As a jazz archivist, collector, talent agent and longtime disc jockey, Gary Alderman has rightly earned his chops as Madison’s jazz renaissance man. So when he raves about the Isthmus Jazz Festival’s two-day lineup, fans can trust the solid endorsement.
Granted, Alderman is on the committee that helps select the acts performing at the Memorial Union Terrace for the 21st annual fest.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin System leaders are describing just how difficult it will be to furlough employees for up to eight days for each of the next two years.
UW System President Kevin Reilly said on Thursday that tracking employees’ furlough days will be a big challenge and the system’s aging human resources computer program might not be up to it. He said it’s one of the administrative issues that keeps him up at night.
The 11 a.m. start is becoming a Homecoming tradition.
For the fourth straight year — and sixth in the last eight — the Wisconsin Badgers football team will have a morning kickoff for its Homecoming game.
Highly regarded UW-Madison stem cell researcher Clive Svendsen is heading to Los Angeles to become director of the new Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute.
Svendsen, who is co-director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at UW-Madison, will start his new position on Dec. 1.
â??It was nothing lacking from Wisconsin,â? Svendsen said of his decision to leave UW-Madison. â??This was a remarkable opportunity. Really, there wasnâ??t much they could do to keep me â?? it was a very spectacular offer.â?
The city of Madison is poised to add another hoop for developers to jump through when considering new projects: how many car trips will be generated.
A resolution working its way through City Hall sets a goal of reducing the total amount of vehicle miles traveled here 25 percent by 2020. That could make it harder to build homes, offices or stores on the urban fringe where cars are the sole means of transportation.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday appointed a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire student to the UW Systemâ??s Board of Regents.
Aaron Wingad will replace UW-Madison student Colleene Thomas as a student representative. His appointment is effective immediately and will expire May 1, 2011.
Students faced with suspension, expulsion or criminal charges for non-academic misconduct could have legal representation during hearings at University of Wisconsin System schools, but students would be expected to answer questions on their own, according to a revised policy the Board of Regents will consider this week.
Journalist Thomas Friedmanâ??s hefty speaking fee cost him a chance at being chosen for UW-Madisonâ??s common book read program, Go Big Read.
His book â??Hot, Flat and Crowded,â? was one of five finalists for the programâ??s first book, but his fee of $70,000 â?? which has been the subject of some controversy of late â?? was too pricy for UW-Madisonâ??s budget, said Sara Guyer, interim director of the UW-Madison Center for Humanities and a member of the book selection committee.
Instead, Michael Pollanâ??s book, â??In Defense of Food: An Eaterâ??s Manifesto,â? was chosen by Chancellor Biddy Martin. Pollan was already scheduled to visit to campus this fall at a rate of $15,000, sponsored by a number of sources including the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Gov. Jim Doyle has tapped a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire student to join the UW System Board of Regents.
Doyle says Aaron Wingad will replace UW-Madison graduate student Colleene Thomas as the student representative on the 18-member board that sets policy for the UW System.
Highly regarded stem cell researcher Clive Svendsen is leaving the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become the director of the new Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute in Los Angeles.
The announcement was made in a press release put out by Cedars-Sinai.
Svendsen, who is the co-director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at UW-Madison, will start his new position on Dec. 1.
The City Council overwhelmingly passed liquor license suspensions for two downtown bars at its Tuesday night meeting, but not before a heated debate over the policeâ??s role in patrolling licensed establishments in the city.
Madison Avenue, 624 University Ave., and Ram Head Rathskeller, 303 N. Henry St., will have their liquor licenses suspended from July 1 to July 30, in addition to having several restrictions added to their licenses. Johnny Oâ??s, 620 University Ave., will also see several restrictions added to its license.
A report released Tuesday by the National Research Council shows that although females still are underrepresented in the applicant pool for faculty positions in math, science and engineering at major research universities, those who do apply are interviewed and hired at rates higher than those for men.
The report also notes that while women are underrepresented among those considered for tenure, those who are considered receive tenure at the same or higher rates than men.
Thousands of new University of Wisconsin-Madison students might be very confused on their first visit to campus, for good reason.
Road and building construction has turned the campus into a maze — not good news for visitors trying to find their way around during student orientation days that start Wednesday and continue through July.
Added to the mix of confused visitors this week are hundreds of athletes, coaches and fans descending on the university’s Nielsen Tennis Stadium for the state high school boys tennis tournament.
The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the Milwaukee 7 Water Council are joining forces to train students to work in water-related industries, officials announced Tuesday.
