If holding conferences and talking about high-tech were the sole gauges of economic development success, Wisconsin would be booming these days like Dublin, Ireland.
Unfortunately, every other state from Alabama to Oregon is trying to market itself as the next Silicon Valley or Research Triangle. And Wisconsin is having a particularly hard time shifting gears from its traditional old economy of manufacturing and agriculture into a new economy world where brains count more than brawn.
The University of Wisconsin will release limited information after a former Dane County judge concludes her investigation into the Paul Barrows matter.
UW-Madison Provost Peter Spear said Susan Steingass has not yet completed her investigation, in part because some people she needs to interview are still away on vacation.
“What the public will learn are the facts of the case and the opinion of the investigator as to whether those facts indicate that rules have been broken,” Spear said on Monday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the top party school in the nation, according to new Princeton Review rankings. The publication also ranked UW-Madison as third in “lots of beer” and “lots of hard liquor,” seventh in “reefer madness,” and 20th in “best college newspaper.”
In a statement, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said efforts to curb high-risk drinking will continue.
“Junk science that results in a day of national media coverage does not do this issue justice,” he said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been crowned the top party school in the country, according to an annual survey by The Princeton Review – a title drawing cheers from some students and scorn from the university’s administration.
Quoted: University of Wisonsin-Madison education professor Kurt Squire.
While a potential scientific breakthrough released on the eve of a landmark vote in the Senate holds great promise, scientists warn that even if the new stem cell approach works, there are still significant hurdles to be overcome – obstacles likely to take years, if not decades, to resolve.
…while dozens of pundits and politicians paid tribute to Gaylord Nelson following his death on July 3 at age 89 and lauded him for his sterling environmental record, most made passing or no reference to the issue to which the father of Earth Day devoted the last decade of his life: overpopulation. It is, Nelson had maintained, not only a critical issue for the future of mankind, but the most compelling issue of them all.
(Dr. Dennis Maki, head of infectious diseases at the UW-Madison Medical School, is quoted in this first installment of a two-part series by Rob Zaleski.)
Dear Editor: Thank you for highlighting the current conversations between Overture Center and the city of Madison over the facility’s refinancing. It’s a complex issue, perhaps dry and detached to many, but essential in deciding how we, as a community, value and support the nonprofit arts….
Andrew Taylor, director, Bolz Center for Arts Administration, UW-Madison
Quoted: Frank Tuerkheimer, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jonathan Orr loves football.You don’t devote hours of your free time catching hundreds of passes, as Orr has, in an effort to make your hands more dependable if you aren’t passionate about the game. Yet when asked to choose, the University of Wisconsin senior wide receiver confesses football isn’t his No. 1 priority.
“When I leave, I want to leave a legacy that I helped to change people’s lives,” Orr said quietly after a recent practice. “I want to leave a legacy in football, too. But I just feel I’ve been called to do more wherever I go.”
Scientists for the first time have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells – without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has previously been required, a Harvard research team announced Sunday.
Republican legislators are calling for an audit of the University of Wisconsin System that would determine how many school employees have been convicted of felonies, saying they were outraged to learn that UW-Madison has failed to immediately fire three professors convicted of crimes and that it has kept two of them on the payroll while they serve time behind bars.
The proposed redevelopment of the Villager Mall on South Park Street is taking shape with 283,000 square feet of mixed-use space planned for nine buildings on the nine-acre site.
A plan presented to the community Thursday night included proposed uses for a small grocery, a new public library, 39 owner-occupied housing units, a restaurant and other retail and commercial space as well as new accommodations for all of the social service agencies now housed in the Harambee Health and Family Center and the Dane County Department of Human Services. Also sketched in were buildings for educational programs and a business incubator and outdoor public areas.
The University of Wisconsin System will decide this fall whether to rebuild an unfinished computer system that’s already cost the university $25 million.
UW has spent five years constructing the Appointment, Payroll and Benefits System, a human resources database and payroll system for the 26-campus university system. It was scheduled to be operational last April, but is still unusable.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley is aware critics have questioned the effectiveness of UW’s student-athlete discipline policy, implemented in August 2003, and is sensitive to the image of the athletic department and the university in general. Wiley even acknowledges the policy isn’t flawless and does not deter individuals from breaking the law. However, Wiley adds that the policy was not designed to deter lawbreaking but to allow school officials to mete out penalties based on one set of rules and provide students an avenue to appeal. “A law against murder doesn’t eliminate murder,” Wiley said. “And a student-misconduct policy doesn’t eliminate misconduct. It deals with it when it happens.”
