Republican legislators’ assault on University of Wisconsin System campuses’ diversity, equity and inclusion offices failed to address the problem the politicians purportedly wanted to solve: Ensuring the state’s universities, particularly UW-Madison, help grow Wisconsin’s economy.
March 19, 2024
Top Stories
Research
Fresh. Buttery. Soapy. Astringent. Enter the world of professional cheese tasting.
It’s quiet as a group of eight people stand bent at the waist, intently staring at a pizza sitting on a gleaming stainless-steel counter.
It’s an early March Wednesday morning, and they are in the Hilmar Cheese Dairy Applications Lab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research.
Higher Education/System
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Lakeland University enhance collaboration efforts
Multiple universities in Wisconsin have announced staff reductions over the last year, from public universities like UW-Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay to private colleges like Concordia University and St. Norbert College. And several Universities of Wisconsin System schools have announced plans to stop in-person classes at their two-year branch campuses.
Marquette University plans to cut $31 million by 2031
Marquette University is planning $31 million in budget cuts over the next seven years, campus officials said in a message Monday. That represents about 7% of its current operating budget.
Why Scholarships for Students of Color Are Under Attack
Meanwhile, Wisconsin lawmakers are considering legislation that would eliminate race-based criteria in scholarship, grant, and loan programs. A University of Wisconsin system spokesperson told the news site WisPolitics that its campuses would remove race as a factor in most scholarships by the end of the academic year, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
State news
Wisconsin plants ‘confused’ by mild winter, now freezing temps
“For the staff here, it’s tracking these events over time, and seeing how they differ between different years,” said UW-Madison Arboretum ecologist Brad Herrick.
He’s worked there for 17 years, so he’s able to compare each season. He said this year is a weird one.
“We’ve had really sharp temperature swings from February on,” he said.
Breaking down the constitutional amendments on Wisconsin’s primary ballot
“This is the money that private give to city clerks to spend for the purposes of helping people get to the polls and cast votes,” Howard Schweber, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
Arts & Humanities
Ceramic Artist Toshiko Takaezu Gets a Posthumous Reappraisal
The Noguchi retrospective — which will travel to the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Mich; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chazen Museum of Art, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and the Honolulu Museum of Art — includes about 200 works in ceramics as well as the artist’s paintings, weavings and bronze-cast sculptures.
Wisconsin Film Festival preview: UW-Madison centric films you should watch for
With the annual Wisconsin Film Festival around the corner, here’s a breakdown of some University of Wisconsin-Madison related films that will be featured at the event.
UW Experts in the News
Opinion: How to make sure the 6% real estate home commission really does die
It might seem like the National Association of Realtors, which in the past few years has been the target of antitrust lawsuits and whose former president resigned in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, is in crisis. Last year, a federal jury in Missouri found that the NAR, along with private brokerages, had colluded to keep broker fees artificially high and awarded nearly $1.8 billion to hundreds of thousands of home sellers. And on Friday, the NAR announced that instead of appealing it would settle the lawsuit. (Max Besbris is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of “Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality.” )
Georgia primary votes not counted ‘in hours’
Barry Burden, the founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, outlined several other reasons why votes were counted faster in the primaries than in the 2020 general election.
How Realtors’ settlement could change the buyer-agent relationship
That may sound like a more expensive arrangement for homebuyers. But economist Abdullah Yavas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business said under the traditional arrangement, sellers only technically pay for buyer’s agents. In reality, buyers were still footing the bill.
Census: Dane County added nearly 14K residents since 2020
“It shows the economic strength of the region,” said Kurt Paulsen, a professor of urban planning at UW-Madison. “I think it also means we really have to go and update our long-term forecasts. They’ll probably be significantly higher.”
Obituaries
Ed Mintz, Who Gave Audiences the Chance to Grade Films, Dies at 83
His interest in math led Ed, as a teenager, to write a book about square roots, and later to study the subject at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1964.