It’s called Mickioli – a waffle sandwich shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head, with a strawberry-yogurt filling. And if you see it on store shelves someday, you can thank a team of students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The food-development team, headed by new graduate Andy Renaud, is headed to Disneyland Monday to compete against five other universities’ teams in a product-development competition sponsored by Disney and the Institute of Food Technologists IFT.
A lawsuit filed against Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk by the family of Brittany Zimmermann has been dismissed.
Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi issued a ruling today saying the Zimmermann family cannot sue Falk or Dane County over an alleged lack of funding for the 9-1-1 center.
Brittany Zimmermann made a 9-1-1 call just moments before she was murdered in her apartment in April of 2008. The 9-1-1- operator did not hear any sound on the call and when the call was disconnected she failed to call back or dispatch police.
MADISON, Wis. — A Dane County judge on Tuesday dismissed elements of a lawsuit filed by the parents and fiance of slaying victim Brittany Zimmermann.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin campuses have made progress on plans to prevent and respond to mass shootings but budget problems will slow some of them, according to a new report.
Want to have a job once you graduate college? You might want to consider majoring in engineering, nursing or teaching.
….Technicians, machinist/machine operators and sales representatives have appeared all four years on the Manpower list, while engineers, drivers and laborers have appeared three out of four years.
In other words, there appear to be some good job options out there for those who don’t have an undergraduate degree from a four-year college.
It’s official: Catie O’Leary is a Badger. The All-State guard from Janesville Parker, who originally signed with Loyola (Ill.) but told The Capital Times in April she would change course and come to Wisconsin, has signed a national letter of intent with UW and was introduced by the school Monday.
O’Leary, whose 20.9 points per game average as a senior ranked second in the state among Division 1 players, will join the program this fall.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers continue to find evidence that shows there is no innate difference in the math ability of males and females.
“There is a persistent stereotype that girls and women are just not as good at math as boys and men,” said UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde. “And the data we have indicates that’s just not true. I really think it’s important to get that word out and to chip away at that myth.”
Hyde and Janet Mertz, UW-Madison professor of oncology, co-authored an analysis of data compiled on math performance at all levels in the United States and abroad.
Madisonâ??s Alcohol License Review Committee is recommending tough discipline for another troubled Downtown bar.
The ALRC on Monday voted 5-2 for a rare 30-day license suspension plus new license conditions for Ram Head Ratskeller, formerly Bull Feathers, 303 N. Henry St. The suspension, which would run July 1 through July 30, and license conditions that would require better technology to detect fake IDs, will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday.
Ram Head, owned by former non-voting ALRC member Richard Lyshek, is one of three campus-area bars to face license non-renewal hearings this spring.
The University of Wisconsin System released its annual accountability report on Monday. The system has put these studies out since 1993.
The document is basically a self report on a range of topics and issues. This year’s version is titled “Investing in Wisconsin’s Future.” The report will be presented to the UW System’s Board of Regents during meetings later this week at UW-Madison.
With costs threatening to detour millions of students off the college route altogether, itâ??s time to open the educational express lane.
Some American universities are planning to give more students a chance to graduate in three years rather than four. Graduates would still be saddled with a sizable student-loan boulder, but it would be quite a bit lighter.
Like many others interested in change, Colleene Thomas pondered whether to devote herself to working from within or outside the system.
“You can work against something you are concerned about — like joining the Sierra Club and protesting the Charter Street Power Plant,” says Thomas. “Or you can work through the system, maybe gain office and a position of power, and be able to impact policy that relates to the power plant.”
Jennifer Jenkins took a break between her third and fourth years of medical school to practice what is called “street medicine” with an organization in Pittsburgh. She made “house calls” on the streets, handing out medicine, socks and sandwiches. And she was glad to do it. Jenkins, 35, was once there herself.
“There’s nothing special about me,” says Jenkins, sitting in a cafe on Willy Street just days after graduating from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “You should see the resilience of the homeless people on the street.”
Piece by piece, a framework of research and development resources is being welded into place in the Milwaukee 7 region. The recent flow of news has been decidedly positive at a time when most economic news has been largely negative.
Unlike Madison, where academic research and development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the main engine, multiple players are bringing intellectual horsepower to bear on revitalizing southeastern Wisconsin. It is the region’s best hope for the future.
….While reading reports about the Joint Finance Committee’s actions late Thursday and early Friday, I noticed the following two tidbits and figured they were worth noting here:
*** First, jsonline.com is reporting that the committee signed off on $28 million in bonds for a School of Nursing facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
*** And the Wisconsin State Journal reported that the committee’s plan will make UW System research assistants part of existing unions for teaching assistants.
