University of Wisconsin officials are on schedule to address the contracts of winter sports coaches during the athletic board’s June 12 meeting.
Noted: Weeks passed without the expected surge of new patients. UW Health established two special units for people hospitalized with COVID-19, but no patients arrived. Staff waited.
“None of us have done this before,” said Ann Sheehy, a doctor there for 15 of her 46 years. “We had to create new processes.”
Sheehy helped build a large backup team of doctors and other clinic staff who don’t normally practice in the hospital but are certified to do so. They were offered special training and the chance to shadow hospital staff in preparation for COVID-19 duty.
Noted: Since there are no veterinary clinics in those areas, the Wisconsin Humane Society is working with the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine to offer tele-medicine appointments for sick and injured animals owned by Pets For Life participants, said Speed.
Widespread testing and temperature checks. Socially distanced classes and labs. Isolation protocols. Contact tracing and cellphone tracking devices. Hybrid in-person and online classes. Modified academic calendars.
Although University of Wisconsin officials still hope the UW football team will play its full 2020 schedule despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, they continue to work with season ticket holders unsure about attending games in the fall.
Noted: After he left the military Bakko earned a geology degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then joined the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s 105th Cavalry Regiment, serving from 2010 to 2016.
Noted: Although Halleman is a web developer by trade — he currently works at Watermark Insight in Milwaukee’s Third Ward — his time at UW-Madison was spent majoring in Spanish and international studies. Still, he said the pandemic motivated him to use the coding skills he picked up in his mid-20s to help others.
In their final weeks of medical school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jandal and his peers had seen the world turned upside down.
Quoted: Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease expert with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and medical director of infection control at UW Health, said the study addresses an important question, but cannot eliminate the possibility that other activities during the same time period might have been the real cause of cases.
“They did a pretty careful assessment of traffic during the period of interest, but these challenges remain with these kinds of studies,” Safdar said. “It’s association, but not causation.”
Oguzhan Alagoz, an expert in infectious disease modeling at UW-Madison, said he thinks a slight bump in COVID-19 cases after the election may be attributable to in-person voting.
Elections expert Barry Burden said he thought the partisan differences that voters expressed in the poll over voting-by-mail reflected the political debate that surfaced between the parties over the April election in Wisconsin, with Democratic politicians pushing for an all-mail election and Republican politicians opposing changes in the timing or conduct of the election.
President Donald Trump’s attacks on voting by-mail also fed the partisan debate.
But Burden expressed skepticism that the gap between how Democrats and Republicans choose to vote in November — whether by mail or in-person — will be as large as the poll suggests.
“It doesn’t reflect what we saw in the April 7 election (when) there was consistent but I would say modest differences between liberal and conservative voters in how they used mail ballots,” said Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the way elections are administered.
From Rebecca M. Blank is chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and chair of the Council of Presidents of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, a research, policy, and advocacy organization. Peter McPherson is president of APLU and former president of Michigan State University.
Quoted: How science, and those who communicate it, deal with changing sets of facts is an important question in a pandemic. Uncertainty must be clearly demonstrated and explained — or used in bad faith, according to Richard Keller, a professor of science history at UW-Madison.
“Scientists are comfortable with uncertainty — they don’t like it, they want to be certain — but they recognize that you’ll never be completely certain,” Keller says. “There’s a degree of comfort with uncertainty the general public doesn’t have. We want to know what we should likely do, what we have to do.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, which boasts an endowment of $3 billion, announced this week that it will accept $10 million in federal coronavirus relief. Wealthy universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have rejected millions of dollars in taxpayer funds in April after facing pressure from President Donald Trump and the public.
Quoted: “This may sound small at first, but it is the largest drop since World War II, as emissions have generally increased year-over-year, even during recessions,” Ankur Desai, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA TODAY.
The University of Wisconsin pulled off an awesome move for recent graduates.
With everybody needing to take online classes because of the coronavirus pandemic, students were robbed of the chance to enjoy a proper commencement.
The University of Wisconsin Madison is sitting on an endowment worth $3 billion and also will receive nearly $10 million in federal aid to help with profit losses from coronavirus — but it’s still not enough to handle an estimated $120 million budget shortfall looming for the flagship state university.
Quoted: These conditions are important to help understand who is most vulnerable to the disease and how to take protective measures, according to Dr. Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But Remington cautioned against “othering” people, thinking that COVID-19 is a problem affecting someone else.
“Remember, most Americans have comorbidities,” said Remington, a former CDC epidemiologist and now the director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at Madison. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think this is another person’s disease.”
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross says campuses will provide extensive COVID-19 testing for students, faculty and staff in hopes that campuses can resume in-person classes this fall.
Noted: Around 40% of all workers could theoretically earn more while unemployed than going back to work, according to an analysis by Noah Williams, director of the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Graduates and their loved ones tuned into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first ever virtual commencement ceremony Saturday.
