If Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann had his way, his county would have one college campus.
Students currently have two local options: the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Washington County or the West Bend campus of Moraine Park Technical College.
The UW System Board of Regents voted last week to raise tuition prices by an average of 4.9% (or $404) across all 13 universities and 26 campuses in Wisconsin. Room and board rates will increase too, by an average of 3.5%, resulting in an overall 4.2% (or $706) increase for all in-state students.
The Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities held a more than four hour meeting on Thursday in an attempt to find ways the Legislature can facilitate free expression on the state’s public university campuses.
Republican state lawmakers questioning whether a lack of political diversity on college campuses is hurting education discussed possible fixes — like considering political affiliation when hiring professors — during a legislative hearing Thursday. The meeting follows a University of Wisconsin System student free speech survey that found a majority of conservative respondents reported self-censoring views in class.
An hour before the polls closed on Tuesday, Teddy Landis was standing outside a freshman dining hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, trying to encourage students who hadn’t voted yet to cast their ballots.
Written by Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs.
The Field Day Lab in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research is creating online video games to be used as learning tools for students. We talk to Sarah Gagnon, creative director for the Field Day Lab in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the UW–Madison School of Education, about their latest games and how they work.
Noted: Considered by many to be the father of wildlife ecology and the United States’ wilderness system, the Iowa-born Aldo Leopold was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose non-fiction book, A Sand County Almanac (1949), helped inspire and inform the environmental movement.
Quoted: Both referendums to change the state’s bail policies passed with nearly 70% in favor. Howard Schweber, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the changes take effect right away.
“There will need to be a drafting of a formal version of the rules we put in the legislative record, but there’s no reason not to take much time at all,” Schweber said.
It’s officially spring, and the robins are out. So are many other Wisconsin birds. Stanley Temple, an ornithologist and professor emeritus in conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells us what species we can expect to see this season.
Quoted: What if there were a dispute over the Legislature’s handling of an impeachment? Then the Wisconsin Supreme Court would decide, as it has in other states, said Miriam Seifter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor.
“An impeachment that immediately follows a free and fair election is not a sign of a healthy democracy,” Seifter said. “Absent allegations of corruption or crime, impeaching a judge who just won a resounding electoral victory would show a troubling disregard for the will of the voters.”
Quoted: While nearly unheard of, Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the old norms of how Wisconsin government operates have fallen away since former Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation, followed by the recall election in 2011.
“The series of steps both parties — but especially Republicans — have taken shows the Legislature plays hardball,” Burden said. “Republicans, in their majority for the last 12 years, have not been shy about exploring what tools are available to them and trying to push them as far as possible.”
Noted: Roychowdhury served as a research assistant while a doctorate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his degree in May 2022. “He is no longer affiliated with the university,” a spokesperson with UW-Madison said Thursday.
Quoted: “Housing right now is unlike 2008, when we overstimulated housing demand, and that drove up housing prices. Now, housing is expensive because there’s an inadequate supply,” said Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “There are two parts to the discussion about bail in Wisconsin,” University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Adam Stevenson said. “One is what, if any, cash is required for release and the other is what conditions or rules do folks have to follow when they are out in the community on bail.”
Quoted: Lawmakers can use the results to gauge public opinion on an issue and inform policy decisions, according to state documents. However, referendums have been increasingly used by both political parties, particularly with non-partisan spring elections, which don’t usually generate great voter turnout, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“These elections just don’t generate the same level of media coverage or public discussion so these gimmicks are one way to get the attention of the voter,” Burden said. “The effect on overall turnout probably won’t be great, but in Wisconsin, most people assume elections are going to be close, so even a change in the balance of things by a percentage point or two could tip the race and tip the balance of the Supreme Court itself.”
Quoted: While nearly unheard of, Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said the old norms of how Wisconsin government operates have fallen away since Former Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation followed by the recall election in 2011.
“The series of steps both parties — but especially Republicans have taken — shows the Legislature plays hardball,” Burden said. “Republicans, in their majority for the last 12 years, have not been shy about exploring what tools are available to them and trying to push them as far as possible.”