Dancers from across town and across the world kicked off Thursday what UW Dance Program Chair Jin-Wen Yu coined “the most exciting dance event in Madison history.”
Boy power! The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a group of students at the University of Chicago thinks the campus could focus a little more attention on men. So Steve Saltarelli, a junior from Lake Bluff, Ill., formed the student organization “Men in Power.”
The group’s Facebook page now has over 350 members — a nearly three-fold increase since the Tribune’s article on the group was posted late Wednesday. The Facebook page states: “Men in Power (MiP) is a gender advocacy organization founded in the University of Chicago that seeks to address issues and challenges that contemporary men face in the society, while also providing a pre-professional platform for its members.”
It’s going to get ugly out there, folks. No, I’m not talking about gas prices or Beltline traffic. Rather, it’s the looming fight over a shrinking pie.
As much as you wanted to think Wisconsin was going to cruise through this recession unscathed, signs are pointing to a long and painful road ahead. Government officials at the state and local level are now realizing they are going to have to make do with less, lots less.
Quoted: UW-Madison associate professor of business Jim Seward
Democrats on the Legislature’s budget committee approved new taxes and fees and billions of dollars in cuts to deal with the largest projected budget shortfall in state history during a marathon session that stretched into early Friday.
Two candidates with ties to the University of Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball program — North Dakota State assistant coach Will Ryan and Platteville assistant coach Jeff Gard — are among five finalists for the head coaching vacancy at UW-Platteville, the school announced today.
Asked by Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reporter Michael Rothstein about potentially playing the University of Wisconsin football team in a nonconference series, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said that he and Barry Alvarez have spoken but not about specifics. Here’s a link to Rothstein’s blog.
“At this time of year, everybody talks to everybody,” Swarbrick told Rothstein. “As you know, it’s a real Rubik’s Cube of trying to fit everything together. Would we be interested in playing Wisconsin? Absolutely. Great football tradition. Great school.”
A nutritious, mouse-eared waffle could win a team of UW-Madison students $2,500.
The student-created snack, called Mickioli, is a finalist in a food product development competition sponsored by Disney and the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association.
A Madison company founded by stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson has obtained an exclusive license with a New York medical school to turn stem cells into heart cells.
Cellular Dynamics International announced the deal with Mount Sinai School of Medicine on Wednesday.
….almost 3,300 UW football fans failed to renew their season tickets compared to zero menâ??s basketball fans. Not sure about you, but the only logical conclusion I can draw from Alvarezâ??s statements is the nationâ??s economic crunch is having a far greater impact on UW football fans than it is on UW basketball fans.
Of course, that makes no sense. If the sour economy is encouraging people to spend less of their discretionary income, it stands to reason that it would affect more than football. According to Alvarezâ??s math, thatâ??s not the case.
That makes his comments about weathering the poor economy seem a little less rosy and a little more like a convenient excuse for UW losing six percent of its general-public football audience.
….A decade after falling one faculty vote short of tenure at the UW-Madison Business School — a development that sparked a legal battle and a two-year hiatus to Bridgeport, Conn. — (Denis) Collins has settled into a position at Edgewood College.
The University of Wisconsin is in discussions with Notre Dame about scheduling a nonconference football series, athletic director Barry Alvarez said Tuesday in an interview on WTSO-AM/1070.
Alvarez told host Mike Heller that his talks with Fighting Irish officials have focused on a four-year window from 2012 to 2015.
“I haven’t told anyone else this, but actually I have talked to their athletic director about it,” Alvarez said. “There is a possibility.”
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders said Thursday that state aid for local governments and public schools will be cut 2.5%, and more than 1,400 state workers might have to be laid off to offset a recent $1.6 billion drop in tax collections.
Quoted: Laura Dresser, a labor economist and associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin-Parkside Teacher Education Program has allowed some students to student-teach without passing required tests or completing necessary field hours, an investigation by the state Department of Public Instruction has found.
As another comparison point to the MPS search for a superintendent, consider the search that led to Biddy Martin being chosen in 2008 as University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor.
That cost just under $140,000, not including the time faculty and staff spent on the search, said David Musolf, UW-Madison’s secretary of the faculty. The state’s public flagship university spent about $72,000 on a search firm, about $17,000 on advertising, roughly $38,000 for hotel expenses and the remainder on incidental expenses such as postage, printing, phone charges and travel expenses, Musolf said.
