For most of February, the Black Cultural Center was hard at work with creating the University of Wisconsin’s Black History Month, and with the help of their student-run planning committee, this year was one for the books.
They were the longest five seconds of his life.
University of Wisconsin wide receiver Quintez Cephus stood inside a Madison, Wis., courtroom six months ago, on trial for two sexual assault charges. As Judge William Hanrahan prepared to read the verdict, a bevy of thoughts suddenly raced through Cephus’ mind.
As the coronavirus continues to spread, the University of Wisconsin canceled its study abroad program to South Korea for the coming Spring semester.
A UW spokesperson, John Lucas, told NBC15 the university’s Vice Provost and Dean of the International Division made the call after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised its Warning Level to 3, which warns people to avoid nonessential travel to the Asian nation.
Quoted: Yang Sao Xiong, a professor of Asian-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says Hmong history as war allies of the U.S. military has long shaped the way the community sees itself. But the story of broader Hmong acceptance in the U.S. has never been simple.
“There are times when they are treated as citizens,” Xiong said. “And there are times when they’re treated as, clearly, outsiders. So this relationship fluctuates depending on this larger political context.”
We talk with a UW-Madison professor about his effort to take the political pulse of three battleground states, including Wisconsin. Then we chat with the producer of the Emmy-winning Beat Making Lab about Afrofuturism.
Appleton native and University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna Brenda Rae will be singing the role of Poppea in Handel’s opera “Agrippina” on Saturday at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The performance will be broadcast live over the NPR News and Classical Music Network of WPR beginning at 1 p.m. that day. It will also be live streamed at many movie theaters around Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has asked two students studying abroad in South Korea to return to the U.S. as a precaution due to the coronavirus outbreak there.
Noted: According to “The Dictionary of American Regional English,” the massive dialect dictionary produced over half a century at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,one of the first uses of “bubbler” in connection with a drinking fountain was in material from Kohler Co. in Sheboygan County in 1914, citing a Kohler fountain that was “fitted with … nickel-plated brass self-closing bubbling valve … adjustable for a continuous flow of water. … Can also furnish … continuous flow bubbler with above fountain.”
Note that it’s an adjective there, not a noun.
Joan Houston Hall, former chief editor of the dictionary, told Wisconsin Public Radio in 2015 that “bubbler” usage “mirrors the marketing area of the Kohler Company of 1918 or so,” chiefly in eastern Wisconsin, and especially in the southeastern corner of the state.
Noted: The clinic is a partnership between Gee’s Clippers and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and is supported by the city’s Health Department, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and others.
Quoted: Ajay K. Sethi, associate professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was more certain about the possibility.
“Right now there has been confirmed asymptomatic transmission,” he said. “We just don’t know how much of the spread is being driven by people who are asymptomatic.”
Noted: Holzman worked there after school and on weekends. When he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1953, Holzman’s career as a full-time furrier began. He took over the business from his dad in 1972.
Tight end Luke Benzschawel has played his final football game for the University of Wisconsin.
The graduate of Grafton High School announced via Twitter on Monday he has decided to quit playing because of lingering issues with his surgically repaired right knee.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Friday waived the last of a former student’s debt and announced plans to add staff training on how to help students with residency issues.
Noted: Heiden said afterward he didn’t relish the idea of being on cereal boxes or other forms of publicity. He did what he could to return to a quiet life and obtained his medical degree. He first attended the University of Wisconsin and then completed his undergrad work at Stanford University before completing his medical degree in 1991. He became an orthopedist like his father, Jack Heiden.
Noted: Assembly lawmakers early Friday also approved a bill that would require the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study dangerous long-lasting chemicals in groundwater and soil and mandates the Department of Natural Resources to develop standards to use to certify labratories to test for such chemicals.
Noted: In the UW-Madison survey, there was a lot less separation among the three states, with Trump essentially even or modestly behind in matchups with most Democrats. Of the three, Pennsylvania was the worst state for Trump in the Quinnipiac polls. Michigan was the worst for Trump in the UW-Madison polls.
