Enrollment of American Indian students in the University of Wisconsin system jumped 50 percent in four years, according to the latest available figures, but graduation and retention rates are well behind the general student population.
Rebekah LaFontant will graduate Sunday from Brandeis University. ?It?s kind of bittersweet,?? the New York City native said earlier this week. ?Brandeis is a bubble – it shields you from the real world. Once I leave, I?ll be a real adult.??
If all the world?s a stage, a Madison theatrical continent is about to slip off the globe. The Wisconsin Union Theater will close this summer for two years of renovation and remodeling.
The Washburn Observatory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been the school?s scientific centerpiece since its commissioning in 1881. The same year which, coincidentally, was the last time anybody bothered to clean the optics.
Noted: She has decided to leave the classroom, and is entering the Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.
Expect to hear the name Justin Schultz a lot in the coming weeks. The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin defenseman has the option to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1 if Anaheim, the team that drafted him 43rd overall in 2008, doesn?t get him under contract by June 1.
In most rooms, Russell Wilson blends in just fine. At 5-foot-11, he?s by no means a shrimp, but in the buildup to the NFL draft, Wilson?s “height issue” dominated scouting reports. His promising 72.8 completion percentage as a senior at Wisconsin was alluring, but quarterbacks under six feet aren?t usually long for the NFL.
Noted: The new numbers are a more accurate reflection of what?s happening, but they still show very slow job growth for the state, said University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky. Since they?re being released early, it?s impossible to tell how Wisconsin compares to other states, he said.
Quoted: Steven Deller, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Walker?s budgetary austerity and a “tremendous amount of uncertainty” generated by the recall “have kind of put the brakes on the state economy.”
Noted: “By that measure, the most popular movies have already won a very big award in the form of lots of cash,” Jonathan Gray, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in an email. “While it may seem elitist and snobbish for other award ceremonies to ?ignore? popularity, I often find myself wondering why something that got half a billion dollars at the box office needs a little faux-gold statuette for validation.”
The voter ID law passed last spring by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature was widely criticized for requiring that voters show a driver?s license or other form of photo identification at the polls. These provisions are now under two court injunctions by judges who found that the photo ID requirements likely discriminate against minorities, the poor and the elderly.
Interviewed: UW-Madison Political Scientist Barry Burden describes why the majority of voters have not needed swaying.
Just down the hall from the reference desk at Emory University?s law library in a room housing antique legal texts is Stanley the golden retriever puppy, barking his head off.
Noted: A visitor to Madison not only identified a healthy grocer in Madison named Fresh Madison Market, but discovered that the store delivered food to the university where her professional development seminar was being held. Given the convenience, she booked a room at the university?s on-campus Lowell Center instead of an off-campus hotel.
The radioisotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is a source for the commonly used radiomarker technetium-99m applicable in cancer diagnostics and life science research, but it?s in short supply and there are no American manufacturers of the material.
Why do we view a K-12 education as so important that we require it and offer it free of charge, but in an increasingly competitive world, we are making it harder to go beyond high school?
A law firm has charged the University of Wisconsin-Madison about $43,700 to investigate an athletic official who resigned amid a sexual-assault investigation.
The outgoing chancellor of the University of Hawaii?s flagship Manoa campus will be paid nearly $300,000 for a 10-month sabbatical.
Noted: For Carolyn Abbott, the numbers will be little more than a curiosity. She has decided to leave the classroom, and is entering the Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.
Noted: Viewers easily absorb health messages that are embedded in a narrative, research shows. Inaccurate information offered in a story format is recalled more readily than the real facts received during sex education classes or from a doctor, said Al Gunther, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
It mystified most NFL draft experts when the Seahawks, selecting in the third round, latched onto University of Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson. His first negative, according to critics: Lack of height (5-foot-11). His second: the Seahawks had, only weeks earlier, guaranteed Matt Flynn $10 million over two years after acquiring him in free agency from the Green Bay Packers.
Quoted: Colonography “does have some advantages and disadvantages and I think it?s important for people to know what those are,” said Dr. Perry Pickhardt, of the department of radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
Some ancient plants, although a little smaller, are still around today. Wisconsin Gardner’s Shelley Ryan and botany professor Ken Cameron visit the Mesozoic Garden at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus to see living fossils that would make great container plants.
Noted: The Helium-3 fusion process is not simply theoretical ? the University of Wisconsin-Madison Fusion Technology Institute successfully performed fusion experiments combining two molecules of Helium-3. Estimates place the efficiency of Helium-3 fusion reactions at seventy percent, out-pacing coal and natural gas electricity generation by twenty percent.
