Wayne State University has announced plans for its new Mort and Brigitte Harris Office for Adult Literacy, which will train students to become tutors and teach tutors to train others. It will work closely with Reading Works, a growing community initiative whose partner agencies work diligently to boost adult literacy in southeast Michigan. "The office will have three functions," said Jerry Herron, dean of Wayne State's Irvin D. Reid Honors College, where the office will be located. "The first is to teach the teachers and train the trainers to increase the capacity to help adults who want to read. The second is to provide resources to the community to study outcomes and determine how large the problem is. We want to bring the research facilities of a research university to bear on this." As its third goal, the office plans to help Reading Works convene a national summit in Detroit to show the world "that we're not only good at identifying problems, we're good at solving problems," Herron said.

Wayne State University School of Medicine students are participating in Street Medicine Detroit, a program that takes doctors-to-be out of the clinic and into the city treating homeless people in the shelters, parks and underpasses where they often live. The students monitor vitals, provide checkups and make sure people with chronic illnesses are getting the proper medication. The new venture is supported by about 100 Wayne State medical students and the Neighborhood Service Organization (NSO). Founded in the summer at Wayne State University by medical student Jonathan Wong, the chapter has seen many good outcomes in the once-a-week visits they coordinate with NSO's Road Home program and its resident nurse practitioner Dean Carpenter, Wong said. A photo of WSU medical students Wong and Paul Thomas is included.

Dr. Gerald A. Shiener, assistant professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, wrote an opinion piece calling for modernizing the old Northville Psychiatric Hospital site into a state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital for long-term care. He wrote: "That would certainly benefit people in desperate need of psychiatric care not available in the community…As a psychiatrist who has worked at a community mental health center for more than 30 years, I can attest to the unavailability of needed services for mentally ill people and addicted who are indigent. We pay for those needy individuals in the corrections system and in the overburdened emergency medical system at a cost of triple or quadruple of the cost of appropriate community services and long-term care.

A front page feature story chronicles the accomplishments and challenges during the tenure of President Allan Gilmour. One of the first challenges he tackled was the school's graduation rate. He appointed a task force to probe why only 24 percent of WSU students were graduating in five years. Within a year, the Board of Governors passed a tighter admissions policy that will affect the next incoming freshman class. "(The graduation rate) was unacceptable and we had to do something about it," said Gilmour. In the area of recruitment the University has broadened its efforts reaching out to Lansing, Traverse City, Alpena and western Michigan. As a result, the last two incoming freshmen classes have included students from 14 west Michigan high schools that had not sent graduates to WSU in the recent past. There also has been an effort to build relationships with high schools and key stakeholders in various communities, and to promote a culture for college attendance. Students have been hired to be ambassadors as co-recruiters in Detroit Public Schools. They also represent the university at other campus functions, including alumni and fundraising events. Meanwhile, efforts to improve the student transfer experience from local community colleges to WSU were initiated. WSU also has plans to expand the number of programs offered in Macomb County. Before he leaves, Gilmour said he hopes to revamp the University's master plan, attract about 150 new faculty members, name new deans in several schools and break ground on a new $93 million medical research building. A photo of President Gilmour is included.

The uprising in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad, now in its 21st month, is having a profound and often disturbing effect on children in the region. Parents and humanitarian organizations are struggling to help. Many refugee schools have play rooms and art programs that encourage children to express their fears and start to regain a sense of normality. Rola Kadi, a Syrian American art student at Wayne State University, has been giving art lessons to students at the Bashaer School in Antakya, Turkey. When she asks children who left the country several months ago to draw anything that's on their minds, they gravitate to images of the Syria of their dreams. "They draw the revolutionary Syrian flag with words like freedom and peace," she said. Sooner or later, she said, most children stop coloring the sea red and reach for the blue pencils and crayons.

