From the article:
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana looked closely into his phone’s selfie camera, then flipped the view around to reveal a lush oasis: his backyard.

“This is another one of those silly videos my staff told me I needed to make,” the 74-year-old junior senator said in the video posted on June 17. Kennedy admitted, “I don’t know why on God’s green Earth anybody should care,” before showing viewers his manicured grass, moisturized with the help of a sprinkler, and two patio umbrellas on an unstained deck. ...

Chicken salad and Charlie the dog offer relatable look at senator’s life

One expert said online content featuring Kennedy resonates because he is authentic.

April Eichmeier, a professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas, said: “The kind of backyard folksy, you know, relatable, humorous John Kennedy, that kind of stuff would have come out only in the Parade magazine on the weekends” 30 years ago.

“We don’t need to wait for that anymore, and it doesn’t need to be filtered,” she said.

From the story:
She said the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office also played a role in those exonerations.

For people whose cases were still under review, Jonas said the shutdown will be devastating. “If a lot of time has been invested in their case and now the Conviction Review Unit is shutting down, it must be incredibly frustrating,” she said. “If someone was just at the beginning of the process, then they are back to square one.”

Jonas said her advice to people still fighting for their freedom is simple. “If you are innocent, do not give up hope. Contact the Innocence Project. If your family or you have the wherewithal, hire an attorney, but be careful. Make sure that you are hiring a good attorney,” she said. “I really think that innocence cases will ultimately prevail.”

Great North Innocence Project is a nonprofit legal organization that works to free people who were wrongfully convicted. 

From the article:
There have always been some “fly-by-night” folks in the health care business, said Mike Porter, a University of St. Thomas marketing professor with expertise in health care business communications. Today, he said, there is greater access to data that dishonest marketers can use to target people who may be in a vulnerable group. 

One telltale sign of a bad actor is getting trapped on the phone.

“The harder the sell, the more I would question it,” he said.

Experts cited out-of-state cold calls, over-the-moon promises, and demands for quick decision among other red flags.

Whether grabbing coffee between classes in the Anderson Student Center, studying late in the Schoenecker Center or meeting classmates before a group project, students will now have access to freshly roasted Dunn Brothers coffee across campus. The partnership also extends to campus catering and additional university dining locations.

The collaboration reflects a shared commitment to community, hospitality, and creating spaces where meaningful connections can happen over great coffee.

“Coffee is part of daily life for many of our students,” St. Thomas Executive Director of Dining Services Steve Griffin said. “Whether they’re heading to an early class, meeting classmates or settling in for an evening of studying, we wanted to offer a local brand known for quality. Dunn Brothers helps us enhance the campus experience while supporting a Minnesota company.”

Dunn Brothers coffee will be available at popular student destinations including The Loft in the Anderson Student Center, the STEAM Café in the Schoenecker Center and other campus dining locations.

“St. Thomas is an outstanding university with deep roots in the same community where Dunn Brothers began,” Dunn Brothers Coffee President Ben Anderson said. “We’re honored that our first higher education partnership is with an institution that values connection, community and excellence.”

The partnership launches in July and will be fully in place for the start of the fall semester, giving new and returning Tommies another place to connect over coffee as campus comes back to life.

From the story:
Experts say part of the pricing strategy is about what ‘might’ happen with the war – and the market response.

“If markets now believe future conflict is more likely, they also have to price in the possibility that future supply could be lower,” says Tyler Schipper, an economics professor at the University of St. Thomas. “That pushes prices up.”

Schipper says gas consumers shouldn’t worry about long lines at the gas pump just yet – he notes there are enough reserves for now.

But he adds it takes time for global inventories to be refilled – and we may not see prices drop again for possibly a year or more.

From WCCO-TV:

“I’m studying data analytics at the university,” said Logan Sorsveen, a University of St. Thomas junior working on the project. “It’s cool to work with numbers and to actually enter them into a spreadsheet and to know that they’ll be used later on in an analysis in order to just show that lakes in Minnesota are special and that they need care.”

The signs are posted around the 17 different lakes across nine counties included in the study, asking you to rank your thoughts about the water on a scale of 0-10.

“They ask you to rate the water quality of the lake. You send a text message to a phone number that’s on the sign and then you interact with a chatbot. So you’re responding back and forth via text message with this short survey,” Keeler said.

Keeler is one of the scientists overseeing the study. She said we’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars each year to improve water quality, but we know very little about how people actually perceive and value those improvements. 

“This is providing a key piece of missing information that’s going to help lake managers better understand how to manage our lakes for what people really care about,” Keeler said.

