Some day in the not so distant future, college football officials might no longer work for conferences, instead being part of a national organization.
That won’t eliminate blown calls, but it might help squash the perception that in nonconference games officials tend to give preferential treatment to the school that helps pay their salaries. It also could provide more consistent officiating across the country.
The state Building Commission Wednesday added $15.57 million to the Chazen Museum of Art’s construction budget, bringing the cost of the University of Wisconsin-Madison art, auditorium and classroom facility to $47.1 million.
UW System Vice President David Miller said the 50 percent increase was needed as a 2005 study of expanding the then Elvehjem Museum for an estimated $31.5 million didn’t include space for hallways, mechanical or storage areas.
A moment of silence to honor all who have fallen in armed conflict will be the central rallying point Sunday during Peace Day at UW, held in conjunction with U.N. International Day of Peace.
As the city approaches the state-issued quotas on liquor licenses for bars and restaurants, members of Madison’s Alcohol License Review Committee voted Wednesday night to take a closer look at the economic benefits of granting new licenses.
The committee formed a subcommittee that will address ways to maximize the economic gain of a license, including considering whether a license is necessary or merely beneficial to a business, reserving licenses according to geographical area to save some for developing parts of the city and reserving licenses for particular purposes, such as for major hotels.
A man who was found naked lying on a couch in the basement of the home of one of Madison’s elite power couples has been ordered to appear in court to face charges of criminal trespass to property and criminal damage to property.
Andrew D. Martin, 28, of 1334 Jenifer St., was found Aug. 27 in the basement of the lakeside Morrison Street home of Alan Fish and Susan Goodwin. Fish is associate chancellor for facilities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison while Goodwin is the chief of staff for Gov. Jim Doyle. Neither was home at the time of incident, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in Dane County Circuit Court.
The Dog Jog, a two-mile run/walk sponsored by the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine on Sunday, raised $29,000 to help care for homeless animals.
The money goes to area humane society and shelter organizations.
On the morning of Aug. 4, moments before he walked out the door to report to Camp Randall Stadium for the start of the University of Wisconsin football team’s preseason training camp, offensive coordinator Paul Chryst leaned over and gave his wife a kiss.
“See you at Thanksgiving,” he told her.
Robin Chryst laughed, even though she knew her husband was only half-joking. As she’s come to understand during her 17 years as a coach’s wife, that Monday morning marked the official beginning of a 16-week grind that will include 12 games, more than 80 practices and countless hours spent in meetings and watching film for Paul Chryst and his co-workers.
No one, including Bernard Siegel himself, pictured the day he would become a passionate advocate for the cause of stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
“As I often say, my 10th-grade biology teacher would really be surprised,” said Siegel, who is credited with spearheading the World Stem Cell Summit and related events, slated for Sept. 21-23 in Madison.
Even before he turned the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball program into a Big Ten powerhouse, William “Bo” Ryan had made a name for himself in this state as a highly successful, street-smart coach.
First at UW-Platteville and then at UW-Milwaukee, Ryan displayed a magnificent understanding of the dedication, resources and personnel required to build a championship program.
BARABOO, Wis. (AP) — A Libertarian Party candidate for Congress is charged with disorderly conduct after being accused of hitting his 13-year-old son. Kevin Barrett’s wife has also petitioned for a restraining orders that would prevent Barrett from having contact with her, the 13-year-old and an 11-year-old son.
….Barrett is a former University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer who taught students the government was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Barrett’s campaign manager, Rolf Lindgren, says the incident was a “bizarre publicity stunt cooked up by Dr. Barrett’s wife.”
UW-Madison will continue to be a major center of European studies for at least the next three years thanks to a $450,000 grant from the European Commission.
The grant, to the UW-Madison European Union Center of Excellence, was announced Tuesday. It continues funding the center through 2011.
Using engineered adult stem cells from bone marrow to deliver a growth factor directly to atrophied muscles, scientists at UW-Madison have successfully slowed the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — in rats.
The finding was published Tuesday in the journal Molecular Therapy.
Although it’s at a relatively early stage, the research offers hope that the process might someday provide a new therapy for people who suffer from the debilitating and fatal disease, which is caused by the progressive loss of motor neurons and their connections to muscles.
As part of a plan to create an arts hub on the UW-Madison campus, the “East Campus Gateway,” the School of Music has received $20 million from anonymous donors to build a performance center at the northwest corner of Lake and University avenues.
