For small business owners who depend on the warmer months for the majority of their revenue, time is money. From landscapers, restaurants and summer camps to house painters, public relations firms and swim clubs – they all need additional help each summer. And they’re all competing for a smaller pool of workers, whether it’s students on break or adults looking for full-time or supplemental income. Businesses are using financial incentives like higher pay and signing bonuses as well as some now-sought-after perks like flexible hours and hybrid office-remote work models to attract talent. Adding to full-time payroll takes away some flexibility, according to Matt Piszczek, Wayne State University assistant professor of management. Still, Piszczek, who specializes in employee relations and human resource management, sees seasonal employment as a major benefit to small business owners because it allows them to avoid hiring too many full-timers who may not be needed in the off-season. However, small and seasonal businesses are facing new staffing problems, Piszczek said. “Businesses are generally facing the opposite problem. They need more full-time staff over the long term, not just temporary help over the summer,” he said. “Competition for seasonal workers will be stark this year, but rather than thinking of them as a stopgap to wait out the ‘Great Resignation,’ businesses may want to consider this as an opportunity to convert some of those seasonal workers into permanent employees in order to fill now-persistent gaps.”  

Graduating Wayne State University Law School student Muthu Veerappan set the school record for the highest number of pro bono hours donated by a single student. Veerappan reached 1,020 total pro bono hours with the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office as part of the Warrior Pro Bono Pledge. The graduating class donated nearly 2,400 pro bono hours. “It was remarkable because I learned a lot working there over the past year,” Veerappan said. “I have done everything from preliminary exams, motions, briefs, and a jury trial to watching a victim’s 8-month-old child while they were testifying. Prior to completing his pro bono hours, Veerappan worked at Wayne Law’s Free Legal Aid Clinic, Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic, and completed a public service externship.  

Advocates said they warned the state that the city’s freeway walkways were in need of repair, including a pedestrian bridge a Detroit man claims collapsed beneath him last week, causing him to fall toward the freeway below. The Spruce Street pedestrian bridge was the subject of at least one previous complaint about structural problems, according to the Detroit Greenways Coalition, a nonprofit that pushes for better hiking and biking paths in the city. A spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Transportation said she wasn’t aware of any previous issues with the span in Detroit. A group of Wayne State University students in 2016 visually inspected the then-71 pedestrian bridges in Detroit. Alex Hill, a professor at Wayne State’s Center for Urban Studies who also helps run the DETROITography blog about mapping different parts of the city, helped the students with data collection and then created an online map showing the problem bridges. The study found that the structural integrity of 33 bridges, or 46%, was compromised, with the structures in operation but with observable issues ranging from crumbling and disintegrating concrete to significantly rusted support beams, down signage and missing fencing or railing. Hill said the problems have likely gotten worse since the study was conducted. “The pedestrian bridges have not gotten better since then,” Hill said. “The only change I can see is that a number of the bridges have been torn down and haven’t been replaced – so potentially that means they’re safer because those bridges are no longer there.”  

By Ethan Bakuli  In recent years, the Detroit Public Schools Community District has prioritized restructuring its GED program. Adult educator Christian Young, a Wayne State University College of Education alumni, was named Adult Educator of the Year by the Michigan Reading Association. Young focuses on welcoming his adult students back to school, recognizing that for many of them, it is the first time they have stepped foot in a classroom in years. For Young, endearing students to class assignments and term papers starts with an autobiographical essay, an exercise that focuses on the student’s life. Not only does it allow him to gauge their writing skills, but it “gives me a window to them as people,” Young said. He added, “I continue to pay attention to them throughout the year and find plenty of ways to incorporate their likes and dreams into the lessons.” 

By J. Scott Trubey and Kelly Yamanouchi   Ford announces an electric vehicle manufacturing mini-city in Tennessee. General Motors unveils a $7 billion road map to build EVs at plants across the Midwest. An electric upstart picks Georgia for a truck, SUV and delivery van plant. Peach State leaders prepare to uncork a second multibillion dollar EV plant near the coast. Factories to make EV batteries spring up in Georgia and across the South. After years in which Tesla was a lone standout in battery-powered cars and the rest of the industry appeared mired in the slow lane, the biggest vehicle brands are suddenly placing future-defining bets. “We are definitely at a watershed moment, at a tipping point in the automobile industry,” said Kevin Ketels, an assistant professor of global supply chain management at Wayne State University in Detroit.  

