Institutions of higher education should do a better job teaching students, making sure that they graduate with rigorous intellectual skills. But the federal government, with its dubious track record in management and efficiency, particularly in education, should be prevented from making matters worse.
Pity the poor high schooler shopping for colleges. Even the U.S. secretary of Education had trouble making a smart choice. Margaret Spellings went college shopping last year with her daughter. She discovered what parents have despaired over for years: Information on dining plans and intramural sports is everywhere, but data about graduation rates or instructional quality are hard to come by.
University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema’s administrative assistant, Lisa Powell, came into the office on Monday and asked if they should high-five.
New UW football coach Bret Bielema has taken enough grief and says it’s time for the final word on his controversial Hawkeye tattoo.
UW-Madison Afro-American studies professor Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis say its purveyors see it as creative expression, cultural identity and the claim of a right to exist, be seen and have a place in the world that commands respect.
“Inherent in graffiti marks . . . is resistance to capitalist oppression, inclusive of racial or ethnic oppression,” she said.
But those who pay the price say it’s all criminal.
They won’t be the first people to sell their foreheads to the highest bidder. But UW- Madison seniors Liah Hansen and Chloe Britzius are counting on the Internet and their winning personalities to help sell enough temporary noggin tattoo ads to pay for a yearlong trip around the world.
A Dodge County women has been selected as the 2006 American Honey Queen. Jolene Hoefs of Ashippun was crowned with the honor during the American Beekeeping Federation’s national convention in Kentucky last month.
Jolene is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is majoring in life science communications
Quoted: Kevin Kniffin, an honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Allan Odden, professor of educational administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin who has blogged about the Palestinian election results.
Quoted: Cognitive scientist Morton Gernsbacher of the University of Wisconsin, Madison
One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade, and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking too much at a wild weekend party.
Jennifer Schultens, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, received this e-mail message last September from a student in her calculus course: “Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I’m a freshman, I’m not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!”
MADISON, Wis. — This past weekend’s frigid temperatures wreaked havoc on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus when several water pipes froze and ruptured, causing water to flood five buildings.
The pipes burst in three older UW buildings, but there was also flooding damage at two newer buildings, WISC-TV reported.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? Ren-He Xu, the WiCell Institute’s first employee six years ago and senior scientist there, has been named director of the University of Connecticut’s new human embryonic stem-cell lab.
Xu led the University of Wisconsin-Madison team that last year found out how to make some human stem-cell cultures viable without depending on mouse “feeder” cells to keep them alive.
Families make a lot of sacrifices to send their children to college. They drive old cars, give up premium cable and skip their annual Las Vegas vacation. Yet, millions of families leave money on the table every year by overlooking valuable education tax breaks.
Like everyone who played football for Dave McClain at the University of Wisconsin, Randy Wright was shocked when McClain died from a heart attack at age 48.
But 20 years later, McClain’s passing resonates even more deeply with Wright than it did in 1986.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley gets high marks for defending the right of student journalists to publish one of the controversial cartoons that have sparked outrage and violence in much of the Islamic world.
At the same time that two student editors of the University of Illinois campus daily were suspended for publishing the cartoons, Wiley was quick to defend the right of Badger Herald editors to reprint a drawing that depicted the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
DURHAM — Duke has become the sixth university in the nation to more closely monitor the pay and treatment of workers in factories where garments bearing its university logo are manufactured.
The subject is to be kept in drug-induced artificial coma for period of approximately 12 weeks. Follow this with three electroshock sessions per day for one month. Next, subject is to wear football helmet-like device, so that no escape is possible from headphones playing tape loop of voice that says, “My mother hates me.” Continue this protocol for three weeks – approximately one half-million repetitions of message.
Review: A Question of Torture, by Alfred McCoy.
To the University of Wisconsin hockey team and the Green Bay Packers, for making the Frozen Tundra hockey game between the Badgers and the Ohio State Buckeyes at Lambeau Field on Feb. 11 such a big success. More than 40,000 fans went to the game, one of the few outdoor games held in football stadiums. Besides the game, the Badgers and the host Packers teamed for other events, such as an autograph signing and a chance to see the Stanley Cup. The game certainly isn’t an every-year proposition, but we’d welcome another hockey game at Lambeau whenever the Badgers want to come back.
Quoted: Dr. Jonathan Temte, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Phil Moy of the University of Wisconsin and the government-affiliated water protection group Sea Grant.
Quoted: Arthur Glenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied memory.
MADISON ââ?¬â? The last time a 20-year-old college student disappeared in this city, the police led a massive search that cost $100,000 and the national media converged to cover the story.
This time, two police detectives are assigned to the case. The media is paying little attention. And the investigation has yielded few clues three weeks after the student’s disappearance.
MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-Madison riding club has quarantined one of its barns after two horses got sick with a virus.
