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MSU Grad Darin Gross Works To Make Textbooks More Affordable

May 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Darin-GrossDETROIT (WWJ) – As if college costs aren’t high enough, parents and students know there’s yet another financial hurdle: the cost of books.

Darin Gross, a 22-year-old entrepreneur who recently graduated from Michigan State University, is working on that problem. He has a new project meant to make it more affordable for local sons and daughters to buy textbooks at three Michigan universities by letting them buy and sell directly.

It all started when Gross bought a book for a class, paying $100 for a tome that he later learned had been sold to the bookstore by his best friend — for $25.

“He could have made more money, I could have saved a lot more money,” Gross said.

Booklify was born.

Read more at CBS Detroit MSU Grad Works To Make Textbooks More Affordable « CBS Detroit.

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27 Survivors of 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Retell Their Painful Story At Wayne State University Event

May 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Lilian Fenster

87-year-old survivor of Warsaw Ghetto, Lillian Fenster of Birmingham, Michigan, with her son & grandson.

It has been more than 70 years since Lillian Fenster of Birmingham was in the Warsaw Ghetto, where Nazis placed Jewish people in the Polish city as part of a plan to exterminate them.

But she still can recall the painful details.

“I remember the wagons going back and forth with dead people on them — men, women and children,” Fenster, 87, recalled. “It’s not a pleasant story.”

Her experiences and others who survived the Warsaw Ghetto were recalled Wednesday night at Wayne State University for an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In 1943, a group of men and women in the ghetto rose up; they were crushed by the Nazis, but their actions are still remembered today.

Read more at Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/20130508/NEWS06/305080177/warsaw-ghetto-uprising-70th-anniversary-wayne-state

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MSU Urged By ADL To Close Hall Of Fame To Editor Of Arab American News

April 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

BY MARK HICKS

THE DETROIT NEWS

Osama SiblaniThe Anti-Defamation League is asking Michigan State University officials to reconsider inducting the longtime editor of what is considered the nation’s largest Arab American community newspaper into their Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, claiming the publication has been a “forum of hate.”

“The fact that Osama Siblani consistently allows his publication to be a forum for hate should call into question his fitness for the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame,” Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the organization, said in a statement Monday.

“The Arab American News has repeatedly published anti-Semitic diatribes and rhetoric and Mr. Siblani has publicly stated support and sympathy for terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Siblani, publisher and editor of the Dearborn-based weekly launched in 1984, is among five inductees set to be honored Sunday in East Lansing.

ADL officials last week sent a letter to the director of MSU’s School of Journalism, seeking a review of Siblani’s nomination.

Read more at Detroit News MSU urged to close Hall of Fame to Arab editor | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com.

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Walking Seven Miles To Final Four Stadium With Michigan Flag Tied Around His Neck

April 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

goblueChaim Frankel graduated from the University of Michigan in 2012 and shortly after moved to Atlanta to work for a startup company. Because of his religious beliefs, Frankel doesn’t use a car or public transportation from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday in observation of the Sabbath.

So when he straps on his walking shoes and throws on his Michigan gear to make the 7-mile trek from his apartment to the Final Four festivities in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, he’ll be keeping the faith in more ways than one.

To his team, and his religion.

“I’ll be walking the seven miles with my Wolverine flag tied around my neck,” said Frankel, who won’t be alone. He said most of the eight to 12 people he’ll be hosting at his apartment for the weekend will join him.

Read more at AnnArbor.com Thousands of Michigan fans heading to Atlanta for Final Four.

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University Of Michigan Cardiovascular Center Named In Honor Of Samuel And Jean Frankel

March 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment

FrankelsANN ARBOR, Mich. — The University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center will be named in honor of the late Samuel and Jean Frankel, whose foundation provided early support of the Center’s innovative model for caring for people with cardiovascular disease.

The University’s Board of Regents approved the naming Thursday to recognize Samuel and Jean Frankel’s groundbreaking support of the U-M CVC. Gifts from the Frankels to advance health care and culture at the U-M are among the most generous in school history, and their heritage of philanthropy has elevated scholarship and culture worldwide.

A $25 million gift from the Samuel and Jean Frankel Foundation to the U-M Cardiovascular Center was announced anonymously when the Center opened in 2007, and today marks the first time the donor has been named publicly.

The gift offered immediate support for the Cardiovascular Center’s clinical approach, a model never before attempted by a health care institution, which emphasizes cooperation among health care providers and puts patients and families first.

An additional $25 million was pledged on condition that the Cardiovascular Center met certain goals agreed upon by the donor and leaders of the Center.  Pleased with the success in meeting those goals, the family has committed the latest gift.

“It is with enormous pride that we are affiliated with Samuel and Jean Frankel whose belief allowed us to create a path for others to follow,” says Ora Hirsh Pescovitz, M.D., executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Michigan and chief executive officer of the U-M Health System.

“The gift guarantees that innovative approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of patients and families with cardiovascular disease will continue at Michigan and provide a national model,” Pescovitz says.

Highlights of that model are patient and family centered care, and cooperation, excellence and results in all areas of the Center’s operations: clinical care, research and education.

Read more at UofM Health University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center named in honor of Samuel and Jean Frankel | UofMHealth.org.

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Michigan Graduate Helen Zell Offers Unusual $50 Million Gift For Writing At The University Of Michigan

March 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

zell

ANN ARBOR — Helen Zell, the wife of billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell, is giving $50 million to support the University of Michigan’s acclaimed graduate writing program. The donation, to be announced today, is believed to be by far the largest ever gift to such a program, and comes at a time when most major gifts to higher education are supporting science, not the humanities.

