Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson called Tuesday for the school and students to commit to a goal of graduating in four years. Calling the six-year graduation rate improving but still "unacceptable" at 32 percent, Wilson said the aim is not to achieve better national rankings or more state funding but to prepare a diverse student body to thrive. "We do this because every student deserves the opportunity to obtain the best of a college education," Wilson said. "Every student deserves the opportunity to aspire and to achieve excellence - the type of excellence that is part of the value system of Wayne State. Every student deserve the opportunity to thrive regardless of their family wealth or the circumstances in which they were born." Wilson made the call during his third annual university address, where he touched on the university's 2016-21 strategic plan, which included themes of collaboration, innovation, excellence, diversity and inclusion, and integrity. He pointed to numerous signs of progress at the university, including a 16.9 percent increase in freshman enrollment over the previous year and a rise in research funding to $150.3 million. In addition, student housing is at capacity with waiting lists for dorm beds and retention rates are at their highest level in 16 years. Within two years, Wilson said he wants WSU and students to make a commitment to graduate in four years - as opposed to six years. He promised that WSU will do its part to help them along the way by ensuring that advisers and required classes will be available, and more. "Students do their part and Wayne State does its part," Wilson said. "One student at a time, every student counts."

Fox 2 was onsite during the reopening ceremonies for the Student Center offering video coverage.

Charles Lang Freer loved Asian and American art so much that he had his 1892 shingle-style Detroit home expanded three times in 1906, 1910 and 1913 to accommodate his expansive collection. Those Eastern and Western influences also were seen in his garden, installed when the house was built, redesigned in 1906, and now target of a more than $250,000 restoration campaign. The project, which is expected to take two years to complete, begins with the removal of slate outside the home at 71 E. Ferry St. so an aggregate-material driveway mimicking the wealthy railroad freight car manufacturing magnate's original can be installed. Existing plants are also being removed and repurposed around the campus of Wayne State University, which owns and manages the home's property between Woodward Avenue and John R Street in Midtown, said Meghan Urisko, research assistant at the Freer House. The campaign is an effort to lift the school into the top ranks of public urban research universities in the U.S. The project is part of Wayne State's $750 million Pivotal Moments campaign, launched last year and expected to be complete in 2018 to coincide with the school's 150th anniversary.

Initially written to preserve German heritage and tradition, fairy tales often had a dark side. Professor Donald Haase, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, talked about the darker elements of these tales with Stephen Henderson on "Detroit Today." Haase will present dramatic readings of unfamiliar dark fairytales and discuss their role during another Knowledge on Tap event WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 16 at Hopcat in Midtown.

TechTown CEO Ned Staebler was a guest on Comcast Newsmakers to discuss how Wayne State's business incubator is supporting small businesses and innovation to create jobs throughout the region.

"Getting older is inevitable. Aging is optional." Those are words that Huntington Woods resident Norine Zimmer lives by as a member of the Society of Active Retirees (SOAR) for the past six or so years. Zimmer engages through SOAR, the Farmington Hills-based nonprofit organization affiliated with Wayne State University. It was created to mentally and socially engage seniors. The 12-year-old organization grew after its first fall semester of about 20 courses; the organization now boasts 72 noncredit spring and fall courses, with roughly 850 members enrolled. The fall semester runs Oct. 12-Nov. 12. The fee is $80 for eight classes. Registration begins Sept. 9. In addition to courses covering art, culture, film and history, the organization has a book club, a new film club, special events and field trips. Most classes take place at the Wayne State University-Oakland Center, where SOAR is headquartered.

The underbelly of the internet allows hackers to sell our information. But where is it? An estimated 200,000 Apple iPhones have been hacked. Personal information is now in the hands of the hackers and presumably will be sold to other criminals. The motives for the iPhone hack may be different than the recent attack on cheating spouses website Ashley Madison, but in both cases, it's likely that before the information hit the world-wide web, it showed up on the internet's black market called "The Dark Web." WDET's Amy Miller spoke with Wayne State University Information Security Officer Kevin Hayes for an explanation of this subversive space.

The College and University Flu Vaccination Challenge began in the 2014-15 season as a friendly competition between schools to see which could garner the highest flu vaccination coverage on their campus. College students have unique risk factors that make them more susceptible to getting sick, such as close contact in dormitories, classrooms, public transportation, parties and sports events. But even healthy young adults can get influenza. According to Michigan Care Improvement Registry data, adults aged 18-24 years have the lowest flu vaccination coverage rate, only 10.8 percent during the 2014-15 flu season. There are currently 15 schools enrolled in the 2015-16 College Flu Challenge including Wayne State University.