Vets euthanized the two horses after they showed symptoms of a neurological disease known as equine herpes virus-1.
Ten other horses in the barn at the Hoofer Equestrian Center near Belleville have developed fevers in the last few weeks, said Benjamin Darien, head of large animal internal medicine at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine
Quoted: Kurt Squire, a former Montessori and primary school teacher who is assistant professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Pamela Oliver, a sociology professor at UW-Madison.
Floors were flooded and walls were wet, but luckily for UW-Madison, science will progress unimpeded by nature this morning despite several campus buildings suffering weather-related damage over the weekend.
According to John Harrod of the UW Physical Plant, below-zero temperatures over the weekend caused several burst pipes and frozen heating coils in the genetics, biotechnology and biochemistry buildings on campus.
Career: Retired Dec. 2 after 33.5 years working at UW-Madison. Spent most of her career as a budget expert in the Dean of Students office. “A lot of my work was as an assistant to the budget officers, working with finances and working with student organizations and their finances, and making sure they follow procedures.
When you walk into one of Madison’s many young biotechnology companies, sometimes what you don’t see is as significant as what you do see.
NimbleGen Systems may be an example of that.
There is no fancy new building. NimbleGen, at 1 Science Court, is on the older side of University Research Park (east of Whitney Way). The do-it-yourself “front lobby” – more like an office-sized dent in the wall – consists of a few chairs and a small table with a phone on it, from which visitors ring up the employees they’re seeking.
“When the public has a chance to look more closely at what went on (at the Legislature), it’s not going to make them feel any better,” said Kathy Cramer Walsh, assistant professor of political science at UW-Madison.
A gay film festival opened at the University of Notre Dame last week with a sold-out showing of “Brokeback Mountain.” On Valentine’s Day, Notre Dame students staged a production of “The Vagina Monologues.”
Though the events have been held for the past few years, it may have been their last time on campus. In speeches and interviews recently, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame’s new president, has said that staging the events on campus implies an endorsement of values that conflict with Roman Catholicism.
By most measures, UW-Madison’s billion-dollar-plus private fundraising campaign couldn’t be going much better.
This month, the tally stands at $1.65 billion, well beyond the campaign’s $1.5 billion goal – which was achieved in May, 18 months ahead of schedule.
But Susan Fischer, UW-Madison’s director of student financial aid, has a concern. Even though one of the campaign’s main goals is increased student financial aid, her office isn’t being guaranteed anything from the proceeds, she said.
The district grew from 2,897 students in 1992 to 4,352 students this school year. Projections by the Applied Population Laboratory at UW-Madison show the district adding from 1,133 students to 2,834 students by 2015-16. The majority of that growth is projected to occur at the elementary and middle school level.
Over at Memorial Union on campus, the Hoofers’ Club winter carnival was also cancelled. But the cold didn’t force everyone in doors. An impromptu dance party broke out at a softball tournament on the frozen diamond of Lake Mendota.
MADISON, Wis. — The mayor’s newly appointed “bar czar” has been on the job for five months, and WISC-TV caught up with the man to see what it is he actually does.
Joel Plant is Madison’s new alcohol policy coordinator. He makes $52,000 per year, with half being paid for by the University of Wisconsin.
We now take a look at what lies behind the shocking images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison by turning to the history of the CIA and torture techniques. Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book ââ?¬Å?A Question of Tortureââ?¬Â, a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. CIA mercenaries attempted to assassinate McCoy more than 30 years ago. (Full transcript follows.)
Anyone who has contemplated the open sky and Lake Mendota from Picnic Point, fished off of Raymer’s Cove or hiked to Frautschi Point knows the value of UW-Madison’s Lakeshore Nature Preserve.
This environmental treasure deserves careful protection and nurturing while allowing for human use and enjoyment.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin researcher David Rabago.
Quoted: Seth Pollak, a developmental psychopathologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, US.
Donors gave an all-time record of at least $25.6 billion to American colleges and universities in 2005, an increase of 4.9 percent over the year before, thanks largely to greater generosity from alumni and foundations.
Stanford raised $603.6 million, more than any other university last year, and the second-highest total ever behind Harvard’s $683 million in 2001, according to the annual survey released Thursday by the Council for Aid to Education.
Second was the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose $595.2 million included a $296 million foundation grant awarded to its medical school following the conversion of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Wisconsin to a for-profit company.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Feb. 16 ââ?¬â? Since the morning the cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad were republished in the student newspaper at the University of Illinois here, response has been swift and split.
Officials at the University of Wisconsin were organizing a forum in Madison for next week after The Badger Herald on Monday ran one of the cartoons, one that portrayed Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb.
The winter storm that unloaded 9 inches of snow on Madison by noon Thursday shut down schools, forced UW- Madison to call off late- afternoon and evening classes, sent vehicles spinning and even brought commerce to a halt – both West Towne and East Towne malls closed early.