This weekend I will graduate in my living room. I will turn my tassel for a Zoom audience full of loved ones and drink a bottle of champagne in honor of my ancestors. Then, I will assure everyone looking on that despite drastic changes in our reality, I am eternally grateful for the journey that led me to this point. We will dance and sing in our respective homes and get tipsy enough that the distance that separates us will shrink. And I will end the night as a 2020 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: To get started, McGinnis turned to the website of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s face shield project. It offered nearly everything his team needed, including a list of materials to make face shields and a pattern to use for assembly.
This was the weekend it begins: The celebratory season in which thousands of proud family members traditionally descend on campuses statewide to witness and revel in what for most is the academic accomplishment of a lifetime.
But this year, the campuses are largely empty.
It appears the University of Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez, Paul Chryst and Greg Gard are going to have to take one for the team.
The UW athletic department is implementing a “compensation and work reduction plan” in an effort to offset the losses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, a move that includes voluntary pay cuts for top-earning personnel such as Alvarez, the athletic director; Chryst, the head football coach; and Gard, the head men’s basketball coach.
In a special meeting Thursday of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, two board members whose terms expired on May 1 participated and voted in board proceedings.
Noted: American Girl’s lead designer for the Girl of the Year series, Rebecca DeKuiper, lived near Monona Terrace in 2014, and Walkowicz’s attorney believes she and other American Girl employees attended Walkowicz’s talk and were inspired to use Walkowicz as the basis for a new doll.
In October 2016, Walkowicz was back in Madison taking part in Space Place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and led activities for parents, and did more outreach in Trempealeau and LaCrosse.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents on Thursday held a special meeting Thursday, voting to waive test score requirements for incoming freshman, discussing campus reopening plans and providing an update to the search for the next UW System president.
On any list of the top 50 sports moments in the United States over the past 50 years, Miracle On Ice will inevitably be near the top, if not No. 1.
Quoted: “The question I have is why they should be going to court at all,” University of Wisconsin Law School constitutional law professor David Schwartz said. “(GOP lawmakers) are asking the court to basically rewrite this law — to turn it into something much narrower than it is.”
When Soyeon Shim was young, she wanted to be a teacher.
“I’d come home and gather all the kids in the neighborhood and play like we were at school and I was the teacher,” she says.
For a girl growing up in South Korea, there weren’t many other options. “Teacher or nurse,” Shim says. “But in the back of my mind, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.”
The leader of the University of Wisconsin System will unveil Thursday a three-part plan that radically re-imagines the network of schools that has been in place for a half-century.
Two months have passed since coronavirus first began major disruptions to American society, and the nation still lacks a clear timeline back to “normalcy.”
Noted: Pallen graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in communications arts and advertising. Beer was always in his bloodline — and, occasionally, his car.
Noted: EatStreet, co-founded by Howard in a University of Wisconsin-Madison dorm room in 2010, has around 150 employees in its Madison headquarters. More than 15,000 restaurants in 250 cities are on the platform.
Quoted: “The fact that we are not seeing those from one community cropping up in the other community suggests that the stay-at-home orders are working,” said David O’Connor, a UW professor of pathology and laboratory medicine.
Quoted: Tash and Brown’s comments get an endorsement from Kathleen Bartzen Culver, who directs the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
A government loan doesn’t automatically cause a conflict of interest, she said. But “I would . . . ask what [a] local news organization will do to counteract any potential conflict.” Her suggestion: “Any news organization that takes funds should report on that and reassure readers that they will continue to see fair, hard-hitting reporting, including on the government’s approach to an economy wrecked by an epidemic.”
Quoted: That non-verbal communication is complicated if a mask covers half of your face. If others are unable to see your mouth, they’re left to guess how you’re feeling, said Dr. Shilagh Mirgain, a health psychologist with the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
“When we don’t get that nonverbal feedback, we feel more distance from one another, [and] it makes the other person feel less safe,” she said.
Quoted: “In the end of the day, there is only the same number of people wiping their, um, you know what,” said Troy Runge, the chair of the biological systems engineering department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “The presence of a minor party candidate can affect who wins an election,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of its elections research center. “My research on prior minor party candidates for president indicates that between 25% and 60% of their support is from people who would not have voted.”
Quoted: Director of the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Sandra Newbury, who has been conducting research on how COVID-19 impacts animals, stressed that the news is no reason to panic.
“We really don’t want people to freak out in general,” Newbury said. “In fact, it looks like dogs are not very good hosts for the virus … Most dogs that have tested positive have been asymptomatic.”
Quoted: UW-Madison anticipated a freshmen class of roughly 7,300 students, nearly 3,700 of those students would be in state.
André Phillips, director of admissions and recruitment at UW-Madison, said they should be able to surpass the 7,300 students anticipated by at least 100.
“We’ll likely have several hundred students that we’ll work with throughout the month of May leading up to the June 1 deadline, and that’s pretty significant,” Phillips said.
