Sciences. It is currently ranked first among
Master of Social Work
The Master of Social Work (MSW) is a master's degree in the field of social work. It is a professional degree with specializations compared to Bachelor of Social Work (BSW). MSW promotes macro-, mezzo- and micro-aspects of professional social wor ...
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. The school was the first in the country to have a building for the purpose of social work education, and it is also a founding member of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health.
McDonnell International Scholars Academy
The ''McDonnell International Scholars Academy'' (MISA) is an alliance between universities that supports collaboration on research, development of joint educational opportunities, and joint research conferences. The program is named after
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 University ...
''. 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.
''
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 ...
'' 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 building ...
and the second-best college campus and college dorms in the United States in 2020. The
Washington University School of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine has 1,260 students, 604 of which are pursuing a medical degree with ...
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 wor ...
and
physical therapy 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 the ...
'' ranked Washington University sixth in the world for
anatomy and physiology in 2020. In January 2020,
Olin Business School
The Olin Business School is one of seven academic schools at Washington University in St. Louis. Founded in 1917, the business school was renamed for entrepreneur John M. Olin in 1988. The school offers BSBA, Master of Business Administration (M ...
was named the Poets&Quants
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 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 re ...
.
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".
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
Andrew D. Martin 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
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 ...
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.
According to 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 I ...
, Washington University spent $920 million on research and development in 2020, ranking it 28th in the nation. The university has over 150
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 late ...
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 secu ...
,
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 I ...
, 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, succeeding t ...
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
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 a ...
, 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
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, ''Spirit (rover), Spirit'' and ''Opportunity (rover), Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two 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 of ...
'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
Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a volunteer computing project aimed to help scientists develop new therapeutics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. This includes the process of protein folding and the movements ...
, a
distributed computing
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...
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 the ...
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 consider ...
. 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 reproduci ...
research. Folding@home's research is primarily focused on biomedical problems such as
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, 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 short-term me ...
,
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 quickly ...
, and
Ebola virus disease. In April 2020, Folding@home became the world's first
exaFLOP computing system with a peak performance of 1.5
exaflops
In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...
, 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 topography, topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous.
The term (mountain top) is generally used ...
, 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:
*
Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library
*
Business Library
*
Chemistry Library
*
East Asian Library
*
Law Library
A law library is a special library used by law students, lawyers, judges and their law clerks, historians and other scholars of legal history in order to research the law. Law libraries are also used by people who draft or advocate for new la ...
*
Kenneth and Nancy Bernard Becker Medical Library
*
Music Library
A music library contains music-related materials for patron use. Collections may also include non-print materials, such as digitized music scores or audio recordings. Use of such materials may be limited to specific patron groups, especially in ...
*
Physics Library
*
Social Work Library
*
Special Collections & Archives
*
West Campus Library
The
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...
, 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
George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 – July 7, 1879) was an American artist, soldier and politician known in his lifetime as "the Missouri Artist". Initially a Whig Party (United States), Whig, he was elected as a delegate to the Missouri legisl ...
,
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintin ...
,
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
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism ...
,
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and hi ...
,
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
,
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 consid ...
,
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 ...
,
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captio ...
, and
Christian Boltanski
Christian Liberté Boltanski (6 September 1944 – 14 July 2021) was a French sculptor, photographer, painter, and film maker. He is best known for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual art, conceptual style.
Early li ...
. Also in the complex is the Newman Money Museum exhibiting the collection of American
numismatist
A numismatist is a specialist in numismatics ("of coins"; from Late Latin ''numismatis'', genitive of ''numisma''). Numismatists include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholars who use coins and other currency in object-based research. Altho ...
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
is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
Early life
Maki was born in Tokyo. ...
. 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 Washington University in St. Louis has varied programs and events for students.
Student organizations
Washington University has over 30registered undergraduate student organizationson campus. All are funded by WUSTL's student government, the Wash ...
, 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 d ...
'', ''
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
The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a major regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the ''Belleville News-De ...
'' through The Collegiate Readership Program; it also funds the campus television station, WUTV, and the radio station,
KWUR
KWUR is a college radio station in St. Louis, Missouri located at 90.3 MHz FM. KWUR was founded on July 4, 1976 at Washington University in St. Louis, and represents one of the last remaining independent and fully student-managed radio ...
. 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
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 ...
