WRITER: Chad Lawhorn

Donations, matching funds to allow KU to host two Ukrainian professors next year, offer fellowships to students

Organizations and departments at the University of Kansas have raised enough funds to host at least two Ukrainian professors and two graduate students from the war-torn country next school year. KU leaders on Tuesday provided an update on efforts to assist Ukrainian students and scholars that began shortly after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of the country. A fundraising effort involving KU’s International ...

Drive-thru coffee chain slated to tear down, take spot of vacant pizza restaurant on south Iowa

I’ll take my coffee with two sugars and a bulldozer. At least, I’m assuming that is a new option at Scooter’s Coffee in Lawrence. The chain has filed its second plan in nearly as many months to tear down an Iowa Street building to make way for a drive-thru coffee shop. Recent plans filed at City Hall call for the building at 2500 Iowa St. — it used to house Pie Five Pizza Co. for a brief time — to be ...

KU set to introduce new advising system for undergraduate students; professors no longer would serve as advisers

When University of Kansas Chancellor Douglas Girod speaks with students, he often gets some advice on advising: Make it better. KU now may spend up to $6 million trying to do so. “When I meet with students, their No. 1 concern often is advising,” Girod said in a brief interview with the Journal-World. KU has an undergraduate advising system — the process where students are given guidance on what ...

City Union Mission still shows signs of opening thrift store operation in Lawrence; another taco shop slated for downtown

News and notes from around town: — I still think there is a chance one of Kansas City’s largest homeless shelter nonprofits is going to open a thrift store in Lawrence. In March, I wrote about Kansas City-based City Union Mission filing plans at City Hall to convert a vacant convenience store at 23rd and Haskell into a “thrift distribution center.” But, when I tried to get more information out of ...

Regents approve new KU capital improvement plan that hopes for major library renovations, new student health center

The University of Kansas now has an updated plan — or in some cases, wish list — of major building projects it hopes to undertake in the next five years. The Kansas Board of Regents on Thursday unanimously approved new five-year capital improvement plans for KU and other state universities. KU’s plan totals $1.06 billion worth of construction projects over the next five years on the Lawrence campus and ...

Ta Co. Mexican restaurant closes in downtown Lawrence and heads to Topeka; plans for Italian restaurant to take its place

Massachusetts Street, it appears, is about to get a new Italian restaurant, but it will come at the expense of a local Mexican restaurant. (That’s as close to international business reporting as I get.) Ta Co., the Mexican restaurant at the corner of Eighth and Massachusetts, has closed, but the owner of Ta Co. has published on the eatery’s website that the Italian restaurant Basil Leaf Café will be ...