LAST WEEK was pretty special for Joe McBride, a Wisconsin native who studied film at UW-Madison in the late 1960s and in 1970 went west to interview the great director John Ford.
McBride spent an hour with Ford, or, I should say, spent an hour in Ford’s company. As a film scholar, McBride has actually spent decades with the famed director of such classics as “The Searchers” and “Fort Apache,” and the association may have peaked last week.
University of Wisconsin-Madison is the No. 1 public school for research spending, top-rated in many academic fields and often a winner in athletics.
But its next leader’s compensation will not be near the top of any chart.
The search for a chancellor to lead Wisconsin’s flagship university could be hindered by a relatively low salary at a time when compensation for higher education leaders is rising, experts say.
While some universities have viewed Facebook.com with suspicion, the University of Wisconsin athletic department is using the popular social networking site as a tool to grow its student fan base.
The department has set up a profile page for Bucky Badger, and uses the site to post news — like information about the upcoming Outback Bowl — and pictures from various sporting events. For those who link to “UW Badgers” as a friend, they can occasionally score free tickets to some games, like Friday’s UW women’s basketball game at the Kohl center.
MADISON, Wis. — While area residents braved traffic slowdowns and dug out from still more snow on Tuesday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band proved that playing in the snow isn’t just for children.
Prepping for the Badgers appearance at the Outback Bowl in sunny Florida in January, the marching band practices three days during the week. On Tuesday, the band was practicing in the snow for about an hour. The band was practicing its routine for the bowl game on a snow-covered Waisman Center soccer field. The snow is a foot deep in some parts, WISC-TV reported.
A study led by a UW-Madison anthropologist has found that human evolutionary change, driven by huge population growth and cultural shifts, has moved much faster in the past 40,000 years than formerly believed, and even faster in the last 10,000 years.
The findings by a team led by University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks are making headlines around the world. They counter a common theory that human evolution slowed to a crawl in modern humans, who had conquered nature, were living longer and had an easier life.
If, as expected, Gov. Jim Doyle signs the bill preliminarily passed by the state Assembly to provide emergency contraception to rape victims, it will be the first time in a decade the state has significantly expanded access to birth control.
“This was the first breakthrough,” Lisa Boyce, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said in an interview about Tuesday night’s vote.
Dear Editor: The granting of an alcohol license to the proposed Field Pass restaurant and bar frustrates the effort to control alcohol consumption downtown.
The Field House will be sited in a complex that includes student housing, and across the street from the southeast dorm complex. I couldn’t think of a worse location. Alcohol establishments should not be placed in the middle of student housing.
Even with the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, you don’t hear much in presidential candidates’ stump speeches and broadcast debates about the arts.
That’s not the way that Caroline Levine thinks it should be.
Levine, who teaches English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently published “Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts.”
When the three other senior class officers charged with picking a University of Wisconsin commencement speaker told Gestina Sewell they wanted ESPN personality Scott Van Pelt, the history major and self-professed “film geek” had just one question:
Who?
“I had to be educated on who this guy was,” acknowledged Sewell, the senior class president. “I’m not exactly a sports person, but all three of my fellow officers are. And they were excited about the guy.”
At first, Scott Van Pelt was incredulous, stunned, flabbergasted. And, then, he was just numb. Why would the University of Wisconsin want an ESPN sports anchor — a self-described “bald-headed guy who talks about sports at midnight” — to address graduates at Sunday’s commencement exercises? The more he thought about it, the more weird it felt. Rationalizing that such speakers are usually politicians, Hollywood actors or rock stars, he wondered if he wasn’t being “Punk’d” by MTV’s hidden cameras. “I kept waiting for someone to show up and say, ‘They really don’t want you to do this, ya dope,'” Van Pelt admitted.
The effect college students will have on the Iowa caucuses is more of a wild card than in years past because they will occur during winter break. Campaigns are not taking any chances and are heavily courting the student vote.
“Bear in mind, we have presidential candidates walking around the campus more often than we see custodians,” says William F. Woodman, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University. “I’ve seen an awful lot more student involvement and attendance at these things, anecdotally, than I’ve seen in the past.”
The status of University of Wisconsin freshman Aaron Henry for the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1 appears, at best, uncertain.
Despite another city snow emergency and several school cancellations in surrounding areas, business continued as usual at UW-Madison during Tuesdayâ??s five-inch snowfall.
UW-Madisonâ??s Roman Catholic Foundation filed a motion against the university Monday claiming it determined money distribution based on the groupâ??s religious ties.
