Madison, Wis. – Are Wisconsin’s universities and technical colleges wasting an opportunity to save millions in taxpayer dollars by not migrating to free outsourced e-mail service like Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Live@edu product?
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student and faculty leaders will travel to Madison later this week to seek UW System Board of Regentsâ?? approval for its Growth, Quality and Access plan.
â??The implications for the future of the university and the community are huge in terms of enhancing the quality of the university, stimulating the local economy and increasing our visibility in the region,â? said UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow.
The board of regents will vote on the plan Friday, assuming the Business, Finance and Audit Committee recommends it Thursday.
The plan is a modified version of UW-Lâ??s Growth and Access proposal that failed to be included in the 2007-09 state budget.
Quoted: Ann Althouse, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor, said that while an interesting feminist argument can be crafted against the pink locker room, launching a legal fight over it doesnâ??t do any service to feminism. â??It just seems to me that youâ??ve got a long tradition at a big football school and youâ??re picking on something thatâ??s going to make people think that feminists are very prickly and touchy and have no sense of humor or they donâ??t respect the male tradition of sports. I just donâ??t think that thatâ??s helpful to the feminist cause to pick that battle,â? said Althouse, who also blogged on the issue in 2005.
Dr. Katherine Kulak, age 45, passed away on Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007. Kathy completed both her internship and fellowship from UW-Madison under the guidance of her mentor, Dr. Dennis Maki.
The next consultant, Ann Kinkade, is director of the Family Business Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Kinkade, 45, is most troubled by Kirsh’s habit of setting goals, such as more efficiently using his workforce, then failing to follow through and coach managers on their performance. That’s a sign that the owners are too complacent, she says. “You ask why you’re in the red, but there’s no fire in the belly,” she notes. “You’re saying, ‘We’ve got to make the best of this for ten years until we sell the business.’ Your employees sense it, and feel comfortable too.”
Wally Welker died on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. Wally was an internationally renowned neuroanatomist and professor emeritus in the department of physiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lola A. Reddeman, age 95, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. Except for several years during World War II, Lola worked as an operating room nurse at University Hospital from 1934 until 1974.
Just as a rotten apple can spoil the bunch, so can a rotten potato. So UW-Madison researchers have developed a test that may for the first time allow growers to prevent widespread crop damage.
Using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, Zahi Atallah, associate researcher in the department of plant pathology, developed a test that can detect as few as one spore of a number of fungal diseases that can destroy potatoes. A spore is the early stage of fungi.
Here’s a loaded question for you, Barry Alvarez: What’s the biggest problem facing your University of Wisconsin Athletic Department in the coming years?
A new study says binge drinking among University of Wisconsin System students has declined slightly but remains higher than the national average.
The survey found that 54 percent of UW System students admitted binge drinking at least once in the last two weeks.
UW-Milwaukee administrators say they will rescind a larger security fee imposed on a student group to host a speaker who has drawn protests elsewhere.
Every day, countless people walk along the sidewalk in front of the Wisconsin Historical Society on the UW-Madison campus. Most are probably completely unaware of the treasures that lie just below their feet.
More than 15,000 film reels from the Golden Age of Hollywood, stored in identical flat, gray metal canisters, are stacked in row upon row of non-descript shelving in the vast temperature- and humidity-controlled vault underneath the sidewalk.
Q. Why does wood float?
Dylan Jack
Sixth grade
Cherokee Middle School
A. The simple answer is that wood is less dense than water, says UW-Madison wood products professor Scott Bowe.
A proposal for a new high-rise apartment building near the UW-Madison campus is up for an important hearing tonight and the big question is likely to be the fate of two historic buildings, each more than a century old, that stand in its way.
A UW-Madison student survived an eight-story fall from an apartment building late Saturday night, Madison police said.
Paul S. Donhauser, age 71, passed away at home on November 22, 2007. Paul taught design and ceramics at UW-Oshkosh until 2004. During 40 years with the University of Wisconsin system, he touched countless lives including students and colleagues.
New rules would require University of Wisconsin faculty to take sick days even when colleagues cover their classes. The rules could rein in a lucrative benefit for some workers, who can convert unused sick days into cash to buy health insurance in retirement. The rules are likely to be enacted this week.
