Although Wisconsin defensive coordinator Bret Bielema remains mum on the makeup of his first coaching staff at UW, a handful of familiar candidates have applied for positions.
University of Wisconsin football player Marcus Randle El was charged Tuesday with two misdemeanors stemming from a fight over gambling money during which he allegedly punched an acquaintance in the face.
Randle El, a 19-year-old sophomore wide receiver, faces charges of battery and bail jumping in the Dec. 16 incident. His attorney, Charles Giesen, appeared on his behalf during an initial appearance on the charges. Randle El, who is free on a signature bond, is with the Badgers in Orlando, Fla., where they will play Auburn in the Capital One Bowl on Monday.
Among Kevin Lynch’s top 10 picks for the best performing arts events of 2005 are the Nov. 18 UW-Madison Faculty Dance Concert and “The Music of Gunther Schuller” on Oct. 27.
Madison visual arts felt depleted in 2005 with the transitional limbo of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (waiting for its new home in Overture to open in the spring), and the losses of Spaightwood Galleries, Wendy Cooper Gallery and Art Beat Gallery & Studio.
Then came the astonishing gift of the Chazens (prompting the controversial renaming of the Elvehjem), which projected a bright future for the city’s cramped public art museum, to more than double gallery size and add a dazzling collection of contemporary art, among other enhancements. The sudden renaming is ultimately appropriate: The Chazens have allowed a very good museum to court greatness….
Christmas is past, and the new year soon to arrive. It’s time for a long winter’s nap and some comforting dreams about how the datelines of 2006 might read. Wake me up Jan. 2, when the Badgers play. Please save some eggnog.
Hmmm, let’s see …
….MADISON – UW United, a new organization comprising University of Wisconsin System alumni, announced today a statewide effort to build support for Wisconsin’s higher education system. It’s time to end decades of erosion in support for the system, organizers said, promising to target legislators who have sought to dismantle the system.
The University of Wisconsin’s Center for Tobacco Research is looking for up to 700 Madison area smokers for a study intended to compare five stop-smoking treatments.
….The National Weather Service and Wisconsin Emergency Management plan to use the Aug. 18 tornadoes to study how larger cities such as Madison and Milwaukee would cope with a massive tornado.
The two agencies are drafting projections on what would happen should a tornado lay waste to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the state Capitol, downtown Milwaukee or Miller Park, all scenarios that could result in tens of millions of dollars in damage and dozens of deaths….
University of Wisconsin football player Marcus Randle El was charged today with two misdemeanors stemming from a fight over gambling money during which he allegedly punched an acquaintance in the face.
Randle El, a 19-year-old sophomore wide receiver, faces charges of battery and bail-jumping in the Dec. 16 incident.
….Randle El was initially suspended from the UW football team over the incident, but later was cleared to play in the (Capital One) bowl game.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison administrator collected $125,000 in salary during nearly eight months of paid leave after he stepped down and his position was eliminated, university officials acknowledge in court records.
The university could have saved $77,000 of that salary had Chancellor John Wiley demoted Paul Barrows into a lower-paying backup job after he forced him to resign as vice chancellor, UW-Madison human resources official Stephen Lund said in an affidavit.
….In the garment industry, Steve & Barry’s fits into an emerging category of “extreme-value retailers who go to off-the-beaten-track marketplaces like Madagascar where they can really get tremendous deals,” said Lois Huff of Retail Forward, a consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio.
They cater to tightfisted customers “looking for something that’s ‘good enough’ – decent quality at a great price,” Huff said. “There’s a huge shift in many consumers toward that kind of a mind-set.”
The Lesbian Health Task Force will offer “Delicious Lesbian Kisses” to gay women over 40 on New Year’s Eve to inspire them to stop smoking. The kissing booth at the Outreach Pink Party will offer cut-rate kisses to non-smokers and to smokers who turn in a pack of cigarettes.
The advertising campaign, which will be kicked off that night, is in partnership with the UW Center for Women’s Health Research.
….Halloween horrors: Separated now by several weeks from an event that kept him sleepless for about a weekend, Cieslewicz said that his perspective on the annual party has changed.
“We do have to recognize that the event has improved somewhat in each of the last four years,” he said. “But still, any time you end the event with pepper spray, it’s not a good thing and there were an awful lot of kids just sick on alcohol.”
The mayor said there are two main points to address next year: Finding ways to make the crowd, particularly the underaged, less inebriated and taking the cost of the party off of property taxpayers.