“All three states are up for grabs in 2020,” said Barry Burden, political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Elections Research Center.
Noted: Enjoyiana Nururdin, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was upset that there weren’t any people of color on the university’s Homecoming committee, this year and the lack thereof showed. The committee released a promotional video for Homecoming with no black students featured. Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. – an African-American organization, were interviewed and tagged in the video, but their clip was not shown.
“We apologize that the video gave only a partial representation of the UW-Madison student body,” said Tod Pritchard, Director, Media and Public Relations for the Wisconsin Foundation & Alumni Association, who currently sponsors the UW’s student Homecoming Committee. “We established new review and oversight protocols for marketing and communication pieces of student-sponsored work and we are committed to creating a workforce and culture in which all perspectives are reflected.”
Noted: Research for the project was done in partnership with the California-based Human Impact Partners and with UW-Madison professors Geoffrey Swain and Marah Curtis.
Noted: The late Cheryl Rosen Weston, a law professor at UW-Madison, made a significant donation to support the program, but the United Way did not disclose the amount.
Noted: Noah Williams is the founding director of the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He expects automation to have a more prominent role in Wisconsin manufacturing as companies continue to face worker shortages.
Quoted: Those rivals have increasingly moved into selling home furnishings and merchandise that were once virtually the exclusive domain of Pier 1, according to Hart Posen, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin.
“You’d see something in someone’s house—a wicker-rattan chair or an elephant-themed umbrella holder—and know it came from Pier 1,” Mr. Posen said. “You could buy it at Pier 1 or nowhere, but that’s just not the case anymore.”
University of Wisconsin officials on Friday released ticket information for the Badgers’ non-conference football game against Notre Dame on Oct. 3 at Lambeau Field.
A former student of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee says the school inaccurately listed her as an out-of-state student, a decision that has crushed her financially and emotionally, and all but ended her goal of getting a degree.
As a public radio listener, you’re probably familiar with the theme song for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” It’s had a few variations over the decades.
But did you know it was originally composed in Madison in 1971?
It was written by Don Voegeli, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and the longtime music director at WHA (now known as Wisconsin Public Radio).
Noted: The 2012 University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Science graduate joined the guard 3½ years ago because she wanted to serve in the military. There are no veterinarian jobs in the Wisconsin National Guard — only in the reserves and active duty military — so she opted to enlist as a medic.
Instead of just hanging up or letting the calls go to voicemail, Barry Orton attempts to shame phone scammers into seeking another line of work.
The retired University of Wisconsin-Madison telecom professor gets the usual mix of calls peddling everything from back braces to extended car warranties. When it’s a scam and there’s a real person on the line and not a robot, he makes the call a bit personal.
“I tell them that their parents or grandparents would be ashamed if they knew what they were doing. And can’t they get an honest job?” Orton says.
Construction work on three capital projects designed to improve the Kohl Center, Camp Randall Stadium and the University of Wisconsin Field House is set to begin soon.
Quoted: There has been a resurgence of interest among educators in recent years, driven in part by people like Mark Seidenberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist whose 2017 book “Language at the Speed of Sight” argued that the current approaches to reading instruction were out of sync with the latest research into how children learn.
Speaking at the Capitol Wednesday, Seidenberg said DPI “has done little to address literacy issues that have existed for decades.”
“We know the best ways to teach children to read,” he said. “Wisconsin is simply not using them, and our children are suffering.”
Quoted: Among those who spoke was Mark Eppli, director of the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When Eppli came to Marquette, he had dinner with Daniels, then a professor in the economics department. Their friendship blossomed from there.
As interim dean from 2012-’15, Eppli used Daniels as an assistant dean. He described Daniels as “extraordinarily thoughtful.”
“As an economist, he was always thinking of the unintended consequence of an action,” Eppli said. “He was a perfect person to be the dean. He was a servant leader looking to take care of others first.”
Get pumped because Bill Nye, who you should all know as the Science Guy, is coming to UW-Madison April 21.
