Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• KU’s School of Medicine in Wichita opened for its first class of four-year medical students.

The eight students in the inaugural class — Matthew Blue, Caitlin Farrington, Jordan Groskurth, Ashley Lida-Venegas, Kyle Rowe, Stephanie Shields, Jacob Wallace and Whitney Weixelman — join the new crop of students in Salina as KU tries to address an ongoing physician shortage in rural Kansas.

Wichita State and Newman University will share faculty and resources to provide basic science education to first- and second-year students, according to a statement from the school.

A ribbon-cutting shindig for the newly expanded medical school and KU School of Pharmacy in Wichita is set for Sept. 15.

• Here’s a quick peek at another comprehensive fundraising campaign being waged by our neighbors to the south.

KU is preparing to launch its own capital campaign publicly next spring. Oklahoma State University, meanwhile, has already raised $750 million of a $1 billion goal, according to a statement from the school.

That pays for 720 new scholarships and 124 new endowed chairs and professorships, courtesy of 66,676 campaign donors.

Mega-donor T. Boone Pickens has contributed a $120 million challenge gift to create more scholarships at the school.

I’ll be interested to see if KU’s announced goal is more than $1 billion, which seems to be around what many schools are aiming for these days.

• The Langston Hughes Center at KU is hosting a weeklong seminar this week at KU.

The seminar, “Presidential Politics, Civil Rights and the Road to Brown, a Summer Seminar for Teachers,” will feature presentations at KU, the presidential libraries of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic site.

Several academics and two attorneys are scheduled to present as part of the seminar.

The attorneys, Jack Greenberg, a member of the NAACP legal team that argued the Brown case, and attorney Theodore Shaw, a member of the NAACP team that argued the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, both served as the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

That’s the same Jack Greenberg, by the way, who’s speaking at the KU School of Law this week.

• Four out of five dentists agree — sending tips for Heard on the Hill to ahyland@ljworld.com probably won’t help your teeth, but it will lead to more awesome posts. So give it a try today.