Noted: Creativity can benefit from distraction too. Jihae Shin, now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found that when people played Minesweeper or Solitaire for 5 minutes before coming up with new business ideas, they were more creative than those who didn’t play.
Noted: James Kreul, founder and curator of Mills Folly Microcinema (and an Isthmus contributor), was also inspired by Kuchar, whom he met while attending UW-Madison. “Meeting George was a transformative moment for me, and began my journey exploring experimental film and video art,” says Kreul.
Noted: Simms is the editor of Settlin’: Stories of Madison’s Early African American Families, a collection of oral histories published late last year by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Simms, 74, grew up in Madison, attending the city’s public schools and later UW-Madison, where she received three degrees, most recently a doctorate in educational administration. She is 15 years younger than her sister, Delores Simms Greene, whose oral history is included in the collection. The age gap proved pivotal to how their respective lives unfolded.
Noted: Ableman’s Gorge State Natural Area, on Highway 136 north of Rock Springs, features a nearly mile-long L-shaped cliff of quartzite and sandstone. Nearby is Van Hise Rock, a 15-foot monolith named for geologist and former president of UW-Madison Charles Van Hise, who used the rock to demonstrate how rocks change when mountains are formed.
Their bond – built upon a foundation of faith, friendship and football – was born before they became University of Wisconsin teammates.
Quoted: “It’s unusual for the lake to freeze and open up, freeze and open up,” said John Magnuson, UW-Madison limnology professor emeritus and director emeritus.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison marketing professor Kevin Chung sees good reason for insurers to keep their names before the public. In a hyper-competitive insurance market in which consumers shop only infrequently, it’s very important for companies to be on consumers’ minds, Chung said by email.
That’s one reason why insurance advertisements — think of Geico — tend to be memorable and interesting, he said.
“With this being said,” Chung added, “there is no study in marketing that I know of that has convincingly shown that sponsorship via stadium naming rights led to increased awareness and ultimately to more sales in insurance products.”
Noted: In his speech, Evers gave a nod to retiring University of Wisconsin-Madison Band Director Mike Leckrone and praised the Wisconsin Idea, the UW mission statement that says the university’s purpose is to improve people’s lives beyond the classroom.
Quoted: Hemant Shah, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s journalism school, said the pattern is part of a larger trend where white people are overrepresented as victims and people of color are overrepresented as criminals in mass media.
Part of the problem is the lack of diversity in newsroom leadership, said Shah, who teaches courses about mass media, race and ethnicity. White journalists may be more likely to latch onto stories of white victims.
“There’s a social psychology at work where you relate more to your in-group than to your out-group,” Shah said. “You may see in a missing white girl something that’s more relatable: It could be my daughter, my neighbor, et cetera. Whereas with a non-white young woman you might not have that same visceral connection.”
Quoted: “We found that the addition of piperine significantly improved the bioavailability of resveratrol,” says Nihal Ahmad, a professor of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who has studied the effect piperine has on the body’s absorption of resveratrol.
Quoted: Adrian Treves, a UW-Madison professor who runs the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, says it’s difficult to say what effect these contests are having on coyote populations, because the state isn’t regulating them.
However, they have the potential to be devastating. “We suspect the worst — that a whole region is getting depleted of coyotes, as in a whole county area or broader.”
Interview with Phil Greenwood, senior lecturer at the Wisconsin School of Business.
Noted: The festival, which is backed by the University of Wisconsin, screens an average of 150 films per year over an eight-day span. The 2019 Wisconsin Film Festival is tentatively scheduled for April 4-11.
Noted: Hart Posen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, said Shopko couldn’t compete with huge retailers like Target, Wal-Mart and online giant Amazon.
Quoted: Jirs Meuris, an assistant professor of management and human resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said his research with truck drivers has shown that “financial worry is associated with a higher probability of a preventable accident.” And while “many air traffic controllers suppress their feelings of financial anxiety, this suppression actually makes people more error-prone as well because it takes cognitive effort to do so,” Meuris said.
Noted: Claus Andersen, assistant professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests the word’s mainstream appeal reflects the reality that nations have become increasingly focused on themselves in the past few years.
Quoted: While some see telemedicine as the the future of medical care in rural Wisconsin, the director of the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health said it won’t replace the need to bring more physicians to rural areas.
“Telemedicine is an important piece of the puzzle, but even more important is that physician or primary care person in the communities,” said Dr. Joseph Holt.
Noted: Mezrich is an associate professor in the division of multiorgan transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. He reflects on his experiences as a transplant surgeon and shares stories from the operating room in his book, When Death Becomes Life.
Noted: Once he arrived at UW, he studied some political science and earned a degree in sociology in 2014. He then went into Teach for America, where it became clear that education was going to be his venue for social change. But he knew he’d need more education for himself first.