If lawsuits in state and federal courts against Madison taverns that sought to end some drink specials magically came to an end over the holiday season, tavern owners would still be out almost a half-million dollars in legal fees.
Campus area taverns had agreed to end the specials after they were pressured by the city and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But there is no chance that the legal actions, brought by the Minneapolis law firm of Lommen, Nelson, Cole & Stageberg on behalf of three UW students are going to end soon on either of two fronts.
Disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk was forced to quit his post at Seoul National University after the college said his pioneering stem-cell research was partly faked.
Hwang, who until last month was feted as a national hero, was flanked by weeping researchers as he apologized for the fabrication of a 2005 study that was heralded as a breakthrough in finding cures for diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. The government said it is considering cutting funding for his work.
Art has a long history of putting into images what escapes words. One of the greatest of those expressions is in Madison right now.
On the third floor of the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, you will find Robert Motherwell’s “Homage to the Spanish Republic No. 125,” on loan from the collection of UW alumni Simona and Jerome A. Chazen of New York.
….If nothing else, the Christmas card tradition seems to force us to renew old friendships, get up to date on growing families and, yes, sometimes hear sad news as we all get a year older. The memories those cards induce are precious.
University of Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez revealed on his statewide Thursday night radio show that suspended tailback Booker Stanley will not be practicing with the team and will not make the trip to Orlando, Fla., for the Capital One Bowl between the Badgers and Auburn on Jan. 2.
Less than two weeks before the Capital One Bowl, Badgers running back Booker Stanley was suspended from the football team after an incident at his campus area apartment during which he allegedly choked a 20-year-old woman.
The 22-year-old junior from Milwaukee, who was set to plead Wednesday on four misdemeanor charges stemming from a fight last April, was arrested at about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday after a resident in a neighboring apartment called police, Madison Police spokesman Mike Hanson said.
In the 20 years I’ve been doing this column, I’ve never met so many college-age individuals who are committed to making the world a better place. These are, I think most would agree, difficult times to be an optimist.
And yet, for the first time in eons – well, since Election Day, Nov. 7, 2000, actually – I’ll be celebrating Christmas filled with hope.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez made some significant changes to his senior staff this week, and there’s another move on the horizon.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez, who has lost three members of his management team in the last year, on Thursday announced a realignment plan that is to go into effect Feb. 1.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells said he supports a state Senate bill that would give faculty and academic staff members at University of Wisconsin institutions the right to organize unions.
The bill, sponsored by Sens. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, and Daniel Kapanke, R-La Crosse would not automatically unionize faculty and academic staff members. Instead, it would give groups at each university in the UW-System the ability to vote on whether or not to organize.
University of Wisconsin Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez announced plans Thursday to realign his senior administrative staff effective Feb. 1, 2006. The announcement included the assignment of new duties to some current senior staff personnel as well as the promotion of Marija Neubauer to the new position of Associate Athletic Director for Development.
Quoted: Dr. Hans Sollinger, a professor of surgery and chairman of transplantation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Q&A interview with UW-Madison researcher and author of a book on evolutionary developmental biology.
Young women with type 1 or insulin-dependent diabetes are apt start menstruating later than young women without diabetes, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study suggests.
….In Madison, Lester Dore hadn’t forgotten the small Louisiana towns he grew up in and visited as a child. He felt as if a loved one had been struck at the news of New Orleans’ flooding, he said, and soon realized that the marsh towns were becoming inundated with evacuees after Rita struck.
….Dore tapped in to his community – the Madison Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the UW School of Nursing, where he works as a graphic artist, and friends and family members – for resources to help.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday signed a bill into law that prohibits the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority from making, buying or assuming mortgage loans to anyone without a Social Security number.
Other legislation he signed included three bills that benefit university and college students.
A search committee has forwarded three finalists for the position of provost to University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley. They are:
� Patrick Farrell, executive associate dean of the UW-Madison College of Engineering.
� Sue Rosser, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
� Kumble Subbaswamy, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington.
A lack of funding means police and security units on University of Wisconsin campuses are understaffed and cannot afford crime prevention programs, a new UW System report warns.
Some of the smaller campuses in the UW System struggle to maintain an around-the-clock security presence due to low staffing levels even though they assure parents such coverage is always available, according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.
Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill on Wednesday that will add a second student to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.
A lack of funding means police and security units on University of Wisconsin campuses are understaffed and cannot afford crime prevention programs, a new UW System report warns.
The image of the University of Wisconsin football program suffered another ugly hit Wednesday when for the second time in less than a week a member of the team was arrested in the wake of a violent incident.
