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Detroit News: Two WSU professors appointed to Gov. Snyder's Human Trafficking Commission

Several Metro Detroit professionals and authorities are among Gov. Rick Snyder's appointees to two advisory groups aimed at combating human trafficking. Snyder this week announced initial appointments to the Human Trafficking Commission and the Human Trafficking Health Advisory Board, which follow bills the governor signed into law last year that included stricter penalties and state protection for juveniles rescued from the sex trade. The 14-member Human Trafficking Commission, which was created through last year's House Bill 5158, oversees recommendations to the Legislature to improve laws and rules addressing human trafficking violations statewide, Snyder's office said. Appointees serve two-year terms expiring March 1, 2017. Among the newly appointed Commission members are Herbert Smitherman Jr., CEO of Health Centers Detroit Foundation and associate professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, and Dena Nazer, chief of the child protection team at Children's Hospital of Michigan and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University.
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Arab American News: WSU study on the impact of pollution on Arab Americans' health highlighted

A study was conducted last year by researchers at Wayne State University's medical school in collaboration with ACCESS, a local human service organization, to determine whether there is an association between changes in air pollution and asthma symptoms in young and old Arab Americans. The study was conducted to see whether the winter season, as opposed to summer, is associated with worse self-rated and objective pulmonary function. The survey covered socioeconomics, self-rated health and pulmonary function, health care utilization and environmental exposures during the summer of 2013 and the winter of 2013-2014. The study concluded Arab Americans' pulmonary health is adversely affected by environmental factors. There is also a high degree of concerns in the Arab community as to health effects from pollutants. Dr. Bengt B. Arnetz, a professor of environmental and occupational health at Wayne State's medical school, is one of the researchers who worked on the study. He said the study concluded that future studies need to delineate pollutant sources in more detail, as well as provide a means to combat adverse health effects. Arnetz noted that Dearborn's Southend is home to one of the most polluted ZIP codes in the state and country. He pointed out that many of the subjects lacked education and were economically strained.

New Monitor: Hilberry production to enter National Theatre Archive at Lincoln Center

The Hilberry Theatre Company has announced that its critically-acclaimed production of William Congreve's The Way of the World will be recorded for inclusion in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive in the National Theatre Archive at Lincoln Center. Local critics have praised the Hilberry's production, with John Monaghan of the Detroit Free Press calling the production "an especially impressive undertaking for the Hilberry…a talented ensemble," while Patty Nolan of the Examiner awarded the play five stars. (print only edition)

WSU's Ned Staebler named president and CEO of TechTown

Ned Staebler, Wayne State University's vice president for economic development, has been appointed president and CEO of TechTown, the Detroit business accelerator and incubator founded in partnership with the university in 2000. The TechTown board of directors approved the appointment following a March 2 vote. "My expanded role provides an opportunity to more closely align the innovation efforts of Wayne State University and TechTown," said Staebler, whose office oversees several small business support programs, including the Blackstone LaunchPad student entrepreneurship center, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and The Front Door for Business Engagement. "In addition to the university's existing entrepreneurship programs, we will soon be launching the Anderson Engineering Ventures Institute in our College of Engineering. This is the perfect time to build on the already close relationship between the university and the city's business innovation hub."
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WDET: Tech Town's new CEO sees chance to grow

Detroit's Midtown business incubator, Tech Town, has raised more than $100 million in start-up capital in the city since 2007. Its new president, Ned Staebler, says TechTown has a vital role in Detroit's economic recovery. Staebler is also Wayne State University's economic development vice-president. He tells WDET's Pat Batcheller Tech Town and the university already enjoy a close relationship, and he wants to build on that. "We can help you start businesses, we can help you launch them, and then when they're ready, we can help you grow them."
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Detroit Free Press: Hilberry's 'Enemy of the People' proves timely

"An Enemy of the People" is exactly the kind of thoughtful production we have come to expect from the Hilberry and its graduate-student theater program. Though full of speeches and grand gestures, the play is oddly timely and brings to mind current political debates about everything from climate change to the sad state of Michigan's roads. The production now in repertory at Wayne State's Hilberry Theatre (it's based on a 1950 adaptation of Ibsen's play by American playwright Arthur Miller) is solid, though it does little to lighten Ibsen's moralizing. Though Ibsen's drama is often stiff and preachy, his message comes through loud and clear in this Hilberry staging. That's the result of solid work.
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Crain's: WDET hires Free Press Pulitzer winner as 'Detroit Today' host

