MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison has received a $10 million grant to enhance education and research in the humanities.The grant announced Monday comes from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The state will match the award.Gov. Jim Doyle said in a statement that the money will allow the humanities program at UW-Madison to grow and prosper.
If the skies are clear Monday night, people in the area willing to stay up very late can view a rare total lunar eclipse.And if you?re in a partying mood, UW-Madison?s Space Place will be holding an eclipse viewing party from midnight until 5 a.m.
The Madison Plan Commission will get a look Monday night at a $25 million, 130-unit apartment and retail project slated for the 2500 block of University Avenue.
In an interview with WGN radio in Chicago, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany acknowledged the negative reaction to the decision to name the conference?s divisons “Leaders” and “Legends.” And for the first time, Delany said there was a possibility of re-evaluating the names and changing them.
Two men, one armed with a handgun, stole marijuana and a safe from a downtown house in a home invasion on Thursday night, Madison police reported. The incident was reported at 11:10 p.m. at a residence in the 200 block of Langdon Street, police said.
During the University of Wisconsin football team?s breakout season, much has been written about Bret Bielema?s growth as a coach, the unwavering leadership of the seniors and the NFL-level talent that bubbled to the surface.
One of the biggest reasons UW is 11-1 and bound for the Rose Bowl, however, is that Bielema has assembled a strong coaching staff.UW?s impressive stretch run resulted in uncommon respect shown to Bielema?s assistants.
University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema and his assistants have secured some nice financial rewards for their quality work this season. All will get 20 percent of their salary as a bonus for leading the Badgers to a share of the Big Ten Conference title and a berth in the Rose Bowl. The total payout is $525,480 pending administrative approval.
Badgers fans who don?t have cable TV or Internet access won?t be able to watch the Rose Bowl at home. The game will be broadcast on ESPN, unlike in 1999 and 2000 ? the last two times the Badgers were in Pasadena ? when it aired for free on ABC.
Dear Editor: It is immensely disappointing to see that UW Health and Meriter Hospital have given up so easily on the women of our state. They made a commitment in January 2009 to provide second-trimester abortions when necessary, and now they have revoked it, leaving a huge void in the health care system for women all across our state.
Over the last few decades, it has become increasingly common for foreign athletes to attend American universities on athletic scholarships, taking advantage of a student-athlete experience that simply isn?t available anywhere else on the globe.
….Clearly, UW has benefited from these arrangements, infusing its programs with talented players, who for their part earned a top-notch education and athletic training that prepared them for professional careers.
Education scholar Diane Ravitch, once the darling of conservative critics of American public education, recanted her support of charter schools, standardized testing and test-based teacher culling last year. Now she?s coming to Madison in March to give her views on the future of public education in a talk co-sponsored by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, the UW-Madison School of Education and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, which is part of the School of Education.
Catching up on a couple higher education-related items …
….The race is on for faculty across the UW System to join unions. With final exams and the end of the fall semester upon us, it appears it’ll be February before elections will be held.
Of course, with the new Republican leadership coming into power in just weeks, who knows what the future holds. Gov. Jim Doyle gave university faculty and academic staff the right to form unions in the summer of 2009, when he signed his 2009-11 state budget. How quickly this right can be wiped away remains to be seen.
Collective bargaining issues also remain an important topic to academic staff working across the UW System. However, there remains no indication most faculty or academic staff on the UW-Madison campus are interested in forming unions.
Like any 82-year-old, the Memorial Union is beginning to show its age. Wild nights, keg parties, and concerts with the likes of Harry Belafonte and Joan Baez have caused the student union to sag and fade. Now it?s ready for a nip here, a tuck there.The state of Wisconsin earmarked $52 million to renovate the building, specifically the wing that holds the Union Theater.
Despite earlier optimism from U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl?s office, Louis Butler?s nomination to the federal bench may be dead in the water, according to the Politico. The website today says that Butler is among four of President Barack Obama?s judicial picks that that would be thrown under the bus to pave the way for candidates Republicans see as less liberal.