Less than two weeks before the Capital One Bowl, Badgers running back Booker Stanley was suspended from the football team today after an incident at his campus area apartment during which he allegedly choked a 20-year-old woman.
The 22-year-old junior from Milwaukee, who was set to plead today on four misdemeanor charges stemming from a fight last April, was arrested at about 3:30 a.m. after a resident in a neighboring apartment called police, Madison Police spokesman Mike Hanson said.
He was jailed on tentative charges of second-degree reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, intimidation of a victim, all felonies, and two counts of misdemeanor battery.
Wisconsin running back Booker Stanley was suspended from the team Wednesday after being arrested for allegedly choking a woman at his apartment.
Stanley, the Badgers’ top returning rusher this season, could face charges of second-degree reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, two counts of battery and intimidation of a victim, Madison police spokesman Mike Hanson said Wednesday.
University of Wisconsin wide receiver Marcus Randle El has been cleared to return to the team and could play in the Capital One Bowl after he was arrested on a battery charge last weekend.
A school committee decided Tuesday to let Randle El, the brother of Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Antwaan Randle El, start practicing with the team again on Monday.
I am a professor at UW-Eau Claire committed to the constitutional guarantee of freedom for all speech, popular or unpopular, religious or anti-religious. I am alarmed when ideas are restricted in the university.
Recently interim Chancellor Vicki Lord Larson announced that UW-EC is no longer enforcing its unwritten ban on religious, ideological and political activities by an off-duty resident assistant in his/her dorm. I applaud this decision!
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have demonstrated that embryonic stem cells can develop into three different kinds of heart cells to help recover from a heart attack.
The experiments, performed on mice, could be a step in the right direction toward repairing human heart tissue, said Dr. Timothy Kamp, the lead researcher. He is a UW-Madison stem cell and heart specialist.
Although UW officials never announced that Badgers football player Marcus Randle El had been suspended for violating the school’s student-athlete discipline policy, they announced Tuesday that his suspension had been modified by an appeals committee.
Randle El, who sat out practice Monday and Tuesday, will be allowed to return to practice on Monday, UW’s first scheduled practice in Orlando, Fla., in preparation for the Jan. 2 Capital One Bowl. Randle El is to miss UW’s final practice on campus, set for Thursday morning.
Wisconsin residents and businesses paid a record $56.5 billion in state, local and federal taxes and fees this year, a 10% increase from last year and the biggest jump in more than two decades, according to a study by a non-partisan taxpayers group. The article quotes Andrew Reschovsky, professor of public affairs and applied economics at UW-Madison.
It’s all about supporting everyday heroes and reaching out to fellow emergency communicators. That’s why police dispatchers in Fitchburg and Middleton and on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus are sending holiday gifts to 911 professionals in New Orleans.
….To make this happen, a connection was made through a national 911 CARES project, which is part of an organization called Public Safety Training Consultants. Helping to coordinate the project here is LeAnn Krieg, communications supervisor with the UW-Madison police department.
The Wisconsin Union is pushing to rebuild Union South on its current site rather than renovate it, its director said.
The project, which would also include renovations to the Wisconsin Union Theater, would require funds from a student referendum. Students voted down a similar measure last spring on a 2,385-2,200 vote; union officials are gearing up for a new referendum in spring 2006, although the details of how much students would pay are unclear.
Numerous of pieces of evidence that helped send Ralph Armstrong to prison for the 1980 murder of Charise Kamps, a 19-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student, are being sent to the State Crime Laboratory for re-analysis and will help prosecutors decide whether to pursue a second conviction against Armstrong.
First-year data from the NCAA’s new Graduation Success Rate show the UW-Milwaukee’s men’s basketball program had a 28% graduation rate for classes starting from 1995-’98.
The UWM score for men’s basketball was in stark contrast to scores for the men’s basketball programs at the other Division I schools in Wisconsin. UW-Green Bay had the highest GSR for men’s basketball, 91%, followed by Marquette (86%), and Wisconsin (58%).
As of this morning, there was no word on the status of University of Wisconsin receiver Marcus Randle El, who was arrested Friday night on a tentative charge of battery.
Under athletic department rules, players arrested for crimes of violence are suspended automatically, but can appeal for reinstatement to a committee.
Wisconsin reserve wide receiver Marcus Randle El was arrested Friday night and faces a tentative charge of battery for his alleged role in a fight in a Madison bar, according to Madison police.
Wisconsin defensive coordinator Bret Bielema acknowledged once more Friday that, yes, the Iowa Hawkeyes mascot (Tiger Hawk) still resides on his left calf in the form of a tattoo.
