A Q&A interview with Tomislav Longinovic, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of Slavic and comparative literature, who is offering a course called “The Vampire in Literature and Film.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison interim Provost Virginia Sapiro is a finalist for the position of provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of Kansas.
She was passed over for the permanent provost’s job at UW-Madison when the finalists were announced late last month.
The University of Kansas has posted the news of her finalist status on its Web site. The other four finalists have not been named. Sapiro is on the Kansas campus in Lawrence interviewing for the job today.
Marcus Landry ended nearly a week’s worth of speculation about his future with the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team when he stepped up to the microphones Monday afternoon and told reporters he’s academically ineligible for the rest of this season.
….The reserve, who had been averaging 6.0 points and 3.1 rebounds a game, said he waited to make a statement about his eligibility until he had exhausted appeals to regain it.
All students of African-American literature and history owe a debt to Nellie McKay, said Henry Louis Gates Jr., a noted scholar and author.
McKay, a former chairwoman of the department of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died on Sunday after a lengthy battle with liver cancer.
Gates, chairman of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, was co-editor with McKay on the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, released in 1997. It is widely regarded as the definitive collection of works by American black authors.
Two days after being swept by Western Collegiate Hockey Association foe Denver, the Wisconsin men’s hockey team fell from the No. 1 spot in the USA Today / USA Hockey Magazine national poll.
Mike O’Melia wasn’t the best player on the 1962 University of Wisconsin team that upset top-ranked Ohio State and snapped the Buckeyes’ 47-game, regular-season winning streak, but he ran the show.
“He was like the quintessential point guard,” former Badgers athletic director Pat Richter said Monday night. “He handled the ball. Good defender. A real playmaker.”
O’Melia, the captain of the Badgers’ 1964 squad, died Saturday of unknown causes. He was 63.
Misery took a three-day weekend in the Badger nation.
First the University of Wisconsin suffered an embarrassing basketball loss Saturday to North Dakota State, a team so new Division I that it still doesn’t belong to a conference. The news was worse Monday though not totally unexpected.
Freshman forward Marcus Landry, a key member of the Badgers’ bench, is academically ineligible to play the rest of the season.
Wisconsin’s national rank for venture capital investment – a common yardstick for entrepreneurialism and economic innovation in a regional economy – dropped to 35th last year from 26th in 2004, according to a survey released Monday.
Nellie Y. McKay, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who introduced African-American literature to college students around the world, has died, a university official announced Monday.
“She helped shape the transition of black women’s studies from the margins of awareness to the center of intellectual life,” Craig Werner, who teaches in the university’s department of Afro-American studies, said in the release.
A team of nationally known education researchers has unveiled an ambitious plan to study the impact of the private school voucher program in Milwaukee.
The study would be conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project at Georgetown University, with Patrick Wolf, a well-known researcher in education policy, as the lead figure. Jay Greene, a professor at the University of Arkansas who has written numerous research works favorable to voucher programs, would be a partner with Wolf, as would University of Wisconsin-Madison professor John Witte, who was the main researcher in the studies in the early 1990s and who is regarded as more neutral on the merits of voucher
Nellie McKay, one of the nation’s foremost scholars of African-American literature, died Sunday.
McKay, who was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1978, died at HospiceCare after battling liver cancer for the last year. She was 75.
McKay was best known as the co-editor of “The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,” written with Henry Louis Gates Jr. She was a pioneer in the movement to make black studies an academic area of higher education.
“Tandem Press Highlights: 1995-2005” is at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave. It opened Friday and runs through April 9, and features selections from more than 200 prints. The printmaking workshop, located on Madison’s near east side, is a teaching facility associated with the UW-Madison and is directed by Paula McCarthy Panczenko.
One of the three finalists for the provost position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has taken a job elsewhere.
Kumble Subbaswamy, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, has accepted the position of provost at the University of Kentucky, according to the latter university’s Web site.
A federal grand jury in Milwaukee is reviewing the controversial decision to award a major state travel contract to one of Gov. Jim Doyle’s campaign donors, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
….According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the grand jury has heard testimony from UW officials involved in the contract decision, some of whom have said they felt political pressure to award the contract to Adelman (Travel).
Students, faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were shaken after learning this week about an apparent hate crime in Ogg Hall.
Earlier this week, four men were charged with hate crimes after a Dec. 21 incident in which an Ogg Hall lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liaison had his door defaced.
