“As a physician, I believe that these deaths are almost completely preventable,” said Bill Kinsey, a physician and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Until we determine as a society the importance of a human right for people to work in healthy situations, we are going to see continued illness and death in this population.”
“The whole thing is unusual. It’s unusual that the elections commissioners themselves would divide, three to three, on whether to reappoint the administrator,” said Barry Burden, an elections expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So there’s a kind of a legal ambiguity now that didn’t exist before. But it seems to allow Megan Wolfe to stay in her position beyond her term, something that probably wouldn’t have been possible a year ago.”
The University of Wisconsin Madison will absorb the bulk of a state funding cut this year. And despite the first increase in tuition costs for Wisconsin undergraduates in more than a decade, most other campuses face budget deficits and will pull from reserves.
There’s been a flurry of headlines throughout the summer about the University of Wisconsin System’s finances. It culminated Tuesday with the UW Board of Regents unanimously approving a budget that has 10 of the 13 campuses projected to run deficits this school year.
Noted: In addition, Haley received the maximum donation of $6,600 from Continental Properties CEO James Schloemer and President Daniel Minahan. Former University of Wisconsin System Regent Scott Beightol also chipped in $3,300.
The nonprofit National Young Farmers Coalition surveyed more than 4,300 farmers ages 40 and younger in 2022, with the help of the University of Wisconsin Survey Center. The biggest challenge faced by current, former and aspiring young farmers: finding land.
Ketamine has emerged as a therapeutic option for treatment-resistant depression and other mental health conditions. We talk to Cody Wenthur, an assistant professor at UW-Madison’s School of Pharmacy and director of the school’s new Psychoactive Pharmaceutical Investigation master’s program, about how it works and why ketamine clinics have popped up across Wisconsin.
Two more University of Wisconsin System campuses are looking to furloughs, retirement incentives and layoffs to address combined budget deficits of around $15 million.
The latest announcements from UW-Parkside and UW-Platteville come just more than one month after Republican state lawmakers included a $32 million cut to the UW System in a state budget signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
NFL running back Dare Ogunbowale played four sports at his high school in Milwaukee, but golf wasn’t one of them.
He started getting into golf during his time at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was something he could do away from football. Before college, “golf just wasn’t even a thought.”
Andrea Dutton, a professor of geology and sedimentologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is leading international research on climate change. Her work focuses on studying fossilized corals to track changes in sea level. It’s helping scientists better understand the impact of rising temperatures.
“A lot of what I do is reconstruct past sea levels during warm periods so that we can understand how high sea level gets as temperatures rise and how quickly those ice sheets retreat,” Dutton said.
The number of University of Wisconsin System campuses considering furloughs and layoffs to close budget gaps this school year continues to grow.
A new school year is quickly approaching. We check in with Dr. Emily Ruedinger, a pediatrics expert from UW-Madison, about how to best prepare children mentally and physically.
Noted: Wisconsin is known for having tight elections. According to the UW-Madison’s Elections Research Center, the margin between two front-runners in Wisconsin is often less than 1 percent in four of the last six elections between 2000 and 2020. Only two wins, from former President Barack Obama, stood out as sizable wins for a candidate, according to the director of the research center, Barry Burden, per USA Today.
Noted: She’s going to UW-Madison, majoring in Biochemistry. But before she left high school, she completed one of her most important projects. She created and ran a camp called “Little Scoopers” during the summer of 2022 at an intermediate school in Oconomowoc. It taught first and second graders ways to lead better, more healthy lives. Her efforts netted her $10k in scholarship money. Her award money will go toward paying off her tuition.
Quoted: “If it’s a case in which the defendant can make the argument that this was a lawsuit that’s being pursued in order to discourage people and intimidate people, and in fact, cost people a ruinous amount of financial damage, then that suit can be dismissed very, very early in the game,” said Robert Drechsel, a professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “In many cases, plaintiffs aren’t really suing to win, but they win by suing.”
Noted: Meir visited Milwaukee a number of times before she became prime minister, from promoting a Bonds for Israel fundraiser in 1951 to coming back home after receiving an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1960.
Deer became the first member of the Menominee Nation to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1957 and was the first Native American to receive a master’s in social work from Columbia University. She returned to UW-Madison as a lecturer and later as director of the American Indian Studies program in the early 2000s.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Law and Director of the Great Lakes Indian Law Center Richard Monette said the raft of lawsuits in the easement dispute was “very foreseeable” and it may take an act of Congress to get the various parties to the table.
“This case is giving rise to the complex nuances of the political relationship between the United States and the tribes,” Monette said. “That’s why this is a matter for the political branches, not for the courts.”
It may be time to break out the face masks again.
COVID-19 cases are on the rise nationwide due to a new omicron subvariant, EG.5, nicknamed “Eris.” Though Wisconsin isn’t getting hit hard yet, hospitalizations are up 14.3% and deaths are up 10% in the last week, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
The Maui wildfires are the deadliest in more than a century. Volker Radeloff, associate professor, forest and wildlife ecology at UW-Madison, explains their cause and how climate change contributes to increased risk of wildfires.
