Wisconsin was the only state in 2010 to fully fund its pension plan and was only one of seven states to fund 25 percent of its health care liabilities, according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States.
Quoted: “So called ?minor people? were very important in unravelling this story,” says Stanley Kutler, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Wars of Watergate.
With federal college loan rates set to double in less than two weeks unless Congress takes action, some Democrats are using the time until then to draw political capital from the hot-button issue.
Whether or not Roger Clemens and Lance Armstrong are lying when they deny they used steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) is beside the main point, which is why we are prohibiting, and even criminalizing, the use of these products.
Considering that Wisconsin is below the national average in the percentage of adults who have college degrees, almost any move to make college more accessible should be applauded.
The University of Wisconsin System on Tuesday announced a new flexible degree program aimed at graduating nontraditional students. It will focus on competencies rather than class work and allow students to move at their own pace. As WUWM?s LaToya Dennis reports, the program is in its early stages, but the hope is, to have online classes ready to go by fall.
MILWAUKEE (AP) ? Working adults, military veterans and others pursuing college degrees in the University of Wisconsin System will soon be able to get college credit for knowledge already gained through work or life experience.
The University of Wisconsin System wants to churn out more degree-holders with a new online plan that will grant students college credit for their work and life experiences.
People soon will be able to improve their job prospects by earning college degrees at their own pace, wherever they are, through a new University of Wisconsin System Flexible Degree program.
In “The Emotional Life of Your Brain,” psychologist, psychiatrist and brain researcher Dr. Richard Davidson looks at how our brains emotionally respond to events in our lives. He and science writer Sharon Begley explain how your brain chemistry controls your emotions and, ultimately, your personality.
Noted: University of Wisconsin researchers even found that profile pictures and the presence or absence of a declared relationship status can predict the level of harmony between two people. Men who post their status as ?In a Relationship? rather than leave it blank were more satisfied with their relationships, the Wisconsin researchers found. Women whose profile pictures include their partners were similarly more satisfied.
An open data ordinance is moving through the legislative process in Madison, Wis. Championed by Scott Resnick, an alderperson on Madison?s Common Council, the proposal seeks to codify a movement that?s gaining momentum inside and outside of City Hall. Drawing on best practices of other cities across the country, Resnick expects that the law will be approved by Mayor Paul R. Soglin and the Common Council in July or August.
Crises and controversies are almost always useful learning moments, including in the world of higher education. Im learning much this week while observing a roiling debate about the de facto removal of the University of Virginias President Teresa A. Sullivan after a mere two years in her leadership position.
John Morgridge, former chairman and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems, and G. Steven Burrill, chief executive officer of Burrill & Co., are among the teachers at an entrepreneurial boot camp at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this week.
Wisconsin?s public colleges and universities aren?t making the grade as tuition continues to rise at three times the rate of inflation and student loan debt soars, according to a sobering state-by-state “Leaders & Laggards” report card issued Tuesday in Washington.
Seven new fellows have been elected to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, it was recently announced. Among them are three faculty members from the University of Wisconsin-Madison: a globe-trotting doctor, a plant geneticist, and a technology communicator.
Quoted: David Drake, wildlife specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When it comes to Wisconsin politics, divisions begin at the local level. But one group looks to put the issues into a new light, by resurrecting an old idea. The Wisconsin Idea has been reborn, and is taking on the hard hitting issues from around the state, with people from right here in the Northwoods.
Noted: More recently, University of Wisconsin-Madison, communications scholars have warned that Google?s search recommendations (the list of suggested searches that pop up when you start typing a word using the popular search engine) actually bend people?s perception. Looking at nanotechnology, for example, the study showed that top search suggestions over a few years turned away from business to health concerns. The search recommendations were actually steering more people to look into less-reliable nanotechnology health-issue websites, they found. “Google is shaping the reality we experience in the suggestions it makes, pointing us away from the most accurate information and towards the most popular,” study lead author Dietram Scheufele told USA TODAY in 2010.
Noted: Matthew Fuxjager and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison let male mice chalk up three rigged “wins” against other mice and then after a fourth win, studied how many “androgen receptors” there were in key parts of their brains. Androgen receptors are receiving stations for testosterone, and the more there are of them, the more powerfully any single spurt of testosterone will affect the brain.
