(MADISON) University of Wisconsin chancellors say the upcoming state budget will be a tipping point for the UW System. They gathered at the Capitol yesterday (M) to give the Governor and the press a taste of cuts they say theyâ??d have to make if Assembly Republicans have their way.
LEXINGTON, Ky. â?? A thick loose-leaf book jammed with charts and graphs details Lee T. Todd Jr.â??s ambitious plans for the University of Kentucky. But in a recent speech to a chamber of commerce, Dr. Todd, the universityâ??s president, summed them up in three brisk words: â??Research drives jobs.â?
His own life story encapsulates the idea. Dr. Todd grew up in a small coal-mining and farming town in western Kentucky, graduated from the university and earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at M.I.T. He returned to his Kentucky alma mater to teach before leaving to spend 18 years creating two successful high-tech companies here, in a state better known for thoroughbreds and bourbon than for digital innovations.
MADISON â?? The overhaul of the patent system now working its way through Congress would hamper innovation, hurt inventors, crimp small biotech companies and cost the University of Wisconsin, the head of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) warned today.
â??If this law passes, there will be every incentive for people to infringe on patents and not license,â? said Carl Gulbrandsen, WARFâ??s managing director, speaking today at a Wisconsin Innovation Network luncheon.
In his early 20s, UW-Madison grad Michael Stanek got a performance job in Florida with Disney. He liked it so much, the Spring Green native figured he’d become a “lifer” — a long-time Disney performer who’d stick with the company for decades, working his way up to the title of, say, choreographer, or maybe heading into management.
The University of Wisconsin System is asking campuses to look at ways to lower the cost of textbooks after a report showed disparities in book costs among university locations.
The facts simply don’t support the State Journal’s July 24 editorial praising the so-called “Video Competition” bill. A column co-written by telecommunications expert Barry Orton.
It ‘s not news that Rep. Frank Lasee hates lawyers.
On his blog, he compares them to “a plague of locusts. ”
The Green Bay Republican says we ought to cut the UW-Madison Law School out of the state budget because we have more than enough lawyers already.
MADISON â?? University of Wisconsin chancellors warned today that the budget approved by the state Assembly would require them to cut courses, increase class sizes and delay needed building projects.
Gov. Jim Doyle said the budget would also hurt access to the UW System by limiting financial aid for low-income students and depriving resources that campuses need to make room for additional students.
Doyle, a Democrat, hosted university officials from around the state at a round-table event to discuss the potential impact of the Republican-controlled Assemblyâ??s budget on the system of 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges.
Quoted: Timothy Donohue, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works as scientific director for the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has upheld an informal opinion on the University of Wisconsinâ??s admissions policy, which includes race as one of many factors to be considered.
One of the Republican legislators who sought the opinion, Sen. Glenn Grothmann of West Bend, says he is â??disappointedâ? with Van Hollenâ??s ruling and promises to introduce legislation to stop the policy.
His effort will only make it more difficult to ensure that UW enrollment reflects the state population as a whole.
Madison: The UW Board of Regents will be forced to set tuition for the coming school year with no state budget in place. UW System chancellors are worried about making even more cuts.
“We really are at a fundamental decision point in this state about in what direction we are going to go,” says Governor Jim Doyle. Doyle says the state has reached a tipping point when it comes to funding the UW System.
The Assembly Republican’s budget contains $120 million less than the Democrat’s version.
The President of the UW System is urging lawmakers not to compromise on funding higher education.
The budget offered by Assembly Republicans includes $120 million in cuts to University of Wisconsin campuses. System President Kevin Reilly says even meeting half way on that is a bad idea. Reilly says even if Democrats and Republicans meet halfway, the UW System will still be losing $60 million in funding, which would make it difficult to keep up with the demands being placed on campuses.
Governor Jim Doyle is joining University of Wisconsin Chancellors from across the state in blasting the Assembly Republican budget.
