All departments in the College of Arts & Sciences will select two days to cancel classes during the spring 2021 semester, as part of Washington University’s efforts to support student mental health and compensate for the absence of a spring break, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences Jen Smith announced in an email to students, Dec. 7.

After students objected to the replacement of Spring Break with two nonconsecutive “wellness days,” Washington University announced a revised spring calendar that included two consecutive wellness days and one additional wellness day, Dec. 3.

The College of Arts & Sciences released an open letter reaffirming its commitment to policies of diversity and inclusion Thursday, placing special emphasis on applying these policies to the physics department—which currently has received criticism no tenured or tenured-track female professors.

Though less than 5 percent of eligible students voted, Arts & Sciences students approved the ArtSci Council’s new constitution on Tuesday, giving the group the expectations and structure necessary to move forward.

Monday will be the first day in nearly 25 years that students will have the opportunity to enroll in classes with the Department of Sociology.
In 1991 the Department of Sociology was disbanded at Washington University due to reasons disclosed by Claire Navarro, managing editor of A&S Magazine, including competing departmental priorities and even a physical altercation between a sociology chair and a graduate student.

As one of its selling points on tours to prospective students, Wash. U. espouses how easy it is for undergraduates to take classes across schools and even earn dual degrees if so inclined. What Wash. U. neglects to tell those students is that, if they are in the College of Arts & Sciences, earning that second degree or major will consume any time you may have had for electives.

When sophomore and cadet Connor Eulberg approached Dean Jen Smith last fall to ask why the College of Arts & Sciences didn’t offer credit for ROTC courses, he didn’t anticipate it would take 20 months to receive an answer.

As Washington University admissions officers sift through early decision applicants for the class of 2017 this month, they will have one less thing on their minds. “We do it in three-and-a-half,” the age-old motto of the January Program, will soon become obsolete as the last group of JProg students arrives on campus in January.

Faced with the decision of whether to take a third term as vice president of the National Academy of Sciences or become Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University, biology professor Barbara Schaal chose the latter. Schaal, whose work in evolutionary biology has taken her everywhere from Washington D.C.

Clusters, the core of the College of Arts & Sciences’ Discovery Curriculum introduced in 2001, have been replaced for students in the class of 2016 and beyond. They have been replaced with “Integrations,” and the Discovery Curriculum will be succeeded by the new “Integrated InQuiry” (IQ) system, developed collaboratively over a four-year period.