Graduate programs in science and engineering at American colleges enrolled 474,203 students in the fall of 2003, an all-time high that reflected an increase of 4 percent over the preceding year, according to data released on Wednesday by the National Science Foundation.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly on Thursday said he had “no doubt” that university leaders will soon move to change some personnel policies and practices as a result of intense scrutiny by state lawmakers over paid leaves, backup jobs and the treatment of professors convicted of serious crimes.
UW-Madison has won the first battle in what could be a long legal skirmish with animal-rights groups that want to build a protest hall right outside the university’s primate research facilities.
The study of forgiveness is now one of the most popular fields of research among clinical psychologists in the U.S., with more than one-thousand studies published in the past five years. Bob Enright, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, discusses the process of forgiveness. (Audio.)
Interviewed: Dr. Joan Schiller, an oncologist at the University of Wisconsin
Quoted: Edward Friedman, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Paul Boyer, professor emeritus of history at UW-Madison. (Audio.)
MADISON ââ?¬â?? The Badger State will likely never produce a Silicon Valley, but it could become a major force in the science and technology business world, a trio of experts told trustees of the Wisconsin Investment Board Wednesday morning.
But to do that, emerging companies need financial backing so they can grow, produce jobs and contribute to the state�s economy.
A Massachusetts judge has handed down a key ruling in a student-suicide lawsuit against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stirring concerns among some college officials that the case heralds a storm of wrongful-death litigation.
A UW-Madison official said a property owner has accepted a $1 million purchase offer for land right next to UW primate research facilities on Charter Street.
UW Research Park Director Mark Bugher told 27 News the property owner’s acceptance of the UW’s proposed option to buy, may lead to an expansion of the exisiting primate research facilities.
What part of the brain is involved in the storage of memories and is especially vulnerable to alcohol abuse? If you didnââ?¬â?¢t answer ââ?¬Å?hippocampus,ââ?¬Â you might learn something from AlcoholEdu, an online alcohol education program that is being used by an increasing number of college campuses.
Bo Ryan doesn’t make a habit of coaching opposing teams the day before a matchup.
But it’s not everyday that the University of Wisconsin men’s coach gets a chance to work with some of the best players China has to offer.
Wisconsin Wolves football coach Norm Killion has player concerns that Barry Alvarez never worries about.
Game-night child care is one. Backups for pregnant players is another.
“I have an Olympic-caliber soccer player who says she’ll kick for me next fall if she doesn’t get pregnant,” said Killion, who will be recruiting a new Madison-based women’s professional football team at tryouts beginning Sunday.
(UNDATED) Alcohol during pregnancy can harm the developing fetus. Now some UW-Madison researchers think they know why. (Second item.)
A UW Medical School professor sentenced to prison last week for sexually assaulting three girls was told in mid-June that he would be fired.
But physiology professor Roberto Coronado, 52, remains a member of the faculty — paid through accrued vacation time — while he appeals his dismissal, said Casey Nagy, special assistant to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley.
For the last two years, Chelsey Imm has been taking classes at UW Marathon County, but she’s a student at UW Madison.
She has a counselor there, uses the library, even attends some sporting events and sits in the student section, and after two years at the Wausau campus, she’s now on her way to Madison, but she doesn’t have the debt that she would if she started school in the state capital.
The summer of 2005 has been an embarrassing one at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
First, the university came under fire when it was revealed that Paul W. Barrows, the vice chancellor for student affairs who quit last year, did so because he had had an affair with a graduate student. That Barrows stayed on the university�s payroll infuriated legislators, and focused attention on how the university treats employees who get into trouble.
By wading into the highly contentious issue of Native American nicknames and mascots for college sports teams on Friday, National Collegiate Athletic Association leaders achieved their stated aim of sending a clear message that they object to such imagery. But the NCAA also created a cacophony of confusion and put the association in the potentially uncomfortable position of judging when Native American references are ââ?¬Å?hostileââ?¬Â and ââ?¬Å?abusiveââ?¬Â and when theyââ?¬â?¢re not ââ?¬â?? questions that could take months, and possibly help from the courts, to resolve
Heeding his doctor’s advice to stay home from work during an illness should have been a no-brainer, Madison resident Russell McDaniel said. But low-wage, low-benefit workers like McDaniel find themselves in a tough spot – what’s more important, their health or two days’ pay?