“The War at Home,” an Oscar-nominated documentary about Madison during the Vietnam War, was released in 1979. The film depicted violent protests and a famous and fatal campus bombing. Today, the title feels relevant again, as the Republicans who are poised to run state government seem to despise Madison ? and all it represents ? in ways that border on the pathological.
When Gov. Jim Doyle announced in July that a high-speed rail line from Milwaukee would stop in Madison near the Monona Terrace Convention Center, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz saw vast potential for downtown.
….Susan Schmitz of Downtown Madison Inc. says her group of downtown business owners saw the rail station as a major boon for bringing in new customers, adding that the events of recent weeks have been disheartening to those business owners. Moreover, she says, the rail line would have connected Madison businesses and institutions, such as the university’s Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery, to the global economy.
“That’s such an amazing place and that’s going to be an attraction to people all over the world,” she says. “How are they going to get here and move around? Not everyone is going to rent a car. We need to think about being connected to the world.”
If you?re a state employee, just how bad are these next few years going to be? It appears they might be not only bad, but certifiably terrible.
Gov.-elect Scott Walker and the horde of Republicans who will shortly take over the state Legislature have made it crystal clear that they?re expecting government workers to pay a major price for the mess that governors, legislators and the captains of the financial industry have created over the past several years. And if that means dismantling the public employee unions, so be it.
The effort to balance the state budget on the backs of public employees will certainly involve some changes to pension contributions. Gov.-elect Scott Walker has even talked about having state employees pay 50 percent of the contributions to their retirement plan. Right now, state, UW and local government workers including teachers pay nothing, with the entire contribution picked up by the “employer” aka “the taxpayers.”
Unfortunately, several newspapers around the state in their effort to back reasonable changes to the retirement system are getting the numbers wrong, saying workers would pick up only 5 percent of their pension contributions.
DETROIT, Mich. (WKOW) — Michigan State fans are now using more than their voices to get out a message, one Badger fans certainly won?t be a fan of.
CBS Outdoor in Metro Detroit is providing client sponsored 14?x48? billboards suggesting MSU should be the one representing the Big Ten in Pasadena, California on New Year?s Day.
NEW YORK ? Gabe Carimi and John Moffitt, the fifth-year seniors who anchor the left side of the University of Wisconsin?s offensive line, have been named first-team All-Americans by the Associated Press. Carimi, the Outland Trophy winner at left tackle, and Moffitt, who plays left guard, are the foundation of a unit that helped usher the Badgers (11-1) to a share of their first Big Ten Conference title and Rose Bowl appearance since 1999.
Tight end Lance Kendricks and defensive end J.J. Watt were named to the second team, while running back John Clay was named to the third team.
MADISON, Wis. — Frustrated state workers are calling on Wisconsin lawmakers to approve new contracts.Workers stood arm-in-arm at a news conference at the state Capitol on Tuesday and demanded the Legislature take action. Mike Senn, who teaches inmates at Redgranite Correctional Institution, says he works hard for taxpayers and he never thought he would have to stand up and demand lawmakers do their jobs.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering students are using their ingenuity to compete for thousands of dollars in prizes on Wednesday. Their unique inventions will appear during the Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics Fall Design Competition. Some examples include a pedal-powered riding lawn mower, a green garbage disposal and an attachment for wheelchairs that increases traction in slick conditions.
When defensive coordinator Dave Doeren was talking with coach Bret Bielema about possibly leaving the University of Wisconsin football program for the top job at Northern Illinois, Doeren made it clear he wanted to coach in the Rose Bowl. Doeren, one of the original members of Bielema?s coaching staff, was introduced as the Huskies? new coach during a Monday afternoon news conference in DeKalb, Ill.
The Madison Surgery Center will not offer second-trimester abortions after all, according to a news release issued late Monday by UW Health.
