A state commission approved plans to renovate a Camp Randall facility as part of the second phase of the University of Wisconsin?s plan to build a new center for student athletes to train.
Several downtown residential proposals were granted unanimous approval from a city commission at its meeting Wednesday evening, including two that would provide new housing for University of Wisconsin students.
UW-Madison?s School of Business is ranked 24th in Bloomberg Businessweek?s annual listing of the top undergraduate business schools. That?s a jump of three spots since last year and the highest UW-Madison has been ranked since the list first started coming out in 2006.
Agronomists believe farmers should stick to their schedules even though the ground is warming up quickly and there are no signs it?s going to cool down anytime soon. “This weather is odd,” said Shawn Conley, an assistant professor in the UW-Madison agronomy department. “I think we have to be cautious and just know what the risks are out there.”
It may not salve the wounds of potentially losing the WIAA state basketball tournaments but Dane County has landed one of the state?s most prestigious farm shows for 2015. County officials on Monday said they filed an application to host Wisconsin Farm Technology Days, which old-timers might remember as ?Farm Progress Days.?
In the never ending battle for customers, Wisconsin?s largest telecom providers are touting their investment in new equipment as the number of official consumer complaints are falling. Fewer complaints are a bit of a surprise to Barry Orton, a professor of telecommunications at UW-Madison. He maintains it?s more difficult than ever to tell what companies are doing following the telecom reform bill passed here in 2007. Orton speculates that consumers today may have become numb to problems or simply change providers rather than filing a complaint. He also admits it?s possible companies are actually providing better service.
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While March Madness is now underway with the NCAA men?s basketball tournament, the city of Madison?s own annual version of basketball mania also began on Thursday. The first rounds of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association?s high school basketball tournament officially began on Thursday morning. However, while the tournament has called the state?s capital city its home for years, ongoing questions about whether this year could be Madison?s last as host hover over much of this year?s activities.
You could win a state high school championship in any city in Wisconsin. All you need is the right facility. Baseball crowns its champions in Appleton, gymnastics and cross country in Wisconsin Rapids and track and field in La Crosse. There are soccer titles crowned in Milwaukee and volleyball in Green Bay. But you can?t replicate in Green Bay what took place Thursday with the WIAA boys state basketball tournament in Madison.
Our university has a long history of successful shared governance ? something we hold in high regard as active members of the student community. Unfortunately, Interim Chancellor David Ward recently violated shared governance statutes in his failure to acknowledge students? voices regarding our contract with Adidas.
He?s 23, a relatively recent graduate of UW ? an institution known for its academics and party scene ? and the city?s alcohol policy coordinator. Mark Woulf, named to the position by former Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in January 2011, just eight months after he graduated with political science and sociology degrees, advises and represents the mayor?s office on alcohol policy issues, serves as staff to the city?s Alcohol License Review Committee and advises license applicants.
At least one of the biggest shareholders of Great Wolf Resorts stock is questioning the deal announced Tuesday for Apollo Global Management, a New York private equity firm, to buy the Madison indoor water park company for $5 a share. With the share price above Apollo’s $5 offer, it could be an indication of “investors guessing it’ll be sold at a higher price,” said Jim Seward, associate professor at the UW-Madison School of Business and faculty director of the Nicholas Center for Corporate Finance and Investment Banking.
In 1975, three former University of Wisconsin-Madison students met at a bar in New York City. All three were in their late 40s and feeling adrift in their careers across the fashion industry. After hours of talk ? and a few rounds of drinks ? one asked, ?So now what do we do??
A man thrown out of a campus bar for smoking allegedly attacked the bouncers, sending two to the hospital with injuries. Logan Sloan, 22, Madison, was tentatively charged with battery, substantial battery and disorderly conduct, according to a news release from Madison police. The incident happened at about 3 a.m. Sunday at Wando’s, 602 University Ave.
Virent has hired a new chief financial officer, Jeff White, who has experience working for companies with publicly traded stock. But that doesn?t mean the Madison biofuels company is about to go public, Virent CEO Lee Edwards said.
COLUMBUS ? Beer hasn?t been commercially brewed here since Kurth?s Brewery closed in 1949. But a Columbus couple have changed that with the opening late last year of Hydro Street Brewing Co. & Eatery in downtown Columbus at 152 W. James St. Aaron and Sandye Adams, former researchers at UW-Madison, drained their savings, maxed out their credit cards and pestered family and friends to help them raise $86,000 to renovate a former clothing store into a business that likely will be a draw for local residents and the antiques shoppers who flood the city of 5,036 to visit the many shops.