Specifically, the complaint asks UW-Madison to not use the groupâ??s religion in deciding funding, to treat RCF-UW like any other registered student organization and to reimburse $39,000 in costs university officials said they would cover in the groupâ??s budgets, but later retracted.
Despite heavy snowfall in the Madison area Tuesday, the University of Wisconsin remained open.
When University of Wisconsin sophomore Caitlin Kuck took the Route 85 bus to arrive early to class Tuesday, she expected to escape the snowstorm that struck Madison.
But what would have otherwise been a regular bus ride turned out to be quite frightening, she said.
The University of Wisconsin decided Tuesday to cover nearly $1,300 in safety fees recently charged to a student group.
For any criticism you might hear about the university police, the department has received a low number of formal complaints over the past three years.
What we need to do as a university and a community is quit the posturing and rhetoric. Quit the debating about the necessity of diversity education programs or positions promoting diversity and campus climate. Quit focusing too much on recruitment and start focusing on retention. We need to quit talking, quit stalling and Just Bust.
The University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team has had more than its share of weather-related scheduling nightmares this season, but tonight won’t be one of them.
The Badgers’ game tonight against UW-Green Bay will go on as scheduled at 7 p.m., athletic department spokesperson Tam Flarup said today.
The Phoenix are already in town, as are the game officials, and in that event the game always is played, Flarup said.
Dan Trainer was in the front row last month when they named a building for him. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s College of Natural Resources building bears his name today, in honor of the man who oversaw the process of building the largest undergraduate natural resources college in the country.
Hundreds were on hand to congratulate Trainer and his wife, Betty. No one will regret being there, especially since Trainer died in his sleep over the weekend. He was 81.
Kelvin Sampson is 52. But the Indiana men’s basketball coach dated himself and a percentage of his listening audience Monday on the Big Ten teleconference. Addressing the impact that material things, like new practice facilities, can have on Generation X prospects, Sampson pointed out, “Every kid we’re recruiting today was born in 1990. A lot of the things that we appreciate about tradition and history, for these kids” — pause and sigh — “for a lot of these kids, tradition is an Xbox, or 100-inch flat screen.”
Each of the league’s coaches had his own spin on this particular theme question, from Purdue’s Matt Painter (“When recruits come in, that’s one of the first questions: ‘Where’s your practice facility?’ “) to the University of Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan (“With their AAU teams, when they’re 13, 14 and 15 years old, they’re being told that they can get better uniforms, more shoes, travel better … so these young men are not making decisions in college for the first time.”) to Michigan State’s Tom Izzo (“If you’re picking up a nice date in college and you come in a Chevette or a Corvette, who’s she going to want to go with?”).
….Respect for his many accomplishments, as well as a recognition of his missteps, should guide members of the UW Board of Regents as they seek a successor….
Wiley’s achievements are significant. Under his leadership, the university has expanded its role as a center of research and scientific advancement that has few public or private rivals.
….For the UW to maintain its greatness, the school must be more closely linked to Madison and Wisconsin. With the straining of that relationship, the commitment of the state to providing the public funding that is needed to keep the UW strong and independent has slackened.
John Wiley has been an able administrator in many significant senses. But the next chancellor must take a broader view of the UW’s mission and its need to reconnect with Wisconsin.
With the fall semester winding down, room cleaning probably isn ‘t high on the agenda of most UW-Madison students. But some residents of Chadbourne Residential College weren ‘t given an option over the weekend.
A broken radiator coil in a seventh-floor dorm room Saturday morning led to partial flooding all the way down to the west wing ‘s main level, forcing dozens of students to scoop up belongings and temporarily evacuate their rooms.
When Trixie the dog travels to the University of Wisconsin Veterinary School in Madison for an evaluation prior to surgery to remove a cancerous tumor near her right eye, she’ll be wearing a pet guardian angel on her collar.
â??I thought, we canâ??t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.â?
After years of searching, and at times almost giving up in despair, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka may have found that alternative. Last month, his was one of two groups of researchers that independently announced they had successfully turned adult skin cells into the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells without using an actual embryo. The other group was led by James A. Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, one of the first scientists to isolate human embryonic stem cells.
Quoted: Barry Orton, a telecommunications professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and a paid cable-television consultant to municipalities.
Quoted: Craig Werner, chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Chip Hunter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of management and human resources.
The world may feel more and more like a global village, but its residents are increasingly genetically diverse thanks to the rapidly accelerating pace of human evolution, a study said Monday. John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, collaborated on the study
A new poll shows that Wisconsin Democrats favor Hillary Clinton for president, and Republicans like Fred Thompson, but no candidate is a clear front runner.
