State businesses may have more of an incentive to pay for a studentâ??s tuition after the state Assembly passed a bill Thursday giving tax credits to such companies.
How many of us have a doctor come to our home to check on our family health every week? Every two weeks? Every month?
Probably not a one, unless there is a specific illness that must be monitored and we canâ??t make it to a clinic or hospital. Yet many of Wisconsinâ??s top dairy herds are visited by a veterinarian (who is indeed a well-trained and skilled doctor) on a regular weekly, biweekly or monthly schedule.
With a record turnout, UW-Madison students voted against raising student-segregated fees to fund the proposed renovations for the Natatorium.
A record-breaking 34.5 percent voter turnout in the Associated Students of Madison elections brought the NatUP 2010 referendum down Wednesday night with just more than 60 percent of those casting ballots voting against the renovation.
UW-Madison students have been actively demonstrating their support or opposition to a referendum that would increase student segregated fees to extensively expand the Natatorium with a $60 million renovation.
As Associated Students of Madison Spring Elections began at the University of Wisconsin, the student organization NatUP asked students to vote yes to the Natatorium renovation â?? using around $30,000 of university money to convince them.
Madison City Council signed off on the new Gordon Commons and adopted a resolution declaring Madison a Fair Trade city at their meeting Tuesday night.
Dear Editor: As a current Badger, I am extremely supportive and happy with the universityâ??s decision to end its contract with Nike. This is an unbelievable start to addressing the labor rights of factory workers around the world. The university can only be seen as an example of how to stand up for human rights.
However, I am disappointed and disgusted with some of the online comments posted on Todd Finkelmeyerâ??s April 9 article â??UW-Madison ends Nike contract amid labor concerns.â?
Inspired by his solution for one of the computer industryâ??s biggest problems, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Guri Sohi decided to pursue a strategy thatâ??s gaining popularity in Wisconsinâ??s academic circles: starting a company.
Itâ??s not up and running yet, but Sohi says heâ??s deep into the details of a developing a business plan for the firm.”Iâ??m very excited about the technology we have. It goes counter to four decades of thinking,” said Sohi, a computer science professor and former head of the schoolâ??s computer sciences department.
Judging from the numbers, you might think there arenâ??t a lot of Guri Sohis in Wisconsin.Professors at UW-Madison – the stateâ??s biggest research engine – started just six companies in fiscal 2008, according to the recently released Association of University Technology Managers survey of licensing activity.
The Labor Licensing Policy Committee announced its plan to end UW-Madisonâ??s contract with Nike Friday, saying the company failed to address several alleged labor violations in Honduras.
With Madisonâ??s application submitted to become the pilot city for Google Fiber â?? an experimental high-speed Internet connection â?? to increase support, city officials unveiled a Google Fiber ice cream flavor Friday.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor Biddy Martinâ??s office announced Friday it will end its apparel contract with Nike after the companyâ??s failure to respond to a series of labor law violations.
Over the next 15 years, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly wants to see 33,700 students graduate annually from the system of four-year and two-year colleges, up from 26,000 per year currently.
He says itâ??s a financial investment in the stateâ??s economic future.
Producing more college graduates is a laudable goal â?? and, yes, college degrees give adults an edge in the jobs market. How that growth is pursued will determine how effective such a plan will be.
The state of Wisconsin is finally at the brink of the crisis weâ??ve all seen coming for a long time.
As structural deficits increased each biennium the past many years – with no end in sight thanks to inexorable shifts in demographics and Wisconsin’s economy – blue-ribbon panels and special commissions have tried to come up with ideas that could right the ship of state.
The natural beauty of Wisconsin hides an ugly truth: This state is facing an aging population of non-working retirees while its best and brightest young people are leaving for greener pastures.
This scenario is played out in a new report from Wisconsin Way, a coalition of business, government and educational groups working on solutions to the stateâ??s biggest challenges.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is ending its apparel contract with Nike, becoming the first school to cut ties with the athletic shoe and apparel giant due to alleged labor rights abuses at two factories overseas.
