These troubled times call for a fresh understanding of what America means. That’s the intended effect of “Visions of America,” a multimedia program created by UW-Madison professor and trombonist Mark Hetzler and Madison photographer Katrin Talbot at 8 p.m. Friday in Mills Hall.
Wisconsin must focus on continued modernization of its manufacturing and agricultural industries, while also working to develop emerging industries, such as bio-medical research, to keep the state’s economy competitive, Gov. Jim Doyle said at a conference Thursday.
Those emerging industries that need continued investment include stem cell research, said Doyle, speaking to about 300 economic development officials and business people at the Governor’s Conference on Economic Development. The conference, organized by the Wisconsin Economic Development Association, met at Madison’s Monona Terrace convention center.
University of Wisconsin System regents on Thursday approved a proposal that would put UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley in position to receive 22% more than his current yearly salary of $251,000 and set up other top administrators for raises.
Republican legislative leaders on Thursday offered a 2,500-word constitutional amendment that would tie state, school and local government tax collections to factors ranging from inflation to population growth and, for cities and villages, to new construction.
Local government officials instantly denounced the proposal, saying that it would cripple their ability to provide services at current levels and cope with health care costs that are increasing much faster than inflation.
The proposal would limit state revenue, including most fees but excluding University of Wisconsin System tuition, to increases dictated by the three-year average change in inflation, plus population growth.
A new study showing that a low-fat diet does not necessarily decrease the risk of cancer and heart disease is not a license to go out and eat a Big Mac and super-sized fries, local doctors say.
Doctors here praise the study as important and well-designed, but point out that the research has limitations.
….The principal investigator for the UW site, Dr. Gloria Sarto, acknowledged that the study didn’t turn out as she and other researchers had expected.
Republicans today tried a new tack with a proposal to limit taxes and fees imposed by state and local governments.
The measure would be a constitutional amendment that focuses on revenue. A try for an amendment that would have focused on spending failed to pass the Senate in 2004.
Dear Editor: The pen is certainly mightier than the sword, as cartoonist Mike Konopacki said in his response to letter writer Ovamir Anjum on Tuesday, but to simplify the negative reaction to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons as an issue of “free speech” is a shameful cop-out.
The reactions against cartoons vilifying Prophet Muhammad are not protests against the right to free speech or expression; they are protests against the racist rhetoric that demonizes the faith of more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world….
Muslim Students’ Association, UW-Madison
Friday is the busy night of this classical music week, and Friday is also the night when one of the most unusual events of the season will take place.
On Friday in Mills Hall at 8 p.m. (though early arrival for the preconcert show at 7:30 is strongly suggested) the UW Faculty Concert Series will present “Visions of America,” a multimedia program created by UW trombonist Mark Hetzler, who tours with the Empire Brass and performs in the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, and Madison photographer Katrin Talbot.
The state of Wisconsin has some messed-up computer systems. So three legislators want an audit done on how much the problems are costing us. It sounds like a solid idea. The computer problems include the University of Wisconsin System’s payroll program, which has cost the state $25 million and isn’t fully operational yet.
Wisconsin must focus on continued modernization of its manufacturing and agricultural industries, while also working to develop emerging industries, such as bio-medical research, to keep the state’s economy competitive, Gov. Jim Doyle said at a Madison conference today. (Can be found in Journal Sentinel’s Daywatch blog).
….Many independent businesses along this stretch have moved or closed to make way for a new development by The Mullins Group, which owns much of the property. Others will soon relocate. They include Etes Vous Prets coffee at 518 Highland Ave. this spring and, eventually, Lulu’s restaurant, which has been at 2524 University Ave. for over 21 years.
If the Christian rock concert stage doesn’t draw students away from boozy State Street, perhaps the laundry machines, fireplace study rooms or game room might.
Pastor Thomas Trapp says the palatial Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel and Student Center, scheduled to open later this month, has everything students need to serve as a home away from home.