Forty-seven percent of respondents in the University of Wisconsin Survey Center’s Badger Poll released Monday said they would vote for a Democrat for president next year, while 39 percent would chose a Republican.
Madison state Rep. Dave Travis, who is hanging it up next year after serving 30 years in Wisconsin’s Legislature, says he’s never seen anything like it. He’s received more calls, letters and, in this modern age, e-mails about the Big Ten Network-cable television brouhaha than any other issue he’s been involved in.
People are just plain angry, he told me last week. They feel betrayed and they’re just as mad at the University of Wisconsin as they are at cable TV.
I agreed that’s about the same reaction we’re getting from readers here at the paper. In fact, it appears that the UW and the Big Ten Network have probably done the impossible — made the typically villainous and arrogant big cable networks the good guys.
The far-reaching search to replace outgoing University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley will begin immediately, and whoever will be the next chief Badger has a significant void to fill.
“John Wiley is leaving the UW at the top of its game. He has left the university in excellent shape,” said Tom Loftus, a member of the Board of Regents and former Democratic speaker of the Assembly and candidate for governor in 1990. “His timing is perfect: The chancellor’s home will be ready for a new occupant, a new biennium will be starting in the Legislature, and the university’s reputation is at its zenith.”
Loftus said the search is “wide open, and we’ll undoubtedly look internationally. I’m sure pay will be an issue as the choices are narrowed.”
Tired of not being able to watch University of Wisconsin sports on the Big Ten Network? Walter Dickey has promising news for you.
The UW athletic board chairman revealed Friday that big cable has resumed negotiations with the fledgling network and is optimistic that a deal will be brokered “in the reasonably near future” with Charter Communications to make BTN widely available in Madison.
“Whether that happens in the next day or two or the next few weeks, I’m not certain,” he allowed.
A gust of winter weather has not deterred one group of downtown motorists from braving the streets during and after the snow, sleet and general slushiness that covered Madison this week. These drivers, however, were not manning the city’s snowplows.
It was moped drivers on the UW-Madison campus and the surrounding areas who took to the roads sporting parkas and face masks during and after Saturday’s storm and Tuesday’s snow.
According to University of Wisconsin Police officer Kristin Radtke, Madison has the highest concentration of mopeds in the country.
Looking back at seven sometimes stormy years in the top post at UW-Madison, Chancellor John Wiley said that the best parts of the experience — and the worst — involved personnel matters.
The good part was finding highly qualified people for key jobs. “We have the best collection of deans this campus has ever had,” Wiley said during a press conference Friday at the Chazen Museum of Art, where he announced that he would leave the chancellor’s post in September 2008.
But the worst parts of the personnel process were not the highly publicized incidents in which felons were found to be working at the university, or the criticism of his placing Vice Chancellor Paul Barrows on a lengthy sick leave after allegations of sexual harassment were made against Barrows.
Come on, Wisconsin, quit badgering Washburn University.
You folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison simply cannot be serious about this lawsuit over your school logo.
John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison since 2001, announced today that he would step down in September 2008. He said now was the time to begin a transition, as the university will be up for its 10-year reaccreditation next year and will also be in the middle of the stateâ??s biennial budget cycle.
In the fall of 1984, Robert Enright sat at his desk behind a stack of books, lost in uneasy thought. Why am I doing what I’m doing?
He had spent almost a decade studying how children view justice, publishing dozens of papers. The subject was to be his life’s work. Now, on sabbatical from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was plowing through the books, the fruits of a century of progress in his field.
Jim Bockheim, a UW-Madison soil scientist, has spent a lot of time in Antarctica. If you need proof of that, just check a map of this remote land at the bottom of the world.
Look for Mount Bockheim.
John Wiley was a scientist before he became a college administrator. And in the years after his departure from the UW-Madison chancellor ‘s job, the university ‘s reputation throughout the world as a leading research institution is likely to become his most lasting legacy, researchers and administrators said.
The stellar reputation of UW-Madison and its departing chancellor, John Wiley, will make the position attractive to top candidates despite a complex and demanding job description, education experts said Friday.
“I think Wisconsin is in a position to recruit the very best, ‘ ‘ said Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and a past president of Michigan State University.
John Wiley was a scientist before he became a college administrator. And in the years after his departure from the UW-Madison chancellor ‘s job, the university ‘s reputation throughout the world as a leading research institution is likely to become his most lasting legacy, researchers and administrators said.
The next UW-Madison chancellor will need the skills of a Fortune 500 CEO, small-city mayor, big-money fundraiser, university professor and savvy politician — all at once.
UW-Madison officials said they will review whether a student Republican group should be charged nearly $1,300 to cover security for a campus speech by a conservative commentator.