“MSC is co-owned by UW Hospital and Clinics, UW Medical Foundation and Meriter Hospital. The MSC board had approved introducing second-trimester abortion care at MSC, but throughout the planning process held patient safety and privacy as the paramount consideration. MSC has now concluded that the open and multi-purpose nature of the 1 S. Park campus makes it very difficult to guarantee the safety and security that all patients deserve.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison didn?t break any state laws by waiting more than a month to notify some 60,000 former students, faculty and staff that a security breach compromised their Social Security numbers, a regulatory specialist in the state Office of Privacy Protection said Monday.
CHICAGO — It?ll be the Leaders vs. the Legends divisions when the Big Ten stages its first football championship game next season. The conference also on Monday unveiled a new logo — it is a block “Big Ten” with the numeral 10 embedded in the word last two letters of Big — as well as two-person trophy names for 18 new football awards, including the Stagg-Paterno Championship Trophy and the Hayes-Schembechler Coach of the Year.
Wisconsin defensive coordinator Dave Doeren is being hired as head coach at Northern Illinois, ESPN.com blogger Adam Rittenberg reported Monday morning. Northern Illinois will introduce Doeren as its head coach at a news conference scheduled for 2 p.m. Monday, ESPN reported.
M. Vere DeVault, age 88, died at his home, peacefully, on Dec. 9, 2010.Vere was a man who enjoyed people and reached out to them as a friend and teacher, in his long career as an academic and also in his daily life. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas-Austin in 1953 and in 1961 moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he worked in the Mathematics Education group in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He was also the founder and director of Computer Fest.
Despite having its vocal critics, the University of Wisconsin System must be doing something right. In a national survey of young alumni (ages 25 to 39), 94 percent of those who graduated from one of the UW System?s four-year campuses believe “that their college education was worth the time and money.” Ninety-two percent “think their institution charged them a fair price for their college education.”
Terry Hartle, a senior vice president with the American Council on Education, was in town Friday to take part in a University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents meeting at the Memorial Union on the UW-Madison campus.
Hartle?s job entails working with all sectors of higher education — from community colleges and for-profit schools, to public universities and private not-for-profits — to try and fashion a unified voice in dealing with the federal government in Washington, D.C.Hartle spoke to the regents about the future of higher education and also briefed them on the upcoming release of an American Council on Education survey of young alumni.
Before catching a plane back to Washington, he sat down with Campus Connection to offer a national perspective on the state of higher education in Wisconsin and across the United States.
An emotional Gabe Carimi became just the second University of Wisconsin football player in school history to win the Outland Trophy on Thursday night at the College Football Awards Show.
The only other Badgers player to win the award given to the nation?s top interior lineman, on offense or defense, was Joe Thomas, who preceded Carimi as the starting left tackle. A four-year starter who has started all 48 games he has played in, Carimi is a two-time All-Big Ten Conference first-team selection and was also named the league?s offensive lineman of the year this season.
DES MOINES, Iowa ? Lisa Stone has seen her share of victories at the Knapp Center, but none more significant than Thursday night?s.
James V. Edsall, a World War II pilot, architect, world traveler and all around great guy, passed away at the age of 90, on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010, at HospiceCare, Inc. Following the war, he attended the University of Illinois school of architecture and became a campus planner. In 1964, Jim transferred to UW-Madison as the director of planning and construction. He was asked to be a consultant to many universities in southeast Asia.
You may not be familiar with Groundwork Madison or Operation Welcome Home, local grass-roots groups working for racial justice, but you probably heard about the ruckus last spring when Take Back the Land Madison placed a family in a townhouse left vacant after a foreclosure.
Z! Haukeness was one of the band of local activists who worked in support of the high-profile action, which dovetails with his efforts at Groundwork, a white, anti-racist collective; and Welcome Home, a community of homeless people and their allies. Haukeness, 29, is a native of tiny, homogenous Strum, Wis., who came to UW-Madison for its Afro-American Studies program and never returned home.
Stop me if you?ve heard this one before. The University of Wisconsin System argues its faculty and staff are in desperate need of pay raises in each of the next two years just so these in-demand folks can keep from falling further behind those at peer institutions.
