The UW-Madison College of Engineering received a $32 million donation pledge from The Grainger Foundation of Lake Forest, Illinois — the largest donation in the College’s history.
UW-Madison is a big part of the community, but in a place like Whitewater, the university is almost as big as the city itself.
That’s why UW-Whitewater is encouraging its students to take the pandemic, and their impact on it, seriously.
A UW-Madison graduate student resigned from their co-presidency of the Teachers Assistant Association after coming under fire for misrepresenting their racial identity.
Eight Wisconsin metro areas have landed on the New York Times’ list of places across the country where new cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest.
La Crosse is number one on the New York Times’ list, which was updated Thursday afternoon. In third is Whitewater, and the Oshkosh-Neenah area is in eighth. Stevens Point, Appleton, Platteville, Madison and Green Bay take up the 15th through 19th spots of the list, respectively.
With the exception of Appleton, all the Wisconsin cities on the list are home to a University of Wisconsin System campus.
Noted: The president praised the Big Ten for its decision this week to start college football this season after earlier postponing it and singled out Barry Alvarez, the athletic director at the University of Wisconsin. Madison officials have urged fans not to gather for Badgers games as cases in the city climb — an increase largely driven by college students.
Shortly after it was announced that the Big Ten conference had backtracked and the University of Wisconsin-Madison would be playing football this year, the team’s Twitter account tweeted a meme video of a group of people celebrating in a crowded bar during a soccer game in 2016.
“You love to see it,” the tweet said.
Except in 2020, amid a local spike of COVID-19 cases, that image takes on a whole new meaning.
Noted: The group will be co-chaired by inaugural members Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Alia Stevenson, Chief Programs Officer with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.
“The Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance is comprised of Black women serving in important roles in health care, our community, and as decision-makers and knowledge experts. Our highest priority is to ensure that the health and wellbeing of Black mothers remains front and center,” says Co-Chairs Green and Stevenson in a statement. “As the Alliance moves forward, we are pleased to join the Dane County Health Council as we work together to advance the health of Black mothers, babies and their families in this county.”
Dane County confirmed 210 new coronavirus cases this morning, as yesterday’s Data Snapshot from Public Health Madison Dane County (PHMDC) reported 72 percent of all new cases the September 1-14 were from UW students and staff. Today’s new cases bring the total for the county to 8,461 as of this morning. There are 6,548 recovered cases while 1,872 are currently active. This brings the percentage of active cases to 22 percent.
Noted: Just over three-quarters of those recent cases were found in University of Wisconsin-Madison students and staff, with students making up the vast majority, 1,808 to 10 for the UW staff, PHMDC data notes indicate. Nearly 1,400 of the total cases were linked to college-age housing clusters, such as forms, apartment complexes with 10 or more cases, and fraternities and sororities.
Noted: Bayfield County is projected to lose 28% of its child population by 2040. Pepin County, 25%; Price County, 20%, according to the Applied Population Laboratory at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Those communities that lose too much of their youth population are in danger of becoming unsustainable,” the university said.
Health officials in Madison and Dane County are urging fans not to gather to watch football games when the University of Wisconsin Badgers begin their season next month.
Noted: The new cases come as colleges and universities across the state continue to grapple with outbreaks of the virus on and around their campuses.
Nearly 90% of University of Wisconsin-Madison students who have tested positive for COVID-19 have exhibited symptoms, public health officials said Wednesday.
As expected, Big Ten officials are determined to play football this fall.
The league announced Wednesday morning the 2020 season is scheduled to begin the weekend of Oct. 23-24.
Formats and preoccupations change, but comics never lose their power to communicate, criticize and entertain.
“Wisconsin Funnies: Fifty Years of Comics,” presented through Nov. 22 by the Museum of Wisconsin Art in two locations, surveys our state’s role in the great hurly-burly of funny words and pictures, especially from underground and alternative points of view.
A new venture capital fund will start investing in Wisconsin’s university and college entrepreneurs this fall after closing on $6 million in fundraising.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s coronavirus crisis hit a new phase Monday with the faculty senate voting to cancel spring break and the school investigating 300 students for violating policies related to COVID-19.
A cluster of coronavirus cases at a Marquette University dorm has prompted officials to quarantine the entire residence hall for two weeks.
As the second University of Wisconsin campus switched to virtual learning because of an alarming rise in coronavirus cases Sunday, statistics show seven state communities where colleges are located are among the fastest-growing COVID-19 outbreaks in the nation.
As she climbed down nine flights of stairs and stepped into the dark night in the pouring rain outside Sellery Hall, Lauren Tamborino described the scene as “apocalyptic.”
A doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison issued a public apology this week after accusations emerged online that they were presenting as a person of color despite being mostly of Italian ancestry.
Freshmen Lauren Tamborini and Bailey Donahue move out of Sellery Residence Hall at UW-Madison on Thursday. The students will be attending class online for at least the next two weeks. Citing rapidly rising COVID-19 cases including two straight days in which one in five student tests came back positive, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank locked down the state’s largest university campus for two weeks.
In response to spiking COVID-19 cases, the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to make classes virtual, restrict other in-person activities and quarantine students living in two residence halls, Sellery and Witte. The decision was made Wednesday and most restrictions will be in place until at least Sept. 25.
Quoted: “We are in pretty uncharted economic territory,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: In the last presidential cycle, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim found that Russian-linked disinformation campaigns focused ads on the swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in particular, targeting both sides of the political spectrum with inflammatory posts on race, gun rights and increasingly, feminism.
If the WIAA has state championships this fall, they won’t happen at the University of Wisconsin.
Wednesday the state’s high school sports governing body and the university announced that due to the “challenging situation with COVID-19 restrictions in Dane County” no state championships will be held on the UW campus this fall.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi has asked the University of Wisconsin-Madison to consider sending undergraduate students who live in dorms home as COVID-19 continues to spread.
Citing rapidly rising COVID-19 cases including two straight days in which one in five student tests came back positive, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank locked down the state’s largest university campus for two weeks.
Noted: Polack, who grew up in Racine and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, served at the U.S. Treasury Department as an intelligence analyst and policy adviser under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
One day after the University of Wisconsin-Madison said COVID-19 spread was on the verge of jeopardizing plans for in-person instruction, the state’s top Republicans sent a letter to Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren asking that he reconsider the cancellation of the fall 2020 college football season.
After Hartland native Taylor Amann was eliminated during the national finals of “American Ninja Warrior” last year, she said she would be back.
Despite gyms being closed at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate stuck to her word.
The members of nine fraternities and sororities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been directed to quarantine themselves after 38 students tested positive for COVID-19, the university confirmed Friday.
Alarmed by a rise in coronavirus cases on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, Chancellor Rebecca Blank on Monday ordered all undergraduates to restrict their movements for the next two weeks.
As tens of thousands of Wisconsin students return to dorms and off-campus apartments this fall, universities have attempted to plan for just about everything.
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Dwight Watson was placed on paid administrative leave Thursday pending the outcome of an investigation into an unspecified complaint.
Noted: Birx was in Madison to talk to Wisconsin officials and health care representatives about COVID-19 as part of a tour of states. Among those she met with was Tommy Thompson, the University of Wisconsin System president whom she knows from his time as health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush.
“I think he has taken a very serious and public-health approach to this,” Birx said. “He has a plan for surveillance testing, he has a plan for surge testing … and I think equally importantly, he has a plan for caring for students who become positive.”
She suggested that could help UW avoid the problems of colleges that have seen clusters of cases once students arrived on campus.
Quoted: “It is hard to find these causal relationships,” said Nasia Safdar, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
How are people going to figure out how students are doing in school this year?
“I can’t imagine how this isn’t going to be the most challenging year that we’ve ever had for answering that question,” said Brad Carl, an expert on the subject who is with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How are we going to tell?”
A crucial Phase III clinical trial of a vaccine against COVID-19 begins this week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and its teaching hospital UW Health.
Noted: Hart Posen interviewed in video beginning at 3:13 mark.
Quoted: The idea of using azithromycin for COVID-19 was based on preliminary French research suggesting a benefit that later was found to be flawed, said Ann Misch, an assistant professor of infectious disease at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Separately, laboratory research showed hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin reduced viral replication of cells infected by the virus, though not azithromycin alone. But, she said, “there’s a huge chasm between an effect in cell culture and in humans.”
She said there is no evidence azithromycin is effective against COVID-19.
“If people are using azithromycin, I am sorry to hear that,” she said.
Quoted: Richard Monette, director of the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, largely agreed that the messaging would not have much influence on Native people.
He doubled down on Greendeer’s statement that U.S.-tribal relations are not as bad as some make it seem, but he added the presence of these tensions opens Native groups up to these types of social media attacks.
“America has got this history of trying to separate the Native American from her land and from her wealth. That’s true, and that gets exploited by people throughout the world,” Monette said. “If we don’t want them to use this against us, then we should stop doing that.”
It’s been five months since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered college campuses across the country. Like thousands of other college students, I finished the spring semester on Zoom, attending classes and taking exams in my childhood bedroom in Madison.