University officials announced their decision Friday afternoon at a meeting of the Labor Licensing Policy Committee at Bascom Hall.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students marched on Chancellor Biddy Martinâ??s office Thursday and made a simple demand: Take a firm stand against the abusive practices of the Nike corporation. The manufacturer of shoes and athletic wear, which has a licensing contract with the UW, is in violation of commitments it made to respect the rights of workers at two of its Honduran apparel factories.
Imago Scientific Instruments, a Fitchburg company that makes high-power microscopes providing 3D images, has been purchased by Ametek, a publicly traded company in suburban Philadelphia, for $6 million. Imago was founded in 1998 based on technology discovered at UW-Madison.
The Urban Design Committee granted initial approval of the Charter Street Heating Plant upgrades on Wednesday. The project includes demolishing the current coal-burning Charter Street Heating Plant and replacing it with an environmentally friendly biomass plant.
St. Paulâ??s University Catholic Center could undergo a major improvement in coming years in the form of a complete rebuilding of its facility at the bottom of State Street.
The fact that a Madison-based tech company could raise $7 million in venture capital in the current financing climate is noteworthy. That the financing was led by one of the premier Silicon Valley venture capital firms may be the bigger story.
Local and state leaders have long acknowledged the importance of tapping into the big money financing firms on both coasts for the money, contacts and expertise necessary for the areaâ??s developing tech sector to reach its potential. To aid such efforts, officials have organized special fund-seeking trips to places like Boston and Silicon Valley. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation even opened an office in California.
While the UW-Madisonâ??s effort to condemn property owned by the Brothers Bar & Grill chain has grabbed plenty of attention, a prominent campus-area landlord is also bumping up against the universityâ??s thirst for real estate.
For months, Otto Gebhardt has been seeking city approval for a new 87-unit, high-rise student apartment building at 1208 Spring St. Three aging rental houses on the property now would be torn down. Gebhardt and others have been quietly redeveloping other properties in the area between Randall Avenue and the Park Street viaduct.
The owners of Brothers Bar and Grill have agreed to drop their lawsuit against the UW Board of Regents, ending a lengthy legal battle just one day before their scheduled trial.
Brothers Bar and Grill dropped a lawsuit Tuesday against the UW System Board of Regents contesting the boardâ??s use of eminent domain to condemn the barâ??s property, just one day before the parties were set to meet in court.
The owners of a popular campus-area bar have agreed to drop their lawsuit and accept the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s $2.1 million offer for their property.
The owners of a popular campus bar have decided to dismiss their lawsuit that sought to stop the University of Wisconsin-Madison from taking their property through eminent domain.
The owners of a popular campus bar have decided to dismiss their lawsuit that sought to stop the University of Wisconsin-Madison from taking their property through eminent domain.
A face off between a popular downtown Madison bar and the University of Wisconsin-Madison wonâ??t happen after all.
MADISON, Wis. AP – A fight between a popular bar and the University of Wisconsin-Madison heads to a courtroom Wednesday in a case that will test the schoolâ??s power to take private property for a public use.
But the Virent story shows whatâ??s possible when lab smarts of the university are blended with the financial savvy of business. There is a lesson here for the Milwaukee region as it works to develop a more nimble and robust economy. [The editorial mentions that Virent was born to commercialize ideas formed at UW-Madison.]
When he founded Phoenix Nuclear Labs LLC five years ago, Greg Piefer wanted to do something simple – like detect nuclear weapons.
But a worldwide shortage of a radioactive isotope used in medical imaging tests has drawn the 33-year-old nuclear engineer, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering from UW-Madison, to a more complicated task.
Recent reports reveal that Nike, a UW-Madison licensee, violated several workersâ?? rights laws in India and Honduras.
Although hopes of an NCAA title for Wisconsinâ??s largest university were dashed this weekend, officials are confident the city of Madison has what it takes to make a solid run at another title: Test city for Googleâ??s upcoming ultra high-speed Internet experiment.
Virent Energy Systems has reached a milestone in its quest to create a better biofuel.Madison-based Virent announced Tuesday that it has opened the first biogasoline plant, creating gasoline from plant sugars. The company was formed in 2002 to deploy technological innovations developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Assessing the impact of the Great Recession on Wisconsin is turning into a tale of Madison and everybody else.
While Madison has certainly taken some lumps over the past two years, its unemployment rate has remained among the lowest in the nation.