The Emerald Isle certainly has lessons to teach Wisconsin about economic development and the key role education plays in a healthy economy, as Gov. Jim Doyle, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, and other area leaders learned on a recent trip to Ireland.
Milwaukee businessman Michael Cudahy, who organized the trip, called it a “wakeup call.” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago said he was astonished by some of the things he learned. All apparently came away with the idea that education is the single most important factor in transforming an economy. That’s an idea they need to spread.
The other day, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago repeated his pet theme: The campus must step up the amount of research it does, from $39 million annually now to $100 million in 10 years. This time, however, Santiago unveiled a strategy to help meet that goal.
Authorities have convened a federal grand jury to review whether campaign donations to Gov. Jim Doyle played a role in the state awarding a $750,000 contract to Adelman Travel.
As part of the same investigation, officials are looking into political contributions made around the time the state approved the sale of a nuclear power plant, a source familiar with the inquiries said Saturday.
Quoted: Ruth Benca, sleep specialist and psychiatry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
With the arrests Wednesday of Antonio Freeman and Jameson Davis, four Wisconsin football players have allegedly broken the law since Dec. 16.
Freeman and Davis were arrested Wednesday night in Jefferson County after deputies pulled them over for speeding and then found marijuana in the car.
A Kerry-for-President sign improperly hung in the front window of a Madison condominium a few days before the 2004 election will probably change a state law.
Because of the sign, put up by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Diana Hess, the state Senate on Thursday passed a bill (SB 350) telling condominium associations they cannot prohibit political signs.
The bill would allow condo by-laws to regulate the size and location of political signs, however.
A Catholic organization serving University of Wisconsin-Madison students wants to be the first group to spend student fees on activities that are openly religious.
The UW Roman Catholic Foundation, which operates the private St. Paul’s University Catholic Center at 723 State St., is pushing to get $205,000 in segregated fees, a portion of which would pay for Lenten booklets.
….The Catholic foundation’s budget request was scheduled for a vote Wednesday night by the Associated Students of Madison Council. But the council decided to delay it and seek legal advice.
Dane County residents will be healthier if the air is cleaner, so local forces are working to reduce bad air with help from the University of Wisconsin.
The Dane County Clean Air Coalition has received a $450,000 Wisconsin Partnership Fund grant from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health to prevent health risks caused by ground-level ozone, fine particles and toxic air pollutants.
It appears likely that the girls and boys state swimming meets will have a new home as early as this fall.
Last Friday the WIAA Board of Control approved a recommendation by the swimming and diving coaches advisory committee to examine a potential move of the State Championship meet to Waukesha South High School.
….The WIAA has held its boys state meet at the University of Wisconsin Natatorium since 1966 and the girls meet at the Nat since 1978.
Two UW Badger defensive backs were arrested Wednesday night in Jefferson County when an officer found marijuana after stopping the car for going over 100 mph.
Antonio Freeman, 20, and Jameson Davis, 19, were released after being booked into the Jefferson County Jail. Both await dates for their court appearances in Jefferson County Court.
Consider this the Wisconsin Badgers’ third loss in two days.
Sometime on Tuesday the Badgers learned they would face Ohio State without two members of their rotation, Marcus Landry and Greg Stiemsma, who were out because of academic and medical issues, respectively.
While riding down a rural Irish lane so narrow that two cars could barely pass – much less avoid the wandering sheep – Gov. Jim Doyle mused out loud last week about the contrast between the bumpy road and the growing technology center that lay at its end.
Back in Wisconsin, Doyle said, most argue that the state must build expensive highways to lure factories and research facilities.
Quoted: Dietram Scheufele, a professor in the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Here are 10 of the most intriguing films that the UW Cinematheque will be screening this spring.
With one speech, Gov. Jim Doyle has offered state Democrats a platform for this fall’s elections: a living wage to lift families out of poverty, health care for all Wisconsin children, aid for low-income families to pay their heating costs this winter, easier financial access to the University of Wisconsin, and help for seniors to stay in their homes.
Doyle included those as points in his “Affordability Agenda,” unveiled during Tuesday night’s annual State of the State speech. He took to the road today to back up the speech with a series of statewide appearances.
Four college students were charged with hate crimes for an incident during which they allegedly wrote anti-gay statements and spit on a dorm room door.