Rockwell Automation Inc. said Monday it had acquired a privately held industrial controls company started by a University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor.
For Milwaukee-based Rockwell, which employs more than 21,000 people in more than 80 countries, the acquisition of privately held SoftSwitching Technologies Corp. in Middleton ranks as a niche acquisition.
UW-Madison?s primary licensing committee passed a resolution Friday to define a successful mediation period with adidas as occurring only if the company ensures all workers are paid severance by April 15. This deadline is 60 days after UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward initially announced plans to enter mediation with the company.
UW-Madison interim Chancellor David Ward and members of the university?s Labor Licensing Policy Committee continue to butt heads over how best to convince Adidas to rectify allegations of sweatshop abuses at a factory the company subcontracted with in Indonesia.
In the 1960s, Allan Bachmann had no interest in the family construction business. He was going to join other college students in rebelling against authority. That all changed the summer that Bachmann?s father announced he was selling the operation.
Q: I know Bachmann has also been a leader in historical preservation. What makes that work difficult?
A: Bachmann’s latest significant historical restoration project was Olin House, the (UW-Madison) chancellor’s residence.
A $76.8 million project enhancing Camp Randall?s academic and training facilities for student athletes is closer to construction after the Urban Design Commission approved the final phases of the project.
UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward told student leaders Monday he feared the UW System could face legal repercussions if it did not enter a period of negotiation with adidas before giving the company an ultimatum to remedy alleged labor violations within 90 days.
David Krakauer, the new director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, says a lot of interesting, challenging, borderline-radical things. Then again, he comes from a pretty interesting place, born of a borderline-radical approach to science and research ? one where ideas are free to grow in an interdisciplinary greenhouse in which odd hybrids are nurtured and appreciated rather than cut off at the roots.
The Madison B-cycle bike sharing program will return on April 1 with more stations, longer hours, and a cheaper price tag, officials said Tuesday. The program ? bicycles from Trek Bicycle Corp. are offered for rent at stations around the city ? debuted in May 2011 with six stations on the isthmus and grew to 27 stations by the time the first season ended on Dec. 15. In the first year, B-cycle members rode nearly 39,600 miles, with the station at UW-Madison?s Memorial Union getting the most use.
Fully 30 percent of Wisconsin?s children now live in working but low-income households, which overall make up a quarter of the state?s working families and half of its non-white families, a new report from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) says. Wisconsin also is near the bottom of states for minority-family income, which is higher in 41 states, the study said. The COWS study argued that recent policy changes were making things even worse for low-income working residents, defined as those earning two times the poverty line.
Locked behind a set of double doors in a sparkling clean warehouse on the city?s far east side is a miniature refinery. The tangle of silver metal tubes and columns resembles the huge oil refineries along the Gulf Coast ? although at 20 feet tall and 40 feet long, it?s just a fraction of the size. But instead of using crude oil as the main ingredient, the refinery at Virent Inc. uses sugar water. Through a patented catalytic process called aqueous phase reforming, the sugar molecules are converted into a product with the same chemical makeup as gasoline. Science fiction? Not at all.
….”I think we’re at a point where these advanced biofuels are nearing commercialization and Virent is right in the front row,” says Gary Radloff, director of Midwest energy policy analysis for the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative at the UW-Madison. Virent officials remain cautious, however, about tooting their own horn.
A city planning commission stalled in making a decision on a proposed apartment complex on North Brooks Street Monday because of conflict between city and university building guidelines.
While Wisconsin?s unemployment rate is below the national rate, many in the Badger State are now working two jobs just to make ends meet. Minorities are especially struggling in the current economy, according to a report titled ?Wisconsin Jobs and Low-Income Working Families? from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a liberal UW-Madison think tank….?One in four families, half of minority families and three in 10 children now live in families with low incomes — and our commitment to these families is shrinking even as their needs are rising,? says COWS associate director Laura Dresser in a statement.
In another sign of rebirth for a worn Downtown gateway, a developer is proposing a five-story housing and retail project for the 500 block of South Park Street. The proposal by the Gallina Cos., called the Ideal, would be the first big, non-student housing project on South Park Street in many years and continues a revitalization from Regent Street to the Beltline.
The newly appointed head of the University of Illinois Accountancy Department says it needs more senior faculty members. Jon S. Davis, a former UI accounting professor who is slated to return as department head in April, has been at the University of Wisconsin at Madison since 2001.