We know an industry is in crisis when its top institutions cannot establish stable leadership. That is the case with some of our nation?s best public universities today.
Quoted: ?There?s a lot of uncertainty about what the solution is,? said Mark Copelovitch, an assistant professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who specializes in the politics of the world economy. ?Investors are savvy and they realize this is a short-term solution and not a permanent fix.?
An electrical problem likely caused the weekend fire in Wittich Hall, the second University of Wisconsin-La Crosse building to catch fire in less than six months, according to a Monday announcement from campus officials.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be in Green Bay this morning to announce what is described as “a major University of Wisconsin System economic development initiative.”
By sticking to one big “Idea”, project leaders for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery were able to make a number of new laboratory design concepts work.
Quoted: All these Muslim warriors governed immense inkblots of territory that were extensions of the Arab-Persian world that lay to the west, even as they interacted and traded with China to the north and east. It was a land without fixed borders that, according to University of Wisconsin historian André Wink, represented a rich confection of Arab, Persian, and Turkic culture, bustling with trade routes to Muslim Central Asia.
College tuition and student loan costs have been a hot topic this year, even becoming a signature issue of the presidential campaign.
Former Jets receiver Al Toon was proud on draft day, when the Saints called his son?s name.
When it comes to Wisconsin politics, divisions begin at the local level. But one group looks to put the issues into a new light, by resurrecting an old idea. The Wisconsin Idea has been reborn, and is taking on the hard hitting issues from around the state, with people from right here in the Northwoods. The project is called the Wisconsin Idea Scholars Program, and is a rebirth of an older project called the Wisconsin Idea.
Matt Beilfuss is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this summer, but you won?t see him hanging out at the Memorial Union terrace after classes. Beilfuss isn?t in Madison or Wisconsin. He isn?t even in the United States.
Nearly 17 years after the birth of Andean Health and Development, the organization is expanding to train Ecuadorean physicians and work toward opening a hospital in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, just west of the capital, Quito.
The Milwaukee native behind the nonprofit organization, physician David Gaus, along with the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, started a hospital in 2000 in Pedro Vicente Maldonado, a small rural district in the Pichincha province.
Quoted: In 2010, Paul Mitchell of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that US growers of conventional maize benefitted economically from having an adjacent Bt maize farm, because it suppressed maize-damaging pests. “This paper is part of the ongoing research documenting the environmental, economic and social benefits that Bt crops generate for more than just their users,” he says.
The University of Iowa and Anheuser-Busch have renewed their relationship, a move some say conflicts with the university?s high-profile responsible-drinking campaign.
It?s hard to believe, but the University of Wisconsin-Madison Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE) program is already 13 years old.
After I posted my previous blog entry, ?Priced out of education? (which also was published in Monday?s hard-copy edition of the Leader-Telegram), I received a couple of emails saying I?d missed half of the picture in my rant about the rising cost of college. I?m accustomed to complaints about my writing, but in this case they were exactly right.
Victoria Haler, 18, was crowned Miss Teen Minnesota United States in February, was selected a Princess Kay finalist in May, and graduated from Waconia High School in June. Haler plans to continue her studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she?ll major in international studies and Spanish.
In “The Emotional Life of Your Brain,” psychologist, psychiatrist and brain researcher Dr. Richard Davidson looks at how our brains emotionally respond to events in our lives. He and science writer Sharon Begley explain how your brain chemistry controls your emotions and, ultimately, your personality.
Chris Chambers thought he was on track to play a 13- or 14-year career in the NFL. He wasn?t putting up the numbers he did in his first seven NFL seasons with Miami, but Chambers was still a productive receiver for San Diego and Kansas City in his later years. He was traded to Kansas City seven games into the 2009 season, and still led the Chiefs in receiving that year despite playing only nine games. Chambers later signed a three-year deal with Kansas City before the 2011 season.
MADISON – An agriculture professor in the University of Wisconsin says that farmers are experiencing some level of anxiety over the lack of rain so far this spring and summer.
