Colleges are testing new tactics to increase the number of adult learners in the classroom after years of a downturn in enrollment. Postsecondary enrollment in Michigan declined by 1.7%, or 7,463 students, in fall 2021. From fall 2019 to 2020, enrollment dropped 9.2%, or 44,578 students, according to estimates by National Student Clearinghouse. The problem isn’t limited to traditional college-age students because students 24 and older experienced the sharpest relative enrollment decline. Many universities and community colleges are making efforts to reduce those numbers and, in the process, designing ways to meet the needs of older learners, such as child care options and advising services. At Wayne State University, the Warrior Way Back program is aimed at re-enrolling adult learners with some previous education. Amber Neher, adviser for the program, said that having a dedicated support team has made all the difference for adult learners once they are on campus. “We developed a strong team, including adult learner advisers, an adult learner career coach, and an adult learner liaison, so there are some folks who are specific to adult learners,” Neher said.   

By Kaitlyn Tiffany    The internet is a powerful machine for twisting the meaning of language. A new word gets pushed through various subcultures that use it for their own purposes, then out to broader audiences that will use it in whichever way they first hear it. ‘Doxxing’ is a special example, in that it originally referred to somewhat specific, dangerous, and unethical behavior — “dropping documents” — or making private information public and calling unfriendly attention to it. By naming that behavior, the word allowed for the development of shared norms against it on the nascent internet. But ‘doxxing’ has since been used to describe so many different situations – with varying degrees of sincerity and fairness – that its original utility has faded. Where the term once defined a category, it now expresses an emotion. Whoever feels doxxed will claim to have been doxxed. Any time a person’s information is “purposefully moved, lifted, and repurposed in other spaces” without their consent, that could be called “doxing,” according to Stine Eckert, an associate professor of communication at Wayne State University who has written about the history of doxxing. There is “usually an element of bad intentions,” she said.   

Anyone can choke under pressure, as evidenced by a seemingly simple puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune” that stumped two players who have faced ridicule online. Physical and mental tasks you normally perform with ease become challenging under pressure, which comes from people watching, big rewards or losses at stake, fear of judgment, or even your own memories. Under stress, working memory is disrupted by external factors, like an audience, time pressure, or potential embarrassment. The clutter interferes with the prefrontal cortex’s communication with the rest of the brain. “Humans really only have one way of dealing with stress, and that’s our ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ reflex,” said Seth D. Norrholm, a professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine. “…Your body doesn’t discriminate between a game show versus a predator. It’s just going to kick in the responses inborn within us.”   

Wayne State University and Wayne Health, its affiliated physician practice group, have received a $900,000 grant from Bank of America to strengthen the Wayne Health Mobile Unit (WHMU) program. The innovative fleet of health delivery vehicles was established in partnership with Ford X in April 2020 to deliver COVID-19 testing, education, and vaccinations to underserved populations in Detroit. The support from Bank of America will provide two fully outfitted electric vehicles from Ford Motor Company that will bring preventative health care to Detroit workers in an environmentally sustainable way. The new electric Ford Transit vehicles will make regular site visits to an estimated 16-20 small- and medium-sized businesses in Detroit through partnerships between Wayne Health, the businesses, and their health insurance providers – offering comprehensive or preventative health care services to thousands of workers. Each mobile unit will function as a mobile clinical setting with an examination and consultation area and a telehealth component. The funding from Bank of America will support the purchase of the vehicles, along with three years of personnel, medical supplies and vehicle maintenance. “We are helping businesses help their workers and with these new electric vehicles, we are doing so with a small environmental impact,” said Phillip Levy, M.D., M.P.H., project lead for the WHMU program as well as Wayne Health’s chief innovation officer. “Healthier workers mean healthier business, which translates to greater economic health for the Detroit region. We are grateful to Bank of America for helping us move from crisis response to destination care, and for giving these businesses the capacity to offer high-quality, affordable health care for their workers.”  

Most histories of law schools focus on the notable deans and professors, and the changes in curricula over time. In “Detroit’s Wayne State University Law School: Future Leaders in the Legal Community,” author Alan Schenk highlights the students and their influence on the school’s development, character, and employment opportunities. Schenk, a longtime professor at Wayne State Law School, has devoted his academic career to tax law and is regarded as an expert on value added taxation. His decision to write a book about the law school stemmed from a question posed by his wife, Betty, in the fall of 2014 when she asked him if he was the longest serving faculty member there. “When I determined that I was, I started reminiscing about my years at Wayne, my students, my colleagues, and the law school administration,” Schenk wrote in the preface to the book. “I taught at almost a dozen law schools and I always returned to Wayne – for two important reasons. First, I was treated well at Wayne and there is a tendency to return to a place that treats you well. Second, and more importantly, Wayne students were special. I enjoyed teaching them more than the students I taught at other law schools.”  

