Rebecca Blank has been the chancellor of UW Madison since 2013, steering the university through the pandemic, an imposed tuition freeze, and growing awareness of social justice issues. We have an exit interview with the chancellor as she leaves to become the president of Northwestern University.
Noted: The game was produced by PBS Wisconsin Education, Wisconsin Sea Grant, and Field Day Learning Games — an educational game developer within the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research and Wisconsin educators. It complements the PBS Wisconsin Shipwrecks! documentary and virtual reality experience exploring wrecks on the bottom of Wisconsin’s Great Lakes.
Noted: Olikara is a Brookfield native and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who gave up his job to run for U.S. Senate. He was the founder and chief executive of Millennial Action Project, a Washington-based nonprofit devoted to “post-partisan political cooperation.”
The UW-Madison varsity band’s annual spring concert is back this week for the first time since 2019. It’s the first time without Mike Leckrone conducting the show, so we talk to new director Corey Pompey about taking his place and leading the band into the future.
The use of liquid brine is more effective at keeping highways safe during the winter months, a new report says.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Lab looked at data from 143 storms occurring in 10 counties across Wisconsin. It compared brine-cleared routes to those nearby cleared with a traditional granular rock-salt method. The researchers found use of liquid brine in winter highway maintenance cleared Wisconsin highways faster, provided better friction on roadways, and reduced overall salt usage.
From Mars missions to moon colonies, the human species has some ambitious travel plans in the works — ones that stretch way beyond our planet.
“Space exploration is the big challenge of this century,” said Elena D’Onghia, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In the last few years, northeastern Wisconsin workers and companies have told us they want education targeted for today’s students, employees, and parents. They want education that leads directly to good jobs. We agree. On April 11, our two campuses, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, announced a plan to meet their needs.
DeVon Wilson, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the School of Letters and Science at UW-Madison, experienced deep loss and grief near the beginning of the pandemic with the passing of one of his best friends. He says, “grieving during a pandemic is difficult … I learned that I couldn’t do it alone.” In this episode of Black Oxygen, DeVon discusses his journey to Wisconsin, the difference in community needs between Beloit and Madison, and his experience of navigating grief after losing a dear friend. Near the end of the episode, DeVon shares, “grief is an indicator of the positive impact folks had on your life.”
A group of students and staff at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is gearing up for a big trip overseas this summer to hopefully bring soldiers home who are missing in action.
Cheri Klussendorf graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Farm and Industry Short Course in 2002.
The 16-week on-campus certificate program is where she met her husband, Ryan, and where she decided to take a chance on dairy farming.
Tommy Thompson has decided not to launch a fifth campaign for governor.
Thompson — who was elected governor of Wisconsin four times, served as President George W. Bush’s health secretary, and led the state’s system of universities through a pandemic — said Monday he has decided against a new run for his old job but believes he would have been a formidable candidate.
When it comes to the climate crisis, Gregory Nemet has some good news and some bad news.
“The climate problem is getting worse,” said Nemet, a professor at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. “But the solutions are getting better.”
Ajanae Dawkins, a Detroit native and UW-Madison alum, is the 2022 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence at the Taft Museum of Art in downtown Cincinnati.
The Wisconsin Republican race for governor is still up in the air four months away from the primary election as two potential candidates — a political icon and an owner of an international construction firm with personal wealth — decide whether to reshuffle the race.
Quoted: Robert Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and redistricting expert, said the court’s decision had reinforced a map that was “strikingly” gerrymandered.
“And it means that although this state is often a 50-50 state one where Democrats have frequently managed to win statewide races, they are going to have virtually no chance of taking control of the Legislature,” Yablon said in an interview with PBS Wisconsin.
Here’s what guests on the April 15, 2022 episode had to say about the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling on legislative redistricting, the difficulties faced by homebuyers and a model for K-12 summer school programming in Green Bay.
April is Minority Health Month. In recognition of the month, the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships is getting as much information as possible out about health to communities. The Center houses two major programs, the UW All of Us Milwaukee site and the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute Regional Milwaukee Office. Dr. Bashir Easter, associate director for UW All of Us Milwaukee and Dr. Nia Norris, associate director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute and administrative manager with UW All of Us
Milwaukee join us to talk about their efforts they believe are crucial to keeping the community healthy.
