Higher Ed

Iowa State University’s Catt Hall -- honoring the women’s suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, accused by some of holding racist views -- will permanently retain its name after an ISU name-removal committee voted 11-4 to keep it.

Although Mercy Iowa City – given its pending sale to the University of Iowa – now has more resources to pay all the attorneys and restructuring agents it hired to navigate its bankruptcy, a U.S. trustee has objected to fees for one law firm, arguing the amount “shocks the conscience.”

Nearly two years after first bringing to the Board of Regents its intentions to renovate the nearly 50-year-old Duane Banks Baseball Stadium, University of Iowa this week released renderings and details not shared before -- including its plans to double the stadium’s size and construct a new and larger “seating bowl.”

A Board of Regents “DEI study group” – having spent six months reviewing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across Iowa’s public universities following Legislative criticism – has pitched 10 recommendations of new policies and actions the campuses can take, including one ensuring no student, employee, applicant, or campus visitor is compelled to disclose their pronouns.

In a return paired with a side of reconnection, former University of Iowa Health Care Chief Financial Officer Bradley Haws — who left two years ago for the CFO post at Emory Healthcare — has been chosen to come back as UI Hospitals & Clinics CEO, a role vacated by Suresh Gunasekaran in early 2022.

With little debate or discord — after months of twists and turns and objections — a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge on Monday approved the sale of Iowa City’s only community hospital Mercy Iowa City to the University of Iowa for $28 million.

The state of Iowa will consider paying $2 million to the daughters of a Muscatine woman who died during an MRI at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in 2018 from an allergic reaction to the contrast dye administered intravenously.

As Monday’s final sale hearing approaches in the historic and heated bankruptcy of Iowa City’s oldest and only-remaining community hospital, precarious deals are being tested by objections and rising tempers – including from Mercy Hospital partners and creditors unlikely to get the millions they’re due.

A day after Iowa Democratic Party leadership condemned the University of Iowa student Democrats for an “antisemitic” social media post, calling on student organization leaders to resign, the chair of the state party’s Arab American caucus accused his party leadership of misquoting the students and called for an apology.

The University Democrats of Iowa statement expressed support for Palestine while using the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ which has a complex and sometimes antisemitic history.

Nearly a year after Kirkwood Community College announced the closure of its 32-year-old Iowa City campus on the southeast side of town, Oral-B Laboratories has agreed to buy the 84,277-square-foot property for $6.4 million – pending 120 days of “due diligence.”

Just southeast of where the ballooning University of Iowa Health Care operation is planning to build a new $1 billion inpatient tower, UI President Barbara Wilson on Tuesday surveyed a hole in the ground that will – among many things – make that new tower possible.