Researchers at Wayne State University are about to experience a power surge in the ability to do their jobs, thanks to an upgraded computer network infrastructure supported by a federal grant. David Cinabro, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is principal investigator for the project, which comprises two major components and will be funded with a two-year, $360,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The first component builds a dedicated, very high-speed network that will enable WSU researchers to transmit and receive large amounts of data quickly, across the campus or around the world. The dedicated network, or "Science DMZ," as investigators call it, will be exclusive to scientific research and separate from the standard university network for day-to-day traffic. The new network is scheduled for completion around mid-2013. Patrick Gossman, Wayne State deputy CIO for computing and IT and a co-investigator for the grant, likened the Science DMZ to a dedicated lane on the freeway with a 700-mph speed limit. "They need to move huge files here, where they have the computing power to analyze them, or send them to collaborators at other institutions," he said. "This upgrade will greatly speed up our researchers' ability to work, moving their research forward." The second project component will upgrade the local network infrastructure in the physics building. This component will provide the necessary on-off ramps to the new Science DMZ as well as speed up their daily work.

David Martin, research associate at Wayne State University's Center for Urban Studies, is quoted in columnist Charlie LeDuff's opinion piece on fighting crime in Detroit. "We need to change the dynamic where drugs are sold and thugs rule," said Martin, who tracks crime in Detroit. "Police have to enter those neighborhoods, reestablish order, build trust and pick off the worst of the worst."

Christopher Trentacosta, Wayne State University assistant professor of psychology, believes both nature and nurture appear to be significant factors in early antisocial behaviors of adopted children. Trentacosta was a guest on "The Craig Fahle Show."

Jocelyn Benson, Wayne State University Law School interim dean, talks about the Military Spouses of Michigan (MSoM) receiving an invitation to walk in the 21st Presidential Inauguration Parade to be held on Jan. 21. Benson, president and founding member of MSoM, received the invitation just days after being appointed interim dean. Military Spouses of Michigan, founded in 2012, is dedicated to building a network of support and services for military spouses and families. According to the Detroit News, more than 2800 applications were received by the Joint Task Force- National Capital Region, the organization tasked with choosing which groups will participate in the parade.

The Southeast Michigan Purchasing Managers Index dipped one-tenth of a point in December to 51.8 from 51.9 in November. "The Southeast Michigan PMI has maintained a value over 50 for 33 of the past 34 months, indicating a steady strengthening of the regional economy," said Timothy Butler, associate professor of supply chain management at Wayne State's business school. "The majority of purchasing managers responded that the economy will remain about the same or become more stable over the next six months," said Ken Doherty, a member of the Institute for Supply Management and assistant vice president for procurement and strategic sourcing at Wayne State University. "The 'fiscal cliff' was on the minds of purchasing managers, who worry about the impact on the regional economy. Now that it has been averted, it will be interesting to see if or how that reflects in next month's PMI."

Stephanie Brock of Ferndale, a chemistry professor at Wayne State University, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is an honor bestowed by her peers for her distinguished contributions to the field of inorganic materials chemistry, particularly for a generation of new nanomaterials and methods for their assembly into functional structures.

Oakland Press, 12/24 By Monica Drake After meeting 17 years ago, five local friends made a pact that, no matter where they live, they will meet for dinner once a month. Through marriages, divorces, births of children and deaths of parents, the friends have never broken this pact. To thank the law school that brought them together, the friends decided to create a scholarship fund. Marcy Hahn, Stacey King, Mary Margaret O'Donnell, Dianna Collins and Samantha Lord met in May 1995 and graduated from Wayne State University Law School in 1998. This year they created the Brass Ring Scholarship, to award a scholarship of at least $1,000 to an incoming freshman every year at the school.

In a year-end review of technology advancements, Wayne State University is noted as it announced that it would build a $93 million, 200,000-square-foot biomed research center on the site of the former Dalgleish Cadillac building on Cass Avenue, across the street from TechTown.

Engineer Idan Regev loves the feeling he gets when things he builds perform well. As a part of the Wayne State University team participating in the "EcoCAR 2: Plugging in to the Future" competition, the Huntington Woods resident says all his sleepless nights will be worth it if he gets that feeling again these next two years. The event - a three-year marathon exploring electric drive vehicle technology - builds upon 23-year history of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions, AVTC, that utilize professional partnerships to give students valuable real-world experience in hybrid engineering. The Department of Energy, along with General Motors Corp., asked universities to apply to participate in the North American competition. While the sponsors targeted 400 universities for proposals, only 15 were chosen.

