The rules governing state construction projects are so outdated and cumbersome they cause delays, drive up costs and hurt quality, according to a report released Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin System report recommends major changes in the way the state plans, approves and carries out $500 million in construction projects each year. Many of the laws and rules governing projects haven’t changed since the 1970s.
Madison City Council Members unanimously passed a new stricter smoke alarm ordinance.
It’s called The Peter Talen Memorial Ordinance. Named after a 23-year-old Plymouth man who died in a fire inside a home on North Bedford Street on UW’s campus on November 18th 2007.
Three people escaped. Talen did not.
The UW marching band took their instruments on the road today to deliver meals to people who are homebound.
Members played mini concerts and helped deliver 200 meals in Madison to those who have difficulty leaving their homes or are disabled.
Tragedy brings change to Madison. The city council has approved changes to the city’s fire code, almost a year-and-a-half after a college student lost his life in a fire downtown.
Tim and Patty Talen described Tuesday as being “bitter sweet.”
They lost their son in a blaze in November of 2007.
A 41-year-old man was found dead in a guest room at Memorial Union on Tuesday morning, according to the UW-Madison Police Department.
â??There was no foul play, no forced entry, no visible wounds and no reason to believe thereâ??s a continued danger to the community,â? said Lt. Eric Holen.
A Union staff member found
A proposal to allow UW faculty bargaining is facing criticism from a state lawmaker.
Governor Doyle’s proposed budget includes a provision that permits unions on campus, and that’s drawing opposition from State Senator Glenn Grothman. The West Bend Republican is asking the Legislature’s budget committee to kill the plan, which he says would cost the state more money and reduce the quality of the UW System.
The UW System wrapped up its 10-year plan to increase diversity on campus with mixed success.
Plan 2008 was meant to attract more students of color to UW campuses through recruitment, scholarships, retention efforts, and diverse coursework.
A new report says Wisconsin made progress, but much work remains to be done.
The new economic-stimulus law includes more than $29-billion in provisions directed at making college more affordable in the next two years. That includes $13.9-billion budgeted over 10 years for education-tax-credit changes in 2009 and 2010, $15-billion in additional Pell Grant support, and $200-million for the Federal Work-Study program. But what will all that money actually do for students?
Rep. John Culberson’s Web site shouts that the country should “just say no to federal spending,” and the Texas Republican boasted at a House of Representatives hearing Tuesday that he has a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union because he consistently opposes wasteful government spending. But Culberson makes an exception, he told his colleagues on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related, for spending on scientific research and science education, given the contribution those things make to the country’s economic stability and national security.
Renee Paquette Schelb of Deerfield passed away on Feb. 28, 2009. Most recently she worked at the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, Madison.
Mary Kuehn, age 79, died after a brief illness on Sunday, March 1, 2009. Trained as a nurse, Mary completed her career working as a psychiatric nurse at University Hospital.
Arlita B. “Molly” Draper, age 86 of Portage, passed away in her sleep on Sunday, March 1, 2009. Molly worked for the University of Wisconsin as a cook.
Carolyn Finkelstein Wilson, affectionately known as Callie, age 89, died peacefully on Friday, Feb 27, 2009. She moved to Madison in 1976, serving as librarian for University of Wisconsin Extension Women’s Education Resources and as bibliographer to the U.S. State Department’s International Women’s Year (1977) Wisconsin State Meeting. An inventive bibliographer, Callie completed her career at the University of Wisconsin Office of the Women’s Studies Librarian, as editor for 10 years of New Books on Women and Feminism.
Struggling college students are having an even more difficult time because of the financial downturn. Some opt to wait in food-pantry lines. Others have stopped drinking soda, using their cars or eating out.
Quoted: Rob Meyer is head of the Value Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is contracting with Chicago.
Those who watched the University of Wisconsin Varsity Marching Band concert at Hartford Union High School on Sunday night likely recognized a few familiar faces on stage.
HUHS graduates Michelle Gehlhausen (trumpet), Christy Fritche (mellophone) and Jessica Scheunemann (trumpet) were joined by Slinger grads Nathan Retzlaff (trumpet) and Heather Wheiland (trombone) for a rousing performance of arrangements and compositions.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee would take a $19.8 million budget cut over the next two years under Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget plan, university officials said Monday.
The reduction makes up about 11% of the UW System’s total $174 million budget reduction.
The system late Monday released a breakdown of the cuts that each of its campuses will have to absorb if Doyle’s budget passes in its current form.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse will provide about $5.4 million â?? more than any other UW System school â?? to help create $25 million in financial aid for Wisconsin students.
Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s 2009-11 state budget includes a one-time transfer of $25 million from UW System school reserves to fund student financial aid.