For years, Ahna Skop didn’t feel like she fit the mold of a scientist.
She comes from a family of artists. Her father, Michael Skop, was a pupil of a famous Croatian artist, Ivan Meštrović, and her dad brought in students from all over the world to an art school they had at their house. Her mother, Kathleen Prince Skop, is a ceramicist and retired high school art teacher.
“Here I am as a scientist,” said the geneticist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You might assume that I inherited the recessive gene for science.”
Four years after a sexual assault scandal shook the University of Wisconsin-Madison, some of the key players have moved on with their careers.
Quoted: “It is an honor and a privilege to be here today to celebrate a revolutionary change, a revolutionary paradigm shift,” said Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor of population health sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and co-chair of the Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance of Dane County. “It is a program and this is a process that’s going to center the lives of Dane County’s Black women and birthing people in solving our persistent and frankly shameful disparities in birth outcomes.”
There is a growing movement of climate change activists on university campuses pressuring their schools to divest from the oil and gas industries. But is fossil fuel divestment effective or a distraction? We talk to the moderator of an upcoming UW-Madison panel discussion of the issue.
Noted: The virus’s spread has accelerated northward with the spring migration of many North American bird species, explained Ron Kean, a poultry specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
Quoted: “I do believe the U.S. has one of the more convoluted structures and also requires a lot more effort to understand,” says Cliff Robb, who teaches about personal finance and human behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.. “It forces individuals to engage much more directly with the tax system than other industrialized countries.”
Even for people who don’t pay fees to a tax preparer or for tax prep software, there’s a significant “opportunity cost” to filing, he says.
“Most people are going to take a weekend or a couple of days,” says Robb. And it’s not just time. “It creates more stress than is necessary, I believe.”
One construction worker was injured after a fire broke out at Camp Randall Stadium on Wednesday morning, according to University of Wisconsin officials.
Quoted: “It’s a very limited stopgap,” said Barry Orton, professor emeritus of telecommunications at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: The big mammals — mammoths, mastodons and giant beavers — came later. They were Ice Age creatures, living in Wisconsin from between 2.5 million and 11,500 years ago.
“It’s a little bit like yesterday for a geologist,” Brooke Norstead, assistant director of the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum, said.
And just like yesterday, there was a big animal roaming that huge ice sheet — so vast you could walk to the North Pole on it without touching land — that may sound familiar.
“There was an animal called a stag moose,” Norstead said. “Imagine a supersize moose, with even more interesting antlers.”
Warren Porter is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies animal shape and size.
“One of the evolutionary benefits of being a large or very large animal is … that you don’t have to deal with as much threat of predation and may be able to better defend your young,” Porter said.
The family of the late Teju Olaniyan, a beloved UW-Madison professor who died suddenly on Nov. 30, 2019, honored his legacy with a celebration of his life on April 9 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, and launched a nonprofit in his name that will focus on preserving and continuing strands of his contributions to higher education.
The amount of tuition costs at Wisconsin colleges covered by state and federal financial aid for students has shrunk over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The average amount of federal Pell grants and state Wisconsin grants together covered 91.4 percent of tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002, for example, but only 69 percent in 2021.
A team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has created a material that is tougher than Kevlar, which is found in bulletproof vests.
It’s a project they hope can help save lives.
The material in small scale is almost comparable to the look of electrical tape. However, it’s much different and much stronger. So what’s inside that makes it so strong? Engineering and physics assistant professor Ramathasan Thevamaran has the answer.
“It’s a nano fiber mat made out of carbon nanotubes and Kevlar nano fibers,” Thevamaran said.
One of the more important steps backyard gardeners can take to help disappearing native bees is to grow native plants that provide continuous blooms throughout the season, according to Susan Carpenter, plant curator at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.
Quoted: Native plant curator Susan Carpenter with the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison said they detected the rusty patched at the Arboretum about 10 years ago. “That started us on this voyage of discovery,” she said. When the rusty patched was declared endangered, she said, “people just went crazy on that.”
Noted: Xela Garcia helps young Milwaukee Latinos see themselves in art and education.