“It’s just where we want to be,” said Trapp, noting its location at 220 W. Gilman St., just steps away from State Street. “To be where the action is, where the students are, to give them an alternative.” The $5.1 million center is the first of four new private religious facilities planned for University of Wisconsin-Madison students.
Seven University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members will speak at the free, public Darwin Day symposium Saturday from 9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Room B10 of Ingraham Hall.
The symposium is being held in honor of Charles Darwin’s 197th birthday. Darwin’s theory of evolution, of course, has long been the target of advocates of “creationism” or “intelligent design” and the disagreement has blossomed into a national debate.
Rep. Rob Kreibich (R-Eau Claire), chair of the state Assembly’s Committee on Higher Education, rolled out a proposal Wednesday that would guarantee certain high school graduates admission to the University of Wisconsin campus of their choice. (Last item in Regional Briefs)
The state’s troubled computer systems continue to be a source of debate and worry, as officials call for audits, hear testimony and bring in an outside overseer for the awarding of yet another software contract.
The leaders of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee have called for an overall audit on the state’s information technology system contracts, after repeated expensive systems failures.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher says she’s found further evidence of a link between a cold-like virus and obesity.
After experimenting with chickens, UW-Madison associate scientist Leah Whigham concluded that a human virus caused the chickens to become fat. That could lend credence to the idea that a virus causes obesity in humans, she said.
Erica Buytaert said she’s attending the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater because of its reputation as a good education school – even though it’s costing her $10,000 more per year than schools in her home state of Illinois.
University of Wisconsin System regents could give out-of-state students like Buytaert some welcome news this week.
The regents will consider a plan at their meeting Thursday and Friday in Madison to reduce nonresident tuition by $2,000 or more per year at all four-year UW campuses except UW-Madison in an effort to bring their rates in line with similar schools in other states.
The Republican legislators who find great sport in bashing the University of Wisconsin ought to take a look at a column in this month’s Inc. magazine, one of the nation’s leading business journals.
The Steve Nashes, Ron Kreibichs and Robert Cowleses of the world might be interested in knowing that the UW does a remarkable job translating its research and patents into business development and job creation, something that’s usually near and dear to a Republican’s heart. But they’d rather punish the school over social and personnel policies that don’t fit their own prejudices.
The University of Wisconsin athletic department has an image problem.
During a 42-day span from Dec. 16 through Jan. 26, eight UW football players were arrested or issued citations by police, with several of the alleged crimes violent in nature. Five players were suspended from the team, including two repeat offenders, and one player was dismissed from the team.
Including the latest incident, involving four players, one football player was arrested every 5.3 days during that 42-day span.
The president of Zeppos & Associates, a Milwaukee public relations firm, said Tuesday that UW officials must take swift and decisive action to address the growing problem and reassure frustrated fans and alumni and prospective students.
The idea of flooding Lambeau Field’s famously frozen tundra for a college hockey game this weekend might seem like a natural – but nature actually has very little to do with the transformation under way on the stadium playing field.
More than 30 miles of plastic pipes coursing with 3,000 gallons of pink anti-freeze have been laid on a plywood platform on the north end of the football field. The fluid, chilled to around 10 degrees Fahrenheit by a rumbling 300-ton refrigeration system parked under the stands, is needed to ensure that the gridiron has been properly iced in time for the 3 p.m. Saturday faceoff between the University of Wisconsin Badgers and the Ohio State Buckeyes.
A Democratic legislator said Tuesday that she will sponsor a bill that would require schools to teach an evolution-based science curriculum approved by the National Academy of Sciences and prohibit the teaching of “intelligent design.”
Freshman running back Parrish “P.J.” Hill was suspended from the University of Wisconsin football team after a Jan. 26 altercation during which he allegedly wielded a baseball bat.
Hill – the fifth football player suspended in recent weeks for violating the student-athlete discipline policy – was allegedly involved in a disturbance between two groups involving eight people outside the Sellery Hall dormitory at about 2:15 a.m.
Creationism or intelligent design could not be taught as science in Wisconsin public schools under a first-of-its-kind proposal announced today by Madison state Rep. Terese Berceau.
