Lawrence Berger, a University of Wisconsin at Madison associate professor of social work, has found that when the dollar amount of a person?s debt increases by 10 percent, depressive symptoms ? like not being able to shake the blues, feeling lonely, or having trouble eating or sleeping ? increase by 14 percent.
Saying he wants to give Wisconsin students the same opportunities he had, Milwaukee money manager Albert “Ab” Nicholas said Thursday he has created a new foundation with a $50 million endowment that will provide scholarships for selected high school basketball players to attend University of Wisconsin System schools.
Dr. Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that the electrical signals ? sight, sound and pain ? spreading across the brain create consciousness. During surgery, anesthesia stops the signals from spreading, making a person completely unconscious.
It was not research but the love of nature that led Wisconsin ecologist Aldo Leopold to pen his journals more than half a century ago, meticulously documenting the times of the year that plants bloom, mammals emerge from hibernation and frogs begin to sing.
Many of these words have more than five different definitions, in addition to five different spellings, depending on the region ? or even the region within the region ? from whence they came. To find out more about the Dictionary of American Regional English, the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a great website about the project.
Mentions that only four inaugural addresses cracked a list of the top 100 political speeches of the 20th century compiled by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A&M University.
Quoted: UW-Madison professors Bob Drechsel and Donald Downs.
A legislative committee will hold a hearing Tuesday as part of a probe of the University of Wisconsin System?s human resources practices after learning of the universities? overpayments of nearly $33 million for health insurance premiums and retirement benefits.
The Big Ten men?s basketball race is unfolding just as every analyst predicted: Unranked Wisconsin is alone in first place four games into the season.
Jerry Kaufman, a longtime UW-Madison urban planning professor and pioneer in the urban agriculture movement, will have a new five-story building in Milwaukee hosting a vertical farm named for him, it was announced today.
Here?s your chance to influence what an entire university community reads and discusses. The selection committee for University of Wisconsin-Madison?s common-reading program is seeking a book for the 2013-?14 academic year that fits the theme of global connections. Fiction titles are strongly encouraged.
Citing depression that “goes way back to childhood,” former Olympic runner and Madison-area resident Suzy Favor Hamilton confirmed Thursday that, until recently, she had lived a “double life” as a high-priced prostitute in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Chicago. The news of Favor Hamilton?s secret life was broken Thursday by the website The Smoking Gun.
In what will be music to the ears of the state?s prep football coaches, native son Ben Strickland will be a member of Gary Andersen?s staff at the University of Wisconsin. Strickland, who was elevated to full-time assistant in charge of the secondary prior to Bret Bielema?s final season on the sidelines, is a former Brookfield Central athlete who walked on with the Badgers and eventually became a team captain.
Saying that he was “grateful” and “humbled” to make Madison the next stop on his coaching journey, Gary Andersen was introduced this morning as the University of Wisconsin?s new football coach. Andersen arrived in the city on Wednesday but had his introductory news conference delayed 24 hours by Thursday?s snowstorm. The former Utah State coach was finally able to meet the media during a mid-morning news conference Friday at the Nicholas-Johnson Pavillion with his boss, UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez sitting proudly at his side.
MADISON, Wis.- Gary Andersen is Wisconsin?s new football coach. Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez made the announcement Thursday, and Andersen?s official introduction will come Friday morning. The 48-year-old Andersen just completed his fourth and best season at Utah State. The 18th-ranked Aggies finished 11-2 with a bowl victory over Toledo and won the Western Athletic Conference.
When Gary Andersen called him the other day, Ron McBride thought it was just to chat about something going on at Utah State. Then Andersen dropped the bomb, telling McBride he was going to become the head football coach at the University of Wisconsin. McBride couldn?t believe it at first. Some things just sound too good to be true, so it took a moment for the news to register with him.
Many UW-Madison students got a pass on final exams Thursday, accompanied by the chance to revive a traditional battle on Bascom Hill as a winter storm blanketed the campus with snow perfect for packing and pelting opponents. Exams and other normal campus operations were expected to resume Friday. Between 500 and 600 students turned out for the snowball fight between the Lakeshore dorms and the Southeast dorms, according to UW Police, who said the Lakeshore residents won the battle.
MADISON, Wis. -Two of the three men accused of attacking Wisconsin running back Montee Ball were accepted into the first-offenders program during plea and sentencing hearings Wednesday. Twenty-one-year-old Wendell J. Venerable and 22-year-old Robert A. Wilks were each facing a single count of battery. The felony charge carries a maximum penalty of 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.
MADISON (WKOW) — Two of the three men charged in the attack on Badger running back Montee Ball are scheduled for plea and sentencing hearings Wednesday.
