In the news

Another life sciences win for Kalamazoo

Kalamazoo Community College will be the home of a new high-tech laboratory for Michigan\'s life sciences industry. The Michigan High Throughput Screening Center is expected to be up and running by next summer. It will provide computerized, high-speed and robot-driven procedures that can help accelerate drug discovery for small pharmaceutical companies, university researchers and start-up companies. Financial support will come from private donors and grants.

Universities need help to educate more students

This month\'s \"President\'s Perspective\" commentary, authored by incoming Michigan State University president Lou Anna Simon, identifies the challenges Michigan\'s universities face as they heed Gov. Jennifer Granholm\'s call to identify a strategy that will increase participation in the state\'s higher education system. The governor\'s mandate, through the Commission on Higher Education and Economic Growth, is to double the number of postsecondary degree holders within 10 years, then keep them living and working in Michigan. Growing enrollment translates into needed funding for more university professors and increased physical capacity offering classrooms, laboratories and technological infrastructure.

Sports Resorts rejects buyout

Randy Paschke, chair of the accounting department in Wayne State's School of Business Administration, commented about Sports Resorts International Inc. board's rejection of an offer by company founder and majority shareholder Don Williamson to buy its three subsidiaries for 40 million shares of stock. Paschke said there are advantages for a company such as Sports Resorts to go private. \"The cost of being a public company is just horrendous,\" he said, adding that costs have more than doubled for some companies with the new rules.

Lack of trust poisons efforts to reform asbestos litigation

Dr. Michael R. Harbut, chief of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Wayne State University, commented about the declining numbers of patients being treated for illnesses related to exposure to asbestos. Harbut said it\'s difficult to understand why medical centers with a large patient load wouldn\'t be seeing asbestosis. \"In my own practice, I\'ve seen at least three new noncontroversial diagnoses in the last nine workdays,\" said Harbut, who is also co-director of the National Center for Vermiculite and Asbestos-Related Cancers.

Workplace bullying affects the whole company

Professor Loraleigh Keashly, academic director of CULMA's Master's in Dispute Resolution (MADR) program, is extensively quoted in a story about workplace bullying, an issue she has been researching for more than 10 years. A study performed by the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs in 2000 indicated that one in six employees reported being victims of "harmful" mistreatment by fellow employees. "They become disabled in a way," Keashly explains. "It inhibits a person's ability to do their job and becomes problematic for the organization."

GALLERIES: Spiritual works evoke the smoky hues of Cuba

This article featured a new exhibit of Cuban art that opened at Wayne State\'s Elaine L. Jacob Gallery. ...An art department trip to Cuba last year to meet artists, students and faculty at the island\'s premier art school prompted Wayne State University\'s two exhibitions on Cuban art and an accompanying symposium. \"Cuba from the Inside Looking Out\" is offered in two parts -- work by faculty, students and alumni from the Instituto Superior de Arte, and contemporary Cuban art from American collections. This article also quoted the director of the Jacob Gallery. \"It was a challenge to get the work here,\" said gallery director Sandra Dupret. \"No shipping company wanted to bring them to the U.S.,\" because of the U.S. sanctions on the communist-ruled island. \"We got the work through the Cuban Art Space in New York, where they will go after our exhibition. The pieces arrived in two rolls, unframed and unstretched.\"