The owner of the Detroit Red Wings and Tigers and Little Caesars gave Wayne State University $8.5 million last week. Mike Ilitch and his wife Marian donated the money to the school of medicine to develop new surgical innovations. Dr. Donald Weaver, chairman of the department of surgery at Wayne State, says researchers are working on new technology that would let surgeons practice on a three dimensional replica of a specific patient.

Wayne State University is one of 14 institutions in the country to receive elite designation as an Innovation & Economic Prosperity University from its peers in the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). The designation acknowledges universities working with public and private sector partners in their states and regions to support economic development through a variety of activities, including innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, talent and workforce development, and community development. WSU received this new distinction based on its support of innovation and influence on economic prosperity in Detroit and throughout Michigan. Ned Staebler, vice president for economic development, talked about Wayne State's commitment to the community, and contributions to the city and state.

Wayne State University Chief of Police Tony Holt is the man in charge of Midtown's public safety that is now being looked at as a national model for local universities and their police forces that are located in urban environments. His department was praised in an April article in the New York Times for its 90 seconds response to the need of a small business owner in Midtown. That is not unusual for Holt's department. It is the norm. "I believe the high sense of security is due to the collaboration of all the partners involved in Midtown. By our department taking the lead and hosting a biweekly Compstat meeting. Compstat is a data driven process where we concentrate on crime hot spots," Holt explained. "An environment was created that displays high police visibility, crime prevention methods employed and quick response to calls for service. When you combine all of these elements with citizen cooperation and involvement, results will be attained." "The commitment that the university has made to the community that we will be a good neighbor in a great neighborhood is one of the biggest reasons for the success," Holt said. "With that commitment and the resources allotted to this department, it allowed us the opportunity to expand our operations. The officers of this department took this challenge and went to work to achieve the objectives of a safe vibrant community."

Wayne State University's department of surgery at the School of Medicine has received an $8.5 million grant from Mike and Marian Ilitch to develop innovative surgery technologies, the university announced this morning. The grant will create the Ilitch Chair for Surgical Innovation and establish a fund to support research. The school has renamed the department the Michael and Marian Ilitch Department of Surgery.

The city's business community is looking for business leaders, entrepreneurs, celebrities and movers and shakers with ties to the city to come back and help rebuild the D. A host of local leaders, including Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson, Mayor Mike Duggan, Chris Ilitch of Ilitch Holdings and Keith Crain of Crain Communications, announced their Detroit Homecoming event at an early Monday morning press conference at the Lowe Campbell Ewald advertising agency by Ford Field. The invitation-only Detroit Homecoming will be held Sept. 17-19 with a pull-out-all-the-stops agenda that includes tours throughout the city, a concert at Chene Park, dinner at the David Whitney Building and the Globe Building Outdoor Adventure & Discovery Center.

After seven years hosting a weekday talk show on WDET 101.9 FM, Craig Fahle is leaving the Detroit public radio station to become director of public affairs and senior adviser for the Detroit Land Bank Authority. Fahle has hosted the "Craig Fahle Show" since 2007, and since last year also has been co-general manager of the station. His final show is scheduled for Aug. 8. The university said it would "leave the door open" for Fahle if he wants to return to the station. "We are delighted for him, and that he's been recognized as such an important and influential person, and that WDET had, as well," said Michael Wright, WSU's vice president of marketing communications who oversees the radio station as part of his department. "He's made it very clear he's not leaving WDET lightly." In the interim after Fahle leaves, Michelle Srbinovich will be the full general manager while the university conducts a review of the station's needs, Wright said. "We'll examine what are the needs for the management of WDET," he said, while praising Srbinovich's oversight of the station's business functions. "For the moment, Michelle is in the driver's seat," he said.

