The Detroit Regional Chamber with higher education institution partners Henry Ford College (HFC), Oakland University (OU), and Wayne State University (WSU) announced an innovative new program that will remove a primary barrier to degree completion for thousands of adults in the Detroit region.

Nearly 700,000 metro Detroiters started college classes, but didn’t finish because of debt and other circumstances. Now, Wayne State University, Oakland University and Henry Ford College have agreed to forgive part of any outstanding debt if they come back to finish school.

Relief for returning college students with student debt is on the way. With nearly 700,000 people across the region with college credits but no college degree, the Detroit Regional Chamber is teaming up with three Detroit area colleges to ease the burden on those hoping to finally graduate.

Jennifer M. Gómez, postdoctoral fellow in trauma psychology, wrote an article for The Conversation on sexual abuse in the black community and the harms of cultural betrayal. “As a trauma expert who has studied the effect of violence for over a decade, I have found that there is a unique harm for black people and other minorities whose perpetrators are of the same minority group. To understand this harm, I created cultural betrayal trauma theory. The general idea of cultural betrayal trauma theory is that some minorities develop what I call “(intra)cultural trust” – love, loyalty, attachment, connection, responsibility and solidarity with each other to protect themselves from a hostile society. Within-group violence, such as a black perpetrator harming a black victim, is a violation of this (intra)cultural trust. This violation is called a cultural betrayal.” Gómez suggests that policy change that combats inequality, such as changes in education, health care, law enforcement and the judicial system, can benefit minorities who experience trauma.

The school will combine with the Detroit Pistons to build a $25-million facility on the western edge of its athletic fields, the Detroit Free Press reports. WSU's board gave its blessing to the deal.

The Detroit Pistons are planning to bring an NBA G League affiliate to Detroit. The Pistons announced Wednesday their G League team would play in a new arena that Wayne State University is planning to build for its basketball programs. The school's board of governors has approved the facility.

Federal Judge Damon Keith of Detroit died Sunday morning at 96. Dignitaries from around Michigan weighed in to offer their respects. Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson: "It’s a sad day. Judge Damon Jerome Keith passed away earlier today, and we are all mourning the loss of this outstanding civil rights pioneer, federal judge and great friend of Wayne State. I had the honor of being sworn in as the 12th president of Wayne State University by Judge Keith, but it meant even more to me to have met the man..."

Federal judge and civil rights icon Damon Keith, who died Sunday morning at age 96, left a legacy well beyond the ground-breaking decisions he made from the bench during his career. Keith — who more than five decades on the federal bench first as a  U.S. District Court judge and later on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals — ruled in several high-profile cases during his tenure, including the desegregation of Pontiac schools, President Richard Nixon's and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell's wiretapping of student radicals in Ann Arbor and against deportation hearings held in private. While Keith may be gone, his legacy lives on. Here are the buildings and programs named in his honor: Damon J. Keith Scholarship. 

Jack White is set to receive an honorary degree from Wayne State University. The now-globally-renowned rock musician will be on hand at 9 a.m. May 3 at the Fox Theatre to receive an honorary doctor of humane letters, "for his dedication to Detroit and significant contributions to the arts as one of the most prolific and renowned artists of the past two decades," according to a WSU release. The May 3 ceremony is part of a two-day slate of commencement activities for WSU's latest graduating class of 4,000-plus students. Other honorary degrees will also go to Detroit native Florine Mark, CEO of the WW Group (2 p.m. May 2), and social-justice scholar Earl Lewis (2 p.m. May 3). 

The conference “(S)exploiting the Vulnerable: Empowering Future Legal Advocates,” held April 12 at Wayne State University Law School, attracted more than 300 attendees from a variety of disciplines including, law, social work, law enforcement and non-profits. Planned and coordinated by Wayne State Assistant Professor Blanche Cook and law students Taylor Hilton, Ben VanSlyke, Lydia Mikail, Rebecca Bundy, and Elisabeth Moore, the event opened with remarks by WSU Law School Dean Richard Bierschbach about the issues of sex trafficking and how future legal advocates can make a change by bringing light to this topic. Wayne Law alumna Angela Povilatis from the Michigan Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention and Treatment Board, and Kim Trent from the WSU Board of Governors spoke about the growing world of sex trafficking and how the legal community can work to combat this practice. 

Wayne State University and HERE Technologies have announced an agreement to partner on various industry projects, create education curriculums, and develop solutions with other technology providers at the Wayne State Smart Manufacturing Development Center (SMDC). “Wayne State University is at the heart of Detroit’s resurgence. The campus is growing, the curriculums are being tuned to the needs of the future workforce and we’re aligning to new industry principles such as Industry 5.0,” said Joseph Kim, professor of industrial & systems engineering at Wayne State University. “HERE’s expertise in navigation and location will help us bring practical experiences and real-life business situations to students and provide them an opportunity to see how location technology is applied to customers in the industrial sector.” 

The 'kissing bug' is on the move and is possibly already establishing itself in Michigan. The blood-sucker carries the third most common parasitic disease in the world but is most often associated with warmer climates in Central and South America, or in southern U.S. states like Texas and Arizona. But that's changing. "It seems to be moving north. The more they look, the more they’re finding it," said Glen Hood, biologist and evolutionary ecologist at Wayne State University. 