Thirty-five years after the federal government created a public health campaign to raise awareness of a growing epidemic of alcoholism in the U.S., the problem became more pronounced, especially among young women, during the pandemic. Figures from Nielsen report national alcohol sales surged 54% in March 2020. April is National Alcohol Awareness Month, an opportunity to reexamine your relationship with alcohol, said Erika Bocknek, an associate professor of counseling psychology at Wayne State University. “It’s a moment to step back and reflect before your drinking gets out of hand,” she said. The first step to evaluating your drinking is to ask yourself why you’re having a drink, Bocknek said. “Alcohol plays a pervasive role in our culture, so it’s easy to make drinking issues seem less problematic. It’s important to remember that the problem can be invisible…The reason alcohol works as a coping strategy is because it dulls your senses and forces you to relax,” Bocknek said.  

Researchers from the University Research Corridor (URC) with local officials Monday to discuss ways to address the storm-related home flooding experienced in Detroit and other southeast Michigan cities, months after the second “500 year rain event” in seven years left thousands in the region with drowned basements and downed power lines. Experts from the University Research Corridor gathered on the Wayne State University campus to present research on updating outdated infrastructure to make communities more resilient in the face of extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change. “The problem is that we’re impoverishing people that are already at the edge of poverty in a series of Detroit communities,” said Lyke Thompson, director of Wayne State’s Center for Urban Studies. The URC works with industries like infrastructure, water, and mobility.  “We know that water always wins, as it has the time and energy to find the paths of least resistance, which are often our basements or other infrastructure,” said William Shuster, chair of the Wayne State University civil and environmental engineering department. “We need to respond to the way that water plays this game and give it other options.” The money for necessary large-scale infrastructure repair is available to Michigan and should be used to mitigate future impacts of severe weather, according to Britany Affolter-Caine, executive director of the URC. “We are in a unique time in where we’re getting a ton of money and communities are sort of staring down at an influx of infrastructure dollars and COVID dollars,” said Affolter-Caine. “…We have to use it smartly.”  

Wayne State University Law School’s Student Bar Association Board of Governors announced its 2022-23 executive board, elected by the student body. The Executive Board includes President Christina Atanasoska; Vice President Katie Prebelich; Treasurer Ila Zielke; Secretary Andrew Nurmi; ABA Representative Alexandria Sharpe; and Student Senate Representative TK Khan.

The team at Wayne Health knows to break the cycle of health disparities in Black and brown communities, they must take their tools on the road. For more than a year, the Wayne Health mobile unit has broken down the barriers to healthcare access in Detroit's Black neighborhoods, providing COVID vaccines, heart health awareness, and other services. Dr. Philip Levy, a professor of emergency medicine and assistant vice president for translational science and clinical research innovation at Wayne State and chief innovation officer for Wayne State University Physician Group, said that his team has noticed that nearly 7 out of of every 10 visitors has elevated blood pressure. "Most of the folks have pretty profound hypertension, and a lot of them fall into the category of stage 2 hypertension, which is advanced hypertension that we need to do something about as soon as possible," said Dr. Levy. This summer, Wayne Health will officially being its Achieve Greater initiative, which will provide Detroiters with the resources to manage their health. After one visit with the mobile health unit, all other follow ups are done remotely. Wayne Health is partnering with a number of church groups, recreation centers, and other community groups to connect with more residents. Dr. Levy said the life expectancy of a Detroiter is up to 15 years less than Michigan's average life expectancy of 77.7 years, and that deaths linked to heart disease jumped 25-30% during the pandemic. Wayne Health wants to help future generations of Black families live longer. "Ultimately, we want everyone in the state, and especially in the City of Detroit and the Black community, to live as many years as everyone else," Dr. Levy said. 

By Sarah Rahal  A community event is inviting children with an incarcerated parent to Wayne State University’s campus for a day of fun and exploration. Families of Future Warriors, the first-of-its-kind event at the university, will bring together families on April 23 for planetarium shows, science demonstrations, a tour of the Midtown campus and lunch at Towers Café. The event is designed for children ages 8-15. “Incarceration impacts millions of children across the country including those in metro Detroit,” said Stephanie Hartwell, dean of Wayne State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “Oftentimes these children do not have access to family events.” Families of Future Warriors will showcase the university’s exhibits and aims to connect like-minded families. They’ll start at WSU’s Old Main and be welcomed by author Darryl Woods, a motivational speaker whose father was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison when Woods was a year old.  

