Vanessa Miller

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.

Nearly a year after former Hawkeye football players added linebackers coach Seth Wallace to their list of defendants in a discrimination lawsuit against the University of Iowa Athletics Department, they’ve dropped all claims against him.

This spring, the

Acknowledging the reality that students, workers, employers and corporations will be using artificial intelligence and chat bot technology — and, in many cases, already are — Iowa’s public universities are issuing guidance, forming committees, crafting assignments and churning out research on how to use it, how to benefit from it and how to guard against its limitations and potential harms.

With lawmakers in the throes of deciding how much to appropriate Iowa’s public universities for the upcoming budget year, the Board of Regents this week released a new “economic impact report” showing its campuses collectively added $14.9 billion to the state’s economy in the 2022 budget year.

The University of Iowa’s efforts to acknowledge and reward good work come as UI Health Care reports 500 to 600 open nursing positions, and the broader campus reports its most faculty resignations since at least 2006 — with 92 in fiscal 2022.

In its push to become coal-free by 2025 – or sooner – by adding more “green” to its energy palette, the University of Iowa is considering a second utilities-related public-private partnership, this one for the production of renewable fuel pellets to help power its sprawling campus.

For the first time in decades, all three of Iowa’s public universities want to update the peer institutions with which they compare themselves to “more closely align” with their respective campuses.