Under the bill, only science capable of being tested according to scientific method could be taught as science. Faith-based theories, however, could be discussed in other contexts.
Alan Attie, a biochemistry professor at UW-Madison, said the bill puts Wisconsin on the map in the ongoing controversy over evolution and intelligent design.
….The University of Wisconsin hockey team faces a series of unknowns uncommon to its game on Saturday when it plays outside at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field in the Frozen Tundra Hockey Classic.
Hockey players often have to deal with the chill of the rink, but they don’t usually have to worry about wind chills or thoroughly frozen feet inside their skates. They will Saturday, when they play Ohio State in a 3 p.m. game on a temporary rink constructed over the stadium’s football field.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Psychology students and fans of Apple’s popular iPod can now listen and learn at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Calvin Garbin is one of the first instructors at the university to harness iPod’s versatility and use it as an educational tool.
“For 30 years, I’ve said if I could just touch my forehead to theirs and pass on the information …” Garbin said. “This technology, to me, is an approximation of that.”
While most Americans believe slavery was abolished nearly 150 years ago, a young Sudanese man is touring the country to call attention to the estimated 27 million people worldwide he says are living as slaves today.
Monday night, Francis Bok, 26, told a Madison audience the story of the 10 years he spent in servitude in his native, civil-war-torn Sudan. Bok spoke to a half-filled Union Theater as part of the UW-Madison’s Distinguished Lecture Series and received a standing ovation when he was done.
MADISON, Wis. — A former state auditor will monitor the bid process for a huge state information system.
Administration Secretary Stephen Bablitch is mindful of the contract awarded to Adelman Travel that resulted in federal fraud charges against a Doyle administration official.
So Bablitch has hired Dale Cattanach at $120 an hour to oversee the selection process for the new software system. It will replace nearly 100 separate systems for human resources, payroll and financial management.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – Sheldon B. Lubar, founder and chairman of the Milwaukee-based investment company Lubar & Co., says he is donating $10 million to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee business school.
The money will be used to fund new professorships and provide scholarships to business students as the university seeks to play a greater role in the regional economy.
The head of a task force studying a college campus merger had a clear message Monday for faculty and staff members at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha: Prepare yourself for change.
Whether that change will involve a long-debated merger with UW-Milwaukee remains to be seen, said Donald Mash, chairman of the task force appointed at the urging of Gov. Jim Doyle.
As he works to fill out his first coaching staff at Wisconsin, Bret Bielema might want to consider hiring a public relations firm to clean up the image of the UW program.
That image suffered another hit Monday.
P.J. Hill, a promising freshman tailback who redshirted last season, has been suspended indefinitely from the team for violating the school’s student-athlete discipline policy, school officials announced Monday.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is working on a computer model that she says can identify the targets that terrorists are most likely to hit, which would help authorities figure out how to best allocate their limited security resources.
Did the Irish read the Wisconsin Blue Ribbon Report on Jobs for the 21st Century, published back in 1997?
The strategic blueprint laid out almost a decade ago sounds like a carbon copy of the strategy that has propelled Ireland to the top of the prosperity pyramid in Europe.
The Irish have been focused. They have beefed up investments in universities. We have been going the other way, except for the BioStar initiative at UW-Madison.
Citing a number of information technology horror stories involving several state agencies, key members of the Legislature�s Joint Audit Committee today called for a massive state review.
One is the UW System’s Lawson payroll software system, which has cost $25 million.
Entrepreneur Sheldon B. Lubar is donating $10 million to the business school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the largest gift in the university’s history.
Your wife is pregnant; so why are you gaining weight?
Working with man’s closest relatives, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have shed new light on the centuries-old observation that is part of a phenomenon in people known as the couvade syndrome.
….(A.J. Degenhardt is the only UW player left using the classic wooden stick. Others have moved on to sticks made of synthetic material, and the cost reflects it.