Quoted: Song Gao, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been aggregating cell phone data that shows how far Wisconsinites are traveling each day as a way to understand if residents are following the state’s “Safer At Home” order. Gao said residents’ mobility has been reduced significantly in the past month, especially in urban areas like Dane and Milwaukee counties.
But he has seen increased movement around Wisconsin starting last week
“I think this is also linked with last week’s events. Like people started getting (outside) and also last Friday, they also had some protests outside the state Capitol,” Gao said.
Quoted: “You’ve certainly seen in places that stopped isolation measures too early — what the flu pandemic did in those places,” said Dr. James Conway, an infectious disease expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and a self-described history buff.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that contrary to government guidelines, asthma may not put a person at increased risk for severe COVID-19, but may, in fact, offer some protection against it.
Quoted: Jim Conway, an infectious disease expert and associate director for health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute, argued loosening restrictions regionally is a short-sighted idea.
“It’s like being in a swimming pool and having one area of the pool that it’s OK to pee in,” he said.
Conway said because the economy relies on travel in many sectors, there would be no way to ensure new cases weren’t brought to areas with few cases and few restrictions under a regional plan — especially in a state like Wisconsin with a lot of recreational tourism in rural areas.
University of Wisconsin officials do not expect to extend for the second time the deadline to buy season football tickets for 2020.
State campuses in Milwaukee and Madison unveiled more information on their plans to furlough employees this week, with the aim of mitigating the mounting financial fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.
Quoted: But James Conway, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute, called opening different regions of the state at different times “terrifying.”
“It’s almost like the least common denominator will prevail if you do start to allow certain areas to open more liberally and have other areas still confined because you know there’s going to be travel and transit between those places. And as we saw in the Green Bay area it doesn’t take much for something to go from a small number of cases to exponentially exploding in just a few short days,” said Conway, who supports Evers’ plan.
Quoted: “I think a lot of that first buying was people loading up and now I think that demand has decreased,” said Ronald Kean, a University of Wisconsin Extension poultry specialist. “Some of our large egg producers sell a lot of liquid eggs, but that has dropped off because that’s mostly used by restaurants and schools.”
Quoted: “It’s pretty clear that pushing the economy to go back to work before coronavirus is brought under control is going to be like being in a vehicle and pushing on the accelerator and the brake at the same time,” said Ian Coxhead, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Misleading people by providing real information divorced from necessary context is not a unique strategy, said Dave Schroeder, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who tracks disinformation on social media.
He’s been following how public health information on the COVID-19 pandemic is being “attacked by actors with an agenda” and twisted to suit certain narratives.
Noted: Aaron Olver is managing director of University Research Park in Madison. He is the former state Secretary of Commerce under former Gov. Jim Doyle.
Quoted: “It’s tempting to attribute that higher-than-expected number of cases to the election, but I think we have to be cautious,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, a former CDC epidemiologist and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s virtually impossible to know whether that relationship is cause and effect.”
Oguzhan Alagoz, a professor of industrial engineering and infectious disease modeling expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he expected to see a spike in cases. But data from Milwaukee and Madison, he said, have shown only modest increases in coronavirus cases.
Noted: DJ Shawna, the official DJ for the Milwaukee Bucks and University of Wisconsin Badgers, said sticking to a routine is key to helping her get through this time.
“I wake up every morning around the same time, work out, meditate, and then tackle my project for the day,” she said. “I have been learning new DJ and production skills, making mixes, recording podcasts, reaching out to friends and family via FaceTime, reading, and making sure I get outside (safely) at least once a day.”
She is sharing her skills by legally live-streaming DJ sets and is raising money for Key to Change, which helps homeless families and individuals.
The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball program, which lost two members of its extended family last May, suffered another blow this month.
Noted: Born in Milwaukee in 1940, Miller was in Nicolet High School’s first graduating class in 1958. After earning a degree in drama and speech at the University of Wisconsin, he moved to Los Angeles to find a job in film and television. His first big break was serving as dialogue coach for legendary director Billy Wilder, in what effectively became a four-year apprenticeship.
If the WIAA decides to have a spring sports season, it won’t be able to host the state championships planned at the University of Wisconsin as originally scheduled.
In conservation circles, a litmus test for decisions often is expressed in a question: What would Aldo do (WWAD)?
Aldo is of course Aldo Leopold, the late, great University of Wisconsin professor, pioneer of wildlife management and supreme observer of nature and humankind.
The University of Wisconsin System released initial estimates on the cost of the coronavirus pandemic Sunday: $168 million across the state’s 13 campuses as of April 10.
In a move that wasn’t surprising, University of Wisconsin officials announced last week they had canceled all Badgers sports camps through Aug. 15.
That move, made in response to the coronavirus pandemic, will make evaluating recruits more difficult for UW coaches.