From the Sahan Journal:
University of St. Thomas biology professor Chip Small and University of Minnesota researcher Becky Forgrave are leading a project tracking water quality and visitors’ perceptions of water quality at urban lakes across the Twin Cities. 

“One piece there’s not been much data on is how this investment impacts how people are experiencing water quality,” Small said. 

They are collecting data at 17 lakes in the Twin Cities. Students help Small and Forgrave collect weekly water samples measuring levels of phosphorus, E. coli and other variables that affect water quality. The project is also soliciting opinions from guests to gauge their thoughts on the waters they visit. 

The survey is advertised on multiple signs posted around each of the 17 lakes. It asks visitors to evaluate the lake’s water quality on a scale of 1 through 10. People can text four numbers that offer an automated questionnaire in different languages: English, Hmong, Spanish and Somali. 

The first question, asking for a 1 through 10 grade, is the most important, but the researchers have programmed 11 follow-up questions seeking more detailed assessments about what factors influence perspective on water quality. There are questions about how frequently people visit the lake and why; if the lake seems good for fishing and whether they would eat fish caught there; and if they’ve visited the lake frequently and noticed changes in the water quality. 

From Mankato Free Press:
While researchers collected regular water samples, only seven people took the survey on Lake Washington last year, Forgrave reported, putting the lake in the bottom third of performers.

Despite the survey turnout, while St. Thomas undergraduate students Jack Sistrunk and Logan Sorsveen are out taking samples on Lake Washington, visitors approach them with curiosity.

“We probably get at least one person per day asking us, ‘What are you doing? Is that a water quality tester?’” Sorsveen said.

Sistrunk and Sorsveen drive to each of the lakes, using a handheld water sampling meter to assess the water’s makeup. As part of their data collection, they also take a standardized photo at each site, record the number of lake visitors and note the algae cover.

“It’s kind of nice to see people care about the lakes,” Sorsveen said. “They seem interested and satisfied that someone is actually taking the time to see if their lake is doing OK.”

From the conversation:
Catharine Richert: Now Laura, Minnesota has a lot of headquarters based here, a lot of corporate and office spaces. If all of these spaces are now worth a little less, what does that mean for how cities need to think about their tax base going forward? Are they thinking about how they might, for instance, convert office buildings into something else so they’re more valuable than they are right now? 

Russ: I think that’s an important point as we look toward, how do we adapt to this? Minnesota does traditionally have a legacy of a lot of corporate headquarters here, which is a positive thing and remains a positive thing. 

It doesn’t necessarily mean that we have more office space because we have corporate headquarters. It just means that we have a diverse economy. That diversity of economy is an important strength, because those headquarters are not just in one industry. They’re in a number of different kinds of industries. And as Josh said, each of those types of uses contribute something differently to the tax base. 

Another thing that we have done more in the last few decades is integrate more of our areas with various kinds of property classes. So downtown is no longer just office space. It includes a good chunk of housing. And as we move forward and as we clear out a lot of this excess inventory, that is absolutely what communities and building owners and developers should be looking toward. How do we adapt this space? How do we convert to uses that the market is asking for more of rather than less of? 

Richert: Now looking around the state, Laura, are you seeing anything very creative, cities that have taken an older building and just turned it into something that really fit the community’s needs? 

Russ: We have seen that really across the state, particularly in our major metro areas. Both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as Duluth, have used historic tax credits and other incentives to attempt to do some conversions of space. That is a difficult endeavor.

From Chemistry World: 

Now, a team led by Ali Ling from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, US, has analysed publicly available datasets to estimate the cost of treating current and future PFAS pollution in Europe. ‘The European Commission’s report looked more broadly at societal costs, including healthcare costs, [whereas] our report focusses on a more comprehensive analysis of remediating PFAS,’ explains Ling. 

The new study details two possible scenarios for PFAS remediation. The first, which Ling and co-workers call the legacy scenario, considers the cost of treating historic long-chain PFAS in drinking water, landfill and heavily contaminated soil sites using current remediation technologies such as granular activated carbon adsorption and ex situ soil washing. The second, called the emerging scenario, extends to continuously remediating both long- and short-chain PFAS from future wastewater effluents. Based on these scenarios, Ling and co-workers estimate the cost of legacy remediation at €37 billion over 20 years, equivalent to €1.8 billion per year, and emerging remediation at €100 billion per year. 

