Man of Commerce, Man of Letters
“The cliché is absolutely true, ‘Retail is detail,’” says Hendrik (Hank) Meijer, 51, who, as CEO of Michigan-based Meijer Stores, must do daily battle with the likes of Wal-Mart and other national big box competitors.

A Tale of Both Nogaleses
The white 15-passenger van lurched awkwardly on the potholed dirt road. Outside, in the evening twilight, I could see Flores Magon, a neighborhood of cinderblock and brick homes bearing satellite TV dishes and air conditioners, and wood-and-tarpaper shacks clinging to rocky, barren hillsides along improvised dirt streets.

Why Mexicans head for our border
Before visiting the divided border towns of Nogales, students in “Labor in Mexico’s Maquiladora Zone” study the political and economic history of Mexico to provide a context for what they will see, hear and read.

Travels In Mind & Space
“When we win we will free you from your shackles.” So proclaimed Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, to American slaves after he lost control of his colony in the summer of 1775.

A Fuel-ish Inconsistency
It’s all about the fuel for the vehicles we drive or ride in: How efficient is it? How clean can it burn? How little can it cost? Can new fuels replace fossil fuels?

Moving ahead with an eye on the past
The inauguration of U-M’s 13th president, Mary Sue Coleman, was celebrated as a day to “look back” and “reach forward.”

Granholm and Coleman Challenge Class of 2003
In her first commencement address as governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm said on April 26 in Michigan Stadium that her wish for University graduates “is that when that diploma is handed to you—like a relay runner passes the baton—that you feel the force, feel the charge of leadership.

McDonald is named dean of LS&A
Terrence McDonald was approved by the Regents as dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at their June meeting.

NCAA penalizes U-M after basketball probe
The NCAA penalized the University this spring after a seven-year investigation of violations of NCAA rules in the U-M basketball program dating from the early 1990s.

Non-tenure-track faculty vote to unionize
Faculty members off the tenure track at the University of Michigan voted in April to create a union to represent 1,300 full- and part-time teaching staff.

You’re probably not eating enough copper
Dennis J. Thiele has studied copper for decades in yeast, plants, fruit flies and mice, and he says, “We believe that in nature every cell is always looking for copper. There’s never enough.”

A bakery rises from Syria’s ancient past
I met Humaidi Abed in 1992 when I traveled to northeastern Syria to work as a junior excavator at Tell Brak, a mound (tell in Arabic; Brak is the name of the town today) that contains the remains of Nagar, one of the oldest capital cities of ancient Mesopotamia.