Wayne State University powers a big part of Detroit’s economy, and has always done so. But as the city changes, Wayne State is also crafting its vision for the future - both as an institution of higher learning, and as a critical part of Detroit’s economy and culture. The goal at WSU is to be a very different place by 2040. But how to get there? A master planning process for the university begins today, and the university is inviting students, faculty, staff and community to give input. Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson spoke with WSU professor of urban planning, Robin Boyle, about the event and Wayne State’s role in Detroit.

There are currently over 13 million children in the United States at risk of going hungry, an issue that not only leads to sickness and decreased attention spans, but can set back whole classrooms, leading to community­wide deficits in test scores and more. Suzanne Baker, an anthropology professor at Wayne State University, has been able to make a substantial impact on their lives. Baker is one of 10 unpaid volunteers who run Blessings in a Backpack­-Livonia, an organization that buys and packs weekly grocery bags full of easy-­to-­make meals such as cereal, canned veggies and peanut butter to tide kids over for the weekend. “When I was younger, I wanted to change the world,” Baker said. “We do a lot of volunteerism in our family. But this was the first [time] where I thought, ‘I’m not just going to volunteer. I have the capacity, and there’s a need here...I gotta do this.’” By sending qualifying students home with accessible food to tide them over, Baker and her fellow volunteers are helping set up a whole generation of kids in her community to succeed against the odds.

Fairview senior Mercedes Wagner said she’s always dreamed of playing basketball at the collegiate level and she made those dreams a reality on Tuesday by signing to play at Wayne State University, an NCAA Division II school in Detroit. Wagner was in contact with several schools during the recruiting process, but said Wayne State ultimately felt like the right fit. It was at an AAU tournament earlier this summer in Louisville, Kentucky when she first appeared on the radar of the Wayne State coaching staff. Wayne State was originally there to see another player, but when they noticed Wagner starring as a member of the Glass City Fury, they couldn’t look away and got in touch soon after.

Some of the same blood markers that spike following a heart attack also skyrocket in amateur long-distance runners, especially those who do a full marathon, researchers say. The small study in Spain tested non-professional runners before and after 10K, half-marathon and full-marathon races and found that a protein called troponin, which indicates damage to the heart muscle, surges to many times its normal level after a full marathon. It's not clear if this represents long-term damage, however, the study team writes in the journal Circulation. While deaths in long distance races are relatively rare, we shouldn't forget that the runner who sparked the marathon competitions, the Greek herald, Pheidippides, who in 490 BC ran a distance of about 26 miles from Marathon to Athens with the news of the victory his people had over the Persians died shortly after delivering that news, said Dr. James Glazier, a cardiologist at Detroit Medical Center and a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University, who wasn't involved in the study. The increase in troponin levels "suggests that marathons put quite a strain on the heart," Glazier said. "Other studies that looked at MRIs of the hearts of runners showed that they can become very enlarged after a race and we worry that with competitive running you might get some scarring of the heart and then maybe some rhythm problems."

Dawn Medley is a student affairs official at Wayne State University, a public four-year institution in Detroit, Michigan. She says the Lumina Foundation reached out to the school about setting an example for how schools could help improve student graduation rates earlier this year. Together, they began examining student data and found that Wayne State had 13,000 students drop out of college without earning a degree. So, Wayne State launched a program called “Warrior Way Back.” 

After a near-death in the Great Recession that required government bailouts for General Motors and Chrysler, the U.S. auto industry has been on a tear. Sales rose steadily through 2016. Since then, sales have softened a little. Now, the industry faces a host of looming political, technological, and consumer challenges, which signal tougher times ahead. One of the biggest challenges is political. A trade war – levied either against Europe or China or both – could be devastating for the U.S. industry. “The concern going into the 2019 negotiations will be largely maintaining jobs,” says Marick Masters, a labor expert at Wayne State University. “With the whole restructuring of the companies … the union is going to be very concerned about product placement, investments in plants in the U.S., and also how they might take advantage of the move toward electrification and ensure that their workforce is trained to perform those types of jobs.”

With the midterm election in the rearview, significant shifts among certain groups of Michigan voters appear to show a political realignment in the works. Wayne State University associate professor Jeffrey Grynaviski said. "What's interesting about suburban voters to me in Michigan is that it's really purple," he said. "I think a lot of the changes in the suburban electorate, the voting patterns we're seeing, is attributable to the changes in voters in the suburbs." Grynaviski said there's been a major shift towards the Republican party among non-union residents without college degrees who have successful careers in small business or trades. 

The secrecy — and the resulting confusion — are prime examples of the difficulties that scientific institutions and researchers face in dealing with the thorny issue of bullying. Some actions might fit into a grey zone. What one person considers firm management, another might consider bullying. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, a Ph.D. supervisor giving a student a raft of unfamiliar experiments to complete, with a deadline that leaves the student stressed and working all night. Is this bullying? The answer depends on the broader behavior and approach, explains Loraleigh Keashly, a communications scientist at Wayne State University.

Here’s a riddle: How does an exceedingly expensive, regressive redistribution of federal dollars turn into a college affordability proposal embraced by progressives? Here’s a hint: It involves a lot of talk about the burden of student loans without actually addressing the needs of the people who struggle the most to pay back their debts.