Zell, who earned her English degree at Michigan in 1964, has been supporting the Michigan program with smaller gifts totaling more than $10 million over more than a decade. Five long bookshelves, nearly covering an entire wall of her Chicago apartment, are filled with books written by the graduate program’s faculty and alumni, she said, and she looks forward to adding more. Graduates include writers Elizabeth Kostova, Hanna Pylvainen and Jesymn Ward.

In a telephone interview, Zell described the new donation as an investment in some of the world’s promising young poets and novelists, to ensure the books they have inside them get written, shared with the world, and allowed to work the unique magic of human self-reflection that literature offers.

“What I’ve watched happen with the introduction of the Internet and media and blogging, I almost feel like this part of our education is under siege,” Zell said. “The ability of fiction to develop creativity, to analyze the human psyche, help you understand people — its’ critical. It’s as important as vitamins or anything else. To me, it’s the core of the intellectual health of human beings.”

The gift — the third-largest ever to the university — comes from the Zell Family Fund, where Helen Zell is executive director, and is in her name. Her husband, who endured a contentious tenure as chairman of media conglomerate Tribune Co., which he took private but then led into bankruptcy, is also a Michigan alumnus who has made substantial gifts to the university.

Read more at Crain’s Detroit Business Zell offers unusual $50 million gift for writing at the University of Michigan | Crain’s Detroit Business.

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University Of Michigan Partners With Technion – Israel Institute Of Technology For Heart Disease Research

February 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The number one killer of both men and women in the United States is heart disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. Researchers at the University of Michigan are working to change that. Partnering with colleagues at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, scientists are investigating new ways to attack the causes of heart disease.

Some of the research currently being undertaken includes using ultrasound energy to deliver a special type of gene so that an irregular heartbeat can be corrected. This project uses Israeli technology to deliver a gene that was discovered by researchers at U-M. There is also a program of drug discovery. Specifically, researchers are looking to discover new drugs out of Israeli organic compounds found in the Dead Sea, desert, and other areas in Israel.

The collaboration is co-led on the U-M side by David J. Pinsky, M.D.,the Ruth Professor/Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine and Director at the U-M Cardiovascular Center, Alan Saltiel, PhD., the Mary Sue Coleman Professor and Director, U-M Life Sciences Institute, and on the Technion side by Michael Aviram, Ph.D. professor at the Technion and director of the Clinical Research Institute, Stat Laboratory and Lipid Research Laboratory. Faculty at the Weizmann institute will also be joining this leadership team.

Read more at Ann Arbor Journal ANN ARBOR: University of Michigan partners with Technion – Israel Institute of Technology for heart disease research – Ann Arbor Journal – Heritage Newspapers.

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Detroit Gets A Kosher Restaurant That Attracts A Melting Pot of Customers

November 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s lunchtime at Wayne State University, and student Charles Bryson is sitting at a table with three friends, chowing on slivers of pizza at Gold ‘n’ Greens, a campus restaurant.

“I love the pizza,” Bryson says.

But his pizza is not ordinary pizza. And Gold ʻnʼ Greens is not an ordinary restaurant. The pizzaʼs ingredients are special, produced under the supervision of a rabbi to meet Jewish dietary laws.

Thatʼs because Gold ʻnʼ Greens is a kosher restaurant. It’s the only kosher restaurant in Detroit, and it is attracting a customer base at the melting pot that is WSU — one that goes far beyond the relatively small number of Jews on campus.

Bryson, who is African American, doesnʼt care that Gold ʻnʼ Greens is kosher, though he adds: “I do prefer kosher food over non-kosher food. An extra blessing is always good.”

Read more at Deadline Detroit Detroit Gets a Kosher Restaurant That Attracts A Melting Pot of Customers –  Deadline Detroit.

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Zingerman’s Deli In Ann Arbor Quietly Opens A Spacious Addition

November 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For years, I’ve struggled with the joys — and frustrations — of visiting Zingerman’s Deli.

It’s not a quick trip from my house to Ann Arbor, and going there without making a stop at one of America’s best-known delis and food emporiums is almost painful. Mario Batali called it his “temple of deliciousness” for a reason.

I’d rather shop for great olive oils and chocolates than shoes or purses. And I love the sweet agony of trying to decide what new sandwich to try.

But on a busy Saturday, it can take so long to stand in line outdoors — and then indoors in the narrow aisle between the irresistible cheeses and the rustic breads — and then find a place to sit, I won’t go.

Those days are over.

Zingerman’s quietly opened the doors last week to the new addition it began two years ago, increasing indoor seating by 2 1/2 times, adding new bathrooms and cash registers, providing easier access for wheelchair users and debuting a fabulous new kitchen that’s bigger, faster and open for customers to see.

Read more at Free Press Sylvia Rector: Zingerman’s quietly opens a spacious addition | Sylvia Rector | Detroit Free Press | freep.com.

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The Detroit News Endorses Jeff Sakwa For The Michigan State University Board Of Trustees

October 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Two positions are up on the Michigan State board of trustees and the incumbents are hoping to keep their seats. Melanie Foster of East Lansing, Republican incumbent and vice chair of the board, deserves to keep her place on the board and has good ideas for keeping the university relevant and costs down. Republican Jeff Sakwa of West Bloomfield, president of a commercial real estate company, is committed to keeping tuition low and clearly passionate about education. Democrats Brian Mosallam, a financial adviser from Dearborn, and longtime incumbent and board chair Joel Ferguson of Lansing, are well-informed, but Sakwa and Foster come out ahead. Democrats control this board 5-3.

via The Detroit News Editorial: Balance state education boards | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com.

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