Articles Tagged: Iowa Board of Regents

With Iowa eager to put COVID in the rear view mirror, Board of Regents President Mike Richards in May lifted the state of emergency he imposed in March 2020 and mandated Iowa’s public universities return to pre-pandemic operations.

The University of Iowa-based State Hygienic Laboratory – which for the last nearly two years has been on the front lines of Iowa’s COVID response – hasn’t been consistently charging customers or collecting documentation, leaving on the table as much as $1.1 million, according to a recent audit.

COVID-19 altered how faculty members across Iowa’s public universities spent their work days in the last academic year – draining hours spent in a classroom and decreasing time on research and scholarship while spiking virtual instruction and online grading and preparation.

The ongoing enrollment losses Iowa’s public universities are experiencing mirror trends shaping the higher education landscape nationally – with the Board of Regent campuses since fall 2019 losing 7 percent of their total enrollment, compared with a 6.5 percent two-year drop at the national level.

University of Iowa Health Care is planning a $300 million bond sale to help finance its new $395 million hospital in North Liberty — but not until January, prompting the Board of Regents next week to consider action that would make proceeds from the debt sale retroactive.

The University of Iowa has identified 77 more damaged or at-risk windows in its Stead Family Children’s Hospital that need an emergency “safety film” — costing another $771,516.

After much speculation on how COVID-19 would affect Iowa’s high-profile university athletic programs in the 2021 budget year — with deficit projections p

The University of Iowa’s dining operation this fall is about 900 workers shy of being fully staffed — putting it at only 42 percent of its goal.

B.J. and Jim Hobart didn’t set out to be restaurateurs, but they’re opening their second restaurant – the Old Hospital Pub – in the former infirmary on the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School campus in Vinton.

The upper-level University of Northern Iowa students who last week experienced the “unnecessary stress and anxiety” of losing their specialized Plant Systematics professor as part of his discipline for mandating masks want their money back.

Heeding mounting pressure from not just directly-affected students but the larger student body, University of Northern Iowa late Wednesday revised its discipline of an embattled professor who required masks — allowing him to continue teaching the class he was removed from last week.

The dozen University of Northern Iowa students left without an instructor after administrators stripped him of his in-person teaching duties for making them wear masks have continued meeting at their scheduled class time, and on Tuesday finalized a joint statement in support of their lost professor.

The University of Northern Iowa faculty union is filing a prohibited practice complaint against the Board of Regents and UNI for reprimanding their tenured peer for rebuffing regent guidance by requiring masks in class and threatening lower grades if students didn’t comply.

Upper-level University of Northern Iowa students who this week lost their specialized “plant systematics” professor feel they’re the ones being punished by the administration’s decision to discipline him -- for imposing a mask mandate -- by stripping him of in-person teaching duties.

Professor Steve L. O’Kane — who is 64 and has been at UNI for 26 years — will be allowed to continue teaching his online courses for this semester, according to a disciplinary letter UNI College of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences Dean John Fritch wrote in a disciplinary letter Wednesday.