Education Section

UM Board of Regents (Dec. 18, 2008) Thursday’s meeting of the University of Michigan regents was overshadowed by news about its purchase of the former Pfizer facility, but before they voted on that item, the board spent an hour dealing with a range of other issues – including a farewell to one of its longest-serving current members.

Early in the meeting, the board paid tribute to Rebecca McGowan, who has served for two terms – a total of 16 years – but did not run for reelection this year. Regent Libby Maynard gave an emotional presentation, calling McGowan a friend and an important colleague. “Becky, you’ve given Michigan your wisdom, your vision, your care – no institution could ask for more.” [Full Story]

Word about the University of Michigan’s plans to buy the former Pfizer research site had leaked out much earlier in the day, but UM regents waited until the end of their regular Thursday afternoon meeting before making it formal: The university will spend $108 million to buy the roughly 174-acre Plymouth Road complex, with plans to transform it into a major medical and scientific research hub. In the long term, university officials hope to add 2,000 jobs to the local economy over 10 years. But in the short term, the deal will take millions of dollars off the tax rolls for local governments at a time when they’re already anticipating budget shortfalls. [Full Story]

There were two distinctly different agendas on view at Tuesday’s Wall Street neighborhood meeting, hosted by University of Michigan staff. University representatives, led by Jim Kosteva, were there to deliver information about environmental and safety issues related to the proposed UM expansion in that area. The neighbors wanted answers to questions they’d been asking for many months – and their frustration was palpable.

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Fly on the wall at Detroit Metro airport: Lots of Ann Arbor area residents travel to exotic places. Smack dab from the middle of America, we long for a change of scenery, and Midwesterners are friendly types.

But Rwanda? 

In 2007-2008, three local couples, well into their careers, traveled to the heart of Africa, landing in a country about half the size of Michigan. For differing missions, David and Valerie Canter, Andrea Sankar and Mark Luborsky, and myself and Rob Pasick stepped onto the warm black tarmac of modern Kigali airport, and began to work. [Full Story]

A young man who’d just purchased a copy of an old Life magazine from the Dawn Treader Book Shop asked The Chronicle, “What are they protesting?” So we clarified for him that the group holding candles and signs at the corner of Liberty and Main streets in downtown Ann Arbor were there to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly. [Full Story]

The Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library receives over 200,000 books every year, but they found out on Dec. 4 that the area they use for sorting them will soon be shrinking by half. The other half of the space that they use currently will be needed to accommodate equipment and materials from the Washtenaw Library for the Blind and Physically Disabled, which the AADL recently assimilated. Part of the strategy to ease the space crunch is to suspend acceptance of donations effective immediately. Expect to see signage in the library to that effect soon. [Full Story]

Glimpsing through the door of room 116 of Hutchins Hall at UM Law School on Tuesday evening, The Chronicle could see what seemed like a late-evening class in session. Not sure of the room number we wanted, it was with some caution that we nosed further into the room. Ah. The familiar faces of Tony Derezinski, newly elected Ann Arbor city council representative of Ward 2, and Dave … [Full Story]

When I present to school groups, I always pose the same question: What images come to mind when you hear the word homeless? Inevitably, the answers sound the same, whether I’m speaking to University of Michigan athletes or elementary age students huddled in a circle on the floor. They think of single adults, often male, outside, asking for food or money. They think of someone who is dirty, wearing layers and layers of clothes, maybe someone pushing a grocery cart.

The truth is, the homeless are diverse – and a great many are invisible and forgotten.

Each day, I work with homeless families, children and youth as an education advocate with the Education Project for Homeless Youth. You likely won’t see … [Full Story]

At the Traverwood branch of the Ann Arbor District Library on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the room at the back of the building was awash with the colors of blue, purple, red, orange and green cups. On entering the room, the ock-ock-ock of cups getting stacked into pyramids then rapidly collapsed by small hands became audible. There were 20 or so kids from kindergarten through eighth grade at the event – enough to fill the room without making it feel cramped – which culminated in a competition with prizes awarded in the form of gift cards to Target. [Full Story]

Within the first few minutes of the Nov. 20 University of Michigan Board of Regents meeting, President Mary Sue Coleman led the group through three rounds of applause: Congratulating Larry Deitch on his recent reelection to the board, applauding vice president for development Jerry May and his staff for their work on the $3.1 billion Michigan Difference fundraising campaign, and wishing a happy birthday to Bill Best, who has led the Department of Public Safety for 10 years and is taking another job within the university. The remainder of the meeting was somewhat less festive. [Full Story]

In Fritz Haeg’s first slide, shot straight down into his own compost pile, a banana peel was still discernible. “This,” he said, “was what we should be celebrating!” Not banana peels per se, but rather compost – a kind of recycling that does not lose value with each cycle as many of our other efforts do (like, for example, paper recycling).