Fiscal conservatives reflexively howl that those within the UW System simply don?t understand the magnitude of the budgetary crisis facing Wisconsin and are out of touch for wanting more when everyone else is trying to make do with less.
….Maybe it’s not an either/or proposition, but right now the million-dollar question appears to be: What’s a greater threat to the future of Wisconsin …
Ballooning budget deficits or a less competitive University of Wisconsin System?
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A University of Wisconsin Board of Regents committee has approved a 2 percent pay increase for faculty and staff despite objections from a key Republican state lawmaker.
Governor-elect Scott Walker has picked a fight with Wisconsin?s public employee unions – even before his inauguration. But that?s not the surprising thing.
What?s surprising is that Walker is willing to consider what amounts to abolishing public unions. And with the news Wednesday that Walker?s Republican colleagues might introduce right-to-work legislation next year, the climate for labor is growing chillier by the day.
Tough talk. But when it comes to the public employee unions, it?s justified.
The most stressful time of the school semester ? final exams ? will soon be upon college students. But if you develop good stress relieving habits, finals should be a little easier to take, according to UW-Madison?s University Health Services UHS.
The Badger Herald has removed the names of the UW-Madison students it dubbed “the worst” on campus. Lest you forget, the student newspaper published a list of about three dozen students who purchased Rose Bowl tickets, then tried to sell them for a profit online. Editor-in-chief Kevin Bargnes subtly noted that there is a “special place in Hell” for those students. But today, the editors removed the list of names in the online article and replaced them with a note.
UW-Madison?s athletic department continues to rank among the national leaders in revenue produced according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The university?s athletic department ranked 10th nationally in 2009-10 by raking in $93.9 million. That figure marks a 4.5 percent increase over the previous year.
MADISON, Wis. — The incoming leader of state Assembly Democrats said it?s ?shocking? that Republican Gov.-elect Scott Walker would consider the possibility of essentially abolishing state employee unions. Walker suggested that possibility on Tuesday. He is seeking deeper concessions from public employee unions, who have reached tentative contract agreements with the state.
MADISON — Delta Air Lines says it will add more than 1,300 seats for University of Wisconsin fans traveling to this year?s Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. Five additional flights timed to allow customers to travel nonstop between Wisconsin and Los Angeles just in time for the game are now available for sale at delta.com….
If you enjoyed “Teach Me How to Bucky,” we suggest you take a look at “We?re Smelling Roses. “The high-quality video is being promoted as the “2011 Rose Bowl Badger Anthem.” It?s directed by Madison?s Anthony Lamarr, who also directed “Teach Me How to Bucky.”
Madison is one of “America?s Brainiest Bastions” according to a report in Portfolio.com. The website used American Community Survey data to “identify markets that have the highest levels of collective brainpower, as indicated by their residents? educational attainment.” Not surprisingly, the report was top heavy with college towns….Madison checked in at No. 8 — one spot behind Boston and one ahead of San Francisco/Oakland.
Gov.-elect Scott Walker has tried at every turn to get the administration of outgoing Gov. Jim Doyle to put government on hold until January.
….Walker and his fellow Republicans are even arguing that the negotiation of contracts with state workers — which the governor and his aides are required by law to engage in with good faith — should halt until they take charge in January.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin and UW-La Crosse political science professor Joe Heim
It?s the kind of story that seems impossible now, when unmanned planes drop explosives on foreign soil and solitary snipers hover behind enemy lines. Early in World War I, German and Allied troops called a temporary truce on Christmas Eve, 1914. They sang carols, exchanged gifts, even played soccer.
Cantus, a professional all-male a cappella choir from Minneapolis, recaptures the poignancy of that cease-fire in ?All Is Calm,? a performance that combines letters from soldiers and Christmas songs from the early 20th century. This is the fourth year Cantus has toured the show, which comes to the Wisconsin Union Theater on Saturday, Dec. 11, at 7:30 p.m.
MADISON — Suggestions for changing the system of distributing Rose Bowl tickets to UW students are being offered in the wake of widespread student scalping of the hard-to-get tickets. In an open letter to UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, published in the campus newspaper The Badger Herald, UW graduate Tyler Bye proposed student tickets be picked up by the purchaser in Pasadena at the game venue to reduce the possibility of student scalping.
