Vanessa Miller

The state education budget lawmakers finalized early Wednesday includes a fraction of the $22.1 million increase Iowa’s public universities sought for the upcoming budget year.

Inflation and supply chain issues have driven up the cost of two premiere University of Iowa construction projects about to begin – including a new wrestling facility featuring state-of-the-art locker rooms and practice spaces for the Hawkeye men’s and women’s wrestling teams.

Kirkwood Community College, a 55-year-old Cedar Rapids-based higher education fixture that’s ballooned to a sprawling network of 14 campuses in seven Iowa counties, for the first time is conducting a comprehensive review of its Iowa City campus to ensure it is meeting the needs of the community in which it sits.

Iowa’s public universities last year used a waiver process to bypass open searches — designed to attract a diverse pool of qualified candidates and ensure all applicants have an equal opportunity to compete for open positions — in more than 150 hires, most of which involved the University of Iowa.

Over the most recent decade on record, only 28 percent of NASA’s “competed missions” had female principal investigators — a primary and substantial position — and NASA over that time didn’t fund any female PI-led mission proposals in two of their four divisions: astrophysics and earth science.

A former University of Iowa provost who resigned under a cloud of suspicion after just one year – hinting on her way out that she wanted to serve a campus aligned with her diversity, equity, and inclusion values – is being accused in a lawsuit of taking that social justice mission too far in her new job.

Like more than a dozen museums working to return to Nigeria objects and artifacts stolen in the 1800s, the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art has arranged an audience with the Oba of Benin this fall in hopes of repatriating two pieces “to their rightful owners as swiftly as possible.”

Two years after Iowa’s three public universities made the unprecedented and heart-wrenching pandemic-propelled decision to nix in-person spring commencement ceremonies – a historic rite of passage – all three are resurrecting them this weekend.

Since the start of this spring semester, Iowa State’s name-removal committee has met 15 times about the request to remove Catt’s name from Catt Hall – interviewing experts and hearing from Maryland-based History Associates Inc., which provided the committee with 200-plus historical documents.

An Iowa State graduate student is suing the university, a fellow veterinary medicine research assistant, and two supervisors, asserting she endured years of sexual harassment – which continues today – and gender discrimination and retaliation for reporting it.

Adding to the growing clinic side of its operation, University of Iowa Health Care on Tuesday opened new Urgent Care and Sports Medicine clinics in Cedar Rapids.

Iowa State in February 2021 debuted its 33-desktop esports and gaming space – divided into two areas, a competitive room with 13 computers and an open space with 20. The darkened room also includes four consoles for drop-in use, equipped with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

A handful of City High students who don’t have a clear post-graduation path due to a range of disabilities have started working at a new Latin-inspired café created just for them – and for any member of the community keen on tacos, enchiladas, tostadas, and helping students get a leg up.

David Hayes on Oct. 1, 2021, stepped in as 16th president of the 170-year-old Coe College of 1,371 students in the heart of Cedar Rapids — his hometown.

Iowa’s 15 community colleges collectively are projecting a $2.3 million dip in total resources for the next budget year — contributing to a projected $36.8 million deficit — propelled largely by previous bumps in federal funding, due to COVID-19, and more anticipated facility and program expenses.