The University of Toledo will celebrate the heritage and history of African Americans with a series of events and activities for students, faculty and staff throughout Black History Month.

Events include spaces for conversations with local beauty salon and barber shop owners as well as the 53rd Annual Black Student Union Fashion Show, a showcase of Black fashion from Black-owned vendors with proceeds going toward UToledo scholarships for Black students.

“We are excited to celebrate Black History Month this year. We have worked hard to compile a list of events that exemplify the spirit of celebrating the history of Black people as well as help to understand that Black history is not just a month,” said Kyndra Gaines, multicultural program manager in the Office of Multicultural Student Success (OMSS). “Throughout the year Black history is being made, celebrated and needs to be appreciated.”

The celebration begins with the annual Black History Month Kick-Off Event, hosted by the Office of Multicultural Student Success and the Black Student Union, from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, in the Thompson Student Union Ingman Room.

“This year, we wanted to ensure student voices were being heard about how they wanted to celebrate Black History Month,” Gaines said. “We have partnered with minority business owners from the community like Crysstyles Salon and J’Maes Home Cooking. Our office also is collaborating with campus partners like TRIO, the Eberly Center for Women, the Center for Racial Equity and Black Student Excellence, and the Black Student Union (BSU), which we have worked hard with in creating great programs that tie in the Toledo community and The University of Toledo.”

Black History Month events include:

Monday, Feb. 6

• Beauty Shop Talk, with OMSS and Crysstyles Hair Salon, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Thompson Student Union Ingman Room, featuring space to discuss hot topics related to women of color and conversations about how to take care of your hair, start your own business and take care of yourself.
• Barber Shop Talk with OMSS, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Student Union Auditorium, featuring free food, health screenings and haircuts.

Tuesday, Feb. 7

• Talented Aspiring Women Leaders (TAWL) Mentoring Meet and Greet, from 5 to 6 p.m. in the OMSS office, Thompson Student Union Room 2500.

Saturday, Feb. 11

• 53rd Annual Black Student Union Fashion Show, 6:30 p.m. in the Thompson Student Union Auditorium.

Wednesday, Feb. 15

• Community Service: Make blankets for Family House, a homeless shelter, hosted by OMSS, Family House, BSU and National Pan-Hellenic Council, all day in the OMSS office, Thompson Student Union Room 2500.

Thursday, Feb. 16

• Poetry Night, with OMSS and TRIO, from 6 to 8 p.m. in Thompson Student Union Room 2584, featuring set performers and an open mic session in celebration of the history of the Black diaspora.

Saturday, Feb. 18

• Meet the Author: Raineasha Williams-Fox, a Black writer from Detroit who is the author of the children’s book “Radiant Black Girl,” from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in the Eberly Center for Women.

Monday, Feb. 20

• African American Professional Panel, with OMSS, TRIO and Career Services and hosted by Gaines, from 6 to 8 p.m. via Webex.

For more information, including a full list of events and online resources, visit the Office of Multicultural Student Success website.

The University of Toledo Medical Center completed a record 200 successful kidney transplants in 2022 while maintaining its status as one of the fastest kidney transplant programs in the country.

“These are life-changing procedures,” said Dr. Obi Ekwenna, transplant surgeon at UTMC and associate professor. “We’re proud of these milestones, but what this is really about is getting more people off dialysis and significantly improving their quality of life.”

The 200 transplants completed in 2022 represent a 15% increase from the 174 done in 2021 and are more than double the number of procedures the hospital performed in 2019.

UTMC, which completed its first kidney transplant in 1972, has grown its transplant program in each of the last five years.

The hospital also completed the region’s first robotic-assisted kidney transplant surgery in April of last year, putting UTMC among a select group of hospitals nationwide offering the innovative, less invasive surgery.

The number of kidney transplants nationally has been trending upward for several years, with 2022 marking the first time the total has exceeded 25,000, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. However, many patients still spend years waiting on a suitable kidney.