“I have opted not to have it removed.” said Bielema, who played at Iowa from 1989-’92 and coached there from 1993-2001. “But if it gets to be much more of an issue, maybe we ought to look into that.”
What Bielema insists does not exist is an “escape” clause in his contract that will allow him to bolt UW for Iowa if the Hawkeyes have a head-coaching vacancy. He is less than two months away from replacing Barry Alvarez as UW’s head football coach.
Wisconsin’s high school students are smoking less than they did eight years ago. They’re wearing car seat belts and bike helmets more. And of those who have sex, almost eight in 10 use birth control.
That’s according to the Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a biennial report whose 2005 results were released last week by the state’s Department of Public Instruction.
Experts say the findings show teens have absorbed basic lessons from health class and public service announcements – wear seat belts, don’t smoke – but they also point to underlying data showing students still experiment, often dangerously.
Quoted: Scott Craven, chairman of the wildlife ecology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Charles O. Jones, University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus professor of political science.
Jamie Pollard, who was credited with creating a strong financial foundation in the University of Wisconsin athletic department as it moved into the 21st century, would have been a hard act to follow – but there will be no “next Jamie Pollard.”
Athletic director Barry Alvarez said Wednesday that he will not hire a new deputy AD, and is meeting today with representatives of the chancellor’s office and the athletic board to discuss the next step in the restructuring of his senior staff.
Milio’s Sandwiches, the franchise formerly known as Big Mike’s Super Subs, is donating $100,000 to University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital.
“Big Mike” Liautaud, founder and owner of company, presented a commitment check of $100,000 to the hospital today – along with a “sleigh full” of sandwiches for hospital staff – with a special holiday helper: Harlem Globetrotter guard Anthony Blake.
….In addition, for 2006, ’07 and ’08, Milio’s will partner with the hospital to raise funds and heighten awareness of the hospital and its programs.
The State of Wisconsin Investment Board has given preliminary approval to allocating up to $50 million to two new venture capital funds proposed by state firms Mason Wells and Venture Investors.
The Mason Wells Biomedical Fund II and Venture Investors Early Stage Fund IV are planned to focus on seed and early stage financing of life science opportunities coming out of Wisconsin universities and medical research facilities, said Monica Jaehnig, Wisconsin private equity portfolio manager. But the investments will not be limited to state firms.
University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have used stem cells to deliver a protein to the brains of rats in an experiment that could lead to treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders.
A Madison anti-war protest was one of many such gatherings investigated by the Department of Defense as the military stepped up monitoring of civilian activities, according to a classified database obtained by NBC News.
“This is just a further example of how a war abroad creates paranoia at home,” said Ashok Kumar, a member of the Student Labor Action Coalition, which, along with Stop the War, a UW student group, coordinated the April 26 rally that came under Pentagon scrutiny.
….Participants in the rally numbered only about 20, but a planned Air Force recruiting drive was abandoned as a result.
THE MOVIE of “Winter of Frozen Dreams,” Karl Harter’s 1990 book on the Barbara Hoffman murder case, is heating up.
….Hoffman was a brilliant and beautiful UW student who inexplicably took a job at a massage parlor and wound up accused of the cyanide murders of two of her customers, Gerald Davies and Harry Berge, who left her money in their wills.
William Proxmire, a maverick Wisconsin Democrat who gained national fame for his crusade against government waste and served 32 years in the U.S. Senate, died early today at age 90 at a convalescent home near Baltimore.
Proxmire had fought a decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
The Associated Press was told of the former senator’s death by an unnamed congressional official. As of this morning, Proxmire’s family had not made a formal announcement.
It’s not just your head that hurts when you get a headache.
Quoted: Dr. Nicolas Stanek, a clinical assistant professor of neurology and Dr. Douglas Dulli, an associate professor of neurology and population health science, both of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
William Proxmire parlayed tireless shoe-leather campaigning, a mile-wide independent streak and golden political instincts into a record 32-year tenure, a place among Wisconsin’s political giants and a measure of national fame as a crusader against government waste.
He died early this morning at a long-term care facility near Baltimore, at the age of 90, after struggling for years with Alzheimer’s disease.
During Rob Jeter’s first game as coach, an exhbition against UW-Parkside, the UW-Milwaukee coach’s first thought before the game was to make a phone call – to Bo Ryan. That should tell you a lot about the tie between Jeter and Wisconsin coach Ryan. It goes beyond friendship. They’re family.