McDaniel, a janitor, stayed home and suffered the financial hit.
But McDaniel and a coalition of labor, housing and religious interests on Wednesday proposed that the city of Madison intervene by requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave for employees.
The decorated halls of higher education sometimes aren’t always so high-minded. In fact, they look downright dumb in some cases. Two schools that immediately come to mind are a pair of otherwise fine academic institutions marred by their leadership’s intransigence over an issue many schools long ago resolved with a few fast-disappearing traits in our nation: common sense, appropriateness and decency.
Commentary By Jon Saraceno
Much has been written over the past week about the NCAA Executive Committee’s decision not to conduct championships on the campuses of member institutions where the use of nicknames and mascots representing American Indians is considered hostile and abusive.
By Myles Brand NCAA president
Snuppy, the world’s first cloned pup, romped onto front pages last week to fascinate and provoke. Seoul National University’s puppy, whose genetic material came from a single cell from the ear of an Afghan hound, teased the public with the prospect that people might soon be able to clone their beloved dogs.
Even creating embryos for stem cells to research is morally wrong. Those of us who support a ban on all types of human cloning do so because we believe that ultimately no good can come from the procedure.
A coalition of labor, housing and religious interests is launching an effort to get paid sick leave for all employees in Madison.
But some are skeptical about a law that could put a financial burden on businesses already upset about city laws for a minimum wage, smoking ban and making developers put lower- cost housing in projects.
A regulatory agency has warned that a group of Wisconsin county coroners may be putting UW Hospital out of compliance with federal organ and tissue donation rules.
The UW Hospital Organ Procurement Organization is required by law to sign a contract with a single tissue bank; the UW Hospital OPO has signed a contract with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation.
NASA and its daring astronauts showed again this week that they can face danger, ad lib and succeed in space – all while furthering our knowledge of the universe.
President Bush said it well Tuesday – the amazing shuttle trip, covering 5.8 million miles in 14 days, “regains the confidence of the American people” following the Columbia accident in 2003.
Discovery landed safely Tuesday morning in California after a series of events and experiments, some planned and others a surprise. It helped show why our nation’s space program deserves strong support despite significant risks and costs.
The successful mission also bodes well for UW- Madison. Our great university has had strong ties to the nation’s space program dating back to the 1950s.
The second quarter also marked the startup of MGE’s new cogeneration power plant on the UW-Madison campus in late April, and the company will see approximately $2.5 million in revenue that plant has already produced in the coming months.
First impressions, second thoughts and the third degree:
Instead of trying to legislate its fuzzy perception of morality regarding the use of Native American nicknames, the NCAA would have been better served emphasizing one of its core values to get its point across.
The NCAA is about many things, but power is No. 1. When it singled out 18 schools last week that feature “hostile or abusive” nicknames and mascots, and threatened to ban those images from postseason tournaments starting next year, the NCAA didn’t look very tough. Downright wishy-washy is more like it.
Name: Ingrid Andersson
Age: 42
Job: Certified nurse midwife with Community Nurse Midwives.
I had already gotten my undergraduate degree at UW- Madison in anthropology.Later, as a master’s student, I began exploring women’s birth stories – that was in the late ’80s.
Summer is no vacation anymore for those with career ambitions in academia. As teaching positions become more competitive and less secure, college-level educators are scrambling wherever they can to get an edge. Though this new reality bears its marks year-round, never is it more pronounced than now, when today’s frenzied research replaces the leisurely summer sojourns of yesteryear.
Opening a 529 college savings account requires a leap of faith. You trust you’ll be able to come up with enough money to fund the account. You hope the stock market will work in your favor. And you pray your child will stop searching for the sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto and start studying for his SATs.
Column by John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology:
Last week, President Bush said this about presenting “intelligent design” alongside evolution in science classrooms: “That decision ought to be made by local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.”
National organizations of scientists immediately condemned his view. The American Geophysical Union released a statement saying Bush’s position “puts America’s schoolchildren at risk.”
A UW-Madison professor was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting three girls.
Roberto B. Coronado, 52, had pleaded no contest to assaulting two girls over a period of years and assaulting a third girl once.
UW-Madison students moving out of their apartments this week can donate clean clothes, quality furniture, unopened nonperishable food and other household items in good condition at several sites. Anything in poor condition should be thrown away.
