Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) awarded a $754,840 CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to TechTown Detroit to support innovation and entrepreneurship in the region’s medical and manufacturing sectors. This EDA grant, to be matched with $249,900 in local investment, is expected to generate $5.5 million in private investment. “TechTown has been helping to build a more resilient and inclusive economy by leveraging this region’s unique assets for more than 17 years, and now we have a partner at the highest level to help us expand our impact,” said Ned Staebler, president and CEO of TechTown Detroit. “With this grant from the Economic Development Administration, we’ll engage 25 regional stakeholders including healthcare systems, local government entities, private investors, universities and economic development organizations to advance regional innovation in medical technology, creating good-paying jobs and helping SE Michigan build back better.” “This critical support from the Economic Development Administration signals a commitment at the highest level to Detroit’s innovation ecosystem,” said Wayne State University President and TechTown Chair M. Roy Wilson. “With it, TechTown will continue to be a leader in driving the region’s economic recovery through the COVID-19 crisis via its MedHealth cluster. Since 2015, MedHealth has played a critical role in convening, educating and connecting medical innovation stakeholders in the Detroit region, and we are thrilled to work with the EDA to expand programs that will further catalyze entrepreneurship and business growth in the region’s healthcare sector.”  

Bertie Greer, associate dean at Wayne State's Mike Ilitch School of Business, said companies have a lot to lose, or to gain, based on the tone they are set as we return to work. “Right up until we had the pandemic, conversations about flexibility at work or remote work were still a no-no. This pandemic really, has squashed that argument," she said. Greer, who also knows what it's like to be a working mother herself, said the pandemic has shown us workplace flexibility can no longer be a perk, but is a necessity in some cases. COVID, she said, taught us that it's possible to accommodate that. “It becomes second place to see a child walk in the back of a video conference. It has become second place to hear interruptions," Greer said. Data shows that inflexible work cultures have contributed to some women having to choose between caring for a loved one or advancing in their career or keeping a job. “There is this issue of not necessarily gender, but gender plus," Greer said, the idea that employers are not concerned with gender, but rather what traditionally comes with it; kids, household duties, care-taking, etc. “We’re going to have to work with our employees," said Greer. "Now we know we have more tools to use. Invite these tools into the workplace and figure out how to use them to retain your best and brightest.”

Home prices are hitting record highs, and rent is also on the rise, making it difficult for some people to find and keep a place to live. According to Zillow, the average home value in Michigan is more than $205,000, up 13% from April 2020. Rent Cafe reports the average rent in the city of Detroit is up to more than $1,100 a month, a 4% increase from last year. This is a problem that can cause even more damage down the road, as the CDC said it's a basic necessity for families to find safe and affordable housing. "You really just need state and federal government to create tools that make it easier for developers to build affordable housing and for residents to qualify and to live in affordable housing," Matthew Roling, an adjunct professor of finance at Wayne State University said. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Detroit suffers from a deficit of about 100,000 housing units for low-income residents. The U.S. has a shortage of 7 million units of affordable housing. Roling said the term affordable housing typically refers to government-subsidized housing for low-income residents. "But these days the housing market, the 'for sale' residential market has exploded in value so much in the last year and a half, the affordable housing conversation in a lot of markets could also reasonably be construed to include that," he said.

It's now the centerpiece of Wayne State University's Detroit campus, but the Old Main building started out life as a high school. Construction on Detroit's Central High School began in 1894 at the corner of Cass and Warren, and held its first classes in the fall of 1896. It was originally T-shaped, with more than 100 rooms and about 1,600 students. Decorative brickwork, elevators, 20-foot-wide corridors and a clock tower were some of the features of the four-story building. Today, Old Main houses the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which includes the university's planetarium and the anthropology museum. While it is no longer the only building on campus, its age, history and prominent location at the intersection of Cass and Warren make it an emblem of the university.