By Kristen Jordan Shamus  A shortage of contrast dye used for CT scans, gastrointestinal imaging, angiograms and cardiac catheterizations is expected to cause delays across the country and around the world in need of the procedures. The shortage of iodine-based contrast dye was sparked by ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai, China, which have forded GE Healthcare’s pharmaceutical manufacturing plant to temporarily close. Dr. Daniel Myers, a vice chairman of radiology at Henry Ford Health System and clinical professor of radiology at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, said the hospital system’s supply has been interrupted. “We have had meetings with folks at Bracco and discussed it…We’ve had assurances from them that there won’t be issues for customers such as Henry Ford Health, who obtain a high percentage of our contrast from them…” Myers said. Myers said he’s like to think the impact in Michigan will be minimal, and it’s important for people to continue scheduling testing as their doctors recommend. “I don’t want people to think they shouldn’t go see their doctors because they won’t get an adequate test. People need to get their health care.”  

Jennifer Selin, co-director of the Levin Center at Wayne Law, wrote an article for The Conversation analyzing the enforcement of unprecedented subpoenas for GOP lawmakers related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. An attempt to force five Republican lawmakers into providing information to the House panel investigating the attack is unlikely to end with the subpoenas, Selin writes. “The question of whether a committee can subpoena a sitting member of Congress is almost certain to be headed to the courts. If it does, Congress’ authority will be determined in part by a little-known provision of the U.S. Constitution called the “speech or debate” clause,” Selin writes. The clause protects legislators and their staff from liability for doing things like giving floor speeches, voting on legislation, and conducting investigations. 

By Doug Tribou and Lauren Talley  Governor Gretchen Whitmer is waiting to find out whether the Michigan Supreme Court will hear the challenge to Michigan’s dormant abortion law that would come back into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned at the federal level. The governor has asked the state Supreme Court to bypass lower courts and declare that Michigan’s 1931 law violates privacy protections in the state constitution. Whitmer is using a combination of legal maneuvers in her challenge. To look at the possible paths, Michigan Radio turned to former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly, who served on the court from 1997 to 2012. She’s now the distinguished jurist in residence at Wayne State University Law School. “This is rare. It’s unusual. But the governor definitely has the legal authority to use her executive power to seek an informal opinion of the Supreme Court. She also has the legal authority under the Michigan constitution to bring a lawsuit in the name of the state in order to prevent violations of a constitutional power. So, that’s what she did,” Kelly said. “…The Michigan Supreme Court has to consider whether this is of such public importance that it should grant this rather extraordinary remedy of not hearing from the lower courts,” Kelly said.  

More than half of all Michiganians live in counties where they should mask up indoors following a spike in COVID-19 cases, according to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across the state, 16 counties – including Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb and many others near heavily-populated Metro Detroit – are now in “high” community levels, a CDC classification to show where COVID cases and hospitalizations have risen to the point that people are recommended to wear masks indoors. The city of Detroit is also at a high risk level. Dr. Matthew Sims, director of infectious disease research for Beaumont Health and a faculty member in the Wayne State University School of Medicine, said that upticks tend to follow a particular pattern. First, community levels rise, followed by a rise in hospitalizations, and then, a few weeks later, a rise in deaths. “We’re certainly not at a crisis point,” said Sims, acknowledging the number of COVID patients he has seen in recent days has risen. “But we could be there in a few weeks if things don’t go well. We’re going to keep watching this and doing everything we can.”  

A novel technique to measure the age of male sperm has the potential to predict the success and time it takes to become pregnant, according to a newly published study by researchers at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. “Sperm epigenetic clock associates with pregnancy outcomes in the general population,” published in the journal Human Reproduction, found that sperm epigenetic aging clocks may act as a novel biomarker to predict couples’ time to pregnancy. The findings also underscore the importance of the male partner in reproductive success. “Chronological age is a significant determinant of reproductive capacity and success among couples attempting pregnancy, but chronological age does not encapsulate the cumulative genetic and external – environmental conditions – factors, and thus it serves as a proxy measure of the ‘true’ biological age of cells,” said J. Richard Pilsner, Ph.D., lead author of the study. Dr. Pilsner is the Robert J. Sokol, M.D., Endowed Chair of Molecular Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of Molecular Genetics and Infertility at WSU’s C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development. “Semen quality outcomes utilizing World Health Organization guidelines have been used to assess male infertility for decades, but they remain poor predictors of reproductive outcomes. Thus, the ability to capture the biological age of sperm may provide a novel platform to better assess the male contribution to reproductive success, especially among infertile couples.”