By Lily Bohlke  An analysis of mobile health clinics launched in the Detroit metro area during the pandemic finds it’s a model that can deliver health screenings and health care and could be replicated in other communities. The Wayne Health Mobile Units are specially equipped vans with medical equipment and professionals. They began as testing sites for front-line workers in the early days of COVID-19, out of a partnership between Wayne State University and Ford Motor Co. Over time, they transitioned to what Dr. Phillip Levy, a professor of emergency medicine and assistant vice president for translational science and clinical research innovation at Wayne State and chief innovation officer for Wayne State University Physician Group, called a “vision of patient-centric, portable population health.” “If they have comorbidities and need doctors’ appointments or health care,” said Levy, who runs the program, “can we provide linkages around that? If they have food insecurity, can we help them get food access so that we can really be delivering on the holistic approaches that are needed in order to keep this person healthy and avoid complications?” Appointments are not necessary, and they don’t require insurance or identification – which can be barriers to care. Levy added that bringing care into communities also reduces the barriers of transportation time and cost. Beyond testing and treatment for COVID, Levy said the Mobile Health Units do blood screenings for high cholesterol, diabetes, and kidney disease, and provide prevention infrastructure – as well as blood pressure screenings for hypertension. Levy said they are also building out HIV screening and treatment, and have started working with the state’s needle-exchange program.  

By Kiara Hay  A nationwide infant formula shortage has families in metro Detroit struggling to feed their babies. Empty shelves and signs rationing out supplies is a sight many have not seen since the early days of the pandemic. But moms across metro Detroit say it’s a constant crisis. Moms are struggling to find sensitive-stomach and lactose-free formulas, and some are relying on limited doctors’ samples or cans brought from relatives out-of-state. “We had a bad situation with access to baby formula before, and the recall by Abbott only made it worse,” said Kevin Ketels, an associate professor at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University. Ketels says a massive federal recall earlier in the year is one of the causes for the empty shelves, with 31% of formula products being out of stock across the country. According to Ketels, Abbott has begun airlifting formula products to the states to fill the gap, and other companies are looking at ways to stretch the supply. But he said the solution could take weeks, not months. “Hopefully, the company can ramp up production quickly and we can avoid the severe shortages that we have right now, but we ill not be able to escape the general shortages just because of the pandemic.” 

By Kim Russell  The Consumer Price Index is out for March, putting the inflation we are seeing into numbers. First, the bad news: If you are one of the 1% of Michiganders who use fuel oil to heat your home, turn down your thermostat or you will be spending 70.1% more than a year ago. The cost of filling up your gas tank in March was 48% more than a year ago, and food prices are up about 8.8%. Overall, in the last year, the all items index increased 8.5%, the largest spike since 1981. “It is a little bit scary,” said professor Kevin D. Cotter, Wayne State University department of economics chair. Cotter says while there is reason to be concerned, it is not all bad news. “Food and energy costs have been bumping up largely because of the war and they almost certainly are going to come back down,” said Cotter. If you exclude historically volatile food and energy prices, inflation has moderated. “If you look at, for example, medical costs, those go up but they don’t go down, so the fact those aren’t going up so much is good news. The things that are going up the most are the things that go down just as easily,” said Cotter. Cotter says the pandemic continues to cause inflation, but there is also reason for some optimism that the Federal Reserve might be able to manage inflation without causing a recession. “The things that would lead to a recession, a drop in consumer demand or job losses, we are seeing the opposite right now,” Cotter said.  

By Lauren Williams  Jenae Lodewky is one of the few female assistant equipment managers in the NBA. The 22-year-old Bay City native started with the Pistons as an intern in the human resources department last year, but found herself working as a team attendant after strict COVID testing protocols created staffing shortages for the team. She has earned the respect of the players and coaches, whose needs she sometimes anticipates without a word. Lodewyk is finishing up her senior year at the Mike Ilitch School of Business. ”I’m so fortunate to be with the Pistons because they’re an organization that believes in hiring women,” Lodewyk said. “So, I have role models. I have women who are 10 years older than me, 20 years older than me so on, and I’ve very lucky for that. When it comes to equipment, I think it makes me just value my community that much more. But even then, being the only woman in equipment with the Pistons, I’ve very grateful to have Kong and Black (Mahorn) and John (Narra) who believe that women belong in the locker room.” 