When a student newspaper published a review in 2001 that said Jewish producers had caused a “Blitzkrieg” of one-sided movies about the Holocaust as a form of revenge, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee administrators denounced it as repugnant but defended the paper’s right to express such views. The Leader may not enjoy such a defense should it print a similar article this year.
In June, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that college newspapers can be subject to the same type of censorship as high school newspapers. The decision, which applies in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, came in a case out of Governors State University in Illinois. It could affect more than newspapers. Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said all subsidized college activities involving student speech, such as groups that bring speakers to campus, are subject to censorship unless they can prove they are a public forum, a place or publication for free expression.
China, Poland, Kenya, Australia and India have studied Ireland’s rapid bust-to-boom economic turnaround in search of inspiration to bolster their own competitiveness. Now it’s Milwaukee’s turn to learn from the Celtic Tiger. “We want to look at how their universities are structured, how they connect to the private sector,” said Carlos Santiago, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Santiago, who envisions UWM as a catalyst that can bolster the city’s transition to a knowledge-driven economy, is scheduled to meet Irish President Mary McAleese this weekend when she becomes Ireland’s first head of state to visit Milwaukee.
The latest U.S News & World Report rankings of America’s best colleges hold no major surprises for Wisconsin. The new rankings, which were released today, rank the University of Wisconsin-Madison 34th among all national colleges along with Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., and New York University – down from 32nd last year. In a comparison with just public colleges, UW-Madison dropped from seventh to eighth.
Steve Limbach, an undergraduate at UW-Madison when the August 1970 bombing occurred, shares his recollections of that time.
“…I do know that the Sterling Hall bombing will always be a part of my life. Even today I can shut my eyes and still see, smell and experience it as if it were yesterday.”
Limbach is one of several people offering their thoughts about the bombing in today’s Wisconsin State Journal Spectrum section.
Last season, the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. The UW’s success in 2004-05 may be a big reason why the Badgers will appear on national TV at least seven times in 2005-06.
All of the UW’s Big Ten Conference games also will be televised, according to the schedule released Wednesday.
It’s been a long, hot summer for UW-Madison chancellor John Wiley, who’s taken heat from the Legislature over his handling of an extended paid leave for a top administrator.
But Wiley, an engineer by training, had a chance Wednesday to flaunt perhaps the proudest accomplishment of his five years at the helm: completion of a state-of-the-art heating and cooling facility for campus buildings.
The No. 2 official at the University of Wisconsin-Madison moved up his retirement after he decided to pull out of an agreement that would have kept him on paid leave through the end of the upcoming school year.
Provost Peter Spear originally announced in April he would step down after the fall semester. At the time, the school did not disclose a plan that would allow Spear to collect his $227,000 salary for five months of paid leave after he left campus.
The Wisconsin Badgers can thank the Rose Bowl and television for a very busy first week of Big Ten basketball this upcoming season. The Wisconsin men’s team opens the conference season Thursday, Jan. 5 against Iowa at the Kohl Center. Two days later the Badgers play host to Michigan State and three days after that they travel to Minnesota for their first conference road game. That’s three games in five days.
The Medical College of Wisconsin has leveraged a $2.5 million grant, part of the Bush Administration’s “War on Drugs,” to partly fund a new, wide-ranging research facility. The school’s technology transfer office calls the $8.3 million facility another step forward in its efforts to move scientific discoveries into new products that can help patients. Among other things, its high-powered imaging equipment will be used to study the effects of cocaine on the brains of rats. The facility also will be available for other projects by scientists from across the state.
The No. 2 official at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is moving up his retirement after he decided to pull out of an agreement that would have kept him on paid leave through the end of the upcoming school year.
A strand of hair collected from a 1985 crime scene has led to a proposal for wide-ranging reform of the state’s criminal justice system. The root of the hair, which police saved for nearly two decades, contained DNA evidence that ultimately exonerated Steven Avery, a Manitowoc County man who was released in 2003 after serving 18 years in prison for a sexual assault he didn’t commit. On Wednesday, state lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle unveiled a package of legislation addressing the problems that were highlighted by Avery’s case. The proposals would change the way suspected criminals are questioned and prosecuted. The bill is expected to be a top priority when the Legislature returns in September for its fall session. Avery was freed through the work of the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the UW Law School.
The provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was scheduled to retire at the end of December, announced Wednesday that he would leave the university two months early. [Third item]
Japanese police have launched an investigation into the disappearance of a 20-year-old Menasha man who had been teaching English in Japan before he went missing three days ago. Andrew Lathrop is a 20-year-old who moved to Japan after his freshman year at UW-Madison last August to teach English as a second language through the Labo International Exchange Foundation.
Virginia Sapiro, an associate vice chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will become interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs in October, Chancellor John Wiley announced today.