, also dedicated in honor of the Danforth family. The building opened on August 11, 2008, and earned
LEED Gold certification for its environmentally friendly design.
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, 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
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 ...
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
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 ...
. 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 somethi ...
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 da ...
.
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 Epsilon Pi
Alpha Epsilon Pi (), commonly known as AEPi, is a college fraternity founded at New York University in 1913 by Charles C. Moskowitz and ten other men. The fraternity has more than 150 active chapters across the United States, Canada, United K ...
*
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 Unite ...
*
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
Kappa Sigma (), commonly known as Kappa Sig, is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at the University of Virginia in 1869. Kappa Sigma is one of the five largest international fraternities with currently 318 active chapters and col ...
*
Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Sigma Alpha Epsilon (), commonly known as SAE, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. It was founded at the University of Alabama on March 9, 1856. Of all existing national social fraternities today, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is t ...
*
Sigma Chi
Sigma Chi () International Fraternity is one of the largest North American fraternal literary societies. The fraternity has 244 active (undergraduate) chapters and 152 alumni chapters across the United States and Canada and has initiated more tha ...
*
Sigma Nu
Sigma Nu () is an undergraduate Fraternities and sororities in North America, college fraternity founded at the Virginia Military Institute on January 1, 1869. The fraternity was founded by James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles and James McIlva ...
*
Sigma Phi Epsilon
Sigma Phi Epsilon (), commonly known as SigEp, is a social college fraternity for male college students in the United States. It was founded on November 1, 1901, at Richmond College (now the University of Richmond), and its national headquarte ...
*
Tau Kappa Epsilon
Tau Kappa Epsilon (), commonly known as or Teke, is a social college fraternity founded on January 10, 1899, at Illinois Wesleyan University. The organization has chapters throughout the United States and Canada, making the Fraternity an interna ...
*
Theta Xi
Theta Xi () is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. It was founded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) on April 29, 1864. Of all the social fraternities today, Theta Xi was the only one founded during the Civil War. It ...
*
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 beco ...
;Washington University Panhellenic Council
*
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Epsilon Phi ( or AEPhi) is a sorority and one of the members of the National Panhellenic Conference, an umbrella organization overseeing 26 North American sororities.
It was founded on October 24, 1909, at Barnard College in Morningside ...
*
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
Alpha Phi International Women's Fraternity (, also known as APhi) is an international sorority with 172 active chapters and over 250,000 initiated members.
Founded at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York on September 18, 1872, it is the fo ...
*
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
Delta Gamma (), commonly known as DG, is a women's fraternity in the United States and Canada with over 250,000 initiated members. It has 150 collegiate chapters and more than 200 alumnae groups. The organization's executive office is in Columbus ...
*
Gamma Phi Beta
Gamma Phi Beta (, also known as GPhi or Gamma Phi) is an international college sorority. It was founded in Syracuse University in 1874, and was the first of the Greek organizations to call itself a sorority. The main archive URL iThe Baird's Man ...
*
Kappa Delta
Kappa Delta (, also known as KD or Kaydee) was the first sorority founded at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University), in Farmville, Virginia.
Kappa Delta is one of the "Farmville Four" sororities founded at the university, wh ...
*
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 a ...
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
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 ...
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
A residential college is a division of a university that places academic activity in a community setting of students and faculty, usually at a residence and with shared meals, the college having a degree of autonomy and a federated relationship wi ...
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 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
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 ...
. 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 repor ...
,
''Student Life'', is available for students.
KWUR
KWUR is a college radio station in St. Louis, Missouri located at 90.3 MHz FM. KWUR was founded on July 4, 1976 at Washington University in St. Louis, and represents one of the last remaining independent and fully student-managed radio ...
(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 d ...
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 an ...
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
In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below.
Association football
*Belgian Thir ...
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
In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below.
Association football
*Belgian Thir ...
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 s ...
.
Francis Field is also home of the Washington University football, soccer, and track and field teams.
Traditions
*
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 ...
– Walk In, Lay Down, the semesterly concert in the Quad which brings in popular musical acts.
*
Thurtene Carnival – 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 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
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
,
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, and
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
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.
*
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. ...
– 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
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 ...
. 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
James Morgan McKelvey Jr. is an American billionaire businessman, who is the co-founder of Block, Inc. McKelvey was appointed as an independent director of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in January 2017. As of November 2021, his net wort ...