It seems everyone has a college horror story, and it often involves a roommate. Although my freshman-year roommate actually neared perfection, I do remember a girl on my floor who drove her roommate to the brink of insanity. Her quirks included phobias of fruit, carpeting and taking phone messages. When her roommate spilled juice in the bottom of their mini-fridge, she threw all of the food away and proclaimed the mini-fridge “contaminated.”
As a personal mental health counselor at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, Susan Fee saw the same trend in the students who came to her for help.
Nobody likes parking tickets, especially state lawmakers who get to park for free on the Capitol Square. Nobody likes rude people, yet plenty of state lawmakers have sizeable tempers. And nobody wants to do something for nothing — yet that’s what at least two lawmakers want to demand.
Reps. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, and Robin Kreibich, R-Eau Claire — acting on a laundry list of Schneider’s personal gripes against the University of Wisconsin System — are pushing a bill that would strictly and ridiculously micromanage UW campuses.
UW-Madison officials expect to know by early next week if they will be able to buy some land that two animal rights groups want for a protest building near the university’s primate research facilities.
“We’ve asked for a quick decision,” said Mark Bugher, director of University Research Park, which would use investment earnings, not state tax dollars, for the purchase. “We didn’t want (the offer) to languish.”
Amber Ault, director of diversity at UW-Madison’s School of Pharmacy, wants to set an example for future pharmacists by learning the Hmong language and cultural practices using traditional herbal medicine, which could interact negatively with modern drugs.
Katy France, who graduated from UW-Madison’s Law School on Friday and plans to work as a public defender, sees a need for lawyers who can communicate with Hmong defendants. Sarah Allen, who teaches English as a second language in the West Allis School District, is striving to better connect with her Hmong students and their families. And Kazoua Xiong, a student at St. Olaf College, yearns to know more about her Hmong heritage.
For the past two months, they and other students and educators spent four and a half hours a day, five days a week, studying Hmong culture and language at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) at UW-Madison.
Everyone’s heard of the “freshman 15,” that insidious weight gain that creeps up on first-year college students. But is there truth to it?
Researchers say there is. A study at Cornell University found that students gain an average of four pounds during the first three months of their freshman year of college – a rate that is 11 times higher than typical for 17- and 18- year-olds.
Think about it: For every student who maintains pre- college weight, there’s another who is eight pounds heavier by Thanksgiving. And the first semester isn’t even over.
UW-Madison will see a surge of new students this fall in an alternative enrollment program designed to relieve pressure on the freshman class and give applicants what they want – at least eventually.
The initiative, known as the Connections program, offers qualified students the opportunity to be dual-enrolled. That means they are considered to be UW-Madison students from the start – with certain campus privileges like student rates on games and concerts – but they must complete the first two years of general education courses elsewhere before coming to campus for classes starting their junior year.
UW-Madison senior Will Temby, 22, an online poker player who considers it his part-time job, said while poker’s popularity may indeed breed more gambling addicts, these people probably would have become addicts of some sort anyway.
“I think it’s sort of a genetic disposition that some people have to become addicted to things,” he said. “I think that’s a shame, but people who gamble and play poker responsibly shouldn’t be punished by it.”
Brett Hartfiel, 22, is his own boss for the summer. He wakes up at about 10 a.m. and works sporadically throughout the day.
If his friends go to the beach, he can go with them. If he wants to work in his pajamas, he can. That’s because Hartfiel has turned online gambling, a pastime that has recently exploded among college students, into his summer job. In the past six or seven weeks, he has made more than $6,000.
….Professional poker has its perks for the recent UW-Madison graduate. Hartfiel job-hunts and fills out applications online while he plays. Plus he can enjoy the college lifestyle for one last summer.
Rita retired from the UW Food Research Institute in 1991.
Former University of Wisconsin athletic director Pat Richter has followed major college football since he was a kid growing up in Madison, but the upcoming season might require his greatest sense of focus.
Richter has agreed to participate in a new top-25 ranking, conducted by the Harris polling service, that will help determine the national champion.
U. S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s smart and courageous stance on embryonic stem-cell research should embolden more Wisconsin state lawmakers – especially Republicans – to support scientific advances.