Probably nobody on the University of Wisconsin football team is looking forward to the trip to Tampa, Fla., for the Outback Bowl more than sophomore running back Lance Smith.
“I’m telling everybody, ‘I love playing in Camp Randall, but I’m just ready to get on a plane with my teammates,’ ” Smith said after the Badgers started bowl practices on Friday. “I wasn’t able to do that this year and just fly to a nice environment and play football and get on the field and make plays for my teammates.”
It seemed reasonable enough. Students who vomit, fall down or otherwise draw attention to themselves inside Camp Randall Stadium as a result of excessive alcohol consumption forfeit the privilege of attending future University of Wisconsin football games.
That was nearly the policy that the UW Dean of Students Office put in place years ago to help curb the binge drinking and rowdy behavior that have become synonymous with Badger Saturdays in Madison. “A game ticket is a license that can be revoked, and our initial idea was to just revoke the season tickets of those students who get kicked out,” says assistant dean of students Ervin Cox. “Then we thought, ‘Let’s not do that. Let’s give them the chance to still come, but they have to come sober.’ ”
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all. Being able to reprogram skin cells into multipurpose stem cells without harming embryos launches an exciting new line of research. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re at square one, uncertain at this early stage whether souped-up skin cells hold the same promise as their embryonic cousins do.
Far from vindicating the current U.S. policy of withholding federal funds from many of those working to develop potentially lifesaving embryonic stem cells, recent papers in the journals Science and Cell described a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions. In fact, work by both the U.S. and Japanese teams that reprogrammed skin cells depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.
MADISON, Wis. â?? A new study says binge drinking among University of Wisconsin System students has declined slightly but remains higher than the national average.
The survey found that 54 percent of UW students admitted binge drinking at least once in the last two weeks.
Thatâ??s down from 59 percent two years ago but above the national average of 44 percent.
Quoted: John Coleman, a wildlife ecologist with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and Stanley Temple, a University of Wisconsin professor, estimated that the stateâ??s 1.4 to 2 million rural cats were killing between 8 million and 219 million birds every year.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers who figured out how to make valued embryonic stem cells out of ordinary skin cells said on Friday they had found a way to cut one cancer-causing ingredient out of the mix.
But it came at a price — the method may be safer, but it is also less efficient.
Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan said the findings, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, demonstrate that the stem cell breakthrough may have been exciting, but is nowhere near ready to be used in humans.
The ground floor of the Petersen Automotive Museum’s parking garage looked like pit row at a NASCAR race. Vehicles covered in brightly colored decals were strewn about, motors revving, while folks poked about beneath hoods and discussed various aspects of speed and performance.
But instead of promoting Valvoline or Viagra, the decals sported the names of lithium-ion battery companies and state universities. The vehicles were 2005 Chevy Equinox crossovers — not over-engined stock cars — with power plants not found on any race track.
Why else would it have been news when a dozen or so rich folks recently pooled their resources to ensure that a business school in Wisconsin would not â?? I repeat, not â?? be named after anybody at all?
As The Associated Press reported last month, the dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business couldnâ??t find anyone to pony up a cool $50 million to get his or her name on the school. So the dean switched strategies and discovered that several givers were willing to chip in to ensure that, for 20 years at least, the school would not be personally branded, but would instead simply remain the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business (a long enough handle, surely). The non-naming fund eventually reached $85 million.
â??It is an unprecedented act of selfless philanthropy,â? Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for the American Council on Education, told The A.P. â??I hope it is the start of a trend.â?
Terra Engineering & Construction Co., Madison, Wis., is building a new $20-million utility system to support the growth of more than a dozen buildings on the west end of the University of Wisconsin – Madison campus.
Completely new, the system includes water mains, storm and sanitary sewers, cooling-water supply and return lines, high-pressure steam distribution for heating, electronic signal lines for controlling the buildings’ mechanical systems, electrical distribution lines, and fiberoptic, coaxial and data exchange lines. It also includes some road work and paving.
Not only do the new utilities replace 20- to 40-year-old components that supported the few original buildings constructed on the west end of the campus; they also expand capabilities to permit better efficiency and support current and future expansion of the area.
