Professor Tamara Bray, director of the Grosscup Museum of Anthropology at Wayne State University, is featured in a video discussing the university's digs and artifact collection.

Everyone it seems is talking about the need for more people trained in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in the current job market. Especially for students that are at-risk and face challenges, access to that education can be difficult. To help people get these in-demand skills at an early age, Wayne State University's C2 Pipeline Program has become the 21st American CCLC program to receive STEM Accreditation through STEM.org. The C2 Pipeline Program partners with 15 high schools in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties that serve at-risk students. The program complements the students' school curriculum with after-school and summer activities. The summer programming culminates in an 11-day residential program that is the first of its kind.

Cricket flour - which is not really a flour, but a powder made of pulverized organic crickets - is growing in popularity as a sustainable way to deliver protein. It's used in baked goods, power bars and protein shakes. On Tuesday, students from Wayne State University's Anthropology Department will host a cricket flour bake-off at Detroit Farm and Garden, 1759 21st in Detroit. A panel of local food experts will judge the snacks, and the public is invited to come and have a taste. Assistant Professor Julie Lesnik has asked her students to create sweet treats using cricket flower to shed light on the importance of the cultural significance of food. "It's just part of our way of exploring the potential of insects as food," she says. "We don't identify them as food here, but it's food all over the world for millions of people. It's been utilized over the entirety of human evolution." Besides it being totally normal to eat crickets in other parts of the world, Lesnik says it's a more sustainable and ethical way to consume protein than traditional animals such as cows, pigs and chickens.

A new study by scientists at the Wayne State University School of Medicine demonstrates that communication between some of the brain's most important centers is altered in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The research led by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience's David Rosenberg, M.D., and Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D., sheds significant light on our understanding of how brain networks contribute to obsessive-compulsive disorder in youth. "Our studies are perfectly aligned with the renewed emphasis of the National Institute of Mental Health to discover mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disease in the brain. If you can discover a reliable mechanism underlying disease, you have the promise of improved pathways toward treatment," said Diwadkar, an associate professor.

Wayne State University has announced that it will award the first posthumous honorary degree in its 145-year history to Viola Gregg Liuzzo. In 1965, Liuzzo, a White woman who studied nursing at Wayne State University, was murdered in Lowndes County, Ala., by the Ku Klux Klan. Liuzzo, a member of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, was helping participants in the Selma voting rights effort. She was 39 years old. Three White men were acquitted of murder in state court but later were convicted of federal conspiracy charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Each year the Michigan Noble Book (MNB) list features 20 books, published the previous calendar year, which are about or set in Michigan or the Great Lakes region, or are written by a Michigan author. Selections include nonfiction and fiction books that appeal to a variety of audiences and cover various topics and issues close to the hearts of Michigan residents. MNB is a statewide program that began as part of the 1991 Michigan Week celebration, designed to pay tribute and draw attention to the many people, places and things that make Michigan life unique. The 2015 MNB book selections include the following published by Wayne State University Press: The Art of Memory: Historic Cemeteries of Grand Rapids, Michigan, by Thomas R. Dilley; Making Callaloo in Detroit, by Lolita Hernandez; Strange Love, by Lisa Lenzo; and Strings Attached, by Diane DeCillas.

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters visited Wayne State University's medical school Monday to push for legislation helping health care professionals better identify patients who are victims of human trafficking. Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, has introduced a bill creating a pilot program for a medical school to develop best practices for identifying and preventing the spread of human trafficking - what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security calls a "modern-day form of slavery involving the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain," often resulting in sexual coercion. Peters talked more about the proposal later Monday at Margherio Family Conference Center at Wayne State's School of Medicine. He was joined at the event by Wayne State School of Medicine Dean Dr. Jack Sobel and Angela Aufdemberge, president and CEO of Vista Maria, an organization that helps youth vulnerable to sex trafficking. "Wayne State is already doing a lot of great work in that area," Peters said Monday on the "Michigan's Big Show" radio program. The university embraced Peters' proposal. "Clearly there is an important role for the medical profession to play, and his legislation will help train those professionals to identify and treat victims of human trafficking," said Patrick Lindsey, vice president of government and community affairs at Wayne State University.

A recent Street Beat segment, featuring a Wayne State University faculty member and student, examined health issues facing Michigan residents. Cynthera F. McNeill, a member of the clinical faculty at the College of Nursing, explained how the upcoming S.A.V.E. T.H.E.M. Youth Step Show and Resource Fair on April 11 will teach high school students about good health care and disease prevention. Jennifer Tislerics of Gift of Life Michigan, and Kayla Stafford of the WSU Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority, talked about the importance of organ donation and the recent WSU Campus Challenge.

