Vanessa Miller

The University of Northern Iowa faculty union is filing a prohibited practice complaint against the Board of Regents and UNI for reprimanding their tenured peer for rebuffing regent guidance by requiring masks in class and threatening lower grades if students didn’t comply.

More college and university students nationally and locally are in need of mental health resources in the wake of pandemic-related changes and challenges, according to recent surveys and campus experts.

While many colleges and universities this fall welcomed back fewer students — given the upheaval from COVID-19 and its impact on higher education — Mount Vernon’s Cornell College saw total enrollment jump more than 50 students to 1,055 and its first-year class swell 30 percent to 404.

Upper-level University of Northern Iowa students who this week lost their specialized “plant systematics” professor feel they’re the ones being punished by the administration’s decision to discipline him -- for imposing a mask mandate -- by stripping him of in-person teaching duties.

Professor Steve L. O’Kane — who is 64 and has been at UNI for 26 years — will be allowed to continue teaching his online courses for this semester, according to a disciplinary letter UNI College of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences Dean John Fritch wrote in a disciplinary letter Wednesday.

A quarter of the female University of Iowa students who in spring 2021 responded to the institution’s third iteration of a survey examining sexual misconduct on campus said they’ve experienced some type of sexual violence since enrolling.

Given staffing concerns at a University of Iowa hospital facing the confluence of surging patient demand with an overstressed workforce, administrators Wednesday morning announced they will double extra shift premium pay for inpatient nurses and respiratory therapists for the next seven weeks.

After considering a resolution earlier this week to rebuff a Board of Regents prohibition of mask mandates by encouraging faculty to act “at their own discretion,” even if it violates state law and board policy, University of Northern Iowa’s Faculty Senate opted for a less combative stance.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have proved “highly effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19” among health care workers in “real-world” settings, according to a new national study that involved 300-plus University of Iowa Health Care workers.

Faculty across Iowa’s public universities are continuing to demand the right to mandate masks in the classroom — looping in attorneys and considering resolutions urging faculty, regardless of state law or campus policy, to act in their own best interest and that of their students and the community.

“It came a lot faster than I thought it would,” UI sophomore Lyman, 20, told The Gazette on Friday, the day after UI Athletics announced plans to become the first Power Five conference school to add women’s wrestling. “It’s exciting to see Iowa doing it first – that’s a big thing.”

Hawkeye Athletics had been considering the idea for years, Athletics director Gary Barta said, noting growing national interest in the sport while more women are attending colleges.

When prominent animal behavior scientist and autism advocate Temple Grandin stands before a Coe College crowd this evening, she plans to pose a question: “What would have happened to Einstein in today’s educational system, since he had no speech until he was 3?”

Employees are retiring, moving to less stressful careers, as UI works to hire hundreds

Ashley Hudson –an “aspiring kindergarten teacher and had dreams of becoming a Mount Mercy graduate” – died Monday, Sept. 20, as a result of COVID complications.