Like many game show enthusiasts, one of Suchita Shah’s life goals was to be on America ‘s favorite game show, “Jeopardy!”
Shah, a UW-Madison senior majoring in neurobiology, said she remembers watching the show while sitting around the dinner table as a child and shouting back the answers to the TV.
The 911 dispatcher who mishandled the call from a homicide victim’s phone has transferred to another Dane County job, officials confirmed Friday.
Contrary to what he said Thursday, the director of the 911 center, Joe Norwick, now acknowledges that the transfer took place soon after April 2, the day a UW-Madison student was found dead in her home.
Karen Bosold is a Madison mother with two daughters attending UW-Madison. She made sure that the girls took their cell phones with them to campus, and she reminded them to use the phones to call 911 if they get in trouble.
“That’s the reason you get your daughter a cell phone,” Bosold said. “They all tell you it’s to talk to their friends. As a parent paying the bills, safety is the reason.”
JANESVILLE â?? Flooded by workers displaced from General Motors, its suppliers and other non-automotive manufacturers, the local economy is expected to sputter in the short term.
How it fares in the long term, however, will likely be a matter of community attitude and hard work.
â??There will be short-term economic struggles, and weâ??re already in a recession,â? said Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison.
The revelry, boozing and general lawlessness went on as usual at the annual Mifflin Street Block Party, but reminders of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann permeated the party.
Zimmermann was killed a month ago in her home near Mifflin Street, where the raucous pre-finals block party takes over the neighborhood during the first Saturday in May.
Four decades is a long time to be looking for someone who does not want to be found. It means that only one of you can be successful, either at hiding or finding. In the murder of Christine Rothschild, there is the added skill of remembering.
And to her friends and the few who remember her â?? the retired detectives, the aging professor, the surviving sister â?? Rothschild’s murder might have been yesterday.
Quoted: David Spooner, a research botanist with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and a professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “With complementary foods like milk, the Irish subsisted on potatoes and milk.”
As the video game industry continues to grow, colleges are starting to offer classes aimed towards helping their students break into different areas of the field. Over at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the drama department now has a class on mo-cap acting, designed to teach actors how to act for motion-capture dramatics used in video game
MADISON, Wis., May 1, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) — Since scientists learned to make nanowires, the tiny wires have taken many forms, and now U.S. researchers have accidentally learned how to grow nanotrees.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Song Jin and graduate student Matthew Bierman accidentally made some pine tree shapes one day and, in doing so, opened a new chapter in nanotechnology.
In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some Baby Boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.
The weak dollar, a sluggish economy and a tougher time getting some types of student loans is making it harder for some U.S. college students to study or travel abroad this summer.
Study abroad programs have set records in recent years, with more than 223,000 U.S. students participating during the 2005-06 academic year, according to the latest annual survey by the New York-based Institute of International Education. Most universities expect overall participation to keep rising, but that growth could be limited within some programs by the struggling dollar and other economic factors.
MADISON â?? One of the nation’s most enduring and well-known college beer bashes will go on but against a darker backdrop this year.
Thousands of college students will gather Saturday for the annual Mifflin Street Block Party, where students party hop between houses stocked with kegs, and beer bongs start flowing about 8 a.m.
Itâ??s always fulfilling when you find such a colorful, culturally rich event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thatâ??s exactly what the African Student Association (ASA) brought to the Lowell Center Saturday, April 26, with with their annual show â??Africa Night.â?
Quoted: Dietram A. Scheufele, a media and public opinion expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Morris Davis, a professor of real estate and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says curtailed credit will “cause the price of starter homes to fall, thus reducing the wealth of current owners of starter homes, which will itself trigger a chain-reaction decline in the price of a trade-up home.”
The UW formally broke ground on the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
The key word is institutes-plural, because it’s made up of the public Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the private Morgridge Institute for Research.
It’s hard to officially break ground on a project when most of the hole has already been excavated, but a who’s who of UW Madison was on hand Friday.
Built in the middle of campus, it will be the center of research in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, engineering and information technology.
SAFEwalk is a program that sends out teams of two to walk with students on campus who request it. Everyday, they provide their services from 8 at night to 1 in the morning. But, some feel it could be better.
“My last day was on April 29,” stated Dana DeMet.
Earlier this week DeMet and 10 of his fellow SAFEwalk employees quit, saying that management was not listening to their concerns.
The streets of downtown Madison near Doty street haven’t been the same since the murder of Brittany Zimmermann just one month ago. What’s missing is the sense of security residents once had in their neighborhood.