In addition to his role as the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, Stephen Henderson has been tabbed as host of WDET-101.9 FM's Detroit Today talk show. He begins the regular public radio hosting on March 16. The show airs from 9 to 10 a.m. weekdays. Wayne State University, which holds the station's license and provides it free space, announced his hire today. "I'm really excited to join WDET as host of Detroit Today," Henderson said in a statement. "I've been a listener since I was a kid, and that listening will be key to bringing my brand of civil discourse and inquiry to the air with listeners all over the metro area and the state." Henderson doesn't have a full-year contract because of where the university's budget calendar currently falls. "Because of where we're at in the Wayne State fiscal year, the current agreement is for 28 weeks and pays $30,800. We will move to annual contracts after that," said Matt Lockwood, WSU's director of communications. "We are thrilled to welcome Stephen Henderson to the WDET team as host of Detroit Today," said WDET General Manager Michelle Srbinovich in a statement.
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BLAC Detroit: WSU experts weigh in on sex trafficking - invisible industry in Detroit

Sex trafficking victims are seemingly imprisoned by invisible chains - since the industry is so underground. An estimated billion-dollar business that operates under the veil of "not existing." The women are largely unaccounted for; they are runaways or those without family. Some victims are blackmailed and coerced into committing lewd sexual acts for money by lovers. Others are controlled by drug addiction and brute force, a tactic called "gorilla pimping" - making it nearly impossible to escape. Often used to refer to sex trafficking, "human trafficking" is an umbrella term that includes labor trafficking (a modern form of slavery and work exploitation) and sex trafficking. At the root of both offenses is commercial exchange. "People use sex trafficking and prostitution interchangeably," explains Blanche Cook, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Wayne State University's Law School. "But sex trafficking is actually a much larger rubric. It's a much larger term that can often include pornography, exotic dance clubs, strip clubs and massage parlors." It's covered under federal statute - title 18 U.S. code 1591. "If you are talking about adults in sex trafficking," Cook explains, "there has to be some type of commercialization, something of value exchanged. And there also must be some element of force, fraud and coercion. "As a scholar and as someone who is actively involved in this work," she adds, "my work is to stop problematizing women."

Ned Staebler to replace Leslie Smith as TechTown CEO

Ned Staebler, Wayne State University's vice president for economic development, has been appointed president and CEO of TechTown, the business accelerator and incubator founded in partnership with the university in 2000. TechTown's board of directors approved the appointment Monday. Staebler will continue to serve in his current role at the university after assuming his new position on March 16. "TechTown is an incredibly effective conduit for transferring the economic power and innovative energy of a public research university directly to the people in our community," said WSU President M. Roy Wilson. "Ned's leadership at TechTown will strengthen the connection Wayne State has to our community as an economic driver." According to TechTown figures, between 2007 and 2014, it has served 1,026 companies, which raised over $107.26 million in startup capital and contributed 1,190 jobs to the local economy. "My expanded role provides an opportunity to more closely align the innovation efforts of Wayne State University and TechTown," said Staebler in a statement. "In addition to the university's existing entrepreneurship programs, we will soon be launching the Anderson Engineering Ventures Institute in our College of Engineering. This is the perfect time to build on the already close relationship between the university and the city's business innovation hub," he said.
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Prof. Dana Thompson sworn-in as a new member of the Wayne State University Board of Governors

Prof. Dana A. Thompson was recently sworn-in as a newly elected member of the Wayne State Board of Governors. The packed crowd inside the university's McGregor Conference Center watched Chief Federal Judge Gerald Rosen administer the oath of office to Thompson and former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Kelly, who was also elected to the board. Thompson is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan and the founding director of Michigan's Entrepreneurship Clinic. She is also a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School who taught on the faculty of Wayne State's Law School prior to joining Michigan's Law School. Kelly is the Distinguished Jurist in Residence at the Wayne Law School where she teaches on the faculty with Gerald Rosen, the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan,

WSU appoints associate provost for diversity and inclusion

Marquita Chamblee was appointed the inaugural associate provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Wayne State University. Since 2012, she has been the director of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Multicultural Education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Chamblee is a graduate of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She holds a master's degree and a doctorate in agricultural education from Pennsylvania State University.
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Wayne State Alumni Group helps new lawyers get experience and startups get legal advice