The University of Wisconsin has selected Utah State?s Gary Andersen to be its next head coach. A source close to the UW football program told the State Journal on Tuesday night it is a done deal: Andersen is UW athletic director Barry Alvarez?s choice to succeed Bret Bielema, who left to become the head coach at Arkansas. The source said Andersen was going to inform his staff of his decision to leave on Tuesday night.
I was moved by a recent letter from a UW-Madison engineering professor questioning the generous financial package being awarded to UW athletic director Barry Alvarez while the school is being forced to cancel academic courses due to lack of funding. The irony is Alvarez was hired during UW-Madison Chancellor Donna Shalala?s era as part of her efforts to raise the profile of the athletic department. Shalala?s hope was that success on the athletic field would translate into increased support for university programs around the state. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred.
Wisconsin, we?ve still got a problem. Despite private businesses receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in grants, tax credits and other incentives since the 2007 recession, the state?s economy continues to sputter…The Center on Wisconsin Strategy in its latest “Wisconsin Job Watch” says the state remains down 161,000 jobs since the 2007 recession as well as lacking another 86,500 jobs needed to keep up with population growth since then….”It’s not just that we’re giving out so much money to business, it’s that our job creation remains so much worse than the rest of the nation,” says Laura Dresser, associate director of COWS, a liberal UW-Madison economic think tank.
A key legislator is asking state and UW-Madison officials to review the process through which a subcontractor was selected to build a new scoreboard and sound system at Camp Randall Stadium, to see if the jobs should be rebid. Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, chairman of the state Assembly?s Committee on Colleges and Universities, ?is very concerned with the appearance of how this bidding process worked out,? said Mike Mikalsen, Nass? spokesman.
Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), Madison, has agreed to license stem cell patents from GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Terms of the arrangement were not disclosed. GE Healthcare has had a long-term agreement, recently expanded, to license the stem cell technology developed by Geron Corp., a biopharmaceutical company in Menlo Park, Calif.
The Big Ten spent much of the year as a national punch line.It might get worse during bowl season.The Big Ten could only fill seven of its eight predetermined bowl slots ? and each of those bowl-bound teams is currently an underdog.
STEVENS POINT – John Evan Roberts, age 92, of Stevens Point died in his home at Oakridge Senior Living on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012. A service to celebrate his life will be held at ST. PAUL?S UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, Stevens Point, after the holidays.
The first big snowstorm of the season is ready to hit Madison, but that won?t stop local colleges from conducting final exams this week. “UW-Madison is open for business and finals are expected to be held as scheduled,” the UW said in a news release Tuesday. A caveat was added, however. “Any changes to campus operations will be announced on TV, radio, via social media and the university home page,” the release said.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez was so frustrated by the departure of so many assistant football coaches last week, he considered being the head coach next season at one point, just to halt the exodus.
A UW-Extension manager with a wealth of experience working with county government was named Monday as the next general manager of Wisconsin Farm Technology Days Inc. Matt Glewen, 56, who has worked for the UW-Extension for the past 32 years, said he is excited to lead an organization that must decide soon whether to continue to hold its show at a different county each year or create a permanent location.
Redshirt freshman quarterback Joel Stave was so intent on getting back on the field as quickly as possible for the University of Wisconsin football team, he sacrificed a good part of his wardrobe toward the effort. One of the hardest things for Stave after suffering a broken left collarbone against Michigan State on Oct. 27 was keeping his left arm motionless for the first few weeks, to help the bone heal.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. ? The contract for new University of Arkansas defensive line coach Charlie Partridge will be $350,000 per year. The contract released Monday shows it runs from Jan. 2 until June 30, 2014, and includes an automobile paid for by supporters of the Razorbacks athletic programs.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez was in northwest Ohio on Tuesday, presumably interviewing a potential head coaching candidate, multiple sources close to the UW football program told the State Journal.
An idea for a printable prosthetic hand, first dreamed up when Eric Ronning was bored during an entry-level freshman engineering course, has now been recognized with a national inventors prize for the UW-Madison junior, who?s also parlayed it into a start-up company. “I feel like you could change the world with this idea,” said Ronning, a mechanical engineering major from the Chicago suburbs, in a university release. “And that?s what keeps me going.”
Plea hearings for two men charged with an attack in August on UW football running back Montee Ball were delayed until Wednesday over apparent confusion about what was to happen at the hearings and whether Ball and his father wanted to attend.
From substitute teachers to cabinet secretaries, thousands of public employees in Wisconsin who retired in recent years returned to work, allowing them to earn both a paycheck and a state pension, according to a Legislative Audit Bureau report released Friday. And while many employees and employers like the arrangement, the system can be abused, the report found.
