Social work students cited for field work

Quarter-million hours volunteered at agencies

Working closely with school, church and community leaders, health providers and other professionals, students of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work provided nearly a quarter million hours of volunteer services during the 1997-98 academic year, according to estimates by the school's Office of Field Education.

During May 15 Commencement ceremonies, six of those students will be honored with the 1997-98 Dr. Clara Louise Myers Outstanding Practicum Student Award and another will receive the Shirlee Fink Kahn Award for exemplary volunteer service in the St. Louis community.

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Mary Wickes' bequest to fund library collection in film, theatre, television

University Libraries are a principal beneficiary of the estate of alumna and actress Mary Wickes, whose classic comic touch enlivened stage and screen for decades. Wickes died in 1995.

From the actress' $2 million bequest, made in memory of her parents, has come the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts. The fund will be dedicated at 3 p.m. Thursday, April 16, in the Women's Building Formal Lounge.

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Take Our Daughters to Work Day encourages girls' ideas and dreams

About 80 girls ages 9 to 15 are expected to come to the University to participate in Take Our Daughters to Work Day Thursday, April 23 -- day dedicated to girls' ideas, spirit and dreams. This is the fifth year that faculty and staff have joined in the national event.

Take Our Daughters to Work Day was created in 1993 by the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national, multi-issue public women's fund based in New York. The day focuses attention on the needs and concerns of girls and helps them stay focused on their future during adolescence -- a period when many girls lose self-esteem.

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Caribbean lizard study yields key new findings about evolution

Lizards may not get the limelight in beer commercials, but thanks to Washington University biologists the slighted creatures now have marquee value in evolution and genetics.

A team led by Jonathan B. Losos, Ph.D., associate professor of biology in Arts and Sciences, has discovered that remarkably similar lizard communities have evolved independently on different islands in the Caribbean. Losos and his colleagues examined the DNA of 56 species of anole lizards found in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica and the Greater Antilles. Using several common genes of different species, they developed a "family tree" of these species, the most commonly observed in the Caribbean, to test theories on the lizards' evolutionary history.
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