Abby Riese lives on West Doty, several houses down from where Zimmermann was found dead in her home and is still nervous about the fact her killer is still on the loose. Since the murder she and her friends only travel alone if they have to during the day.
“And now after this I don’t feel safe here anymore,” says Riese. “I promised my dad that I wouldn’t walk alone at night and I haven’t so there’s a lot of times where I just don’t do things I would normally do.”
More than 300 dollars from a local firefighters’ union went to the Dollars for Brittany scholarship fund as friends of Zimmermann kicked off fundraising during Saturday’s Mifflin Street Block Party. One month later, the 21-year-old’s tragic murder is still fresh on everyone’s minds.
“I just thought it was a good idea to bring awareness to it and just also help people remember to be safe,” says Brittany’s best friend, Jenna Krasselt.
The fundraiser was held right in the midst of the block party, now in it’s 40th year, as UW students crowded the streets enjoying the annual celebration.
MADISON, Wis. — There are many inspiring women in the Madison community, and one is likely to be Gloria Ladson-Billings, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who is an award-winning educator as well as a nationally recognized author.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Jim Doyle broke ground Friday on a new multimillion dollar research complex in Madison.
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a $150 million public-private research complex that will help develop stem cell technology and other scientific research.
When it’s completed in 2010, the facility on the 1300 block of University Avenue will bring together the brightest researchers in the country.
MADISON, Wis. — Thousands of college students gathered downtown Saturday for the 40th annual Mifflin Street block party, one of nation’s most enduring and well-known college beer bashes.
At the block party, thousands of revelers party hop between houses stocked with kegs all day.
MADISON, Wis. — Many questions linger following the revelation Thursday that a 911 call from the cell phone of slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann did not result in police being sent to her downtown apartment last month.
County Executive Kathleen Falk said that “the system didn’t work like it should” when a 911 dispatcher received the call from Zimmermann’s cell phone on April 2.
State officials and major donors break ground on the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
The facility on the UW-Madison campus will focus on the fields of biotechnology, health sciences, and stem cell research. Governor Jim Doyle says it will help make Wisconsin a leader in those areas, which he expects to become vital to the US economy in the coming years. Doyle wants to capture 10-percent of those markets by the year 2015.
Noted: Leotha Stanley. Teaching, inspiring and leading through music at church, at home and in our schools.
UW FAVE: Babcock Ice Cream: Sure, UW–Madison creates and sends scientists, engineers, writers and artists out into the community. But let’s not forget the school’s contributions in ice cream. For ninety-plus years, it’s whipped up the goods at Babcock Dairy Plant. The namesake ice cream comes in more than seventy flavors–plus sherbet and frozen yogurt. Get your fix at the Babcock Hall Dairy Store or its very popular shop at the Memorial Union.
Bernie Siegel was a Miami lawyer in 2002 when a cult-like organization known as the Raellians claimed to have cloned a human baby.
Siegel filed a motion in a Broward County court on behalf of the “baby,” suspecting all along it didn’t exist, and helped to expose a dangerous hoax.
He soon founded the Genetics Policy Institute and became a global advocate for stem-cell research based on science versus science fiction.
As Madison recovers from its latest shock, the murder of University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Brittany Zimmermann, students, locals and out-of-towners were tentatively festive at this yearâ??s Mifflin Street Block Party on Saturday.
Joviality and cooperation, among drunkenness, colored the fortieth annual gathering that originally intended to protest the Vietnam War. Fewer than 10,000 attended this year’s party, according to Madison Police Department Public Information Officer Joel DeSpain — down from 2007.
Few people doubt that embryonic stem cells may offer extraordinary opportunities to treat or prevent disease, but few deny either that the politics surrounding the idea has often seemed as complex as the science. All that may have changed last year with the announcement that it was possible to give adult human cells many of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, avoiding entirely the issue of whether embryos would be destroyed in the process. The new cells, known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, are expected to live for a very long time while retaining the ability to form all of the different tissues found in a human body.
MADISON, Wis. — Itâ??s the annual bash that brings thousands to Mifflin Street.
“Just partying, seeing all your friends at one time, people you don’t see during the year, just a great time,” according to UW senior Rachel Roggi.
In addition to the usual festive atmosphere of the Mifflin Street Block Party, revelers noticed a new rallying cry this year: â??Pizza, remember Brittany Zimmermann,” came the repeated shout from volunteer Joann Gonnering.
Pretty depressing April so far. Winter won’t leave.
