We talk with LaVar J Charleston, the University’s Chief Diversity Officer, about his job and efforts to promote equity and social justice. We also look at scholarship and service programs designed to increase diversity and foster equity.
The newly crowned Miss America, Grace Stanke, said she wants to spend her term promoting nuclear power as a cleaner way to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
“It doesn’t use a lot of land,” said Stanke, a Wausau native and University of Wisconsin-Madison senior studying nuclear engineering. “As our population continues to grow, we can continue to use that land for farming and agricultural purposes, and we can use that clean, zero-carbon energy coming from nuclear energy to power our cities.”
As most University of Wisconsin System campuses grapple with consistent enrollment declines, some have increasingly relied on out-of-state students to fill the gap. That’s brought in more tuition revenue along with some concerns about limited access for state residents.
On the evening of July 12, 1893, in the hall of a massive new Beaux-Arts building that would soon house the Art Institute of Chicago, a young professor named Frederick Jackson Turner rose to present what would become the most influential essay in the study of U.S. history.
It was getting late. The lecture hall was stifling from a day of blazing sun, which had tormented the throngs visiting the nearby Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, a carnival of never-before-seen wonders, like a fully illuminated electric city and George Ferris’ 264-foot-tall rotating observation wheel. Many of the hundred or so historians attending the conference, a meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), were dazed and dusty from an afternoon spent watching Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show at a stadium near the fairground’s gates. They had already sat through three other speeches. Some may have been dozing off as the thin, 31-year-old associate professor from the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison began his remarks.
Noted: I was interviewed for a Forbes article with the title “A Computer Can Now Write Your College Essay—Maybe Better Than You Can.” Forbes fed ChatGPT two college essay prompts, one the 650-word Common Application prompt—“Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story”—and the other the “Why Wisconsin?” essay from the University of Wisconsin at Madison supplement. According to the article, each essay took ChatGPT less than 10 minutes to complete. That is both far less time than we hope students would spend composing essays and far more time than most admissions officers spend reading essays.
Wisconsin will join the growing list of states to ban the use of the popular social media site TikTok on all state-issued devices over cybersecurity concerns.
Gov. Tony Evers said Friday he would issue an executive order by early next week. As of Friday, it wasn’t immediately clear what the executive order would include or if the University of Wisconsin System would have to abide by the TikTok ban
Noted: Soaring prices for cattle, land, and everything else, have made it difficult for someone to get started in dairy farming.
And soon there will be one fewer educational resource available as University of Wisconsin-Madison shuts down its School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, which has graduated around 600 budding farmers since the 1990s.
The non-degree program has offered instruction in what’s called “grazing,” a type of dairy farming where cows graze on pastures for most of their food rather than consuming a diet of grain and spending most of their time indoors. In addition to classroom instruction, the program has offered on-farm internships, business planning assistance and mentoring.
Noted: Sarah Barry will continue to serve as deputy secretary. Barry holds a master’s degree from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor of Science degree from the UW-Oshkosh and spent 15 years as chief of staff for several state senators.
The former University of Wisconsin-Madison football player accused of killing two women appeared in court Friday for the final time before his trial begins next week.
The Wisconsin Medical Examining Board last month ordered Dr. Molly Day to take six hours of education in communications and root cause analysis after the Oct. 11, 2021 operation, in which the patient died shortly after his shoulder surgery began.
According to Dr. Elizabeth Salisbury-Afshar, an addiction medicine physician at UW Health and associate professor of family medicine and community health at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, one of the reasons people could be calling for emergency care less could be because they don’t want to get in trouble during an overdose situation.
UW Health emergency departments saw a decrease in 2022 from the number of opioid overdose visits from 2021, a difference of 631 down to 583. However, the hospital reported seeing an increase in the previous two years leading up to 2022.
Quoted: Dr. Cynthia Carlsson, Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Leqembi targets deposits of proteins in the brain called amyloid. Amyloid is believed to contribute to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“What was impressive about this study is that it improved the amyloid levels in the brain, lowered those. It improved their cognition, improved their function, improved their quality of life, all of these things we really care about, as well as, what the brain looks like,” Carlsson said.
Carlsson told CBS 58 the drug is primarily given to people with mild Alzheimer’s symptoms intravenously every two weeks.
She said side effects can include increased risk of micro bleeds and swelling in the brain.
“The results from the clarity study showed pretty vigorous responses across all of these outcome measures, which we hadn’t seen for a therapy like this before,” Carlsson said.
From 10 to 11 a.m. fans were invited to join the members of the UW Men’s Hockey team for a free skate, autographs and photos at the Edgewater Hotel ice rink.
JJ Watt received one of the strangest gifts in the mail and only Wisconsin fans will truly appreciate it.
The gift appears to be a taxidermy Badger. That’s right, someone appears to have sent Watt a stuffed Badger.
Watt shared photos of the gift on Twitter Thursday saying, “I have received a lot of wild fan mail over the years. This package that arrived today is certainly being added to the list.”
He worked for the University of Wisconsin, Madison within the Physical Plant Department as a U.S. Mail Distributor for 35 years until retirement in January, 2002.
For most of his career, John worked as an entomologist for the USDA at the UW Russell research labs where he further specialized in the study of honeybees. The study of insects was a lifelong passion of his that included beekeeping at home, which provided fresh honey to family and friends for many years.
Grace worked at General Casualty Insurance for a few years until she found the jobs she loved, being a wife, a mother and being the proverbial part time “Lunch Lady” at both Witte Hall on the UW campus and for many years at Kennedy Elementary School.
Mr. East worked at the UW School of Library and Information Studies from 1966 until 2000.
In 1974, Joan started her career at the Waisman Center, UW – Madison, eventually becoming a Clinical Professor. She developed the Genetic Counseling Training Program (first graduating class of 1978 at the UW Madison). During her professional career of teaching and promoting she instructed the importance of genetic counseling.
School board members, dressed in business casual and carrying black folders, stuck out amongst the bathing suit clad families at the Great Wolf Lodge during a recent December weekend. While children streamed past, running towards the water slides, the school board representatives from across Wisconsin and other midwestern states walked past a “UW-Madison Department of Political Science” sign into a reserved meeting room.
Noted: Many say LeClaire took pride in their heritage. They served on the state Department of Justice’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force, earned speaking gigs and had a paid residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sami Schalk, a UW-Madison associate professor of gender and women’s studies, called the news “deeply disappointing.”
“It just makes no sense to me why someone would do it,” Schalk, who identifies as Black, said. “Because there’s so many ways to be an ally to a community and be very involved in creating change for a community that you believe in, to be a part of a community without claiming something that you’re not.”