If all goes well raising the additional $18 million necessary to build the facility, School of Music director John Schaffer hopes to open within five years.
A state champion in golf at Madison Edgewood High School, Cody Strang was getting some attractive offers to play that sport in college. But then the offer came Monday that swept everything else off the table.
The collegiate push to get Sen. Barack Obama into the White House begins in Wisconsin Tuesday, with rallies planned in Madison and Milwaukee.
Rallies organized by Students for Barack Obama are scheduled at 7 p.m. in the Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus and at 6 p.m. in Union Ballroom West on the UW-Milwaukee campus.
Other kickoffs this week are at UW-Stout’s Memorial Student Center and at Reeve Underground at UW-Oshkosh on Wednesday, UW-Superior and UW-Green Bay on Thursday and Alverno College on Friday.
Sconnies wanting to ferment their knowledge about how their favorite brewskies are made will actually get to earn credit for it next spring, thanks to the second-largest brewery in the country giving beer making gear to UW-Madison.
MillerCoors is donating $100,000 in brewing equipment to the UW College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the keystone for a new brewing and fermentation course to be offered for the first time in the spring semester.
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials held a news conference Monday to unveil new exterior architecture renderings for the $82 million South Campus Union.
The new building is scheduled to open in the spring of 2011, in time for the National Science Olympiad being hosted by UW-Madison in May of that year.
The University of Wisconsin’s non-conference football schedules continue to be a hot topic of conversation.
Coach Bret Bielema on Monday added to the discussion when he suggested that UW was close to moving a future road game to a neutral site. The two closest venues are Lambeau Field, which was the site of a UW menâ??s hockey game in 2006; and Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears
The Western Collegiate Hockey Association referee whose error denied the University of Wisconsin a tying goal in a game last season remains on indefinite suspension as a new season approaches.
The league quietly suspended Randy Schmidt last season after his incorrect interpretation of a video replay at the end of the Badgers’ Jan. 11 game at Denver.
There is an elephant in the room, and I don’t mean the GOP. I’m referring to an issue that looms large in America’s future but is presently being overlooked by both presidential candidates: the significant decline in the percentage of Americans earning degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the proportion of students obtaining STEM degrees from American universities has dropped from 32 percent to 27 percent over the past decade. At the same time, the percentage of non-American students earning these degrees from American universities has increased dramatically.
(Bill Costello is training director of Making Minds Matter, Bowie, Md., and teaches parents and teachers the best strategies for educating boys.)
Millions of young Americans are off to college, and many will rely on those institutions for health care. But that reliance might be misplaced, because our college health systems are gravely ill. Unless colleges address widespread problems with insurance coverage, students risk being one disease or accident away from losing the potential for getting the education they are paying for.
(Bryan A. Liang is professor of law and executive director of the Institute of Health Law Studies at California Western School of Law in San Diego. This column first appeared in the Baltimore Sun.)
Five hundred dogs barked, howled, growled, whimpered, ran, sat, panted, sniffed and greeted each other with varying degrees of friendliness.
It was the 25th annual Dog Jog, put on by the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine to raise money for humane societies in the area with registration fees and pledges.
The dogs brightened a cloudy, drizzly Sunday morning with their exuberant energy and varied sizes, shapes and personalities.
Cold weather and the threat of rain didn’t keep more than 1,000 people from experiencing Thai food and culture at Olbrich Botanical Gardens Sunday afternoon for Thai Fest.
The event is hosted by the Gardens as well as the University of Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin Alumni Assocation, the Royal Thai Consulate General in Chicago and the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Throughout the afternoon, various groups of Thai performers showcased traditional dance, music and even a practice wedding ceremony.
Lopsided victories over Akron and Marshall left the University of Wisconsin with a 2-0 record but did little to answer several nagging questions about Bret Bielema’s third UW team. Consider most, if not all, of those questions answered.
UWâ??s 13-10 victory Saturday night over a Fresno State team ranked No. 21 in the national polls and determined to make a statement to the nation, in front of a raucous crowd of 42,387 that roared long before kickoff, showed that the Badgers cannot be overlooked as a Big Ten Conference title contender.
Most rural Americans never knew Calvin Beale, but he knew rural America.