Techonomy Detroit, slated for Sept. 15 at the Wayne State University Law School, hopes to give attendees a leg up on what is possible in business, government and society as a result of new and fast-changing technology. The fourth annual conference will take a high-level look at how technology is changing work and life in the U.S. and its cities. Among the speakers are Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk; Mark Bertolini, CEO, Aetna Inc.; Jennifer Crozier, vice president, Global Citizenship Initiatives, IBM; Dan'l Lewin, corporate vice president, technology and civic engagement, Microsoft; and Beth Niblock, Detroit chief information officer.

With 131 incoming first-year students, Wayne State University Law School marks a 10 percent increase over last year's 119 first-year students. Coursework is underway for the new class, which includes students ages 20 to 56. They hail from 35 undergraduate colleges and universities, where they pursued 34 undergraduate and graduate majors, including biology, chemistry, journalism, mathematics, music and religious studies. All but 10 students are from Michigan. Eleven of the new students are in Wayne Law's evening program, eight are in a combined program of day and evening classes, and 112 chose to attend the day program. "I'm proud that with our boost in enrollment, we've also not only maintained but increased the caliber of our incoming students," Wayne Law Dean Jocelyn Benson said. She noted that the median LSAT score of the incoming class is 157, up from 156 last year, and the median grade point average is 3.42, up from 3.29.

Are universities and community colleges addressing the educational disparities that come with having a more diverse student body? A round table of guests including Mark Bernstein of the University of Michigan Board of Regents, Sandra O'Brien, Wayne State University Board of Governors, Fidelis D'Cunha, district provost of diversity and inclusion of Wayne County Community College District, and Curtis Ivery, chancellor of Wayne County Community College District answer the question on Redline with Bankole Thompson.

A research team led by Kezhong Zhang, Ph.D., at the Wayne State University School of Medicine's Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, has discovered that exposure to air pollution has a direct adverse health effect on the liver and causes liver fibrosis, an illness associated with metabolic disease and liver cancer. Zhang, associate professor of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and of Immunology and Microbiology, and his group have been studying the adverse health effects of air pollution from a unique perspective. While the major research efforts in the field were focused on the effects of air pollution on lung tissues and cardiovascular system, the Zhang lab studied the pathological effects and stress mechanisms of air pollution on the liver, the major organ of detoxification and metabolism. Their work demonstrated that inhalation exposure to high-concentration airborne particulate matter PM2.5 has direct effects on the liver, triggering liver fibrosis, a pathological condition characterized by accumulation of the extracellular matrix protein collagen that occurs in most types of chronic liver diseases. "Our work has a major impact on medical care and health policy-making for the populations under air pollution environment," Zhang said.

Tonia Reinhard, a registered dietitian and director of the Coordinated Program in Dietetics at Wayne State University, offers some tips to up your midday meal game. Sandwiches: Look for healthy bread that has 4 grams of fiber or more, add a lean source of protein, like chicken breast lunch meat, and then leafy greens, like spinach or kale. Be conscious of what you are spreading on your sandwich; mayonnaise is packed with calories and fat, while mustard is very low in calories and fat. Smoothies: Smoothies can fit into a fast-paced lifestyle, where there is limited time to eat or prepare a lunch. Blending a smoothie is also a great way to incorporate healthy foods into your diet that you may not typically eat raw by themselves.

Two White House officials will explain the nuclear deal negotiated with Iran during a presentation at 6 p.m. today at Wayne State University Law School's Spencer M. Partrich Auditorium. The presentation, sponsored by the law school's Program for International Legal Studies, will lay out the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated between six major world powers and Iran after nearly two years of meetings. Paul Irwin, director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council and one of the negotiators for the plan, will detail the deal and how it addresses international concerns about Iran's nuclear program. Presenting with Irwin will be Matt Nosanchuk, associate director for public engagement and liaison to the American Jewish community and on international issues.

