Iowa’s public universities for years have requested legislative funding increases — promising to commit the extra tens of millions they sought to student aid, mental health, and more recently hybrid learning in an age of COVID-19 — but the asks have fallen flat.
Since the Board of Regents three weeks ago directed its public universities to make COVID “vaccination verification and accommodation systems available to all campus employees on a voluntary basis,” 3,426 workers have confirmed they’re vaccinated.
Although UIHC in reapplying for a state “certificate of need” didn’t amend its project cost or size, officials did change how they described it - and the council highlighted that as a “significant” difference between the initially rejected and subsequently approved applications.
Iowa State University has agreed to pay a former professor and lab director $275,000 as part of a settlement stemming from years of accusations both from her and against her — including that her department chair and his domestic partner made unwanted sexual advances.
Though total enrollment across Iowa’s public universities has been sliding for the last five years — including big drops from COVID since 2019 — the University of Iowa is predicting a 4-percent one-year jump next fall and 6-percent bump by 2026, according to new data UI provided to lawmakers.
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.
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