Executives with a Boise-based company are poised to begin marketing a new type of ammunition specifically for law enforcement teams and designed to avoid causing serious or fatal injuries to their targets and bystanders. The technology was created at Integrity Ballistics LLC, which has been testing a round that resembles a shotgun shell. The round fires a synthetic ball that flattens upon impact and is intended to stun or subdue the target and the plan is to make it available only to law enforcement. During the testing phase, Integrity's partners fired the Burns Round repeatedly at indoor gun ranges and targets on land administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management. They also sent the ammo to Wayne State University for more rigorous trials.

The Bonstelle Theatre, designed by architect Albert Kahn and opened in 1903 as the Temple Beth-El, opened as an entertainment venue on Jan. 1, 1925. What was then called the Bonstelle Playhouse was the home of the Bonstelle Players, named for the troupe's managing director, Jessie Bonstelle, who bought the old temple for $500,000. Acting alumni include William Powell, Jessie Royce Landis and Oscar winner Gale Sondergaard, according to Wayne State University. The university began renting the beaux-arts-style building on Woodward in 1951 and bought it five years later. Today, it's used for performances by WSU's undergraduate theater department. The 1,200-seat Bonstelle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

With the threat of a faculty strike looming, both sides in Wayne State University contract talks say they'll continue working toward a deal. The two sides have met over the holidays, and additional bargaining sessions are scheduled. In the meantime, the faculty contract that expired last summer has been extended once again, this time through mid-February. A university spokesman confirmed the contract extension, and says talks between the two sides are "ongoing."

Street Medicine Detroit, a WSU School of Medicine student organization that involves medical students providing treatment for the homeless, was featured in "Stateside" with Cynthia Canty on NPR's Michigan Radio (91.7 FM) on Dec. 18. Several Wayne State University students started Street Medicine Detroit in May. They'd heard about a similar program in Pittsburg and they were inspired. They partnered with a Detroit non-profit called Neighborhood Service Organization and together they created a mobile medical clinic. The team deals with three big health issues in this particular homeless population, a group known as "the service-resistant." The first is a problem with their physical health, the second is severe mental illness, and the third is substance abuse. If a homeless person has all three of these things - or what the medical team calls the "trifecta" - it puts a homeless person at risk of dying, sooner rather than later, especially during the winter.

A Nigerian student who has battled illness and fought to remain in the U.S. since moving to Michigan more than a decade ago will be allowed to stay under legislation that received final congressional approval Tuesday and was headed to President Barack Obama for his signature. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., sponsored the legislation that the U.S. House passed on a voice vote Tuesday. It allows Sopuruchi Chukwueke - who goes by the name Victor - to remain in the U.S. despite the expiration of his visa. According to Levin's office, Chukwueke was born into poverty in Nigeria and diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that affects the growth of nerve cells and led to tumors deforming his face. After his parents put Chukwueke in an orphanage, Catholic nuns there made arrangements to bring him to the U.S. for treatment when he was 15. Chukwueke moved to Southfield and he underwent seven surgeries over the next 11 years. Meanwhile, he graduated from Wayne State University with a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and chemical biology and had a 3.82 grade point average. The Detroit Free Press front page story includes photos.

A Wayne State University researcher is working to create a device ships can carry to avoid bringing new invasive species into the Great Lakes. Jeffrey Ram, professor of physiology in the WSU School of Medicine, has received an $823,000 grant from the Great Lakes Protection Fund for his "Automated Ballast Water Treatment Verification Project." His team will seek to develop an automated, shipboard, rapid-testing system that will be able to report - in real time - the presence of any live organisms in ballast water after it has been treated. "If successful, this effort will eliminate one of the greatest challenges facing invasive species control: the ability to get feedback at any time of day and even while ships are underway that their ballast treatment systems are working to prevent the discharge live organisms that may have come from other ecosystems," Ram said. Amar Basu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering, has worked on enzyme detection methods and is collaborating with Ram on the project.