The University of Wisconsin pulled off an awesome move for recent graduates.
With everybody needing to take online classes because of the coronavirus pandemic, students were robbed of the chance to enjoy a proper commencement.
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross says campuses will provide extensive COVID-19 testing for students, faculty and staff in hopes that campuses can resume in-person classes this fall.
Graduates and their loved ones tuned into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first ever virtual commencement ceremony Saturday.
This was the weekend it begins: The celebratory season in which thousands of proud family members traditionally descend on campuses statewide to witness and revel in what for most is the academic accomplishment of a lifetime.
But this year, the campuses are largely empty.
Nearly 8,500 University of Wisconsin-Madison students graduated Saturday, when a commencement video was published online at noon in lieu of the annual pomp and circumstance at Camp Randall Stadium.
Graduating seniors said an abrupt and socially distanced goodbye to their campuses in March when classes moved online in a matter of days. The pandemic stripped much of the pomp and all of the in-person options from commencement ceremonies. And the graduates now enter a job market in which unemployment is the highest since the Great Depression.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, which boasts an endowment of $3 billion, announced this week that it will accept $10 million in federal coronavirus relief. Wealthy universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have rejected millions of dollars in taxpayer funds in April after facing pressure from President Donald Trump and the public.
The University of Wisconsin Madison is sitting on an endowment worth $3 billion and also will receive nearly $10 million in federal aid to help with profit losses from coronavirus — but it’s still not enough to handle an estimated $120 million budget shortfall looming for the flagship state university.
In a special meeting Thursday of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, two board members whose terms expired on May 1 participated and voted in board proceedings.
Yogev Ben-Yitschak expected his Facebook feed to be filled with photos of friends’ final semester on UW-Madison’s campus and announcements about where they will spend the next chapter of their lives.
This weekend I will graduate in my living room. I will turn my tassel for a Zoom audience full of loved ones and drink a bottle of champagne in honor of my ancestors. Then, I will assure everyone looking on that despite drastic changes in our reality, I am eternally grateful for the journey that led me to this point. We will dance and sing in our respective homes and get tipsy enough that the distance that separates us will shrink. And I will end the night as a 2020 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The medical degree class of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health graduated virtually this morning.
Graduating seniors are taking photos across the UW-Madison campus in their caps and gowns and attending ceremonies virtually this weekend.
The commencement, which featured speeches from Chancellor Rebecca Blank and keynote speaker James Patterson, was watched by students who celebrated at home with family.
UW-Madison graduates don’t get to celebrate in Camp Randall Stadium and the Kohl Center this year due to the pandemic. However, this didn’t stop UW-Madison from honoring the Class of 2020.
“We put the tv and the couch outside, and we put the ceremony on and we kind of just enjoyed each other,” UW-Madison Graduate Janell Voves said.
The 2020 graduates of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health virtually moved their tassels Friday morning at 10 a.m. A live ceremony was held on the school’s Facebook page.
The virtual commencement lasted about a half an hour on the UW-Madison’s Facebook page, starting at noon Saturday.
It is a time of celebration and uncertainty for many in the Class of 2020.
Aguirre, who worked as a peer career advisor, said, “The tone of my graduating class is kind of scared.”
’No one will ever forget the class of 2020,’ Patterson said.
Class of 2020 celebrates accomplishments despite fear, stress over future.
UW-Extension meat specialist Jeff Sindelar said that while there are fewer packages of meat available at stores, this isn’t a “no food on the shelf” situation. He encouraged consumers to avoid the impulse to stock up on supplies.
Quoted: How science, and those who communicate it, deal with changing sets of facts is an important question in a pandemic. Uncertainty must be clearly demonstrated and explained — or used in bad faith, according to Richard Keller, a professor of science history at UW-Madison.
“Scientists are comfortable with uncertainty — they don’t like it, they want to be certain — but they recognize that you’ll never be completely certain,” Keller says. “There’s a degree of comfort with uncertainty the general public doesn’t have. We want to know what we should likely do, what we have to do.”
Quoted: These conditions are important to help understand who is most vulnerable to the disease and how to take protective measures, according to Dr. Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But Remington cautioned against “othering” people, thinking that COVID-19 is a problem affecting someone else.
“Remember, most Americans have comorbidities,” said Remington, a former CDC epidemiologist and now the director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at Madison. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think this is another person’s disease.”
COVID-19 patients experience many symptoms: Fever, chills, muscle pain, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, cough. But one of the biggest concerns for Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at UW Health, is shortness of breath.
It appears the University of Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez, Paul Chryst and Greg Gard are going to have to take one for the team.
The UW athletic department is implementing a “compensation and work reduction plan” in an effort to offset the losses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, a move that includes voluntary pay cuts for top-earning personnel such as Alvarez, the athletic director; Chryst, the head football coach; and Gard, the head men’s basketball coach.
Alvarez pledged to help, just as the school had done for Badgers legends Michael Finley and Ron Dayne, who earned their degrees after turning 40. Griffith did not have to take a financial hit; UW’s policy is to cover tuition, fees and books for any scholarship student-athlete wishing to return to knock out his or her degree.
The University of Wisconsin athletic department is looking to save $2.8 million during the COVID-19 pandemic through voluntary pay cuts or a reduction in work hours.
Most employees will participate in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s Work-Share program (pending approval) and have their work hours reduced by either 20 or 50 percent.
In the proposed plan, the department’s highest-earning employees will be asked to take a “voluntarily” 15-percent reduction in pay over the next six months.
While finishing the spring semester of my sophomore year at UW-Madison, I find myself seeking new ways to understand the landscape of college life and the diverse situations my peers face during the age of coronavirus.
Noted: Around 40% of all workers could theoretically earn more while unemployed than going back to work, according to an analysis by Noah Williams, director of the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: To get started, McGinnis turned to the website of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s face shield project. It offered nearly everything his team needed, including a list of materials to make face shields and a pattern to use for assembly.
The UW School of Business will salute 2020 graduates by covering Grainger Hall in red light with inspiring congratulatory messages Saturday night.
Quoted: “This may sound small at first, but it is the largest drop since World War II, as emissions have generally increased year-over-year, even during recessions,” Ankur Desai, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA TODAY.
Ajay Sethi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Master of Public Health program, studies the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV and measles. He also studies the spread of public health conspiracies, which can quickly unravel the progress achieved by researchers.
Quoted: Hart Posen, a management professor at the UW-Madison School of Business, said it will be key for industries to incorporate both in-store and online options effectively.
In 1970, Hans joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, establishing what soon became an internationally recognized research program in physical-organic chemistry.
Noted: American Girl’s lead designer for the Girl of the Year series, Rebecca DeKuiper, lived near Monona Terrace in 2014, and Walkowicz’s attorney believes she and other American Girl employees attended Walkowicz’s talk and were inspired to use Walkowicz as the basis for a new doll.
In October 2016, Walkowicz was back in Madison taking part in Space Place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and led activities for parents, and did more outreach in Trempealeau and LaCrosse.