Metro Detroit is regarded as having one of the worst public transit systems of any major metro area in the country. The region’s 4.2 million residents are mainly served by two unconnected and inadequate bus systems: DDOT in Detroit and SMART in the suburbs. There’s also the People Mover, an elevated train that rings downtown Detroit, and the QLine, a 3.3 mile-long streetcar that runs along Woodward Avenue from New Center to downtown Detroit. “It’s embarrassing and it really financially hurts us,” said Ned Staebler, vice president for economic development at Wayne State University in Detroit. Last year, voters across the country approved 47 out of 52 public transit proposals on local ballots, according to the American Public Transit Association. The biggest was in fast-growing Austin, Texas, where voters in November passed a $7.1 billion plan that will pay for new rail lines, a bus rapid transit (BRT) network, a downtown transit tunnel, e-bikes and more. An additional $300 million was approved to prevent transit-related real estate development from displacing low-income Austin residents from their homes. “They’re making investments in their future,” Staebler said about Austin’s ambitious transit plans. “If you don’t invest, you don’t succeed. We’re a case study of that.”

Numerous Metro Detroit employers have announced or are currently considering plans to preserve at least some remote work post-COVID-19, and that shift is likely to have significant and varied effects on the area. More than just increasing the likelihood that you'll continue taking Zoom meetings from your kitchen table, the change will affect everything from traffic to real estate to housing. However, less commuting may not mean fewer overall trips or fewer vehicles on the road. Carolyn Loh, associate professor of urban studies and planning at Wayne State University, says people who have flexible or remote work models may choose to make more trips in the middle of the day. "It might not reduce trips overall, but it might spread them out over a distance of time so they're not concentrated at rush hour," she says. Loh predicts that reduced commuting will also prompt some workers to choose to live farther from work. If they only have to commute three days a week, for example, many will be willing to accept a longer commute in exchange for cheaper or more spacious housing. Loh notes that this is all likely to make public transit planning more complicated. housing along bus lines and train lines, if we ever build train lines. I think it's just really, really hard to adequately serve that spread-out of a population with buses."  

Vincent Chandler is native Detroiter, who was a protégé in Detroit’s jazz scene during one of jazz music’s peaks in the city. He studied under some of Detroit’s most influential jazz musicians and is now passing on what he has learned as a lecturer in jazz studies, trombone, at Wayne State University. Chandler joined Jackie Paige on Community Connect to talk about the importance of passing on the history of jazz to the next generation and how jazz music has influenced the Black community since the genre’s conception. While speaking about jazz music’s history, Chandler points out the opportunities that the popularity of jazz gave to Black musicians, as the music helped start a foundation for eroding racial prejudice and breaking down barriers. Although the fight for racial equality continues today, jazz fueled the Civil Rights Movement in a way that no one thought music could. “What the Black community has done for music when it comes to America… you’ll see that throughout history it has given us opportunities that transcend even slavery.”

James Holly Jr., assistant professor of urban STEM education, wrote an article for The Conversation on improving STEM learning for Black students. “Black people make up just 9% of the STEM workforce in the U.S. As a scholar who studies how STEM educators can more effectively reach Black students, I want to help all people develop an understanding of how anti-Black racism is a significant barrier for Black students learning STEM. Many scholars have argued that our current ways of teaching STEM are bad for everyone because only the experiences and contributions of white people are discussed, but the negative effects are greater for Black people. Teachers frequently question the intellectual ability of Black students and prevent them from using their cultural worldviews, spirituality and language in the STEM learning setting. Still, Black people continue to boost STEM knowledge across the world. It is time to generate new teaching practices in STEM that affirm Black students in a way that connects with their lives.”

Pharmaceutical companies are already hard at work to make the next generation of vaccines for COVID-19 easier to administer, less invasive in some cases, and more effective against a wider range of illnesses. Pfizer and Moderna are already conducting trials to evaluate booster vaccines to protect against new variants, the results of which are expected later this year. “They have to be as good or better than the current vaccines that we have," said Dr. Paul Kilgore, an associate professor and the director of research in the Department of Pharmacy Practice within the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Wayne State University. Kilgore, who is also a senior investigator with Henry Ford Health System's Global Health Initiative, told Action News hitting that gold standard takes time. “The first approach is to develop an mRNA vaccine very similar in design to the original vaccine that Pfizer and Moderna have, but what they will have is a new sequence in the mRNA that corresponds to the new spike protein in the variant," he said. 

