Joique Bell has a new home and he's staying in the NFC North. The former Detroit Lions running back signed with the Chicago Bears on Tuesday, and his first game with his new team will come against his old team. Detroit worked Bell out last week after the franchise lost Ameer Abdullah to injured reserve but decided not to sign him again after cutting him as a salary-cap casualty in February. The 30-year-old Bell struggled last season with Detroit, rushing 90 times for 311 yards and four touchdowns. He battled a multitude of injuries along the way that limited him to 13 games and also took the majority of his offseason work away from him as well. Originally an undrafted free agent from Wayne State, Bell has 561 career carries for 2,235 rushing yards and 22 touchdowns. Also a receiving threat out of the backfield, he has 161 receptions for 1,640 yards.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump faced off Monday in the first of three televised debates. Wayne State University held a Debate Watch in the Student Center Building which was attended by students, faculty and staff. Fox 2 reporter Dave Spencer spoke with students following the debate to hear their view on the election and outcome of the debate.

When Beki Schultz tore the ACL in her knee in high school, she started to get interested in medicine. When she tore the other ACL a year or so later, she knew what she wanted to do with her life — become an orthopedic or trauma surgeon. That journey is getting jump-started this fall as Schlutz begins her freshman year at Wayne State University. She is one of 10 students in the initial Wayne Med-Direct class. The program, designed to increase the number of students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds who are studying medicine, will pay for the students' entire undergraduate education, including room and board; guarantee them admission to Wayne State's medical school, and pay for their tuition there. The students also get mentoring and various special seminars and other opportunities. Students applying for the program have to meet criteria. Have a minimum 3.5 GPA and 1340 SAT or 30 ACT score; be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident; and an incoming freshman. WSU will hold a series of open houses this fall for those interested in next year's class. All sessions will be 5-6 p.m. in the Welcome Center Auditorium. The sessions will be today, Oct. 5, Oct. 19 and Oct. 24.

Detroit might be the Motor City, but for the next few weeks, biking and walking will take center stage. A series of events dedicated to non-motorized transportation will kick off Thursday. An event this week, from Thursday through Saturday, will highlight innovative ideas to transform the Wayne State University area of Warren Avenue in Midtown between Woodward and Second avenues "into a walkable, bikeable, transit- and retail-friendly corridor." "Through creative yet practical streetscape improvements such as painted bike lanes, pedestrian bump-outs, and shortened crosswalks, Wayne State hopes to re-imagine Warren’s long-term design as a safe, active and vibrant corridor," according to a news release. The effort, which is led by WSU and the City of Detroit, includes a food truck rally in the courtyard area next to the WSU bookstore from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, sidewalk seating at Warren and Cass all day Friday and a pop-up market at Warren and Woodward from 1-5 p.m. Saturday.

The Sycamores of New York City are hardly your run-of-the-mill Depression-era American family. Much of the country is wondering where its next meal is coming from, but not the Sycamores. In "You Can't Take It with You," they indulge in not-so-practical passions like painting, playwriting, candy making, wrestling, ballet dancing and dart throwing, often in their homey living room. First produced in 1936 and written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the screwball comedy opens the 64th season of the Hilberry Theatre. It's a nice showcase for the current crop of Wayne State University graduate-student actors, each of whom is given the assignment of playing a broad, eccentric character who could have stepped right out of an old New Yorker magazine cartoon.  “You Can’t Take It with You” has long been a staple of school and community theater groups, and it works fairly well for Hilberry. The show ends with the cast singing the 1936 pop hit “Goody Goody,” which is fitting for a production that's mostly pretty good but rarely great.

With last year’s high-scoring affair against Lake Erie fresh on its mind Saturday night, the Wayne State defense was hungry for redemption. The Warriors set the tone early in their home opener and rolled to a dominating 50-7 victory over the Storm in front of 3,469 at Tom Adams Field. Last year, Wayne State escaped with a 56-54 victory over Lake Erie, which was the highest-scoring game in program history. In Saturday’s rematch between the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference opponents, the Warriors’ defense controlled the game, leading at halftime, 47-0. “Our defensive staff was highly motivated to not let (a close game) happen again,” coach Paul Winters said. “We set the tempo right away.” The Warriors finished with 655 yards of offense, a program record. WSU running back Romello Brown had an 86-yard touchdown run in the second quarter.