, co-founder and director of
Block, Inc.
Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) is an American multinational technology conglomerate founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and launched its first platform in 2010. It has been traded as a public company on the New York Stock Exch ...
;
Avram Glazer
Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews ...
, 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 City of Salford, Salford to ...
;
Jon Feltheimer
Jon Feltheimer (born September 2, 1951) is the Chief Executive Officer of Lions Gate Entertainment and has held that position since 2000. Feltheimer has led Lionsgate to grow into the leading Canadian independent filmed entertainment studio.
Bi ...
, CEO of
Lionsgate Films
Lionsgate Films (formerly known as Cinépix Film Properties) is an American film production and film distribution studio, headquartered in Santa Monica and founded in Canada, and is the flagship division of Lionsgate Entertainment. It is the larg ...
;
Andrew McCabe
Andrew George McCabe (born March 18, 1968) is an American attorney who served as the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from February 2016 to March 2018 and as the acting Director of the FBI from May 9, 2017, to Augus ...
, former deputy director of the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
;
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
Gilead Sciences, Inc. () is an American biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Foster City, California, that focuses on researching and developing antiviral drugs used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, and C ...
;
Siniša Mali
Siniša Mali ( sr-Cyrl, Синиша Мали, ; born 25 August 1972) is a Serbian economist and politician serving as deputy prime minister of Serbia since 2022 and as minister of finance since 2018. A member of the Serbian Progressive Party ( ...
, Serbian Minister of Finance;, Broadway Playwright and lyricist, Steven Sater; former Missouri Senator
Jim Talent
James Matthes Talent (born October 18, 1956) is an American politician who was a U.S. Senator from Missouri from 2002 to 2007. He is a Republican and resided in the St. Louis area while serving in elected office.
After serving for eight years ...
; 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 life ...
; former Nebraska Congressman
Hal Daub
Harold John Daub Jr. (born April 23, 1941) is an American lawyer and politician from Nebraska who served four terms in the United States House of Representatives and as the 48th Mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. In 2012, Daub was elected to the Board of R ...
; 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
Leana Sheryle Wen (; born Wen Linyan; January 27, 1983) is an American physician, an op-ed columnist with ''The Washington Post'' and a CNN medical analyst. She is a practicing physician, a former Health Commissioner for the City of Baltimore, ...
, 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
Harold Allen Ramis (; November 21, 1944 – February 24, 2014) was an American actor, comedian, director and writer. His best-known film acting roles were as Egon Spengler in ''Ghostbusters'' (1984) and ''Ghostbusters II'' (1989), and as Russell ...
(''
Ghostbusters
''Ghostbusters'' is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film directed and produced by Ivan Reitman, and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. It stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, thr ...
'', ''
Caddyshack
''Caddyshack'' is a 1980 American sports comedy film directed by Harold Ramis, written by Brian Doyle-Murray, Ramis and Douglas Kenney, and starring Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Michael O'Keefe and Bill Murray with supporting ...
,
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 Hu ...
,
National Lampoon's Vacation (film series)
''National Lampoon's Vacation'' film series is a comedy film series initially based on John Hughes' short story "Vacation '58" that was originally published by '' National Lampoon'' magazine. The series is distributed by Warner Bros. and consists ...
''); 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 cham ...
; 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 star ...
(''
Design Squad
''Design Squad'' is an American reality competition television series targeted towards children ages 10–13. Contestants are high school students who design and build machines to compete for a $10,000 college scholarship from Intel.
The series a ...
''); NASA astronaut
Bob Behnken
Robert Louis Behnken (; born July 28, 1970, in St. Ann, Missouri) is a NASA astronaut, engineer, and former Chief of the Astronaut Office.
Behnken holds a Ph.D in mechanical engineering and the rank of colonel in the U.S. Air Force, where he s ...
;,
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
Susannah Cahalan (born January 30, 1985) is an American journalist and author, known for writing the memoir '' Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness'', about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. She ...
; sociologist
Pepper Schwartz
Pepper Schwartz (born May 11, 1945) is an American sexologist and sociologist teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, magazines, and web ...
; CDC director
Rochelle Walensky
Rochelle Paula Walensky (née Bersoff; born April 5, 1969) is an American physician-scientist who is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. P ...
