When students arrive next week at the new Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University, they’ll sit in classrooms with breathtaking views of the city's downtown skyline down Woodward Avenue. Officials gathered for a ribbon cutting Tuesday for the 125,000-square-foot building at 2771 Woodward Ave.

The new Mike Ilitch School of Business has opened Tuesday in downtown Detroit. A new addition to Wayne State University's campus, the development was made possible thanks to $40 million donation from Mike and Marian Ilitch. "Mike and I were so proud to make the gift to build this school, it was one of the highlights of our careers," said Little Caesars co-founder Marian Ilitch. "We were so excited about the positive impact it will have on the students, the university, the city of Detroit and our broader community, for generations to come."

A gaggle of local officials were on hand Tuesday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business building. The new facility was made possible by a $40 million donation in 2015 from Mike and Marian Ilitch, the co-founders of Little Caesars and Olympia Entertainment, and is the largest charitable gift in Wayne State’s history.

The second major building in the District Detroit is opening, as Wayne State University and Olympia Development celebrate the completion of the Mike Ilitch School of Business. Faculty and staff started moving in earlier this summer, and classes begin Aug. 29 at the building that overlooks downtown Detroit.

"This is a part of Wayne State Medical School's social mission," said Dr. Jennifer Mendez, the medical school's director of co-curricular programs and assistant professor of internal medicine. "It is a way for our students to apply their classroom knowledge to real-life situations." The Wayne State students also formed an organization to support Auntie Na's this year after being inspired during volunteer efforts during the last school year. It includes about 20 members.

At the end of a marathon day in Balocco, Italy, in June, Sergio Marchionne was still going strong. Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, died less than two months later. In the days after his death, the Swiss hospital where he died said Marchionne had been treated over the previous year for an undisclosed serious illness, and questions were being raised about what company officials knew. But if the FCA board knew of Marchionne's struggles — and that's not a certainty — is there a requirement to share more? Professor Sudip Datta, finance department chair at Wayne State University's Mike Ilitch School of Business, said the issue goes to privacy. "There's no requirement per se about disclosing the health of the CEO to investors," Datta said, "Just because someone is a CEO, it doesn't mean someone checks all his privacy at the door." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "doesn’t say you have to disclose the private lives of the CEO or for that matter any employee," Datta said.

Researchers from Wayne State University’s School of Medicine say some non-traditional forms of treatment are helping lessen the mental impact of the Syrian civil war on refugees.

Land contracts are a popular home buying tool in Detroit where mortgages have historically been hard to come by — have little protections for buyers. "Land contracts can be so pernicious there is no filing requirement, there is just no regulation on them," explained Peter Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School. "They can just exist in this completely private space, and almost no accountability for them." 

As you watch fireflies flit around your backyard at night, do you ever wonder, "How does that firefly do it? What makes him glow?" Chemistry professor A. Paul Schaap asked himself this very question while working in his lab at Wayne State University where he was searching for the molecule at the heart of "bioluminescence."

A learning opportunity for local high school students at Wayne State University -- Smash Academy is a five-week STEM camp that take students through biology, computer science and math courses. Forty ninth-graders, 20 male and 20 female, were selected last January from among a large group of applicants interested in participating in the five-week program.

Conversation piece by Tamara-Hew Butler

Five women are standing together in the drawing, each wearing factory coveralls, each with bright scarves tied around their heads, each raising their right arms and flexing their biceps. They are all Rosies, "a group of women defined not by the identity of a single riveter in a single factory, but by the collective might of hundreds of thousands of women whose labors helped save the world," explains the introduction to "Rosie, a Detroit Herstory." The Wayne State University Press book, which officially arrives Monday, is special in several ways, starting with the fact that it was created by two Detroit women: author Bailey Sisoy Isgro and illustrator Nicole Lapointe, whose friendship just happened to begin through a Rosie-themed trivia question.

