In an unexpected move Saturday, the board overseeing state public universities narrowly rejected a deal University of Wisconsin System leaders brokered with the state’s top Republican over campus diversity efforts.
A narrowly divided UW Board of Regents on Saturday rejected an agreement between Universities of Wisconsin system President Jay Rothman and legislative Republican leaders authorizing UW system funding and pay raises in exchange for changes to universities’ diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Krishanu Saha leads the CRISPR Vision Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is member of National Institute of Health’s Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium. His lab is specifically studying how to cure Best disease as well as Leber congenital amaurosis, one of the most common causes of blindness in children.
“All of the testing that we’ve done thus far shows a lot of promise that it can actually correct the defects in these cells. And so the task for us over the next five years is to formulate a medicine that could be used here in trials enrolling patients,” Saha said in a recent interview with WPR’s “The Morning Show.”
The marten has been the focus of several reintroduction efforts over the last 75 years. Ten Pacific marten were introduced to the Apostle Islands from Montana and British Columbia in the 1950’s but didn’t survive; the last was detected in 1969, according to Jonathan Pauli, marten researcher and professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh sophomore Aubrie Selsmeyer read the assurances from campus administrators that cutting 200 staff positions to address an $18 million budget deficit would have a “minimal impact on students and student success.” But she doesn’t buy it.
“We’re losing mentors. Our professors are losing colleagues and friends,” Selsmeyer recently said on WPR’s “Central Time.” “There are going to be empty classrooms. Emails are going to go unanswered. And I think we’re going to lose things that we absolutely took for granted and we may not even realize yet.”
Campus closures and tuition hikes loom at the Universities of Wisconsin with a projected $60 million deficit by next summer.
College leaders and lawmakers hope a change to the state’s reciprocity deal with Minnesota can help ease some of those shortfall struggles.
In a narrow vote on Saturday, the University of Wisconsin (UW) System Board of Regents chose to reject $800 million of additional funding in exchange for keeping and expanding their diversity offices.
Universities of Wisconsin regents narrowly rejected a deal Saturday reached with Republicans that would have given employees a pay raise and paid for construction of a new engineering building in exchange for reductions in staff positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
The Board of Regents rejected a deal Saturday that would have unlocked pay raises for employees, funded UW-Madison’s new engineering building and allowed the Universities of Wisconsin to recoup the $32 million cut from its budget earlier this year.
Without private donations, the Universities of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Tuition Promise program could be in jeopardy for future cohorts of low- to median-income students who might otherwise struggle to afford a college education.
Regents share perspectives, emphasize importance of DEI at UW schools.
The regents voted 9-8 against the deal, which would have unlocked $32 million for the system’s workforce development plan, paid for projects including a proposed engineering building at UW-Madison, and green-lit raises for UW employees.
The Board voted 8 to 9 with several members stating the deal would limit resources for students of color. “I can not and will not vote to set the system back,” stated Regent Joan Prince.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents rejected a resolution to restructure DEI positions in exchange for funding for UW System employee pay raises and building projects in a 9-8 vote.
The regents voted 9-8 against the deal, which comes after Republican lawmakers had previously threatened to completely cut diversity programs.
A Broadway-caliber entertainment group is getting ready to tour Wisconsin and the Midwest. The Wisconsin Singers is a decades-old tradition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nearly every person involved in the production is a student, and not all of them are arts, music or theater majors.
Patrick Remington, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said the rate of underage tobacco sales is going in the wrong direction.
“It’s more than just a minimal change,” Remington said. “To me, that would be cause to certainly redouble the efforts to vendors and sellers to comply with federal law.”
Granato, 59, is a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame and most recently coached at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. He also coached Team USA at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The University of Wisconsin volleyball team will make its fourth national semifinal appearance in the last five seasons and sixth overall in a matchup of teams who have won the last three national championships.
The Badgers defeated the Ducks in a pulsating affair on Saturday night at the UW Field House.
The 59-year-old played for the badgers in the 1980′s, and coached the Badgers from 2016 to 2023. He lead Wisconsin to a Big Ten Championship in 2021.
Former University of Wisconsin men’s hockey coach and player Tony Granato said he has been diagnosed with a form of cancer and will begin treatment this week.
Letter to the editor: In the Dec. 2 State Journal article “Rothman: Liberal arts safe,” Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman walks back parts of an email he had sent to chancellors that suggested “shifting away from liberal arts programs.”
Letter to the editor: Here is a little reminder to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who is holding Universities of Wisconsin employees hostage.
I set long deadlines, knowing that I was working on what disability scholars have called “crip time.” (Term used by UW–Madison scholar Ellen Samuels.)
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said most Republicans in the state legislature and GOP leaders opposed any kind of independent redistricting commission or process “until Tuesday, September 12, when Speaker Vos led a press conference to announce support for a freshly crafted bill that would implement a system similar but not identical to the Iowa model.”
Burden said it was a surprising turn of events given Republicans’ history of standing by the existing system and resisting reforms.
Dr. Julie Stamm, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the summit, says it’s exciting to see a lineup of experts coming together to discuss not just CTE but other conditions related to traumatic brain injury.
“For a retailer, they’re primarily a tool to incentivize people to make a purchase,” said Laura Hensen, executive director of the Kohl’s Center for Retailing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If the incident in question causes you continued distress and negatively impacts your life, that’s where the f-word — forgiveness — may have a role to play, said psychologist Robert Enright, a pioneer in the field of forgiveness science and professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
And installing technologies to capture greenhouse gasses on fossil fuel power plants would further raise prices for a sector already struggling to compete with renewables, as Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies the public policy of technology change, told The Hill.
Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, calls the way our society relies on families to independently support social reproduction a “D.I.Y. society.”
She worked at the UW vet school for over ten years working with various animals in critical care and surgery, which was her passion.