A former state Supreme Court justice and a commercial litigator from Madison are being recommended to President Barack Obama for consideration for a federal judgeship here.
Democratic U.S. Sens. Russ Feingold of Middleton and Herb Kohl of Milwaukee forwarded the names in a letter to the White House today to fill a vacancy in the federal court for the Western District of Wisconsin created by the retirement of Judge John Shabaz.
So many officers descended on Hoyt Park to join in the search for murder suspect Steven Weber on Tuesday that Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain lost count of the departments on the scene.
“That happens when you have an ‘all hands on deck’ situation,” DeSpain said, a day following the intense manhunt in the west side park for Weber, 49, accused of shooting and killing his ex-wife Francesca Weber on Saturday night outside her Fitchburg apartment.
ESPN is making changes that will boost ESPNU, the giant network told media buyers on Tuesday, Multichannel.com reported.
A massive manhunt for Steven Weber, suspected in the shooting death of his wife Saturday, ended Tuesday evening with the discovery by Madison police of a manâ??s body in Hoyt Park on the Near West Side.
(UW Police and other law enforcement agenices were also involved in the search. According to the paper’s print edition, Steven Weber was among a group of construction workers inured when a portion of the UW-Madison Pharmacy Building collapsed while under construction in June 1999.)
In 1931, Madison newspapers reported an ominous sign of the economic gloom that would lower like a fog over Dane County by the middle of the following year: a spike in the number of households evicted on Sept. 1, the city’s traditional “moving day,” for owing back rent.
Mentions that University of Wisconsin-Madison law school students help Madison police identify who the transients are and determine what resources it would take to help them help themselves.
Construction could start next year on a plan to convert the Charter Street heating plant from burning coal to burning biomass and natural gas, a state official said Tuesday.
Vander Blue has discarded his oral commitment to play for the University of Wisconsin menâ??s basketball team, but he made it clear that doesnâ??t mean he has completely ruled out playing for the Badgers.
The 6-foot-4 junior guard from Madison Memorial said during a news conference Tuesday that he wants to take “a step back and see what else is out there for me.
Thirteen months after committing to play basketball for the University of Wisconsin, Vander Blue says he isn’t sure which school he will eventually attend and he plans to take his officials visits in the fall.
Blue, a 6-foot-4 junior guard from Madison Memorial High School who generally is rated among the top 30 players in the nation for the 2010 class, made the announcement during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
“I feel like I made a decision prematurely,” said Blue, who was 15 when he gave UW a non-binding oral commitment after his sophomore season. “Now I’m more mature.â??.â??.â??.
University of Wisconsin officials for months cautiously projected a high percentage of their football fans would renew their season tickets for 2009, despite a struggling economy and a team coming off a disappointing 7-6 season.
The final numbers were released Monday and the 94% renewal rate left UW officials smiling.
By December 2013, the UW-Madisonâ??s Charter Street heating plant will be off its diet of coal and may start digesting wood chips, if state lawmakers approve a $251 million project.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of the world’s biggest research universities, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation one of its biggest technology transfer organizations, Gov. Jim Doyle said. The $150 million public/private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, along with the expanded tax credits, should help the state grow even more young, high-tech companies, Doyle said.
Two of the three finalists for UW-Madisonâ??s No. 2 job work in the universityâ??s School of Medicine and Public Health.
After a two month search, a 15-member committee has recommended three candidates, all currently employed by the university, to Chancellor Biddy Martin for the role of provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs.
The University of Wisconsin has announced the finalists for the position of provost.
Included are three internal candidates: Paul DeLuca, vice dean and associate dean for research and graduate studies at the School of Medicine and Public Health; Irwin Goldman, vice dean and associate dean for research at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and Richard Moss, chair of the department of physiology at the School of Medicine and Public Health.
Uncertainty about the availability and cost of biomass fuels makes Gov. Jim Doyle’s $251 million plan to overhaul a University of Wisconsin-Madison power plant somewhat risky, according to a report released Tuesday.
Doyle has proposed converting the coal-fired Charter Street plant, long a major polluter in the area, to run on cleaner-burning biomass fuels such as wood chips and paper pellets. His administration says it would be one of the nation’s largest biomass projects and the plan has delighted environmentalists.
By the winter of 2013, UW-Madisonâ??s Charter Street heating plant will be off its diet of coal, if state lawmakers approve a $251 million project whose details were released Tuesday.
In an opinion piece written for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E. Horton ask if it’s “possible that higher education might be the next bubble to burst?” At the very least, the commentary notes a few eye-opening stats and raises several excellent questions.
