Vanessa Miller

In a small dark room at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in November 2017 — just days after Thanksgiving — Alisha and Ross Stottmeister felt the devastating crush of unexpected silence.

A 41-year-old Colorado woman accused of forging COVID-positive documents from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to get out of a Colorado court hearing now is facing formal charges out of Boulder County related to the Iowa-related allegations.

Iowa State University has agreed to pay a former professor and lab director $275,000 as part of a settlement stemming from years of accusations both from her and against her — including that her department chair and his domestic partner made unwanted sexual advances.

Coe College community members protested Thursday in response to diversity, equity, and inclusion concerns following the private college’s recent presidential search – prompting two trustees to resign and issue scathing letters accusing colleagues of deceit.

Even with COVID crippling community services and hampering projects and initiatives last year, a “heart safe community campaign” in honor of the late University of Iowa cardiology professor Richard Kerber did not skip a beat — so to speak.

Once again, fewer students enrolled in Iowa’s 15 community colleges this fall — continuing a decadelong slide that COVID exacerbated, driving a 7.5 percent drop from fall 2019 to fall 2021.

Though total enrollment across Iowa’s public universities has been sliding for the last five years — including big drops from COVID since 2019 — the University of Iowa is predicting a 4-percent one-year jump next fall and 6-percent bump by 2026, according to new data UI provided to lawmakers.

With Iowa eager to put COVID in the rear view mirror, Board of Regents President Mike Richards in May lifted the state of emergency he imposed in March 2020 and mandated Iowa’s public universities return to pre-pandemic operations.

Like other award recipients from the upended 2020-21 term, Dizdarevic said she’s glad to get any experience at all through an esteemed Fulbright program – the world’s largest international exchange program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2021.

Protests that enveloped the University of Iowa’s Phi Gamma Delta fraternity this fall caused more than $200,000 in damage to the chapter house and displaced 28 members for the semester.

Although the retreat from daylight saving time might have worn off by Nov. 19, anyone still riding that extra hour into predawn wakefulness might get to see this month’s beaver moon turn “blood” red when North American gets a front-row seat for the century’s longest lunar eclipse.

The University of Iowa-based State Hygienic Laboratory – which for the last nearly two years has been on the front lines of Iowa’s COVID response – hasn’t been consistently charging customers or collecting documentation, leaving on the table as much as $1.1 million, according to a recent audit.

A national nonprofit civil-liberties group is calling on the University of Iowa College of Law to remove or revise a new question it added to faculty evaluation forms asking how the professors have improved their law school’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — calling those terms “broad,” “subjective,” and “political.”

A 41-year-old former immigration attorney facing numerous theft charges in Colorado is being held in the Johnson County Jail in Iowa City, accused of fabricating a positive COVID test from the University of Iowa in an attempt to avoid a mandatory in-person court appearance in Boulder.

In a fall semester already plagued by fraternity-related controversy, the University of Iowa has placed on interim suspension three more Greek chapters accused of alcohol violations — among other things.