Sapiro will be the first woman to ever hold the position of the campus’ top academic officer, whether on an interim or permanent basis, said Peter Spear, the current provost. She was a finalist for the provost position in 2001, when Spear was selected.
Spear is moving up his retirement from December to late October, Wiley added.
What’s billed as the world’s largest public art exhibit will help promote the state’s dairy industry next year.
“CowParade Wisconsin 2006” – a collection of life-size, painted, fiberglass cow statues – will kick off Cows on the Concourse in Madison on June 3, 2006, and continue through Oct. 13, 2006. The cows will travel to events across the state, including the World Dairy Expo.
….After the promotion concludes, about 50 cows will be auctioned off with the proceeds going to UW Children’s Hospital and other local nonprofit organizations.
Let’s start today’s discussion on the new Harris Interactive college football poll with a basic disclaimer: The BCS is a broken, collusive syndicate.
Funny that a century ago Congress could bring down John D. Rockefeller but today is unable to twist the arms of a bunch of public employees who run major colleges into adapting the most democratic of notions, a playoff system. Somewhere along the line, the Sherman Antitrust Act had its teeth extracted, and with enough novocaine that no one noticed.
Next year, Madison turns 150.
Fifty or 100 years from now, what will future Madisonians want to know about how life in Mad City is lived today?
Answering that question is the impetus behind a new project sponsored by the Center for Photography at Madison. The project is being spearheaded by two local photographers, (retired UW-Madison geology professor) Carl Bowser and Jackson Tiffany.
While I was in Chicago last weekend, a group of college kids, including some from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, picketed in front of the Eddie Bauer store on the so-called Magnificent Mile to urge the trendy retailer to pressure one of its Third World suppliers to treat its employees better.
….It’s an admirable cause and involves a practice that needs to be brought to light. But, in this age of the rush to the bottom for workers worldwide, all I can say is, good luck.
It just so happened that Kevin Patrick was on the road when he got a phone call from Mike Eaves to talk about the vacant University of Wisconsin men’s hockey assistant coaching position.
What a perfect place, considering Patrick’s work on the road as a recruiter was at or near the top of the list of reasons why he was tabbed Tuesday to fill that open position.
Wisconsin state and local government retirees got a better pension deal than almost all their counterparts across the country in the 2001-02 fiscal year, a report released Tuesday found.
The average monthly pension payment to state and local government retirees for the year that ended June 30, 2002, was $1,958, second only to Rhode Island, where government retirees got an average $1,969 a month, according to the study from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. The national average for that period was $1,427 a month.
Quoted: Matthew Wolff, chief of cardiovascular medicine at UW Hospital.
Marquette University announced Tuesday that it has raised $357 million over the past seven years, an amount that exceeded its $250 million goal and that was framed by the university as its most successful comprehensive fundraising campaign ever.
Since Lou Holtz hired Barry Alvarez as one of his assistant coaches at Notre Dame, Holtz has been a confidante and adviser to Alvarez after their three years together in South Bend ended.
The two coaches have talked regularly about football matters over the years, and Alvarez brought Holtz down to Tampa last season to talk to the Badgers before they played Georgia in the Outback Bowl.
Holtz did not think it was wise for Alvarez to announce his retirement before the season has even started.
After creating the most detailed analysis yet of what the Milky Way looks like, astronomers say a long bar of stars cuts on an angle through the center of the galaxy that includes the sun and planet Earth.
For the first time in a decade, Wisconsin slips to No. 2 nationally when it comes to the record of high school students on the ACT college admissions test. They averaged 22.2 on a scale of 36; the average score in Minnesota was 22.3.
Public employees in Wisconsin receive some of the richest retirement benefits in the country while making the smallest contributions to their pension systems, according to a new report by a non-partisan taxpayers group.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison business professor Kerry Vandell, director of the school’s Center for Urban Land Economics Research.
Medical College of Wisconsin researchers deceived a Sun Prairie couple into participating in a cystic fibrosis research study and then lied to them about their baby’s health, the family’s attorney said Monday in Dane County Circuit Court. Among those on the witness list are two investigators on the project: Norman Fost, a University of Wisconsin-Madison bioethicist, and Philip Farrell, dean of the UW Medical School.
MADISON CRIMINAL defense attorney Chris Van Wagner was in Rusk County on Monday, meeting with his new client, a UW-Madison Law School graduate named Cherie Barnard. The charge is lying to a grand jury being party to first-degree murder.
The charging and extradition of Barnard are the latest twist in a 26-year-old murder case with several Madison ties.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher is serving a two-year suspension from experimenting with animals after at least three monkeys died during or soon after her experiments, the university confirmed.
