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March 17, 2023

Top Stories

What’s it like to be a conductor? Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra fellowship helps reveal the answer

Wisconsin State Journal

For an orchestra conductor, raising the baton at the start of a concert is a tiny fraction of the job. “I’d say it’s about 5% of what we do,” says Andrew Sewell, music director for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.

It’s that other 95% that Kelby Schnepel and Daewon Kang are learning as graduate students at the UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music — and now as the first recipients of a new conducting fellowship with the WCO.

Research

Big oil firms touted algae as climate solution. Now all have pulled funding

The Guardian

“It’s very challenging and very expensive to bring these technologies to market,” said George Huber, whose biofuels research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was funded by Exxon for years. “It’s not gonna happen overnight. It’s great they make these commitments, but you know they need to start putting more capital into these projects.”

Higher Education/System

Crime and safety

Former UW-Madison student indicted for making graphic threats to professors, students

Wisconsin Public Radio

A former University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges he threatened students, professors and their families.

Arvin Mathur was arrested at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport March 10 after emailing victims that he was returning to campus for “an evening of fun” on St. Patrick’s Day. Mathur, 32, of Grass Lake, Michigan, now faces six counts sending online threats to nine individuals associated with UW-Madison.

Arts & Humanities

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Opinion

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UW-Madison Related

“Pinball,” Reviewed: A Remedy for Your Post-Oscar Hangover

The New Yorker

The Braggs dramatize Sharpe’s pinball life, starting with his early days as a pinball wizard, as a student at the University of Wisconsin in 1971. The character—call him Roger—is played by Mike Faist, in his first-released film since his breakout role in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” and the new film gives him the time, the space, and the pace to deliver a far subtler and richer performance.