Vanessa Miller

University of Iowa experts say their research suggests state cursive standards could be a good thing — to the extent that a focus on cursive gets kids focused on handwriting.

Propelled by high-impact research — including one project targeting extreme wind events, like the storm that blasted Iowa on Monday — Iowa State University on Tuesday announced a third straight year of record research funding that for the second straight year topped $300 million.

In a hypercompetitive higher education landscape — where colleges and universities are vying not just for top students but the best and brightest faculty and staff — Iowa State University has entered a new partnership with employment-centered social media platform LinkedIn aimed at making it “an employer of choice regionally and across the world.”

A year before the University of Iowa plans to start an $18 million expansion and modernization of its 51-year-old Cambus Maintenance Facility -- in part, to make space for 12 future electric vehicles -- the campus on Thursday announced it has landed a $16.4 million federal grant to help UI advance those transit plans.

Adding to turnover atop the University of Iowa’s 12 colleges is Kevin Washburn, who’s leaving his post as dean of the College of Law in December after six years on campus.

After seeing big declines in alcohol-related driving deaths in the 1990s, progress nationally has stalled — compelling University of Iowa researchers to study whether a growing breadth of automotive technology could again move the needle.

After taking over Iowa City’s 150-year-old Mercy Hospital and its handful of clinics in January with a $28 million bid in a contentious bankruptcy auction, the University of Iowa has sold the Mercy clinic in Kalona that it obtained through the process to Washington County Hospital and Clinics for $425,000.

Nearly three years after longtime University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center Director George Weiner announced plans to step down, the health care enterprise has announced his permanent replacement in Mark Burkard.

Now in training mode, Olivia Chambers is feeling excited as one of 21 women and 33 total athletes chosen for the Paralympic swim team. She also becomes the first UNI swimmer in school history named to a U.S. Paralympic team and joins an elite list of Panther athletes to qualify for either the Olympic or Paralympic Games.

More than two years after a retired Iowa State University agronomy professor sued her former employer, the Board of Regents, and state for wage and gender discrimination, the Iowa Supreme Court has retained her appeal of a lower court’s August ruling limiting her ability to recover lost wages.

Continuing a change enacted last year in how the University of Iowa doles out income generated through a “Strategic Initiatives Fund” – created by way of its $1.165 billion public-private utilities partnership four years ago – administrators said they’ll reserve nearly $8 million for distribution on a rolling basis over the coming year “to address emerging needs and opportunities as they arise.”

Complicating vehicle and foot traffic in and around the main University of Iowa Health Care campus and its neighboring Kinnick Stadium — beginning this summer and stretching into and through the upcoming Hawkeye football season — is construction of a new road and roundabout, creating a multifaceted utility corridor necessary for a massive new UIHC inpatient tower in the works.

Nearly six years after a University of Iowa Cambus slipped on icy roads in Coralville and veered into the oncoming lane, hitting another vehicle and injuring the woman inside, the state has agreed to settle a resulting lawsuit for $68,000.

The University of Iowa has agreed to suspend “internal proceedings” with a tenured associate professor and not fire him as long as he resigns, relinquishes his tenure rights, and stays away from “any of the three graduate students referred to as ‘complainants’ in the university’s investigation reports.”

In less than two months, thousands of freshmen will be moving into their new college digs — with the fall semester for Iowa’s three public universities starting Aug. 26. Orientation sessions this summer are attracting thousands.