Kirsten Carlson, associate professor of law and adjunct associate professor of political science, wrote an article for The Conversation on police authority over non-Indians. “The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the sovereign power of American Indian tribes on June 1, 2021, ruling that tribal police officers have the power to temporarily detain and search non-Indians on public rights-of-way through American Indian lands. In most communities in the United States, the local government has the authority to investigate and prosecute both misdemeanor and felony crimes. And local police can detain and search individuals suspected of state and federal crimes, at least until handing them off to the appropriate authorities. Tribal governments – the local governments in Indian country – have the power to prosecute tribal citizens on tribal lands. When it comes to non-Indians, though, the situation is different. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that tribal governments could not prosecute non-Indians for any crimes in Indian country. Tribal governments have to rely on state and federal governments to prosecute non-Indians – which doesn’t happen often. Effectively, non-Indians have been able to commit crimes in Indian country with impunity.

Wayne State University will be working with the city of Detroit to provide economic development initiatives to the greater Corktown neighborhood as the city deploys the $30 million Choice Neighborhoods Grant it received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development deployment. “Wayne State University is pleased to serve as an anchor institution for the city’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative for the transformation of Clement Kern Gardens and the Greater Corktown Neighborhood,” says M. Roy Wilson, president of WSU. “Wayne State has been a critical partner in the planning process and is excited to continue working with the city during implementation of the grant by providing evaluation services and committing $3.7 million of leverage to support neighborhood residents.”

American history is riddled with interesting facts. The earliest Memorial Day celebration is one of them. Waterloo, New York is officially credited with starting our nation's most solemn holiday on May 5, 1866. But in 1966, one hundred years later, Yale University and Pulitzer Prize-winner historian David W. Blight stumbled across a then little known narrative inside boxes of Union veteran archives at Harvard University's Houghton Library. On May 1, 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered, a crowd of about 10,000, mostly freed slaves, staged a parade around a Charleston, SC race track to honor Union soldier prisoners who had fallen in the brutal Civil War. In a recent interview with Marc Kruman, the Distinguished Service Professor of History at Wayne State University, also educated at Yale University, he recalled the story that reportedly happened in the city where the Civil War began. Special services at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868, marked the official beginning of Decoration Day, the forerunner to Memorial Day. And, in 1971, Memorial Day became a Federal holiday which is observed every year on the 4th Monday of May.

Wayne State University will implement a holistic defense partnership program in fall 2021. The program will pair social work and law students to assist clients in criminal defense offices in Detroit. The students will tackle systemic issues in the criminal justice system under the supervision of licensed attorneys and social workers. Administrators at the university believe that the holistic approach will spur criminal justice reforms and inspire change in their community. Dan Ellman is an externship professor at the Wayne State University Law School. “When people become enmeshed in the criminal justice system, they face a lot of consequences,” Ellman says. For some individuals, he explains, these consequences can include the deprivation of employment, parental rights and housing. Sheryl Kubiak is the dean of the Wayne State University School of Social Work. Kubiak says interdisciplinary partnerships are often fraught with misunderstandings about objectives. “In these offices, we hope to produce lawyers and social workers who are used to working together,” Kubiak says. Though this initiative may prove to be costly, Kubiak says it is a necessary investment to improve the livelihood of citizens. She explains, ”When you look at the unintended consequences of an individual who goes further and further into the criminal legal system, you have to think about what happened to their children, what about their lost revenue, what about the issues of family disruption, and what are those costs to our society?” 

Detroit has been awarded a $30 million federal grant to build hundreds of new affordable housing units west of downtown. The Choice Neighborhoods funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was announced Wednesday. It would be used to help fund a development of what is currently envisioned as 841 units of mixed-income housing primarily for rent, but also for sale, across sites in the city's Corktown and North Corktown neighborhoods. The project would cost more than $200 million and be built in phases over the next six years. The HUD document also says that Detroit Public Schools Community District, Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, Detroit Economic Solutions Corp., the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, Ford Motor Co., the Detroit Economic Development Corp., Illinois Financial Fund, Michigan Department of Transportation, VIP Mentoring, Wayne Metro Community Action Agency, Wayne State University, the Wayne State Center for Urban Studies and the Wayne State College of Education are all involved in the project in various capacities. In addition to the housing component, things like street and park improvements and a community empowerment center, which would house critical support services, are expected.