In the past five years, the amount the Badgers spend on sticks has doubled, UW director of hockey operations Rob Malnory said. This season, he expects to spend around $70,000 of the team’s budget on sticks alone.
THE DAY before Jennifer Connor was officially going to enter the mustard business, her partner put her in a pickle.
At the time – 2004 – Connor was in Chicago, back from Hollywood, looking to buy a mustard line named for a longtime Madison retail clothier.
….Connor was a UW-Madison freshman eating a cheeseburger at Stillwater’s on State Street when she had her first heavenly bite of Rendall’s mustard. Talking to Connor, you soon learn she does not suffer from an enthusiasm deficit – especially when it comes to Rendall’s mustard.
WHEN SHIRLEY Robinson was attending UW-Madison half a century ago, she was one of only eight women in the concert band. But what she really longed to do was play with the marching band, and that, in the early 1950s, was not possible.
….As bad as Robinson felt then, she felt elated Thursday, a little before noon, still flush after playing the tambourine with the UW Varsity Band and being introduced to a cheering crowd at the Overture Center by band leader Mike Leckrone.
Net farm income in 2005 in Wisconsin was an estimated $1.6 billion, after hitting a record $1.9 billion in 2004, when prices were stronger for nearly all farm products, according to the annual Status of Wisconsin Agriculture report from the UW-Madison College of Agricultural Life Sciences.
Faced with his first disciplinary decision as Wisconsin’s head football coach, Bret Bielema acted swiftly and boldly.
He dismissed junior tailback Booker Stanley from the team Thursday, his second day on the job.
Text messaging isn’t a new phenomenon, but it certainly is building more and more momentum with each passing day because most college coaches consider it an efficient way to correspond with high school prospects.
“It’s quick. It’s responsive. And it’s informative,” said University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema.
It’s also becoming more and more controversial as its popularity soars — to the point where the NCAA and American Football Coaches Association are keeping a close eye on the practice.
Signing day, while not quite a national holiday, is still the most important day of the year for prep football players.
But while the focus is often on NCAA Division I schools, there are many Division I-AA, II, III and NAIA programs that could also be a perfect fit for an eager student-athlete.
Clay Russell, a former collegiate basketball player who works as a financial advisor, recently posed the question: “Why do many successful prep student-athletes end their competitive careers before college when their dreams of competing in Division I are dashed?”
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. has received a new federal grant that enables it to expand into cancer research.
Stratatech has received several federal grants for its work in developing human skin substitutes for burn victims and chronic wounds such as diabetic and pressure ulcers.
….Stratatech, a UW-Madison spin-off established in 2000, has 27 employees at its offices in the MGE Innovation Center in University Research Park.
The Madison City Council on Tuesday is expected to approve the final master plan for redevelopment of the Villager Mall. Two years in the making, the ambitious plan calls for tearing down much of the existing center and constructing a new “Main Street” running through the middle of the 9-acre property.
….The site now hosts the South Madison Health and Family Center, also known as “Harambee”; outlets for UW-Madison, Madison Area Technical College and Edgewood College; a city library branch; Yue Wah Oriental foods, and other smaller retailers. Plans call for maintaining that unique blend of uses, plus adding residential housing to the mix.
How do you stop a herd of rampaging elephants?
A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison business students recently learned that the answer lies in learning to think from a different point of view.
A group of 10 master’s of business administration students visited the impoverished African nation of Malawi in early January. The journey was one of several trips abroad the MBA program has been adding in an effort to give their students a more worldly outlook.
UW-Madison telecommunications professor Barry Orton is quoted.
A Madison man who was involved in a drunken driving hit-and-run accident that left a University of Wisconsin professor with extensive injuries and who had seven previous drunken driving convictions was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison and four more on extended supervision.
Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg called coverage of Hurricane Katrina “probably the biggest media scandal of the last 20 years” during a talk here Wednesday night.
“The first thing you should know about Katrina is that everything you know about it is wrong,” Goldberg, the prolific columnist and National Review Online editor told an audience at Grainger Hall on the UW-Madison campus.
His talk was sponsored by the conservative student group Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow.
