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Author: jnweaver

Krome: UW funding ‘what ifs’ a scary set of possibilities

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Capital Times

….It makes good sense that the state should encourage new businesses to emerge from the wellspring of research and innovation that erupts from the university. A friend of mine left the university in the late 1990s, mortgaged all his family’s worldly assets and, with seven employees, started a medical products company that now has 500 employees and assets of $1.8 billion.

But what if the state had been unwilling to invest in the university infrastructure that supported his education and research all those years prior to his start-up? What if the sagebrush rebels that impoverished university systems all across the western United States had succeeded in crippling the University of Wisconsin’s budget such that his professors had left, his program was cut prematurely, or his research had not reached the necessary level of development?

Doug Moe: UW prof knows just why Elvis matters

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Capital Times

NOT LONG after Frank Sinatra died, his journalist friend Pete Hamill, spurred by obituaries that were full of Sinatra’s feuds and foibles, wrote a wonderful little book called “Why Sinatra Matters.”

….At noon Wednesday at the Rotary Club of Madison’s meeting at the Inn on the Park, UW-Madison Professor Craig Werner — an admirer of Hamill’s Sinatra book — will make a similar case for another music legend, Elvis Presley.

Ethan Allen costs to rise steeply

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For about $18,000, a Wisconsin teenager can study for a year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the flagship of the state’s university system and one of the most respected public universities in the country.

For $45,620, he can pay the annual cost of attending Harvard University, one of the most famous and prestigious universities in the world.

And for more than $90,000, he can spend a year at Ethan Allen School, the locked campus in Waukesha County where teenage boys go after committing crimes such as armed robbery, battery and first-degree sexual assault.

Baughman discusses “Same Time, Same Station”

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James Baughman, professor and chair of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, talks about his new book on the history of network TV in this interview on a public radio affiliate in Chicago.

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Zweifel: Legislators shove UW’s rep to second tier

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Capital Times

Longtime reader Chris Wren is alarmed, and the rest of us should be, too. Wren caught the op-ed column by Stanley Fish in the New York Times on Aug. 1 about the sad state of affairs in the Florida state university system.

“The following comment caught my attention,” Wren wrote.

“Florida does not have a single campus that measures up to the best schools in the systems of Virginia, Wisconsin and Georgia, never mind first-tier states like California, Michigan and North Carolina. Climbing that hill will be an arduous task, and the key will be a persistence few states are up to.”

So, there we have it, Wren commented. “A new motto in the making: ‘UW: Setting the standard of excellence for the second tier,'” he complained.

Arts, cultural groups granted $163,600

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Capital Times

The Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission has announced the award of 43 grants totaling $163,600 for community arts and cultural programs.

(The UW-Madison Art Department, Wisconsin Union Theater & Chazen Museum of Art are among the grant recipients.)

Decontamination exercise today

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Capital Times

Decontamination exercise: Emergency government officials will be conducting a decontamination exercise tonight beginning at 6:30 p.m., so people living near area hospitals should expect to hear sirens from EMS vehicles arriving at the emergency rooms later, during the test.

The exercise will take place at a UW-Madison soccer field, where about 35 people will be “exposed” to a chemical agent, with the field decontamination operations set up in UW campus lot 60 behind the UW Hospital complex.

Teaching money magic

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When Mark J. Ready visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange while working on his doctorate in finance during the last 1980s, he fell in love. Not with a woman. The New Jersey native was a happily married man with a young family back in Ithaca, N.Y., where he was attending Cornell University.

Instead, Ready fell in love with the market itself, with its ebbs and flows of information among a sea of humanity striving to make a profit at every turn.

That infatuation has defined the rest of his career, which in 1990 brought him to a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. On Wednesday, he will take over one of the gems of the school, the Stephen L. Hawk Center for Applied Security Analysis, becoming just the fourth director in the center’s 37-year history.

It’s time for UW faculty to gain union rights

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, in the University of Wisconsin System, we have reached critical mass on the insanity meter.

Faculty begin each academic year believing that shared governance means we have a say in what happens on campus. (It doesn’t.) The Republicans in the Legislature begin each biennium by casting their first stones at UW System faculty and academic staff. When will faculty members wise up and realize that collective bargaining will actually give us a say in what goes on and will remove the bull’s-eye painted on our backsides?

Fields are fertile for emerging technology

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

C56, which is a spinoff from the biotech firm Lucigen, is developing enzymes that can make ethanol production more efficient, whether corn-based ethanol or the next-generation version known as cellulosic ethanol.