A southwest Michigan factory just a few miles from the Indiana border is at the center of an infant formula recall that’s helped fuel shortages across the U.S. and raised concerns about federal oversight of contamination in food production. Abbott Nutrition, a division of Abbott Laboratories that employs an estimated 420 people in its factory and R&D facility in Sturgis, voluntarily recalled various brands and lot codes of powdered formula – including Similac, the most sold brand in the U.S. – in February. The recall came five months after an initial complaint that an infant in Minnesota hospitalized with a bacterial infection had consumed Similac from the Sturgis factory. The Food and Drug Administration first inspected the plant last September, when it found contamination risks. By the end of February, the FDA had identified five infants who became seriously ill with bacterial infections after they consumed the formula. Four had been infected with Cronobacter sakazakii – an infrequent infection that can be deadly for babies – and one had been infected with salmonella. Two of the infected infants died. The FDA continues to investigate. “It’s super serious – one of the worst” infant infections, said Dr. Eric McGrath, director of Wayne Pediatrics. He said he had treated a child with a cronobacter infection years ago – the only one in his 12 years as a pediatric infectious disease specialist. “The reason that this germ is devastating is that can cause blood infections and meningitis, and complications that include brain abscesses,” McGrath said. At minimum, a baby with cronobacter infection is hospitalized for three weeks and likely subjected to a spinal tap and other trauma.  

The president and CEO of TechTown Detroit and vice president for economic development at Wayne State University, Ned Staebler, talks with host Jeff Sloan about the group’s pursuit of equitable growth, funding and access to opportunity for entrepreneurs. He shares success stories, but also explains the significant challenges to communities that have to occur to draw a talented workforce to Michigan.  

By Chanel Stitt  Every time Sarah Brown-Derbah takes a stride down the Barbie aisle of a store, she sees a lot of professions that the doll is portraying — certified nursing assistant, doctor, nurse, teacher, social worker and politician. But she has never been able to find her profession — funeral home director. So she started a petition, which she plans to send to Mattel, the parent company of Barbie, in an effort to get the company to make a funeral director doll. She's collected 415 so far and plans to draft the letter to the toymaker once she feels she has gathered enough signatures.  “I've been looking for a funeral director Barbie for probably about 10 years, Brown-Derbah, of Southfield, said, "and I noticed the Barbie line has expanded.” The National Funeral Directors Association's membership reports that 81.1% of funeral home directors are men. But there is a shift happening within mortuary schools. In 2019, the organization reported that women made up 71.9% of mortuary school attendees. While Brown-Derbah was in mortuary school at Wayne State University, there were only seven men in her class.  

At Wayne State University, on-campus police have recently launched a National De-escalation Training Center. Here, the finest from various jurisdictions are trained in how to take down situations without the use of excessive force, something Officer Andrew Sheppard says should never be an option. "Instead of getting into a fight with you, I rather say, 'Hey man, let's talk this out. Whatever you did is not that bad,'" Sheppard said. Sheppard believes that when police use excessive force during confrontations, officers are "letting personal issues get above the job." According to data collected by the Washington Post, last year, at least 1,055 people were shot and killed by police nationwide. That’s more than the 1,021 shootings in 2020 and the 999 in 2019. "We as officers go through a divorce, we also go through ... PTSD. Again, we are human. We don’t know what's in the background of some of these police officers. We don’t know what's in the background in some of these citizens," Sheppard said. 

By Joe Guillen and Annalise Frank  Black women in Michigan already dealing with across-the-board health care inequities would especially suffer if Roe v. Wade is struck down, health care experts say. It's a matter of life and death. Restricted abortion access in Michigan would endanger Black women's lives because they are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. It's not just about access to health care. Even when Black women have access, structural racism within the medical community affects the care they receive. "We're not believed, we are rendered invisible and people don't believe our pain," Ijeoma Nnodim Opara, an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Wayne State University, tells Axios. 