Frist, R-Tenn., recently threw his support behind a House bill to expand federal funding for research on stem cells. The bill would only affect stem cells taken from embryos created in fertility clinics for reproduction, but which aren’t used and would probably be discarded. He also asked for a comprehensive system of ethical oversight.
150 research reactors in the world still use highly enriched uranium, including at eight U.S. universities. After 9/11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered the universities to upgrade their security.
The University of Florida and Texas A&M will convert their reactors to low-enriched uranium in 2006. The Senate Appropriations Committee added another $7 million to President Bush’s budget to speed up conversion of reactors at Purdue, Oregon State, Washington State and the University of Wisconsin.
Dominique Sicard has watched four older sisters and one brother go off to college, and now that it is her turn, she cannot wait.
ââ?¬Å?Iââ?¬â?¢m not really nervous,ââ?¬Â said the 18-year-old Neenah High School graduate who will study ââ?¬Å?something probably math-relatedââ?¬Â at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
For three former University of Wisconsin players on the Buffalo Bills� training camp roster, receiver Lee Evans and safeties Troy Vincent and Jim Leonhard seem headed in vastly different directions.
Quoted: John Bethencourt, a computer scientist from the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin Law School Remington Center Clinical Instructor Byron Lichstein.
Grandparents� University, inspired by a program at UW-Madison, brings children ages 7-14 and their grandparents together for some one-on-one, get-to-know-you-better time, said Cathy Paynter, director of continuing education at UW-Fox Valley.
Proponents of social-norms strategies to reduce high-risk drinking have new data to support their approach
Enough. Enough already!” said a capital-campaign donor when the performing-arts center came back seeking a gift for its third campaign in less than five years.
More and more nonprofit organizations are joining the capital-campaign bandwagon. Once the purview primarily of educational institutions and hospitals, capital campaigns are now frequently run by organizations of all sizes and types and in all nonprofit fields. Some organizations seem to be continuously in capital-campaign mode — either preparing for one, in the midst of one, or coming off the last and readying for the next.
It was a mistake that put hundreds of former MATC students at risk for identity theft. The mistake involved old applications, filled with personal information that anyone could have gotten their hands on…including us.
Californiaââ?¬â?¢s colleges have seen the (possible) future ââ?¬â?? in Colorado ââ?¬â?? and they donââ?¬â?¢t like the looks of it.
If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, Californians will vote in November to put strict constitutional limits on growth in state spending. The ââ?¬Å?California Live Within Our Means Act,ââ?¬Â as the measure is called, would restrict what the state government spends in any fiscal year to what it spent the year before plus the average rate of growth in certain spending over the three previous years
The grand reopening of Camp Randall Stadium will not only trigger organized celebrations and fond memories in the coming months, it will be used to sell groceries, clothes, DVDs and other souvenirs.
Plans to “Celebrate The Legacy” of Camp Randall were outlined Wednesday. The process will begin with an open house later this month. It will continue Sept. 3 when the Badgers christen their new home and its $109 million makeover by playing host to Bowling Green. The process will continue to unfold during the remaining five home games as people and performances are recalled from the 88-year history of the facility.
I’ll start with a warning.
The surgeon general says smoking causes cancer.
And another warning: Ira Sharenow and the rest of the anti-smoking crowd don’t want you to read one more negative word about Madison’s no- smoking ordinance.
“Your paper,” Sharenow writes, “has turned into a tool for smoking interests.”
Our crime is talking to Madison tavern owners about how their business has plunged since the smoking ban started July 1. We’ve been taken to task by UW-Madison cancer folks, and by the mayor’s spokesman George Twigg, who called our coverage “one-sided.”
Dr. Christina Iyama, an associate professor of pediatrics at UW-Madison, said she is angered that the Fitchburg center purports to help children with autism and other developmental disabilities.
“There is no reason to think that a supplemental dose of oxygen would fix autism,” she said. “It’s not even theoretically useful.”
“You can’t go around recommending things to other people on no scientific basis,” she said. “To prey upon people who aren’t able to cure their children is an outrage.”
Dr. Carl Stafstrom, chief of pediatric neurology at UW Hospital in Madison, said people should be very skeptical of hyperbaric therapy as a treatment for neurological disorders.
Quoted: Carol Diamond, head of hematology and oncology at the University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital in Madison.
Quoted: Merri Lindgren and Megan Schliesman are librarians at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a noncirculating library of the School of Education at UW- Madison
