Another academic year draws to a close this month, and as it ends I have mixed emotions. I’m certainly happy for the graduates, as well as the students who’ve just completed a year of outstanding education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At the same time, I’m concerned about the racially charged incidents that were reported on the UW–Madison campus this past semester.
Noted: Christof Koch, the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, and Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, have proposed that consciousness is nearly ubiquitous in different degrees, and can be present even in nonliving arrangements of matter, to varying degrees.
The study of English literature, and literary studies more broadly, was, for the greater part of the 20th century, the crown jewel of the humanities. And from the early 1960s until his death last month, at the age of 86, Geoffrey Hartman was one of its staunchest guardians.
Members of the University of Wisconsin Band played to a packed gym on Saturday at Mauston High School.
More than 520 faculty and staff members and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have signed an open letter that says the university police department went “well beyond the call of duty” on Thursday afternoon when officers entered a campus auditorium during an Afro-American-studies class and arrested a senior, Denzel J. McDonald, on 11 counts of graffiti. In the letter, the signers said they would “refuse to be silent” and they called for an end of “anti-black racism on campus.”
The chance that those mosquitoes will transmit the virus to people in Wisconsin this year seems slim, said Susan Paskewitz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist.
We all do stupid things when we’re young. Many of us continue to do them as we age, too. Stupid has no expiration date.
Differences in the staffs of the Big Ten’s counseling centers often boil down to the needs and budget of the centers, some Big Ten mental health service providers and administrators said.
If you don’t already, odds are that someday you’ll hold a newspaper at arm’s length to read it more clearly. This incredibly common eye condition, called presbyopia, generally affects those in their 50s and older. It occurs when eye muscles begin to age and harden, making it more difficult to focus on nearby objects.
The arrest of an African-American student on the UW-Madison campus Thursday has prompted a swift and damning response from university faculty, staff and students.
Right now, Seymour’s Ty Majeski feels like a Class AAA baseball player ready to get the call up to the big leagues.
Prompting widespread anger from faculty and students, University of Wisconsin at Madison police on Thursday pulled a black student from class and arrested him for allegedly spray-painting anti-racist messages across campus.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Chief issued an apology on Friday after campus officers interrupted a class to arrest a student earlier this week.
Noted: Political scientist Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us that Kasich’s seven-of-10 claim is on target. But there is an important caveat, according to Burden, who said:
Layoffs, course cuts and consolidation are among the methods the UW System campuses is using to handle new budget cuts. Our guest reporter looks at the how the UW System is absorbing the cuts in funding.
At Madison East High School, students in Amy Isensee’s classroom are considering what they have in common with 17th-century Chinese culture
If you were told that nearly half of the people on the planet had a higher risk of developing a mental health disorder, what would you do?
Mark us as seriously concerned about the impact of reductions in the levels of state funding for the University of Wisconsin System. And, for now, add that we are moderately concerned about the level of interest in a robust, public discussion of that impact.
Reductions to student advising, some academic programs, and the loss of teachers and a security officer were among the changes the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay made to accommodate state cuts to higher education, according to a new report.
In his April 7 op-ed “An Overheated Climate Alarm” Bjorn Lomborg targets the recent Federal Climate and Health Assessment, focusing on the balance between cold-related deaths avoided and heat-related deaths caused by climate change. He complains that the report “not once” mentions that more people die of cold than heat—a complaint that is plainly false (see the chapter on temperature). Mr. Lomborg is right that cold-related deaths will decline, but quantitatively comparing this health benefit with the health penalties of hotter weather and more heat waves is complex, as the report clearly acknowledges.
The University Of Wisconsin Madison has not had a D-1 baseball team since 1991. It was dropped during a period of financial problems for the athletic department although the university brass also used Title 9 problems as a reason.
What is this, the academic version of “The Gong Show”? What’s next? Will UW System President Ray Cross tell Becky Blank and other chancellors to sit in a corner and count to 10 because they’re being “whiny”?
We remain in favor of Voter ID as a concept, that a person appearing at a polling place should be wiling to offer proof of identity. But we also recognize that for all law-abiding citizens 18 or older, voting is a right, affirmed with the same powerful language in the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments as something to “not be denied or abridged.”
The $250 million budget cuts that started in 2015 at the UW system schools are impacting students and faculty.
In early January, UW-Madison economists Steven Deller and Tessa Conroy released a study on Wisconsin job creation that sank beneath the waves with barely a ripple, despite its insight into the Badger State’s sluggish economy.
Want to know how to do Twitter or Facebook right at your institution? You might want to study the practices used by the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the first and Baylor University for the second. Those two institutions have been deemed the “top users” of the those social media sites by Engagement Labs, which develops technology for measuring online social engagement.
Noted: Different recovery times. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, has spent decades studying the relationship between our emotions and various brain structures and neurological systems. In his 2012 book The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Davidson notes that people vary widely with regard to the speed with which we recover from adverse experiences. (Davidson calls this quality “resilience,” but I prefer “recovery time,” as I use the former term more broadly when discussing our overall response to stress and challenges.) Davidson’s research demonstrates that people with different recovery times even show different patterns of activity in their brains.
Financially troubled UC Berkeley will eliminate 500 staff jobs over two years to help balance its budget by 2019-20, The Chronicle has learned.
Noted: The man credited for first bringing the figure to public attention is Alfred W. McCoy, an American historian. McCoy is an eminent professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published extensively on the colonial and post-colonial history of state repression, the military, and policing in the Philippines.