Your editorial last Sunday on UW athletics advances the antique idea that “amateur” collegiate sports should involve minimal investment and revenue. That probably worked a hundred years ago. Today, the greatest amateur athletic event ? the Olympics ? involves hundreds of millions of dollars in both investment and revenues. The editorial implies that institutions of higher learning, such as UW-Madison, really don?t need an athletic program. Former UW Chancellor Donna Shalala was smart when she realized the overall value of the athletic program to creating greater interest in and support of the entire UW System.
Almost 200 University of Wisconsin-Madison students gathered on Bascom Hill Friday to pay their respects to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. that took place earlier Friday. The vigil was organized by UW-Madison freshman Anthony Birch in response to the shooting of 26 people, including 20 children, by a gunman who entered the school and opened fire.
….If demand drives advertising and ticket prices upward, should college football refuse the revenue, which is considerable and, at UW-Madison, actually leaks back to the university? Railing against big bucks in college football provides stimulating reading and letter-to-the-editor yeast, but also a contemporary case of Don Quixote?s windmill tilting. Skip stressing over consumer behavior, since it only changes at the tipping-point of pricing (supply) and demand.
Last Sunday?s editorial, “College football running up its score,” raises important questions for higher education. These include dealing with the consequences of a financial arms race, the potential corruption of the institutions at stake, the death knell for traditional rivalries that have inspired so many fans to be avid followers ? look at what is happening to UW hockey ? and the incredible salaries now being paid to coaches that dwarf what even university presidents make.
During these austere times in the UW System, with diminishing state resources and grants and scholarships, it is judicious to question the fellowships and rewards received by athletes in high-profile sports such as football. The football program is currently flush with money and resources (it has not always been), due largely to Pat Richter and Barry Alvarez turning the program around. The lucrative funds from donors are retained within the athletic program and do not help support academic programs.
A. ?For the most part, Neanderthal genes are still with us,? said UW-Madison anthropologist John Hawks. ?If you look across enough people, much of the Neanderthal genome is represented in one person or another.?
A: By Sunday, Dec. 9, Milwaukee had gone 280 consecutive days without measurable snowfall (defined as 0.1 inches or more of snow). That set the all-time record long streak for no snow in Milwaukee?s weather history. By the time you read this article, the streak will have continued into its 288th day ? an amazing way to approach the end of a truly unusual, and in many ways, unsettling year of weather in our state.
At UW-Madison?s winter commencement ceremony Sunday, former Athletic Director Pat Richter cleared up one of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi?s famous quotes. ?He?s been misquoted as saying, ?Winning isn?t everything, it?s the only thing.? But what he really said was, ?Winning isn?t everything, wanting to win is.? There?s a tremendous difference,? Richter said during his speech to graduates at the Kohl Center.
UW interim chancellor David Ward started the graduation ceremony by asking for a minute of silence for the people of Newtown, Conn., two days after a massacre at an elementary school there.
Final exams began Sunday in Madison, and college students across the city are cramming for tests, typing out essays and downing enough caffeine to keep campuses buzzing. So to cut down on some of the stress their finals can cause, local schools are offering a little pampering, whether it?s with massages, free coffee or visits from therapy dogs….According to Rob Sepich, a stress management specialist at UW-Madison’s University Health Services, a small amount of stress can help students at finals time. Too much of it, however, can hurt their ability to concentrate and compromise their immune systems.
Karl Schmidt puts images in people?s heads. His vivid reading of great books across seven decades on public radio has seen to that. The thing is, Schmidt himself occasionally fixes on an image he can?t shake. One involved a longtime listener to the Wisconsin Public Radio “Chapter a Day” program Schmidt has handled off and on, mostly on, since 1941.
A contractor hired by the state to manage a $76.8 million renovation of Camp Randall Stadium agreed to accept a higher bid for a new scoreboard over a competing offer that an outside consultant advised was of better quality. The contractor, J.P. Cullen & Sons of Janesville, is a listed subcontractor on the winning bid, for which it stands to receive more than a half-million dollars.
From school janitors to cabinet secretaries, thousands of public employees in Wisconsin who retired in recent years returned to work, allowing them to earn both a paycheck and a state pension, according to a Legislative Audit Bureau report released Friday. The study found that 2,783 employees of the University of Wisconsin System and state agencies who had retired returned to work between January 2007 and March 2012. In addition, 2,599 retirees from local school districts, cities and counties also were rehired between January 2011 and March 2012, the audit bureau found.