The leader of the social media and adolescent research team at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, Dr. Megan Moreno, says conversations about social media best practices need to include teenagers.
The Senate voted last week to repeal the authorizations for the use of military force in Iraq, and President Biden has indicated he would sign it. We talk to John Hall, a U.S. military policy expert and associate pofessor of U.S. military history at UW-Madison, about what the repeal would mean and how these authorizations work.
The UW-Madison Center for Communication and Civic Renewal released a new survey measuring political divides and common ground in Wisconsin. We talk to the Mike Wagner, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the group’s faculty director, about the results and the path forward.
Madison’s political landscape is shifting and its common council is looking much younger.
More and more young Wisconsinites find themselves not only running for, but sitting in Madison Common Council seats. Some said their interests piqued while enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When Barry Alvarez decided he was ready to leave his post at Notre Dame and accept the challenge of taking over the University of Wisconsin football program, one of the men he targeted to join his first UW staff was Bernie Wyatt.
“Under the law, you’re not supposed to use cash to keep people detained. Cash bond is always supposed to be just a way of making sure people are complying with the rules to decide if they actually are guilty or not,” said Cecelia Klingele, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “The idea is if you have money, you get to be out pending release, and if you don’t have money, you’re stuck, and so we should set high bonds that people can’t meet. In fact, under existing law — U.S. and state law — you have to set reasonable bonds in amounts that people are expected to be able to pay. People are supposed to be out pending release. And we use conditions to keep everyone safe, not money, which has disparate effects on different people.”
The growing research into PFAs contamination finds sources in everyday consumer goods like toilet paper and traces PFAs into Green Bay and the Great Lakes. We talk to Christy Remucal, is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Water Science and Engineering Laboratory at UW-Madison, about where we’re finding PFAs in Wisconsin’s waters.
When it comes to adjusting for warmer water, some fish are defying expectations. We talk to Olaf Jensen, an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Center for Limnology at UW-Madison.
Health outcomes are not even across Wisconsin’s 72 counties, and even the healthiest counties have sharp disparities, with Black residents far more likely to die prematurely, according to new data from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Population Health Institute.
Noted: Although the badger has long been associated with Wisconsin and shows up in things like the coat of arms, state seal and as the University of Wisconsin’s mascot, students in four Jefferson County elementary schools were shocked to find the badger wasn’t the official state animal; in 1957, they lobbied to get a bill introduced to declare the badger to be the state animal.
“Ads are rarely pulled in races even when they’re really controversial,” said Michael Wagner, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor who directs the school’s Center for Communication and Civic Renewal.
“It’s not common for a candidate to ask for an ad to get pulled. But it’s uncommon for it to happen in a race,” Wagner said.
Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, attributed Protasiewicz’s fundraising haul, in part, to a national network of donors Democrats have had better success than Republicans in creating in recent years.
“Democrats have generally built up more national infrastructure to promote fundraising for candidates across the country,” Burden said.
Two new reports from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention detail infant and maternal mortality rates in the U.S. We talk with Tiffany Green, a reproductive health expert and assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, about what needs to be done to save the lives of mothers and their babies.
In-state undergraduate students in the University of Wisconsin System will see the first tuition hike since Republican state lawmakers instituted a tuition freeze a decade ago.
The UW System Board of Regents on Thursday approved the tuition hike with 16 members voting in favor and one voting against. Regents Héctor Colón and Jennifer Staton were not present. The average increase of 5 percent comes as a GOP bill aims to limit the board’s tuition setting authority once again.
Noted: A report from University of Wisconsin-Extension found that while the number of veterans in Wisconsin is declining, spending on veteran services by the U.S. Department of Veterans Administration, or VA, is increasing.
Steven Deller, a professor of applied and agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the report, said those funds return federal tax dollars to the state and inject money into local economies.