It's clear Wayne State professor Carol Miller loves Belle Isle. Miller, says the Detroit River's unfair reputation for being dirty is based more on rumor than fact. And she's proud that Wayne State University has included Belle Isle in the Adopt-A-Beach program for student research. "Belle Isle beach is important," Miller says. "It's a tremendous asset of southeastern Michigan. It's another one of the Great Lakes beaches and its undervalued."  Miller, who's taught at WSU for 30 years and is one of Michigan's premier civil engineers, and part of a prestigious cohort of water-quality engineers and science professionals from the state who are tackling issues in Flint, Detroit, and areas around the Great Lakes. In 2005, Miller's dedication to teaching won her the prestigious Michigan Society of Professional Engineers, Engineer of the Year award—one of the many accolades from her long list of awards. But after years of being an instructor, Miller wanted to focus more closely on urban water issues, in particular the narrow Huron–Erie Corridor (HEC) where the upper Great Lakes and lower Great Lakes connect on the east side of the state, as well as Lake St. Claire and the Detroit River.  Miller believes the HEC, a surface-water drinking resource satisfying more than six million people, is too often overlooked. So in 2009 she created Healthy Urban Waters, a multi-million dollar initiative to advance civil engineering, and give WSU students real-world experience dealing with projects that address the challenges of environmental degradation due to human activity. Major funders hailed her brainchild. The ERB Family Foundation, the Great Lakes Protection, and the National Science Foundation have each awarded grants to WSU to develop Healthy Urban Waters and further Miller's work. WSU has since cemented its national status as a major player in water education and research. Along with the University of Michigan and Lawrence Tech, WSU is investing in water fieldwork and pioneering solutions that address freshwater ecosystem restoration to provide potable drinking water for a water-starved developing world.

Wayne State University in Detroit is reporting the urban school’s first overall student enrollment increase in seven years. Current enrollment is at 27,326 -- an increase of 104 students. Wayne State has more than 7,300 new students this fall, including transfers and graduate students. The university’s strategic plan calls for 30,000 students by 2021. President M. Roy Wilson says in a release that the number is “a tough, yet attainable goal” and can be reached with “an average two percent increase per year for the next five years.”

No student should have to choose between going to class and life’s most basic needs of food and shelter. Since we founded the HIGH Program in 2013, this has become our simple mantra that motivates us each day. Unfortunately, it remains a reality for some Wayne State University students. I discovered this when I first arrived at the university in the summer of 2013, when my husband, M. Roy Wilson, M.D., accepted the honor to be the 12th president of Wayne State. It was brought to my attention at an event, that a graduate student was homeless and living out of her car.   

Both Dan Gilbert and Stephen Ross will donate $5 million to Wayne State University’s Law School in honor of outgoing dean Jocelyn Benson, the school will announce today. The pair – each alumni of the school – will give the gifts to establish the Benson Legacy Fund for Wayne Law and the Benson Endowed Enhancement Fund for Wayne Law. The money will be spent at the discretion of the school’s dean to further the school. Benson is leaving the school at the end of the month to work for a new organization headed by Ross. Each gift is the largest single gift ever received by the law school. “I am thrilled to have two of Wayne Law’s most successful and influential alumni unite to make this historic investment in the future of our law school,” Benson said in a written statement. “It is an honor to count them both as members of the Wayne Law family; their accomplishments and leadership are an inspiration for our entire community.” The announcement comes as Gilbert and Ross are inducted, along with 11 others, as part of the inaugural class of the Miller Family Wayne Law Alumni Wall of Fame. The wall of fame – the highest award presented by Wayne Law – is awarded to alumni who have distinguished themselves by contributions they have made in their fields, or in the betterment of humanity, or to former faculty and staff who have had a significant impact on the law school. The gifts from Ross and Gilbert are part of Wayne State’s $750-million Pivotal Moments fund-raising campaign. Including their gifts, the campaign has raised more than $590 million. With their gifts, the law school has raised nearly $24 million of its $30-million goal for the campaign. "Both Mr. Ross and Mr. Gilbert have worked to revitalize development in urban cities and build a sense of community through numerous projects,” Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson said in a statement. “Their generous gifts will help Wayne Law continue to play a significant part in the renaissance of Detroit.”

The Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance is pleased to open what promises to be an exciting and invigorating season. On Friday, Sept. 16, the annual President's Preview Event will be held with notable individuals from the community who support and patronize the arts. The event has become a staple for the Wayne State community's "Welcome Back" given by President M. Roy Wilson himself, that celebrates the start to a brand new year. The evening also welcomes audiences from all over the Metropolitan area into the Hilberry Theatre's doors, as the 54th season jump starts with “You Can't Take It With You” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, running Sept. 16 through Oct. 2.   Other media mentionshttp://www.broadwayworld.com/detroit/article/Theatre-and-Dance-at-Wayne-Opens-201617-Season-With-YOU-CANT-TAKE-IT-WITH-YOU-20160908

Jocelyn Benson, the dean of Wayne State University Law School, is stepping down this month to serve as CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality — a venture founded by real estate developer and philanthropist Stephen M. Ross and led by professional sports organizations to improve race relations in America. Benson also will serve as a special adviser on philanthropic investments to Ross, a WSU law school alum whose total donations of $1.1 billion to higher education rank behind only those of fellow American billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Additionally, Benson will serve as director of the Levin Center at Wayne Law, established in 2005 to educate law students, lawmakers and other public servants on bipartisan techniques to oversee public and private activities. She will co-teach a course on Legislative Oversight with former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Benson said she is grateful for the opportunity to serve as WSU’s law school dean for four years, and proud that in that time Wayne Law has risen to be ranked as the second most prestigious law school in Michigan. WSU Provost Keith Whitfield will meet with the law school faculty to discuss appointing an interim dean. A national search will be launched to replace Benson, with a goal of having her replacement take office in June.

A century ago, researchers discovered that some people — most likely including Mary Todd Lincoln — had a condition called pernicious anemia, a deficiency of red blood cells ultimately identified as an autoimmune disease that causes a loss of stomach cells needed for B12 absorption. Mrs. Lincoln was known to behave erratically and was ultimately committed to a mental hospital. “Depression, dementia and mental impairment are often associated with” a deficiency of B12 and its companion B vitamin folate, “especially in the elderly,” Dr. Rajaprabhakaran Rajarethinam, a psychiatrist at Wayne State University School of Medicine, has written. He described a 66-year-old woman hospitalized with severe depression, psychosis and a loss of energy and interest in life who had extremely low blood levels of B12 and whose symptoms were almost entirely reversed by injections of the vitamin.

It wasn't so long ago in Detroit that proposals for bicycle lanes, urban farms, mass tree plantings and other alternative uses for urban land were viewed as soft-headed or even harmful. But today these ideas and others  like them have gone mainstream. And advocates for urban farming, protected bicycle lanes and other tactics have slowly chipped away at the skepticism over the years. Doubters remain. Robin Boyle, a professor of urban planning at Wayne State University, wonders aloud whether Detroit leaders have turned to greenways and pocket parks simply because the really big projects like highways and skyscrapers are just too hard to do now. "In order to achieve some of their goals, in order to achieve what they want, they've moved toward this piecemeal, smaller scale, more immediate action," he said. "They don't require huge amounts of money, they don't require land acquisition." And, Boyle adds, all these greening projects taken together don't change the trajectory of a city that still faces significant challenges of poverty, schools and crime. "To some extent, the road closure idea or the pocket park are small-scale improvements, and I'm not trying to be critical of them, but in the big picture, they are modest," he said.

The Detroit Creative Corridor Center (DC3) has announced the schedule for the sixth-annual Detroit Design Festival (DDF). Titled “Designing Detroit’s Future,” this year’s festival will highlight the city’s recent designation as a UNESCO City of Design. One of 22 cities named City of Design, Detroit is the only U.S. city with this designation. The five-day festival, open from Sept. 21 to 25, will span across the city with installations, talks and interactive events. Before the full festival, though, a UNESCO City of Design event will be held on Sept. 8. This will include a design crawl through some of the city’s many design studios. The full festival will include discussions and lectures as well as nightly performances throughout the city. Daylong workshops and demonstrations will also be happening each day of the festival. Wayne State University and the Museum of Contemporary Art will be hosting events and installations.