By Meryl Davids Landau Figures suggest a form of chronic pain afflicts between a third and half of the UK population, and in the U.S., the figure is 20%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The devastating consequences of addiction to opioid painkillers have motivated researchers to look for innovative treatments beyond new drugs. One promising area of new research is looking at the way “catastrophizing” about pain – thinking it will never get better, that it’s worse than ever, or that it will ruin your life – plays a central role in whether these predictions come true. Pain doctors who do recognize the importance of quelling catastrophizing generally refer patients for cognitive behavioral therapy, says Mark Lumley, a psychology professor at Wayne State University. This psychological practice is often used to treat depression, eating disorders, and even PTSD, Lumley says.  

By Margaret Blohm  LaunchDETROIT, the Rotary-powered program established 10 years ago to help entrepreneurs in under-resourced areas of Detroit, has made significant strides. The program has provided business education, mentoring and networking opportunities to 83 entrepreneurs as well as micro-loans of up to $2,500 each to 39 qualifying participants. Loans have gone to businesses in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and many Downriver communities as well as other cities in the Detroit Metro region. Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business and International Strategic Management partnered to provide additional business education resources customized to better serve participating entrepreneur’s business needs.  

By Kirsten Matoy Carlson  It’s unusual for someone to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit one of its decisions. It’s very rare for that to happen almost immediately after the ruling was issued. But in the two years since the court’s ruling in a key case about Native American rights, the state of Oklahoma has made that request more than 40 times. State officials have also repeatedly refused to cooperate with tribal leaders to comply with the ruling, issued in 2020 and known as McGirt vs. Oklahoma. Local governments, however, continue to cooperate with the tribes and show how the ruling could actually help build connections between the tribal governments and their neighbors. In the McGirt ruling, the Supreme Court held that much of eastern Oklahoma is Indian country under the terms of an 1833 treaty between the U.S. government and the Muscogee Creek Nation. Based on that treaty and an 1885 federal law, the ruling effectively means that the state of Oklahoma cannot prosecute crimes committed by or against American Indians there. Federal and tribal officials are the only ones who can pursue these cases.

By Arash Javanbakht  In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 brought rising levels of stress, anxiety and depression. But stay-at-home orders and a national emergency prompted many psychiatric and psychotherapy offices to shut down and cancel in-person appointments. The country needed a robust – and fast – transition to mental health telemedicine. And the pandemic turned out to be just the thing to make it happen. I was skeptical of telemedicine in 2015 when I began working at Wayne State University as a psychiatrist and researcher in the medical school. At that time, the department of psychiatry and its affiliated clinics were using telemedicine in primary and emergency care and for substance use recovery. But the idea of seeing patients via video had been around since long before then. In 1973, a team of behavioral scientists studied the two-way interactive television system Massachusetts General Hospital started using in 1969. The hospital provided mental health evaluations at an off-site medical station at Logan International Airport in Boston and a Veterans Affairs hospital outside the city. “The system has proven to be feasible and acceptable to individuals and institutions in the community, providing psychiatric skills on a much wider scale, in a more accessible way, and faster than any other system,” researchers wrote in their analysis. 

By Jake Neher  Last week, Amazon warehouse workers on Staten Island in New York came away with one of the biggest organized labor victories in the last century. Some experts are comparing their effort to the 1937 Flint General Motors strike that helped catapult America’s labor movement. More than 5,000 workers voted in the election to form the company’s first-ever union. The new Amazon Labor Union (ALU) won by about 500 votes. That’s despite a massive anti-union campaign by Amazon. Marick Masters is chair of the Department of Finance and chair of the Department of Accounting at Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business, as well as an expert on organized labor. He says the comparison to the Flint sit-down strike of 1937 is appropriate. “I think it reflects that there is a large, untapped desire for worker participation,” says Masters. “I think it’s a long way ahead before labor can capture the glory of the past, but this is certainly a significant step in that direction.” 

By Erin Marie Miller Over 30 years ago, Dr. Sheryl Kubiak made an observation that would alter the course of her career forever and, eventually, impact the future of Michigan’s incarcerated. After developing and operating a long-term residential re-entry program for pregnant women addicted to crack cocaine in Detroit for nearly seven years, Kubiak noticed many of the women she was working with struggled with unacknowledged behavioral issues, keeping them locked in a cycle that was often difficult to break free from. “I found out then that the vast majority of people who are coming out into the community (from corrections facilities), or are involved in the criminal/legal system, have behavioral health issues that they are trying to find their way through. What happens is, a lot of times, that behavior gets misinterpreted as ‘bad behavior’ or ‘illegal behavior,' and then they get wrapped up in a system they can't get out of,” Kubiak says. Now the Dean of the Wayne State University School of Social Work, Kubiak is the founding director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice (CBHJ) — an initiative that provides research, evaluations, training and support to local communities, behavioral health, and law enforcement agencies, and other organizations in Michigan related to jail diversion, re-entry, crisis response and more.