Eric Williams is a man who does not sleep. "I get maybe four or five hours a night," he said, laughing. That's Williams' sacrifice to balance all of his roles and projects at the Wayne State Law School. He's an assistant professor there as well as the director of the program for entrepreneurship and business law, director of the business and community law clinic and director of the patent procurement clinic. And now he's formed a new law firm dedicated to assisting Detroit startups: Wayne Alumni Law Group. Williams started the nonprofit practice in December as a way to give recent Wayne State graduates experience practicing law and teach them the technical skills needed to run a business -- and help small-business owners get good legal advice at a price they can afford.
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Detroit News: WSU to honor civil rights martyr Liuzzo with degree

The late Viola Gregg Liuzzo will be granted an honorary doctor of laws degree at Wayne State University. Liuzzo, a Detroit mother of five, was murdered by Ku Klux Klan night riders on March 25, 1965, as she drove her Oldsmobile on a highway near Selma, Alabama. Liuzzo, 39, was a student at Wayne State and the wife of Teamsters business agent Anthony Liuzzo. The degree from Wayne State, the first time the university has bestowed one posthumously, will be the highlight of three days of honors, April 10-12, that are pegged to Liuzzo's April 11 birthday (she would have been 90). It's a time of heightened awareness of what happened in Alabama 50 years ago, prompted by the feature film "Selma" which went into wide release in early January and focuses on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the violence-plagued voting rights marches in Alabama in 1965. Kim Trent, who is a member of Wayne State's Board of Governors, recommended the award, and the board voted unanimously to grant Liuzzo the honor. "It really means the world to me, that we're planning these events," Trent said. As part of the April weekend's events, Wayne's Law School will dedicate a tree or greenspace in Liuzzo's name in the Law School courtyard, and Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, will give a lecture about her activism. "She walked right into danger," said Gary Pollard, chairman of WSU's Board of Governors. "She had a just heart, she wanted to do right by people, and ended up losing her life in such a tragic way." Wayne State's Trent said Liuzzo is a particularly apt role model for the school, "particularly because she was a mature student, almost 40 when she died," she said. "We have a lot of nontraditional students, and students who think about changing the world. There is no better example of that than Mrs. Liuzzo."

Wayne State University police work off-campus to boost Detroit

Wayne State University's policing philosophy has helped revitalize the 4-square-mile area around the campus in Midtown Detroit, reports the New York Times. Wayne State's police force is the primary law enforcement agency in the area, and it spends most of its time operating off-campus. University police are commissioned by the Detroit Police Department to have the same policing powers as city police, and the university's force accounted for 61 percent of the arrests made in Midtown in 2014. It seems obvious from the New York Times article that the surrounding community holds Wayne State in high regard, basically crediting the school with helping to turn the area around from both an economic and public safety perspective. Ultimately, it's a great example of how a university can improve its standing and visibility in the local community.
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Broadway World: "The Lion King" choreographer Garth Fagan to receive WSU Apple Award next month

Garth Fagan, Tony Award winner for "Best Choreography" in "The Lion King," founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance, is receiving the Apple Award from Wayne State University's Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance. "A Conversation with Apple Award Recipient Garth Fagan" will be hosted at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts on March 28 at 7 p.m. Fagan will appear in an "actors studio" style interview and question-and-answer session. Fagan, a Wayne State University alumni, began his career when he toured Latin America with Ivy Baxter and her national dance company from Jamaica. Baxter and two other famed dance teachers from the Caribbean, Pearl Primus and Lavinia Williams, were major influences on Fagan. In New York City, Fagan studied with Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Mary Hinkson, and Alvin Ailey, who were all central to his development. The Apple Award, named for Sarah Applebaum Nederlander, is given by the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance at Wayne State University on behalf of the Nederlander family.