Feature about Suzanne Dove, outreach director for the UW-Madison Center for International Business Education and Research, or CIBER, a job she has held since 2007. CIBER works with other organizations to help Wisconsin businesses sell their products in other countries.
A program meant to help students explore the riggers of business startups will take place the week of June 20 on the UW campus. Due to generous donations from program sponsors, there is no cost to participants. From new fuel alternatives to embryonic stem cells, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is an international leader in scientific research.
More than 80 state agencies, including UW-Madison, are not in compliance with an open records law that requires all state agencies to report their contractual agreements on an aggregate website maintained by the Government Accountability Board.
This eight-part series concludes appropriately with the biggest idea of all eight opportunities: to advance the region as a knowledge and convening center connecting, translating and integrating ideas to help regional and state businesses advance and compete globally. If you are thinking that this is already happening, you are right. The big idea here is to recognize this knowledge and convening role as an export product in itself and to take it to the next level. We are recognized around the world as an R&D center led not only by UW-Madison and WARF, but also by the expanded UW System that includes the two-year campuses and the county-based UW Extension, our outstanding technical colleges and private colleges, and many leading private sector technology businesses.
When Bob and JoAnn Wollersheim purchased a nearly abandoned property and opened Wollersheim Winery in 1973 – restarting the tradition of a family-run vineyard on the site – it was the beginning of a modern-day fairy tale.
Toyotaâ??s reported sins have given us the scandal du jour, but typically, the media zips past the basic problem. Toyotaâ??s safety irregularities pointedly illustrate instead the failure — if not the virtual disappearance — of regulation, a pattern begun in the 1970s as the nation dismantled and eroded the effectiveness of its Regulatory State. In bipartisan fashion, its origins began with the Carter and Reagan administrations, and then deregulation accelerated and magnified under Clinton and both Bushes.
Itâ??s only fitting for Americaâ??s Dairyland: Madison is hoping to create an ice cream flavor to woo Google Fiber. Not to be outdone by Topeka, Kan., which changed its name to Google for the month of March, Madison wants to tempt the sweet tooth of the Internet giant. UW-Madisonâ??s Babcock Dairy created a test batch of a Google Fiber ice cream that has a vanilla base, M&M candies and granola, said manager Sara Brummel. The M&Ms mimic the multi-colored Google logo and the granola provides the fiber.
UW-Madison is partnering with some of the worldâ??s leading business schools to create a first-of-its-kind graduate degree in global real estate. The unique model for the new Global Real Estate Master will start American and foreign students at one of three international schools and then bring all the participants together for a final semester at the Wisconsin School of Business at UW-Madison.
Itâ??s been 25 years since the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center started on campus, and to commemorate the occasion, a celebration is set for 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Biotechnology Center at 425 Henry Mall.
Dick Burgess, founding director of the center, said there were only three companies working in biotech in Madison in 1985.
“Now we have over 150 biotech firms in the area, and the state is recognized as a premier site for biotechnology research and industry,” Burgess said in a release from the UW-Madison news service.
Flavio Solorzano, the executive chef at a fine dining restaurant in Peru who is lauded throughout Latin America, has been in Madison for a week, speaking at the UW-Madison School of Business on the importance of cuisine to an economy.
One year ago, near east side Ald. Bridget Maniaci and former Ald. Brenda Konkel were locked in a fierce battle for the cityâ??s District 2 seat, which Konkel had held for eight years. Now the two find themselves as tentative allies in Maniaciâ??s effort to push back the November downtown rental rush by reviving discussions about when landlords can start showing and leasing occupied apartments for next yearâ??s rental cycle.
Maniaci says the time is right to revisit the decade-old issue, with the downtown rental market changing as more young professionals choose apartments over buying houses.
But before it began operations, Mentor Worldwide LLC decided to abandon the Madison lab, which is valued at $16 million. The company announced Wednesday that they would donate it to the Morgridge Institute, a private research partner with UW-Madison.
University of Wisconsin Athletics announced Tuesday they will postpone plans for a new hockey facility, which would connect the SERF and the Kohl Center and would include a new professional ice rink, due to funding problems.
