A new center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will focus on studying PFAS and finding solutions to environmental contamination by the chemicals. The new center will be launched with federal funding announced last week. Scientists said they hope to be able to identify PFAS they currently can’t measure, and find ways to reverse or stop environmental damage caused by the substances sometimes called “forever chemicals.”
April 1, 2024
Top Stories
Research
Maps: These states, counties are home to the most excessive drinkers, study finds
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has published its annual County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report, which is intended to highlight the factors that can impact our health outcomes and disparities nationwide. The report considers numerous data points, including the excessive consumption of alcohol.
Higher Education/System
‘A crisis by design’: Students, profs, lawmakers hold town hall on declining state higher ed support in Wisconsin
Members of American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls led the March 25 town hall.
Communities losing UW branch campus may get $2 million to redevelop
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has signed the GOP-authored bill into law. It will help cities and counties transition their former two-year campus sites for new purposes.
Behind the scenes of the University of Wisconsin’s diversity deal
Over a single week, the UW Board of Regents faced unprecedented pressure from all sides, according to interviews and nearly 1,500 pages of emails and text messages the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel received under the state’s public records law. The records showed deep fissures among board members, and UW System President Jay Rothman questioning his ability to continue leading.
Next week ‘critical’ for Northland College’s hopes to stay open
With just days to go before its self-imposed deadline to raise $12 million, the Northland College Board of Trustees said the coming week will be “critical” to the survival of the small liberal arts college in Ashland.
Campus life
UW speaker security fees may stand on shaky legal ground, UW law expert says
Such regulations must be content-neutral time, place and manner restrictions, according to the free expression webpage. Time, place and manner restrictions are limits on free speech that do not target the content of the speech, UW Law assistant professor Franciska Coleman said.
UW veteran, military affiliated students struggle to find community due to lack of dedicated space
Board of Regents to propose plan to honor veterans in new football facility project, student veterans push for community building.
UW–Madison’s Curling Club snags national championship in Rice Lake
Newly-formed program sees growth, improvement in performance throughout school year.
Around the world in 95 years, refugee from Nazi Germany celebrates with fundraiser
By Emily Auerbach, executive director of UW Odyssey at UW-Madison and a professor of English who co-hosts “University of the Air” on Wisconsin Public Radio.
State news
Black scholars face anonymous accusations in anti-DEI crusade
Six of the seven are Black. Among them are Harvard’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer and her husband, who’s the chief diversity officer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. They also include the chief DEI officer for staff at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. If you add Gay to the seven, four are Black women at Harvard
Athletics
Inches are the difference on great scoring chances in Wisconsin men’s hockey’s NCAA loss
The Badgers were close but not quite close enough. That’s the way the game went Friday and the way the season went down the stretch; they went 7-8-2 after a 10-game winning streak that covered parts of November, December and January.
UW Experts in the News
UW-professor on what to expect in the 2024 Wisconsin presidential primary
Howard Schweber professor of political science at UW-Madison broke down what primaries have been like in the past.
The FAFSA Fiasco Is a Really Big Deal
Nick Hillman, an education-policy professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that the “hollowing out” of the department forced it to rely on third-party contractors to complete its technical fixes.
What Would A Solar Eclipse Have Looked Like to Neanderthals? Here’s What We Know
“It’s almost impossible to imagine that ancient hominins would have ignored an eclipse, or not noticed,” University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks tells Inverse. What’s harder to guess — and more interesting to speculate about — is what the Neanderthals would have thought and felt when darkness suddenly swallowed the day.
Deepfakes raise alarm about AI in elections
What might have taken a studio budget and a production team to produce a few years ago can now be put together by everyday users with just a few clicks, said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And with the ubiquity of social media platforms, fabricated content can be widely spread, with few formal checks in place.
Obituaries
Marjorie “Margie” Flagel
Later in her career she worked both at the UW Medical School and the UW School of Veterinary Medicine doing medical transcription.
Shelley M. Lagally
She believed that further education would offer new opportunities and so she earned, with honors, an MA in Public Policy and Administration with a concentration in bioethics from The LaFollette Institute at UW and immediately accepted a position as a staff member in the office of the Health Sciences Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University. Shelley’s charm often won the day in vital ethics deliberations.
Esther Coopersmith, Washington Hostess and Diplomat, Dies at 94
She attended the University of Denver and later the University of Wisconsin.
UW-Madison Related
Patricia Coffey is a forensic psychologist who loves learning about what makes you tick
The forensic psychologist is a faculty member in the UW-Madison Department of Psychology. She not only teaches UW-Madison students pursuing their graduate degrees how to conduct court-ordered psychological evaluations or forensic assessments for those who have been charged with crimes — at times quite violent crimes; she also teaches an introductory psychology course at Oakhill Correctional Institution near Oregon, for which incarcerated people can obtain college credit.