Tim Smeeding gestured at the white board in his University of Wisconsin office and told me the indecipherable scrawling related to a model for measuring poverty. I?ll have to take his word. Like many professors on the Madison campus, Smeeding is a star. He?s been director of UW-Madison?s Institute for Research on Poverty and is a national poverty expert, a prolific author and someone regularly quoted in the national media.
UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward decided to enter a negotiation period with adidas out of fear that giving the company a 90-day ultimatum to remedy its alleged labor violations would result in the company suing the university, according to Labor Licensing Policy Committee Chair Lydia Zepeda.
Building a Grandview Commons grocery store with 58,000 square feet does not mean it has to be served by a “big, driver-friendly” parking lot, as suggested in columnist Chris Rickert?s Feb. 23 piece.
Aric Rindfleisch has been named head of the Department of Business Administration in the University of Illinois College of Business, effective in August.
Shell has been a partner of Virent for the past five years, working to develop the Eagle pilot biorefinery that has been operating in Madison for several years. Shell also is an investor in Virent, which spun off from the chemistry labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Madison stem cell company, Stemina Biomarker Discovery, is getting a $150,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health aimed at expanding the use of its drug testing technology for harmful side effects. Co-founded by UW-Madison stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar, Stemina has been using its technology with heart cells provided by Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), the Madison company founded by UW stem cell pioneer James Thomson, to see if drug compounds could cause cardiomyopathy, a condition that weakens the heart and can lead to heart failure.
According to the latest edition of the ?Organic Agriculture in Wisconsin? report, prepared by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, the state has about 1,200 organic farms–an increase of 60 percent from 2005– and leads the nation in number of organic dairy farms.
The University of Wisconsin?s renowned Polymer Engineering Center is collaborating with the University of Massachusetts-Lowell to design the curriculum for a new plastics institution in India, expected to break ground later this year.
A student housing proposal may conflict with territory claimed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Owners of 202 to 206 North Brooks Street plan to replace the property with a new five-story, 14-unit apartment complex. The land is part of the UW-Madison campus development plan, but the university said the property?s cost is too high.
The chair of UW-Madison?s primary licensing advisory committee said Monday she is unhappy with the way Chancellor David Ward decided to enter a period of mediation with Adidas, rather than give the company 90 days? notice to pay severance to its workers as the committee recommended.
Contention has arisen surrounding a new student housing building proposal that could infringe on territory claimed by the University of Wisconsin, forcing a city committee to stall approving the beginning of construction on the property.
City officials unanimously approved a plan for proposed redevelopment in the downtown area Monday, which includes possible plans to construct high rise apartment buildings in the Mifflin neighborhood. The plan would call for demolition of houses on Broom, West Dayton and Bedford streets, replacing them with apartment complexes.
Another potential development in the Mifflin area is the proposed “urban lane,” which is a pedestrian-friendly area designed to create space, underground parking and vehicle access for new buildings, between West Washington Avenue and West Mifflin Street. The plan also includes a proposal to construct a pedestrian walkway connecting Langdon Street to the UW-Madison campus for increased safety, as well as improving public paths along Lake Mendota between Picnic Point, Memorial Union and James Madison Park.
A Florida girl who fell 100 feet from a Wisconsin amusement park ride has returned to the state for the first time since the accident, walking up to a news conference at a Madison hospital under her own power.
Hundreds of students and members of the Student Labor Action Coalition protested Chancellor David Ward?s decision to enter a mediation period with adidas over allegations that it owes former Indonesian workers $1.8 million in severance pay.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Board unanimously approved a $113.6 million budget for the 2012-13 financial year, along with price increases for student football ticket holders next year.
For nearly two decades now, a small but vocal student group on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus has prided itself on making university administrators, classmates and other members of the public aware of labor rights abuses at factories in the United States and abroad. Friday afternoon on Bascom Hill, it was apparent members of UW-Madison?s Student Labor Action Coalition aren?t fighting this battle alone.
Armed with its status as a sovereign nation and powerful treaties with the federal government, the Bad River Chippewa tribe has the legal muscle to do what Democratic opponents of an iron mine proposed for northern Wisconsin have so far been unable to do: halt or delay the project.
Those powers, say experts on Native American law, appear to have been both underestimated and misunderstood by proponents of the mine, including Republican legislators who have been criticized for failing to consult with tribal members as they work on a bill to streamline permitting for the mine.