At Wayne State University, where motivational author Wayne Dyer earned three degrees in eight years, some 74 students have received scholarships in his name since 2008. Dyer, a pioneer in self-help books and speeches, died Saturday in Hawaii, at age 75. Dyer wanted to help students from Detroit high schools, who struggled with grades and financial circumstances much like he did growing up in a Detroit family ripped apart by alcoholism. The Dyer scholarship doesn't require a minimum grade point average, but does require students show financial need. "He was accepted at Wayne State on a provisional basis, because he didn't have the grades," Christine Hansen, WSU's assistant vice president for advancement services, said Monday. In a December 2005 memorandum of agreement with WSU about the scholarships, Dyer was quoted as saying: "I realize now that the university gave me a big break by admitting me back in the early '60s." Eleven students enrolled for the new fall term are recipients of a total of $27,500 in Dyer scholarship grants, said Hansen. Dyer's generosity will help WSU students into perpetuity, said Hansen. The awards will be given out annually; the numbers and amount varies based on the endowment. The scholarships give preference to graduates of high schools located in Detroit, but is not limited to them.

If you're loading up on vitamin C and zinc to stave off the sniffles, you should try an earlier bedtime instead. People who regularly sleep six hours or less each night are four times more likely to get a cold than people who sleep just an hour longer, a new study finds. Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting who would get sick after exposure to the cold virus, researchers say. "Sleep is part of our own nature's defense against illness," says Dr. M. Safwan Badr, former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and chief of the division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He calls the study's results "powerful." The study is unique because it used objective measures to show that poor sleep habits make people more vulnerable to a cold virus, says Badr, who was not involved in the research. The actigraphy measured sleep in a much more accurate way than information researchers get from self-reports, he says. Furthermore, the researchers actually gave the subjects the virus, assuring that everyone was exposed to the same bug.

One of the most oft-quoted presences in the Detroit development scene in recent years has been neither a developer nor a politician but an academic: Robin Boyle, the long-time chair of urban planning at Wayne State University. Boyle just returned to Detroit from a nearly year-long sabbatical that took him to the Ruhr Valley in western Germany and to Melbourne, Australia. Detroit Free Press writer John Gallagher caught up with him recently. His main takeaway: Both the Ruhr Valley, a network of nine cities including Dortmund, Essen, and others that traditionally housed Germany's steelmaking and other industry, and the rapidly growing Melbourne region (recently ranked as the most livable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit's annual global livability index) offer robust networks of public transportation that metro Detroit so far can only dream of. Those transit options include comprehensive systems of inter-city trains, subways, downtown streetcars and trams, buses, and bicycle and walking paths, all connected in vast networked systems. "What we came home with was a sense that people in these modern, attractive cities deeply appreciate the connectedness that good public transportation offers," Boyle said. "They and their employers are prepared to invest in these transportation systems, just as they are eager to see good roads for their cars."

As schools look to appeal to students interested in accessing education from anywhere, anytime, they are working to be more interactive and innovative to improve the experience and usefulness of online learning. From faster-paced coursework and new teaching formats and technologies, to faculty training and classes that orient online students, schools are plugging in to enhance student achievement. "The challenge is keeping up with the pace of advances, and technology, and try not to follow the fads, and just stick to what is good for our students, and their success ultimately," said Ahmad Ezzeddine, associate vice president for educational outreach and international programs at Wayne State University. One approach to improved online learning is to present course information in smaller segments, Ezzeddine said. "When someone is online, the attention span is a lot shorter. You need to maintain the interest of students, so having them watch a three-hour lecture is not going to be effective," he said.

Work has begun on the final phase of a 3½-mile urban greenway in Midtown Detroit. Midtown Detroit Inc. said the Midtown Loop Greenway will connect places such as Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center with greenway initiatives in other neighborhoods. The final phase of construction includes adding bicycle lanes to link Midtown to the Detroit Riverfront, and completing a walkway with colored and stained sidewalks and amenities such as bike racks and benches. Construction on the $15 million project began in 2010 and is expected to be finished by late summer or early fall of next year.

Continuing its new mission to visit communities battling income inequality, UNITY: Journalists for Diversity has announced that the coalition will hold its second regional conference for a gathering planned in Detroit. The regional event titled "Empowering The Detroit Story" on Sept. 12, will bring journalists around the country to Wayne State University for an event centered on media literacy, multimedia training, entrepreneurial journalism and discussions on tackling poverty. Ethriam Cash Brammer, associate director for the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies at Wayne State, said the university was happy to welcome UNITY to campus and believes the area needs to have an honest discussion on media diversity. "Detroit is a unique city with a very diverse population," Brammer said. "All of our voices need to be heard." Workshops will include building simple websites, investigative journalism, social media training and media engagement. Before the summit, syndicated cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz will hold a cartooning workshop for students in Detroit and Chicago Tribune Standards Editor Margaret Holt speak on media ethics to a Wayne State journalism class. http://www.laprensatoledo.com/Stories/2015/082815/unity.htm