Winter Wonderland

Those who have never lived in Minnesota love to joke about our winters. Those of us who do live here, or have lived here while attending the University, know the truth: The campus is rarely as lovely as when snow hangs from the trees.

A Wellspring of Wellness: Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing Celebrates 30 Years

The Bakken Center, founded in 1995 by Mary Jo Kreitzer (Ph.D. ’90)—who continues to serve as director—has been a leader in integrative health and well-being through education, research, and community partnership.

In the past year, the Bakken Center reached 86 of Minnesota’s 87 counties with free or low-cost programming, served more than 100,000 individuals, and welcomed 50,000 additional participants to its weekly Mindful Mondays. Its Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing site draws nearly 3 million annual visitors worldwide.

During the past decade, the Bakken Center’s research team has secured more than $25 million in external funding.

Its master of arts in integrative health & wellbeing coaching was the first of its kind at a major university. Beginning in 2025 and 2026, new integrated degree programs with the University of Minnesota Rochester and the School of Kinesiology will expand access and accelerate career paths in integrative health.

What We Can Learn From Taylor Swift's Speech Patterns

Miski Mohamed and Matthew Winn of the University of Minnesota analyzed years of recorded interviews from Taylor Swift’s different eras to study how her speech patterns have evolved through the years. They wanted to explore how social groups, age, and leadership status influence the way a person speaks. Their work was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Mohamed and Winn analyzed more than 1,400 vowel sounds from Swift’s interviews, allowing them to track shifts in pronunciation and vocal resonance. The pair chose to focus on three major areas of Swift’s life: different years, different cities, and different albums.

During the Fearless era, Swift was establishing her career in Nashville as a country artist. In interviews, the researchers noted a few distinct features of a southern accent. Mohamed and Winn recognized an /ai/ vowel shift which led to her pronouncing words such as “ride” like “rod.” She also adopted the fronting of the /u/ vowel which explains shifts in words like “two” to sounding like “tee-you.”

Winn and Mohamed say the accent was likely a way for Swift to integrate herself into the Nashville music scene and establish herself as an artist. The accent was short-lived, because by the time she moved back to Pennsylvania and began promoting Red, Swift’s southern sound diminished. According to the researchers, this was also likely a strategic move. The star was attempting to transition to the pop world and separate herself from her country roots. Dropping the southern dialect was a way for her to do that in public media.

The second major shift in Swift’s dialect came during her Lover era in 2019. Swift had moved to New York City and started exercising her voice more openly in social and political discourse. Mohamed and Winn observed that at this point in her career Swift’s speech was in a noticeably lower pitch, to emphasize authority.

Has this all worked? It would appear so. She’s the highest-grossing live music artist of all time.

Tony Dungy's Uncommon Gophers Experience

When legendary football coach and analyst Tony Dungy (B.S. ’78) played quarterback for the Gophers from 1973 to 1976, his coach was Cal Stoll, who told him this, according to Dungy’s memoir Quiet Strength:

“Success is uncommon and not to be enjoyed by the common man. I’m looking for uncommon people because we want to be successful, not average.”

Dungy certainly was uncommonly successful in football, winning a Super Bowl as a player for the Pittsburgh Steelers and as a head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. But what’s less known is that he also had a basketball tenure with the Gophers. He played as a freshman and averaged 2.6 points a game in 16 appearances. Dungy did have one uncommon experience, during a three-overtime win against Butler. “I remember the game well. Right-corner jumper to tie the game in the second overtime. I had just joined the team after the football season and wasn’t playing much yet. But we had three guys foul out, including former T-Wolves coach Flip Saunders,” Dungy said on social media.

A Red Hot Scholarship

Chad Smith, the Grammy award-winning drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is launching a scholarship at the University’s School of Music. The scholarship honors his parents, who are both alums of the University and who instilled a love of learning and the arts in the rocker. Smith said the goal of his scholarship is to help those in need of financial aid who are inspired and passionate about music. He said without his own music education he’d be dead or in jail.

U Researchers Study Infant Virus

A University of Minnesota Medical School research team is launching a first-of-its-kind study of infants born with congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) with a new $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Congenital CMV is a virus passed to infants in the womb and occurs in about one in 200 infants. About 20 percent of babies with cCMV infection have birth defects or other long-term problems. Knowledge about the full range of neurodevelopmental and intellectual outcomes for affected children is limited.

The research team will study participants during an extended period to understand the development of kids with cCMV. The study will generate a definitive dataset by tracking infants across the first three years of their lives.

In 2023, Minnesota became the first state to screen all newborns for cCMV. Research by Mark Schleiss, M.D., and his team at the University of Minnesota Medical School was a catalyst in bringing this idea to hospitals across the state. Scientists now have the means to study 200 infants over time who are identified as having asymptomatic cCMV identified through newborn screening, using gold standard tests of cognition, language, executive function, and MRI.

The study is slated to run through July 2030.

New Regents Appointed

In August, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made four appointments to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. The Board of Regents articulates a vision for the University, and each volunteer member works to ensure the University fulfills its mission of education, research, and outreach. The governor made appointments after the 2025 legislative session concluded without votes taken on new members.

Joel Bergstrom, a member at large, is a principal at Orion Search Group, where he leads executive searches for clients across the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. His work focuses on higher education, social services, housing, and the arts. Bergstrom previously served as vice president at CohenTaylor Executive Search Services.

Samuel Heins, a member at large, is a retired U.S. Ambassador to Norway and a human rights advocate and attorney. Heins founded The Advocates for Human Rights and cofounded the Center for Victims of Torture. He has served on election-monitoring teams in Pakistan and Ukraine.

Ellen Goldberg Luger, representing congressional district 5, most recently served as Minister Counselor for Agriculture at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations food agencies in Rome, where she was appointed Acting Deputy Chief of Mission. She represented U.S. agriculture in global efforts to improve food security, including collaborating with the Rockefeller Foundation on expanding school meal programs.

Kowsar Mohamed, a student at large, is the enterprise director of inclusion for the State of Minnesota’s Office of Inclusion and a doctoral student in Natural Resources Science and Management at the University of Minnesota. Mohamed previously served as director of strategic partnerships at the Center for Economic Inclusion and as a senior project manager with St. Paul's Department of Planning and Economic Development.

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