The firm is one of the corporate partners collaborating with University of Wisconsin-Madison, which recently won $145 million in funding over three years to become one of three national biofuels research centers in the nation. The others are in California and Tennessee.

Vartan Manoogian ‘had a willingness to give and give’

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Star Tribune

He began teaching at the Madeline Island Music Camp at its founding in 1986 and became its artistic director in 2000, bringing the luminaries of chamber and ensemble groups to Madeline Island from across the nation.

“Vartan had a passion, love and intensity for the music and teaching,” said the camp’s founder and executive director, Tom George. “He had a willingness to give and give and give to his students.”

Ikegwuonu stars in video

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

As promised, Bret Bielema made sure University of Wisconsin cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu was given a starring role in the highlight video shown to the players this week at the start of pre-season camp.

The highlight in question, of course, showed Ikegwuonu tracking Arkansas tailback Darren McFadden from behind and dragging him to the ground at the UW 9 on the Razorbacks’ third offensive play of the Capital One Bowl.

Senate Democrats back 4% cap on tuition

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Senate Democratic leaders offered Wednesday to go along with a 4% limit on University of Wisconsin System resident tuition – a cap first backed by Assembly Republicans.

A special Capitol committee working on a budget compromise took no action on the proposal Wednesday.

Editorial: Funding UW simply smart (Appleton Post-Crescent)

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Appleton Post-Crescent

If you asked University of Wisconsin System officials if they have a love-hate relationship with the state Legislature, they’d be right to respond, “Uh, where’s the love?”

With Republican majorities in the last two Legislatures, the UW System became a favorite target for budget cuts â?? and cutting comments.

Not that all of the cuts were misguided. The state was in particularly dire financial circumstances and the UW had to take its share of the burden. But it got more than its share.

Regents raise tuition 5.5%

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents voted Tuesday to raise resident undergraduate tuition 5.5%, gambling that Senate Democrats will prevail in upcoming budget negotiations with the Republican-controlled Assembly.

Searching for truth, his way

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Christopher Wolfe, the demanding professor whose classes in constitutional law and civil liberties have challenged Marquette University students for almost 30 years – and helped many decide whether they have what it takes to pursue law school – will leave his academic home in May, and not for the usual reasons.

He’s not ending his academic career. Nor is he going to a rival university – not exactly.

Wolfe intends to work on establishing a university of his own, one inspired by the intellectual approach of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher.

Badgers off to a running start

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Sophomore tailback Lance Smith saw his suspension lifted less than an hour before pre-season camp opened and joined his teammates for practice; coach Bret Bielema revealed that senior defensive end Kurt Ware is expected to miss two weeks of camp while recovering from surgery on his left knee; freshman wide receiver Daven Jones, whose academic status had been uncertain as late as last week, practiced after a long bus ride from his home in Cleveland; and Bielema continues to wait for word on the academic status of tailback John Clay.

Big Ten: Delany pledges that new network won’t change hockey

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Capital Times

The architects of the Big Ten Network believe that men’s hockey and baseball provide significant programming opportunities, but pledge that will not affect the status of either sport at the University of Wisconsin.

That is, the Badgers will continue to skate in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association for the foreseeable future, and baseball will remain defunct.

(Article contains information on other sports as well.)

UW football: Badgers No. 7 in USA Today coaches’ poll

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Capital Times

The University of Wisconsin football team is ranked No. 7 in the USA Today preseason coaches’ poll, which was released today.
Southern Cal is the preseason No. 1 pick, followed by LSU, Florida, Texas and Michigan, which at No. 5 received two first-place votes.

Two other Big Ten Conference schools are ranked: Ohio State at No. 10, and Penn State at No. 18.

Possible tuition freeze for 2-year schools

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Capital Times

Undergraduate students attending the four-year universities in the UW System will likely face a 5.5 percent tuition increase this fall.

That is the increase system President Kevin Reilly will recommend to the Board of Regents when the board meets Tuesday at 2 p.m. in Van Hise Hall on the UW-Madison campus.

Reilly also is recommending that tuition be frozen at the two-year colleges, which often function as “feeder” schools for the larger institutions.

Big Ten programming set

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Capital Times

The Big Ten Network’s programming over the next year will include:

About 50 percent of Big Ten football games, including 40 percent of conference matchups. That will include three to five Wisconsin games, with one guaranteed to be a conference game. The only Badgers game scheduled so far is against The Citadel on Sept. 15.

Once the conference season starts, ABC will get the first pick each week, ESPN will get the second and third picks 75 percent of the time, the Big Ten Network the second and third picks 25 percent of the time and the Big Ten Network the remaining games each week.

