The University of Wisconsin System is changing its admissions policies to consider race, income and other non-academic qualities of applicants with the explicit goal of boosting student diversity.
EARLIER THIS year, in conjunction with its 100th anniversary, the NCAA released a list of the 100 Most Influential NCAA Student Athletes of all time.
The athletes were chosen by a special panel that included college presidents, athletic directors, faculty representatives, student athletes and conference representatives.
The list was intended to honor those student athletes who have significantly impacted or made enduring contributions to society.
Stringing a 345-kilovolt transmission line along the Beltline is a great idea or a bad idea, depending on whose back yard or barnyard the line cuts across.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz expressed “very grave concerns” about using the Beltline as an electrical conduit across Dane County, one of three routes introduced today by American Transmission Co. to a group of about 50 civic leaders from throughout the county.
The most voluminous body of information on record of the performance of Wisconsin public school students, being released today by the state Department of Public Instruction, shows little change in how well most kids are doing and no change in a huge problem: The huge gaps that, in general, separate the top students from the bottom along racial, ethnic and economic lines.
Mentions that the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business reports a 14.2% jump in companies interviewing on campus and a 6.2% raise in average salary for graduates – $47,021. UW Engineering Career Services says the average salary for engineers is up between 7% and 8%, with many new job seekers getting multiple offers, signing bonuses and relocation packages.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=425493
Mentions the winner of last year’s Governor’s Business Plan Contest: Madison-based Mithridion Inc., a company formed in late 2004 that is working on a drug developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that it hopes will either halt or slow the nerve damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Doctors say they were able to cure urinary incontinence in the vast majority of patients who were treated with injections of their own stem cells.
The University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital will salute the 10th anniversary of its Pet Pals program with a celebration June 1.
The program brings selected dogs to the hospital on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons to boost the morale of children who are hospitalized. The program was started in 1996 by Linda Teeter, a veterinary medical student who is now working as a vet in Jefferson.
The public will be able to access on the Internet a list of companies competing for state contracts worth more than $10,000 under a new law.
Gov. Jim Doyle signed Thursday what’s become known as the “Contract Sunshine Act,” which says the Wisconsin Ethics Board must provide a list of companies competing for state business.
Are new high-voltage power lines needed in Dane County?
Before any new transmission line projects go forward, the County Board wants an independent study done to prove there’s a bona fide need for the lines and doesn’t want to just take the word of the American Transmission Co.
Dear Editor: I do not know whether this has been proposed to head off many of the downtown/campus attacks, but restoring Women’s Transit Authority seems a fitting part of the solution.
There was a time when University of Wisconsin coaches would tell you their biggest fear was getting that middle-of-the-night telephone call, the one all but guaranteed to have bad news coming from the other end. Somebody got arrested. Somebody is in detox. Somebody is in the emergency room.
That universally dreaded 3 a.m. wakeup call now has some company.
Have you seen that stuff on the Internet, coach?
It turns out that Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett are in love with each other’s cities and they think it’s time their respective constituents start sharing that love.
The two mayors appeared together in an extraordinary forum put together by the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters before a nice crowd at the Overture Center Tuesday night.
WITH SUICIDE bombings half a world away in the headlines almost daily, a Madison author has just published a heartbreaking book on the suicide bombers of an earlier era – Japan’s kamikaze pilots of World War II.
But Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a longtime UW-Madison professor of anthropology, insists there is little comparison between the Islamic suicide bombers of today and the kamikazes.
The case of Paul Barrows is only the latest in a series of embarrassments for the University of Wisconsin’s efforts to promote diversity. Barrows, the former UW-Madison vice chancellor for student affairs, was portrayed as guilty as regents, legislators, university officials and the press tried him before gathering evidence.
Officials jumped to the old racist stereotype that African-American men have one thing in mind: taking sexual advantage of white women. Partly because Barrows’ picture was so prominently displayed, very few regents or legislators bothered to question whether the sexual harassment allegations were true.
A $150 million project to transform University Square has won last-minute financial support from the city of Madison.
On a 12-6 vote early this morning, the Madison City Council agreed to back the project – which includes one UW office tower and one private student housing tower, along with retail and parking – with $3 million in tax incremental financing.