Noted: The experience of dairy farmers like Peterson, who also was appointed to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018, is more complicated than the brief appearance at the convention might suggest.
The heads of the University of Wisconsin System, the Tavern League of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association sent an open letter to restaurant and bar owners Monday asking they take precautions to prevent COVID-19 spread as students start to return to campuses across the state.
UW System Interim President Tommy Thompson asked businesses to “help to encourage responsible behavior of our students,” alongside on-campus efforts to bring back a portion of some 170,000 students across 13 UW campuses.
Noted: Protests in Wisconsin’s capital city started around 9 p.m., drawing out hundreds of protestors who were largely peaceful. The group marched up and down State Street and other streets near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, drawing students into their ranks, according to tweets from Emily Hamer, a reporter with the Wisconsin State Journal.
Wisconsin doesn’t have the capacity to process the number of coronavirus tests health officials ideally want available when schools and college campuses reopen, Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm said Friday.
Quoted: “Face to face campaigning is a known positive … the positive on the Republican side is they know this can work. One of the negatives is that we don’t know that it works in a pandemic,” said Michael Wagner, a journalism professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in political communication and behavior.
It was 50 years ago, but Bob Shaffer hasn’t forgotten. It’s not something anyone who lived through could forget.
Quoted: “We were really, really close two years ago and then the number ticked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Sarah Paige, a former post-doctoral fellow from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who now works at the CORE Group Polio Project dedicated to eradicating the disease. In 2019, the number of polio cases rose to 94.
Noted: Harris briefly lived in Madison when she was young in the late 1960s. Her father, Donald Harris, was an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a breast cancer researcher there.
Laurie and Scott Dubin, along with their daughter Lindsay, stood outside a rented RV last Saturday with a heap of luggage.
They were about to start the 2,000-mile drive from the San Francisco Bay Area to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Lindsay would start her freshman year at her dream school in the middle of a pandemic.
“I hope school isn’t canceled from Saturday until then,” Laurie Dubin had said earlier that week.
The head of the University of Wisconsin System will propose its Board of Regents support a 3.5% increase to its 2021-23 state budget in the hope of funding several new initiatives, including a statewide free tuition scholarship program for some Wisconsin students.
Written by Robert N. Golden, MD, is dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Joseph E. Kerschner, MD is dean of the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
Quoted: But, Trump is still tailing Biden among Wisconsin’s voters. According to surveys from both the Marquette Law School and the UW-Madison Elections Research Center, Biden is holding a steady, five to six percent lead over Trump in the state.
“In 2016, Trump was the outsider and he was trying to take down Washington,” Burden said. “He was running against an establishment figure in Hilary Clinton and he pledged to go to Washington and ‘drain the swamp.’ Now, he’s governing and is serving as president in the swamp and has to still convince voters that he’s shaking things up, but still governing effectively.”
Noted: The College Democrats of the University of Wisconsin-Madison are hosting a series of remote, online watch parties this week for the convention with a plethora of political guests.
On Tuesday night, the group will be joined by former state Senate District 26 candidate Nada Elmikashfi and Madison Ald. Max Prestigiacomo, who is also a UW-Madison student.
Noted: UW-Madison had a virtual commencement this spring. It featured video appearances from administrators, students, athletes and author James Patterson, as well as a Camp Randall lights display and a carillon rendition of “On Wisconsin.” The university hopes to host a physical winter commencement in December and a larger in-person ceremony once the state emerges from the pandemic.
Noted: University of Wisconsin researchers have been testing volunteers this summer with a saliva test.
UW athletic director Barry Alvarez, speaking to reporters during a Zoom session last week, acknowledged the current inability to secure rapid test results played a role in the Big Ten’s decision to shut down fall sports in 2020.
Quoted: But raw numbers don’t always tell the whole story, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, a rise in cases can also be due to a rise in testing.
“If you think about something too simplistically, you can fall into the trap of believing something that is partially or maybe not even true at all,” Sethi said.
In a shaded parking lot on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, so-called spit concierges guide volunteers though giving a saliva sample. On the other side of the parking lot is a pared-down biology lab where scientists test the spit-filled plastic vials for the virus that causes COVID-19.
They’ll have the results within one or two hours.
Quoted: Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told PolitiFact Wisconsin voting policies in Wisconsin over the past decade — when Republicans have generally controlled state government — have had “a disproportionate impact on communities of color, as well as other vulnerable voting groups.”
But Mayer added he does “not see evidence that the (election officials) had the goal of disenfranchising Black voters” when reducing the number of Milwaukee polling places from 180 to five.