The science educator, mechanical engineer and author will lead a conversation about one of the most pressing issues of our time: climate change.
Target released a statement apologizing for some misprinted onesies bearing the name “Minnesota Badgers” in the familiar University of Minnesota maroon and gold, releasing a statement to WCCO-TV.
“Color us red,” the statement began. “As a Minnesota-based company, we know we are home to the Gophers.”
Russia has always seen Ukraine as its own backyard and sphere of influence, said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Yoshiko Herrera. When Ukraine considered having a relationship with the European Union, though not joining the EU, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials got nervous.
This was a day to reminisce, to celebrate the past and to honor a coach and a group of players who helped lay the foundation for the heights the Wisconsin men’s basketball program has since reached.
The abrupt resignation of Erik Helland, the strength and conditioning coach for the Wisconsin men’s basketball team for the last six-plus seasons, appears to have hit the players hard.
Quoted: Robert Drechsel, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in media law and constitutional issues, said the agency is free to ask the reporter not to publish but cannot legally compel them to do so.
“I don’t know how common it is for a Wisconsin state agency to tell a reporter to ‘cease and desist’ and threaten prosecution this way. No other examples come to mind in all the years I’ve lived in Wisconsin,” Drechsel said after reviewing the agency’s letter to NBC News. “Any formal legal cease and desist order issued against the news media would be a prior restraint that is almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Among the thousands of voters flagged to be possibly removed from Wisconsin’s voter rolls are two state lawmakers, a cabinet secretary, a Milwaukee County supervisor and a former University of Wisconsin chancellor.
Election officials in October asked more than 230,000 people to update their voter registrations because they believed they had moved. The letters triggered an ongoing legal battle over whether the recipients should be quickly taken off the rolls.
Among those who were targeted were Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam; Rep. David Crowley, D-Milwaukee; Workforce Development Secretary Caleb Frostman; Milwaukee County Supervisor Sequanna Taylor and former UW Extension Chancellor Cathy Sandeen.
Pewaukee High School and University of Wisconsin product J.J. Watt gave comedy a swing as host of Saturday Night Live on Feb. 1, and it was a pretty successful debut in the late-night showcase.
The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is looking at potential layoffs in the wake of a “drastic” decline in enrollment this fall that resulted in almost 500 fewer students than the fall of the year before.
Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order Wednesday creating a task force to research the mounting pressure student debt places on Wisconsin college students, which some say has reached crisis levels — not just in the state but nationwide.
In a promo for his hosting gig on this Saturday’s “Saturday Night Live,” Pewaukee native and former University of Wisconsin Badgers star J.J. Watt gets a “test” from “SNL” regular Kyle Mooney.
In the wake of news that Kobe King was leaving the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team, another prominent player to move on from the Badgers program chimed in with some thoughts in a Twitter exchange.
Noted: Red Arrow first welcomed campers in 1922, with the boys taking trains from Milwaukee and Chicago. To help launch the camp, Razz brought on Paul Waterman, the business manager for MCD, as his co-director, and Rollie Williams, the University of Wisconsin’s first nine-letter athlete, as the athletic program director. For counselors, he hired athletic young men from MCD and UW.
Quoted: “I think his perspective is overlooking all of the work that has been done on coronaviruses,” since SARS, said Robert N. Kirchdoerfer, assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“One of the challenges with designing vaccines for emerging viruses is that it is incredibly difficult to predict which virus is going to cause the next outbreak.”
Noted:
Conor Williams, an economist and policy analyst from Community Advocates, hosted the panel featuring Sylvester Jackson, a community organizer for EX-incarcerated People Organizing; Christine Apple, chief psychologist at Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ Milwaukee Community Corrections; Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor; and Carr.
Klingele said a piecemeal release of prisoners won’t reduce prison costs.
“There will be no cost savings anywhere unless we shut down prisons, and that is going to take large-scale change,” she said.
