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August 21, 2024

Higher Education/System

New biohealth workforce training program aims to be ‘major catalyst’ for Wisconsin economic growth

Wisconsin Public Radio

A new workforce development program in Wisconsin will train 2,000 workers over the next five years in a growing sector of the health care industry.

The Actualizing Biohealth Career Pathways project is a partnership between Wisconsin technical colleges, universities and employers that want to keep up with anticipated demand in the field.

After declaring financial emergency, Alverno College lands $10 million gift

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

John Morgridge is the former chairman of Cisco Systems, and Tashia Morgridge is a retired special education teacher. They have a long history of donating to Wisconsin colleges and universities. Both of them graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and have given hundreds of millions of dollars to their alma mater for various causes, such as faculty recruitment and a new computer and data sciences building. They have also given money to Cardinal Stritch University — where Tashia earned a doctorate of education — before the university closed in 2023.

Campus life

Wisconsin Palestinians have felt isolated from politics. The upcoming election has made it worse.

Wisconsin Watch

University of Wisconsin-Madison student Reem Itani, 20, who was involved in the uninstructed movement in the April Democratic presidential primary, told Wisconsin Watch she felt “very unsafe” living under a Trump presidency, pointing to his administration’s 2017 travel ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which Trump called a “Muslim ban.”

State news

Wisconsin’s inmate population swells as other states limit incarceration and close prisons

Wisconsin Watch

Extended periods of supervision after release from prison do little to improve public safety, according to Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor of criminal law. The long terms “may interfere with the ability of those on supervision to sustain work, family life and other pro-social connections to their communities,” she wrote in a 2019 study examining 200 revocation cases.

“Fewer, more safety-focused conditions will lead to fewer unnecessary revocations and more consistency in revocation for people whose behavior poses a serious threat to public safety,” she added.

Athletics

Watch Wisconsin volleyball unveil another NCAA Final Four banner

Wisconsin State Journal

University of Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh and UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin led a countdown that ended in a big reveal Tuesday night.

Another banner is hanging from the rafters of the Field House, this one celebrating the Badgers volleyball team’s 2023 appearance in the NCAA Final Four.

Business/Technology

UW Experts in the News

Can Thousands of Huge Machines Capture Enough Carbon to Slow Climate Change?

Scientific American

The U.S. plans to draw down and store more than a billion tons of CO2 annually by 2050, more than one fifth of what it currently emits. For that to be possible, carbon removal would have to become one of the world’s largest industries in just a few decades, ex­­pand­ing by more than 40 percent each year. That’s far faster than most technologies develop—although it is comparable to the pace of solar panels and electric vehicles. “It’d be one of the biggest things humans have ever done,” says Gregory F. Nemet, a professor of public policy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who wrote a book called How Solar Energy Be­­came Cheap. “One of the hardest things we’ve ever done. But not unprecedented.”

Obituaries

Mary Jane Ayer

Wisconsin State Journal

She earned her nursing degree at Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul, her Bachelors degree 1959, Masters in 1964 and Ph.D. in 1966, all three at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Jane was a Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Education retiring in 1992.