WISCONSIN RAPIDS (AP) – A University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student faces six counts on accusations he had sex with a 14-year-old rural Marshfield girl he met on the MySpace.com Web site.
Jesse W. Cahn, 22, was charged Tuesday in Wood County Circuit Court with two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, one count of attempted sexual assault of a child, two of child enticement and one of using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Dane County Board supervisors have joined with energy expert Nino Amato in calling for an independent study to see if Dane County really needs the new high-voltage power lines proposed by the American Transmission Co.
Board Chair Scott McDonell, other supervisors and Amato called for the study today at a press conference downtown. ATC’s own study shows a need for increased capacity in Dane County, especially in the southern half of the county, to meet expected electrical demands.
…One of the possible three routes would use the Beltline corridor, affecting sensitive areas such as the E-9 environmental corridor, the UW Arboretum and Odana Hills Golf Course.
Melany Stinson Newby, top lawyer to three University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellors, will depart at the end of the month.
Stephen Lund, associate director of human resources, confirmed this morning that Newby submitted her resignation on Thursday in order to retire on July 31. Her last day of work will be May 31, and she will be on unpaid leave until her retirement, said Amy Toburen, a university spokeswoman.
Charles Hoornstra, an assistant attorney general, will replace her on an interim basis.
Over the past few weeks, the student government has been battling the University of Wisconsin-Madison administration over the allocation of segregated fees, a student tax that funds student service organizations.
It has become apparent that Chancellor John Wiley believes the system is significantly flawed and perhaps in need of an overhaul or even a dismantling. Much of the debate pertains to the use of segregated fees to fund a religious entity, the University of Wisconsin Roman Catholic Foundation.
Based on state statutes and policies, UW students across the state have a right to administer and distribute segregated fees as they see fit. But at UW-Madison, that student autonomy is at risk.
It was the Latino people on the streets of Madison and other cities that forced President Bush onto prime-time television Monday night to try to snuff out the smoldering controversy that’s burning a divide in Congress and across the country, local activist Alex Gillis said.
….Gillis and others in the Dane County Latino community interviewed for their initial response to Bush’s proposal were generally supportive of what the president had to say.
(UW-Madison political science professor Ben Marquez was among those interviewed for this story.)
OUT TODAY for the first time on DVD: “Side Effects,” perhaps the best of the many independent films shot in Madison in recent years.
Written and directed by Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, a 1991 UW-Madison grad, the film, starring Katherine Heigl of “Grey’s Anatomy,” is a romantic comedy with serious undertones about values and ethics in the pharmaceutical industry.
(This column also contains information regarding several other UW-Madison alumni.)
Mentor Corp. has begun clinical testing of another botulinum product stemming from a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
The Phase 1 safety and dose escalation study involves a botulinum toxin type A product focused on treating the pain associated with adult onset spasmodic torticollis/cervical dystonia.
The UW-Madison School of Business was ranked 14th in the U.S. and 28th in the world in the Financial Times’ annual list of executive education providers.
Last year, UW was rated 15th in the U.S. and 26th in the world. In 2004, UW was rated 17th in the U.S. and 32nd in the world. In 2003, UW was rated 17th in the U.S. and 34th in the world.
Charles Nuttycombe closely monitored last weekend’s Big Ten outdoor track and field championships on the Internet. While doing so, the 76-year-old Nuttycombe anticipated nearly every strategic move before it was actually executed by his son.
“My mother said he was exhausted by the end of the meet,” said Ed Nuttycombe, the University of Wisconsin head coach. “The old apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” son fils proudly conceded. “He told me why I did what I did before I told him what I did. And he was right on – 100 percent.”
TIME WILL tell whether Damian Novak, a UW-Madison electrical engineering graduate, now living in the Twin Cities, has come up with an idea that will make him revered among golfers.
Novak’s idea, which I will explain in more detail momentarily, makes it easier and more affordable for golfers to try new equipment. Golf being what it is, that can be both a good and a bad thing.
First let me say that it always makes me proud when a UW-Madison graduate goes out into the world and invents a better mousetrap. It’s nice for the campus to be recognized for something other than being the top party school in the country.
