Life-Changing Education launches grant applications, website

Life-Changing Education, the 2025-26 Look to Michigan theme year, has launched its full website and grant application process aimed at encouraging university-wide involvement in underscoring how learning shapes lives, work and communities. The site, at futureoflearning.umich.edu, guides the U-M community through the theme year priorities. It offers ways to get involved and see what activities are planned surrounding the impact area. The committee has named “Four Ways Forward” that will shape the year ahead:

• Fostering Open Inquiry and Productive Disagreements.
• Expanding Pathways and Access Across Michigan.
• Marking the Past & Co-Creating the Campus and Education of the Future.
• Sharing Scholarship, Shaping Solutions.

To help fund those efforts, Life-Changing Education is offering grant programs in two tracks that will show — not just tell — how education changes lives. Grants range from $2,000 to $20,000. Learn more about the theme year and grant program.

Faculty invited to apply for the 2026 Michigan Road Scholars Tour

U-M instructional, research, and clinical track faculty are invited to apply to be part of the 2026 Michigan Road Scholars Tour. The five-day state-wide bus tour seeks to increase knowledge and understanding between the university and communities of Michigan; to demonstrate the ways U-M is connected to the entire state; to cultivate an awareness of the state’s distinctive geographic, economic, cultural, and political attributes; and to encourage public service and research that benefits Michigan citizens and organizations. The 2026 tour is scheduled for May 4-8. The application is open from Nov. 17 through Dec. 1. To find out more or to apply to the Michigan Road Scholars program, go to mrs.umich.edu.

Logistics, Transportation & Parking announces Thanksgiving modifications

In preparation for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday break, Logistics, Transportation & Parking is advising the university community of several modifications for parking and transportation services. Staff parking enforcement will be suspended Nov. 27 and 28 for permits and meter fees in all parking areas except the Rogel Cancer Center (P1), Taubman North/South (P2/P3), Mott/Simpson (P4) and Frankel Cardiovascular Center (P5) parking structures as well as the M71 and M95 surface lots. In addition, special signed spaces (Gold, Accessible, Service, Business, Commercial Vehicle, etc.) will require appropriate permits and remain enforced at all times. Regular parking enforcement will resume at 6 a.m. Nov. 29. Patient/visitor parking in P1, P2/P3, P4, and P5 will remain unchanged Nov. 28-Dec. 1. The patient/visitor areas at the Fletcher Street and Palmer parking structures will be free for patient/visitors from 6 p.m. Nov. 26 until 6 a.m. Nov. 29. Additionally, there will be no bus or shuttle service Nov. 27 and 28. Regular weekend transit service will resume Nov. 29.

Experts urge continued hepatitis B vaccine birth doses for newborns

In a commentary published in Gastroenterology, leading experts urge that all newborns in the United States continue to receive the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth. Hepatitis B vaccines are safe and effective with over one billion doses administered worldwide.  Since 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices have recommended hepatitis B vaccine for all infants, not just those born to mothers who have tested positive for hepatitis B, with the first dose given within 24 hours of birth for infants born to mothers who tested positive for hepatitis B. Their recommendation was updated in 2005 to specify that the first dose should be administered within 12 hours of birth for infants born to mothers who tested positive for hepatitis B and before hospital discharge for other infants. In 2018, the timing of the first dose was updated to be within 24 hours of birth for all infants, including pre-term infants and those born to mothers who tested hepatitis B negative. The authors of this commentary have identified this universal “birth dose” as an essential safety net for preventing chronic hepatitis B infection, which can lead to premature death from cirrhosis or liver cancer. The result of these policies has been a 95% decline in infant hepatitis B infections, which have prevented an estimated one million hospitalizations and 90,000 deaths. Read a Q&A from Anna S. Lok, the Alice Lohrman Andrews Research Professor of Hepatology at Michigan Medicine.

— Compiled by Jeff Bleiler, The University Record