Quoted: Dr. Paul Sondel, a UW-Madison professor of pediatrics and human oncology.
Donors gave an all-time record of at least $25.6 billion to American colleges and universities in 2005, an increase of 4.9 percent over the year before, thanks largely to greater generosity from alumni and foundations.
The No. 2 school on the list is UW-Madison, whose $595.2 million in donations included a $296 million foundation grant awarded to its medical school following the conversion of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Wisconsin to a for-profit company.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison gave the numbers a major boost when it received a $296-million foundation donation from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin — a result of the company’s conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status. When the insurance company made the switch, the state government required it to distribute a percentage of its holdings to charities. Half was designated to go to medical programs on the Madison campus, and the other half to the Medical College of Wisconsin.
MADISON, Wis. — If you find yourself away from a computer or TV when a winter storm rolls in, you can still follow the weather’s progress from a cell phone.
WISC-TV’s “gadget guy,” Steve Van Dinter, explained Thursday how cell phones have developed to allow users the ability to see radar, satellite dates and local forecasts.
(MADISON) Muslim students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are demanding an apology from a campus newspaper for publishing one of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. But the editor of the Badger Herald defends the paper�s action and welcomes the debate it�s sparked among students. (Fourth item.)
UW Madison takes action, to respond to its own cartoon controversy.
Muslims in many countries react angrily and sometimes violently to cartoons which appeared in a Danish newspaper, depicting the Prophet Muhammad. On Monday, UW’s Badger Herald newspaper printed one of the offending cartoons.
A thick file at The Badger Herald offices suggests history is repeating itself.
The file is labeled “cartoon controversy,” and it is full of articles from past run-ins with readers at the UW-Madison student newspaper. Such as the 1990 cartoon that portrayed Allah, the Islamic God, as the movie character Eraserhead, and the 1993 comic strip that included a drawing that supposedly looked like the racist Sambo character.
The state-run health plan that initially wouldn’t pay for a third lung transplant for Joan McCarville, whose story was in the Wisconsin State Journal on Wednesday, has agreed to cover it.
Quoted: Sandi Sawchuk, veterinary medicine.
A thick file at The Badger Herald offices suggests history is repeating itself.
The file is labeled “cartoon controversy,” and it is full of articles from past run-ins with readers at the UW-Madison student newspaper. Such as the 1990 cartoon that portrayed Allah, the Islamic God, as the movie character Eraserhead, and the 1993 comic strip that included a drawing that supposedly looked like the racist Sambo character.
The file is about to grow.
The University of Connecticut Health Center has hired an expert on human embryonic stem cells and also has reached a tentative agreement to lease a Farmington building as headquarters of its new stem cell institute, university officials said Wednesday.
As soon as April, UConn scientists will be ready to work with human stem cell lines, including those ineligible to receive federal funding.
Overseeing the human stem cell effort will be Dr. Ren-He Xu, a senior scientist at the WiCell Research Institute, a private laboratory affiliated with the University of Wisconsin. WiCell creates human embryonic stem cell lines and distributes them to scientists nationally.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor.
MADISON – Supporters of a constitutional amendment that would limit government spending began pushing the measure through the Legislature on Wednesday, saying it would ease Wisconsin’s high tax burden.
Critics at a public hearing on the plan said the amendment would lead to devastating cuts in government services and take away local control.
POCATELLO ââ?¬â?? The State Board of Education announced Dr. Arthur Vailas will be the next president of Idaho State University.
Prior to joining UH, Vailas was associate dean for research and development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a university he served in numerous capacities.
A venue on the Capitol Square won’t be able to increase its capacity if a city panel has its way…
A city panel is putting its foot down….and not allowing a bar on the Capitol Square to increase its capacity. A proposal from Kimia Lounge to allow up to 160 people in the bar at once….which would have been a hike of 60….
Republican candidate for Governor Scott Walker planned to attend the sold out, University of Wisconsin basketball game against Ohio State at the Kohl Center with seven donors to his campaign who were willing to pay at least $1,000 for a prime seat.
An invitation to the Walker fundraiser stated for a minimum $2,000 contribution, a donor could sit courtside.
The invitation also promised a donor would spent the game’s halftime in a luxury suite with cocktails.
(MADISON) Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are a step closer to reconstructing one of the body�s building blocks. They�ve discovered a way to make an important protein in the lab, something researchers have tried to do for 30 years.
Collagen is a common protein used in everything from hair conditioner to plastic surgery. In medicine, it�s used to rebuild tissue destroyed by burns and wounds. Currently, most of the collagen used comes from cows.
The hope is to someday manufacture the substance in a lab. UW-Madison biochemistry professor Ronald Raines says this would prevent possible transmission of animal disease to humans, along with other undesired effects.
