Articles Tagged: Iowa Board of Regents

A group of 26 Republican lawmakers wants Iowa’s public universities to explain themselves and their teacher training curriculum by defining a long list of terms plucked from course descriptions — like “compulsory heterosexuality,” “critical media literacy” and “equitable science teaching.”

A tenure ban is shelved again, but more reviews of faculty may be proposed.

By the time the University of Iowa student union celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025, administrators expect the campus hub will be deep into an $81.1 million renovation that includes swapping its historic Iowa House Hotel for a new “campus well-being and mental health center.”

Typifying the gap separating the union representing thousands of University of Iowa Health Care workers and their governing Board of Regents, union representatives Wednesday opened contract negotiations with a 25-page proposal including a 14-percent raise while regents offered a 1.5- to 3-percent raise on a single page.

Iowa State University, which begins developing the $200 million CyTown entertinament district this spring, is looking for vendors, retailers and restaurants to eventually fill out the regional destination.

Iowa’s Board of Regents on Tuesday will conduct mid-year performance reviews of their university presidents, who over the last year have faced a range of high-profile issues and challenges -- like the transition from pandemic-era restrictions, free speech on campus, and hundreds of millions in new facilities and upgrades.

Although the University of Iowa stripped orthopedics from its second application to build a new hospital in North Liberty – after critics of the first, denied application slammed its focus on orthopedics and state officials cited the heavy orthopedics bent in its rejection – UI Health Care officials now are calling the project an “orthopedic hospital.”

Although a Republican-led effort last year to change the way Iowa funds its public universities didn’t materialize, the concept isn’t dead — as lawmakers are airing plans to revisit the idea in the upcoming session in their debate over how much to give the state institutions.

Board of Regents President Mike Richards issues order after Gov. Kim Reynolds, citing security threats, banned app’s usage on state computers and phones.

The coming spring semester likely will be the last for Kirkwood Community College’s Iowa City campus – at least in its current form – after a recent study of the site found the institution would have to spend nearly $40 million over the next 24 years to maintain the campus that’s seen a 75-percent enrollment drop in the last five years.

A $1.2 billion deal the University of Iowa cemented in March 2020 for the private operation of its utilities system over the next 50 years amounts to the “largest financial obligation ever held by Iowa taxpayers,” State Auditor Rob Sand found in his four-year review of the blockbuster agreement.

Three years after stepping in as dean of the University of Iowa’s nationally-ranked College of Engineering, Harriet Nembhard is leaving to become president of a southern California liberal arts college specializing in science, engineering and math.

The athletic departments across Iowa’s public universities have spent more than a combined $7.3 million taking COVID-19 tests and other pandemic-related precautions and measures – expenses covered by their main campuses, athletics revenue or federal aid.

The University of Iowa is seeking help hiring temporary workers for its State Hygienic Lab that – like many other industries – is facing a labor shortage stretching its staff thin as it aims to process an average of 1,000 tests a day for things like COVID-19, newborn and maternal screenings, and tuberculosis.

Spelling out its contention with a $12.8 million jury verdict awarded to a contractor on its Stead Family Children’s Hospital, the state – on behalf of the University of Iowa and Board of Regents – is accusing jurors of leveling “excessive” damages and of being “influenced by passion or prejudice.”