Quoted: “The scientific literature is just beginning to tease that apart,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Matt Hirshberg, who works at the Center for Healthy Minds. “This whole area of research is really quite young.”
Jirs Meuris, assistant professor of management and human resources, is the guest.
Quoted: Jake Vander Zanden, a fisheries professor at UW-Madison, used to catch an occasional burbot in his youth while fishing on Lake Winnebago.
“It’s a species that people don’t really pay attention to, but it’s really a pretty remarkable fish,” Vander Zanden said.
Noted: Wisconsin’s love affair with booze dates to statehood. Milwaukee has served as home to some of the country’s biggest brewers, including Pabst, Schlitz, Miller and Blatz. The Princeton Review in 2017 rated the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the school with the most beer. And last year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released a survey in which one in four Wisconsin respondents reported binge-drinking at least once in the past month, the second-highest rate among the states behind only North Dakota.
Noted: On the contrary, two new companion pieces from Estanich titled “The Biggest Wail from the Bottom of my Heart” and “What Love Looks Like” enter uncharted territory for this decade-old company. Estanich — who splits his time between Chicago and Stevens Point, Wisc., where he is a professor of dance at the University of Wisconsin — approached this new work with a political bent, which, to my knowledge, he and this company have not done before. So, some of those oft-seen tendencies listed above anchor the evening, bringing some familiarity to the forefront and softening overt references to racial tension in America and, yes, even Donald Trump’s wall.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are looking to school districts such as Baraboo for insight into what it’s like to teach in rural areas and how to better connect university graduates to those schools.
Noted: She was located after Jeanne Nutter, who was walking her dog, heard a young girl yelling for help. “I’m just so glad that she’s safe,” said Nutter, who retired as a social worker with Child Protective Services but still works as an adviser to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s social work program.
Noted: Jirs Meuris, an assistant professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business, spoke to Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal about the financial stress that many federal workers could be feeling. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Noted: Jirs Meuris, of the University of Wisconsin Business School, explains why this cautious approach is even more important than it may seem. In a research paper last fall, he discussed studies showing that the more worried employees were about their personal finances, the more accident- and error-prone they were in their work.
Noted: Students are referred to the program by school counselors, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the UW Odyssey Project and Dane County’s neighborhood intervention program.
A 2-year-old collaboration aimed at increasing the number of Milwaukee Public Schools students who graduate from college has made incremental progress on at least some of its goals, including increasing MPS’ graduation rate and the percentage of students who apply for financial aid.
Conservationist Aldo Leopold, the author of A Sand County Almanac, and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were the pioneers of what today is called restoration ecology. The best-known restoration project at the UW Arboretum, Curtis Prairie, played a role in an Oscar-winning Disney documentary.
Could Wisconsin’s dominant victory over Miami in the Pinstripe Bowl lead to the departure of offensive coordinator Joe Rudolph? Miami coach Mark Richt announced his retirement Dec. 30, less than three days after UW’s 35-3 victory over the Hurricanes.
Quoted: With the recent unseasonably warm temperatures, it’s likely many stink bugs are awakening from their winter slumber. And that means stink bugs are among the top bug complaints now rolling into the inbox and voicemail of University of Wisconsin Extension entomologist P.J. Liesch.
“From their point of view, they want to hunker down in the winter and leave in the spring,” Liesch said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It might be 30 outside but if it’s a sunny day, it might get warm enough in some spots for them to get active.”
Noted: While milk prices were bleak to end the year, UW-Madison dairy analysts Bob Cropp and Mark Stephenson are optimistic that 2019 will be better, with only weak increases in milk production forecast and, hopefully, a resolution to trade issues with Mexico and China, which both are big buyers of U.S. dairy products.
Quoted: Another eminent scholar of forgiveness, Robert Enright, Ph.D., a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Forgiving Life, tells Thrive: “Forgiveness does not invalidate the quest for fairness. Justice and forgiveness should grow up together.” By saying he was sorry and modifying his behavior over the last decade, Toussaint says Hart has “balanced the scales of justice.”
Noted: During the ’80s, the difference in the number of women legislators who were Republicans and Democrats wasn’t big, said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who serves as director of the of the Elections Research Center. However, a partisan difference began to emerge after the first so-called “Year of the Woman” in 1992. Since then, women in the state Legislature have increasingly been Democrats.
Quoted: “The implications are huge,” Omar Ohrens, a postdoctoral scholar in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and lead author of a study on the findings, said in an interview.
Noted: After stints in Switzerland and Canada, Khorana found a research position at the Institute for Enzyme Research, a “vanguard of chemical biology” at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.
In was his decade-long stint here, he “helped to decipher how RNA encodes for the synthesis of protein,” the ground-breaking research which helped him land the Noble Prize in 1968.