According to a criminal complaint, the victim, whose door displayed a red sign reading “LGBT Liaison” and several gay-themed posters, told police he was awakened in his Ogg Hall dorm room at about 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 21 by someone yelling, “All faggots should die” and “I hate f– faggots.” He opened the door to find “I hate f— faggots. Die,” written on the dry erase board on his door and saliva dripping down his door.
Sometimes, if you want to get something done, you have to go to the top. That’s what happened when the UW Cinematheque film series tried to secure a copy of “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” the acclaimed animated feature by legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, for its spring season.
Ironically, the film is available at the corner video store on video or DVD, having been distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. But finding an actual film print to screen was much harder, and it ended up that Miyazaki himself had to personally approve a Madison screening, Cinematheque programmer Tom Yoshikami says.
Juggling responsibilities with classes, practice, travel and competition poses challenges for student-athletes.
Akiya Alexander is aware that finding a balance with all of those tasks is crucial, and hopes to return to competition with the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team next season.
Alexander was declared academically ineligible on Tuesday for the second semester and won’t play or travel with the Badgers (6-10, 1-5 Big Ten Conference) for the rest of the season.
Richard Florida, the best-selling author, consultant and professor at Geaorge Mason University submits to a Q & A interview in which he says: “We need to massively, massively invest in our universities and colleges. For every University of Wisconsin, there is a state that doesn’t have one.” Florida says Madison is a “beacon,” partly because of the university.
The attorney for state Rep. Scott Jensen (R-Town of Brookfield) told a judge Tuesday that his witness list for Jensen’s upcoming trial includes former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser and the manager of Gov. Jim Doyle’s re-election campaign. Also on the list is former Assembly Speaker Tom Loftus, now a member of the UW System Board of Regents.
Quoted: James Stein, an associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
In a wide-ranging speech aimed at covering all of his political bases, Gov. Jim Doyle said he had righted the state’s finances and was now turning to an “affordability agenda” to address the demands on middle-class families across the state.
In their first-ever “pre-buttal” – presented before Gov. Jim Doyle gives his State of the State address tonight – majority Republicans in the state Senate were set today to call for new limits on government spending and tax increases and an overhaul of the state’s tax code.
The line to return textbooks snaked up the steps of University Book Store and into the lobby. People who wanted to buy books had to fight their way through the crowds.
“I kinda like the fact it’s crazy crowded,” University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore Adam Markoff, from Northbrook, Ill., said Monday. “I might run into someone I know.”
Students have returned to campus and classes begin today. The mob scene at the bookstore, expected to continue all week, demonstrates the continued allure of buying and selling textbooks in person.
Sounds of protest and praise filled the State Capitol this morning, though on starkly different issues.
In the chambers of the Senate and the Assembly, legislators formally commended University of Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez in a joint resolution that congratulated and thanked him “for his 16 years of hard work and great achievements as coach,” more wins than any of his predecessors.
But, at the same time down Wisconsin Avenue at Bethel Lutheran Church, demonstrators were also talking about work. They were rallying before a walk to the Capitol to try to influence senators not to approve a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship or legal residence to get a driver’s license.
Gov. Jim Doyle says he will propose new steps to maintain Wisconsin’s status as a leader in embryonic stem cell research during his State of the State speech (tonight). In an interview (yesterday), Doyle said he aims to have Wisconsin capture 10 percent of the stem cell research market by 2015. By then, Doyle estimates, the industry will be worth $10 billion nationwide and will employ 100,000 people.
To get to that target, Doyle said he will call for the Department of Commerce to dedicate $5 million to find, fund and recruit companies that find practical applications for stem cell research, such as Cellular Dynamics, the Madison-based company established by stem cell pioneer and UW-Madison researcher James Thomson.
Toni Whited, an associate professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, has won the top award for co-authoring the best paper published on corporate finance in the Journal of Finance.
Although they coached against each other in the Big 12 Conference for the last two seasons, Mike Hankwitz of Colorado and Dave Doeren of Kansas didn’t hesitate to share defensive strategy regarding common opponents.
Although Bret Bielema would welcome the return of former tailback Dwayne Smith to the Wisconsin football team, he will not do so at the risk of Smith’s health.
Smith, who remains enrolled at UW and turns 22 on April 4, contacted Bielema last week and inquired about the possibility of returning to the team. Bielema listened and Smith is to meet with UW’s medical staff this week.
The former standout at Hales Franciscan in Chicago was forced to give up football just days before the 2004 season opener after doctors discovered he had a potentially life-threatening heart condition. The condition, known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, is generally characterized by enlargement of the heart muscle and a thickening of the walls of the left ventricle.