;, 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
Kendall Gretsch (born April 2, 1992) is an American triathlete, biathlete and cross-country skier. She was born with spina bifida. She has competed in both Summer Paralympics and Winter Paralympics and has a unique distinction of winning gold m ...
*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, founder of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is the largest lobbying group in the United States, representing over three million businesses and organizations. The group was founded in April 1912 out of local chambers of commerce at the urgin ...
;
Julian W. Hill, co-inventor of nylon;
Clyde Cowan
Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr (December 6, 1919 – May 24, 1974) was an American physicist, the co-discoverer of the neutrino along with Frederick Reines. The discovery was made in 1956 in the neutrino experiment.
Frederick Reines received the Nobel P ...
, co-discoverer of the neutrino;
James R. Thompson
James Robert Thompson Jr. (May 8, 1936 – August 14, 2020), also known as Big Jim Thompson, was an American attorney and politician who served as the 37th governor of Illinois from 1977 to 1991. A moderate Republican who sometimes took more ...
, Governor of Illinois;
David R. Francis
David Rowland Francis (October 1, 1850January 15, 1927) was an American politician and diplomat. He served in various positions including Mayor of St. Louis, the 27th Governor of Missouri, and United States Secretary of the Interior. He was the ...
, Governor of Missouri;
William H. Webster
William Hedgcock Webster (born March 6, 1924) is an American attorney and jurist who most recently served as chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council from 2005 until 2020. He was a United States district judge of the United States Distr ...
, former Director of the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
and
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
; 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 to ...
;
Edward Singleton Holden
Edward Singleton Holden (November 5, 1846 – March 16, 1914) was an American astronomer and the fifth president of the University of California.
Early years
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1846 to Edward and Sarah Frances (Singleton) ...
, president of the University of California;
Thomas Lamb Eliot, founder of Reed College; and
Abram L. Sachar
Abram Leon Sachar (February 15, 1899 – July 24, 1993) was an American historian and founding president of Brandeis University.
Early life and education
He was born in New York City to Samuel Sachar, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, and Sa ...
, founding president of Brandeis University. Graduates of the College of Architecture include
George Hellmuth,
Gyo Obata
Gyo Obata (小圃 暁, February 28, 1923 – March 8, 2022) was an American architect, the son of painter Chiura Obata and his wife, Haruko Obata, a floral designer. In 1955, he co-founded the global architectural firm HOK (formerly Hellmuth, O ...
, and
George Kassabaum, founders of
HOK, the world's fourth-largest architectural firm.
*The
School of Medicine
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
graduated Nobel laureates
Earl Sutherland,
Edwin Krebs, and
Daniel Nathans
Daniel Nathans (October 30, 1928 – November 16, 1999) was an American microbiologist. He shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application in restriction mapping.
Early life a ...
. Businessman and adventurer
Steve Fossett
James Stephen Fossett (April 22, 1944 – September 3, 2007) was an American businessman and a record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer. He was the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon and in a fixed-wing aircraf ...
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 (who was expelled for defending modernist architecture); actor
Peter Sarsgaard
John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. His first feature role was in '' Dead Man Walking'' in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films ''Another Day in Paradise'' and ''Desert Blue''. That same year, Sarsga ...
(''
Boys Don't Cry'', ''
An Education
''An Education'' is a 2009 coming-of-age drama film based on a memoir of the same name by British journalist Lynn Barber. The film was directed by Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by Nick Hornby. It stars Carey Mulligan as Jenny, a bright school ...
'', ''
Flight Plan'');
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 thre ...
(who left in protest at not winning a playwriting prize);
Enterprise Rent-a-Car 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 ed ...
(who withdrew to fight in World War II); actor
Robert Guillaume (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
Marilyn vos Savant (; born Marilyn Mach; August 11, 1946) is an American magazine columnist who has the highest recorded intelligence quotient (IQ) in the ''Guinness Book of Records'', a competitive category the publication has since retired. S ...
(to help with a family investment business).
File:Tennessee Williams NYWTS.jpg, 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 thre ...
, 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
Rochelle Paula Walensky (née Bersoff; born April 5, 1969) is an American physician-scientist who is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. P ...
, 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, Georgi ...