Theatre and Dance at Wayne, the producing arm of the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance at Wayne State University, has announced its 2022-2023 production season. Theatre and Dance at Wayne has curated a season of theatre and dance productions that will delight and inspire you with four plays, two musicals, two dance concerts, and four student-run productions. The season opens in September 2022 with Rent, the iconic musical about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today. Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again., opening in October 2022, is a wildly experimental and inventive new play that does not behave, is about the conundrums of being a woman in the 21st century. Fans of Shakespeare will be thrilled to attend his comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor in November 2022. 

My wife and I have a big decision to make. Roughly 7 1/2 years ago, we entered our eighth and last cycle in our attempts at in vitro fertilization, the result of which were two healthy, and mischievous, twin boys. They're almost 7.  But the process left a half-dozen unused embryos that remain frozen in cryogenic storage. We've continued to pay the IVF clinic to keep those potential children safe, but after careful consideration we're ready to keep our family to four. That leaves three options: donate those embryos to another couple struggling with fertility, donate them to science or destroy them. But fears that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling have added uncertainty for would-be parents and the providers trying to help them conceive. Christopher Lund, professor of law at Wayne State University, (says) that the 1931 law isn't necessarily applicable to IVF procedures. But, he said, the law is vague in defining what is considered a miscarriage or abortion. Section 14 of the law forbids "administering to any pregnant women any medicine, drug, [or] substance ... to procure [a] miscarriage." Section 15 forbids the providing or selling "any pills, powder, drugs or combination of drugs, designed expressly for the use of females for the purpose of procuring an abortion." 

Over the last decade, more than half of young adults with depression reported not receiving treatment in a survey, and important reasons were related to cost and stigma. Cos of care was the most common problem for young patients with major depressive episodes, with the frequency of cost being cited as a barrier to mental health care going from 51.1% to 54.7% in 2019. Other barriers to care included people not knowing where to go for treatment, worrying about confidentiality, not wanting to take medication, and not having the time, researchers wrote in JAMA Network Open. Community-based education is vital to combat some of those beliefs, said Arash Javanbakht, associate professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine. He said the study’s results suggest the medical community is “behind in educating the public not only about mental illness but also [about] how to navigate the healthcare system, get evaluated, and receive needed care.” “Many patients think medications are addictive, zombify them, or change the way of their thinking,” said Javanbakht. “This also closely ties with the stigma of having mental illness [and] its personal, cultural, and media aspects…There is a need for more realistic education about the prevalence of mental illness, its biological nature, variety of treatment options, and similarities with other illnesses of the body. The government should definitely be more active in this area of public education via media and social media.”

A Starbucks store in Grand Rapids is poised to be the first in Michigan to count votes for unionization, while more than half a dozen others in the state have set election dates. Staff at Workers United are confident the vote will be in favor of unionizing. On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board authorized four stores in Ann Arbor and one each in Grand Blanc, East Lansing and Flint to hold elections. Workers United was notified that a total of 10 stores in Michigan have been approved for election dates in early June. Seattle-based Starbucks has more than 15,000 locations throughout the U.S. Since the recent wave to unionize began in December in New York, more than 50 stores have voted to unionize, while hundreds more are poised to vote soon. Employees have demanded higher wages, better working conditions, and a platform to voice worker interests. On the other side, CEO Howard Schultz has taken a strong stance against unions and said the company could not have grown into a globally famous coffee behemoth with the restraints of organized labor. The Starbucks unionization effort has the potential to rekindle the labor movement in the U.S., and organizing in Michigan, once a union stronghold, has symbolic significance, said Marick Masters, former director of Wayne State University’s labor relations department and current interim chair of the department of finance and business. “If you combine it with some recent successes that unions have had at Amazon, I think that they have the potential to be transformative in the sense of really rekindling the labor movement, but we are a long way form that type of rejuvenation.” Unionization is only half the battle, Masters said. Winning better benefits for employees will be a tough go. “There are serious challenges that the union will face in trying to represent workers at Starbucks sites,” he said. “Their management team is going to become more aggressive and sophisticated in resisting in these campaigns. They’ll resort to a whole bag of tricks to discourage workers at other sites from unionizing.”

Motown legend Stevie Wonder received an honorary doctorate from Wayne State University on Saturday. Wonder was among several people who had honorary degrees bestowed at the university's graduation ceremonies. Others include Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony, the senior pastor of Fellowship Chapel, actor Timothy Meadows and others.