Vanessa Miller

A Le Claire mother is suing the state, accusing University of Iowa physicians of perforating her bowel and charring her rectum during a surgical procedure – leaving her permanently impaired and unable to care for her two sons to the same degree she was pre-surgery.

Iowa’s Board of Regents on Tuesday will conduct mid-year performance reviews of their university presidents, who over the last year have faced a range of high-profile issues and challenges -- like the transition from pandemic-era restrictions, free speech on campus, and hundreds of millions in new facilities and upgrades.

While many features of 21st century journalism would be unrecognizable to publishers more than a century ago, many of its tenets and objectives remain the same: to tell the truth, inform readers, connect communities, and enrich lives – while holding leaders and officials accountable and providing a public forum for questions, criticism, and compromise.

Though a University of Iowa urology professor’s lawsuit against a UI law professor is continuing, it’s doing so absent a federal First Amendment complaint. That ruling came this week after the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that law professor Marc Linder didn’t act as the state when slamming expert testimony from urologist James Brown.

“That's a whole different level of stress on an already stressful situation,” University of Iowa Dr. Christopher Hogrefe told The Gazette, pulling from personal experience as a current assistant physician for the Chicago Cubs.

Although the University of Iowa stripped orthopedics from its second application to build a new hospital in North Liberty – after critics of the first, denied application slammed its focus on orthopedics and state officials cited the heavy orthopedics bent in its rejection – UI Health Care officials now are calling the project an “orthopedic hospital.”

Although a Republican-led effort last year to change the way Iowa funds its public universities didn’t materialize, the concept isn’t dead — as lawmakers are airing plans to revisit the idea in the upcoming session in their debate over how much to give the state institutions.

Given low-dose CT scans are available and capable of detecting lung cancer early, the University of Iowa’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center recently joined more than 50 top cancer organizations in urging providers and insurers to improve access to and more frequently use lung cancer screening tools for those at high risk.

Fast forward a decade, and what once confined Petrucci now compels her as a fall 2022 UI graduate with a newly-minted PhD in neuroscience and plans to continue her epilepsy research as a post-doctoral student at the University of Utah.

“The world has changed a lot in the last two and a half years, and the ways that we're trying to protect health care workers, and society as a whole, are different, too,” said study co-principal investigator Nicholas Mohr, UI professor of emergency medicine, anesthesia and epidemiology.

Board of Regents President Mike Richards issues order after Gov. Kim Reynolds, citing security threats, banned app’s usage on state computers and phones.

Pearson on Friday enacted 50 layoffs at its Iowa City location on North Dodge, which it recently closed “and opened opportunities for employees to work in one of our Cedar Rapids facilities,” a spokesman for the company said.

Organizers aim to pack 80,000 bags of food collected for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank’s “BackPack program” serving “chronically hungry children” in its 16-county service area.

The coming spring semester likely will be the last for Kirkwood Community College’s Iowa City campus – at least in its current form – after a recent study of the site found the institution would have to spend nearly $40 million over the next 24 years to maintain the campus that’s seen a 75-percent enrollment drop in the last five years.

The Hawkeye and Cyclone football teams over the last five years have spent a combined $2.2 million housing players, coaches, and staff in hotels the night before home games to “minimize distractions” and help them prepare with better security, nutrition, and privacy.