A number of U.S. colleges and universities say they've seen a surge of students who say the COVID-19 crisis inspired them to pursue the public health field, and crisis communication in particular. The pandemic exposed the need for and challenges of well-executed public health messaging — particularly in a time rife with misinformation campaigns and polarizing politics. Government officials have been both lauded and criticized at different turns for their public health messaging over the last year, most recently on confusion sparked around mask guidance. "Historically or traditionally, we never anticipated that pandemics would be such political issues," said Matthew Seeger, a health and risk communication scholar at Wayne State University. "Hopefully we’ll get past this moment and we will return to a time where people will work cooperatively and in a very partnership manner to be able to address these concerns," he said.

The Michigan Senate is getting in the middle of the COVID vaccine debate and working to put laws on the books to keep kids out of it. Tuesday, state senators voted to block minors from COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Wayne State University Infectious Disease Professor Dr. Teena Chopra says the data proves the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for both adults and children. The researcher and medical doctor also states it’s the only way to reach herd immunity. “We are looking forward and hoping that throughout the summer the vaccination rates keep going up; and in the fall when we have school starting and also the fact that in fall, we usually see a surge in viral infections. We want at least 70 to 80 percent of our population fully vaccinated,” said Chopra. Currently students are required to follow state vaccine laws for diseases like polio and the measles to attend school. But Dr. Chopra says the same mandate should not be ordered for COVID vaccines since health care providers only have an emergency use authorization. “We need a full approval on this vaccination and also because we want to give the freedom to parents to find out more about the vaccine, to ask questions and then make an informed decision,” said Chopra.

Wayne State University Law School and School of Social Work are launching a holistic defense partnership for J.D. and M.S.W. students beginning in fall 2021, with the goal of addressing clients’ legal and social support needs in tandem. Holistic defense – also referred to as community orientated or comprehensive defense – is a term used to describe an innovative approach that employs an interdisciplinary team to consider both the individual and community needs when working with a person charged with a criminal offense. Unintended or collateral consequences of arrest and conviction can include loss of housing, removal of children, and even deportation. The holistic defense approach brings lawyers and social workers together to achieve positive legal and social outcomes for criminal defendants. “Holistic defense is an underutilized opportunity to effect real change in the lives of people navigating the criminal justice system,” said Wayne Law Dean and Professor Richard A. Bierschbach. “Lawyers and social workers have the same goal – to achieve the best possible outcome for their client. By training lawyers and social workers together, we open the door for future professional collaboration that can make all the difference.” In fall 2020, Social Work students embarked on the initial holistic defense pilot year, completing an immersive field placement experience and Social Work courses focused on the intersection of the criminal legal system and the behavioral health needs of their clients. Five students who recently completed the initial requirements in May 2021 worked with lawyers and fellow allied health professional teams to assess client needs, provide resources and information, and serve as an advocate for their client as they navigate complicated social systems. “The holistic defense model encompasses much of what we do each day as social workers – working in tandem with our clients, colleagues and community partners to provide comprehensive care and empower change in our community. What is unique about this approach is the integration into the criminal legal system, which has resulted in shorter client sentences, a reduction in pre-trial detention and ultimately saved taxpayer dollars,” said Social Work Dean and Professor Sheryl Kubiak.

