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Author: jnweaver

The top business schools for high-paying tech jobs

eFinancialCareers

Noted: Wisconsin only ranked as the 42nd best overall business school in the U.S., with its compensation figures in other industries falling well below the $130k average for tech. For example, Wisconsin Business School grads who took a job in finance earned a median salary of roughly $90k, well behind the $150k average for Stanford and Harvard MBAs. But Wisconsin appears to be your best bet in the Midwest for a high-paying tech job. And tuition is only around $38k, half that of Harvard.

Killed hours before end of WWI, ‘peace seemed as far away as ever’ for Wisconsin soldier

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Among them was Marion Cranefield, one of the first Madison men killed in World War I. Cranefield was a University of Wisconsin-Madison junior when he joined the Army. He had tried to enlist the previous year to take part in the U.S. Army’s pursuit of Pancho Villa but was turned down because he was too thin. He wrote home from France, telling his family “it’s a wonderful country and worth dying for.”

Move like the wind

Isthmus

Standing on a skateboard for the first time in her life, Bing Sun radiates joy. She’s taking it slow as she coasts down State Street, but it’s still thrilling. “When I was young, this was not so popular,” says Sun, a native of China and a visiting scholar at UW-Madison. “Then I got married, had a daughter — I had no time to play.”

Red seawall mostly holds in Wisconsin

Isthmus

Quoted: Tammy Baldwin’s trouncing of Republican challenger Leah Vukmir in Wisconsin’s Senate race is also a bright spot for Democrats, says Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor.

“The Senate race reflects Tammy Baldwin’s hard work over the last six years in building a familiarity and a base of support around the state, and even identifying issues where she can work with Republicans and President Trump while still keeping her base in Madison and other Democratic areas,” he says. “That’s really been a masterful performance from an incumbent politician.”

Election Day live: Polls close in Wisconsin and the wait begins for results

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: UW-Madison officials were seeing steady traffic at campus polling places with no reports of significant delays or disruptions, according to campus spokeswoman Meredith McGlone.

By 2 p.m., the university had issued approximately 500 photo ID cards on Election Day to students who needed them to vote. That’s in addition to 7,928 issued previously.

Where the coyotes roam

Isthmus

Gentle hints of rain tap on yellow-leafed trees as a cardinal’s chorus echos through the forest like surround sound at the Lakeshore Nature Preserve.

Last-minute surprises, secretive moves hide Wisconsin lawmakers’ actions from public view

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Studies disagree about whether the credit spurred job growth, with University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor Noah Williams crediting it with creating 20,000 manufacturing jobs while the Wisconsin Budget Project cites federal statistics showing state manufacturing job and wage growth continue to be slower here than the national average.

UW-Madison math professor says the numbers prove it: Aaron Rodgers is better than Tom Brady

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has mathematically concluded what  Packer national already knows: Aaron Rodgers is a better quarterback than Tom Brady.

UW-Madison math professor Jordan Ellenberg — author of the bestseller “How Not to Be Wrong” — will make his numbers-crunching case for Rodgers in a pregame feature during the national broadcast Sunday of the match-up between the Green Bay Packers and Brady’s team, the New England Patriots.

8 classic Hollywood comedies with Wisconsin ties

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: “Back to School:” Rodney Dangerfield plays Thornton Meloni, a wealthy businessman who heads to college as an adult in the 1986 comedy “Back to School.” Meloni attends Grand Lakes University, but the school is a stand-in for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where many of the scenes were filmed.

Access for all: Shirley Abrahamson talks about fighting for opportunity and justice

Isthmus

Neither the Madison Club nor Union City, New Jersey, proved much of a match for Shirley Abrahamson.

Abrahamson, the longest-serving Wisconsin Supreme Court justice in history, told a packed room at the University of Wisconsin Law School on Oct. 19 how, as a young lawyer at La Follette, Sinykin, Doyle & Anderson, a group of lobbyists tried to take her out for a lunch meeting at the private club in downtown Madison. “We walked into the front entrance and were stopped,” Abrahamson recalled at the law school’s annual Robert J. Kastenmeier lecture. First the group was ushered in through a side entrance and then they were told women couldn’t eat lunch there.

China’s Richest 2018: Google Lessons Help Mint New Billionaire

Forbes

Colin Huang, founder of China e-commerce site Pinduoduo, made a big splash this year with a U.S. IPO that raised $1.6 billion. It made a less welcome splash soon afterward on complaints of alleged fakes among its potpourri of items (Pinduoduo says it is working to crack down on fakes ). Shares of the Sequoia VC-backed company stabilized, giving it a market cap north of $23 billion and leaving Huang, who owns 47% of the business, with an $11.25 billion holding that ranks him, at No. 12, the highest newcomer on this year’s rich list. Forbes spoke to 38-year-old Huang, a serial entrepreneur who started two businesses before setting up Pinduoduo in 2015, in Shanghai earlier this year about his days in the U.S. as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, work in Silicon Valley and China for Google, and business lessons learned. Excerpts follow.

