Vanessa Miller

A Board of Regents pause on new diversity, equity, and inclusion programming – enacted last week in response to a Republican-led bill

Iowa’s jointly-enrolled high schoolers last year earned a total 1,804 degrees, diplomas, or certificates alongside their high school diplomas – marking a 61 percent jump in a single year from 2021, according to the new report.

Best practice for K-12 schools is to offer one psychologist per 500 students, but Iowa is far lacking — at one per 1,900 students, with its outlook “worsening,” according to the National Association of School Psychologists.

Moody’s Investors Service again has downgraded Mercy Iowa City Hospital’s credit rating following “severe cash flow deterioration, from historically weak levels, which has resulted in material and rapid cash burn.”

Fifty years after Iowa began collecting and analyzing data on residents diagnosed with cancer through its Iowa Cancer Registry, statistics reveal Iowa has the second-highest cancer incidence rate in the nation and is the only state with a rising rate of cancer.

The union representing 3,800 University of Iowa Health Care workers has announced the ratification of its “strongest contract for our members in Iowa since the changes to Chapter 20 in 2017.”

University of Iowa Athletics will reimburse the state for the $2 million taxpayers covered of a $4.2 million deal to settle a discrimination lawsuit 12 former football players filed against UI Athletics and its coaches, UI President Barbara Wilson said Thursday morning.

University of Iowa Athletics’ 2023 “diversity, equity, and inclusion five-year action plan” — which the department will get help operationalizing under terms of a new discrimination lawsuit settlement — lists 20-plus “actionable activities,” like designing “spotlight recognition awards for DE&I teams and departments who exemplify our values.”

Despite State Auditor Rob Sand’s opposition to taxpayers footing nearly half the $4.2 million bill to settle a discrimination lawsuit brought by former Hawkeye football players against the University of Iowa, the State Appeal Board on Monday OK’d the agreement — including the $2 million cost to taxpayers.

Despite pushback from accused former University of Iowa students and the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity with which they were involved, a lawsuit alleging alcohol- and drug-assisted sexual violence and “malicious and intentional circulation” of photos and videos is ongoing and headed for trial in July.

Gov. Kim Reynolds on Friday reappointed two regents charged with governing Iowa’s public universities and named one new appointee to the nine-member board — former Republican congressional candidate Robert Cramer.

Mercy Iowa City Hospital in recent months had to retain a “strategic and operational performance improvement” consultant after breaching debt coverage obligations amid declining patient days and occupancy percentages. Just two miles west, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is overrun with as many as 70 people waiting in the emergency room at one time.

Republican lawmakers Wednesday began “dismantling the (diversity, equity, and inclusion/critical race theory) bureaucracies existing at our regional institutions” by advancing a bill barring Iowa’s public universities from spending money on DEI offices, employees, and programming.

Fifty years after Iowa began collecting and analyzing data on residents diagnosed with cancer through its Iowa Cancer Registry, statistics reveal Iowa has the second-highest cancer incidence rate in the nation and is the only state with a rising rate of cancer.

The former Hawkeye football players who in 2020 filed a lawsuit accusing the UI football program of racial discrimination and harassment have dropped their claims against head coach Kirk Ferentz, offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, Athletic Director Gary Barta, and former strength coach Chris Doyle.