Mentions that laboratories at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are getting rolling on scientific research to more easily break down the sugars in cornstalks and other plants. Earlier this year, UW received a $125 million award to establish its first federal research center in nearly a century, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
It’s exhausting work, the pay is low, the fruits of the labor are sometimes hard to see. But those facts haven’t discouraged thousands of America’s brightest college students from applying to work for the fast-growing non-profit Teach for America.
The University of Wisconsin appears to be moving on without running back P.J. Hill as it prepares for the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1.
Hill, who missed 13 of the last 15 quarters of the regular season because of a leg injury suffered in the first quarter against Indiana in Week 9, continues to be a spectator at practice.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
That was the sound of the Marquette University men’s basketball team answering the bell time after time Saturday evening at the Kohl Center. Whether the Golden Eagles were stemming the tide of a University of Wisconsin rally or simply silencing most of the sellout crowd of 17,190, Tom Crean’s team played with a purpose befitting a unit that is ranked 11th in the nation and expected to contend for a Big East Conference championship.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley announced Friday that he will step down in September 2008 – after having changed the face of the campus with an unprecedented building boom, broken records for private fund raising and attracted researchers who have kept the school as one of the top five public research institutions.
MADISON – Chancellor John D. Wiley, who has earned a reputation as a campus builder and a farsighted leader since becoming the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chief executive in 2001, announced today that he will step down in September 2008.
An Indiana native who has spent more than 30 years on the Madison campus, Wiley will relinquish the helm of a university whose international status as a leading research and teaching institution grew under his watch.
“It has been both a challenge and a privilege to lead this university during an important time in its history,” says Wiley. “The university has never been better poised to improve the lives of Wisconsin residents and take a leading role in reshaping the state’s economy.”
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley announced on Friday that he would step down next year
Wiley, 65, said that he will go back to being a faculty member in September 2008. He spoke during a news conference on Friday afternoon.
Wiley said that he was stepping down now so a new chancellor can be in place in time for preparation of the university’s next two-year budget and reaccreditation.
“The timing is right,” Wiley said.
Citing his age and timing that would benefit a successor, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said today that he will leave his post in September 2008.
Wiley, 65, is the chief executive officer of the campus and is responsible for programs and laying out a direction for the school. He has been at the helm of the Madison campus for six years, and plans to return to the faculty after he steps down, though he is not sure which field he would enter.
Wisconsin junior tight end Travis Beckum, a consensus first-team All-Big Ten Conference pick, on Thursday fell short in his bid to win the Mackey Award.
What do you expect from the Badgers now that they’ve spent roughly a dozen seasons on the elite stage? Should you just be thankful for, with few exceptions, a sustained level of good-to-outstanding teams since 1993? Or, if you’re a donor paying megabucks for one of those fancy Camp Randall suites, is it realistic to demand an occasional national-championship game participant?
It could soon become tougher for nonprofit groups to get funding from state university student fees in Wisconsin.
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all. Being able to reprogram skin cells into multipurpose stem cells without harming embryos launches an exciting new line of research. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re at square one, uncertain at this early stage whether souped-up skin cells hold the same promise as their embryonic cousins do.
Far from vindicating the current U.S. policy of withholding federal funds from many of those working to develop potentially lifesaving embryonic stem cells, recent papers in the journals Science and Cell described a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions. In fact, work by both the U.S. and Japanese teams that reprogrammed skin cells depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch says he’s backing a major tuition increase at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to pay for a campus expansion.
Huebsch, a Republican from West Salem, says the $1,000 increase will help the school, the community and the entire state.
The plan would allow the university to add 500 students and hire 95 more faculty and staff.
A committee of the UW System Board of Regents approved the plan today.
Almost 10 months after one of his legal process classes erupted into intense open hearings about what he did or didn’t say about the Hmong people, UW Law School professor Leonard Kaplan said in a lunchtime speech that he was trying to illustrate how the legal system can poorly serve minorities.
Wednesday’s speech before the Rotary Club of Madison marked the first time Kaplan has spoken at length about the controversy in public.
As campus administrators worry about how to prevent violence like last spring’s Virginia Tech shootings, students applying to college increasingly face queries about their past behavior: Were they ever severely disciplined in high school? Have they been convicted of a crime?
Although such questions were added to a widely used college application form months before the massacre at Virginia Tech, admissions officers say that the murders made them more vigilant about students’ personal troubles. They say that they won’t reject otherwise strong applicants because of one schoolyard fight or a beer arrest, but they may be wary of troubling patterns.
(John Lucas of University Communications is quoted in this article)