“I don’t think that means anything for him. What this is, is a lengthy statement of facts of things that occurred to try to establish “look at all these people that Trump and the Trump team talked to. Look at the extent of what they were uh trying to do,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Ryan Owens said.
While some radiopharmaceuticals have been utilized in thyroid cancer treatment for decades, new radiation drugs are showing promise in many other areas, according to Dr. Steve Cho, a professor and section chief of the nuclear medicine section of the Department of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
She was also the first Menominee citizen to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the first Native American to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University.
The sport of golf isn’t always approachable or accessible, especially for people of color. A group of friends and former Wisconsin Badgers athletes started an organization to expand the game of golf and reduce the assumptions and misconceptions involved.
In 1957, she became the first Menominee citizen to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a bachelor’s degree in social work. Deer went on to become the first Native American to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University.
Includes Q&A with Jonathan Ferguson, financial capability specialist, University of Wisconsin-Madison-Financial Education Division of Extension.
The notion of planting miles of trees to hold back encroaching deserts is misguided and damaging; we should promote programs that secure livelihoods and respect dryland ecologies instead
Co-authored by nature-society geographers Matthew Turner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Diana Davis of the University of California-Davis) and Emily Yeh of the University of Colorado Boulder.
Dietram Scheufele, who studies science communication and technology policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that while some of the doomsday predictions about AI are overblown, “we’re definitely entering a new world.”
The technology, he said, “gets real creepy real fast.”
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum’s Wisconsin Native Plant Garden — home to hundreds of species native to the region — the turf grass on the ground is brown but the native plants are green, said Susan Carpenter, the garden’s curator.
“It’s a stark reminder that they are more resilient in the face of drought than turf grass, which has very short little roots,” Carpenter said.
Ever wanted to learn the Irish language? A program at UW-Madison offers Irish classes to the campus community. And a similar program, along with a weekly conversation circle, is being offered to people outside of campus through the Isthmus Conversation Circle. WORT Reporter Heewone Lim is here today with Dr. Becky Shields, who is an instructor and an academic advisor in the Language Sciences program here at UW-Madison and leading efforts to bring Irish to Madison.
From age four, Angelina volunteered at Shabbat services for a local nursing home, which she continued to do until her graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May. When she was younger, she would hand out grape juice or challah to participants. As she got older, she would play Chanukah songs on the violin. When in college, she led services herself and played the guitar. At a bittersweet final Shabbat service, Angelina received an award for the “largest percentage of one’s life as a volunteer.”
Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer and emergency medicine physician at UW Health, says a new COVID booster is good news. Dr. Pothof encourages people to get the new booster in September or October when they get their flu shot.
“Our immune systems get a little bit lazy and they don’t work as well against COVID. So having this booster is going to be helpful. It’s actually against the strain that’s pretty common out there right now,” Dr. Pothof.
He began broadcasting in Appleton, including at Appleton Foxes baseball games, and spent time broadcasting University of Wisconsin football games. He latched on with a Columbus radio station in 1986, the first step toward his current gig in Cleveland.
Brian Schimming practically grew up on a college campus. His parents both worked for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lived on Lathrop Street for 37 years, less than a block from Camp Randall Stadium. He spent a lot of his time wandering the rolling hills and historic buildings on campus or trekking over to bustling downtown Madison.
“Mosquitoes emerge from standing water – like what’s in our gutters and puddles or in more forested areas – but we haven’t had a lot of that,” said Lyric Bartholomay, a public health entomologist and professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So without much rain, there just haven’t been good habitats for mosquitoes to grow.”
UW-Oshkosh plans to cut about 200 non-faculty staff and administrators this fall, while furloughing others, UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt said Thursday, as the university faces an unprecedented $18 million budget shortfall. The cuts amount to about 20% of university employees.
University of Wisconsin fans have been unable to raise a glass (or in this case a plastic cup) to their beloved Badgers at sporting events.
But that will change somewhat this season.
David Drake, a wildlife specialist and forest and wildlife ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared juvenile birds to 16-year-old drivers.
“They know how to drive but, they don’t know where they’re going or how everything works,” Drake said. “We refer to that as an accidental. I’m assuming that’s likely what happened.”
A conservative estimate from a recent University of Wisconsin-Madison study puts the number of undocumented Hispanic workers on medium-to-large farms at roughly 6,200. That figure excludes the many immigrant workers on smaller farms, those with fewer than 500 cows.
The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh will launch a new automation engineering degree program in response to demand from local manufacturers.
It’s the first program of its kind in the UW System, after it received approval from the Board of Regents earlier this month. Classes will begin in the fall with the official program launch in 2024.
Dairy farmer Sarah Lloyd says consolidation in the industry has allowed processors, distributors, and retailers to keep consumer prices high even as farmers are paid less. “There’s been reduced competition in the marketplace,” said Lloyd, who’s worked as a food systems scientist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.
