The Detroit Financial Well-Being Innovation Challenge brought teams together at a showcase event this spring hosted by GreenLight Fund at Durfee Innovation Society. The five-year challenge that launched in February 2022 is run by United Way for Southeastern Michigan in partnership with the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions.

For the first time in its 16-year history, the Elementary Mathematics Laboratory, a program tailored for teachers, education leaders and researchers, will be held at The School at Marygrove in Detroit. The week-long classes, July 24-28, will be hosted by TeachingWorks, a center at the University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education dedicated to harnessing the power of teaching to create a more just society.

Recently, a group of Stamps students led by Professor Ron Eglash harvested electronic waste from household appliances to create jewelry for the African Bead Museum.

Michigan Public Health researchers sought to identify the major sources of particulate matter (PM2.5) in Southwest Detroit, using data collected over six years (2016-2021) to contrast with previous data collected from 2001-2014.

Working with aerial and satellite imagery and more than 30,000 trees in Detroit, researchers from the University of Michigan set out in 2017 to find a better way to measure pollen. By the time they wrapped up their research two years later, the researchers believed they had tested and proved a more precise and meaningful way to know when and where pollen will most likely affect allergy sufferers. 

Sixteen percent of Detroit residents in the labor force were unemployed as of March 2023, according to the latest survey from the University of Michigan’s Detroit Metro Area Communities Study. The latest unemployment estimate essentially holds steady from the previous DMACS estimate in August 2022. Detroit’s unemployment peaked at 43% at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and remains higher than the estimated pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 8%.

The Engage Detroit Workshops grant program will support eight teams of U-M faculty, staff, students, and community partners in organizing workshops that will strengthen partnerships between the University of Michigan and Detroit. The 2023 round of funding is supporting projects through August 2024. The projects range from one that helps parents become more involved in their children’s education to another that explores the range of fatherhood experiences.

Neesha Modi, who earned a dual MBA and Master’s of Science in 2012, is the director of programs and social investment operations at the Kresge Foundation. Modi forwards Kresge’s goals of building and strengthening pathways to opportunity for low-income people in America’s cities, and seeking to dismantle structural and systemic barriers to equality and justice.

“The responsiveness of the researchers was valuable. Not only did I reach out to the School of Information during the pandemic, I also reached out to Poverty Solutions for assistance with case management and they provided support. I reached out to the Medical School as a resource for residents with questions about COVID. In each case, there was a response, and with that response came hope.”

~ Zachary Rowe, executive director, Friends of Parkside