During a roundtable hearing at the Capitol on Monday, Governor Doyle met with Chancellors from all UW campuses to discuss the impacts of the state budget offered by Republicans. Doyle says the budget cuts $120 million from campuses, during at time when the cost of higher education is increasing.
When Beth Donley was an undergraduate, her plan was to one day run her own business.
Instead, she followed her mother â?? Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack â?? into the legal field.
But after more than a decade representing the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation as chief counsel, Donley left WARF last year to found Stemina Biomarker Discovery with UW-Madison stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar. Donley also served as executive director of WiCell, the stem cell offshoot of WARF.
In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon’s special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger’s voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China – two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years.
Convulsed by internal upheavals and surrounded by regional threats, Chinese leaders viewed relations with Washington as a possible anchor for stability.
They’ve seen it all, from the “happy days” of the 1950s to the war on terror. Along the way, they launched their own careers, married, raised children, dealt with prosperity and heartbreak, with growing older and death.
Their story is the story of millions of Americans, but there’s something different here.
Quoted: Dr. Bruce P. Barrett, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved with the review, said he was not convinced of the value of combining the studies in a single analysis.
Quoted: Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s.
Historian Jeremi Suri writes:
President Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted and domestic opposition to present policies is growing. America’s long time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations and worldviews at home, as well as a cast of external challengers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council.
Leaders in Washington and Tehran need one another. The White House should pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s ban on gay marriage was filed Friday at the Dane County Courthouse.
William McConkey, an instructor at UW-Oshkosh who lives in Baileys Harbor, is not an attorney but wrote the lawsuit himself to “fight things that are wrong.”
My first reaction to last summer’s news that former UW-Madison scientist Denice Denton had committed suicide by jumping off San Francisco’s tallest apartment building was disbelief.
Taxpayers do not want UW System to be treated as a stone on which to grind political axes.
That message should ring through loud and clear to the legislative committee working out a compromise state budget bill.
When Jennifer Jackowski thinks about Madison’s lakes, she sees both a problem and an opportunity.
The problem — algae — is not new.
“I grew up in rural Wisconsin, and swimming was one my favorite things about summer,” said Jackowski, a UW-Madison botany student from Green Lake. “Then I came to Madison, where you are surrounded by water, and half the time you can’t swim.”
G. Linn Roth and Jean Martinelli always intended to help UW-Madison by naming the university in their will. But then they figured, why wait?
Quoted: Matthew H. Edney, director of the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
MADISON â?? When the University of Wisconsin approached American Family Insurance officials for support of a new childrenâ??s hospital, it didnâ??t take long for them to embrace the idea.
â??It really struck a chord with Harvey Pierce, our former chairman and chief executive, who believed there could be no finer corporate gift than to help sick children and their families,â? said Ken Muth, an American Family spokesman.
The 80-year-old Madison-based insurance company, which has 3,800 workers in the state, made an initial donation of $10 million in 2003. In return, it got the hospitalâ??s naming rights for the new hospital, which will be feted in an open house this Sunday.
“Mom, would you really have shipped me off to Denver?” I asked my mother recently.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“But imagine,” I said, “what it would have been like for a 5-year-old living in an institution, surrounded by doctors and a bunch of asthmatic kids?”
“You were very, very sick,” she explained. “Nothing helped.”
A prominent senator proposed legislation last week that would have required some colleges to buy tools to curtail illegal file sharing. But at the last minute, outrage by college officials forced the senator to back down.
The proposal was made by Sen. Harry M. Reid, a Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader, as an amendment to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. (See related article, Page A21.) The amendment called for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America to provide annual lists of the 25 institutions that received the most notices identifying cases of copyright infringement, usually by students passing around music and movies. Colleges would be ordered to plan a “a technology-based deterrent” and submit those plans for review by the secretary of education.
A major worry was that no software could stop illegal file sharing without interrupting legitimate file sharing as well. “We don’t know of any such software that’s reliable,” said Brian Rust, communications manager in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s information-technology division. “We would not want to solve the illegal-file-sharing problem by creating a whole other problem that could hinder a student’s ability to learn.”