“We tend to lose money to Washington,” Deller said. “Making sure that the veterans that are in the state are taking full advantage of all the benefits that are offered to them is one way of getting some of that money back into the state.”
The board overseeing Wisconsin’s public university system voted Thursday to increase tuition for in-state undergraduates.
It’s the first rate increase since 2012, a move craved by University of Wisconsin System campuses that have operated under financial strain for years and opposed by students who already take out tens of thousands of dollars to earn their degrees.
Quoted: On the other side of the debate is Mark Seidenberg, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the leading scientists cited by advocates for the science of reading. Seidenberg said there is a large volume of research that sheds light on how children learn to read and that supports the science of reading approach.
Can using such approaches raise the overall success of kids in becoming readers? “I think it’s huge,” Seidenberg said in an interview.
Noted: Cloutier received an award for her efforts, and a photo was published in the newspaper. She left Manitowoc to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, married Daniel Cloutier and moved to northern California.
“There’s two parts to the discussion about bail in Wisconsin,” University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Adam Stevenson said. “One is what, if any, cash is required for release and the other is what conditions or rules do folks have to follow when they are out in the community on bail.”
Referendums are increasingly being used by both political parties, particularly with nonpartisan spring elections, which don’t usually generate great voter turnout, said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.
“These elections just don’t generate the same level of media coverage or public discussion so these gimmicks are one way to get the attention of the voter,” Burden said. “The effect on overall turnout probably won’t be great, but in Wisconsin, most people assume elections are going to be close, so even a change in the balance of things by a percentage point or two could tip the race and tip the balance of the Supreme Court itself.”
Quoted: Howard Schweber, a professor of political science and law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Kelly’s connections send a message to conservative voters and groups.
“He has all of that background that, without him having to say anything, tells those interests that he is their guy,” Schweber said. “And in a way that frees him to be able to afford to run as a traditional conservative or even traditional judge … trusting that those more ideological voters will understand that this is just advertising.”
Noted: Donohue, who is seventy-three years old and has curly chestnut hair, grew up in Sheboygan. She has been a community-minded activist since high school, when she won the Young American Medal for Service, which L.B.J. put around her neck in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. After college, she and a friend took a ten-month trip across the country in a 1960 Volkswagen bus that they called the “flying tomato,” and then she applied to an auto-mechanics program at a technical college and to the University of Wisconsin Law School. She was rejected by the technical college but got accepted to law school. She eventually returned to Sheboygan to work on cases involving domestic-violence victims, tenant disputes, and disability benefits, among other things.
Republicans on the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities announced on Tuesday they’d be holding a series of hearings about free speech and “intellectual diversity” on Wisconsin’s public university campuses.
Quoted: “There seems to be an intense interest on the ideological left, especially among various pro-choice groups, to focus on this race,” said Michael Wagner, who studies elections and media at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Born Helen Celia Schubert in Wisconsin, Schubert grew up outside Cedarburg, just north of Milwaukee. She received a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and journalism in 1952 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also wrote for the student newspaper.
Ozaukee County ranks the healthiest in Wisconsin and Menominee is the least healthy county in the state, according to new data from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute released on Wednesday, March 29.
A Republican legislator who has accused colleges of “indoctrinating students” will hold hearings next month on whether a lack of what he calls “intellectual diversity” at UW System campuses is hurting the quality of education. The push follows a campus free speech survey that found some conservative students reported self-censoring views in class.
Noted: Students should also be prepared for the possibility of deferment, especially at early action colleges, as some schools are experiencing record application volume and are deferring a larger number of students than usual. For example, University of Wisconsin-Madison deferred 17,000 of its 45,000 early action applicants, while Clemson University delivered deferment messages to 15,000 of its 26,000 early applicants.
Written by Manuel P. Teodoro, an associate professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Teodoro studies water sector management, regulation, and finance.