A monkey died in a research chair while a technician took an unapproved lunch break, Eric Sandgren, chairman of the All-Campus Animal Care and Use Committee, confirmed on Monday.
The deaths were part of an unusual number of complications from Ei Terasawa’s animal experiments several years ago, Sandgren said. The university reported the deaths to the federal government, but did not make a public statement at the time.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jean Bahr, from the department of geology and geophysics.
….In answer to the Isthmus headline that asks: Does the UW Humanities Building deserve the city’s scorn?” we would offer a one-word response: “Yes.”
Elizabeth Waters Hall, a longtime bastion of all-female living, will go co-ed in fall 2006, the university announced this morning.
A smaller building will take over as the sole all-women’s hall on the UW-Madison campus.
Paul Evans, director of University Housing, said demand for living in an all-female hall was markedly down.
A few years back when Carlos Santiago was vying to become president of the University of New Mexico, David Gilbert, a colleague and close friend, heaped praise on Santiago. “Everything he has done to this point leads him to being president in the near future,” gushed Gilbert, then a top lobbyist at the University at Albany, where Santiago was provost. Santiago didn’t get the New Mexico gig, but he landed pretty well. He’s now the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And Gilbert? He didn’t do badly, either. He’s a $163,320-a-year consultant to Santiago, ensconced in a UWM office that was redecorated at a cost of nearly $15,000. That’s enough to cover tuition for five in-state students at UWM for this fall semester.
The success of the Social Security program, which marks its 70th anniversary today, is beyond debate. The program has allowed tens of millions of Americans to retire with dignity. And hundreds of millions more will know that same sense of dignity and peace of mind in the future. The Social Security program has never missed a payment and, unlike most federal initiatives, it is solvent today and will be for decades to come. With minor tinkering – such as a fair tax on wealthy Americans, who contribute far less of their earnings to support the program than do working class and middle class Americans – Social Security checks will continue to arrive so long as there is a United States of America.
That is the genius of the program envisioned by University of Wisconsin professors and implemented by President Roosevelt….
A system built by the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology (DoIT) played a key role in winning $1.6 million in federal research funding for Wisconsin health agencies.
The National Science Foundation recently awarded a three-year Goal Oriented Privacy Preservation grant that promotes research on data mining strategies that preserve privacy.
….As the Social Security program turns 70 on Sunday with an uncertain future, UW-Madison is highlighting its role as the intellectual birthplace of the centerpiece of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Three Wisconsin natives who studied economics at the university shaped the program that has helped millions of elderly, disabled and widowed lead decent lives.
WEST ALLIS – Amy Hagen had no idea what a pig looks like before it gives birth.
But under the tutelage of longtime veterinarians at the Wisconsin State Fair, the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine student learned to watch for the signs: the pig getting restless, lying down, and her mammary glands filling up with milk.
….Hagen is one of about 25 University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinary students who are lending a hand, and getting an up-close education, at the fair’s birthing barn.
The past 25 years have been difficult for Wisconsin taverns, but so far there is no hard evidence to show that the smoking ban in Madison is making matters worse, a UW Medical School researcher says.
“A valid study is never done through self reports,” researcher David Ahrens said Friday, referring to early claims by dozens of bar owners that business has been down by 20 percent or more since July 1, when smoking was forced outside.
He said that this kind of data is “highly unreliable,” and in the coming months he’d look at a sample of sales tax receipts submitted to the state Department of Revenue to gauge what’s happening to the city’s taverns and restaurant bars.
LA CROSSE (AP) – Students at three state technical colleges could have an easier time transferring credits to University of Wisconsin System schools under legislation introduced by two lawmakers.
State Rep. Jeff Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, said students in the Eau Claire, La Crosse and Kenosha areas don’t have the same access to a liberal arts education as students elsewhere.
Highlighting what critics called the pervasiveness of backup appointments across the University of Wisconsin System, officials confirmed Friday that President Kevin Reilly’s own housekeeper holds one of the controversial positions, although Reilly has said he learned of it only recently.
All told, the state is spending roughly $65 million a year on more than 400 information technology contractors, including at least 68 who have been on the state payroll for five years or more. That’s too much, say some state legislators who argue taxpayers would save millions of dollars if they used more state employees for the work.
Seven Wisconsin high school students posted a 36 on the ACT during the 2004-’05 testing cycle, according to data released by ACT Inc. on Friday. They were among 251 students nationwide who averaged a top score on the battery of English, reading, science and math tests during that time.
One letter writer says: “Had the university employees with indisputably serious and harmful criminal convictions been working in elementary or secondary education, they would have been dismissed.” Another says: “I hope that calmer heads will prevail and that any law the Legislature proposes will not discriminate against universities and their professors.
Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist David Canon.
