The University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching an environmental sustainability initiative that will include carbon-reduction goals and a new research hub on campus.
UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin made the announcement during a recent UW Board of Regents meeting in Madison.
Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at UW-Madison and the state’s climatologist, said the weather is already causing economic impact, especially on the tourism industry in northern Wisconsin.
“They depend on snow and ice for skiing and skating and ice fishing and so forth,” Vavrus said. “There’s been closed snowmobile trails. There’s been winter festivals that have been canceled, unsafe ice conditions for fishing and so on.”
In Madison highly-regarded ice records have been kept on the city’s local lakes since the middle 19th century. The work is now conducted by the Wisconsin State Climatology Office at the University of Wisconsin’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
The proposed constitutional amendment before the Assembly on Thursday is the latest step in Wisconsin Republicans’ fight against government-run diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Republican lawmakers last year struck a deal requiring the Universities of Wisconsin to restructure their DEI programs, and GOP legislative leaders have said they plan to scrutinize similar programs in state agencies.
The proposal up for a vote Thursday would prohibit state and local governments, including the Universities of Wisconsin and local school districts, from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to anybody on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. It requires hiring decisions to be based on “merit, fairness and equality,” a term conservatives have used as a counter to DEI.
UW-Oshkosh faculty are pushing the Faculty Senate to hold a no-confidence vote on Chancellor Andrew Leavitt’s leadership, following his decision last fall to eliminate one in six jobs in an attempt to address the largest budget shortfall in the Universities of Wisconsin system.
During the fall 2023 semester there were fewer than 700 Native Americans enrolled at Universities of Wisconsin schools, about 0.4% of the total student population, according to system data. Yet despite that minuscule proportion, Wisconsin’s Native American tribes continue to have a large impact on the UW System.
Concordia University Wisconsin will cut staff and make significant changes to its operations, including potentially selling some of its Michigan campus property.
The institution is the latest in Wisconsin to downsize in an effort to reduce costs and balance its budget.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison will likely be required to admit all in-state students who graduate in the top 5 percent of their high school class under a bill approved by the state Legislature Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
Debates on UW campuses over belonging, free expression, and social and political identity have been raised more frequently in recent months as legislative Republicans seek to fund free speech programs and cut diversity initiatives.
The Food Fight restaurant opened inside the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus in 2011, shortly after the building did, as a fine-dining restaurant, but soon became more laid back.
University of Wisconsin-Madison staff and graduate workers delivered to the chancellor’s office Wednesday a petition that garnered support from about 700 signees, all of whom demand administrators implement a paid family leave policy for its employees.
Wisconsin’s medical malpractice laws include: $250,000 cap in malpractice lawsuits involving doctors employed by the state, a category that includes the more than 1,670 faculty physicians employed by UW–Madison. The cap applies even if a doctor’s negligence results in a lifetime injury that will require millions of dollars of future treatment.
Slightly more Wisconsin farmers reported taking steps to protect soil and water quality in 2022. They planted nearly 754,000 acres of cover crops — plants that protect the soil and keep it in place during the offseason — about a 23% increase from 2017. The number of acres that were not tilled also increased, from about 2.2 million in 2017 to about 2.4 million in 2022. No-till practices reduce soil disturbance.
Those acres are still just a small portion of Wisconsin’s total farmed acres. “I would have hoped to see that pick up a bit faster,” said Erin Silva, a professor of organic and sustainable agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In a statement Wednesday, a UWPD spokesperson told News 3 Now that the group had protested peacefully during the bulk of the career fair, however in the afternoon multiple protesters tried to disrupt the event.
Photo package of Greg Gard.
While striving to make it back to the Olympics for a second time, University of Wisconsin-Madison swimmer Phoebe Bacon is making sure she prioritizes her love for swimming leading up to her return to the Olympic Trials stage.
The biggest downfall of early decision for many students is financial. Depending on the school, tuition can add up to painful numbers, and an unwritten rule is that early decision often means less financial aid because colleges have less incentive to award merit scholarships. At the very least, students are unable to compare aid packages when bound by an acceptance. This is important when applying early decision as tuition can be a factor that students don’t know to consider.
The time is now for Wisconsin to reinstate their baseball team.
Allocation of funds to UW System has potential to help students, but only in tandem with DEI programming.
Although the recent avoidance of a U.S. recession has surprised many economists, a downturn could still occur in the coming months. That’s the view of UW-Madison economics professor Menzie Chinn.
Sulfuric acid clouds circle the entire planet at a height of 25 to 37 miles above the surface. They contain tiny acidic aerosols that are about a hundred times thinner than human hair. Together the droplets resemble the air pollution in highly populated cities on Earth. “It’s like a haze that you find when you fly into, say, New Delhi or Beijing,” says Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW professors offer explanations, helpful tips on classic V-Day tropes.
A UW-Madison spokesperson said Wednesday Mnookin is committed to offering paid parental leave and continues to work with UW System and state partners to advance the initiative.