Noted: While some donations can be used at a university’s discretion, many are given as part of an agreed-to plan. As one example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison landed a $100 million investment — one of its largest gifts ever — from electronics maker Foxconn. It calls for the creation of an interdisciplinary research initiative based about 100 miles from Madison, near the future home of a Foxconn plant. UW-Madison must match Foxconn’s gift to be assured the full amount from the company.
Noted: A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that the children the researchers examined who were in out-of-home placements consistently struggled with academics more than children in stable living situations.
Noted: Interview with Majid Sarmadi, a professor of textile science.
Noted: Nearly 19 percent of those 65 and older are working full time, according to Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Early retirees have helped Wisconsin’s rural and vacation communities, said Steven Deller, a professor and community development specialist with UW–Madison’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
Noted: Hart Posen, an associate professor of management and human resources, is the guest.
Quoted: “Everything just grinds to a halt,” said Mike Ballweg, a University of Wisconsin Extension agent in Sheboygan County.
The rules and policies to put the massive piece of legislation in place are largely written by USDA employees at many levels.
“And that’s a mad scramble. They really work hard to get all that in place as quickly as possible,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The shutdown is “coming at a bad time, for sure,” Stephenson said.
USDA isn’t “writing the checks or doing the things to get payments out to dairy farmers, corn and soybean growers. So that’s a problem,” he added.
Quoted: One divide has been evident in the state for years: the rural-urban split. It was most recently studied by Katherine J. Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and author of “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.”
“There have always been tensions between rural Wisconsin and Madison and Milwaukee,” she said. “What changed is now those tensions are on the surface and very obvious to people. I think Governor Walker, depending on where you stand, he either exacerbated that divide or he drew attention to some of the injustices a lot of people have been feeling for a while in rural Wisconsin.”
Quoted: “It’s always a little tough to tell exactly where rates are going to go in the near future,” said Clifford A. Robb, associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I do think 2019 will see a little bit more rate increases.”
Noted: Hawley, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, holds a master of fine arts degree from UW-Madison.
Noted: For his secretary of the Department of Safety and Professional Services, Evers chose Dawn Crim. She now assists Evers as assistant state superintendent for student and school success. Previously, Crim worked for two decades at the University of Wisconsin System in various rules, including assistant coach for women’s basketball and director of community relations for UW-Madison.
Noted: List includes Vel Phillips: A pioneer in civil and human rights in Milwaukee, Phillips’ career was full of firsts. She was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1951; in 1956, she became the first woman and first African-American to sit on Milwaukee’s City Council; she was the first female judge in Milwaukee County and the first African-American judge in Wisconsin; and from 1979 to 1983, she was the first female and nonwhite secretary of state in Wisconsin. Phillips died on April 17 at 95 years old in Milwaukee.
Noted: Deepak Shrestha went to school at UW-Madison, but the couple met in Nepal when he was home on summer break. They settled in Madison in 1988, and Archana says her family has felt “really welcome here.” She and her husband both work other jobs — he’s an engineer, she works for UW-Madison’s University Research Park. Adding a restaurant to the mix will keep them busy, but they’re up to the challenge. “We’ll see how it goes,” Archana says.
The Midwest doesn’t get much film representation. We’ve got Fargo (1996), 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake, and my favorite of 2017, The Bye Bye Man. Wisconsinite Michael M. McGuire, who attended UW-Madison, adds another Midwestern entry with his first feature film, Aquarians. Shot in various locations throughout Marinette County and Menominee County, the movie succeeds at portraying the harsh Midwestern winter as the desolate, isolated wasteland that it is.
“Three…two…one…engine ignited, and we have liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket and Dragon.”
On Dec. 15, 2017, Simon Gilroy listened to that countdown as he gazed across a river separating a mass of scientists from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida. He was a couple of miles from the site, but as close as you could get without being inside the rocket.
Noted: List includes “What We Were Promised” by Lucy Tan, who earned her master’s of fine arts degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: First, we hear from Aaron Bird Bear (assistant dean of student diversity programs) and Omar Poler (American Indian curriculum services coordinator) from the UW–Madison School of Education to discuss the tremendous success of the First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour.
For the second year in a row, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been ranked the No. 1 feeder school for the Peace Corps.
Noted:
The former Wisconsin School of Business dean who served one semester and then resigned amid a plan to discontinue the Master of Business Administration program will head the management school of Massachusetts’ flagship school.
Noted: The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory, located on the UW-Madison campus, also has been closed. Its employees include 60 research scientists.
Noted: Nordby’s professional life was in orthopedic surgery. He and his classmates graduated a few months early from the UW-Madison Medical School so they could help in the war effort. Nordby spent his time doing surgery in Okinawa, Japan, and in what is now South Korea. When he returned to the States in 1947, he began practicing at Madison General Hospital and later partnered with Dr. H. Lewis Greene in a private orthopedic practice.
Noted: After graduating from UW-Madison and declining to seek a third council term in 2007, King earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University and law degree from New York University, where he graduated summa cum laude.