Beale, who died earlier this month at age 85, was a rural demographer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one federal bureaucrat among the millions who help administer the country. He was on the job in two federal agencies for more than 61 years, around a quarter of the history of the United States.
Wisconsin was close to his heart – he received a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was in the state, mid-1950s, where he became involved in a controversy over a survey of farmers. Beale said the survey showed the number of farms was dwindling, and he included the information in a published report. A senior official attempted to quash the document, he said.
John Wiley, former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked so hard to connect the university to the business life of the state that it was disheartening to see him leave on a sour note.
Wiley loves the university, and he loves the state. His expectations were so high, perhaps, that frustration was inevitable.
….Waite will celebrate his 500th career victory if the 14th-ranked Badgers (5-1) defeat Central Michigan (5-1) during their home opener at 7 p.m. Friday at the UW Field House. That’s a milestone attained by a select few coaches, all of whom share a special talent of reaching out to young athletes and teaching them a sport they love.
Ask any of Waite’s current or former players what makes him special, and they all mention his easygoing demeanor, his consistent approach and personal touch.
Audience members who came last Friday to the packed University of Wisconsin-Madison Cinematheque screening of “Singin’ in the Rain” found two new items in this Vilas Hall screening room.
One was a giant carrot cake, there to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Cinematheque series, which brings classic, foreign and independent films to town that wouldn’t otherwise even screen at arthouses like Sundance or the Orpheum.
The other new thing was a donation box.
….Today, the United States is tangled in a triple knot: a shaky economy, battered by volatile energy prices; world politics weighed down by issues of energy consumption and security; and mounting evidence of global climate change.
Building on the wisdom of Vannevar Bush, I believe we can address all three problems at once with dramatic new federal investment in energy research and development. If one advance could transform America’s prospects, it would be ready access, at scale, to a range of affordable, renewable, low-carbon energy technologies — from large-scale solar and wind energy to safe nuclear power.
Sangtae Kim, who currently serves as a professor of both mechanical and chemical engineering at Purdue University, was named the executive director of the new Morgridge Institute for Research — the private half of the twin Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Kim, who served as the chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at UW-Madison from 1995-97, will begin his duties as leader of the Morgridge Institute on Oct. 1.
On the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, several student organizations at UW-Madison joined Thursday as part of an effort to honor and remember the victims.
“So many people forget what happened and forget the meaning of what happened, and we’re just trying to help people remember and memorialize those victims,” said Sara Mikolajczak, chairwoman of the University of Wisconsin College Republicans, the lead group in organizing the 9/11 event on campus.
A 51-year-old UW-Madison staff member escaped injury Thursday night after being mugged by two men outside Bascom Hall on campus.
UW-Madison police said the incident happened at 9:45 p.m. near the southwest corner of the university’s main administration building on top of Bascom Hill at 500 Lincoln Drive.
The staff member struggled with the two suspects, who implied they had a weapon, but the suspects fled on foot without getting any money from the victim.
The home in which Brittany Zimmermann and her fiance, Jordan Gonnering, were living at the time she was stabbed to death in April was lacking in security, and her boyfriend had complained to the management firm about the lack of secure doors and locks, according to a lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court by Zimmermann’s parents.
Carolyn “Biddy” Martin visited The Capital Times recently to talk about her new job as chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Madison.
(Watch video clips of her visit.)
Sitting in his State Street studio, Robert Schultz smiled as he described his upcoming showing at the Chazen Museum of Art as “hometown boy makes good.”
Schultz graduated from Madison West High School in 1971 and attended University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1971-76 and again from 1978-81, earning a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in art. Now Schultz’s work, mostly black-and-white human figure drawings in graphite, is featured in galleries in Los Angeles and Chicago (Koplin Del Rio and Printworks Gallery, respectively). An exhibition of his sold work assembled from collectors opens Sept. 20 at the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW-Madison campus.
The fifth annual Madison World Music Festival, which starts Friday, Sept. 12, and runs over 10 days, is the biggest and most spread out it’s ever been. The festival will mainly be staged at the Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St. — outside on the Terrace, if weather permits — but other venues will include The Annex and the Willy Street Fair.
And best of all, it’s free, although donations are encouraged to keep the festival going into the future.
Mentions two events today at UW-Madison.
As with any lottery, the odds were stacked against Matt Chakmakian when the University of Wisconsin freshman applied for student football tickets.