“Farmers don’t have the power to push back…and consumers are also getting a raw deal,” she said.
A series of Meta-supported are finding Facebook’s algorithms alone weren’t responsible for harmful polarization in the 2020 presidential election cycle. But an independent audit found Meta maintained strong control over what data to provide researchers for study. We talk with Mike Wagner, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison, about research into the power of social media algorithms and what makes an independent study.
Quoted: Whether public employees’ speech is constitutionally protected depends on the context they are acting in, said Robert Dreschel, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus of journalism and mass communication.
“It doesn’t take long before things get complicated and difficult to sort out,” Dreschel said. “It’s certainly quite a clash of interests.”
We talk to an expert on early childhood media consumption about the potential harms of unregulated kids’ content on YouTube, and what parents need to be aware of. We also talk to a PBS Wisconsin education engagement specialist about what outreach is being done to help kids and parents make healthy media choices.
The Federal Trade Commission is finalizing its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. Peter Carstensen, University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Emeritus and an antitrust expert, explains.
Nearly one in four Wisconsin high schoolers earned college credit in the 2021-22 school year through a public university or technical college, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum study released Wednesday.
And yet 35% of the audience were men. What gives? “The current level of uncertainty and turbulence and anxiety accounts for part of that crossover among genders,” said Nancy Wong, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “People associate ‘Barbie’ with a more comfortable, simple and stable time in their lives.”
Somesh Jha, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Google researcher who specializes in A.I. security, called the new paper “a game changer” that could force the entire industry into rethinking how it built guardrails for A.I. systems.
This notion of a “DIY society” can extend to the numerous ways parents—especially mothers—are asked to “hold it all together,” the University of Wisconsin at Madison sociologist Jessica Calarco told me. For example, the rise of double-earner households was not met with policies like affordable child care or mandatory paid leave. Instead, families have been forced to navigate confusing and competitive marketplaces to acquire basic services such as day care and summer camp, and they are largely on their own to deal with any breakdowns.
“The reason that setting new temperature records is a big deal is that we are now being challenged to find ways to survive through temperatures hotter than any of us have ever experienced before,” University of Wisconsin-Madison climate scientist Andrea Dutton said in an email. “Soaring temperatures place ever increasing strains not just on power grids and infrastructure, but on human bodies that are not equipped to survive some of the extreme we are already experiencing.”
About a quarter of Wisconsin’s high school students earn college credits during the school year. But participation in these programs varies widely across the state based on students’ access to participating schools, according to a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The Barbie movie has seen great success at the box office. We talk with Christine Whelan, a UW-Madison consumer science professor, about the doll’s cultural legacy and latest form.
Interview with Jonathan Martin, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW Madison, about why it’s so hot, and what this means for our climate.
Yellow perch, rainbow trout and tilapia are just a few of the fish farmed for food in Wisconsin. We break down the aquaculture industry and take a tour of a fish farm. Interview with Sharon Moen, an outreach specialist for the Sea Grant Institute at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.
Shawn Conley is a soybean and small grain specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said many farmers who just finished harvesting winter wheat brought in quality grain. Conley said soybean fields are also doing OK, but they’ll need at least an inch of rain per week until September to reach their best yields.
“If we don’t get rain, we’ll start seeing a yield hit on the soybean side of things,” Conley said. “Corn is a different matter. I think we’ve already started to see some corn yield losses out there.”
Tomorrow is University of Wisconsin-Madison’s demisemiseptcentennial anniversary as the University of Wisconsin System’s flagship campus celebrates its 175th anniversary. To honor the milestone, the university will be holding a free celebration with music, fireworks, and of course, free ice cream.
While paper converters often go overlooked, they play an important role in both Wisconsin’s paper industry and its economy, according to a recent study from the Wisconsin Paper Council and University of Wisconsin titled, “Adding Value to Our Economy – Paper Conversion in Wisconsin.” More than 145 paper converters operated in Wisconsin in 2022, according to the study.
That number gets bigger a lot faster if you factor in companies that use paper along with plastic and other types of products, Scott Bowe, a professor and wood products specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in the May 31 episode of the Wisconsin Paper Council’s “The Paper Files” podcast about the study.
Written by Chris McCahill, managing director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: It also educates people and prevents schools from making mistakes like one experienced last year by Bang’s son, who was stopped from walking in his Evanston Township High School graduation ceremony because of what he was wearing. Miskobinis, who is now a freshman at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the day after the graduation ceremony, the school’s dean and dean of students hand-delivered his diploma and apologized for what had happened.
“It’s been proven that protracted hot weather can make people depressed,” said Dr. Charles Raison, who has done research on heat intolerance and summer-related depression. “It seems as if the system that modulates body temp also modulates mood.”
Raison, professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said people with mental illness often have trouble with thermal regulation. “From our data, we know that people with depression tend to run body temperatures higher than average, and they don’t sweat as much. So being depressed could set you up to not be able to tolerate heat well.”