Patenting officials at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are excited about announcements that new techniques had been found to generate versatile stem cells without destroying human embryos, even though they acknowledge the discovery could eventually undermine the value of the stem-cell patents and licenses that Wisconsin holds.
“Hey, that’s what science is about,” said Carl E. Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
MADISON, Wis. — Since the early 1980s, more than 9,800 cases of HIV have been reported in Wisconsin. Of that total, an estimated 6,200 people are still living with HIV or AIDS and more than 3,600 have died.
Saturday is World AIDS Day 2007, and the theme is “leadership.” A local woman is working to increase public awareness by asking people to look past HIV/AIDS and see the person.
In a clinic exam room, a doctor might run tests, but Heidi Nass, an HIV/AIDS patient advocate and educator at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, offers patients a kind of therapy that doesn’t involve needles or pills. She listens and shares.
MADISON â?? Scientists and others close to Wisconsin’s research sector often use the term “public-private partnership” to describe a Nirvana of converging interests: the power of a public research university paired with the flexibility and rapid response of private collaborators.
But what does such a partnership actually look like? The recent announcement that a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has produced clinical-quality human stem cells from skin cells offers a world-class example.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) New rules would require University of Wisconsin faculty to take sick days even when colleagues cover their classes and would financially punish those who fail to report their leave.
The rules could rein in a lucrative benefit for some university employees, who can convert unused sick days into cash to buy health insurance in retirement. They come in response to an audit 14 months ago that suggested UW employees abused the perk by failing to report sick days.
The investigation found the average faculty member had a benefit of $222,000 to buy health insurance upon retirement, three times as much as other state employees. Professors report being sick an average of less than one day per year, far fewer than all other employees, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found.
MADISON, Wis. — A 21-year-old UW student is lucky to be alive after falling eight stories on Saturday night.
Madison police said the student fell from the La Ciel Apartments in downtown Madison.
Police found the man lying on the ground.
Betty G. Hrovat died Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. Trained to be a teacher, she also worked for the University Residence Halls.
Nearby on the continent, an international team of neutrino researchers is hard at work on IceCube, a massive “crystal ball” of thousands of detectors dangled two kilometers deep within the ultrapure ice sheet. In the next 10 years, the scientists hope to capture a million of the elusive subatomic particles as they bombard Earth at energies higher than those produced in the laboratory, explained Francis Halzen, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin.
MADISONâ??A legal challenge to the state’s new constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions is gaining momentum.
The lawsuit cleared a key procedural hurdle on Wednesday, a high-profile Madison lawyer has taken the case and the state’s largest gay rights group is supporting the challenge.
Last year, 59 percent of Wisconsin voters approved the amendment in a statewide referendum that prohibits same-sex couples from getting married and the state from recognizing civil unions.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh political science instructor William McConkey filed his legal challenge in July claiming the amendment violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Quoted: One of this year’s speakers is, Soil Scientist from University of Wisconsin, Madison Dick Wolkowski, he says research presented by Universities this year range from soil compaction, treating manures, and nutrient management, along with other topics.
“The goal of what we do is to try to improve the profitability of farming as an enterprise and at the same time reduce the risk to the environment.”
Arash Bahrami doesn’t like the Iranian government. When he was last in Tehran, in 2005, he urged friends, family members and people he met on the street to vote against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He didn’t particularly like the other candidate either, but he foresaw terrible things for his country if Ahmadinejad were elected president. Bahrami’s fears have been realized; he views Iran’s administration as ineffective, repressive and corrupt.
But, Bahrami says, “the most horrible thing that could happen is war between the United States and Iran.”
Should this come to pass, as some pundits now say is inevitable, Bahrami, 28, who has lived in Madison for the past five years pursuing a Ph.D. in biophysics, would feel helpless. “I cannot do anything,” he says, “so I’d just have to stay here and watch it.”
Change is finally coming for the Charter Street Heating and Cooling Plant on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus after more than 50 years of operation. Responsible for providing electricity and steam to most of the university downtown, the plant was the largest state-owned coal burning facility in 2006 by more than an order of magnitude, and consequently a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, not to mention other pollutants. The UW is now preparing to clean up its act, though. (Video.)
Quoted: Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor.
Madison, Wis. – Scientists and others close to Wisconsin’s research sector often use the term â??public-private partnershipâ? to describe a Nirvana of converging interests: the power of a public research university paired with the flexibility and rapid response of private collaborators.