But his number came up, and last Saturday he had a wristband placed on his arm that confirmed his place among the faithful in Section P at Camp Randall Stadium for the Badgers’ game against Marshall.
That scenario irks some upperclassmen, and not just that a freshman was standing in the formerly upperclass-only Section P.
If the Big Ten Network doesn’t broadcast enough Big Ten sports for you, it’s about to provide even more via its Web site.
BTN announced Wednesday that it would expand its Web streaming initiative to include more than 100 events, many of which would not otherwise be produced.
While some conferences charge a fee, the games streamed on www.BigTenNetwork.com will be free, the network said.
The Krispy Kreme doughnut truck thief is in trouble again.
Warren G. Whitelightning, 36, was taken to detox early Wednesday morning and will face charges on several outstanding warrants from Dane and Marathon counties after being found in the same car driven by a woman arrested for a seventh drunk driving offense.
Whitelightning was arrested Nov. 24, 2007, after leading Madison and UW-Madison police on a variable-speed chase on University Avenue after he stole a Krispy Kreme delivery truck from an Open Pantry parking lot.
Dear Editor:
I am a Fresno State graduate and I will attend the Fresno State/Wisconsin game. Whatever the final score, I wish to thank the Badgers in advance for coming to Fresno and playing in a stadium that some teams (in-state and out-of-state) don’t want to play in. Some have even backed out on their word to play a return game. I’m looking forward to an exciting game and wish both teams the best.
Miguel Lopez, Reedey, Calif.
After nearly two decades of preparation, dozens of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists and engineers are eagerly anticipating Wednesday’s scheduled startup of the Large Hadron Collider — billed as the largest physics experiment in history.
This $10 billion endeavor is a collaboration of thousands of scientists and engineers from around the globe, and is expected to eventually revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
“We are taking another step in the exploration of the world around us,” UW-Madison physics professor Wesley Smith, who is directly involved with the project, wrote in an e-mail to The Capital Times. “Since people first walked on Earth, each generation has learned more about the world and passed this knowledge on to the next. Each gain in understanding has resulted in substantial dividends in technology, many completely unpredictable except that they have always followed these gains in understanding.”
For anyone who attended college before the era of e-mails and the Internet, the notion that bulky textbooks could someday become obsolete might seem ludicrous.
Yet with a wealth of information on virtually any topic now readily accessible online, more people are starting to ponder if these hefty staples of education will remain relevant.
Two young men walking along Breese Terrace early Sunday morning were beaten, one quite viciously, after one of the two accidentally bumped into another man who was in a group on the sidewalk.
The attack took place at 12:30 a.m. in the 100 block of North Breese Terrace, along the west side of Camp Randall Stadium.
A caller to Madison police said she overheard someone walking by saying he had just severely injured someone, but police responding to the area couldn’t find a victim. At 1:30 a.m., a man was carried by two other men into a local hospital.
Some 1,200 lucky freshmen enrolled at public universities and colleges in Wisconsin this fall will get a pleasant surprise in the mail next month.
Theyâ??ll be the first recipients of scholarships from the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars, a private, nonprofit foundation created by a donation of $175 million from philanthropists John and Tashia Morgridge last year.
Wisconsin is the second-best “bicycle-friendly” state in the country, according to the first annual ranking of states by the League of American Bicyclists. The Badger State was nosed out by Washington, with Arizona third, Oregon fourth and Minnesota fifth.
States were ranked in six areas using 70 factors, including bike legislation, policies and programs, infrastructure, education and encouragement, evaluation and planning, and enforcement.
The three young people killed in a car accident late last month on Madison’s west side were remembered for their sparkle, their hard work, their excellence and their quirky personalities during a UW-Madison memorial service Monday night.
About 40 people gathered in the Red Gym to pay their respects to the friends and families of Lindsey Plank, 23, Dan Myers, 22, and Rick Putze, 22, who died when the car they were in crashed into a tree on South Midvale Boulevard between Mineral Point Road and Regent Street Aug 27.
This would be Teach for Americaâ??s first effort in Wisconsin, although the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been an active source for participants. Steve Mancini, a spokesman for Teach for America, said 250 UW-Madison students applied and 55 were accepted into Teach for America this year. In addition, 11 Marquette University graduates are beginning work this fall.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department (UWPD) has a new, high-tech answer to the decades-old problem of campus bicycle thefts. In May 2008, the department began placing bikes equipped with GPS units in places around campus where other thefts have been reported.
