Wayne State University has announced it will provide Graduate Program Enhancement Awards of $1.5 million over the next two years, with $250,000 in funding provided to six doctoral programs. The Graduate Enhancement Awards are part of President Irvin D. Reid 's broader vision for the university.

Norma Goldman from Wayne State University will offer a series of five lectures this fall about Caesarea Maritima, the harbor on the coast of Israel . The talks will be 10 a.m. - noon Thursday mornings, beginning Oct. 20, at the WSU Oakland Center . The class is part of the six-week fall program of WSU's Society of Active Retirees.

The appointments page notes that John Varghese has been named administrative manager at WSU's Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. He was formerly assistant director in the budget office.

Professor Lyke Thompson, director of Wayne State's Center for Urban Studies, commented extensively in a piece about the Detroit mayoral race and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's remarks during a recent debate at the Economic Club about character issues and drug use among youth in the suburbs. Kilpatrick said that in suburban communities such as Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills young people "do more meth, they do more Ecstasy and they do more acid than all the schools in the city of Detroit put together." Thompson said national data would support the mayor's comments but there are no specifics to Metro Detroit to back up his claim. "There are several national studies that indicate drug [Ecstasy] use by suburban teens is higher than its use by teens in inner cities," Thompson said. "On the other hand there is no data to suggest that it is higher in those cities than in Detroit." Thompson added that some officials both in the suburbs and Detroit have found this kind of attack to be useful because it gets them votes.

Don H. Barden (Chairman and CEO - Barden Companies, Inc.) was featured on \"Leaders on Leadership\", co-produced by the WSU School of Business Administration and Detroit Public Television. Barden told Larry Fobes (WSU SBA) about his leadership experiences in the real estate, television cable service and gaming industries. The WSU student audience asked for leadership guidance they could apply in their own careers. The program will be repeated on Wednesday, September 28 at 5:00 pm

MichBio Expo 2005 will be held Thursday at Cobo Hall. Wayne State University , together with Pfizer Global Research and Development, the Michigan Economic Development Corp., Henry Ford Health System, Michigan State University and the U of M, is among the major sponsors.

The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Wayne State University , appointed the following: Allen Goldberg assistant professor in the physical therapy program, Health Care Sciences department, and Candice L. Garwood and Susan LeRoque Davis to assistant professors in the Pharmacy Practice department.

Wayne State's Bernath Auditorium will host a tribute to the Beat Generation exhibition today at 7 p.m. On Tuesday, from noon to 9 p.m. , the exhibition moves to the Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham . The exhibition features film recordings of luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Michael McClure and more.

This editorial calls for governments across Michigan facing rising costs and dwindling revenues ought to look at working with other governments before raising taxes or cutting services. The Citizens Research Council of Michigan, an apolitical task force formed by Gov. Granholm, conducted a study with help from Wayne State political science professor Jered Carr, which aimed to remove barriers to cooperation. Carr is leading a conference on Creating Collaborative Communities, which will be held this October at Wayne State .

The Princeton Review's survey of college students covers everything from food and liquor consumption to study time, to give students and parents a better idea what actually goes on at colleges. MSU and U of M were among a few Michigan colleges to be mentioned - and the only list they made was "Teaching Assistants Teach Too Many Upper-Level Courses."

There will be a roundtable discussion on the topic of "Erasing Discrimination at Work" at the WSU Law School on September 29. Dean Frank Wu of the Law School and Saul Green, also of the Law School , will be among the panel members. Contact information and other details are given in the article.

A story about the increasing popularity of car pools as a result of gas price increases mentions that "neither Wayne State nor Oakland universities expedite student car pools."

The Notre Dame women's softball team will host two exhibition games on Saturday, one against Wayne State and one against Detroit Mercy. The tournament will begin with a match up between Notre Dame and Wayne State . The records of the exhibition games will not count toward the 2006 season, nor will any of the stats.

The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute retains its coveted designation as a federal Comprehensive Cancer Center , an award that places it in the nation\'s top echelon of cancer programs. With it comes a $13.9-million grant, a fourfold increase above the previous federal grant from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda , Md. Four years ago, the institute received such low scores from the NCI that it risked losing its federal funding and status. Karmanos changed leadership and in July 2002 brought in nationally recognized lung cancer specialist Dr. Jack Ruckdeschel as president and chief executive officer. Ruckdeschel recruited new faculty and broadened efforts to reach minority patients, which helps the institute attract national cancer research grants. Karmanos, based on the Detroit Medical Center campus in Detroit , is affiliated with the Wayne State University School of Medicine. It is metro Detroit \'s largest cancer program.

Michael McFerren, a legal research and writing professor at Wayne State University Law School , was honored by the school with the Donald H. Gordon Award for Excellence in Teaching. McFerren is also an attorney who represented fire fighter unions throughout the state of Michigan .

Children who were exposed to alcohol in the womb can\'t think as fast as kids who weren\'t exposed, a new study shows. Matthew Burden and his colleagues at Wayne State University in Detroit assessed 337 seven-year-olds. The children were asked to perform several tasks of increasing difficulty, such as determining which of two numbers is larger, or whether a single digit appeared in a short number sequence displayed immediately before. "As the problem gets harder, there is a greater degree of slowing down. And you would expect some of that, but there\'s even more slowing for the kids with the heaviest (alcohol) exposure,\" Burden says.

Danny Medeo is one of the lucky ones. Since his Pop Warner days as a fourth-grader, the Byram Hills senior quarterback has suffered four concussions. Each one was considered mild, though, enabling him to get up and play another day. \"You just feel like you got blasted,\" said Medeo, describing the disorienting feeling that follows. \"You get up, look around, try to gather yourself and then everything comes back to normal.\" It\'s a scary feeling, but it\'s certainly not uncommon. Studies over the last five years by the Brain Injury Association of America indicate that, of the 1.5 million students who will play high school football this season, 250,000 will incur a brain injury or concussion. With players getting bigger, stronger and faster, those numbers can only go up unless more protective equipment is designed. That\'s where Ben Roberts, a schoolmate of Medeo, hopes to make a difference. Roberts, a black belt in Taekwondo, has taken it upon himself to help make contact sports - particularly football - safer with the use of a special mouth guard called Brain-Pad. According to independent studies by Wayne State University , Brain-Pad can reduce the impact of a blow to the jaw by 40 percent.

Michigan\'s K-12 public school system must adapt to a changing world by moving away from the traditional learning environment within classrooms and school buildings, according to a newly released study, \"Exploring E-Learning Reforms For Michigan: The New Education (R)evolution,\" written by Tom Watkins, Michigan\'s former state schools\' superintendent. The report points out that technology, specifically e-learning, can assist in customizing the student\'s learning experience. E-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes such as Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classrooms and digital collaboration. The study provides 29 major recommendations designed to further develop and enhance e-learning in Michigan \'s K-12 public school system. The six-month study was funded under a contract from Michigan Virtual University to Wayne State University . An electronic copy of the report is available at http://www.coe.wayne.edu/e-learningreport.pdf.

Susan LeRoque Davis of Monroe has joined the faculty of Wayne State 's Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences as an assistant professor in the Pharmacy Practice Department.

A story about Western Michigan University 's plans to join the Core Technology Alliance in Michigan mentions that Wayne State is among the founding members of the alliance.