Garcia grew up on Milwaukee’s south side and has served as executive director of the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts for five years.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she minored in Chicano/Latina studies and American Indian studies and saw herself reflected in the class readings.
“It brought me back to that feeling of empowerment, of feeling seen,” she said. “This was something that was me.”
Wisconsin doctors are seeing a steady increase in the number of children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes — a disease that primarily affects adults — which may be linked to COVID-19.
Data released last week by UW Health Kids shows a nearly 200 percent increase in the number of cases of Type 2 diabetes over the past four years.
While this is a trend medical experts have noticed for years, Dr. Elizabeth Mann, a pediatric endocrinologist and director of the Type 2 Diabetes Program at UW Health Kids, said it’s taken a worrisome turn recently.
Noted: Anne Marsh serves in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Her 8-year-old son Ryan is transgender.
“Our son has grown up in a household where from the day he shared with us who he is, he has faced nothing but unconditional love and welcoming and celebration of who he is,” Anne said. “How do you teach a child that the world is going to perceive them differently and treat them differently? It’s a hard conversation to have with a young child as a parent.”
Among 120 life-size, orange statues of women scientists that stood last month on the National Mall in Washington D.C. was the likeness of Ahna Skop, a UW-Madison geneticist and artist. We talk to Skop about the connections between art and science.
We hear from one of the professors behind the UW system’s planned free speech survey on its campuses. Later, we talk about the career of Wisconsin actor Frederic March and the removal of his name from a campus theater at UW-Madison. Plus, a Milwaukee filmmaker talks about his new documentary about the architecture of sacred buildings.
In 2018 and 2020, the name of actor and famous UW-Madison alum, Fredric March, was removed from two University of Wisconsin campus buildings. And in the years since, that decision has gotten pushback from prominent actors, historians and civil rights advocates. We talk to a freelance journalist and public historian about why he says the decision was a mistake.
When people think about geology, most people will think of well… rocks. But the geology museum on the UW-Madison campus shows that geology is much more than rocks, it’s rocks from space, bones, and fossilized dino-droppings.
Last month, WORT reporter Andie Barrow went to the Museum of Geology to learn what makes the museum special.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study finds many cannabidiol, or CBD, products sold in southwestern Wisconsin don’t deliver what they promise on the label. One of the study’s authors says a lack of regulation and oversight is to blame.
Wisconsin’s stagnant — and in some cases declining — investment in state financial aid has led to college students and their families having to pay for a larger portion of the cost of a degree, according to a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The policy forum’s report, issued Tuesday, is the latest in a series of analyses by the forum that have sought to dive into the challenges the state’s colleges and universities face in preparing the workforce of tomorrow amid declining taxpayer support and, in many cases, declining enrollment trends.
The nonpartisan research center found that state lawmakers have not prioritized financial aid in recent state budgets. Instead — in the University of Wisconsin System’s case — they took the approach of freezing tuition for in-state undergraduates for nearly a decade.
Doctors and volunteers in Wisconsin spent Saturday packing and sorting medical supply donations. The shipments will go to Ukraine to aid military and community hospitals during the ongoing war with Russia.
Dr. Nataliya Uboha is an oncologist at UW Carbone Cancer Center. She is involved in the efforts to get resources to Ukraine and she says the effort is personal. Dr. Uboha up in Lviv, Ukraine has been living in the U.S. for more than 25 years. She came here by herself so the majority of her family has been in Ukraine all these years.
“When the war started, we really worked hard on getting my family over here,” she said. Keeping her family safe is top of mind but she also wants to do her part to get resources to her home country, including getting involved in a medical drive for Ukraine.
Shereen Siewert welcomes vaccine expert Dr. Jonathan Temte, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, for a review of the latest science surrounding vaccination, boosters, new treatments and the state of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Changes to UW System admissions processes, including lifting standardized test requirements for applicants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led to more submissions, but preliminary research suggests going “test-optional” hasn’t increased the diversity of the applicant pool.
Noted: Evers vetoed five higher education bills, several of which were a reflection of major cultural and political debates of the time.
Among those was Assembly Bill 884, which would have required the University of Wisconsin System to accept a course on the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights to satisfy the diversity or ethnic studies requirement in place for core general education requirements.