The system sorted out how schools would pay for the financial aid based on how much each had in reserve funds from user fees for residence halls, dining halls and other services.
Winners were announced Monday in the University of Wisconsin’s 100-Hour Wiscontrepreneur Challenge.
The third annual event attracted a record of nearly 200 students and 63 entries, compared to last year’s 17, during the four-day competition.
As the U.S. war in Iraq appears to be winding down, officials at UW-Madison are exploring a unique partnership with the university in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.
President Barack Obama’s recent promise to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by the end of this summer is good news for supporters of a plan to establish a formal relationship between UW-Madison and Tikrit University in Iraq.
So far, negotiations have involved only U.S. embassy staff in Iraq and the Department of International studies at UW-Madison. But plans are underway for a video phone conference between Tikrit University faculty and their counterparts in Madison within the next six weeks. UW-graduate Brett Bruen, now a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Baghdad, is helping design a memorandum of understanding between the two campuses. Heâ??s hopeful that the agreement will be mutually beneficial. (Second item.)
William James Drescher, age 90, died on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009. In 1958 he received a M.S. degree in geology from UW-Madison and taught graduate level hydrology courses at the UW in the late 50s and early 60s.
One bright spot in the gloomy economic news recently is the success of biotech firms. Many are hiring, even during a tough economic time.
The jobs aren’t for everyone because they require a science-specific degree or some specialized training. But for qualified applicants, biotech companies are one industry that is still hiring.
FluGen is one of many area biotech companies still hiring in a tough economy, partially because of support from the state and the University of Wisconsin.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin system suspended payments this month from 38 underwater endowments, taking away $700,000 that would have gone for scholarships and other programs at campuses across the state. At New York University, about $10 million of $16 million in scholarship endowments is untouchable.
Quoted: “Prices were forecasted to be lower in 2009, but no one forecasted prices this low,” Bob Cropp, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in a dairy industry outlook last month.
Quoted: Dr. Frank R. Greer, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and chairman of the nutrition committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The University of Wisconsin football team’s 2008 season fell far short of expectations, by almost any standard.
The Badgers were ranked as high as eighth in both major polls after starting 3-0 and had aspirations of a Big Ten Conference title and a Bowl Championship Series berth. But they stumbled to a 7-6 finish, including 3-5 in the conference, and were beaten by Florida State 42-13 in the Champs Sports Bowl.
Yet that didn’t prevent the football coaching staff from earning $263,492 in bonuses, including $100,000 for coach Bret Bielema, as part of the Athletic Department’s Exceptional Achievement Award Policy, which was passed by the Athletic Board in 1994.
Under the policy, UW coaches received nearly $700,000 in bonuses during the 2007-08 school year. The bonuses were paid to head coaches and assistants in 17 of the 23 men’s and women’s sports.
New research suggests that high levels of calcium in the bloodstream may increase a man’s risk of dying from prostate cancer. If verified in future studies, determining levels of calcium in blood could assist doctors and patients in making decisions regarding treatment.
A nonprofit is bringing 90 college graduates to teach in Milwaukee’s highest need schools in the next three years.
Teach For America says it will provide at least 30 teachers to Milwaukee Public Schools this fall, with at least 30 more in each of the two following years.
More than 50 graduates of the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined the group last year, making it the third-largest source of members.
With just $15 in their pockets and a time limit of 100 hours, University of Wisconsin-Madison students dreamed up and created such inventions as an egg-cracking machine and an isolation chamber for studying.
The winner of the 100-hour Wiscontrepreneur Challenge will be announced Monday.
Quoted: The public’s concern about the diversion of food to fuel in the growing move to developing fuels from plants has to be balanced with the global challenge to produce both food and fuel, said Randell Fortenbery.
The Renk Professor of Agribusiness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said the production of biofuels is a global issue in a global market.
Quoted: Rusty Bishop, director of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After raw milk has been pasteurized, he says, “there’s no difference in composition, other than that you’ve killed off a significant number of bacteria that were in the milk.”
Ralph Ramirez’s mother came from a family of migrant workers.
“She used to go to Door County all the time,” Ramirez was recalling recently, “but not to do anything but pick cherries.”
Ramirez’s father worked in foundries most of his life. Having served in the military police during World War II, he applied at municipal police departments after the war.
Just call it “Match.com for the Super-Skilled Set.”
But beginners need not apply, organizers said.
Instead, the Badger Career Network Alerts program seeks to connect mostly graduates who are now in mid-career and executive-level positions with companies seeking new management, scientific and professional talent in those fields.
There could soon be more money than ever to help students go to college, but figuring out how to get it is the trick.