Charter, Big Ten TV ready to talk

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Capital Times

The Big Ten Network is offering an olive branch to Charter Communications and the other cable companies it’s negotiating with as its Aug. 30 launch nears. And Charter appears eager to sit down for peace talks.

Executives of the network and the conference are touring Big Ten markets, joining with representatives of member schools to put out a clear message to the cable companies: Agree to place us on a regular service like Charter’s Expanded Basic and we’ll work with you on other issues — even price.

Collage comes to State Street

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Capital Times

The two ends of State Street are hosting touring shows of works on paper that demonstrate some apparent differences, but also some strong affinities, especially in the way they use collage to combine many, many disparate images into one work.

….At the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, you’ll find the paper works of Jane Hammond, a world-renowned New York artist who did her graduate work at UW-Madison in the 1970s.

Study warns of emission of fine particles

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Capital Times

Your office laser printer may be hazardous to your health.

That’s because some printers emit large quantities of very fine particles that can be breathed into the lungs, according to a study by Australian researchers at the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at the Queensland University of Technology.

Quoted: Robert Hamers, UW-Madison chemistry department chairman & associate director of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.

ATC: New route would cut through fewer backyards

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Capital Times

If “not in my backyard” is a high priority goal in placing a proposed 345-kilovolt power line across Dane County, the Beltline route seemingly would win out, because it has far fewer residential backyards to run through than the route cutting across the southernmost tier of towns, according to power line builder American Transmission Company.

Millions in state employee benefits on the line

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Capital Times

Tens of millions of dollars in benefits for thousands of state employees are hanging in the balance as legislative leaders hammer out a final budget deal.

….State Rep. David Travis, D-Madison, contends that the proposals are a back-door attempt to cut state workers’ pay.

“This isn’t a pay freeze,” said Travis, whose district includes many state and UW employees. “It’s a massive pay cut.”

ATC Recommends Options For New Power Line

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WISC-TV 3

MADISON, Wis. — Two proposals for a new 345-kilovolt power transmission line through the Madison metro area will be forwarded to the Public Service Commission, but neither include an underground option.

American Transmission Co. announced on Wednesday that it won’t recommend one plan over the other to state regulators. The controversial Beltline proposal is included in the recommendation, but so is a southern Dane County route that would affect mostly rural areas.

….Critics of the Beltline route â?? including Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum officials and the state Transportation Department, which doesn’t want 345,000 volts of electricity pulsing above or below the heavily-used freeway — asked ATC to put the line underground.

ATC narrows transmission line choices; Beltline route preferred

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Capital Times

The Beltline could be the backbone for American Transmission Company’s new 345-kilovolt transmission line, one of two route options being submitted in October to the state Public Service Commission.

Company officials announced their two route options, with two alternate variations to those base routes, at a press conference at company headquarters this afternoon.

“We need this to keep the lights on,” said Mark Williamson, ATC vice president of major projects. “Even with recent improvements, the transmission system is operating at near maximum capacity.”

UW Hospital CEO to leave for Houston

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Capital Times

University Hospital Chief Executive Officer Donna Sollenberger has been chosen to head Baylor College of Medicine’s first college-owned hospital, which is under construction and will open in 2010.

Sollenberger, who became president and CEO of the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics in 1999, will begin her new position in Houston on Oct. 22.

UW Hospital CEO had ‘vision’ for UW, takes job in Texas

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Capital Times

What will Donna Sollenberger’s legacy be after she leaves her position as chief executive of University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics to lead Baylor College of Medicine’s first college-owned hospital?

Most people will look at bricks-and-mortar achievements, most notably the construction of American Family Children’s Hospital.
But perhaps her greater impact has been on health policy and her vision for the hospital, said Steve Brenton, president of the Wisconsin Hospital Association.

Television chefs filled in as teachers for youngster

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

John Pick-Jacobs’ mother didn’t cook much while he was growing up, and neither did his grandmother, who helped raise him in a single-parent household. But his grandmother did love watching cooking shows on television.

“So his friends became those crazy TV cooks of every ethnicity,” said his mother, Elly Pick of Shorewood, who nominated Pick-Jacobs for Great Young Cook honors.

Pick-Jacobs graduated in the spring with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s applying to medical schools while working at a lab in Madison that researches prostate cancer and diabetes.

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Big Ten denies growth plans

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After creating a buzz last week by saying the Big Ten would revisit the issue of expansion, Commissioner Jim Delany wanted to make one thing clear Tuesday: The league has no impending plan to add another school.

Big Ten poll says Badgers will finish second in 2007

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Bret Bielema sometimes enjoys quizzing recruits who are contemplating signing with the University of Wisconsin.