And neither will the predators who haunt downtown Madison. Three unsolved murders. A scorched skeleton where a cathedral once stood. And a State Street that is becoming the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Regardless of the outcome of the open murder investigations, here is a simple question to ask yourself.
Is Madison a safer place than it was ten years ago?
Clarence Warren Klousie passed away on Saturday, May 3, 2008. He left his footprint on the UW-Madison campus through the development of two student housing towers, the Inez Apartments and the Johnson Street Apartments in the 1960s.
August Eckhardt died April 23, 2008, in Tucson, Ariz. August was a member of the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty from 1954 until 1972.
Retractable walls. No corridors. A restaurant for brain-storming.
Those are some of the quasi-futuristic features of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the $150 million, public-private research complex. The official ground-breaking is today.
UW-Madison spinoff company TomoTherapy could have a new, more powerful type of radiation machine on the market for treating cancer within four years.
On Sunday two giants of the Madison arts scene come together. The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music will stage a concert at the Overture Center for the Arts. The unusual event celebrates composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
“The School of Music is very excited about our upcoming opportunity to perform in Madison ‘s world-class new facilities, ” says Prof. John Schaffer, the school ‘s director. “It is rare that our students have the opportunity to perform in such a venue where they get to experience first hand the power of music-making in such spaces. “
GREEN BAY â?? Riding shotgun in Justin Beaver’s girlfriend’s Mercury Mystique Thursday afternoon, Ken DeBauche found himself thinking about all the times he had made the very same drive between Madison and his hometown of Suamico â?? starting up on Highway 151, shortcutting on Highway 26 and finishing up on U.S. 41 â?? by himself over the years.
Dane County’s 911 Center director admitted late Thursday that his agency made a mistake in fumbling a call from Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone at about the time she was killed on April 2.
But after a month of internal investigation, the dispatcher who hung up on the call, after hearing nothing, remains on the job without disciplinary action, and the agency has made no changes in policy, training or procedure, director Joseph Norwick acknowledged.
Madison has tamed its raucous State Street Halloween celebration, but this weekend’s 40th annual Mifflin Street Block Party remains a booze-infused wild child.
On Saturday, thousands of college students are expected to converge on the Downtown neighborhood to drink heavily and get arrested in droves.
Apologize from the heart.
Find out what went wrong and fix it.
Those are the instructions the Madison community should give to Dane County ‘s 911 Center and the Madison Police Department in the aftermath of Thursday ‘s revelations about the day UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered.
Congress gave final approval Thursday to legislation aimed at ensuring the problems in the credit markets don’t prevent students from getting college loans.
The House passed the legislation in a 388-21 vote, one day after the Senate approved it. President Bush is expected to sign the measure.
Weighing in at $62 million, you would think that being the one of the world’s largest student-run portfolios sets the University of Wisconsin’s Applied Security Analysis Program (ASAP) apart from its peers. But ask its student managers what makes their program worth talking about, and size isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. Here’s a look at what does.
A college student apparently called 911 from her cellphone shortly before she was killed but a dispatcher hung up, failed to call back and never sent police to investigate, authorities said Thursday.
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said it was too early to know whether a better response could have prevented the April 2 slaying of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann or helped police capture her killer.
This year one of Minnesota’s most important cultural institutions, the Schubert Club, is celebrating its 125th anniversary. A vital component of the organization’s activities, the Schubert Club Scholarship Competition, is also observing a major birthday.
Five of the winners came by the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio. The fourth young musician is soprano Caitlin Cisler. She’s a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She won first place in the advanced voice category. She sang the music of Richard Strauss and Handel, and talked with classical music host Steve Staruch. (Audio.)
The increasingly bitter battle for the Democratic presidential nomination could benefit Republicans, but not in the catastrophic way some might expect.
So says Kenneth Goldstein, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has consulted for ABC, CBS and CNN.
MADISON, Wis. — Former University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh women’s basketball coach Kathi Bennett has been named an assistant coach at UW-Madison.
The daughter of former Badger men’s head coach Dick Bennett and sister of Washington State men’s head coach Tony Bennett was named on Thursday by Wisconsin women’s head coach Lisa Stone.
Stone said that Kathi Bennett is one of the best defensive coaches and basketball minds in the country and comes from an outstanding coaching family.
At a press conference this afternoon, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray responded to the growing media feeding frenzy over the Brittany Zimmermann case by tossing a body to the assembled hungry reporters. His name was Joe Norwick.