Recently, the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts (CFPCA) at Wayne State hosted a Business of Art workshop, teaching some of the skills found in the business school to budding painters and writers. "The arts have always been about entrepreneurship because artists, at some level, have to feed themselves," said Matthew Seeger, CFPCA dean. What Seeger sees on campus are arts students who are passionate about the idea of entrepreneurship, using their creativity as a way to chart their own paths.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson commented in a story about Mark S. Schlissel's appointment as the 14th president of the University of Michigan. Schlissel's term begins on Monday, and he will be inaugurated Sept. 5. President Wilson recently met Schlissel and believes the U-M community will experience a new type of leadership. "He's very different from Mary Sue but I think he is going to be very effective," Wilson said. "He is a lot like me in being kind of quiet and thoughtful."

Wayne State University is one of 14 institutions in the country to be designated as an Innovation & Economic Prosperity University from its peers in the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. The designation acknowledges universities working with public and private sector partners in their states and regions to support economic development through a variety of activities, including innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, talent and workforce development, and community development. WSU received this new distinction based on its support of innovation and influence on economic prosperity in Detroit and throughout Michigan.

Up to $19 million in Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority tax-increment financing incentives has been approved by Detroit City Council for four projects totaling $155 million in investment. Included among the projects approved is the new 195,000-square-foot Wayne State University Physician Group medical office building at 3800 Woodward Ave. in Midtown. The $73 million development will receive up to $8 million in tax incentives. It will also include a 624-space parking deck, and retail space. The Brownfield Redevelopment Financing Act allows tax-increment financing to be used to redevelop contaminated, blighted, obsolete or historic properties.

Wayne State University has announced a three-year, $1.3 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for a new initiative in which local nonprofits active in the areas of racial equity, health care, education, food security, safety, and housing will be encouraged to address issues of structural racism in Detroit. To that end, sixty nonprofit leaders will participate in the Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), which will be housed within the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne Law School and led by the center's director, Peter Hammer. Through trainings and discussions, DEAL participants will learn how to build the capacity of their organizations, identify structural racism, and create action plans to promote change by boosting awareness of and making policy recommendations to address racial equity issues in the region. "There is great need for a resource of this nature in our city," said Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson. "The Keith Center is committed to promoting equality and justice. Local nonprofit organizations can be key drivers in the discussion and mitigation of civil rights challenges, and we are fortunate to have found an ally in this project with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation."

According to the National Science Board, women made up only 28 percent of all science and engineering jobs in 2010. But Wayne State University is hoping to get more girls interested in stem careers -- which stands for science, technology, engineering and math -- with its GO-GIRL program. GO-GIRL stands for Gaining Options, Girls Investigate Real Life. The program starts off as a 10-week course during the winter semester spending Saturdays learning about careers in stem fields. Then, during the summer, they spend four days on campus, live in the dorms and experience college-level courses. Mentors also play a huge part with the learning process with this program.

New York's Complexions contemporary ballet company is once again bringing its brand of world-class dance to Detroit. "Complexions is a very American company," says Meg Paul, a ballet lecturer at Wayne State University who is also the program director for Complexions' Detroit Summer Intensive, a two-week program that gives students the opportunity to learn from and perform with the company. "When you see the company move, you know it's Complexions," she says. Paul notes that while Complexions utilizes the classical ballet form, its choreography pulls in a spectrum of other influences as well - from hip-hop to African dance. "We have Rachmaninoff, we have Stevie Wonder, we have Bach," she says. She also notes that the company prides itself in its diversity. "They have all colors of the spectrum, all shapes and sizes - as long as they're fierce dancers," she says. "It's about being in your best body. It's not about being super-skinny; it's about being healthy. They break through a lot of those old-school types of thinking."

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded a $1.3 million grant to Wayne State University to launch the Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), a groundbreaking new initiative through which nonprofit organizations working in the areas of racial equity, health care, education, food security, safety and housing will address issues of structural racism in Detroit. Housed within the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne Law, the new initiative will be led by the center's director, Peter Hammer. The project will begin in the summer of 2014 and is funded for three years. "There is great need for a resource of this nature in our city," said Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson. "The Keith Center is committed to promoting equality and justice. Local nonprofit organizations can be key drivers in the discussion and mitigation of civil rights challenges, and we are fortunate to have found an ally in this project with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation."