File:Andrew McCabe official portrait.jpg, Andrew McCabe
Andrew George McCabe (born March 18, 1968) is an American attorney who served as the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from February 2016 to March 2018 and as the acting Director of the FBI from May 9, 2017, to Augus ...
Former Deputy Director of the FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
File:Dr Leana Wen Jan 2013.jpg, Leana Wen
Leana Sheryle Wen (; born Wen Linyan; January 27, 1983) is an American physician, an op-ed columnist with ''The Washington Post'' and a CNN medical analyst. She is a practicing physician, a former Health Commissioner for the City of Baltimore, ...
, 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 ...
File:Jim Studio Headshow.jpeg, Jim McKelvey
James Morgan McKelvey Jr. is an American billionaire businessman, who is the co-founder of Block, Inc. McKelvey was appointed as an independent director of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in January 2017. As of November 2021, his net wort ...
, 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
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (in case citations, 6th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:
* Eastern District of Kentucky
* Western District of ...
File:Robertbehnkenv2.jpg, alt=Bob Behnken is a NASA Astronaut and Test Engineer., Bob Behnken
Robert Louis Behnken (; born July 28, 1970, in St. Ann, Missouri) is a NASA astronaut, engineer, and former Chief of the Astronaut Office.
Behnken holds a Ph.D in mechanical engineering and the rank of colonel in the U.S. Air Force, where he s ...
, 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, succeeding t ...
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 als ...
File:Clyde Cowan.jpg, Clyde Cowan
Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr (December 6, 1919 – May 24, 1974) was an American physicist, the co-discoverer of the neutrino along with Frederick Reines. The discovery was made in 1956 in the neutrino experiment.
Frederick Reines received the Nobel P ...
, Co-discoverer of the Neutrino
A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is a fermion (an elementary particle with spin of ) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass ...
File:Charles Nagel, 1849–1940.jpg, Charles Nagel, Founder of the United States Chamber of Commerce
The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is the largest lobbying group in the United States, representing over three million businesses and organizations. The group was founded in April 1912 out of local chambers of commerce at the urgin ...
File:J. C. R. Licklider.jpg, 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
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 re ...
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, pub ...
File:Sarsgaard at WUSTL 2007.jpg, Peter Sarsgaard
John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. His first feature role was in '' Dead Man Walking'' in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films ''Another Day in Paradise'' and ''Desert Blue''. That same year, Sarsga ...
, Award-winning actor
File:Phoebe W Couzins.jpg, Phoebe Couzins
Phoebe Wilson Couzins (September 8, 1842 – December 6, 1913) was one of the first female lawyers in the United States. She was the second woman to serve as a licensed attorney in Missouri and the third or fourth to be a licensed attorney in t ...
, First woman U.S. Marshal
The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforce ...
File:Steven Sater.jpg, Steven Sater
Steven Sater is a Tony Award, Grammy Award, and Laurence Olivier Award-winning American poet, playwright, lyricist, television writer and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the book and lyrics for the Tony Award-winning 2006 Broadway musi ...
, Broadway lyricist and playwright ( Spring Awakening)
File:Phil Radford.jpg, 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 ...
, Cofounder of the Democracy Initiative and Former Executive Director 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 ...
Faculty
Economist and Nobel Memorial Prize winner
Douglass North;
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 te ...
and
Gerty Cori
Gerty Theresa Cori (; August 15, 1896 – October 26, 1957) was an Austro-Hungarian and American biochemist who in 1947 was the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Me ...
;, cofounder and first executive director of the ACLU
Roger Nash Baldwin
Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August 26, 1981) was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as executive director of the ACLU until 1950.
Many of the ACLU's original landmark cases took place under ...
, physicist and Nobel Prize winner
Arthur Holly Compton
Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radi ...
; novelists
Stanley Elkin
Stanley Lawrence Elkin (May 11, 1930 – May 31, 1995) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.
Biograp ...
and
William Gass
William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...
; poets
Carl Phillips
Carl Phillips (born 1959) is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.
Early life
Phillips was born in Everett, Washington. He was born a child of a military family, moving year-by-year unt ...
and
Mary Jo Bang; architect
Fumihiko Maki
is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
Early life
Maki was born in Tokyo. ...
; neurologist and Nobel Prize winner
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Rita Levi-Montalcini (, ; 22 April 1909 – 30 December 2012) was an Italian Nobel laureate, honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for th ...
; notable artist
Max Beckmann
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s ...