Haeg was standing in front of about 40 people in the multipurpose room of the Ann Arbor District Library to present his project, “Edible Estates,” which involves installations of … [Full Story]

On any given day, you’ll likely find an eclectic collection of people on the Diag – even on a frigid November day like today, when the disparate groups included war protesters, an iPod promotion and several Men’s Glee Club members dressed in tuxes.

At noon, about three dozen people gathered in front of the Hatcher Graduate Library, as several speakers urged president-elect Barack Obama to push for a quick conclusion to the war in Iraq.

The protest was organized primarily by Michigan Progressives, a coalition of student groups. Speakers included Lars Ekstrom of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje and Laura Russello, executive director of Michigan Peaceworks.

Russello told the group that as of 10 a.m. this morning, the war had cost American taxpayers $569 billion – $15 billion of that coming from Michigan. “We don’t want any more of our money to go toward this war,” she said. [Full Story]

On its library website, UM announces the full slate of panelists for a discussion of the social protests of 1968. The discussions will be moderated  by Paul Courant, university librarian and dean of libraries, and Roger Lowenstein, founder and director of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy. The discussions will take place in the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery (first floor) where a similarly themed exhibit from the Labadie Collection is currently on display. The panel takes place on Nov. 13 starting at 4 p.m. with a concert in the same venue by Country Joe McDonald to start at 8 p.m. [Source] [Source]

A cast member dressed in Army fatigues is doing a mic check. Above him, a cloud of theatrical smoke wafts from the stage into the auditorium. He sings a few lines then says, “Am I good?”

“You’re the best!” someone calls out from the group of students clustered around the orchestra pit, as they laugh and hoot and applaud.
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Kim Cameron projected an image on the screen and asked people what they saw. “Mars,” someone guessed.   Someone else thought it was an aerial satellite photo, presumably of planet Earth.

It was a cow, Cameron revealed, at which point the group murmured a collective “Aaah!”

The cow’s head was defined by the lighter shadings in the image. “When you look at the light,” Cameron said, “everything changes.” It’s not the image that changes, it’s your perspective on it.

The exercise was an effective illustration of Cameron’s message: Being positive can yield enormous results, both physiologically and in your business. [Full Story]

There’s a page on the Homeless Dave website called HD Washin’ Man, which is probably the most frequently visited page on the site. It documents a pedal-powered laundry spinner I cobbled together. It’s more popular than Bill Clinton’s teeter totter interview or even T. Casey Brennan’s. (T. Casey has a massive email contact list and he’s not bashful about using it.) I hear from T. Casey from time to time or else bump into him on my frequent trips through downtown Ann Arbor. [Full Story]

On Sunday, the northeast corner of Burns Park was already teeming with humanity at 1 p.m. That was the start time that Ann Arbor Active Against ALS [A2A3] had scheduled for its kickoff fundraiser: a family field day. David Lowenschuss, one of the organizers, pointed out Bob Schoeni for us among the crowd waiting for the formal start to the festivities on a crispy overcast day. Schoeni had provided the impetus for the formation of the A2A3 nonprofit, when he was diagnosed with ALS in July.

A few minutes later, when Christopher Taylor took the microphone to help get the field day fun started, the gray skies had gone from spitting a few misty drops of rain to a steady sprinkle. It was hard to escape the conclusion that it was really raining. Added to a breezy day that saw temperatures in the low 50s, the rain meant that Taylor’s declaration, “It’s a beautiful day!” easily drew the chuckles it deserved from the crowd. [Full Story]

Back in the early days of Teeter Talk, I did a “virtual totter ride” with a guy out in California named Scott Schnaars. We conducted the Talk via Yahoo! chat, because that’s the company he worked for at the time. Now he works for Socialtext. Not very long after Scott’s virtual ride, his wife, Holly, was diagnosed with colon cancer.

After aggressive surgical treatment and chemotherapy, Scott and Holly had a sigh of relief after the latest round of test results from August of this year. Summarized that way in two sentences, Holly’s story is artificially neat and tidy and has a happy end. Since Holly’s diagnosis, I’ve had on my mental white board of potential totter guests someone who would climb aboard – not just virtually – and talk about colon cancer. I didn’t have a particular person in mind. But that person turned out to be Bridget Weise Knyal. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: The following is the annual state-of-the-university speech given by University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman to the 2008 Senate Assembly, a faculty governance group. She delivered the speech today at Palmer Commons. [Full Story]

As the tall, wiry gentleman, who’d been younger back in 1968, finished off an impromptu vocal performance – “There ain’t no time to wonder why, Whoopee! we’re all gonna die!” – a couple dozen people standing in a semicircle applauded the effort. Chuck Ream doesn’t randomly show up to the Gallery (Room 100) in the UM Hatcher Graduate Library to entertain folks with Country Joe McDonald protest songs from the ’60s – the occasion was an informal tour of a show organized by Julie Herrada, curator of the Labadie Collection at the UM library. The show, which is on display through Dec. 19, is titled “The Whole World Was Watching: Protest and Revolution in 1968, Selections from the Labadie Collection.” [Full Story]

The Chronicle understands that art can require heavy lifting, but usually that’s meant in a metaphorical sense. Not so on Monday, when workers hoisted 23,000 pounds of steel sculpture in front of the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s new wing on South State Street.