Quoted: Walter Dickey. “They are the final authority. Since they?re deciders of what the parameters of their authority are, in the event members of the court wish to recuse themselves, they can appoint members of the appellate court to the Supreme Court for purposes of discipline.”
Eliminating loans isn?t an option at most public universities. Substantial state funding cuts are forcing public schools to depend more heavily on tuition payments to cover operating costs. “We just don?t have the fiscal means to eliminate debt,” says Susan Fischer, financial aid director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students graduated with an average debt of $24,140 in 2011.
Noted: Being a nanny is like being a second parent. ?Nannies want to form lasting bonds with the children. They recognize they won?t be there forever, but they do want to be recognized for their hard work,? said Cameron McDonald, author of “Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs and the Micropolitics of Mothering,” to The Huffington Post.
The Big Ten track and field championships will begin on Friday at the McClimon Complex on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, and one Badger athlete to keep an eye on is junior distance runner Mohammed Ahmed.
Noted: The testing found statistically significant improvements in employees? investment knowledge, their establishment of goals and budgets, and an increase in their contributions to retirement plans, according to research by J. Michael Collins, an assistant professor and director the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Quoted: Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says people are more likely to do better for themselves — and their children are likely to do better — in states with more educated residents and more dynamic economies, such as those in the Northeast.
Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.
Noted: A leading U.S. Pushkinist, David Bethea of the University of Wisconsin, agrees that translations of Pushkin into other languages can be disastrous. Most renderings into English come out like ?a pretty good Victorian poet, maybe Tennyson,? he told me by telephone.
Quoted: “With Maurice Sendak?s 1963 classic tale of vengeful rebellion, Max and the Wild Things ushered in a new era in children?s literature,? says Kathleen Horning, director of the Cooperative Children?s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin School of Education in Madison.
One of the world?s experts on vaccinations for pets is Dr. Ron Schultz, professor and chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, Madison. He says you?re in a no win situation. He can?t advocate that you break the law, but is hopeful for changes in this inflexible law.
Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has commented on the controversy surrounding her replacement Scott Thompson, who was found to have falsely claimed that he earned a computer science degree and is now facing calls for his ouster.
MILWAUKEE (AP) ? Hoping to secure some stability at the top of its athletic department, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hired former Ohio State athletic director Andy Geiger on Thursday.
Greg Stiemsma might not be the next Bill Russell, as at least one overly hopeful ex-Boston Celtic predicted. But he has become a regular contributor ? and burgeoning cult hero ? on a star-studded squad that has designs on a deep run in the NBA playoffs.
Quoted: The Midwest union battles demonstrate labor?s erosion of influence in the past 30 years, said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wisconsin?s recall, in which Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will face Walker, is a bellwether for the November presidential election, he said.
A standing wheelchair. It?s not the first of its kind, but it will go where no others have. It?s a project five University of Wisconsin at Madison students embraced — more than a thousand hours in the making and a chance to change the life of a surgeon no longer physically able to do his job.
The new system needs to be more transparent, and Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez would welcome the four teams being chosen by a selection committee, similar to the system used in basketball.
The Morgridge Institute for Research and the U.S. Department of Energy have reached a multimillion-dollar agreement to help open a medical isotope plant in Janesville – a development that Morgridge?s director says could spark a manufacturing cluster that could ultimately bring as many as 1,000 jobs to economically beleaguered Rock County.
The coaching philosophy of new UW-Milwaukee women?s basketball coach Kyle Rechlicz can be summed up in one word. Fit. Well, maybe not the entire philosophy, but it?s not a bad place to start.
Like, for instance, when the moment of truth arrived and she made the decision to leave her position as an assistant coach at her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, and take the head coaching job at UWM.
Easy answers are hard to find for how the University of Wisconsin System can continue offering the same quality education at an affordable cost with less state support.But a task force advising the Legislature on flexibilities that could help make campuses more efficient wrestled with several key issues during an all-day hearing Wednesday in Madison, including the role tuition should play in supporting campuses and financial aid, and how the best and brightest faculty and administrators can be attracted and retained if salaries aren?t competitive.
Quoted: To Bradley Carl, an associate researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the MacIver Institute?s conclusions are more complex than the data shows.
