Vanessa Miller

Iowa State University next week hopes to add to its list of 80-plus honorarily-named buildings, centers, and spaces with Board of Regents approval to name its veterinary medicine academic building, “Frederick Douglass Patterson Hall.”

Continuing its construction boom involving more than $1 billion in new and renovated facilities, University of Iowa Health Care next week will seek Board of Regents approval to spend $249 million on a new 263,000-square-foot “Health Sciences Academic Building.”

In pushing a judge to move out of Johnson County a trial involving a University of Iowa student’s sexual assault allegations against the FIJI fraternity and former members, defense attorneys this week pointed to the likelihood of a scared juror pool.

Six months after launching a search to replace Harriet Nembhard as dean of its College of Engineering, the University of Iowa on Thursday announced Ann F. McKenna — a vice dean at Arizona State University — will take the reins of the 2,000-plus-student college Aug. 16.

Postsecondary enrollment nationally stayed well below pre-COVID levels this spring — down 1.3 million students or 7 percent from 2019 — and Iowa remained among the hardest-hit, with a 13 percent drop in combined community college, private, and public university enrollment over the four years.

On the same day University of Iowa officials asked a federal judge to dismiss a January lawsuit in which its new private utilities partner accused UI of shirking obligations just three years into their 50-year $1.165 billion deal, the university filed its own counter lawsuit against the utilities partner.

The tally of tenured and tenure-track faculty across Iowa’s public universities in the academic year that just wrapped continued down a slope that began a decade ago — when 3,531 Board of Regents faculty were tenure eligible, amounting to 63 percent of the 5,637 faculty total.

He retires Aug. 1 -- the 17-year anniversary of him being introduced at Iowa.

University of Iowa Athletics Director Gary Barta nearly a week ago on Saturday signed a “retirement agreement” with UI and the Board of Regents separating him from the institution Aug. 1 — without additional compensation beyond that date.

The next head of the University of Iowa’s sprawling health care enterprise and medical college is retired U.S. Public Health Service Capt. Denise J. Jamieson, who accumulated decades of experience with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at Emory University.

Three members of one of Iowa State University’s oldest and biggest fraternities – including its vice president and risk manager – are being investigated for allegedly ordering one of their house mates and fraternity brothers to perform a sex act upon threat of violence, according to a series of criminal complaints filed this month.

Taking that trademarked term and idea from the University of Wisconsin — which is offering three two-day Grandparents University sessions this July — UI is starting with a single day of learning for grandparents and grandchildren on July 13.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development office over the years has lent billions to colleges and universities — including at least seven in Iowa since 2013 — often because it wants the smaller communities in which they reside to thrive. Now, with Iowa Wesleyan — one of those loan recipients — closing, the community and the USDA are working to decide the best future use for the campus.

Although University of Iowa Health Care ranked nationally as the second-most trusted health care brand, the state of Iowa had among the most “doctor dodgers” in the country.

As the University of Iowa searches for new leadership atop its sprawling health care enterprise, growing network of hospitals and clinics, and highly-ranked college of medicine, administrators want a partner to help them assess “fair market valuation” of a “wide range of health care settings and assets.”