Dear Editor: There is an abundance of mopeds around UW-Madison, and whether many of the drivers of these little scooters are suitable for the road is questionable.
….After living on the UW campus for a year, I have realized the extent of these scooters’ dangers. Many of today’s mopeds can exceed 40 mph and they drive them like they own the road.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Another Big Ten Conference meet.
Another victory for the University of Wisconsin men’s track and field team.
The Badgers secured their third straight Big Ten Conference Outdoor Championship Sunday, and in the process completed their third consecutive Big Ten “Triple Crown” – winning league titles in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track during the same academic year.
Following are excerpts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Sunday commencement remarks of Adam Schlicht, senior class vice president.
Happy Mother’s Day to you! Today, your sons and daughters are giving you one of the greatest presents a parent can receive: the end of tuition payments.
…Fellow graduates: Expect only the greatest from yourself. For example, I believe that my life’s purpose will be complete after delivering this speech today .
…Life is a journey and the journey is not going to be easy. So don’t be afraid to sometimes stop yourself. Think. Analyze. Reflect. And ask yourself one simple question:
What would Audrey Seiler do?
At the Department of Administration, the new $2.6 million software for employee e-mail led to lengthy delays in delivery and disappearing messages.
At the University of Wisconsin System, the software to track employees’ pay and benefits cannot be implemented after a $26 million effort to do so. And at the Department of Revenue, software glitches in a $37.1 million program still can cause inaccurate sales tax payments to counties.
Essentially, she was a high school dropout and an unwed mother, Odessa Piper, the high priestess of Madison’s culinary community, told UW-Madison’s class of 2006 in her commencement address Sunday.
Piper, who sold her famous restaurant, L’Etoile, last year after nearly three decades, revealed how she learned to make her dreams come true.
“I can sum it up in five words,” she said, “To get there, be here.”
The Medical College of Wisconsin is at a crossroads.
In the last decade, southeastern Wisconsin’s biggest academic research center has had one of the fastest-growing research efforts among all U.S. medical schools, bulking up its research spending to about $130 million.
Now, in the process of creating a new strategic plan for the next five years, the Medical College faces this challenge: building on its strong past growth as federal spending on medical research is stagnating and as new federal initiatives encourage more cooperation among disciplines that have potential to help patients sooner than later.
Dottie Moseley already has lost her mother, sister and cousin to breast cancer. She often pondered how to keep it from striking her family again.
So when Moseley, 58, learned that the University of Wisconsin-Madison was a part of a large clinical trial on breast cancer prevention, she didn’t think twice about enrolling.
Dear Editor: I applaud “Sara” and her family for speaking up (“Student slams UW handling of rape charges,” May 6). Acquaintance rape is all too common on college campuses. It is our responsibility to come up with better ways to handle relationship violence issues.
Jackie Busse has lived within the valley of the shadow of death, and she believes her experience will make her a better doctor.
Busse, 27, is one of 17 Madison high school graduates who earned their medical degrees from the University of Wisconsin on Friday.
In 2001, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia just a week before she was scheduled to begin medical school.Today, with her cancer in remission and the rigor of four years of medical school behind her, she is planning to begin a residency in pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago next month.
Mom, daughter get diplomas together
Norma Iribarren donned her cap and gown Friday like thousands of other UW-Madison graduates.
But final exams are a distant memory for the Chilean native. When Iribarren graduated from the UW in 1986,with a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction, she skipped the pomp and circumstance.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison had no right to deny administrator Paul Barrows a $150,000-per-year consultant job once he accepted it and turned down an outside offer, Barrows contends in a new claim for damages.According to the claim submitted Thursday with the Wisconsin Claims Board, Barrows says he turned down a position with Hunter College in New York paying $150,000 per year because Chancellor John Wiley offered him a consultant position at that same salary.
Ten years ago, Chris Ochoa was contemplating suicide in a Texas prison cell, serving a life sentence for a rape and murder he confessed to, but did not commit. Today, the 39-year-old Ochoa is free, exonerated and about to embark on his first career.
When he gets his law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School on Friday, after giving one of the commencement speeches, Ochoa will become only the second man in America to be freed from prison by DNA evidence who went on to earn a law degree.