Wayne State University is participating in a national effort by 130 public universities and systems to increase college access, close the achievement gap, and award hundreds of thousands of degrees by 2025. The participating institutions will work in clusters of four-12, and Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson will lead a cluster of 11 urban universities. Together, the institutions enroll about 3 million students, including 1 million who receive Pell Grants, or federal grants for college. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) is organizing the effort, which is called Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success.

Wayne State University has two on-site childcare centers for faculty, staff, students and community members: the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute Early Childhood Center and the College of Education Early Childcare Center, both serving children ages 2-and-a-half to 5 years old. Even with two centers, WSU still is experiencing an overwhelming need for additional childcare. WSU's Daycare Implementation Committee works to identify options for childcare in the Midtown area, including expanding on-site campus care.

Wayne State University is being recognized for strides made in improving its student retention and graduation rates. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities named Wayne State University the winner of its 2018 Project Degree Completion Award. “We’re an institution that has a lot of support resources for students,” said Dawn Medley, Wayne State’s associate vice president of enrollment management. “We restructured our financial aid programs so over one-third of our incoming freshman class had zero out-of-pocket expense. I think students are responding to these changes, because our freshman class grew 15 percent over last year, which is huge. It’s our largest freshman cohort in the institution’s history.”

Sonia Brown — known to many as "Auntie Na" — works with the Kresge Foundation and Wayne State University. She has created a health clinic, food pantry, clothing distribution center, and tutoring center called "Auntie Na's House." The “village,” as Brown refers to it, is on Yellowstone Street on Detroit's west side. “Our programs are community-based. It started off with just trying to help some of the young mothers in the community with day-to-day living and responsibilities: clothes and food," Brown said. Now, the program helps in a variety of ways including babysitting children, providing educational opportunities, and holding meet and greets for neighbors.

Young Michigan voters turned out in larger numbers for the midterm election than any time in recent history, thanks in part to campus registration drives by the state and activist groups. At Wayne State University, the Wayne County Clerk's office reported that turnout doubled from 152 voters to 335 at precinct 152, the closest precinct to campus. At Wayne State, groups worked to eliminate the transportation and timing barriers that student voters face on Election Day. The Student Senate partnered with the Detroit Department of Transportation to bus students to the polls, while NextGen Michigan coordinated shuttles to and from campus to precinct 152. Student volunteers also drove voters not only to precincts in Detroit, but also to precincts outside of the city.   

“Ensuring more students have access to college and are fully supported on their path to graduation has always been at the core of Wayne State’s mission,” said Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson. “Wayne State has made great strides by working hard to identify and support the differing needs of all students. We know that if our students thrive, then the university — and higher education — will, too.”

To realize its dream of returning to its roots as an economic powerhouse, Detroit needs a massive boost in local talent. Using records from the past 15 years housed at the National Student Clearinghouse, Wayne State University and Macomb Community College have already identified nearly 53,000 “comebackers” for whom the schools have contacts. The institutions are reaching out on social media and working with business and community groups. They’ve placed stories in newspapers and on television, and they plan to post ads on buses. This academic year, Wayne State is offering comebackers perhaps its biggest carrot yet — a debt-forgiveness program called Warrior Way Back. The program waives past-due balances of up to $1,500 for all students seeking to complete their degrees. For full-time students, the first $500 will be waived the first semester, the second $500 the next semester, and so on. The ultimate goal is to eliminate students’ outstanding debt as they make academic progress. “We have been holding transcripts hostage,” says Dawn Medley, Wayne State’s associate vice president for enrollment management, “because it’s the only leverage we have.”

Julie Lesnik, assistant professor of anthropology, wrote an article about the menu of the first Thanksgiving held nearly 400 years ago in Massachusetts. Lesnik points out that there is only one original account of the feast chronicled in a letter written by Edward Winslow on Dec. 11, 1621. In it he described the first Thanksgiving event held by the pilgrims. Winslow describes how the Puritans celebrated by feasting on waterfowl, eating goose and duck rather than turkey. The letter also recounts that the Wampanoag leader Massasoit Ousamequin was present, along with “some ninety men,” and that they gifted deer to Governor William Bradford.

Wayne State has taken its lumps over the years. Less than a decade ago, about one in four students earned a degree within six years. Fewer than one in 10 black students who enrolled at the Detroit campus left with a four-year degree within that time. For black men, the rate was one in 14. Since then, the chances of Wayne State University students leaving the Detroit campus with a degree has almost doubled to 45 percent. And the African-American graduation rate has tripled to 26 percent. And while still trailing Michigan’s other public universities in graduation rate, Wayne State is garnering national attention for its turnaround, raising hopes that the lessons learned on the urban campus can be applied to improve grad rates of minorities, low-income and first-generation college students across the state. “If students suffer, the nation suffers,” said Monica Brockmeyer, WSU’s  senior associate provost for student success.

The Sean Anderson Foundation has donated $10,000 to Wayne State University’s HIGH Program, which stands for Helping Individuals Go Higher. This is the third gift from the foundation, which is a project of Detroit rapper Big Sean, whose real name is Sean Anderson. He’s previously donated $15,000 in 2017 and $25,000 in 2016. 

Wayne State University has received a gift of $1 million from two graduates to establish a new center for global engineering education. The center, which will be named the Nancy Philippart and Thomas McGrail Center for Global Engineering Education, will serve as the epicenter for international programs and global initiatives, according to a news release.