Quoted: Susan B. Millar, a senior scientist in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies teaching in science and engineering.
Perhaps because of the pungently Nixonian odor of the Bush White House — the patriotism politics, the “l’état, c’est moi” declarations, the war — this season has delivered a bounty of books about the men of Watergate. The current climate has vitalized anxieties about the imperial presidency, drawing fresh scrutiny to the Nixon years from such eminent writers as Robert Dallek, Elizabeth Drew, Margaret MacMillan, James Reston Jr., and Jules Witcover — not to mention a Nixon biography from the scandal-plagued tycoon Conrad Black and the Broadway drama “Nixon/Frost.”
Joining this lengthening queue is Jeremi Suri, a historian at the University of Wisconsin, with a useful, idiosyncratic study, Henry Kissinger and the American Century.
MADISON, Wis. — The state attorney general said a new University of Wisconsin System freshman admissions policy requiring an applicant’s race to be considered is legal.
The policy adopted by the Board of Regents requires a comprehensive review of each applicant seeking admissions. Academic factors are the most important but other factors such as race, income and special talents must be considered to help achieve diversity.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen told lawmakers Thursday that the consideration of race does not violate a 1974 law that says no race-based tests shall be allowed in admissions requirements.
WASHINGTON â?? Despite warnings that America’s dogs are being vaccinated too much and too often, most veterinarians continue the practice as a way to keep clients coming in the door, according to a leading animal immunologist.
Vaccines for rabies and three other major canine diseases â?? distemper, canine adenovirus-2 and canine parvovirus â?? should be given no more often than once every three years, said Ronald Schultz, a veterinary immunologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison picked an insider as its next chief information officer after narrowing the field to three candidates. Ronald Kraemer will become CIO and vice provost for information technology, the university announced, stepping up from his role as deputy CIO and associate director of the Division of Information Technology.
American Family Children’s Hospital held its open house Sunday, and one room got much of the attention.
When Laurie Meade died, her family wanted to do something in which to remember her. And, as it turns out, they may have accomplished something that has never been done before.
When the Waukesha native was born with Cystic Fibrosis, doctors gave her eight years to live. Thirty two years later, it finally caught up with her. Her family, knowing that time may be running out, shifted their attention to her pets.
The new UW Children’s Hospital will be state of the art, and offer the level of medical care expected at an institution like the UW Hospital.
Some of that state of the art technology hasn’t arrived. The theme of today was “opening the gift” and make no mistake – this was a big milestone for the Children’s Hospital.
UW-Madison officials closed the door to a return by controversial instructor Kevin Barrett.
UW-Madison spokesperson Brian Mattmiller told 27 News a teaching assistant within the English department was selected from among three applicants, including Barrett, to teach English 367, a course on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Barrett holds a Ph.D. in Arabic Literature and a Master’s Degree in English Literature.
The University of Wisconsin, its flagship campus Madison, the U-W Extension and Colleges have all been mighty anxious lately in light of the assault on the UW budget by the Republican-controlled State Assembly. UW officials are decrying the cuts and predicting dire consequences if they are enacted.
And the cuts are, virtually without exception, absurd at best and destructive at worst, hurting nearly every citizen of this state. And we stand ready to oppose them all and defend this state’s most valuable asset. We’re just not sure we need to go there yet.
The Attorney General says it’s legal for the UW to use race as an admissions factor. One lawmaker says change the law.
Republican Senator Glenn Grothman is not really surprised at the Attorney General’s opinion.
He says it’s difficult to get anyone to declare what he calls reverse discrimination illegal. So, he wants to make a new law to spell it out.
Green Bay police have confirmed the body pulled from the Fox River Thursday is that of a missing young woman. Captain Karl Fleury says the positive identification has been made, confirming 21 year old Mahalia Xiong was the occupant of a car pulled from the water
Should an undergraduate studying business pay more than one studying psychology? Should a journalism degree cost more than one in literature? More and more public universities, confronting rising costs and lagging state support, have decided that the answers may be yes and yes.