As a conservative and a liberal, policy wonk and professor, Washingtonian and Midwesterner — there isn?t much we can agree on. Where we do see eye to eye is that most aid programs are less cost-effective than they could be. With money scarce and demand for college graduates high, now is the time to fix financial aid. In the Lone Star State, that means thinking smarter about Texas Grants.
Quoted: “It feels like all-new territory,” said Kathy Cramer Walsh, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and faculty investigator for the Badger Poll, which annually measures political leanings among other things in the state. “The rest of the nation senses that, too, which is why there is so much attention to our recall races.
Three baby red-tailed hawks are resting in their nest on a ledge below the roof of the four-story Geosciences building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
With chancellors leaving Wisconsin?s public campuses for jobs that pay tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands more annually, university leaders are looking at whether private foundations could provide extra money to help retain them.
At the anthropology meeting in Portland, I sat down with John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, who chaired the open lab session, to learn more about how it came to be. Hawks explained that the impetus came in 2011, when Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, donated casts of the recently discovered remains of A. sediba to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The move inspired the association?s vice president and program committee chair, Karen Rosenberg of the University of Delaware, to propose inviting other researchers and curators to bring casts of other fossil hominins (humans and their extinct relatives) to the meeting and make an event of it. Rosenberg then asked Hawks to organize the event, which became the plenary session of the meeting.
Among the sweeping changes made to Wisconsin?s political landscape over the last year was the choice to make voting more difficult under the guise of preventing voter fraud. The voter identification requirement of Act 23 has been widely debated and is now suspended by judicial order. The reason for this suspension is that the law was unfair to the 220,000 or so adult state residents without a driver?s license, who are disproportionately poor, elderly and minority. Receiving less attention was the alteration in our residency requirement, which changed from 10 days to 28 days.
In the rushing streams and clear cool waters found from Minnesota to the Hudson Bay, the prized smallmouth bass feeds on crayfish, insects and the occasional bait launched into the water by a hopeful angler. They can be greedy, as freshwater scientist Gretchen Anderson Hansen found while collecting crayfish in a lake in Vilas County, Wis., when she found herself being observed by a handful of hungry smallmouth bass. Anderson Hansen, who does her research work with the UW-Madison Center for Limnology, was able to protect her samples this time around, but she?s not always so lucky. She says “opportunistic” bass “often grab her ?samples? before she gets a handle on them.”
As the flagship college in the state, the University of Wisconsin-Madison holds a special place in education. Well, at least it?s supposed to. And it does, to some extent, but not in the same way that it used to.
Quoted: ?If you build a system to serve 100,000 people and you don?t do too much to change it, it?s going to continue to do that,? said lead author Victor Capoccia, a senior scientist at the Center for Health Enhancement System Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has held various roles in addiction services in Massachusetts.
The Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison has been awarded a $20.6 million project from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the institute?s work with SHINE Medical Technologies in developing a new process and manufacturing plant for a medical isotope needed by tens of thousands of U.S. patients daily.
Two senior senators said on Tuesday that they had opened an investigation into financial ties between producers of prescription painkillers and pain experts, patient advocacy groups and organizations that set guidelines on how doctors use the drugs. The groups that were sent letters on Tuesday included the American Pain Foundation, a patient advocacy group, and the Pain and Policy Studies Group at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Barry Orton, a telecommunications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The genetics comparison was made possible by tissue that had been collected by a postdoctoral geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Stacie Robinson has taken data sets of deer from the north and two areas in southern Wisconsin.
A program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison called the Public Humanities Exchange or “HEX” offers an admirable example of what I mean. A living legacy of the progressive-era idea that the university should serve the whole state, the HEX program sponsors local projects?often involving graduate students?that take the university outside of its own walls. In one continuing project, two graduate students, Colleen Lucey in Slavic languages and literature and Janelle Pulczinski comparative literature, seek to create a “literary environment” for recently released prisoners through reading and creative-writing groups.
Unless you have several hundred dollars to spare, and a foot of shelf space for five 8¾-by-11¼-inch volumes of a close to a thousand pages each, you aren?t likely to own a copy of the Dictionary of American Regional English. But you might find it worth your while to visit your local public or university library to take a look at the 60,000 rare and unusual words inside.
Noted: In a meta-analysis of studies based on more than 7 million children in kindergarten through 11th grade, Janet S. Hyde, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found small average gender differences in such areas as activity level (favoring boys) and ability to focus (favoring girls), but no significant differences in mathematics or reading comprehension and “no solid evidence that boys and girls actually learn differently.”