Wayne State University’s Department of Music hosted its annual J.C. Heard Jazz Week in July. In partnership with the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation, Jazz Week is a free program that brought together 40 of the best young musicians from around the state. Jazz Week participants will perform alongside world-renowned jazz musicians at this year’s Detroit Jazz Festival as part of J.C. Heard All-Star Youth Ensemble. Wayne State University’s director of jazz studies and professor Christopher Collins said students selected are among the best young musicians from around the state. “The students in this program are extremely talented and have the opportunity for unlimited growth in the jazz world. They are selected based on ability and pay nothing to attend,” Collins said. “It’s about nurturing their musical abilities and helping to keep the legacy of jazz alive. Artistry, excellence, communication and education are tenets of our organization. We are proud to see where the music has taken our alums over the last decade.” Jazz Week’s collaboration with Wayne State, Collins said has been shaped by Detroit’s rich legacy of jazz. “Because we are the oldest jazz program in the region, we are fortunate in that we have a long and impressive list of alums that have gone on to have great, successful careers,” Collins said. “The tremendous legacy at Wayne State University and the city of Detroit is attached to the development of creative music.”

The Secretary of State’s mobile office will soon be making its way around Michigan just in time for November’s election. The office will visit 18 college campuses over the next two months while helping students register to vote. “The 3,000-mile 2016 Voter Registration Drive is a great way to give college students easy access to our services, especially registering to vote,” said Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. “We’re also happy to answer questions and to assist anyone who needs any of our services. Please stop by to take care of your Secretary of State business, right on site.” The tour begins Sept. 7 at Wayne State University. All tour stops will be from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. In addition to voter registration the mobile office offers all of the services available of a traditional secretary of state office including address changes and driver’s license renewal. Staff will be available to answer questions about voter identification, absentee ballots, locating a sample ballot and finding their polling place.

Donovan Hohn, Wayne State University associate professor of English and author of ‘‘Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea,’’ wrote an article about the Flint water crisis and Virginia Tech professor of civil and environmental engineering, Marc Edwards. Last September, Edwards, who has been the lead investigator of the Flint water crisis, announced what he had found in Flint’s water; that lead levels in the tap water of “about 5,000 Flint homes” exceeded the safety standard — 10 parts per billion — of the World Health Organization.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson has assured staffers that he can pedal his bike 100 miles Saturday for the second annual Baroudeur — a fund-raising “century” ride that Wilson founded last year to fund scholarships. “President Wilson’s two passions in life are cycling and helping students get an education, so he combined the two for this event,” WSU spokesman Matt Lockwood said. For $65, cyclists can sign up for any of three rides — 25 miles, 62 miles (a “metric century”) and the 100-mile headliner event. They get refreshments on the ride, two beer tickets and lunch at a post-ride party, free parking and a Baroudeur T-shirt. Events start at 7 a.m. For more information: https://baroudeur.wayne.edu/details.php. Baroudeur is French for fighter, and in bike racing it's a rider who isn’t afraid to swing out of line and battle ahead of the crowd. The event starts and ends on the central campus beside the student center, after participants park their cars in Structure No. 2 on Anthony Wayne Drive, officials said. Riders will stay well south of Oakland County on all three routes, with the 100-milers going east to the Grosse Pointes as well south to Grosse Ile before returning to the university.

Following a Free Press story about research at Wayne State University on homeless college students, the university received a $200,000 grant in June from the Detroit-based McGregor Fund to aid such students as well as to find long-term solutions to the problem. About $50,000 of the grant will support a three-year-old program called HIGH — Helping Individuals Go Higher. It's an initiative of Jacqueline Wilson, wife of Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson. Jacqueline Wilson founded the program soon after she arrived on campus and learned that a medical school student was living out of her car, unable to afford housing after paying for books and tuition, she said. In founding HIGH and now applying the grant toward it, as well as to another student-aid program and research, she said that "our overall goal is that no student has to give up their chance of getting a higher education because of the cost of housing or other expenses of college." Just since the grant was awarded, the university has decided to set aside some of its future dormitory rooms for students who can't afford to live there, she said. The university plans to break ground in 2017 on an 800-unit student housing complex, to be on Anthony Wayne Drive north of Warren Avenue, and 10 of its units "will be allocated to our HIGH program students," Wilson said. The university initially thought it would find and rehabilitate a building that would be devoted to housing those students, "but the president" — her husband — "didn't want them stigmatized by being in a separate building," she said. About $90,000 of the grant is earmarked for WSU's Transition to Independence Program, or TIP, whose aim it to increase college access and improve graduation rates for students who grew up in foster care, Wilson said.