But what does such a partnership actually look like? Last week’s announcement that a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have produced clinical-quality human stem cells from skin cells offers a world-class example.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison fans could soon have a new sports bar to watch games, but the project’s location downtown is raising some eyebrows.
The proposed restaurant and bar, called Field Pass, is part of the new University Square complex under construction right now. It will be located on the corner of Johnson and Lake streets, which has some people concerned about the already high density of bars in the area.
The city’s Alcohol License Review Committee did approve the new restaurant and bar Wednesday night, but it didn’t let the $4.2 million establishment through without making a few rules. Among them, Field Pass must remain a restaurant — making more than half its income from food rather than alcohol.
MADISON, Wis. — Authorities said a Crandon man accused of stealing sausages and fleeing officers in a doughnut delivery truck is facing charges.
Warren G. Whitelightning, 36, is facing seven counts, WISC-TV reported.
Authorities said he fled drunk in a Krispy Kreme delivery truck early Saturday after stealing sausages from the Open Pantry at University Avenue and Walnut Street.
In announcing that the University of Wisconsin football team had accepted a bid Wednesday to the Outback Bowl, Jim McVay, president and CEO of the bowl, described the Badgers as “the perfect bowl team for our game.”
“The Badger package is unbelievable with the team, the coaching, the fans, the band, the cheerleaders,” McVay said. “Everything about Wisconsin says, ‘New Year’s Day bowl game.’
Under a plan proposed in the legislature, Wisconsin state workers would get raises amounting to 5 percent over the next 18 months. For taxpayers, that translates into an additional burden of about $126 million, under calculations prepared by the Office of State Employment Relations.
Wisconsin has a lot of employees. There are all those office workers in all those buildings around the Capitol. There are bureaucratic outposts from one end of the state to the other. There are judges and prosecutors and public defenders. There are professors and support staff at the universities. And on and on and on.
For several decades, the topic of educational accountability has dominated K-12 policy discussions. The issue is again heating up as Congress considers the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The six principles of NCLB redesign outlined in the â??discussion draftâ? released by the House Education and Labor Committee all focus in one way or another on incentives for holding public schools and public officials accountable.
Patricia Burch is an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A case in point is British-born economic geographer Jamie Peck, who will take up his appointment as a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Urban and Regional Political Economy at the University of British Columbia next summer. He will continue his research on the impact of market-oriented policies on employment, welfare and urban economic development.
The globe-trotting, 45-year-old academic has held fellowships at academic institutions on four continents and currently is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. One of the most cited human geographers of his generation, Professor Peck last year won a prestigious U.S. Guggenheim Fellowship that gives leading scholars a sabbatical at a university of their choice.
One of the historianâ??s most important tasks is to teach us things we do not know. One significant form this can take is to complicate our understanding of the past by helping us re-imagine how events unfolded. It is too easy to assume, for example, that events move in a straight line from point â??aâ? to point â??bâ? without divagations or byways, without other possibilities or options. We are all susceptible to the alluring simplicity of history being a foreordained linear process.
David Sorkin is professor of history and Frances and Laurence Weinstein professor of Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the forthcoming â??The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Reasonable Belief, London to Viennaâ? (Princeton University Press).
Alpha Pi Omega, the first historically American Indian sorority in the nation, provides American Indian women on the collegiate level with confidence in their capability. Founded at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Sept. 1, 1994, the sorority has spread to other universities around the country and currently has over 250 members.
In 2001, the sorority began initiating women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Twenty-two-year-old Sasanehsaeh â??Suziâ? Pyawasay, who was initiated in the spring of 2005, is one of five members of Alpha Pi Omega Sorority at the UW-Madison.
The convergence of science and ethics is beautiful to behold. The beauty is significantly enhanced when science becomes not only more ethical, but more practical in application with great potential for human benefit. That is what appears to be happening with the recent disclosure that two separate teams of scientists have discovered a means to turn ordinary human skin cells into pluripotent stem cells, without destroying living human embryos to do so.
Madison: The UW campus is being used as a model for a new university in the middle east.
Officials from Kuwait University were on campus Wednesday. The University of Wisconsin is one of only six American colleges being looked at as a model of what the 21st century school should look like.