Nationally, the median time patients spend between getting on a waitlist and receiving a transplant is nearly three years.

At UTMC, the average time is a little more than four months.

UTMC also received improved marks for patient outcomes in 2022. In July, the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients awarded the hospital a four out of five rating for one-year kidney survival following a transplant.

One-year kidney survival is an important metric that speaks to the long-term success of the transplant.

The hospital maintained that four out of five rating in the most recent SRTR report, which was released earlier this month and covers a period from July 1, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2021.

UTMC is currently the only transplant center in Ohio rated a four and none in the state received a five rating.

“We have built a really solid, world-class program here with an amazing team,” Ekwenna said. “Patient safety remains at the forefront of everything that we’re doing as we continue to grow and innovate.”

The University of Toledo continues to move up in the U.S. News & World Report list of the top online bachelor’s programs.

Overall, UToledo is ranked 150 out of 381 total institutions listed in the 2023 Best Online Programs ranking, an increase from 153 last year.

The U.S. News rankings released Jan. 24 also assess individual online degree programs in which UToledo ranked highly.

In its first opportunity, the new online MBA program in the John B. and Lillian E. Neff College of Business and Innovation placed 185 out of 366, ranking higher than about half of the other online MBA programs across the country.

The Online Bachelor of Business Program also climbed to No. 58, placing in the top 30%.

UToledo’s Online Bachelor Programs for Veterans, Online Master’s of Education in the Judith Herb College of Education and Online Master’s of Engineering in the College of Engineering also improved and ranked highly this year.

The U.S. News rankings are determined based on criteria that includes student engagement, student services and technology, faculty credentials and training, and expert opinion.

Specific to online programs, there is a focus on graduate indebtedness, course delivery and academic and career support made available to students remotely.

“We are proud to provide high-quality, flexible learning options and supportive faculty and staff whether students are on campus or online,” said Dr. Risa Dickson, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Student success is our focus every day, and these improved rankings are further evidence that our efforts are working.”

In addition, the College of Engineering recently received recognition from Fortune Magazine.

Fortune ranked UToledo’s new, in-person Master’s of Cybersecurity Program 13th in the country.

These new honors follow UToledo being named as one of the world’s best universities last fall by U.S. News & World Report, making it one of only 280 U.S. schools ranked internationally in the Best Global Universities list.

UToledo also was recognized for the first time among the top universities in the country in the 2022-23 U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges rankings released in September.

The University of Toledo is hosting artwork by 15 emerging young artists with disabilities from across the country.

The traveling exhibition from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is titled MERGE and considers the intersections, juxtaposition and combinations of creative process and disability identity.

Co-sponsored by the UToledo Department of Art and the Disability Studies Program, MERGE is on display in the Main Gallery of the UToledo Center for the Visual Arts from Jan. 17 through Feb. 17.

It is free and open to the public.

“The MERGE exhibition demonstrates the creativity that people with disabilities must employ to live in an ableist world,” said Dr. Jim Ferris, UToledo professor and the Ability Center Endowed Chair in Disability Studies. “These young artists were asked to think deeply about how their disability experience interpenetrates their artistic practice. These artists are not successful in spite of disability. They are successful because they use the richness of disability experience to enliven their art.”

The result of a longtime collaboration between the Kennedy Center and Volkswagen Group of America, the national art competition and exhibition gives 15 artists with disabilities, ages 16-25, the opportunity to display their work in venues across the country where each artist’s individual talent, mode of expression and view of the world is showcased and valued.

The traveling exhibition aims to give visibility to the work of artists with disabilities throughout the United States, positioning them to broaden the public’s understanding of disability and the arts.

For more information about MERGE, go to the Kennedy Center website.

Dr. Shingi Mavima, assistant professor of history at The University of Toledo, will discuss the FIFA Men’s World Cup Wednesday, Jan. 25, at the Main Library in downtown Toledo.