Quoted: “They?re virtually all unnatural means to enhance performance,” says Norman Fost, professor of paediatrics, medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.
HUDSON – Hudson High School graduate Davis Drewiske, who won a state high school hockey championship with the Raiders in 2001, played on the University of Wisconsin?s 2006 national championship team, realized the dream of hockey players everywhere Monday night when he hoisted the Stanley Cup after his Los Angeles Kings team defeated the New Jersey Devils, 6-1, to win the franchise?s first National Hockey League title.
Quoted: John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the research, said it would be interesting to learn how these genetic differences influenced behavior.
Brent Smith?s election last week as president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents is great news for western Wisconsin and the entire UW System.
The base tuition for state universities in Wisconsin is going up another 5.5 percent this fall, continuing a trend of tuition outpacing inflation that has been the norm for some time.
College will become more expensive this fall for students attending Wisconsin?s public universities. Last week, the UW Board of Regents boosted tuition by 5.5 percent, to offset cuts in state funding.
Bright lights, thick black curtains and a large open stage. That?s all it takes for Jasmine Mans to feel right at home. The UW-Madison junior has been involved in all areas of the arts throughout her life, but today, she?s honing her craft as a poet and author.
Noted: That uncertainty is no better illustrated than in the essay “Diagnostic Quests and Accidents,” in which Norman Fost, director of the University of Wisconsin?s bioethics program, describes how mistakes in the diagnostic stage have affected many patients, including two contributors to this book: Arthur Frank (his doctor thought he had chlamydia) and Dresser (an ache in her ear and mouth didn?t seem unusual to her regular doctor). Not only do such mistakes delay the right treatments, they instill a lot of frustration and disappointment.
Hudson High School graduate Davis Drewiske, who won a state high school hockey championship with the Raiders in 2001, played on the University of Wisconsin?s 2006 national championship team, realized the dream of hockey players everywhere Monday night when he hoisted the Stanley Cup after his Los Angeles Kings team defeated the New Jersey Devils, 6-1, to win the franchise?s first National Hockey League title.
I recently attended my daughter?s graduation ceremony from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As I listened to the chancellor and various other speakers, I wondered to myself, why isn?t the governor of our state here?
Wisconsin officials are launching a statewide initiative to help high school students earn college credits.
Wisconsin high school students soon will be able to take University of Wisconsin college courses for little or no money in their own schools and taught by their high school teachers.
UW-Madison says it has found money in its current budget to give pay raises to professors who are being targeted by other schools. The state?s flagship campus said yesterday that it formed what it calls a ?Critical Compensation Fund.?
Noted: So while husbands and wives have become more equal, inequality between families appears to be on the rise. As Christine R. Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, puts it: ?Marriages are increasingly likely to consist of two high- or two low-earning partners,? rather than of one of each.
Noted: I talked to New Party founder Joel Rogers at the time; he also said Obama wasn?t a member, and that the party didn?t exactly have “members”: There was no internal voting structure, and no way to register as a member of the party in Illinois. Donors were sometimes called “members.”
Noted: It doesn?t stunt their growth, as some have speculated, said Tom Cline, a graduate student at the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A long-term study there that involved capturing, marking and then angling for bass found they lose weight over the first one to three days after being caught. But they then feed so heavily that growth rates actually double for a time, Cline said.
While it is fresh in my mind and heart I want to share some of the unique frustrations we face at university election stations. At our ward in Memorial Library we turned away about 20 young adults or about 6% of those who came to vote at our ward.
Noted: God, the weather and the Packers used to be enough to diffuse any political argument among Wisconsinites, said Katherine Walsh, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. but the tenor of the discourse during Walker?s short term in office has been louder than in recent memory, and Walsh isn?t totally convinced the end of the recall will mark the end of the tension.
What does it take to close the achievement gap? Last month the principal of Chicago?s Gary Comer College Prep wrote about how 100 percent of the school?s seniors earned acceptances to four-year universities. This is the last of four student stories.
Quoted: Indeed, MadisonCommons.org at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently got some funding via a service learning grant to integrate the news website into the journalism curriculum, said its founder, Lew Friedland.
Reviewed by Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His book ?How Not to Be Wrong? will be published this year.