However, these estimates account for only a fraction of future emissions because they do not include industrial wastewater and air emissions and ambient soil and water treatment. ‘I had this niggling question in the back my mind: “How much PFAS are we actually getting at with this level of remediation?”’, says Ling. ‘The emerging scenario that we presented is quite an aggressive remediation strategy and I wanted to know how much PFAS we can remediate with that strategy. I ran the numbers and it came out as less than 2% of current emissions. Frankly, I didn’t believe it. [This finding] frees us from the paralysis of feeling that we need to clean it all up – we just can’t. We need to focus on reducing uses and emissions and taking care of people.’ 

From Le Monde: 

A staggering cost for negligible effectiveness. Massively equipping Europe with decontamination technologies would remove less than 2% of annual emissions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), these ultra-persistent chemical compounds linked to a growing number of diseases. This figure is so low that scientists Ali Ling (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, USA) and Hans Peter Arp (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) initially suspected a calculation error. 

Father Collins has served the University of St. Thomas as vice president for mission since 2021, leading Campus Ministry and the Center for the Common Good, as well as community engagement initiatives. He will begin a new Jesuit assignment in Belize in summer 2026 while continuing his connection to St. Thomas through board service.

During his time at the university, he added the role of parochial administrator of the Church of Saint Peter Claver in St. Paul. Before joining the university's senior leadership team, Collins, a 1993 St. Thomas alumnus, served as an educator and campus minister at other institutions.

MacLennan has dedicated much of her professional and civic life to expanding educational access and opportunity for underserved learners.

A former litigation attorney in Chicago and Minnesota, she later served as access coordinator at Edina High School, where she developed post-secondary planning and scholarship programs and helped establish the STRIVE mentoring initiative.

MacLennan has extensive experience in nonprofit and higher education governance. Prior to joining the Board of Trustees, she served on the Dougherty Family College Advisory Board and the School of Law Board of Governors at St. Thomas. Her community leadership has included service with the Minneapolis Foundation, College Possible Twin Cities, the Constellation Fund and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

A native of New London, Connecticut, MacLennan earned a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College and a law degree from Loyola University Chicago. She and her husband, David, live in Edina.

Kruizenga is a partner at Arthur Ventures, an early-growth investment firm focused on software companies across North America.

Since joining Arthur Ventures in 2016, he has helped identify and support high-growth technology companies. Previously, he worked with Mainsail Partners, founded a software startup, served as an investor with Summit Partners and worked in technology investment banking at Piper Jaffray.

A graduate of the University of St. Thomas, Kruizenga earned a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2004 from the Opus College of Business. He has remained actively involved with the university through the Summit Club Executive Committee and Summit Club Leadership Council.

Kruizenga brings experience in entrepreneurship, venture capital and business growth to the Board of Trustees.

The organization has awarded LEED Silver certification to the Lee & Penny Anderson Arena on the university’s St. Paul campus. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the world’s most widely used green building rating system.  Since 2008, the university has committed to obtaining a minimum of LEED Silver certification for all new facilities larger than 25,000 square feet.

The Lee & Penny Anderson Arena is the fifth LEED Certified building on St. Thomas’ St. Paul campus. The others include the Anderson Student Center (Gold), Schoenecker North Residence Hall (Silver), Frey Residence Hall (Platinum) and Schoenecker Center (Gold). All told, St. Thomas – ranked No. 21 in the 2026 edition of the Princeton Review’s Top 50 Green Colleges – has 1 million square feet of LEED Certified space on its campuses.

John Silva, director of construction at St. Thomas, said the Lee & Penny Anderson Arena’s certification is especially notable for the 250,000-square-foot multipurpose complex. It is home to Division I men’s and women’s hockey and basketball programs, contains two ice arenas, multiple practice areas and can hold up to 6,000 guests. The facility is among at least five prominent collegiate ice arenas in the U.S. to be LEED certified.

The arena earned points for, among other things, its water conservation efforts. Outdoor water efficiency of 64% was achieved by connecting the north arena landscaping to the Schoenecker Center rainwater retention system. Inside, low-flow fixtures and waterless urinals helped the building achieve 35.7% indoor water efficiency.

The arena also achieved 11.9% energy cost savings. Enhanced commissioning of the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, along with the exterior envelope, helped support long-term efficiency and performance.

Materials and construction practices also played an important role. Construction waste was sorted to reduce the amount of material sent to landfills, while project teams selected materials that met environmental product declaration requirements, were locally sourced where possible and were low emitting. St. Thomas’ Green Cleaning Policy and Integrated Pest Management Plan also contributed to the award of five Innovation Credits.

Ryan Companies served as the design-build contractor, architect and engineer for the arena, with Crawford Architects also contributing to the project. A LEED plaque will be displayed in the arena’s main entrance.