Free-flowing ideas: “Displaced Horizons” is a multimedia work based on a fascination with water

Isthmus

Noted: The project started after Lundberg read William Fulton’s 1997 book The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles. The book details the early city’s critical need to seek water in other regions. “That opened my eyes to this huge re-engineering of water,” says Lundberg, who is studying at UW’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies while also pursuing a law degree. “I was fascinated by these gigantic systems that allow us to live and profit in these ways, but without seeing the infrastructure that make them happen.”

The Arb wins an Oscar: Well, it was back in ‘54, but it still matters

Isthmus

As UW Arboretum heads into the fall burn season, we rediscovered a piece sent to Isthmus by Thomas J. Straka, a forestry professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. While studying forestry at UW-Madison, Straka spent much time at the Arboretum and he wants our readers to know about the Arb’s role in the Oscar-winning documentary, The Vanishing Prairie (available at Amazon.com).

UW’s challenge: Why does the world-class research institution struggle to work with industry?

Isthmus

Noted: Part I in a series.

It’s a story that Madison loves to hear.

Two plucky entrepreneurs, Kevin Conroy and Manesh Arora, are hired in 2009 to revive a moribund health-tech startup in Boston. They have the temerity to move it from the best-known metropolis in the country for medical innovation to the much smaller Madison, where Conroy had run Third Wave Technologies. Their company had but two employees.

Joe Biden heads to Wisconsin to stump for Tammy Baldwin, Tony Evers

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Former Vice President Joe Biden will visit Madison and Milwaukee on Tuesday to encourage voters in the state’s most liberal areas to vote for U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Democratic candidate for governor Tony Evers.

Biden will stop first in Madison around 9:30 a.m. for a rally on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Baldwin, Evers and lieutenant governor candidate Mandela Barnes. He will then head to Milwaukee for a 2 p.m. rally at Laborers’ Local 113 at 6310 W. Appleton Ave.

The tight race for Wisconsin governor will be decided not by how many people vote but who votes

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “It’s such a wild card,” said political scientist David Canon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, referring to turnout trends in the Donald Trump era and the shifting motivation levels of voting groups on each side as they react to events (like the Supreme Court confirmation fight over Brett Kavanaugh) and the president’s lightning-rod rhetoric.

Five things to know about the $59.8 million Cedarburg schools referendum

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: For the 2018-19 school year, the district’s enrollment is 2,970, an increase of 33 students from the previous school year. That number is higher than what the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory (APL) projected in its study it completed for the district in June 2017. The APL’s projected number for the 2018-19 school year in its Residential Development Projections Model, located on page 26, was 2,950.

Transgender women share story after jury awards damages in health care suit against state

WISC-TV 3

Two women said they have their faith renewed in humanity and the justice system after a jury ruling earlier this week.

A jury of eight is awarding the two University of Wisconsin employees $780,000 in damages following a federal judge’s ruling saying the state can’t ban insurance coverage of transgender health care including gender reassignment surgery.

La Movida Honors Community Leaders at Annual Hispanic Heritage Luncheon Celebration

Madison 365

The Hispanic Achievement of the Year was presented to Leslie Orrantia, director of community relations at UW-Madison.

“This recognition is an honor. While I’m being recognized, we all know that it takes a village,” Orrantia said. “I have so much thanks and gratitude for my family for their unwavering support and encouragement. Education has been a profound part of my experience and has afforded me a snowballing opportunity. My family really grounded me – they gave me my history and they gave me my purpose and my aspiration.”

Education is the one issue both Scott Walker and Tony Evers are hitting hard in their campaign ads

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Given the history of Act 10, all the budgets cut to K-12 early in the Walker tenure, and with a somewhat more positive budget now for education and the governor claiming to be the ‘education governor,’ you knew the Democratic challenger was going to talk about (education) no matter what,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist David Canon. “Then, when the Democratic challenger is Tony Evers, the state school superintendent, it’s ready-made to have education be the focus of the campaign.”

New Film Explores Innovate Work of UW First Wave Students

Madison 365

“This is the type of learning that will light a fire in you. You learn more from the burning in your throat than all the time spent in limbo.”

Those words help kick off “Hip Hop U,” a documentary detailing the rise of hip hop in a college academic setting that is now available on the Wisconsin Public Television website. Hip Hop U, which premiered two weeks ago, tells the story of a one-of-a-kind academic program offered at the University of Wisconsin.