Math Corps, founded in 1991, is a combined academic and mentoring program for Detroit public school students in grades 6-12. It features a summer camp, year-round Saturday programs, and enrichment courses for elementary school children. In addition to math, it also focuses on life skills, said Executive Director Steven Kahn. WSU Math Corps, which is attracting national and international attention, is spinning off from the university as it begins to expand to new sites. The program is heading into DPS middle schools in the coming academic year through a new pilot with the district, other states with a $3 million National Sciences Foundation grant and possibly the West African countries of Ghana and Nigeria, which have been benchmarking it. It's a story not often told: a Detroit nonprofit exporting an impactful program. But the program hasn't spread in Detroit beyond the approximately 3,000 students who've come through over its 26-year-history.

Actor Hill Harper is deepening his connections to Detroit by establishing a new youth empowerment program in partnership with Wayne State University and local companies. Harper, who stars in the CBS drama "CSI:NY," is launching the Summer Empowerment Academy at the Detroit university. It is a weeklong mentorship program for incoming ninth-grade students in the city. Wayne State representatives and alumni are scheduled to host workshops on the college planning and admissions process, while entrepreneurs and employees from Microsoft and TechTown Detroit will also speak to the kids about technology careers. Tours of Quicken Loans and the Motown Museum are also planned.

If you’re living with a chronic illness—as half of all Americans are—then you may want to check any unnecessary bickering. According to a recent study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the only thing worse than living with a chronic condition is fighting with your partner while living with a chronic condition. Researchers were interested in getting a better understanding of how the day-to-day interactions in a marriage impact the health of a person living with a chronic disease.

With August football practice fast approaching, every coach’s favorite cheer will be to “stay hydrated” and “keep urine clear” during the summer heat. In 2017, a University of Texas football coach created a urine-based “Longhorn Football Hydration Chart,” which labeled players with yellow urine as “selfish teammates” and those with brown urine as “bad guys.” This “hydration shaming” practice has permeated high school sports, thereby encouraging a sporting culture which equates superior performance with superior hydration.

Henry Ford Health System, Wayne State University, and the Detroit Health Department have teamed up to offer  free immunization fairs in Detroit. As part of the Vaccines For Children program, children who are less than 19 years old, uninsured, underinsured, Medicaid eligible, American Indian or Alaskan Native are eligible to receive the recommended vaccines at no cost. 

Wayne State University researchers are working with a refugee resettlement agency on efforts that aim to ease anxiety, depression and stress among Syrian refugees in the Detroit area. The Wayne State School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences has developed the project with Samaritas, the state's largest resettlement organization. The program includes a dance class for children, art therapy for teenagers and yoga for women. Organizers say incorporating art, movement and mindfulness seeks to help refugees deal with emotions and trauma. They cite the importance of such programs in a state that has taken in the second-highest number of Syrian refugees coming to the U.S.

Robert Sedler, professor of law and constitutional law expert, was a guest on the Craig Fahle show discussing recent Michigan Supreme Court decisions. Sedler said that Michigan school districts can ban the open carry of weapons on school property. Michigan law prohibits holders of concealed pistol permits from carrying them on school property except that parents picking up or dropping off children may have the pistol in the car. The Court held that Michigan law prohibiting units of local government - defined as city, village, township or county - from enacting gun regulation did not include school districts. Also discussed was the upcoming decision from the Michigan Supreme Court in a challenge to the ballot proposal for a redistricting commission. The challengers contend that it is a general revision of the constitution, which can only be done by a convention. The Court of Appeals unanimously held that it is a constitutional amendment and not a general revision. Sedler said that the decision is clearly correct, because the amendment only deals with one topic, redistricting, and does not change the form of government.

The Michigan Supreme Court decided late Tuesday to keep a proposal to change the way Michigan draws voting district lines on the November ballot in 4-3 decision released late Tuesday night. The decision came after months of contentious legal proceedings which kept the proposal, by the group Voters Not Politicians, in limbo. The opposition group, Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution,  unsuccessfully argued that the measure was too broad to legally go before voters. Instead, that group argued it would require a constitutional convention in order to make the changes. Susan Fino, professor of political science, commented to Bridge ahead of the decision last week. “It’s clearly a valid initiative petition that meets all the constitutional requirements, so unless the Court is willing to expose themselves as overtly political, they really can’t keep it off the ballot.”