Howard Lupovitch is an associate professor of history at Wayne State University and director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies. He says Israelis were trying to form a coalition government before the current conflict. ”We need to differentiate between the current Israeli government’s policies and what most Israelis actually think and feel.” He says he believes the state of Israel is necessary, but says it also created this conflict. ”Looking at both sides is very important … Zionism and the state of Israel solved a European problem and created an Asian or a Middle East problem … it was created to be not only a Jewish state but also a democratic state … both of those things are necessary.” Lupovitch says Hamas does not represent all Palestinians, and the same goes for the current Israeli leadership and citizens of Israel. ”If we could remove the Israeli right-wing extremists from this equation, the conflict could resolve itself very easily.” Saeed Khan is a lecturer of near east and Asian studies at Wayne State University. He says Palestinians are disenfranchised in multiple ways under Israeli occupation. ”Part of the way to understand what’s happening currently … is that Israel is moving farther and farther to the right.” He says with extremism from Hamas and the state of Israel, it’s becoming more difficult to resolve the conflict. ”We are finding that the space for some kind of return to negotiation is looking precarious because the [political] center is in jeopardy of no longer holding,” Khan says.

Michigan's 15 public universities are bracing for a potential change that would severely alter how state aid is divided up among them, with most schools expected to see increases at the expense of two of the state's top research institutions. The Michigan House of Representatives this month passed controversial legislation that would tie the annual appropriation for the state's public universities to the number of full-time Michigan students enrolled. The House plan does not include an increase in funding for higher education — unlike the 2% increase passed by the Senate and recommended by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Instead, it would keep the appropriation around $1.3 billion but shuffle how much each college gets while phasing the changes in over three years. Under the House plan, UM's Ann Arbor campus stands to lose the most: $39.5 million, or 12% of its state funding, in the first year and nearly $125 million over the first three years. Wayne State would lose $8.2 million, or 4% of its state aid, in the first year and nearly $29 million in three years. Both universities, respectively, educate a larger percentage of non-resident students. Michigan would become the only state in the nation to use resident enrollment as the sole basis for state funding, said Britany Affolter-Caine, executive director of the University Research Corridor, an alliance of UM, WSU and MSU that promotes research as a driver of the state's economy. Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson said a cut of $28.6 million over three years would dramatically impact tuition and services at the urban research institution where 2,135 of the 24,155 enrolled students are not from Michigan. The proposed funding change is a similar mechanism that is used to fund K-12 education in Michigan, which pays a set amount per student to schools each year, but it costs more to educate graduate and professional students, Wilson said. Some universities can put 300 undergraduate students into one lecture hall whereas a medical school class may not have that many. "There is a difference of scale here," Wilson said. "There needs to be a more sophisticated mechanism that better recognizes the unique missions of the 15 public universities in Michigan." Wilson added there is an underappreciation of research universities' contributions to the state's economy and residents' health and wellbeing. "Michigan has not historically appreciated the value of research," Wilson said. "There is a huge (investment) return on research. ... Research has a multiplier effect. The kind of technologies that come out of research universities: the life-saving discoveries and the improved quality of life is also really important. It's not just the financial benefit."

Fifty years ago, vibrating with agitation and energy, Marvin Gaye headed down the wood steps into a Detroit studio and made his anthem for the ages. “What’s Going On,” a poignant musical masterpiece crafted in a season of unease, persists as a timely backdrop to another heated time, half a century later, when the world feels upside down. Racial tensions, police controversy, environmental anxieties, a globe on edge — they were the topics on the front burner when Gaye rebooted his musical career and took control of his creative vision inside Motown. “People always talk about various influences out of Detroit. This really was a hometown effort that went worldwide. It captured that community sensibility and coming-together during a challenging time,” said Chris Collins, a music professor and director of jazz studies at Wayne State University. “The production — the openness of the music involved — was a pretty spectacular example of what can come out of that.” Collins said his 20-something son is enamored with the song and album. “It's in his musical life as a young person,” said Collins, also director of the Detroit Jazz Festival. “I think that speaks to the power and sincerity of that recording. It spans generation and communities.” At Wayne State, ethnomusicologist Josh Duchan’s course on 20th century popular music zeroes in on “The Message,” the pioneering 1982 rap hit by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. “A song like that — which is much more explicit in its lyrics — is kind of the extension of what Marvin Gaye and ‘What’s Going On’ did years earlier,” he said. “It’s looking around at the world and saying: These are not the conditions we all hoped for.”