The work being installed was “Orion” by artist Mark di Suvero. It’s the first of two large outdoor sculptures by di Suvero that will be on long-term loan to UMMA – the second, “Shang,” will go up later in the plaza between the old museum and its new building. [Full Story]

Neal Kelley and Jameson Tamblyn are co-chairs of Youth Council, one of the many programs of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. Tottering with these two Huron High School seniors gave me a little more insight into what it is the AAACF does – by focusing on Youth Council. [Full Story]

If you went to Wednesday’s Morning Edition breakfast, here’s what you’d know now: A shop on East Liberty sells bouncing eyeballs; there’s a chance you could get a cupcake named after you; wind turbines are expensive but not that noisy; it’s not too far-fetched to link Nepal with UM’s business outreach; and Washtenaw Community College doesn’t really want a football team.

The monthly event was emceed by Susan Pollay, executive director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, who revealed that she views cupcakes as diet food “because, of course, it’s portion control.” Here’s what other speakers had to say: [Full Story]

It’s hard to know how many of the 200 or so students who attended Friday’s Entrepreneurship Hour lecture will become entrepreneurs. Maybe not the ones playing video games on their laptops or texting on their cellphones – but you never know.

Those who were listening to Christopher Ilitch and Doug Rothwell gleaned a fair bit of advice on what it takes to succeed, and on what some community leaders are doing to support entrepreneurs in southeast Michigan. [Full Story]

Just in time for Halloween, University Productions is holding one of its relatively rare sales to purge unwanted parts of its costume collection. On Friday afternoon, one customer was buying a half-dozen hot pink fuzzballs sewn to elastic bands, at 50 cents a pop. “I’m going to wear them in my hair and around my ankles,” he grinned.

Shoes, jackets, dresses and other clothing – vintage or slightly worn– hung from racks amid assorted props, like the life-sized two-dimensional wooden figures from some long-since-shuttered play.

The two-day sale continues Saturday, Oct. 11 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. “We want to make sure there’s nothing left,” says Renae Skoog, costume stock manager for University Productions. “Everything’s got to go.” [Full Story]

The Eastern Eagle Echo reports that Freman Hendrix, Eastern Michigan University’s chief government relations officer, for the first time publicly declared his candidacy for mayor of Detroit. He spoke at a meeting of the EMU student senate Tuesday night. Hendrix ran unsuccessfully against former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2005. [Source]

At the Project Grow annual meeting of membership, held Thursday evening at the Nature House at Leslie Science Center, news of a possible organizational arrangement with Matthaei Botanical Gardens led to an impromptu expansion of the board of directors to include two additional members. In addition to Catherine Riseng and Dustin Underwood, who were already on the slate for election, Royer Held and Kirk Jones were elected to the board. Project Grow’s mission is to make organic gardening accessible through the community and it does so most visibly through garden plots available at 14 different sites located throughout the city.

At the meeting, Project Grow board president, Devon Akmon, announced that Karen Sikkenga, associate director of Matthaei Botanical Gardens, had … [Full Story]

As the Ann Arbor District Library moves forward on its ambitious project to raze the downtown building and put up a new library on the Fifth & William site, a nonprofit that supports the AADL ponders its own future.

Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library, or FAADL, is best known for the shop it runs on weekends in the basement of the downtown library, raising money to support the AADL. The group has built a real sense of community there, with long-time volunteers and regular shoppers greeting each other by name as they staff the cashier table or browse the shelves, boxes and tables full of books, DVDs and other materials. [Full Story]

Juxtaposition can be an oddly wonderful thing. That was the case Wednesday as The Chronicle swung between two disparate events on the University of Michigan campus: a demo on the Diag by the men’s gymnastics team, and a reception at the Michigan League to celebrate UM inventors.

First, the physical tumbling. Each fall about this time, the men’s gymnastics team hauls out some of its equipment and sets up on the Diag, where team members jump, flip, work the pummel horse and otherwise wow passersby with feats of strength and flexibility. It’s a way to promote their season – their first meet isn’t until Dec. 13, but their daily practices at the UM sports coliseum from 2:45-5:45 p.m. are open to the public.

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Here at The Chronicle, about the only thing we pitch on a regular basis is a hissy fit. So we were intrigued by the concept of 1,000 Pitches, a contest for UM students, faculty and staff to come up with ideas for new businesses, nonprofits or inventions.

The university-wide contest is sponsored by the College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship, but UM’s School of Information took it one step further. Administrators wanted to make it easier for SI students to participate, so on Tuesday, they set up a room in West Hall for videotaping, and invited people to drop by anytime between 1-5 p.m. to make their three-minute pitch. No muss, no fuss – plus snacks! (Cookies, apples and pop, specifically.)

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