Both the proposed state and federal budgets included significant investments in financial aid, beefing up grant and loan programs and creating new ones.
The concern among some officials is that the federal application form for aid â?? a labyrinthine 109 questions â?? intimidates prospective college students and their families from applying to college.
Ah, what fools we mortals are.
With “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare gave the English-speaking world a nice bit of escapism, the kind of play it’s fun to see as the roads ice over and skies remain gray.
In a sensual, Caribbean staging with hanging vines and an onstage waterfall, University Theatre interprets the beloved comedy with a good dash of Latina flair. A lively opening dance sets the heady tone for the evening: warm, breezy and boldly physical.
Visitors to the Memorial Union art galleries can now take a cell phone audio tour, the first of its kind to be offered by an art gallery in Wisconsin.
Organized by UW-Madison students, the interactive cell phone guide, called Dial Up Art, offers visitors artist biographies, interviews, explanation of processes and exhibition critiques.
Itâ??s a story that stretches the bounds of credulity: Police arrest a man, pour blood on him and plant a blood-smeared knife in his truck to frame him for a murder he didnâ??t commit.
Prosecutors and police then withhold, alter and destroy the evidence that could let the man prove his innocence.
Kenneth Hudsonâ??s account of what happened the day 19-year-old UW-Madison student Shanna Van Dyn Hoven was stabbed to death in Kaukauna in 2000 may seem improbable.
As one of the countryâ??s top coastal engineers, Philip Keillor would swoop in to help people whose livelihoods were endangered by flooding or erosion.
In his private life, Keillor exhibited similar compassion for people in distress, helping to found a homeless shelter in Madison now known as Porchlight Inc.
Keillor, 71, died Friday of injuries suffered in a fall at a Madison ice rink 12 days earlier, said his wife, Ann-Britt Keillor.
John Thomson, a UW-Madison botanist who became known worldwide after hitching his career to lichens, died Feb. 20 in Mount Horeb. He was 95.
He had fallen a month earlier at home while ascending a staircase and did not recover from the injuries, said Olive Thomson, his wife of 71 years.
Mark Hoegh’s love for University of Wisconsin-Madison athletics has grown ever since he laced up his football shoes for the Badgers in the early 1950s.
The Oshkosh resident has given of his time, money and fundraising talents through the years to give back to the school that gave him an athletic scholarship.
It was the age of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Dorothy in the land of Oz. Theatrical “fairy spectacles,” with special effects to evoke moonlight, were a huge hit. Even newspaper reporters would gush over artworks and exhibitions as “veritable fairylands” that would “enchant” the viewer.
From literature to theater to everyday life, something magical was in the air as American popular culture turned the corner from the 19th century to the 20th. Fantasy made anything possible. In that spirit, women picked up their sewing needles, and the craze was on.
“A Fairyland of Fabrics: The Victorian Crazy Quilt,” on exhibit at the Design Gallery at UW-Madison through March 8, brings back a time when amateur needle workers fashioned scraps into artworks that sparkle with inventiveness and play.
Three old buildings are coming down on the corner of Randall Avenue and W. Johnson Street on the University of Wisconsin â?? Madison campus to make room for a larger multi-use student-union building that will be a focal point for students and guests in the south-central area of campus.
CG Schmidt, Inc., Milwaukee, is the construction manager overseeing both the deconstruction of the existing buildings and the construction of the 194,000-square-foot, three-story modern structure that will rise in their place.
While University of Wisconsin students are looking forward to spring break in just two weeks, the U.S. State Department is issuing new travel warnings.
Citing rising violence in the country, the State Department is asking the estimated 100,000 American college students that head to Mexico for spring break every year to take extra caution.
Officials said that among the U.S.-Mexico border, escalating violence by Mexican drug cartels has created dangerous situations, including large firefights in some towns.
8th Annual Bowlin’ For Colons raises money for colon cancer research at the UW Carbone Cancer Center.
More than a thousand bowlers hit the lanes this weekend for the eighth annual Bowlin’ for Colons benefit.
Participants at Ten Pin Alley in Fitchburg bowled to raise awareness and funds for colon cancer research at the UW Carbone Cancer Center.
Admissions officers at the State University of New York college campus here are suddenly afraid of getting what they have always wished for: legions of top high-school seniors saying â??yesâ? to their fat envelopes.
Students are already tripled up in many dorm rooms after an unexpectedly large freshman class entered last fall. And despite looming budget cuts from the state, which more tuition-paying students could help offset, officials say they are determined not to diminish the quality of student life by expanding enrollment at their liberal-arts college beyond the current 6,000 undergraduates.
