Skip to main content

October 13, 2022

Top Stories

UW-Madison historian Monica Kim awarded MacArthur ‘genius’ grant

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A University of Wisconsin-Madison historian on Wednesday won one of the nation’s most prestigious awards, which comes with a no strings attached $800,000 stipend to spend however she sees fit.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named UW-Madison professor Monica Kim, 44, as one of 25 national recipients of the MacArthur fellowship. Also known as the “genius grant,” the awards are given annually to a select group of individuals across a range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity in their work and future ambitions.

MacArthur Foundation Announces 2022 ‘Genius Grants’

Posted on
Forbes

Monica Kim is currently an associate professor and the William Appleman Williams & David G. and Marion S. Meissner Chair in U.S. International and Diplomatic History at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her research examines U.S. foreign policy during and after the Korean War. The author of The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold Histories (2019), Kim is currently working on her next book, The World That Hunger Made: The Koreas, the United States, and Afro-Asia, which examines economic development as a tool of foreign policy and international influence.

2022 MacArthur Fellows Have Deep Ties to Academe

Posted on
Inside Higher Ed

Historian Monica Kim, associate professor and the William Appleman Williams & David G. and Marion S. Meissner Chair in U.S. International and Diplomatic History at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, for examining the interplay between U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, processes of decolonization and individual rights in regional settings around the globe.

UW-Madison prof Monica Kim wins coveted MacArthur fellowship

Posted on
The Capital Times

The MacArthur Foundation selected UW-Madison professor, historian and author Monica Kim for one of this year’s 25 fellowship spots, the organization announced Wednesday. The so-called “genius grant” is perhaps the most competitive and sought-after award in the arts, sciences, humanities and academia.

Research

Madison guaranteed income experiment is up and running

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: “We know that our needs change from month to month,” said Roberts Crall, who works at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So one month, it might be that families need a little bit of extra cash to pay for gas and the next month, it might be for rent and the month after that it might be for diapers or school supplies. And so giving people that flexibility to be able to manage their own budget seemed really important and (an) important idea to test.”

City officials are partnering with UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty and the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania to compare outcomes for families getting the payments to those in a control group. Participating households got debit cards to receive the payments, and researchers plan to study how people spent the funds (which will published as broad categories) as well as how the payments affected overall wellbeing, Roberts Crall said.

UW-Madison professors research social media effects on teens

Posted on
Daily Cardinal

Teenagers live and breathe social media, and the negative effects of these platforms can have a strong, long-term impact on teenagers’ mental and physical health. Chris Cascio, an assistant professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an extensive background in neuroscience, is hoping to learn more about teens’ experiences on social media platforms. “

Higher Education/System

Acceptance rates are declining at public universities

Posted on
Washington Examiner

Less than half of the University of Georgia’s applicants, 42%, were accepted this fall after the university admitted a historically low number in 2021 at 39%. It previously toted accepting over 40% of students without a test score of any kind. The University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin similarly let in less than half of the applicants. Ten years ago, however, all three of the schools accepted more than 60% of applicants.

Campus life

State news

18 months after terms expired, GOP appointees to Wisconsin’s technical college board continue to serve and deny Evers’ picks

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: The holdover effect diminishes voters’ power to shape the executive branch when governors don’t have the ability to appoint people who actually serve, said Miriam Seifter, an associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative. And if it becomes a widespread practice, it could affect the responsiveness and accountability of government officials.

“There’s two different things going on here,” she said. “One is the situation where individuals assert the power to stay in office after the term has expired. The other is the Senate refusing to confirm appointees. If either of those things happen in isolation or rarely, neither one is democracy-altering. If these happen systematically and across the board … you would start to see the constraints of gubernatorial power.”

$16 million in grants will support maternal and infant health initiatives across Wisconsin

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced a $16 million, statewide investment Wednesday to improve maternal and infant health, especially among people of color.

The funding, largely made possible through the American Rescue Plan Act, will be split between the state health department’s Maternal and Child Health program, the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Each entity will receive $5.5 million.

The MCW endowment fund and UW-Madison will use the funding to also support community grants for programs that focus on the social conditions that contribute to racial disparities in Wisconsin’s maternal and infant mortality rates.

Wisconsin’s special ed fund only covers a third of what schools spend. See what it means for your district.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Julie Underwood, former chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, served on the Blue Ribbon Commission and is currently pushing for 90% coverage, in her role as president of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools.

“It is a federal mandate to educate all children with disabilities; we have to provide them a free appropriate public education, as we should,” Underwood said. “But when the state stepped back from funding that more and more, it became more and more expensive for local school districts to make good on that promise.”

Crime and safety

UWPD makes arrested in attack after Badgers game

Posted on
NBC-15

UWPD credited a tip for helping them find the individual and positively identify him, the agency reported Wednesday morning. A police department spokesperson previously said its investigators had exhausted their tools for finding him and were turning to the public for help.

Community

Madison’s co-op living: from Fellowship Farm to the future

Posted on
The Capital Times

According to Sparer, Madison has long been a hub for housing co-ops due to Wisconsin’s well-defined cooperative laws and interest from UW-Madison students.

Hypatia itself is an example of Madison’s long cooperative history. Hypatia began in 1943 as Groves Womens’ Co-op, founded by UW-Madison students looking for an affordable alternative to sorority housing. Before moving buildings a few times and eventually changing its name, the co-op was originally named after Professor Harold Groves, an advocate for cooperatives and a shareholding member of a more political project: Fellowship Farm.

Health

Athletics

Sabres sign coach Don Granato to 2-year extension

Posted on
AP

His sister Cammie is an assistant GM with the Vancouver Canucks and was among the first women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame after she captained the U.S. women’s team, which won a gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. His brother Tony played and coached in the NHL and is currently coaching at the University of Wisconsin.

Why Wisconsin women’s basketball believes a breakout year is ahead

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

University of Wisconsin women’s basketball coach Marisa Moseley opened Day 2 of Big Ten media days in a confident fashion Wednesday.

She was sure about what she wanted to talk about. She barely looked at the notes she had written down, and she even matched her glasses to her leopard print shoes.

“It’s all about the little details,” Moseley said.

UW-Madison Related

Smith: New festival in Baraboo will shine a spotlight on the remarkable recovery of the sandhill crane in Wisconsin

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Few figures in the conservation world are considered as wise and prophetic as Aldo Leopold.

The former University of Wisconsin-Madison professor helped pioneer the field of wildlife management in the 1930s.

He’s also the author of “A Sand County Almanac,” the 1949 book of essays published after his death that is now revered worldwide for its smart and poetic passages, including on the relationship of humans to the environment.