Noted: Miles was known for his dedication to education. He earned an Executive Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and also attended Northwestern University to complete a Media Executive Leadership Program.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved three raises above the standard 2% for chancellors on Thursday.
UW-Milwaukee’s Mark Mone, UW-La Crosse’s Joe Gow and UW-Stevens Point’s Thomas Gibson all received slightly larger than normal increases.
A University of Wisconsin System survey of students on the highly-politicized topic of free speech on campus has been delayed following weeks of fallout and the resignation of a chancellor.
Tim Shiell, director of UW-Stout’s Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation, sent an email Wednesday to UW System’s interim president, Michael Falbo, to say the survey would be delayed until fall 2022. UW System officials released the email to reporters Thursday.
University of Wisconsin-Platteville Chancellor Dennis Shields will leave the university on June 1 to take on a new role as the next president of the Southern University System and chancellor of Southern University and A&M College.
A Middleton doctor who was found dead in Iron County last weekend was hiking along a river when a steep embankment likely collapsed beneath her, authorities said Wednesday.
Dr. Kelsey Musgrove, 30, was reported missing on March 30 after she didn’t return from a solo hiking trip near Potato River Falls in Gurney.
Noted: With rapid at-home tests becoming much more widely available since late 2021, an unknown but potentially large number of positive test results are going unreported. While this dynamic may pose a challenge to public health officials tracking COVID-19, the challenge is not insurmountable. That’s according to Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The fact that we have home-based testing is a good thing,” Sethi said. “While it may compromise our ability to have a good record of cases that are in the community, we don’t necessarily want to abandon this very important way that people can test and take action, so we have to find a workaround.”
UW-Madison investigated at least nine employees over the past six years for “hostile and intimidating” academic bullying, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. We talk with a State Journal higher education reporter about their investigation
Members of the University of Wisconsin athletic department – from administrators to coaches – routinely tout the school’s academic standing as a selling point for recruits and a source of pride.
UW officials plan to back up their words with action.
UW is among only 22 FBS schools currently with plans to compensate student-athletes for academic achievement.
Written by Joe Peterangelo, a senior researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum and Ned Littlefield, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a research fellow with the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater interim Chancellor Jim Henderson says his sudden resignation Monday was due to a lack of support from UW System administration and not about issues on campus. Henderson says he wouldn’t encourage anyone to apply for a UW System chancellorship.
The University of Wisconsin System will survey students over the next month about whether they feel campuses support freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The survey is being funded by a donation to UW-Stout’s Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovations.
Quoted: The report’s findings confirm other research that has shown the link between poverty and COVID-19, says Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin economist who researches the impact of race and economics on health.
“This is not about individual behavior,” Green said in an interview. “It’s about what kinds of social conditions place people at risk.”
Early in the Wisconsin pandemic, outbreaks occurred in the meatpacking industry in Brown County. “And because of the way our occupational system is structured, they were disproportionately likely to be Hispanic immigrants,” Green says. “And they were working under conditions that were not properly regulated, that were not safe, when it comes to trying to prevent COVID.”
A battle over a free speech survey that has pitted the short-tenured interim president of the University of Wisconsin System against UW universities’ chancellors has culminated in the resignation of the top leader at UW-Whitewater.
If you’ve been paying more for eggs recently, you have the bird flu to thank, according to egg producers.
UW-Madison scientists say they are fighting back.
Across the nation, tens of thousands of birds have had to be put down in recent weeks as the bird flu ravages flocks, and farmers say while it’s already making eggs expensive, it won’t stop there.
UW-Madison scientists say this is an issue that comes and goes, which is why they’re looking to bring a vaccine for the birds to market.
“Knock on wood, we’ve been doing okay in Wisconsin. We’ve had two outbreaks here in Wisconsin,” said UW-Madison Poultry Specialist Ron Kean.
Noted: University of Wisconsin Law School professor Robert Yablon unpacked the Voting Rights Act and how the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Wisconsin Supreme Court to approach its redistricting rulings.
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater interim Chancellor Jim Henderson has abruptly resigned from his position as head of the school.
In a brief message posted on the campus website, Henderson said that one of his three goals as interim chancellor has been to “help this campus hire the best chancellor possible who will be here for the long term.”