Wray provided information markedly at odds with statements made earlier in the day by Norwick, director of Dane Countyâ??s 911 Center, regarding Isthmusâ?? report that the UW-Madison student called 911 prior to her murder on April 2.
Norwick had told reporters that the Madison police have specifically asked that officers not be dispatched to certain calls made from cell phones, in part because of technological limitations.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly is recommending David J. Ward be appointed interim chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
If approved by the UW System Board of Regents, Ward would assume the interim role June 23. UWGB Chancellor Bruce Shepard, who has led the school since 2001, recently was named the next president of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison launched its WiscAlerts text messaging system on Thursday but said it needs students and staff to volunteer for the service.
University officials said that those who want to receive the free alert need to access My UW Portal to register a cell phone that is able to receive texts. Then, in the event of an on-campus emergency, they will be notified immediately.
“We’re kind of an on-the-go society — people are out and about. This is one of the several means that we’re going to use to communicate with people in an emergency,” said Lt. Michael Newton, of the UW-Madison Police Department.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison Safewalkers are walking off the job, citing bad management as their main concern.
“For the past nine months, they haven’t listened to our concerns,” says Dana DeMet, a UW-Madison senior and former Safewalk employee.
DeMet said management has cut positions even though requests for Safewalks have increased, especially in light of the recent slaying of UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann.
“On an average night, we used to see seven or eight calls. But in the past month, we’re seeing double that,” DeMet said.
MADISON, Wis. — A 911 dispatcher received a call from the cell phone of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student sometime before she was killed last month but the call was apparently ignored, according to officials.
An official with the Dane County Public Safety communications said Thursday that a call for service was made from Brittany Zimmermann’s apartment to 911 on the day that she was killed in early April, but mistakes in how the call was handled resulted in no police officers being sent to investigate.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is now enrolling users in its emergency text messaging system, WiscAlerts-Text.
Students, faculty and staff can sign up by logging into the My UW Portal and looking for the WiscAlerts logo. Registration is simple and takes just a few moments.
We sat down with Jenna Krasselt, Brittany Zimmermann’s best friend, and her fiance’s sister, Thursday afternoon.
Krasselt says she doesn’t know the specifics about the 911 call Brittany made the day she was murdered. All she knows is that a call was made. Krasselt says it saddens her that her friend tried to call for help, and it wasn’t answered but didn’t know any other details about the call. She said Zimmermann did not have a land line phone in her Doty Street apartment.
In a news conference with media Thursday morning, Dane County Public Safety Communications Director Joe Norwick confirmed that a 911 telephone call was made from Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone to the center the day of her homicide.
Norwick said that a 911 dispatcher couldn’t hear a voice on the other end of the line, and proceeded to answer other waiting 911 calls without calling the Zimmermann number back.
When you call 911 in an emergency, you trust help will come regardless if you call from a cell phone or land line.
Local police say you’re putting too much trust into the system.
Middleton’s 911 Dispatch Center has enhanced 911 which gives them the ability to track where calls come from.
Governor Jim Doyle is hopeful an agreement on a budget repair bill can be reached soon.
The Governor is expected to meet tonight with the Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, in an effort to find common ground on closing a $530 million budget gap. Doyle says they need to reach a deal, and be willing to make compromises.
Michael Knetter, the UW-Madison Business School dean, today ridiculed Sen. John McCainâ??s proposed summer gas tax holiday as â??political pandering.â?
Speaking at a global economics conference at the Fluno Center, Knetter said McCainâ??s proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent tax on gasoline (and the 24.4-cent levy on diesel fuel) from Memorial Day until Labor Day is flawed.
Q. How can you have a forecast with both snow showers and thunderstorms on the same day?
A. The weather conditions that lead to thunderstorms can occur any time of year. When updrafts draw warm, moist air a mile or more above the ground, the moisture condenses and falls as precipitation. Whether that precipitation falls as rain or snow depends on the air temperature nearer the surface.
Wars of the 20th century will be the focus of a grant of nearly $1 million working to spruce up K-12 education of American history in Madison-area schools, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday.
A familiar name in Wisconsin basketball has joined the coaching staff of the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team.
Kathi Bennett, the former Indiana University head coach who has been living and working in the Madison area, was named today to fill an opening on Badgers coach Lisa Stone’s staff. She will begin her new job today.
As college tuitions continue to climb, a study released today fuels concerns about whether the investment in higher education by families and taxpayers translates into better results.
Students are a growing source of revenue for colleges, but little of that money is going into classroom instruction, says the report by the Delta Cost Project, a Washington-based non-profit.
