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Category: Business/Technology

Tom Still: In Wisconsin’s quest to produce more workers and startups, don’t forget liberal arts

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Wisconsin State Journal

What’s missing in the UW-Stevens Point conversation, which has attracted notice nationwide, is an honest assessment of what employers expect from college graduates they hire. Do they want an emphasis on STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and math — or a liberal arts background that may be more adaptable?

How to make your cover letter shine

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Wisconsin State Journal

Cover letters are powerful tools in your quest for a new job. A good one can get you an interview and make you a top candidate. Even if the position you’re seeking doesn’t require much writing, it’s important to demonstrate your communication skills and tailor your message to both the employer and the job. Here are some tips for crafting a compelling message.

Virtual clues

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Isthmus

In a recent study, two UW-Madison researchers conducted an experiment having subjects play a virtual reality version of the arcade game Pong. Wearing an Oculus Rift headset, the participants were tasked with whacking a virtual ball with a virtual paddle.

Palmer’s Steakhouse owners working to create $1 million endowment for transplant research

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Their new goal will be no small feat. They are working to create the endowment at UW Health for transplant research, with the help of a $500,000 donation. UW-Madison donors John and Tashia Morgridge will give $500,000 to create an endowment in Tony’s name, but to get the money the Arenas family must match that donation in five years.

The Demise Of The Full-Time MBA

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Forbes

Wake Forest halted its two-year full-time program in 2014. In August, the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business announced it was shuttering its full-time MBA program. And in October, the University of Wisconsin—one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious public business schools—suggested it might as well.

Polisis AI Reads Privacy Policies So You Don’t Have To

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Wired

Today, researchers at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan announced the release of Polisis—short for “privacy policy analysis”—a new website and browser extension that uses their machine-learning-trained app to automatically read and make sense of any online service’s privacy policy, so you don’t have to.

Here’s a sweet recipe for cheap, green plastic—sugar and corncobs

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Science

Plastic has a huge carbon footprint: Producing the petroleum-based material accounts for at least 100 million tons of carbon emissions each year. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has invented an inexpensive way to make plastic with a much lighter touch, from sugar and corncobs. If it can be made cheaply enough, the material could one day replace one of the world’s most common plastics—polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—found in food packaging, soda bottles, and even polyester fabric.

Beer school – and U.S. Brewers Academy – coming to Milwaukee

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Ryder, who teaches fermentation sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wants the class to be geared to “regular people.” Ryder doesn’t imagine he’ll make brewers out of his students. He just wants to round out their knowledge “so they won’t feel intimidated about some of these beers. People don’t know what’s a good beer and what’s a bad beer and why.”

Maps As Storytelling

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A new startup project out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Discovery to Product program sees maps as storytelling. We speak with LifeMapping founder and UW-Madison grad Dean Olsen about how the twists and turns in his own life inspired him to create the software.

Klement’s Sausage names industry veteran as new CEO

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Being a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and a resident of Wisconsin for most of my life, I understand the passion and dedication that the Klement family and all our current and former employees have shared to make Klement’s one of the leading sausage brands in the U.S.,” Danneker said in the statement. “I look forward to continuing to grow Klement’s strong position in Milwaukee and Wisconsin and to sharing our love of sausage with consumers throughout the country.”

CEOs’ Risk Jobs if Taxes Differ Too Greatly from Competition

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CPA Practice Advisor

Noted: Enacted in 2002 in response to jolting financial scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other major companies, SOX instituted a considerable tightening of federal corporate regulation. In the words of the study, by James A. Chyz of the University of Tennessee and Fabio B. Gaertner of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the “post-SOX period coincided with increased IRS scrutiny of aggressive tax positions and legislation that led to increased regulatory scrutiny over the tax function. Consistent with increased pressures to be less tax-aggressive, we find that being in the lowest quintile of benchmarked tax rates [became] influential in predicting CEO turnover… This is consistent with boards responding to…increase[d] political and reputational costs surrounding tax avoidance.”

Centers and Facilities

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BizEd

The Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has embarked on a US$11 million construction project to convert three floors in its facility into a vertically connected educational space called the Learning Commons. The Learning Commons will become the heart of the building, connecting its east and west wings, with ample natural light to open the space. The first floor will house the school’s finance and analytics lab, and the second and third floors will feature the business library and business learning center with five active learning classrooms equipped with wireless displays for collaboration. The upper floors will include ten breakout rooms, as well as collaborative and casual seating. Construction on the 33,000-square-foot space is due to be completed this spring.

Why Current Patient-Doctor E-Communication Guidelines are Not Good Enough: One Researcher Speaks Out

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Healthcare Informatics

Noted: Researchers from the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison recently stated in a paper that although there are plenty of frequently suggested benefits of “e-visits” and of electronic communication between providers and patients, such as enabling providers to give patients a low-cost alternative to visiting the doctor’s office, there could also be unintended consequences involved.

Taste it, you’ll like it: Assaying the impact of in-store product sampling

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Phys.org

Noted: In “An Assessment of When, Where and Under What Conditions In-Store Sampling is Most Effective,” the three authors – Sandeep R. Chandakula of Singapore Management University, Jeffrey P. Dotson of Brigham Young University, and Qing Liu of University of Wisconsin-Madison – find that sampling has both an immediate, if short-term, effect and a sustained impact on sales, but that the impact varies according to the size of the conducting the event. They also found that repeated sampling for a single product produces increased returns and that sampling tends to expand a category rather than purely substitute for another product.

One for me, one for you: “Companionizing” makes gift more special

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Isthmus

According to research out of the University of Wisconsin School of Business, buying the same thing for yourself makes the gift even more special to the recipient. There’s even a name for it: companionizing.

“Recipients end up liking the gift more because it’s shared,” says Evan Polman, a UW marketing professor, who conducted the research with Sam Maglio, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. They published the results of their study in July in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Groundbreakings: College science building, business school, learning commons

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University Business

Noted: Three floors of the existing Grainger House will become a vertically connected education space. Set for completion in spring 2018, the $11 million project will include a new computer lab, business library, and finance and analytics lab. The Commons will also contain the Business Learning Center’s five classrooms with wireless displays.

UW-Madison selected design firm Potter Lawson (Madison), and MSR Design (Minneapolis) is serving as consultant and partner. Miron Construction (Neenah, Wisconsin) is handling construction.

UW entrepreneurial program ahead of the curve

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WI Farmer

“UW-Madison is unique, according to my colleagues at other universities,” says Steele, co-founder and CEO of Lactic Solutions and UW–Madison Winder-Bascom Professor of food science. “UW–Madison may be ahead of its peers in providing support to entrepreneurial faculty and staff. However, most faculty and staff, including us in the early years, are not aware of the resources available to them.”