Given the decades-long warnings about a looming world energy crisis – punctuated by the recent spike in crude oil prices – you’d assume the U.S. has been ramping up its research and development spending on energy.
Think again. Since 1980, energy research has fallen from 10 percent to 2 percent of total R&D spending.
WHITEWATER (AP) – His 12 years as an undergraduate have made Johnny Lechner a celebrity of sorts, so why not go for 13?
Lechner was expected to graduate at last from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater this spring, but instead he withdrew his application for graduation five days before commencement.
“I realized that if I went one more year, I could study abroad,” Lechner said. “That’s one thing I haven’t done.”
Madison’s police chief says a recent spate of violent downtown robberies may be tied to a gang initiation rite.
“The way these robberies are taking place, as far as multiple suspects making multiple robberies, it does have the feel of sort of gang initiation or gang tactic,” Chief Noble Wray said. “At this point, this is only one investigative avenue and we have not drawn any conclusions yet as more information is being obtained.”
Five people reported being beaten and robbed by young men in four incidents late Friday and early Saturday.
A United Nations official and a local cooking legend will be the speakers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison commencement ceremonies this weekend.
Florence Chenoweth, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization liaison office to the United Nations, will speak at the Saturday ceremonies. Odessa Piper, former proprietor and chef of Madison’s L’Etoile restaurant, will speak at the two Sunday ceremonies. Both women are UW-Madison graduates and will receive honorary degrees at Friday’s ceremony.
It might be classical music or Broadway shows or modern dance or world music or children’s entertainment he’s speaking of.
But when Michael Goldberg, the acting president of the Overture Center for the Arts, talks about the newly unveiled 2006-07 season, it’s all, well, “stuff.”
But make no mistake: Goldberg doesn’t use the word lightly, in some insulting or dismissive way. The man has spent his professional life booking great performing artists and presenting them to the public. Instead, the term “stuff” simply shows the lack of pretension Goldberg has about his job as the foremost arts presenter in Madison.
Here’s what retirement looks like for UW film Professor Emeritus David Bordwell: He had to miss the end of the Wisconsin Film Festival (for which he helped secure several films and the presence of Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, a Bordwell fan) to fly halfway around the world to the Hong Kong Film Festival.
He came back late last month, was home for a couple of days, and then went down to Champaign-Urbana for Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of John Malkovich and “Junebug” Oscar nominee Amy Adams. Then he finally returned home to Madison, where he and his wife, fellow film scholar Kristin Thompson, have to finish three books between them in the next month.
Dear Editor: ….The UW policy preventing its athletic teams from playing an out-of-conference school with a nickname offensive to American Indians provides true leadership, moving our nation toward eliminating an embarrassing form of discrimination from our most important educational institutions.
Contrary to the party line, the vote-of-lukewarm-confidence given Lisa Stone by the UW Athletic Board on Friday is indeed a significant development in the women’s basketball program.
From this vantage point, it triggered flashbacks to the short-sighted approach taken a few years ago by administrators, whose public humiliation of Stone’s predecessor tore away the last vestiges of a once-promising program and played a sizable role in the mess Stone inherited three years ago.
This is far from an endorsement of Stone, who to date has failed to prove that the approach that made her one of the winningest coaches in Division III history is adaptable in the Big Ten….
The old boys network has some new competition.
A high-powered group of female investors aiming to put money into young, high-growth, women- and minority-owned or managed businesses in Wisconsin and the Midwest said Tuesday it has raised $2.3 million of capital commitments.
After years of incubating high-tech start-ups, the University Research Park on the west side of Madison is branching out into a new niche: young artists.
The park’s MGE Innovation Center on Thursday will hold its first-ever gallery night. Some 90 paintings and sculptures from 13 Masters of Fine Arts candidates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will line the incubator’s walls and hallways.
….Rather than focusing on tax breaks or other incentives, regions looking to grow their economy need to be investing in education, basic services and those “quality of life” things that make a place attractive.
A first step for any community, however, is to realistically assess its strengths and weaknesses, says Barry Bluestone, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Planning at Northeastern University.
….Bluestone also cautioned against putting too much stock in the latest fad, specifically the biotechnology and nanotechnology bandwagon.