A burglary suspect arrested Thursday night is facing more than burglary charges after a loaded handgun was found in his backpack, Madison police reported. Christopher Mason, 31, of Madison, was tentatively charged with burglary and being a felon in possession of a firearm, police said in a news release. A second suspect in the burglary that happened shortly before 8 p.m. in the 400 block of West Doty Street is still at large, police said. According to the release, a UW-Madison student sleeping on a living room couch woke up to find two strangers in his house.
There is plenty of uneasiness swirling around the UW football program these days. The uncertainty of who the next head coach will be and which of the current assistants might stay top the list for most players. Those players are trying to put all of their focus on the Rose Bowl game against Stanford on Jan. 1. But it?s hard for the non-seniors to keep from wondering who will be coaching them next season.
University of Wisconsin offensive coordinator Matt Canada has been offered the same job at North Carolina State under Dave Doeren, according to a source close to the UW football program. UW athletic director Barry Alvarez is high on Canada and was pushing to keep him with the program, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not cleared to speak on personnel matters.
The Wisconsin Technical College System has named its next president from within, promoting longtime administrator Morna Foy to the top job overseeing the state?s 16 technical college districts. Foy has been an administrator in the system since 1998. She?s been in her current job since 2005 as executive assistant and vice president of policy and government relations. She also worked in the Wisconsin legislative audit bureau from 1989 to 1998 as a program evaluation supervisor.
A large Downtown Madison Catholic church wants to convert a historic school building on its property into rental housing for college students, three years after a different housing proposal by the church hit snags and was abandoned. The latest proposal by leaders of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, 120 W. Johnson St., would turn the former Holy Redeemer School into apartments at an estimated cost of $4.2 million, according to Monsignor Kevin Holmes, Holy Redeemer?s priest….The student housing would be open to anyone but targeted especially for students of St. Paul’s University Catholic Center on the UW-Madison campus, Holmes said. St. Paul’s recently had to eliminate a student housing component to its proposed new building due to concerns over the building’s mass and height.
Journalists and politicians delight in telling us what is wrong with public education, when in fact they know very little about it. A case in point is Jonah Goldberg?s Wednesday column, a denunciation of historians? use of “left-wing” textbooks. I agree that left-wing historians can be boring, but I disagree when he suggests that history teachers use left-wing textbooks.
? Norman K. Risjord, history professor emeritus, UW-Madison
Of all the science behind astronomical events, I think the explanation for meteor showers is my favorite because it is so revealing of the dramatic goings-on in all of that inky space above us. And, despite the solid nature of the nuts-and-bolts science, it is an explanation not without whimsy….Now NASA, according to UW-Madison astronomer Jim Lattis, has announced a new meteor shower that coincides with the Geminids. The source of the new shower is Comet Wirtanen.
Dear Editor: The UW already pays its athletic director more than the average athletic director in the Big Ten ? in fact, he may be one of the few athletic directors who actually has a salary higher than what was paid the head football coach. Now Alvarez is going to pay himself an extra $217,000 for coaching the football team in the Rose Bowl (1/12th of what the departing coach made).
David Wilson, who left as chancellor of UW-Extension and UW Colleges in 2010 to become president at Morgan State University in Baltimore, is out of a job, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Wilson, the son of Alabama sharecroppers who went on to graduate from Harvard University, left his job in Wisconsin despite efforts by top University of Wisconsin System officials to keep him.
Twenty-four UW-Madison engineering seniors and graduate students who had enrolled in a mechanical engineering course in fluid power recently received an email that read, in part: “Unfortunately, due to budget reductions, the mechanical engineering department will not be able to hire an instructor for ME 545 for spring 2013.”
Dear Editor: Holy cripes, Ed Garvey! Attacking Barry Alvarez because he wants to be paid for his coaching is looking a gift horse in the mouth. We get to trade in a GOOD coach for a GREAT coach in an attempt to win another Rose Bowl!
A federal judge on Wednesday again rejected a civil rights lawsuit by Ralph Armstrong, whose conviction for killing a UW-Madison student was overturned in 2009. In September, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb rejected Armstrong?s lawsuit because he had sued the state of Wisconsin and not any of the people or agencies that he alleged had violated his rights.
The Wisconsin Medical Examining Board on Wednesday sanctioned 11 more doctors for writing questionable sick notes to protesters demonstrating at the Capitol in February 2011. The board reprimanded six doctors, who also took classes in medical record keeping or physical exams as part of their discipline. The board said the doctors provided the notes without adequate documentation. “It appears that the entire sick note writing episode is finally closed,” said Dr. Sheldon Wasserman, chairman of the medical board.
