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Honoring Student Veterans: Due to the season’s first daunting snowfall November 12, no one was allowed to rappel off of the 60-foot-high Armory Tower as promised. But inside the Armory, student veterans and members of the University community stayed warm with a chili lunch and many laudatory words. The second annual Veterans Appreciation Day honored University student veterans for their sacrifice and service to their country. In addition to lunch, the day included the U’s Military Color Guard, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and other speakers, and a Veterans Resource Fair.

The University of Minnesota received the second largest gift in its history with a $40 million pledge from the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation. The money will be targeted toward finding a cure for type 1 diabetes, a devastating disease that occurs in children and young adults when the immune system mistakenly destroys all insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Schulze, whose daughter suffers from the disease, said he chose to give to the U because of the work that it has already done to lay the groundwork for a cure: human islet transplantation, pig islet transplantation, and stem cell-derived islet cells. In recognition of the gift and the future of diabetes research, the University renamed its Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation the Schulze Diabetes Institute. Schulze is founder and CEO of Best Buy.

Research at the U is running strong, with sponsored awards totaling $675 million in 2007, an increase of 8.3 percent over 2006. According to National Science Foundation data, for 2007 total research expenditures at the U ranked ninth overall among public universities and 14th among all universities. Over the last three fiscal years the University has increased its research expenditures by nearly 19 percent, posting the second largest growth rate among the top 20 public research universities in the country. The figures were presented to the Board of Regents at its December meeting.

The Board of Regents approved a proposal authorizing alcohol sales in the premium seating sections of TCF Bank Stadium, Mariucci Arena, Williams Arena, and the restaurant at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Beer and wine are already available for free in the suites at the existing arenas; the Regents’ approval allows the venues to sell alcohol rather than give it away. Drinks at all sites will be served only in restricted, non-student areas. A review of 119 college football programs found that 118 had similar policies related to alcohol sales.

A former student has given the University Law School $6.01 million over the next five years to fund the new Program on Law, Public Policy and Society. The grant from the Robina Foundation, created by James Binger (J.D. ’41), allows the Law School to establish two research chairs, a clinical chair, a research fund, four capstone courses, annual conferences, and 50 law student internships in public policy. The first to hold one of the new chairs will be John Borrows, a professor of law at the University of Victoria (British Columbia) and a scholar in indigenous law, who will join the faculty in September. Binger created the Robina Foundation shortly before his death in 2004 to fund forward-thinking projects proposed by the University of Minnesota Law School, Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Yale University, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

The inaugural freshman class at the University of Minnesota Rochester will enter in fall 2009 following the Board of Regents’ provisional approval to admit students for the bachelor of science in health sciences (BSHS), the campus’s first four-year degree program. The BSHS will admit up to 150 students the first year. The program prepares students for a broad spectrum of health science-related fields and for admission to medical, dental, and veterinary science schools.

Michael Osterholm, director of the U’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and professor at the School of Public Health, has been appointed to the Pandemics Global Agenda Council, an initiative of the World Economics Forum. Osterholm joins 13 international pandemic preparedness experts from academia, business, and government sectors who will collaborate to create a central, global authority that can respond quickly in the event of a crisis. The potential global repercussions of a pandemic outbreak prompted governments to request the establishment of such an international body.

    —Cynthia Scott