Vanessa Miller

With tens of thousands of students back and bustling across Iowa’s public universities Monday, the campuses found themselves again dealing with scorching August heat and air-conditioning woes.

Continuing its outreach and expansion, in concert with an explosion of health care services in North Liberty, Mercy Medical Center Cedar Rapids is considering offering services at an “off-site location” in Johnson County — where University of Iowa Health Care is building a new 469,000-square-foot hospital and Steindler Orthopedic is constructing a new 35,880-square-foot ambulatory surgical center.

Five years after discovering damaged and cracking windows throughout its 7-year-old Stead Family Children’s Hospital, the University of Iowa is about one-third through its massive window-replacement project — with work expected to continue through the end of 2025 or into early 2026.

Just days before Iowa State University opened its residence halls and apartments for student move-in this fall, its associate vice president for campus life and director for residence resigned Aug. 7, per a settlement with the university.

After six months of focusing on transition and “maintaining access” for patients of the former Mercy Iowa City it bought for $28 million in January, the University of Iowa is starting to hone a longer-term vision for its new Medical Center Downtown that includes possible relocation of its obstetrics and midwifery, family medicine, and sleep disorders services.

Just over two months until the civil trial of two former University of Iowa fraternity brothers is supposed to begin in Tama County -- after the case was relocated from Johnson County due to its high-profile nature -- parties on both sides are asking a judge to preemptively rule in their favor.

A Johnson County judge faced the question of whether to make an example of driver Drake Brezina or a testament of him — to make him pay behind bars, or behind a microphone, sharing the tragic consequences of his decision to focus on his phone instead of the road.

In the days since Mercy Iowa City’s bondholders raised concerns about dwindling assets available for distribution through a liquidation trust, attorneys, consultants, and advisers for the bankrupt hospital, its creditors, and its pensioners have inundated the court with “final” fee requests totaling nearly $13.4 million.

A century after its debut along the Iowa River that divides the University of Iowa campus, the Iowa Memorial Union early next year will embark on a “major redesign and renovation” that could include new franchised food vendors -- among other new union services and features catering to today’s evolving student needs, expectations, and preferences.

Using a student-teacher model for therapists in training, the grant-funded Telepsychology Training Clinic at the University of Iowa has offered free, short-term counseling to more than 200 Iowans in 17 counties.

Within a matter of days, college and university communities across the state will experience the annual population swell of students returning to campus for another academic year.

At a time of growing worker needs across the agriculture industry and strong sustained interest among agriculture students, Kirkwood Community College last week secured itself more educational cropland with a $1.4 million purchase of 80 nearby acres.

Nearly seven years after a Mt. Pleasant man underwent a coronary artery bypass graft at University of Iowa Health Care in January 2018, UIHC has agreed to pay him $250,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging negligence.

University of Iowa Health Care will pay $1.2 million to the parents of a 17-year-old Iowa City High School senior who died unexpectedly in July 2020 after several UIHC providers mistook her symptoms of a developing pulmonary embolism as COVID.

Adding to its growing clinical enterprise and footprint across Eastern Iowa, Steindler Orthopedic Clinic on Monday debuted its eighth location — this one in Cedar Rapids, where about one-third of its clientele reside.