UW-Madison has hired a new tribal relations director to continue the “high priority” work of strengthening ties with Wisconsin’s Indigenous nations, the university announced. Carla Vigue will join UW-Madison later this month to succeed Aaron Bird Bear, the inaugural tribal relations director.
Vigue, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, is currently director of communications, events and community engagement for the National Council of Urban Indian Health in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, she served for more than a decade as communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, where she developed and implemented a statewide strategy for engaging tribal veterans.
Quoted: For roughly a decade, professionals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been researching the impacts certain psychedelics, including psilocybin, can have on the human brain.
“There are some really encouraging trends that have been noted and encouraging study results that have been published across the country,” said Dr. Chantelle Thomas, a researcher at UW’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. “A lot of people are not aware that this research has been happening for quite some time at the UW.”
There might be a new way to think of one particular species of invasive snail being found in Wisconsin’s water: as a part of a gourmet meal.
At least that’s the approach Minneapolis chef Yia Vang and Titus Sielheimer, a fisheries outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant, made this summer, when they filmed themselves harvesting and cooking up Chinese mystery snails in northern Wisconsin.
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the US have coaxed light-sensitive eye cells grown in a lab to reconnect after separation, an important step for transplantation into patients to treat various eye diseases.
Noted: Controversy exploded in August, when the association’s president, James H. Sweet, a leading historian of the African diaspora at the University of Wisconsin, published a column in its magazine called “Is History History?,” which lamented a “trend toward presentism” and a troubling politicization of scholarship.
The study of pre-modern history, Sweet wrote, is shrinking, while scholars of all periods increasingly question whether work that doesn’t focus on “contemporary social justice issues” like race, gender and capitalism really matters. “The allure of political relevance, facilitated by social and other media,” he argued, has encouraged “a predictable sameness” that misses the messiness and complexity of the past.
Noted: In a letter to North Shore Classical Academy officials, Vanessa Moran, the University of Wisconsin System’s Office of Educational Opportunity director, said the school’s application “was lacking the necessary detail in each of the five sections of the application to demonstrate that the school would be able to open successfully.”
Noted: Representing themselves as a member of the Indigenous community benefited LeClaire in many ways. In March, they began a 10-month paid residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they helped students and staff “understand the stakes of cultural appropriation for Indigenous communities.”
Written by Matthew T. Hora, an associate professor of adult and higher education and co-director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: In the episode, first airing Jan. 20, Brown tastes “sophisticated Wisconsin cheeses,” is a judge in a mustard-tasting contest and learns about the University of Wisconsin, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Society meeting house, her first supper club (Tornado Club Steak House) and the joys of curling and its Madison roots — the latter with help from Olympian Becca Hamilton, according to publicity material on the episode.
The new cafe in the historic campus dining venue, 803 State St., will be run by the Wisconsin Union, the nonprofit organization that manages Memorial Union, Union South, the Memorial Union Terrace, and markets and cafes throughout campus, Union spokeswoman Shauna Breneman said in a news release.
Benjamin Jealous, a former investigative journalist and NAACP president, will be the keynote speaker at the UW–Madison’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium at the Memorial Union’s Shannon Hall on Monday, Jan. 23.
The group (Farm Well Wisconsin), founded in 2020, is funded through a five-year grant associated with the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Through trainings, community members work on building empathetic listening skills, connecting people with resources and discussing issues related to farm culture.
Quoted: Andrew Stevens, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said this percentage has been fairly consistent over time and includes forestland, pasture and cropland.
“The analyses that have been done with the data that are currently available really show that foreign ownership of agricultural land in the United States is a pretty miniscule issue, if it’s an issue at all,” he said. “There are no systematic differences across communities with more or less foreign ownership. Land prices don’t seem to systematically differ.”
Noted: Christensen said he chose to open a clinic in Rockford because it would provide a closer option for women in the Madison area than Chicago-area abortion clinics. Rockford is about an hour and a half south of Madison.
He said he also envisioned the yet-to-be-opened surgical clinic as a potential training location for OB-GYN residents in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The Dobbs decision created new hurdles for OB/GYN residency programs across Wisconsin, because the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education requires them to teach abortion-related procedures or face losing accreditation.
Former University of Wisconsin cornerback Troy Vincent will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in a ceremony late in 2023, one of 18 players so honored in this year’s class.
One of the four coach inductees, Monte Cater, coached at Lakeland College from 1981 through 1986.
The College Football Hall of Fame encompasses a large contingent of inductees, but only 13 associated directly with their time at the University of Wisconsin make the list, though many others with connections to Wisconsin football have been recognized.
Quoted: Brad Tank, an investment management expert and University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus, thinks federal officials will be successful in limiting inflation in 2023.
Tank explained in a recent UW Now livestream, “Predictions for 2023,” that he expects inflation to remain above 4% up until the middle of 2023. The rate most likely wouldn’t hit 2% until 2024.