LinkedIn opened the doors of its new permanent regional home on Woodward to visitors Wednesday, among the latest businesses to locate in the downtown Detroit corridor. Officials and area professionals were on hand to celebrate with the professional network site's space at 1523 Woodward, a 75,000-square-foot office in the Albert Kahn-designed Sanders and Grinnell buildings. Keith Whitfield, provost of Wayne State University, said he’s excited to have LinkedIn expanding in Detroit. There’s so much to do, there’s so much capacity and so much opportunity,” he said. “We want to make the opportunities for people, the mobility for people in terms of jobs.” 

Patrick Gossman, deputy chief information officer at Wayne State University, agrees that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should give institutions the opportunity to deploy their own networks. Equipment costs have now come down significantly, and projects such as the NMU Educational Access Network have shown it can be done, he said. Gossman said the Educational Broadband Service (EBS) is being used effectively by educators. “The only spectrum not being utilized in the United States is the spectrum that the FCC has been sitting on for over 23 years, despite all the efforts we’ve made to get them to license the unlicensed areas,” he said. Wayne State University obtained its EBS licenses in the 1960s and produced educational television programming until the 1990s. It then leased its spectrum to Sprint, which built up the necessary infrastructure in Detroit to make the 4G LTE network operational. “There was no way that I could have built a cellular 4G LTE network to blanket 38,000 square miles and four million people. It made a heck of a lot more sense to partner with Sprint and let them go through that,” said Gossman. “We lease to Sprint, but I look upon it as a partnership.”

Around 7,500 people die each day in the United States—one person every 11.5 seconds. By your 50s and 60s, you’ve almost certainly had personal experience with death—a parent’s death, other close family members, and/or personal friends. And yet, when you hear that someone has died, it’s still hard to know what to say to their loved ones. Part of the reason is that seeing the grief and pain of others surrounding death is uncomfortable. You also may be grappling with your own feelings about your experiences. They may also be busy making arrangements, causing it to appear like they’re handling the death particularly well. “Then you might find a few months later that it’s all starting to hit,” says Peter A. Lichtenberg, a clinical psychologist and director of the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University. “Grief is very variable. It brings out a sense of finality and a sense of helplessness in all of us,” says Lichtenberg. 

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry, wrote an article for The Conversation about post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. “PTSD is common, affecting 8 percent of the U.S. population, up to 30 percent of the combat exposed veterans, and 30-80 percent of refugees and victims of torture. A brain scan is a general term that covers a diverse group of methods for imaging the brain. In psychiatric clinical practice, brain scans are mostly used to rule out visible brain lesions that may be causing psychiatric symptoms. However, in research we use them to learn about the pathologies of the brain in mental illness. 

A redacted Mueller Report is likely to dominate the news cycle for the coming days and beyond as Congress and the public get a first glimpse at its findings. What answers should we expect? What answers should we not expect to get? What are the possible paths forward? And how does this report and investigation compare to other probes into presidencies throughout history? Marc Kruman, professor of American history and director of Wayne State’s Center for the Study of Citizenship joined Reuters reporter David Shepardson in a discussion about the findings.

The Detroit Jazz Festival has year-round education initiatives that bring musicians such as the artist-in-residence into local schools to work with and mentor the next generation of jazz artists. “I think it’s one of the jewels of Detroit,” said Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson. “Wayne State is very proud to be affiliated with it. For students to be able to participate and be mentored is huge.”

Rachel McMahon, a west Michigan teen obsessed with pop star Justin Bieber, made national headlines when she was identified — outed? — earlier this year as the unpaid author of nearly 700 BuzzFeed quizzes. "Digital life, like life in general, has positive and negative aspects," said Karen McDevitt, a Wayne State University instructor on new media. "Economically, digital media has not really found a sustainable business model. It's based on virality." That means, McDevitt said, companies must get a lot of attention. "The joy of the Internet is that we can access everything, and the problem with that goes back to that unsustainable business model," McDevitt added. "If you post something online, why should I have to pay to access that? The thinking is that it should be free. So how do we pay people to do that?"

Over the past year and a half, national security agencies, federal granting agencies, the White House and members of Congress have all signaled their increasing concern about international students or scholars who might seek to exploit the openness of the U.S. academic environment for their own -- or their nations' -- gain. "I don’t think it’s necessarily that anything has changed so much as there’s just a growing awareness that there is a potential issue," said M. Roy Wilson, the president of Wayne State University and co-chair of the NIH working group on foreign influences on research integrity. "I do want to emphasize I think everybody on the committee -- most of us were university presidents -- were very, very, very sensitive to the fact that most foreign scientists who get NIH grants and who collaborate with scientists here, the vast, vast majority are very productive and have contributed a huge amount to science and are playing by the rules. We want to make sure that we don’t stigmatize the overwhelming majority of foreign investigators. But having said that, there’s just a growing awareness that there has been some small but nonetheless important problem that has to be addressed."