Stephen Ross to speak at Wayne State law school

Stephen M. Ross - real estate developer, philanthropist and Miami Dolphins owner - will speak April 9 at Wayne State University Law School, his alma mater. WSU law Dean Jocelyn Benson will discuss Ross' career and accomplishments over the past 50 years in a question-and answer session that is open to the public in the Spencer M. Partrich Auditorium at the law school, 471 W. Palmer. Ross is chairman of University of Michigan's $4 billion Victors for Michigan campaign. In September 2013, he donated $200 million to UM, the school's biggest single gift.
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Mlive: Michigan university presidents praise proposed increase in spending in governor's budget

Presidents of 10 Michigan universities came to Lansing to urge legislators to keep the proposed 2 percent increase in higher education in the state's budget for next year. At a joint meeting of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education Tuesday, the presidents spoke about the successes their universities have had recently. Most of them praised Gov. Rick Snyder's budget proposal to increase higher education funding by 2 percent overall -- $28 million -- and asked lawmakers to keep that hike in the budget. Some universities stand to benefit from Snyder's budget proposal more than others. Grand Valley State University will see a 4 percent increase in funding, the highest among the state's 15 public universities. Wayne State University will see just 0.6 percent more funding, the smallest increase. In addition to the base allocation of money from the state, there will also be a pool of $26.8 million in performance-based funding available to universities. Among the benchmarks universities must hit in order to qualify is limiting any tuition increase to 2.8 percent.
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NYT: How Wayne State Police helped breathe life into a blighted Detroit strip

The Midtown area is one of Detroit's most striking economic-revival success stories. Those who live and work in the area point to the Wayne State University police department, which has become the primary security force in Midtown. This is no ordinary campus police squad. All of Wayne State's officers are commissioned by the Detroit Police Department, with the same enforcement powers as the city's force. Wayne State requires its officers to have a bachelor's degree, while city officers need only a high school diploma. In 2009, the university expanded the department's purview to cover all crime calls in a four-square-mile territory that encompasses both the campus and all of Midtown. "People won't move somewhere they don't feel safe," said Michael G. Wright, Wayne State's chief of staff. "We recognized that if Detroit was going to experience an economic comeback - particularly in Midtown, our neighborhood - this was a big issue." With a larger budget from the university and grants from several foundations, Wayne State's police chief, Anthony D. Holt, expanded his department and shifted some of its practices. The unit adopted a data-driven CompStat program to help it identify and disrupt crime patterns in "hot spot" areas. It also began focusing on preventive tactics. One of its most successful programs entails sending its officers out along with the Michigan Department of Corrections' parole agents when they do home checks in the area. "When the person opens the door, they see two police officers," Chief Holt said. "The agent goes in, and if any contraband is found, the person goes with us." Wayne State's video surveillance system is among the most extensive in Michigan, with 850 cameras tracking locations across the school's campus and beyond. The efforts are paying off. Midtown's major-crimes rate is down 52 percent since 2008.
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Detroit Today: WSU Russian history expert, professor gives updates on the state of Ukraine

"Detroit Today" hosts Sandra Svoboda and Saeed Khan spoke with Wayne State University Associate Professor of History Aaron Retish, an expert in Russian history and politics and Wayne State Associate Professor of Political Science Kevin Deegan-Krause, an expert in Ukrainian politics about the current state of Ukraine and its ongoing conflict with Russian separationists and rebel forces. Deegan-Krause said, "It's extraordinarily complicated especially when you've got agreements that are made by people who aren't necessarily the ones doing the fighting, or at least who claim not to be doing the fighting," which means that the ceasefire does not really encapsulate the entirety of afflicted areas. Retish explained that the complexity of the agreements actually intends to move the rebel region towards a form of federation that could help stabilize issues between Russia and Ukraine. He noted that Putin is not trying to take control of the region by stamping through Ukraine, although it looks similar to what they previously did in Crimea, but his government did have considerations of power in the regions. Overall the importance of the situation lies in the unclear future of Ukrainian/Russian relations and how the region will end up organizing itself.
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Dbusiness: WSU's ENGAGE student investment conference to include live broadcast on CNBC

CNBC's Fast Money Halftime Report, hosted by Scott Wapner, will broadcast live from Detroit's Cobo Center on March 27 during Wayne State University's Engage International Investment Education Symposium. In addition, the network's senior economics reporter, Steve Liesman, will report live from the event on March 26. The two-day event is being billed as the largest student investment conference in the world with officials predicting an attendance of up to 2,000 students and investment professionals, the latter of which can earn continuing education credits for attending the event. Engage will present the latest trends and best practices from such experts as Dennis P. Lockhart, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. There will also be several panels consisting of CEOs, presidents, CIOs, and economists from prominent firms, including Charles Swab & Co. in Boston and Highland Capital Management in Dallas.