His favorite question:

Which football team leads the Big Ten Conference in overall victories over the last three seasons?

The typical responses: Ohio State or Michigan.

“A lot of kids will say something that’s not right,” Bielema said Monday during the first day of the Big Ten pre-season meetings at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. “It’s a good little shock and awe factor that we use.”

The No. 1 team is UW, with 31 overall victories from 2004-’06.

UW chancellors fear budget calamity

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Capital Times

University of Wisconsin chancellors warned Monday the budget approved by the state Assembly would require them to cut courses, increase class sizes and delay or scrap needed building projects.

Gov. Jim Doyle said the budget would also hurt access to the UW System by limiting financial aid for low-income students and denying resources that campuses need to make room for additional students.

The Democratic governor hosted university officials from around the state at a roundtable event to discuss the potential impact of the Republican-controlled Assembly’s budget on the system of 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges.

Mike Lucas: Bielema in tune with Chicago

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Capital Times

CHICAGO — Bret Bielema is planning on keeping his day job. (That’s Terb Ameleib spelled backwards.) Nonetheless, the University of Wisconsin football coach made a favorable impression here Monday night during his national singing debut at Wrigley Field. After instructing the Cub fans to “stand up and the Phillie fans to sit down” for the seventh inning stretch, Bielema breezed through a strong rendition of Take Me Out To the Ball Game.

UW friends celebrate Denice Denton legacy

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Capital Times

It’s the little things adding up that can bring even the toughest woman down.

That opinion came up again and again during a memorial symposium Monday organized by friends and colleagues of Denice Denton, a former UW-Madison researcher and teacher who became the chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz before jumping off a 43-story building to her death last summer.

Bar time in Madison

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Capital Times

Echoing his childhood board game, “Clue”, the dispatcher’s voice was clear as cab driver Ramy Renor headed for the Karaoke Kid to pick up a fare about 1:30 Friday night.

“On State with a snake.”

“Too bad I can’t take that,” the 34-year-old, 6′ 1″ woman, who has been driving for Union Cab for seven and a half years, said. “I’ve never picked up a snake, but I did pick up ‘Whitesnake’ once,” she added.

La Crosse Builds Barriers To Prevent Drunken Drownings

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WISC-TV 3

LA CROSSE, Wis. — The city of La Crosse has started to build barriers to help stop the spate of students drowning in the Mississippi River after drinking.

Work began Friday on building gates, rails and chains at three entrances to a levee at the city’s Riverside Park, which is two blocks from downtown bars.

Jeffrey Bartell: Assembly’s budget attacks much of what we hold dear

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Capital Times

Some people might be surprised to realize what I have in common with bandleader Lawrence Welk, author Andrew Sullivan and radio host Larry Meiller.

Recently, the state Assembly proposed a version of the 2007-09 state budget that makes $120 million in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System. As part of those proposed reductions, this budget slashes all state support from a number of fine educational programs.

Ryan thrilled for son but stunned by loss of friend

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Capital Times

University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan was making the rounds during last week’s AAU tournament in Orlando, Fla. — a Super Showcase for some of the most highly-recruited high school players in the nation — when he ran into his former director of basketball operations at the UW. That would be his oldest son, Will Ryan, 29, who was recently hired as an assistant coach at North Dakota State.

Not resting on laurels

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Feeling satisfied? Think it won’t hurt if you slack off just a bit during training to reflect upon the many highlights the 2006 college football season provided?

Figure that 12-1 finish, followed this summer by the predictable predictions of greater success in 2007, will impress Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State?

If so, you aren’t welcome this fall in the University of Wisconsin locker room.

Alvarez changes stance and now supports Big Ten title game

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

During his 16-year run as the University of Wisconsin’s football coach, Barry Alvarez was not a proponent of a playoff game to determine the Big Ten Conference champion. Recent events have changed that stance, however, and Alvarez now sees merits in holding a Big Ten title game, particularly if the league adds a 12th school.

Desensitization helps fight rejection

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Surgeons at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they have performed the country’s first successful operation that replaces a person’s kidney and pancreas with the organs of a deceased donor.

Missing student recovered from Fox River

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Associated Press

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Green Bay student who disappeared two weeks ago was inside her car that plunged into the Fox River near downtown Green Bay, police said Friday.

An autopsy positively identified Mahalia Xiong, Capt. Karl Fleury said at a news conference….After the recovery of the woman’s body, Brown County Medical Examiner Al Klimek said preliminary indications suggested an accidental death with no sign of foul play, pending results of the autopsy and toxicology tests.