;
sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson;
Poets Laureate Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov (March 1, 1920 – July 5, 1991) was an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. For ''The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov'' (1977) ...
and
Mona Van Duyn
Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1992.
Biography
Early years
Van Duyn was born May 9, 1921 in Waterloo, Iowa."Van Duyn, Mona (1921–2004)." '' Dictio ...
; sociologist and "outlaw
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
"
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
Oth ...
; 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 Part ...
and former Tennessee Attorney General
Charles Burson; writer and culture critic
Gerald Early
Gerald Lyn Early (born April 21, 1952) is an American essayist and American culture critic. He is currently the Merle Kling Professor of Modern letters, of English, African studies, African-American studies, American culture studies, and Directo ...
; 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
Joseph William Kennedy (May 30, 1916 – May 5, 1957) was an American chemist who was a co-discoverer of plutonium, along with Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan and Arthur Wahl. During World War II he was head of the CM (Chemistry and Metallurgy) ...
, co-discoverer of the
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 exhibi ...
; computer scientist
Jonathan S. Turner
Jonathan Shields Turner is a senior professor of Computer Science in the Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests incl ...
, internationally renowned expert in
computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ma ...
; computer scientist
Raj Jain, pioneer in the field of
network congestion
Network congestion in data networking and queueing theory is the reduced quality of service that occurs when a network node or link is carrying more data than it can handle. Typical effects include queueing delay, packet loss or the blocking of ...
; Law Professor
Troy A. Paredes
Troy A. Paredes served as a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 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. Bus ...
, currently on leave as a commissioner of the SEC; sociologist
Adia Harvey Wingfield; former vice president of the National Academy of Sciences, Barbara Schaal, first woman Director of both the
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...
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 Fr ...
,
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"J ...
; chemist
Holden Thorp
Herbert Holden Thorp (born August 16, 1964) is an American chemist, professor and entrepreneur. He was the tenth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assuming the position on July 1, 2008, succeeding James Moeser, and, a ...
, 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 northeast ...
.
File:Roger Nash Baldwin.jpg, Roger Nash Baldwin
Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August 26, 1981) was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as executive director of the ACLU until 1950.
Many of the ACLU's original landmark cases took place under ...
, 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
Gerty Theresa Cori (; August 15, 1896 – October 26, 1957) was an Austro-Hungarian and American biochemist who in 1947 was the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Me ...
, 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, accord ...
File:Arthur Compton 1927.jpg, Arthur Holly Compton
Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radi ...
, 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
Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1992.
Biography
Early years
Van Duyn was born May 9, 1921 in Waterloo, Iowa."Van Duyn, Mona (1921–2004)." '' Dictio ...
, 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, Douglass North, 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 out ...
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. ...
, 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 out ...
bacteriologist
A bacteriologist is a microbiologist, or similarly trained professional, in bacteriology -- a subdivision of microbiology that studies bacteria, typically Pathogenic bacteria, pathogenic ones. Bacteriologists are interested in studying and learnin ...
known for the Hershey–Chase experiment
The Hershey–Chase experiments were a series of experiments conducted in 1952 by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase that helped to confirm that DNA is genetic material.
While DNA had been known to biologists since 1869, many scientists still as ...
File:Arthur Peter Mutharika 2014 (cropped).jpg, 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 ...
, former 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 northeast ...
File:Barbara Schaal.jpg, Barbara Schaal, First woman to be elected vice president of the National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
File:Joseph W. Kennedy Los Alamos ID.png, Joseph W. Kennedy
Joseph William Kennedy (May 30, 1916 – May 5, 1957) was an American chemist who was a co-discoverer of plutonium, along with Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan and Arthur Wahl. During World War II he was head of the CM (Chemistry and Metallurgy) ...
, Co-discoverer of 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 exhibi ...
File:Mary Jo Bang 2015.jpg, Mary Jo Bang, Pushcart Prize (2003)
File:Fumihiko Maki 2010 alt.jpg, Fumihiko Maki
is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
Early life
Maki was born in Tokyo. ...
, United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
' new building architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
File:SEC Troy A Paredes.jpg, Troy A. Peredes, Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
File:Jain8cr.jpg, Raj Jain, internationally renowned expert in computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ma ...
References
External links
*
Washington University Athletics website*
*
{{Authority control
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