Beginning at 6 p.m., the free, public event is hosted by the Roger Ray Institute for the Humanities in the UToledo College of Arts and Letters.

In his lecture titled “The World’s Game? Global Politics, Culture and the World Cup,” Mavima will talk about several of the most significant geopolitical implications in the tournament’s 92-year history that give substance to the phrase “more than just a game.”

“Every four years, the international community gathers around the cauldron of sporting excellence, nationalism and globalization that is the FIFA Men’s World Cup,” Mavima said.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Mavima’s research and teaching focuses on contemporary Southern African history, African literature and popular culture.

The ancient Native American city of Cahokia is located near modern-day St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River.

That’s where archaeologist Dr. Melissa Baltus, an associate professor of anthropology at The University of Toledo, does her prehistoric research going back nearly nine centuries.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded Baltus a five-year, $185,779 grant to study neighborhoods that surrounded the city of Cahokia and their role in the creation of the city.

“We are pleased to receive NSF support for our archaeological investigation into whether outlying neighborhoods at the physical margins of the Native American city of Cahokia were socially peripheral or fully engaged in central city projects and how that affected the historical trajectory of that city,” Baltus said. “This may help people understand the nuanced relationship between social investment and local participation, diversity of neighborhood identities, and the futures of modern cities from a bottom-up, grass-roots perspective that considers ideological engagement and a sense of belonging as much as material benefit.”

The study, done in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Baires, associate professor of anthropology at Eastern Connecticut State University, will focus on the lived experiences and social dynamics of Indigenous people in two different neighborhoods of the past.

It’s expected to take four seasons of field work and analysis.

Baltus will create field school opportunities for undergraduate students to learn techniques of archaeological survey and excavation, plus laboratory analysis during the academic year.

Baltus and Baires said this also is an opportunity for the local community around the ancient city, which is now largely comprised of immigrant or first-generation community members, to engage with and understand the similarities and differences between their modern experience of a city and those of people living in that space in the past.

“Supporting research with federal funding is critical to create jobs and improve our economy. We unleash more American innovation when we nurture all Ohio talent,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said. “This award will help The University of Toledo advance our knowledge and continue Ohio’s leadership in research and innovation.”

The city of Cahokia was comprised of three precincts extending from St. Louis through East St. Louis to the bluff edge near Collinsville in Illinois.

“The outlying neighborhoods that we’re exploring will be on the west and southeast edges of the Cahokia precinct, which forms the core of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site,” Baltus said.

The research will take into consideration local investments like architecture, infrastructure and neighborhood organization and the potential benefits of those investments in the form of access to certain goods, spaces or activities that coincide with an outlying neighborhood actively participating in a city’s public works and community projects.

“Archaeology is uniquely situated to address these questions over the course of a city’s history, with a focus on material evidence for engagement, identity and inequality,” Baltus and Baires wrote in the proposal to the NSF. “By considering neighborhood diversity in relation to level of investment in the city, one can understand whether social, economic and political ties created through intentional engagement led people to stay and continue to participate in that city or, conversely, whether a lack of such ties may lead to more rapid abandonment of those neighborhoods.”

The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is bringing a free, live production of “Letters From Anne and Martin” to The University of Toledo Thursday, Jan. 19.

“Letters from Anne and Martin” is a stage drama that combines the iconic voices of Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom were born in 1929 yet seemingly represent drastically different times and cultures.

Developed from excerpts from “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl “and Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the play evokes the important messages from these legendary figures, as they write of their hopes and plans for a peaceful and unified world.

“Performed by actors from the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, this live dramatic performance features professional actors who bring to life the courage and eloquence of Anne’s and Martin’s thoughts and promotes constructive ideas on how to confront modern-day antisemitism and discrimination via a discussion after the performance,” said Dr. Dilip Das, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion.

The production begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Center Theatre in the Center for Performing Arts. Parking is free in Area 12.