Higher Ed

After seeing big declines in alcohol-related driving deaths in the 1990s, progress nationally has stalled — compelling University of Iowa researchers to study whether a growing breadth of automotive technology could again move the needle.

After taking over Iowa City’s 150-year-old Mercy Hospital and its handful of clinics in January with a $28 million bid in a contentious bankruptcy auction, the University of Iowa has sold the Mercy clinic in Kalona that it obtained through the process to Washington County Hospital and Clinics for $425,000.

Nearly three years after longtime University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center Director George Weiner announced plans to step down, the health care enterprise has announced his permanent replacement in Mark Burkard.

The University of Iowa Police Department has added decals featuring 988, the national suicide and crisis lifeline number, to all its squad cars and Nite Ride vehicles.

Cities around Iowa turn to UNI’s Public Art Incubator for assistance with their public art collections, offering students hands-on experience as they “contribute to their communities in a real way.” Students restored two Cedar Rapids sculptures through the program this summer.

Now in training mode, Olivia Chambers is feeling excited as one of 21 women and 33 total athletes chosen for the Paralympic swim team. She also becomes the first UNI swimmer in school history named to a U.S. Paralympic team and joins an elite list of Panther athletes to qualify for either the Olympic or Paralympic Games.

More than two years after a retired Iowa State University agronomy professor sued her former employer, the Board of Regents, and state for wage and gender discrimination, the Iowa Supreme Court has retained her appeal of a lower court’s August ruling limiting her ability to recover lost wages.

There is currently a shortage of around 80,000 truck drivers in the U.S., a number that could double over the next five years. Effects of the shortage can be felt all across from hometown businesses to family farms to the grocery store.

Continuing a change enacted last year in how the University of Iowa doles out income generated through a “Strategic Initiatives Fund” – created by way of its $1.165 billion public-private utilities partnership four years ago – administrators said they’ll reserve nearly $8 million for distribution on a rolling basis over the coming year “to address emerging needs and opportunities as they arise.”

Complicating vehicle and foot traffic in and around the main University of Iowa Health Care campus and its neighboring Kinnick Stadium — beginning this summer and stretching into and through the upcoming Hawkeye football season — is construction of a new road and roundabout, creating a multifaceted utility corridor necessary for a massive new UIHC inpatient tower in the works.

Nearly six years after a University of Iowa Cambus slipped on icy roads in Coralville and veered into the oncoming lane, hitting another vehicle and injuring the woman inside, the state has agreed to settle a resulting lawsuit for $68,000.

A team of three ISU instructors and 13 students traversed the Midwest for eight days in late May, chasing storms and visiting weather centers and landmarks as part of a course on storm observation.