Higher Ed

Expanding Iowa’s community college offerings to include four-year bachelor’s degrees could address the state’s growing workforce needs, shrink its “educational deserts” in rural communities, and improve earnings for Iowans.

While University of Iowa officials declined to share details of how many grants and contracts have been terminated across campus, U.S. Health and Human Services and NSF disclosures indicate millions of UI research funding has been lost.

As white smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney at 6:08 p.m. May 8 in Vatican City, University of Iowa Catholic Studies Chair Kristy Nabhan-Warren – although 5,000 miles from the action – felt uniquely positioned to understand its meaning and potential implications in today’s conflicted world of both increasing interconnectedness and growing division.

With its already-sprawling campus continuing to grow both in Iowa City and across the region and state, University of Iowa Health Care has created a new administrative position for a “physician executive.”

The University of Iowa has agreed to retroactively reinstate a distinguished professorship and thousands that came with it for a faculty member who says the state — through an error-riddled audit in 2017 — wrongfully accused him of abusing his position.

The University of Iowa Senior College offers 10-14 courses each semester, taught by emeritus and current UI faculty members as well as experts from the community. The classes typically meet for four two-hour sessions, either on Zoom or in person, at locations around the Iowa City area.

For nearly two decades, Kirkwood Community College has provided summertime Kirkwood Interactive Camps for Kids — also known as KICK. …

Aisha Ahmad Nyala will have to spend a year in a residential correctional facility and will be on supervised probation for up to five years.

With a slate of newly-confirmed regents on the nine-member board tasked with governing Iowa’s three public universities, President Sherry Bates this week doled out regent assignments to the board’s seven committees.

Maintaining its lease of the historic Macbride Nature Recreation Area that for decades has hosted thousands of researchers, naturalists, and students will cost the University of Iowa an immediate $14.8 million in repairs and upgrades — plus nearly $1 million annually to maintain — according to a new report on UI use of the land.

Addressing a proposal to up tuition and fees for resident undergraduate students nearly 3 percent across Iowa’s public universities, student representatives on Monday asked the board to halt, pause, or at least strongly consider the impact of the rising cost.

Before regents on Monday authorized their executive director to hire a firm, form a committee, and develop a timeline for the upcoming search to replace outgoing Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen, one lawmaker reminded them of a new law governing the selection process.