MILWAUKEE — Gov.-elect Scott Walker is renewing his call for state unions to pay more for their health care and pensions, saying it would help the state deal with a budget shortfall.
PLATTEVILLE, Wis. — Dozens of University of Wisconsin-Platteville students marched on campus on Tuesday in response to more than two dozen racially-motivated hate crimes on campus this semester.
University of Wisconsin senior quarterback Scott Tolzien set out to win games, not awards. It turns out he?s doing both.
Tolzien has a 21-4 record as a starter and put his name in school annals alongside the likes of quarterbacks Ron Vander Kelen, Darrell Bevell, Mike Samuel and Brooks Bollinger for leading the Badgers to a Rose Bowl. Also, Tolzien was recognized on Monday as the school?s first winner of the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, given to the top senior quarterback in the nation.
The Badger Herald posted an opinion piece headlined: “The Worst People on Campus.” The Herald then lists the names of 35 students. What did these people do?
They bought student tickets to the Rose Bowl through the university — and now are trying to sell them for a profit at Facebook Marketplace.
When Scott Tolzien signed a national letter of intent to play at Wisconsin, his inclusion in the 2006 freshman class was not heralded as a recruiting coup.
Tolzien?s signing turned out to be a steal and one of the critical factors in UW?s resurgence over the last two seasons. The fifth-year senior from Rolling Meadows, Ill., Monday was named the winner of the 2010 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. The award is given annually to the nation?s top senior college quarterback by the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation Inc. and Transamerica.
Editors at The Badger Herald got mad when they saw people they believed to be students reselling Rose Bowl tickets on Facebook.On Monday, they got even.The Badger Herald, one of two student papers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, printed 38 names they said they saw advertising tickets on Facebook Marketplace.
Graduates from across Wisconsin, some 30,000 in all, took a survey on their post-high school plans. The data was used to help the University of Wisconsin System chart its future as higher education began to boom in the post-World War II era. The survey also served as a nudge for students, getting them to think about going to college.
The grand opening of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery and the Morgridge Institutes for Research is a monumental moment in this city?s history. What the moment ultimately means for the human race remains to be seen. But the possibilities are limitless.
It is a boon to Madison that the public/private research facilities have been built here to lure the scientists and researchers and faculty who will find the discoveries promised by the facilities? names.
MADISON, Wis. — Enrollment at the University of Wisconsin?s 26 campuses across the state this fall is about 1.6 percent higher than a year ago, according to school officials. Preliminary figures released Monday by the university show there are nearly 182,000 students enrolled at the campuses, an all-time high.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin President Kevin Reilly is asking that roughly 20,000 university faculty and staff receive a 2 percent pay increase each of the next two years. The request made public Monday comes after the governor and Legislature last year didn?t approve any salary increases for UW employees and ordered them to take 16 unpaid furlough days, which equates to a 3 percentage point pay cut.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison student newspaper Badger Herald is ripping students trying to sell their Rose Bowl tickets online. The paper published a list of students trying to sell their tickets to the Badgers? New Year?s Day game, calling them “The Worst People on Campus.”
The list, published as an opinion piece on Sunday, called out more than 30 students who had put their tickets up for sale on Facebook Marketplace within two hours of the tickets selling out on uwbadgers.com. The paper said some of the tickets, which were $150 face value, were posted for more than $400.
In this day and age, when “best of” lists seemingly come out every day, Madison has landed on a list that most living here probably wouldn?t think of: where to live if you?ve retired from the military. In the first ranking of its kind, Madison is No. 7 in “best places for military retirement,” according to the study commissioned by USAA and Military.com.
A naturalized U.S. citizen has been sentenced to two years in prison after defrauding a Madison firm and the government to get student loans. Ernest Kwasi Bankas, 56, originally from Ghana but living in Texas, was sentenced this week by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in federal court in Madison.
