Articles Tagged: Iowa Board of Regents

Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa have resurrected their fully in-person orientation programs this summer — including offering students the chance to spend the night in a residence hall. The University of Iowa is offering a hybrid model.

The University of Iowa is suing the contractors who installed 900-some windows in its 14-story Stead Family Children’s Hospital, many of which have proven faulty and flawed, with cracks and dilapidation already showing just five years after the hospital’s opening.

The University of Iowa over its first year with Follett didn’t impose enough checks and balances to ensure it’s getting what it’s owed, according to a June 2022 internal audit presented last week to the Board of Regents.

The state Board of Regents has agreed to settle a complaint with a University of Northern Iowa student who accused the institution and its employees of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

State executives Monday agreed to pay more than a half-million dollars to reimburse the University of Iowa for pipe damage its 65-year-old Medical Research Center suffered during an arctic snap in early 2018 that set records and burst pipes across the community.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, higher education challenges remain — and in some cases are more prevalent — although COVID, with all the discomfort it brought, might have forced to the forefront one potential solution: online education.

Recap of news from across the state

Both University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson and Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen are getting 8.3 percent pay raises this summer — bumping up their annual base pay from $600,000 to $650,000.

Continuing what has become annual University of Iowa Health Care cost increases, the Board of Regents on Wednesday approved a 6 percent rate hike — which officials said could have been higher given current economic conditions.

Although social media has proved beneficial in many ways, Iowa’s public universities are facing a surge in mental health needs – like other campuses nationally following the COVID-19 pandemic – and they’re looking at social media as contributing to the problem.

Over the next 30 years, Iowa State University is planning to renew or replace 2.3 million square feet of buildings on its Ames campus and build 700,000 square feet of new construction, according to a facilities master plan presented to its governing Board of Regents on Wednesday.

Systems are not in place on the University of Northern Iowa campus to ensure compliance with the 32-year-old federal Clery Act – which governs higher education crime reporting and security mandates – leaving the Cedar Falls-based university at risk of hundreds of thousands in fines and safety breaches, according to an internal audit.

The state education budget lawmakers finalized early Wednesday includes a fraction of the $22.1 million increase Iowa’s public universities sought for the upcoming budget year.

Inflation and supply chain issues have driven up the cost of two premiere University of Iowa construction projects about to begin – including a new wrestling facility featuring state-of-the-art locker rooms and practice spaces for the Hawkeye men’s and women’s wrestling teams.

Iowa’s public universities last year used a waiver process to bypass open searches — designed to attract a diverse pool of qualified candidates and ensure all applicants have an equal opportunity to compete for open positions — in more than 150 hires, most of which involved the University of Iowa.