In explaining how a business does well by doing good, local ad executive Jim Armstrong talks about 18th-century brewing techniques.
Armstrong â?? whose firm, Good for Business, just became the first company in Madison to earn national certification for business ethics â?? recounts the tale of the storied Guinness Brewing Co.
Quoted: Dan Hausman, professor of business ethics in the UW-Madison philosophy department.
For too long, bankers have gotten a free ride from the U.S. Department of Education.
Under current law, taxpayers provide as much as $9 billion each year to subsidize guaranteed student loans issued by banks. The banks earn profits on the interest; if students default, taxpayers take the loss, not the banks. In other words, working Americans pay while bankers get rich.
Meanwhile, educators, engineers and computer scientists — the backbone of the new economy — face crushing debt from six-figure college tuitions. A study of national post-secondary student aid found that in 2008, two-thirds of college seniors graduated with debt averaging more than $23,000. That number will rise as public and private college tuition costs escalate.
Since the first commercial cultivation of genetically modified GM crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six biotech seed companies Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer have become masters at the art of story telling.
Farmers, always looking for the next big technology fix, loved the stories: the promise of better yields, less chemicals needed for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.
Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops.
An assembly committee had a public hearing Wednesday regarding a bill that would put regulations on university and credit card issuer marketing campaigns that target students.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department is in the process of giving exclusive health care advertising rights to UW Health, officials said Wednesday.
Dear Editor: Compared to Madison as a whole, the UW-Madison delis severely lack fair trade, organic, and local products. Being part of a city full of fair trade establishments like Just Coffee, SERRV, and the farmersâ?? market, UW seems like a natural candidate for these products. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
The rush to find new drugs to fight cancer is spurring big growth for a Madison company. Founded in 1998 as Tetrionics, the company was purchased in 2004 by a division of Sigma-Aldrich, of St. Louis. Its main product at the Madison building is still the vitamin D compound discovered by UW-Madison professor Hector DeLuca that forms the basis of Zemplar, by Abbott Laboratories.
While much focus in town has been on filling vacant land at Hilldale Mall or the squabble over the downtown Edgewater Hotel, a big development is coming to the far west side that has sort of floated under the radar — the addition of a second University Research Park, or, as its backers call it, “URP2.”
I talked with Mark Bugher, research park director, who says they will break ground on a undetermined date this spring and that he foresees the first occupant there late in 2011 or early 2012. After city approval last fall, Bugher says the project has been moving along and it was decided to name new streets within the park after the five UW faculty members who won Nobel Prizes while at the university.
The annual rush of thousands of high school wrestling and basketball fans to the UW-Madison Kohl Center means big money for area businesses, but it also means moving hundreds of drivers with campus parking permits to lots away from the sports arena.
….The out-of-towners not only mean big bucks, about 26 million of them, to area businesses, restaurants and bars, but they are also an important revenue stream for the university, helping to offset the cost of parking for permit holders.
To get the ball rolling on cars parking in lots away from the Kohl Center, UW Transportation Services is asking permit holders to use alternate lots so visitors can use the lots near the Kohl Center, reducing traffic congestion on campus.
Single-game football tickets will cost $3 more beginning this fall after the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board approved its 2010-11 budget.
Bonnie Bernhardt is proud to have helped nearly 400 Wisconsin residents get back some of their money from an online lender that state attorneys say overstepped its bounds.
The 43-year-old single mother from Verona was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed two years ago against online payday lender Arrowhead Investments. After an out-of-court settlement to the class action lawsuit was approved earlier this month, Bernhardt and the others will split $100,000 in restitution. Another $432,000 in outstanding loans will be closed out and forgiven by Arrowhead, and the Delaware-based company is also barred from doing business in Wisconsin for five years.
Quoted: Sarah Orr, director of the Consumer Law Litigation Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
University Research Park began offering space this month in its new Accelerator building.
Designed for start-ups that have outgrown smaller suites in the parkâ??s incubator building, the 80,000-square-foot Accelerator boasts cutting-edge air-exchange systems, space designed for lab build-outs, and features that could help tenants shave thousands of dollars off their energy bills.Facilities like this are becoming more common in Madison, where a growing number of parks offer young firms networking opportunities and shared resources such as research equipment and phone systems.