Bluestone also says states should create clusters of regional economic activity where people can meet, share ideas and foster a positive atmosphere. The University Research Park in Madison would seem to qualify on that account.
Ending a rash of bar-time beatings and robberies downtown has become priority No. 1 for downtown police as concern increases among residents, students and business owners.
Ald. Mike Verveer said the vicious attacks over the past several weeks, four of them last weekend alone, threaten the perception of safety in the downtown area.
The Paul Barrows case has exposed problems with how the University of Wisconsin handles disciplinary matters, several educators and state leaders say.
An appeals committee on Monday slammed the UW-Madison for its handling of sexual harassment and sick leave abuse allegations against the former vice chancellor for student affairs.
James Klauser, who was a member of the Board of Regents until 2003, said in an interview today that the Barrows case has turned into a “imbroglio” that shows the university has no competent system for handling charges of misconduct.
An appeals committee slams the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its handling of sexual harassment and sick leave abuse allegations against a former top administrator.
The Academic Staff Appeals Committee today (Monday) released its report on the discipline late last year of Paul Barrows, the former vice chancellor for student affairs. The committee wrote that Peter Spear, who was provost at the time, should not have disciplined Barrows for allegedly sexually harassing two women, nor should he have been disciplined and for taking five months’ sick leave.
Mentions field studies by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers during 2004 and 2005 did not conclude the cormorant was responsible for the yellow perch population decline.
Graduate student Sarah Meadows, working with adviser Scott Craven, chairman of the department of wildlife ecology at UW-Madison, has found that cormorants are opportunistic birds that will eat all kinds of fish and aquatic life. Their dining habits change during a season and from year to year, she said.
The Academic Staff Appeals Committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison released a report Monday lambasting the administration for its treatment of Paul Barrows and recommending that much of the disciplinary action against the former vice chancellor of student affairs be undone.
Bill Cronon and Northland College are a natural fit. I saw the bond instantly a year ago this month when our Wisconsin Idea Seminar bus from Madison pulled into Northland’s campus in Ashland for a dinner visit with faculty and students.
Cronon, the UW-Madison’s pre-eminent environmental historian who was our seminar’s guest lecturer for the week, launched immediately into an enthusiastic description of the college’s “green dorm,” the McLean Environmental Living & Learning Center, powered by a wind turbine and photovoltaic panels.
….it’s most appropriate that Northland will honor Cronon’s considerable achievements by awarding him a doctorate in humane letters at the college’s commencement on May 27.
Former University of Wisconsin runner Matt Tegenkamp and current Badger Chris Solinsky each made history Saturday night, becoming the first people to run a sub-4-minute mile on state soil.
After a yearlong search, U.S. postal officials have not yet come up with a place to house the University Station Post Office, which will close at the end of business Saturday.
That means those who use the University Station, in the soon-to-be-demolished University Square, will have to make the mile-long trek up State Street and across the Square to use the Capitol Station Post Office, located in the Madison Municipal Building at 215 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Ah, the magic of film.
Shoot Wisconsin from the right angle, and it can look like a farm community in New England, a bustling Midwest college campus, big-city mean streets or a remote windswept beach.
Old buildings? Got ’em. Jam-packed sports arena? Of course.
(Incentives approved by the legislature last week include use of state-owned buildings and locations free of charge as available.)
Taxes are too high in Wisconsin, and they seem to fall inordinately heavy on the property taxpayer. Businesses cannot flourish when people spend too much on taxes. And if businesses don’t grow, jobs don’t grow. In fact, jobs disappear. When that happens, poverty increases, and the demand on social services does as well. So at the same time that demand for government services goes up, there are fewer wage-earners to provide the necessary revenue. That’s a deadly combination.
Admittedly, we don’t know what the answer is, but we suspect there is more than one. Some states rely far more heavily on sales taxes or fees or special tax districts. Others perhaps rely more on business taxes or income taxes.
We do know this: It’s time to start talking about just what services government should be providing and to change the way we pay for those services.
If the University of Wisconsin-Madison stands out as the state’s flagship research school, routinely able to lure venture capital and spin off start-up companies, UW-Milwaukee has long been the underfunded underdog.
