Vanessa Miller

Despite a court order blocking an attempted freeze on all federal grants, loans, and other forms of financial aid, researchers across Iowa’s public universities are being impacted by President Donald Trump’s executive orders — including those eliminating “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.”

Elizabeth Willis, since arriving on the University of Iowa campus a decade ago, has come to epitomize the iconic and esteemed Iowa Writers’ Workshop in which she teaches and the wealth of writers among whom she continues to create.

Shortly after an analyst from a high-profile conservative policy group two weeks ago presented lawmakers with evidence that more than 20 programs across Iowa’s public universities have a negative “return on investment,” a member of the Board of Regents contacted her with questions.

Warning Iowa is suffering from a “crisis in civics literacy,” a representative from the National Association of Scholars on Wednesday urged lawmakers to reform public university general education requirements, establish autonomous civics schools on its university campuses, and ensure education accrediting bodies can’t block Iowa’s reform laws.

In hopes of boosting enrollment and addressing Iowa’s workforce needs, the University of Northern Iowa is proposing slashing tuition rates by more than half for non-resident students from bordering states to match instate rates paid by Iowa residents.

A year after lawmakers passed sweeping legislation banning diversity, equity, and inclusion spending across Iowa’s public universities, legislators are taking aim at DEI-related curricular requirements — and the Board of Regents is in support.

As legislators this week continue their consideration of a group of bills aimed at reshaping higher education in Iowa -- taking aim at diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, curricular offerings, and accrediting agencies -- one lawmaker on Wednesday called on Iowa’s community colleges to consider offering bachelor’s degrees.

In responding to a House proposal that would require the University of Iowa to establish a new “School of Intellectual Freedom,” a UI lobbyist on Tuesday announced campus plans to create a new “Center for Civic Dialogue and Leadership.”

For her decades of space flight and research with NASA and now Axiom space, Iowa native and prolific astronaut Peggy Whitson will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation announced Tuesday.

A review team that Iowa formed last fall to revise its science education standards and draft recommended changes -- which some team members said contained changes they hadn’t signed off on -- has been discharged so a second team now can review public feedback and recommend changes based on the input.

Multiuse entertainment district planned to be ‘game-changer for the Ames community’

Iowa’s new House Higher Education Committee has introduced a spate of study bills directed at Iowa’s public, private and community colleges and universities -- including several going further to limit diversity, equity and inclusion on the campuses and others imposing new mandates around what can and should be taught.

A representative from the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research urged Iowa lawmakers Wednesday to get more involved in higher education -- including by changing Iowa Code to give the Legislature power to eliminate or add departments on its public university campuses.

All three of Iowa’s public universities “have ceased participating” in a nationwide initiative to diversify corporate America by increasing the diversity of business school faculty after a Republican lawmaker and head of the House higher education committee brought the issue to the Board of Regents.

“The cumulative amount of time spent by faculty, staff, and students processing unwanted email represents an enormous loss of personal and institutional productivity,” according to the new UI mass communications policy that took effect last week. “For email to remain a relevant means of communication, it must be strategic.