Q. I have seen a lot of pairs of redtail hawks in and around Monona. One of the birds was high on a treetop above me, and was hissing very loudly, like a cat. Can you explain this?
A. It’s a young bird begging for food, says Stanley Temple, a professor of wildlife ecology at UW-Madison. “This is the time of year when the young redtails have left the nest, and they are wandering about and getting hungry, so they beg.”
A proposed long-range master plan to upgrade University of Wisconsin Athletic Department facilities features new construction near its two marquee venues.
In addition to a competition and practice rink for the men’s and women’s hockey teams adjacent to the Kohl Center, a multi-story complex near Camp Randall Stadium would house sports medicine, strength and conditioning and academics.
Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, takes up the challenge in his new biography, â??Henry Kissinger and the American Century.â? He even uses Kissingerâ??s quote as his epigraph, picking up the thrown gauntlet. The resulting book, refreshingly short compared with the thousands of pages devoted to the man â?? most of which he has written himself â?? is both unusual and fascinating.
UW-Madison study Follows 10,000 Wisconsin High School Grads From Happy Days to the War on Terror.
Third Wave Technologies stock zoomed up Tuesday on the strength of a court ruling seen as favorable to the Madison biotech company in its legal battle with Digene Corp., a Gaithersburg, Md., company about five times its size.
A Republican lawmaker is trying to use the power of the purse to eliminate academic programs he disagrees with philosophically and eliminate university administrators he feels are doing a poor job.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A powerful Republican lawmaker is trying to use the power of the purse to eliminate academic programs he disagrees with philosophically and punish university administrators he does not like.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Tuesday announced the establishment of a charitable trust for scholarships, funded by the $3 million donation of a former electronics company building.
President Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted, and domestic opposition to present policies is growing, even within the highest ranks of the Republican Party. America’s long time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations and worldviews at home, as well as a cast of external challengers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Leaders in Washington and Tehran need one another. The White House should pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
Wisconsin’s youngest hospital patients have a shiny new place for treatment — a 250-thousand square foot UW hospital.
Q. There was a lot of talk earlier this summer about the 17-year cicadas making an appearance in southern Wisconsin. We didn’t see anything in the Madison area. What happened?
A. “If you got to the right spot, it was like a science fiction movie,” said UW-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri, who witnessed the creature feature in June at the Big Foot Beach State Park area near Lake Geneva.
The newest multimillion-dollar residence halls on Madison campuses feature semi-private bathrooms, walk-in closets, wireless Internet connections and even spots for professors to hold office hours.
The uPortal project to develop a free, sharable Web portal for higher education won the 2007 Catalyst award, given by the Educause association for innovation and excellence in campus IT.
Big Brother will soon be watching for crime in downtown Madison.
The plan calls for video cameras to multiple areas of State Street and University Avenue.
Police hope to catch some of the crime that frequents the high-trafficked area.
Saris Cycling Group is selling new pink colored bike racks to raise awareness and funds for the UW Cancer Center.
UW Children’s Hospital treats thousands of children every year. And every year, those children are invited to celebrate their health at a local park.
Sunday afternoon hundreds of former patients enjoyed a picnic at Madison’s Elver Park.
Author Jeremi Suri looks at the influences that shaped the former U.S. Secretary of State, and then examines the pivotal moments of his career.
President George W. Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted, and domestic opposition to present policies is growing. America’s long-time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations at home, as well as a large cast of external challengers.
The time is ripe for the White House to pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
In presenting 17 high school students and a recent high school graduate with a rare, close-up look at one of the science world’s most cutting-edge fields, the WiCell Summer Science Camp also hopes to ignite their interest in pursuing a career in the sciences.
Every spring during his academic career at UW-Madison, Ying Chan makes sure he is sitting at a table at the Memorial Union terrace on the warm day when the ice on Lake Mendota disappears for the season.
To him, the moment has grown to symbolize the strong connection in Wisconsin between everyday life and the natural world. “Wisconsin has a love affair going on with the environment,” Ying said.