Wayne State University's Department of Archaeology researchers have uncovered evidence that may reveal bootlegging activities occurring during the 1920's prohibition era. Tommy's Bar, located near the Joe Louis Arena and Detroit River, is believed to have housed one of Detroit's 15,000 illegal speakeasies that flourished in the city following the Prohibition Act of 1919. Many of the speakeasies were controlled by the purple gang which generated estimated revenue of $300 million a year, translating to almost $4 billion in today's economy. Researchers found artifacts in the basement of the bar that also was believed to house an underground casino. A tunnel was dug in the basement which provided an escape hatch in case there were raids. It extends the full length of the building and exits at the rear of the site.

Wayne State's School of Medicine hosted its Future Docs program Saturday providing an opportunity for children ages 6 to 12 to participate in hands-on, kid-approved learning workshops. Workshops were taught by School of Medicine students and alumni. This popular annual event is sponsored by the School of Medicine Office of Alumni Affairs. The Wayne State University School of Medicine is the largest single-campus medical school in the nation with more than 1,000 medical students.

In the frozen far north, in Arctic Quebec, the Inuit have relied on the same nutritious foods culled from the oceans for centuries: beluga whale, fish, seal, and walrus. But some of these traditional foods have become so contaminated with brain-damaging mercury that the IQs of schoolchildren in remote Arctic villages are abnormally low. Inuit kids with the highest exposures to mercury in the womb are four times more likely than less-exposed Inuit kids to have low IQs and require remedial education, according to new findings by a team of researchers in Canada and the United States. The IQs of 282 Nunavik children, ranging in age from 8 to 14 years, were compared with the amounts of mercury in their umbilical cord blood in the study conducted by researchers at Laval University in Quebec and Wayne State University. Study co-author Sandra Jacobson said the new Arctic Canada findings shift the evidence in favor of the connection between seafood and reduced mental ability in children. The study is the first to link prenatal mercury exposure to poor performance on an IQ test for schoolchildren. "One of the real values of our research is that it addresses some of those differences in a completely independent study population and helps to reduce the degree of controversy," said Jacobson, a Wayne State University neuroscientist who has studied the effects of industrial chemicals on brain development for about 35 years. "Levels of PCBs have decreased over time. It's probable that the Inuit children were exposed to a less neurotoxic mixture of chemicals than existed in the Great Lakes in the 1980s," said Wayne State neuroscientist Joseph Jacobson, who co-authored the Nunavik and Lake Michigan studies with his wife, Sandra.

As a dancer, Garth Fagan has studied with some of the biggest names in the business: Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, José Limón. The Wayne State University grad would add one influential person to that list - a WSU professor named Patricia Weller. Fagan said Weller balanced compliments with critiques without wounding the egos of young talent. Fagan, who has gone on to fame and accolades as a teacher, said he thinks about Weller's influence often. Weller and other college memories will be part of Fagan's presentation as he receives the Apple Award from WSU's Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance. The honor is part of "A Conversation with Apple Award Recipient Garth Fagan" on March 28 at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts in West Bloomfield. The Apple Award brings a nationally prominent theater professional to Detroit and the Wayne State campus as a guest lecturer to interact with and educate the Department of Theatre and Dance through master classes and a question-and-answer style forum. Previous Apple Award winners include Neil Simon, Carol Channing, Mandy Patinkin, Patti Lupone and Tom Skerritt. 'A Conversation with Apple Award Recipient Garth Fagan' will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday at The Berman Center for the Performing Arts in West Bloomfield.

In a special WWJ presentation, "Every Kid Matters: The Case for Early Childhood Investment," WWJ City Beat reporter Vickie Thomas takes a look at brain science and what we can do to help children learn in the earliest years of life. Moriah Thomason, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Wayne State University's School of Medicine, says from a scientific standpoint, it's more than just looking at the structure of the brain. "We are really considering interplay and action," said Thomason. "This makes sense on an intuitive level - the brain is complex … so it's exciting that we are moving beyond that single dimension to get a more complex organization. "A big effort in my lab is even in utero mapping the development of functional developments while women are pregnant. I don't think we can do any better than that, so that's an exciting future research," said Thomason.

President M. Roy Wilson was a guest on the Tavis Smiley Show discussing various topics including graduation rates, tuition affordability, economic and real estate development, Wayne State's Capital Campaign, and the importance of making higher education a top priority in the communities of Detroit.

