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Public schools are back open today in Charlotte, Lee, and Collier Counties. School districts have been working on plans for how best to safely reopen since in-school learning abruptly ended back in mid-March. To get an overview of what’s happening in Collier County, and what plans are in place to protect students, teachers, and school staff we spoke with Dr. Kamela Patton, superintendent of Collier County Public Schools.

A new podcast series produced by WMFE in Orlando, in partnership with the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, explores the history of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP, which was signed into law 20 years ago in the final days of the Clinton Administration. DRAINED is reported and hosted by WMFE environmental reporter, Amy Green, and edited by Trevor Aaronson and Matthew Peddie. We’re presenting the first episode today, called “A river runs dry.”

Next week on Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8 the Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Partnership is hosting the 2022 Southwest Florida Climate Summit. This year it will be held as a two-day hybrid event so people can attend virtually or in person at the Collaboratory in downtown Fort Myers. This public event will feature innovative thinkers to exchange dialogue and ideas on expanding the region’s capacity to respond to climate challenges, and towards building increased community resiliency.

Naples Art has deep roots in the Collier County arts community. Founded as the Naples Art Association in 1954, and located at the von Liebig Art Center at Cambier Park since 1998, the nonprofit arts organization offers a year-round schedule of art classes, festivals, educational events, exhibitions, and a summer camp for kids. But, in recent years it’s fallen short of its potential for cultural influence and financial capacity — and that’s exactly what its newest executive director and chief curator is working to change.

Dr. Albert Keidel has spent his career studying the Chinese economy, and how it’s managed to experience 40-fold growth over the past 40 years. He was on the Florida Gulf Coast University campus last week to talk to the FGCU Honors College for its Provost's Seminar Series — his visit is also part of the Naples Discussion Group’s 2021-2022 schedule. The topic of his talk was 'China and the U.S.: Mirroring Our Times.'

The UF/IFAS Industrial Hemp Pilot Project is approaching its two-year mark with plants in the ground. University researchers have been experimenting with different varieties to determine whether industrial hemp — which is an extremely low THC variety of cannabis sativa — might have a future as a cash crop in Florida. We spoke with the pilot project’s Lead Oversight Manager to get an update.

When our guest today came to Florida Gulf Coast University in 2007 the school didn’t even have a minor in entrepreneurship. But she immediately went to work to change that and is still here today working to grow the program. Dr. Sandra Kauanui is now Director of the FGCU School of Entrepreneurship. Since its founding in 2016 the school has rapidly grown. Its mission is to infuse an entrepreneurial mindset all across the university by offering an interdisciplinary entrepreneurship major, minor, and graduate certificate.

While scholars have mostly focused on law enforcement’s use of aggression and brutality as a means of maintaining African American subordination, Black citizens of that time have often come off as powerless in their encounters with law enforcement.The new book, “Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South” explores the various ways African Americans responded to the expansion of police departments in the early 20th-century South, including thousands of examples of African Americans seemingly working with law enforcement in order to, in some sense, take advantage of the only government institution they had access to: the police department.

As another rainy season begins with red tide present along the Southwest Florida coast we’re looking back to research being conducted by FGCU Professor, Dr. Bill Mitsch, about the role land-based nutrients play in red tide blooms.

P.L.O. Lumumba is an internationally recognized lawyer, human rights activist, pan-Africanist and public speaker who’s message focuses on African solutions to African problems. He's in the United States to visit African Embassies in Washington D.C. and other states, and the United Nations headquarters in New York City, but he began his trip with a stop at Florida Gulf Coast University arranged by the African Student Association, where he met with students and faculty, and gave a public presentation on “Education and Universal Empowerment.”We spoke with professor Lumumba about his life's work promoting pan-Africanism, the critical importance of education, and the role China is playing in Africa and how that could shape its future.