Sunday marks the beginning of Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
It also would’ve been Roger Szemraj’s 57th birthday.
But he recently lost his life to colon cancer.
“Come on Dad you got to help me get a strike.”
You normally wouldn’t find Sara Szemraj-Dongarra bowling on her father’s birthday.
It was all part of the UW Carbone Cancer Center’s 8th Annual ” Bowlin’ for Colons” fundraiser at Ten Pin Alley in Fitchburg.
A record number of University of Wisconsin students rolled out of bed Saturday morning to attend a seminar on personal finances.
More than 120 students attended the Alumni Student Board’s annual personal finance seminar. That’s more than double the number last year.
Students at one UW school are standing behind the statewide domestic partner registry in Governor Jim Doyleâ??s budget proposal. From La Crosse, Danielle Kaeding reports on the debateâ?¦ (Second item, audio.)
Exquisitely detailed and beautifully symmetrical, the snowflakes that David Griffeath makes are icy jewels of art. But don’t be fooled; there is some serious science behind the University of Wisconsin-Madison mathematician’s charming creations. Although they look as if they tumbled straight from the clouds, these “snowfakes” are actually the product of an elaborate computer model designed to replicate the wildly complex growth of snow crystals.
Here’s what’s perhaps most unusual about President Obama’s big budget proposals for higher education: That he’s thinking about higher education at all.
Delineated in a handful of brash proposals Thursday, Obama’s plan to make college more affordable and within reach of more students represents a break from the approach that President Bush took â?? he focused much of his energy from Day 1 on improving K-12 education, most notably with his signature No Child Left Behind law.
The University of Wisconsin is banking on Camp Randall Stadium to draw a world-record crowd next year, but not for football.
The university has tendered a formal contract to the University of Michigan for an outdoor hockey game to be played at the 80,321-seat stadium Feb. 6, and the Wolverines are expected to accept the offer, Michigan associate head coach Mel Pearson said Thursday afternoon.
The University of Wisconsin enjoys a sterling reputation for policing the ethics of its medical school faculty and staff.
“They’re one of our stars,” said Susan C. Chimonas of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University, which ranks institutions on the quality of their programs to avoid and disclose ethical conflicts of interest, like taking money from companies while treating patients with their products.
Some university officials were thus unpleasantly surprised by recent newspaper articles that detailed how Thomas A. Zdeblick, a renowned spine surgeon who is chairman of the university’s department of orthopedics, collected $19.4 million between 2003 and 2007 from Medtronic, a medical-device supplier that sells spinal implants developed by Dr. Zdeblick.
Q: What is the jet stream?
A: A jet stream is a narrow current of strong wind that blows through the upper regions of the troposphere about 7 miles above ground.
Quoted: Michael Scott, director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at UW-Madison, said the Madison Police Department recently adopted a written policy stating that someoneâ??s personal or professional relationship to an officer or to other influential people should not be a factor in exercising discretion.
Doctors would have to disclose the total amounts they get paid by drug companies or makers of medical devices and stop giving talks sponsored by industry under recommendations before the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s physician group.
The recommendations, released Thursday, come as national attention to potential conflicts of interest among doctors has grown in recent years.
Fewer prospective freshmen have applied for admission to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay compared with a year ago, reflecting a trend also evident in Madison.
As of Feb. 15, UWGB freshmen applications were down about 5 percent versus last year, said Pam Harvey-Jacobs, director of admissions. Officials had received 3,175 new freshman applications for fall, versus 3,345 at the same time in 2008.
To the dismay of lenders and the delight of students, President Obama on Thursday unveiled a budget blueprint that would abolish the bank-based student-loan program and use the savings to raise the maximum Pell Grant and make it an entitlement.
The preliminary budget for the 2010 fiscal year, which administration officials say they will flesh out in April, would also provide a $5-billion increase for Perkins Loans, making an estimated 2.7 million more students eligible for the aid and reducing borrowers’ reliance on private loans.
Quoted: “The fascinating aspect of the Kızılburun shipwreck project is the snapshot of building processes the cargo provides,” says William Aylward, a classical archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who specializes in marble architecture. He’s helping Carlson learn the column’s story.
One idea that elite universities like Yale, sprawling public systems like Wisconsin and smaller private colleges like Lewis and Clark have shared for generations is that a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning that the humanities develop have a different purpose: They are prerequisites for personal growth and participation in a free democracy, regardless of career choice.
Quoted: â??I think house prices will be done declining within the year,â? says Morris Davis, a University of Wisconsin economist who studies real estate. But, given todayâ??s uncertainties, he cautions that â??anyone that tells you that they know, doesnâ??t know.â?