The man who bestowed the gift of movement on Simba and company in Broadway's "The Lion King" is returning in triumph to the city he once called home. Choreographer Garth Fagan, founder and artistic director of his own dance company and a 1998 Tony winner for "The Lion King," is this year's recipient of the Apple Award from Wayne State University's Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance. The Kingston, Jamaica, native and Wayne State alum will discuss his career in the world of modern dance and answer questions during "A Conversation With Apple Award Recipient Garth Fagan" at 7 p.m. Saturday at West Bloomfield's Berman Center. The Apple Award is given annually to a prominent theater professional. Past winners include Neil Simon, Carol Channing, Patti Lupone and Tom Skerritt.

Wayne State University's Forum on Contemporary Issues in Society (FOCIS) will feature former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, presidential candidate and author General Wesley K. Clark on Thursday, April 23, exploring the topic "Globalization, Terrorism & National Security: What in the world is going on?" During 38 years of service in the U.S. Army, Clark rose to the rank of four-star general as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Since retiring from the military in 2000, he has taken on the roles of investment banker, alternative energy leader, author, network television military analyst and businessman. In 2003, he became a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. "As we become more of a global society embracing the diversity of cultures, economies and political systems, new and daunting challenges are emerging," said Irvin D. Reid, director of FOCIS and inaugural holder of Wayne State's Eugene Applebaum Chair in Community Engagement. "Globalization seemingly makes our world smaller and our borders more vulnerable. We have witnessed acts of terrorism affecting the safety of citizens and compromising financial institutions through cybersecurity breaches. These threats have contributed to heightened concerns about national security. And we ask ourselves: 'What in the world is going on?'" The FOCIS event features a lecture at 6 p.m. and a book signing at 7:15 p.m., followed by a reception. All events are free and will be held at Wayne State University's Community Arts Auditorium.

Many of the stories about Detroit are founded in myth and Citizen Detroit is using facts to find the real stories. Detroit exited bankruptcy with a plan to balance city budgets and improve services to residents. While elected leaders have the responsibility of overseeing those actions, residents can help measure improvements - or declines - in their neighborhoods. They'll get help learning to do that at two free events presented by Citizen Detroit. "Dinner & Dialogues" are planned for 5 p.m., Wednesday March 25 and April 22 at the International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit. They are open forums where Detroiters can learn more about how the city's post-bankruptcy "blueprint," the Plan of Adjustment, was drafted and how it will be implemented, says Sheila Cockrel, former Detroit city councilwoman who is part of Citizen Detroit, a Wayne State University project aimed at educating and engaging the city's residents in local government. "The idea was that regular Detroiters really want to understand the factual basis for the situations that the city was facing," Cockrel says. "A hallmark of this program would be that we would deal in factual formation but also give people the opportunity to experience the complexity of making decisions."

The Wayne State University C2 Pipeline Program can now add another first to its program accomplishments as it becomes the first 21st CCLC program in the U.S. to receive STEM Accreditation through STEM.org. The C2 Pipeline program is funded through the Michigan Department of Education and works with high schools serving at-risk students from 15 high schools in 13 school districts across Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties to complement their day-school curriculums with after-school and summer programming. In addition to providing 32 weeks of programing in the schools, the program offers six weeks of summer programs on the campus at Wayne State University, which includes an 11-day residential program that is also the first of its kind.

Ned Staebler, the new president and CEO of TechTown Detroit, wants to accelerate the working relationship between the business incubator/innovation hub and Wayne State University, which cofounded TechTown 15 years ago. A better collaboration between the two organizations will put TechTown on a stronger financial footing and help it expand its mission of helping create and grow Detroit businesses, he said. While TechTown received initial funding from Wayne State, it has operated largely independent of the university. "TechTown has helped new businesses create 1,100 jobs in recent years and Wayne State has a $2.6 billion impact on Southeast Michigan," said Staebler, who assumed his new role on March 9. "Those two engines together will really fire on all cylinders." Under Staebler's direction, TechTown and Wayne State already are discussing how the two organizations can integrate administrative functions and grow TechTown's services. "We're looking for ways the university's size and scale can help TechTown," Staebler said. "We're analyzing everything TechTown does."

Former U.S. Senator Carl Levin and Wayne State University Law School Dean Jocelyn Benson joined "Detroit Today" host Stephen Henderson for a discussion about the recently named Levin Center. Levin said that this is an opportunity for him to pass on his own experiences in legislative oversight and teach future legislators lessons about accountability in private, public and government activities. Benson said, "These centers work together to give our students hands-on experiences while in school, working with these great icons in Michigan, to think about their place in service."