A Wayne State University professor and Livonia resident is preparing to go work on a unique project this fall in Illinois. Alexey Petrov, a physics professor at the university has been selected to work at the Fermilab in Illinois to study particle physics theory, dark matter and heavy quarks. The best way to describe his work, he said, is that he studies scientific theories and particles to determine what the universe is truly made up of. He was offered a 2014 Intensity Frontier Fellowship and Universities Research Association Visiting Scholar Award to study for the fall semester at the Fermilab, located in Batavia, Ill. He said he's the first college professor from Michigan to have the opportunity to study at the lab, considered the premiere high energy physics lab in the country.

A Wayne State University professor has been awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award, the agency's most prestigious award for up-and-coming researchers in science and engineering. The five-year, nearly $406,000 grant was awarded to Eranda Nikolla, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical engineering in the College of Engineering, for the project "Tailoring the nature of the active site of Ni electrocatalysts for electrochemical co-reduction of CO2 and H2O". "Our research will have a broad impact in advancing the field by providing a new methodology for designing robust electrocatalysts for efficient generation of syngas from CO2, ultimately addressing nationally important issues in energy and climate change." "Dr. Nikolla is very deserving of this prestigious award from the National Science Foundation," said Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for research at Wayne State. "Her important research will not only transform our knowledge about electrochemical systems and ways to improve their performance, but also will provide important outreach programs that will advance teaching, training and public awareness regarding energy and our environment."

Detroit Tigers Cy Young pitcher Max Scherzer and his wife, Erica, hosted a baseball and softball clinic at Wayne State University for the teenagers that participate in Detroit PAL's RBI (Reviving Baseball in the Inner-City) program. The Scherzer's partnered up with the Detroit Tigers Foundation to make the camp even more special by donating $23,100 to Detroit PAL during a brief ceremony. The Wayne State University baseball and softball teams joined the Scherzer's to help run the clinic.

Opened in 1963 as the nation's first graduate repertory company, Wayne State's Hilberry Theatre occupies a repurposed church dating back to 1917, and has far outgrown the space. "[The Hilberry] is a wonderful historic building and it has served us very well, but it's just no longer adequate to support technologically intense theatrical productions," says Matthew Seeger, professor and dean of Wayne State's College of Fine, Performing & Communication Arts. There are other problems too, endemic of buildings this age. The basement has experienced problems with flooding, and sets and costumes have to be transported to a storage building a block away due to lack of space. WSU recently announced plans for what it dubs "the Hilberry Gateway project," a $48.6 million initiative kick-started by a grant from the Kresge Foundation. The final theater complex will combine the existing building with an adjacent 500-seat new theater and attached scenic and costume designing facilities. Seeger emphasizes that the project is only in the fundraising phase, and the university hasn't selected an architecture firm yet. But the university has commissioned conceptual renderings.

Recently published findings in Annals of Internal Medicine by Steven Lipshultz, M.D., Wayne State University professor and chair of pediatrics and pediatrician-in-chief at the Children's Hospital of Michigan and colleagues could help to reduce health care charges while also protecting childhood cancer survivors from heart ailments caused by drug therapy. That's the "very exciting and very hopeful" bottom line of the recently published study, said co-author Lipshultz, who has spent more than 30 years studying the potential harmful impact - or "cardiotoxicity" - of drug therapies on the hearts of children who have survived cancer. "For childhood cancer survivors and their families, this new study is very good news, indeed - because it shows that many of them in the low-risk category can safely reduce the frequency of their heart screenings, with a significant reduction in accompanying costs."

Robert Forsythe, a professor of finance and former dean of the University of South Florida's College of Business, participated in a Q&A about the goals he has for his new role starting in mid-July as dean of Wayne State University's School of Business Administration.