The program, created by Police Officer John Deering, is showing positive early results. From January 2007 to May 2008, the UW-Madison police took reports of a total of 100 reported bike thefts. During the 2007-2008 academic year, only one person was arrested for a bike theft.
With the GPS program in place, 16 arrests had been made between May and August 1.
Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton and UW-Stevens Point are organizing a climate change summit at the university in December.
Lawton is asking municipal leaders across the state to assemble regional teams that will gather in Stevens Point on Dec. 12 to create a framework for regional and local responses to global climate change.
“This summit is designed to give local leaders the tools they need to address energy independence and climate change together,” Lawton said in a written statement. “We will develop a powerful statewide solutions network.”
Twenty-one fans were ejected from Camp Randall on Saturday as the Wisconsin Badgers routed Marshall University’s Thundering Herd 51-14.
Eight people, four of them UW students, were cited for underage consumption of alcohol. One also was ticketed for throwing hard objects, according to UW-Madison Police and Security.
UW-Madison students and staff, family and friends are invited to the Red Gym on campus Monday night for a campus memorial service for three students killed Aug. 27 in a car crash on Madison’s west side.
The service for Lindsey Plank, Dan Myers and Richard Putze will be at 8 p.m. in the historic facility located at 716 Langdon St. on campus just east of the Memorial Union.
The service is being coordinated by University Religious Workers in cooperation with the offices of the dean of students. Attendees are invited to share stories and reflections about the lives of the three students. Dean of Students Lori Berquam is also expected to speak at the service.
Minutes after they had dismantled an overmatched Marshall team, Bret Bielema and the University of Wisconsin players already had Fresno State on their minds.
Bielema noted in his postgame remarks, before he took his first extended pause, his eagerness to face the No. 21 Bulldogs this week.
Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor
The state’s new commerce secretary, Richard Leinenkugel, must navigate a political climate that lacks consensus on how much – if anything – the state should spend on incentives and subsidies to attract and retain businesses. That discord impedes the work of the 3-year-old Milwaukee 7 economic development agency, the M-7 conceded last week.
That disunity came to the surface last month when John Wiley, the outgoing chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote a scathing criticism of the state’s ideologically split political landscape, which has stalemated tax and economic policy. Asked in an interview Friday what sort of economic climate Leinenkugel inherits, Wiley replied:
“The climate in Wisconsin is bad for a lot of reasons but the worst is the political partisanship,” he said.
Joe Norwick, the embattled director of Dane County’s 911 Center, has resigned effective Sept. 19.
Norwick came under heavy criticism this summer following the revelation that the 911 Center had received a call from Brittany Zimmermann just prior to her murder on April 2. Although the call came in, it was disconnected, and dispatchers did call back, so police were not dispatched to Zimmermann’s apartment on Doty Street until after her death. There have been no arrests in the case.
This Friday night, Cinematheque celebrates its 10th Anniversary with a screening of the classic Singin’ in the Rain, shown in its original 35 mm format.
Manning the projector for Cinematheque is Mike King, a recent transplant from Chicago who got hired earlier this summer as an associate academic curator (which is basically fancy job-title-speak for “projectionist,” although he’ll be involved in some programming as well).
A Doty Street resident who lives about a block from where Brittany Zimmermann was murdered earlier this year, was arrested Wednesday after he allegedly threatened to shoot into neighbors homes.
Paul C. Schultz, 39, of 416 W. Doty St., was charged with disorderly conduct after he made several statements to his next door neighbors at 418 W. Doty St. that he was going to “shoot you through the walls with hollow points,” referring to a bullet that expands upon impact.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher contributed to a new study that bolsters the theory that global warming might be contributing to stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean over the last 30 years.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, was led by Florida State University geography researcher James Elsner, with UW-Madison research scientist James Kossin and FSU researcher Thomas Jagger contributing.
Five months after University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was found dead in her West Doty Street apartment, a $5,000 reward fund has been created in the hopes it will lead someone to come forward with information regarding her death.
An emotionally charged message written by Brittany’s parents, Kevin and Jean Zimmermann, and read by her aunt, Kim Heeg, at a news conference Thursday morning said: “The past five months have been agonizing and today we still have no answers as to who took our daughter from us. … The days since Brittany’s death have been very dark and we are desperate to find justice for our daughter.”