University of Wisconsin–Madison researcher and assistant professor Nick Buttrick studies the psychological relationship that millions of Americans have with their guns. Buttrick’s research builds on the historical record to show that in the U.S.—the only country with more civilian firearms than people—white Southerners started cultivating the tradition of the home arsenal immediately after the Civil War because of insecurities and racial fears. During the rest of the 19th century, those anxieties metamorphosized into a fetishization of the firearm to the point that, in the present day, gun owners view their weapons as adding meaning and a sense of purpose to their lives.
Scientific American spoke with Buttrick about the psychological roots of the gun culture that has contributed to the more than 100 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. so far this year.
DNA found in a half-eaten burrito helped exposed a former Wisconsin university research assistant now accused of firebombing a pro-life center last Mother’s Day.
Quoted: If the U.S. is unwilling to help unemployed parents, then it should make a far greater effort to ensure that parenting and work are compatible. Expanding funding for the child-care-subsidy program to meet the needs of eligible families would be a great place to start, said Alejandra Ros Pilarz, who studies working families with low incomes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We have to look for solutions both on the child-care side and on the employment side,” Pilarz said.
Noted: After college at UW-Madison, they went on different career paths. Kirsten went into the family restoration business, Ungerman, while Lindsey spent 12 years in corporate America at Target. Then came an offer.
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed banning employers from requiring workers to sign non-compete agreements. The FTC argues they suppress wages by $300 billion annually and prevent 30 million Americans from pursuing career opportunities. Martin Ganco, a professor in the Department of Management and Human Resources at the Wisconsin School of Business and an expert on non-competes, joins us.
We caught up with the acclaimed ethologist and conservationist before her talk on UW-Madison’s campus, where she reflected on her time in Tanzania and our shared climate future.
Noted: The planned closure of the plant has left dozens of Virginia chicken growers scrambling to find new buyers in a region with few other options. It could also expose Tyson to fines under the century-old Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA), the U.S. antitrust law requiring the minimum advance warning, according to Peter Carstensen, a professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School who previously served in the antitrust division at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Quoted: Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that Poland “does feel seriously threatened” by Russia’s potential victory in Ukraine, compounded by Russian ground forces moving closer to Polish territory.
“That said, I have not seen Poland advocating a forward-leaning or risk-taking offensive posture vis-à-vis Russia or Russian forces operating in Ukraine,” Troitskiy said.
Quoted: Nick Hillman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education, said he thinks Biden’s forgiveness program would be a net positive.
“Our student loan repayment system has been shut off for three years and it’s already a pretty rusty machine in the first place,” Hillman said.
Once we resume those payments, it’ll leave many people worse off, he explained.
“So cancellation would help in that transition period,” he added.
Noted: While the program was initially funded through a partnership between the city and the county, the city has taken on the program on its own since, with the support of a grant from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Partnership Program.
Quoted: Ajay Sethi, professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the free at-home tests are not only convenient but have been critical in making sure there’s equitable access to testing.
“Not everybody can afford tests if there was a charge for them,” he told Wisconsin Public Radio in February. “So they should continue to play a role. And it’s our job as a society to continue to promote COVID testing, because knowledge of your status of being infected with COVID goes a long way in taking the right steps to prevent spreading that virus to other people.”
Noted: Cao, 54, a research scientist at the University of Kansas, graduated from medical school in China and practiced internal medicine for a decade before immigrating to the U.S. with her family in 2006. Meanwhile, Liu, 26, is a current student at the Medical College of Wisconsin and is expected to graduate this May.
Last week, Cao learned she would be headed to the clinical pathology residency program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison while Liu learned he had matched with the radiation oncology residency program at the University of Pennsylvania in his hometown of Philadelphia.
We talk with Giri Venkataramanan, the Keith and Jane Morgan Nosbusch professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium, about the state of the U.S. power grid, the influence of climate change on its future and a solution being explored at UW-Madison.
The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention warns they’ve seen an increase in the potentially dangerous, drug-resistant fungus Candida aurus. We speak with Dr. David Andes, a UW Health infectious disease physician and Division chief for infectious disease at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, about maintaining sterile facilities and staying safe.
