Festive start to the Brown School’s centennial year Myra López 8/29/2024 Social Work Share this Story: Dorian Traube (right), the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School and Professor, poses with WashU's mascot and Atia Thurman, lecturer, at the Brown School's Centennial launch party on August 27. The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis kicked off its centennial year with a celebration full of sweet treats, free swag, and a look ahead to the next century. The festivities spread across Hillman Hall’s 1st and 3rd floors, where guests ate caramel apples, cupcakes, popcorn, and snow cones, posed for photos with WashU’s bear mascot and many others proudly sported their new red Centennial t-shirts. A button-making station allowed guests to craft their own commemorative buttons highlighting the school’s 100-year impact. Dorian Traube, the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School and Professor, shared the excitement about the Brown School’s future. “We stand in this amazing legacy of a hundred years but we are not looking back alone. We are plowing forward. We have so many amazing opportunities on the horizon at the Brown School and we can’t wait to get to work on those,” she said. Ross Brownson, the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor, who has been with the Brown School for 16 years, predicts it will continue to lead in the coming century. “The Brown School has been a center of excellence, for now, a hundred years in social work and more recently it’s been the center of excellence for public health and social policy and it’s a little hard to imagine what the next hundred years will bring for the profession of social work and the profession of public health but whatever that is the Brown School will be in the middle of it and will be one of the global leaders,” he said. Additional events to celebrate the centennial are planned over the coming months.