The Health Science Learning Center is the University of Wisconsin’s best example of what the future of education looks like. “The School of Medicine has about a million square feet of space,” says UW Asst. Dean for Facilities Mark Wells.
There is a tug-of-war between two bowl games in one state. Badger fans are something to fight over in Florida.
The UW Football team is headed to Tampa, Florida to play in the Outback Bowl. There are several reasons the Sunshine State is ringing in the New Year with Badgers for the fourth year in a row. Besides the fact that the UW Football team finished its season with a 9-3 record and a win against Michigan, Wisconsin fans are highly sought after.
“There was a significant discussion about a return to the Capital One Bowl,” says UW Associate Athletic Director Vince Sweeney.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill Wednesday making Wisconsin the seventh state to enact “Michelle’s Law.”
Michelle Morse, of New Hampshire, lost a battle with colon cancer in 2005. She couldn’t reduce her course load while she battled the disease because she would lose her health care coverage.
Zach Grun, a University of Wisconsin-Marinette student, inspired the law in Wisconsin after losing health insurance coverage while he dealt with a serious illness, WISC-TV reported.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison football team has agreed to play the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla., on New Year’s Day although the Badgers’ opponent is still unknown, athletic director Barry Alvarez announced on Wednesday.
The Badgers, who boast a 9-3 record, pulled out victories at the Capital One Bowl in the last two years, but have played in the Outback Bowl three times since 1998. They defeated Duke, 34-20, in the 1995 game, which was then known as the Hall of Fame Bowl. The team lost two games to Georgia in 1998 and 2005.
Taking time off because of an illness can be a difficult choice for some college students, since many providers won’t continue insurance coverage. Legislation signed by Governor Jim Doyle will keep them from facing that problem in the future though. The law allows students to take a leave of absence from their studies because of illness for up to one year, while retaining their health insurance.
A policy that would limit the use of student segregated fees is on its way to the UW System Board of Regents.
The policy would prevent student governments from allocating segregated fees to organizations for some purposes, such as the hiring of staff members not affiliated with the university and renting off-campus facilities. Organizations that wanted to use segregated fees to such purposes would have to appeal to the chancellor, according to the policy.
In a 6-3-1 vote, a committee of System administrators and students passed the proposal, which now heads to UW System President Kevin Reilly. The Board of Regents will review the proposal at its Dec. 6 and 7 meetings.
As Peter Bosscher sat in his home two weeks ago, painfully ceding the last of his life to kidney cancer, the engineer was thinking about sewage in the streets.
The 53-year-old UW-Madison professor was talking to two students planning sewer and water projects in El Salvador and Ecuador to prevent sickness and better villagers ‘ health. Bosscher, their mentor, was sure they needed one last computer file.
Dozens of colleges, universities and trade schools have been ordered to turn over documents to government officials explaining why a single lender at each school handles the majority of federally backed student loans.
The request, sent to 55 schools, comes amid concerns that some colleges might be steering students improperly to lenders who reward schools for the extra business.
As a young graduate student attending UW-Madison in 1930, Ruth Gruber says she “never foresaw or imagined ” she ‘d end up in harrowing situations, dedicating her life to working with Jewish people around the globe in struggles against oppression.
“All I knew then was that I wanted to be a writer. “
City of Madison fire investigators on Tuesday said discarded smoking materials caused the fatal blaze that killed a 23-year-old man in a Downtown house on Nov. 18.
Peter J. Talen, a former UW-La Crosse student, was unable to get out of the burning house at 123 N. Bedford St. and was found dead by firefighters near a couch in the living room next to the front porch. He had been visiting his brother, Andrew Talen, a UW-Madison student who lived at the house with four other students. Three house occupants were injured during the fire.
The Japanese already use cellphones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, they can take a university course.
Cyber University, the nation’s only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids.
Online education â?? also known as “distance learning” â?? has become an increasingly convenient way to get a college education, especially for students with jobs and families to support. Nearly 3.5 million students enrolled in online classes during the fall of 2006-07, according to the 2007 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, which surveyed more than 2,500 schools and released results last month. Over the past five years, the survey found, online enrollments have grown by an annual average of 21.5%.