“All of us are going to get an education in federal Indian law,” said Larry Nesper, a UW-Madison scholar in Great Lakes Indian law and politics.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professors Julie Underwood and Julie Mead are expressing concern over the growing corporate influence on public education in an article published Monday. In particular, they are highly critical of the American Legislative Exchange Council ALEC, which connects conservative state legislators with like-minded think tanks, corporations and foundations to develop “model legislation” that can be enacted at the state level.
The Student Labor Action Coalition condemned Chancellor David Ward?s announcement that the university would attempt to repair, rather than sever, relations with Adidas over for labor issues Wednesday.
A student labor rights group slammed interim UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward?s decision to enter into a period of mediation with Adidas and promised to hold a protest Friday against the university?s “pro-sweatshop policies.” In a news release from the Student Labor Action Coalition Wednesday, one member called Ward?s action “insulting” and another said that it “warrants his immediate removal.”
In a decision that is frustrating members of one UW-Madison student group, UW Chancellor David Ward announced Tuesday the university will enter a period of mediation with adidas in an attempt to resolve the dispute over whether or not the company owes 2,800 unemployed workers severance pay.
After a report alleged Adidas had violated workers? rights, Interim Chancellor David Ward announced Tuesday the University of Wisconsin will enter into a period of mediation with the company.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will enter into a period of mediation with adidas Group in an effort to resolve an ongoing dispute over the apparel firm?s obligations to former workers at a factory in Indonesia.
UW-Madison will enter mediation with its exclusive athletics sponsor, Adidas, to resolve a dispute over the treatment of Indonesian factory workers, interim chancellor David Ward said Tuesday. The approach is less draconian than one Ward indicated he might take earlier this month, when he said he may put Adidas “on notice” that it was in breach of a labor code of conduct. That would have given Adidas 90 days to address concerns over severance payments to overseas workers before the university would terminate its roughly $2.5 million contract with the company.
In a move that caught some key players on campus off guard, UW-Madison interim Chancellor David Ward announced Tuesday night he?s not prepared to start the process of cutting ties with Adidas over alleged sweatshop abuses at a factory the athletic apparel giant subcontracted with overseas.
A: I joined the co-op as a driver in the fall of 1988, after graduating from UW-Madison with a degree in history and English literature. I was basically taking a year off before deciding on graduate school. I did go to New York University for a semester but decided that my heart was really in the cooperative business model, not English lit.
Experts will debate world oil supply.
UW-Madison Professor Alan Carroll will moderate a debate between two prominent oil experts Tuesday at Union South. John Hofmeister, founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy and former president of Royal Dutch Shell?s U.S. operations, will debate Tadeusz Patzek, professor and chair at the University of Texas-Austin Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, in the 90-minute forum “World Oil Supply: Looming Crisis or New Abundance?” The program begins at 6 p.m. in Varsity Hall II on the second floor of Union South, 1308 W. Dayton St. A reception will follow the event.
Dane County advocates for struggling homeowners this week generally welcomed the national $25 billion settlement with five of the nation?s biggest mortgage lenders over foreclosure abuses like robo-signing….UW-Madison Professor Morris Davis, academic director of the university’s Graaskamp Center for Real Estate, said he didn’t believe the settlement would help most people who are “deeply underwater” on their mortgages avoid foreclosure.
“But (the aid) could encourage some families that are only marginally underwater to postpone the foreclosure process as long as possible,” he said.
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Shares of Roundy?s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday and ended the day up 50 cents, at $9 a share. The Milwaukee grocery company offered 19.2 million shares of common stock in its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, under the symbol RNDY. Shares were priced at $8.50, which was below the $10 to $12 price projected in a company document filed with federal regulators in January. That signifies “tepid response from the marketplace” to the offering, said Jim Seward, associate professor at the UW-Madison School of Business and faculty director of the Nicholas Center for Corporate Finance and Investment Banking.
To earn money to help pay his out-of-state tuition, (Jim) Meehan got a job at State Street Brats. He handled the door, the grill and the bar, and within two years became manager. Meehan ? possessed of ambition, smarts and a willingness to outwork everybody ? was 20 and couldn?t yet buy a drink in his own place. Meanwhile, he was getting a liberal arts education that included majors in English and African-American Studies….Today, Meehan can give you a list of the UW-Madison instructors who influenced him ? Sandy Adell, Craig Werner, Richard Davis and Tim Tyson ? as quickly as those who did the same in the service industry, starting with Kelly Meuer and Ross Johnson at State Street Brats.
A city commission moved forward with a plan for the reconstruction of a cathedral on the University of Wisconsin campus.