Not too many children and grandchildren of University of Wisconsin System alumni are taking up an offer for discounted non-resident tuition under a three-year pilot program.
Gov. Jim Doyle is proposing a new financial aid package to help high school students with good grade-point averages pay for college.
Madison is giving new meaning to “gene pool,” as a small but growing number of companies in the molecular diagnostic field are springing up around the university and attracting the attention of venture capitalists.
There are days he still can’t believe it.
How could a state once known for its squeaky clean politics have degenerated into the cesspool that it is now – and in a relatively short time – Mike McCabe wondered aloud during an interview this week at a downtown coffee shop.
And yet, while he hates to sound naive, the 45-year-old executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign believes there are definite signs that the public is finally waking up and that we may be in the early stages of a “throw the bums out” movement.
Democratic state legislators Thursday introduced a resolution commending the recent development of new stem cell lines at the UW-Madison and announced that they are sending a letter to President Bush asking that those lines be made eligible for federal funding.
The proposed Senate Joint Resolution commends Professor James Thomson and the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the creation of two new lines that are free of non-human nutrients and materials, providing additional potential for developing treatments for life-threatening diseases.
The resolution also states that the Legislature fully supports human stem cell research.
Bucky will be back. Just not at his famous perch at the corner of University Avenue and North Park Street.
The two iconic Bucky Badger clocks – one faced University, the other Park – were removed from the building this summer and are now in storage, said Gary Brown, director of UW-Madison’s office of planning and landscape architecture.
….The UW plans to refurbish the clocks and have them reinstalled as part of the new Welcome Center, under construction on North Park Street, Brown said.
States must give up some control over their public universities so the institutions can continue educating the masses, former University of Wisconsin System President Katharine Lyall says in her new book.
“The state-agency model is failing as a functional management concept for universities; it is driven forward by untenable, long-term fiscal realities,” writes Lyall and her co-author, former UW System administrator Kathleen Sell, in the book, “The True Genius of America at Risk.”
Lyall, who retired in 2004, imagines the state university of the future as a quasi-public, not-for-profit “public-purpose university,” freer from political interference and needless bureaucracy by the state government.
The miracle some Wisconsin football fans yearned for did not materialize Thursday.
As expected, UW junior tailback Brian Calhoun announced that he had decided to skip his senior season and enter the National Football League draft.
It might seem odd that a long-haired hippie fresh out of University of Wisconsin-Madison would set aside his diplomas in business management and sociology, hop into a beat-up Corolla and head for Seattle, just to learn everything there is to know about coffee.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is overhauling the way it allocates state funding for research, with the goal of creating more accountability and entrepreneurship within its ranks.
UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago said the new Research Growth Initiative is the university’s main strategy to boost its annual research budget from $39 million now to more than $100 million within 10 years.
A new report commissioned by the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce in its effort to block a proposal to guarantee workers paid sick leave paints a catastrophic picture of what would happen if the measure were to be approved.
….UW-Madison economist Laura Dresser said that credible studies have shown that the sick leave ordinance would affect about 17 percent of businesses in Madison, and those firms would face less than a 3.5 percent increase in their labor costs.
She said that there were “serious problems” with the methodology employed by Northstar Economics, a private consulting group.
The Information Technology Association of Wisconsin has named a former Charter Communications executive and entrepreneur as its first president and CEO.
Jim Rice took the helm Jan. 1 at ITAW, which was formed last June by a group of Wisconsin businesses as the first statewide organization dedicated to advancing IT.
….In the early 1990s, Rice co-founded Stress Photonics, a technology spin-out from the UW-Madison Engineering Department in the area of thermoelastic stress analysis.
Resident assistants at the University of Wisconsin have the right to free speech, but should not use their position to pressure their student residents, a panel has concluded.
The 18-member Resident Assistant Working Group submitted its final report to UW System President Kevin Reilly on Wednesday. The group recommended principles for new rules governing university employees who live and work in the dormitories.
Bret Bielema’s first hire as Wisconsin football coach is a familiar face: Henry Mason.
Unseasonably warm weather and another announcement that a state company received millions of dollars in venture funding make Wisconsin seem almost like, well, California.
Madison-based TomoTherapy Inc.’s revelation Wednesday that it raised an additional $14 million of private equity funding in late December brings to $33 million the amount of private equity capital three fast-growing Wisconsin firms said this week they’ve raised.
