Minnesota Now

After much of the snow has melted away from the weekend's mild temperatures or washed away by January rains, get ready for more snow!

MPR's chief meteorologist Paul Huttner is back to give Host Cathy Wurzer this week's weather update.

Minnesota is home to a number of owl species, including the Barred, Screech and Great Horned owls. What you might not know is that Minnesota is home to the only center in North America dedicated to their study.

Host Cathy Wurzer talked with Karla Bloem, executive director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota, where they teach visitors how to identify owls during small-group Owl Prowls.

The saga over academic freedom at St. Paul's Hamline University continues with the professor at the center filing suit against the school. Professor Erika Lopez Prater announced yesterday she’s suing Hamline for defamation and religious discrimination.

To help us understand the lawsuit, Cathy Wurzer talked with Jane Kirtley, the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism.

We’ll talk school funding and look at the need for doctors in central Minnesota. Jails around the state are struggling to recruit and retain staff: what’s causing the shortages? We’ll hear the latest in our Winter Play series. Finally, retiring WNBA star Maya Moore is out with a new book.

Minnesota Lynx star and Olympic champion Maya Moore Irons announced she is officially retiring. She is also out with a new book about her efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of her now husband, Jonathan Irons. MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer talks with Moore about the story and her legacy as she moves on from a career in basketball.

As jails around Minnesota struggle to hire and retain staff, administrators say they are trying to adapt to a changing workforce. As MPR News reporter Dan Gunderson reports, for some, a worker shortage has real daily impacts. Then, MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer talks with Andrew Larson, executive director of Tri-County Community Corrections, about what policy changes may help.

Governor Tim Walz unveiled a piece of his two-year budget today focused on kids, families, and education. The governor’s ideas dovetail with those of the DFL-controlled legislature, which aim to fund English Language Learner and special education programs and provide menstrual products and free meals to students. MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer talks with Senate Education Policy committee chair Steve Cwodzinski about these proposals.

If you need help identifying buckthorn or poison ivy, finding snowshoes or ways to help the environment, there's a TikTok account for you.

Angie Hong is a nature educator who coordinates the East Metro Water Education Program, a local government partnership in Chisago, Isanti and Washington counties. And she posts to over 80,000 followers on TikTok @mnnature_awesomeness.

Hong spoke with producer Gretchen Brown about both protecting and enjoying the environment — even in snow, rain and slush.

Amid talks of a Fairview Health Services and Sanford Health merger, another major health care provider — St. Cloud-based CentraCare — wants to partner with the University of Minnesota to establish another medical school in the state.

CentraCare CEO Dr. Kenneth Holmen speaks about the need for a rural medical school on Morning Edition.

The following is a transcript of the conversation edited for clarity. Listen to the full conversation using the audio player above.

I think the why for University of Minnesota and CentraCare is quite compelling.

First off, start with the workforce. We're all cognizant of the workforce challenges. Whether it's a physician, nurse in many of our support roles, medical technology, pharmacy, respiratory — we have a significant workforce shortage. And it's worse in rural areas, as our population has moved to more urban areas in the last number of years. So certainly, workforce is a driving mode of a statistic.

When I went to the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1978, there were 4 million residents in the state of Minnesota. And there were roughly 300 medical students between the University of Minnesota Duluth, Mayo and the main campus in Minneapolis. Fast forward to 2023, and the population of Minnesota is roughly 5.7 million, and the medical school [students] that are graduated is still the same. In other words, we've increased our population by a third, and the number of physicians being trained every year is the same.

And we face a retirement crisis. One in three Minnesota physicians will retire in the next five years. So how do we replace a desperately needed workforce, particularly in rural Minnesota and actually rural America?

The data is quite clear on this: If individuals are trained in rural settings, they have a clear propensity to stay in rural settings. That doesn't mean that they are expected to or that they sign a piece of paper to, but they find the values of the communities that they train in to be worth spending their entire life on. Folks that train in rural institutions stay rural.

The second is that it sometimes is a misnomer to believe that folks in rural institutions are paid less than those in metro [areas]. Depending on the specialty, some [rural doctors] are paid more because there's a shortage of them. Pay is a concern. We want to pay fairly. But the cost of living in some rural environments may be less than in the metro.

Housing, for example, might be less than in a more rural environment; fuel might be a little bit more. But all in all, we believe that by training in rural institutions, we will have a much better opportunity to train more folks who will want to stay in our geography.

It's important because when issues like this arise, they need to be worked through thoughtfully and appropriately. But it's not detracting from us at all. The University of Minnesota Medical School is not a part of the Sanford transaction. It is part and parcel of the University of Minnesota's academic mission. The University of Minnesota will continue to spread its academic wings in medicine, and we are delighted with the conversation with the University of Minnesota.

It's actually a phased approach. We anticipate perhaps a first-year class in 2025. A medical school is a four-year program, so it would continue to grow each year. Additionally, we intend to expand our residency programs. This is post-M.D. training, in specialties like family practice, obstetrics and gynecology, mental health, pediatrics and general surgery.

These are all folks that we desperately need to replace our workforce and improve the health of our communities. We look to collaborate with the University of Minnesota, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud Tech, St. John's and Saint Vincent’s to improve all the educational outcomes for all the other team members.

Former Obama White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett spoke Monday at the 2023 MLK Breakfast in Minneapolis. The annual event is presented by UNCF and General Mills.

Jarrett is now CEO of the Obama Foundation. At the breakfast, she talked with Twin Cities attorney Abou Amara about the inspiration she takes from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., when she first met Michelle and Barack Obama and what to expect from the new Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s south side.