Quoted: Keith Findley, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who co-founded the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said that when physicians work in concert to shape the message sent to investigators, “it undermines the legal system’s access to full truth.”
“What they’re really doing is shaping the evidentiary record, and in fact deliberately hiding from the legal system inconsistent opinions that might be useful to the legal fact finders who are working to determine what actually happened,” Findley said. “It’s deeply problematic.”
Noted: America’s education desert zones are generally less populated than those with easy access to a college, with the average population of a commuting zone desert approximately 72,100, according to a study done by Nicholas Hillman and Taylor Weichman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But not all are — 15 commuting zone deserts across the nation have populations of more than 250,000.
Noted: Stewart basically pulled back from entertainment work after leaving his gig hosting “The Daily Show” in 2015. But in 2017, he reached out to Kathy Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and author of “The Politics of Resentment,” to get insights on the political climate in Wisconsin for a possible feature film.
Cramer’s book, published in mid-2016, looks at the role disaffected rural voters had in Wisconsin’s shift to the right after the Great Recession — a shift that some believe contributed to Donald Trump’s winning the state in 2016.
Six students at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, who were all recently in Wuhan, China, epicenter for the new coronavirus, are being monitored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — though none has shown signs of the respiratory disease.
Gerald Whitburn, who served for nearly 10 years across two terms on the University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents, resigned Thursday, effective immediately.
Noted: Before she was a mathematician, before she earned a doctorate in abstract algebra at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before she began teaching math at Carthage College in Kenosha, Jensen was a little girl learning to knit from her grandmother.
Noted: Madison officials also work with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to recruit college students — in friendly competition with the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which had the highest voter turnout in the midterms of the largest public universities in the nation.
When she was 8 years old, Mae Jemison looked to the world’s first astronauts venturing into space and asked: “What happens if the aliens only see these guys and they think that everybody on Earth is a buzz-cut-haired white male?”
Decades later, Jemison would remedy that quandary on her own by becoming the first woman of color to go to space.
Quoted: A nominating committee of about 30 artists, scholars and record industry insiders draws up the ballot each year. Craig Werner was on that committee for 18 years. An Emeritus professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Werner is also a music writer and he has no problem with the nomination process.
“The issues are much more what happens to that ballot once it goes to the larger electorate,” Werner says. Then he sighs. “Well, I’m just going to say it: I think that the electorate makes dumb decisions on a regular basis.”
Noted: Separately, Lucas is a senior writer for UWBadgers.com, and has been a color commentator on University of Wisconsin football and men’s basketball games.
Despite a one-point loss to Oregon in the Rose Bowl, Wisconsin finished in the top 15 of both major polls.
The Badgers (10-4) finished No. 13 in the Amway coaches poll and No. 11 in The Associated Press poll.
Noted: After Kolb told Kanarowski-Peterson it looked like blister beetle poisoning, she began picking through the alfalfa hay and found what looked like beetles. Samples were sent to PJ Liesch, an extension entomologist and director of the Insect Diagnostic Lab at UW-Madison.
While Liesch has seen blister beetles in Wisconsin yards on occasion — usually in late spring or early summer — it’s a “fleeting phenomenon” for a few days, and he’s not aware of any other cases of beetles being found in hay in Wisconsin.
“Overall I would say that (blister beetles) are not uncommon if you know when and where to look for them,” he said. “To have them occur in hay or animal feed, that seems to be a very rare occurrence.”
In the latest sign that virtually everything is politically divisive, the location of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 14 campaign rally has become something of an issue because it bears the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s name and its Panther mascot.
Quoted: Howard Erlanger, a University of Wisconsin law professor, said that while an 11th-hour claim may raise eyebrows it could be legitimate.
“It’s not implausible as a fraud but it’s also not implausible as a genuine story,” Erlanger said.
Noted: It touted efforts it plans to focus on over the coming years, such as developing a program in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin to assist farmers to reduce leaching nitrates from fertilizer into groundwater. The report also noted the administration had started a program to monitor water chemistry and fish tissue near sites contaminated with PFAS.
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.