Noted: Also, older patients, who are increasingly likely to have a directive, often get treatment from varied sources — surgeons, hospitals, nursing homes, primary physicians. That increases the odds of unaligned systems, said Dr. Irene Hamrick, who directs geriatric services in family medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
While it wasn’t written about the Vietnam War, the song “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by The Animals became an iconic song at the time, and now signifies the era.
Quoted: “These are fundamental studies, but these chemical transformations are at the heart of all kinds of environmental systems, related to soil, sediment, groundwater and waste water,” senior author Eric Roden, a professor of geoscience at UW-Madison, told Phys-Ed.
Ray Cross just isn’t up to his job. Certainly, the UW System president has a tough challenge. He has multiple constituencies, and none of them are easy to please. Worse, their interests often conflict, sometimes spectacularly.
The recent “retirement” of one of my favorite poets of all time, Ron Wallace, from the UW–Madison English Department reawakened a personal source of civic pride: Madison as a serious poetry city.
The University of Wisconsin released new information Tuesday about how the loss of $250 million in state funding will affect each college campus.
New University of Wisconsin-Madison research shows that the snowshoe hare’s habitat in northern Wisconsin is shrinking, in part due to shifts in climate.
The University of Wisconsin System has released details of how all of the state’s campuses are managing the $250 million reduction to their state funding in the current budget. The documents were first published by the Wisconsin State Journal.
Former Wisconsin Badgers running back Brent Moss has been charged with possession of cocaine (second and subsequent offense) and resisting an officer.
Former Denver Broncos running back Montee Ball was reportedly arrested for a felony bail jumping violation in Whitewater, Wisconsin, on Saturday night WKOW-TV reports.
Quoted: Barbara Wolfe, Ph.D., a professor of public affairs, economics, and population health services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn’t involved with the study, said environment could play a role in health as well.
Campuses across the UW System are cutting dozens of positions and resorting to larger class sizes to deal with state budget cuts, according to a new UW System report.
As nearly a hundred faculty and staff members voluntarily leave UW-Eau Claire the school says those early retirements have helped lessen the negative impact of budget cuts on students.
University of Wisconsin Madison history professor William Jones said such arguments have initially seen success in other states, although they have ultimately fallen short when the case has been appealed. He pointed to the most recent challenge of Indiana’s right-to-work law, which was struck down, but then eventually upheld by that state’s Supreme Court.
Lloyd Charles Pray was a loving husband, father, and highly-regarded professor who inspired thousands of students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he taught Geology for nearly four decades. His positive outlook and infectious enthusiasm, along with his candor and sense of humor, endeared him to many throughout his life.
Quoted: “The truth is that white death rates are still much, much lower than they are for African-Americans,” said Bridget Catlin, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin. “My concern is that people will think, ‘Oh, it’s whites that need to be helped.’ ”
Noted: The Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania Dutch population was made up of “church people, or fancy Dutch” associated with Lutheran and Union churches, says Mark Louden, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among them, the language is pretty much gone, diluted out as children grew up, went to college and married non-Dutch-speaking people.
The Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin System on Friday unanimously approved a set of amendments to a layoff policy for the Madison campus that many faculty members opposed. The changes — such as the elimination of guaranteed severance and the stipulation that the university will “consider” alternative appointments faculty members pegged for layoffs for budgetary or educational reasons rather than “pursue” them — were previously approved by the board’s Education Committee.
Noted: “Therefore, those in the Party ruling groups…will intensify repressiveness to keep the truths about system corruption revealed by the Panama Papers out of China,” says Edward Friedman, China specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin in the United States. “They also will understand the Panama Papers to be another item in a supposedly endless effort of the West to undermine Communist Party rule. Ruling groups will tell the Chinese people that the Panama Papers are a Western invention aimed at making China weak and dependent on the West.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore Ashley Hampton is, in many ways, a lot like other students on her campus. She’s in sorority, is steadily working toward a degree in community and nonprofit leadership, and loves to travel and spend time with friends.
Noted: Tim Kamp, the co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center, said it’s impossible to make pluripotent cells (also known as iPS cells) develop in a petri dish the way humans develop in utero—for that, and for the research on heart disease pioneered by his colleague Gail Robertson, they need fetal tissue.
Some UW students could find their tuition bill climbing this fall. The UW Board of Regents approved tuition increases for certain students at their monthly meeting Friday.
Public higher education is often thought of as a way to help level the playing field between Americans of all stripes, but there’s evidence that flagship public colleges aren’t the engines of mobility we think.
Last spring, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Chancellor Jim Schmidt got word that, as part of $250 million in GOP-backed cuts to the UW System, his campus would be hit by a 16 percent reduction in state aid. It was the third-largest cut of all UW schools.
Quoted: Clifton Conrad, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the situation at Chicago State foreshadows what many small universities could experience in the coming years, as state budgets contract and less money is designated for higher education.
Tiny particles that struck Antarctica years ago came from outside our galaxy, puzzling scientists hoping to unlock clues about the universe. Now, scientists think the source might be the center of a bright, violent galaxy some 9 billion light years away.
A century of Yiddish education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be celebrated with live and historic music, including the first event in an international Jewish performance series.
A group of Democratic state lawmakers are slamming a decision to scrap a presentation on how budget cut are affecting University of Wisconsin System campuses.
The Wisconsin primary saw many young voters finding ways to ignite conversations about issues they feel are most important. For students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a series of racially charged incidents have inspired them to create a special hashtag: #TheRealUW.
The University of Wisconsin System regents moved closer Thursday toward raising graduate tuition at five campuses and out-of-state undergraduate rates at three locations, pushing the plan through a committee and on to the full board.
Chancellors at UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout in Menomonie made their cases to the UW System Board of Regents on Thursday, explaining how budget cuts have hurt their campuses this year and how they could have long-lasting impacts.