Bret Bielema’s first football recruiting class at the University of Wisconsin in many ways fits the model he described last week to the UW Athletic Board.
The 23-player class, to be announced today after the players sign national letters of intent, consists largely of players from UW’s traditional recruiting areas.
Quoted: Scott Bachmeier, a research meteorologist who works for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ground to the bone, the teeth of the famous fossil skeleton, Kennewick Man, look as if they’ve spent a lifetime gnashing rocks.
But it’s from these worn choppers that Thomas Stafford Jr., a research fellow in the department of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of Stafford Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., plans to learn about the origins, movement and lifestyle of this highly controversial, 9,000-year-old North American.
Quoted: Don Nichols, an economist and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mithridion Inc., a start-up pharmaceutical firm near Madison, announced Wednesday that it scored a $1.6 million investment to help develop drugs that stop or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
The firm was founded in 2004 and grew out of research on mice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Pharmacy. It will use the funds to expand its laboratories, hire scientists and develop Alzheimer’s-inhibiting drugs. Its investors are Rosetta Partners LLC, a private equity consortium in suburban Chicago, and Leazer’s Wisconsin Investment Partners.
A Fitchburg company that aims to develop drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease today announced it has attracted funding that it will use to establish labs, hire scientists and develop drug candidates.
Mithridion Inc. said it has received the first portion of an anticipated $1.6 million in angel funding, with the remainder expected over the next few months.
….Mithridion’s technology was developed at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy by Jeffrey A. Johnson, an associate professor, and Thor D. Stein, a researcher.
Dear Editor: As I begin my new duties as full-time director of athletics at the University of Wisconsin, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of the great fans of Wisconsin football for all of their support during my 16 years as head football coach. We accomplished a great deal during that time, but none of it would have been possible without your undying loyalty and enthusiasm.
I also want to say thank you to all of the student-athletes who worked so hard during all those years, and a heartfelt thanks to all of our great assistant football coaches and support staff whose behind-the-scenes work had such a positive impact on the program.
Barry Alvarez
Director of athletics
UW-Madison
“Mozart sure brings them out,” one University of Wisconsin piano teacher quipped while looking at the crowd eating cake during an intermission.
He wasn’t kidding.
By just about any standard you care to choose — attendance, artistic quality, money — the six-hour Mozart piano sonata marathon, held Sunday afternoon to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, was an unqualified success.
As upset as some members of the red-sweater crowd are with the news of the UW men’s basketball program’s first academic casualties in 11 seasons, the Badger Nation may want to brace itself:
The worst news concerning this situation, potentially, is yet to come.
….The fact that three UW players were ineligible in the same semester not only hurts this year’s Badgers, but has the potential to haunt Ryan’s program down the road.
Under the ruse of the “ownership society” middle class Americans are being increasingly asked to fend for themselves when it comes to getting old, getting sick or other major life events.
…the ownership society is all about taking government off the hook in terms of providing any kind of safety net. That is, presumably, to free up more tax dollars to keep in the hands of the rich, who are then supposed to create more jobs. Call it trickle down, with an employment kicker.
And you can now add college tuition aid to the growing list of middle class benefits headed for the scrap heap in George Bush’s America.
The London-based Financial Times has ranked UW-Madison’s MBA program the 51st best in the U.S., after it was unranked last year.
The Financial Times’ ranking methodology includes data provided by the school and a survey of students enrolled in the program from 2000-2002 and is based on alumni career development and salary purchasing power, diversity and research capabilities
The UW MBA program has been changed considerably in the three plus years since the class surveyed for this ranking graduated. The new specialized MBA program prepares students to launch careers in highly focused areas.
Bret Bielema’s first offensive line coach at Wisconsin comes with deep ties to the program, as well a lasting emotional bond with one of UW’s most popular head coaches.
Bob Palcic, 57, on Tuesday was named the Badgers’ line coach. He replaces Jim Hueber, who joined the Minnesota Vikings’ staff under longtime friend Brad Childress.
