A proposed merger between the University of Wisconsin campuses in Waukesha and Milwaukee would be less cost-efficient than other alternatives, UW System President Kevin Reilly said at a legislative hearing Tuesday.
Many economists believe that entrepreneurs and small business owners are the major drivers of job growth in the United States. The Small Business Administration says companies with fewer than 500 employees have accounted for nearly 80 percent of the new jobs created in the United States over the past decade, and this trend is likely to continue.
Opening day will be May 11 for Sundance Cinemas 608, the Madison-based flagship venture for a national movie theater circuit founded by actor and director Robert Redford.
….The debut of the six-screen theater, which will also feature a cafe, a restaurant, a rooftop bar and an art gallery and gift shop, will begin with special grand opening events benefiting three Madison-based nonprofit organizations – the Chazen Museum of Art, OutReach and the River Alliance of Wisconsin.
In an attempt to both inform and highlight research innovation, local business members and campus faculty gathered Friday for a stem cell symposium at the University of Wisconsin.
A group of higher-education scholars met Thursday to discuss new ways to integrate various academic disciplines at the University of Wisconsin.
OK, IT was more than 70 years ago, but Lenor Zeeh remembers it vividly. Of course he does. It was the turning point of his life.
Zeeh, who is a lively 92 and lives on Madison’s west side, last month made a gift of $1 million to the UW School of Pharmacy, but he still recalls that moment in 1935 when it looked as if he might have to drop out of that very same school.
For local arts and entertainment presenters, last weekend’s major snowstorm – called “an act of God” in the legal contracts they have with artists – left canceled performances, empty seats, lower sales at concession stands and debt.
….At the Wisconsin Union Theater, “the storm hurt us very little,” said director Ralph Russo, sounding surprised and relieved.
Geeks will rule the world – in fact, they already do, Rick Davidson, chief information officer for Manpower, in Glendale, told a conference in Madison on Wednesday.
But today’s young people don’t necessarily understand that, so there aren’t enough employees who have the computer and engineering skills that companies need, Davidson said.
A panel of Madison-area entrepreneurs shared their business experiences Wednesday in an effort to tap into the young minds of University of Wisconsin students and promote entrepreneurial awareness.
The University of Wisconsin is still searching for answers after a review last fall showed more than 80 area employers owe the university $150,000.
Itâ??s a stereotype. When the scientist finally isolates the protein and solves the age old conundrum, he yells â??Eureka!â? in a fit of joy. These days, however, that shout is immediately followed by a call to the lawyers.
The UW-Madison School of Business has scheduled its semi-annual “Economic Outlook” briefing featuring four prominent economists for March 16 at the Fluno Center on campus.
For more than 40 years, the event has been helping business leaders and owners translate economic trends into competitive intelligence, the UW said in announcing the event.
The economists will explore factors impacting the economy such as oil prices, federal budget deficits, interest rates, employment outlook, and the war on terrorism.
A licensing committee prepared a statement Friday urging the University of Wisconsin to cut its clothing ties with Adidas after the Student Labor Action Coalition delivered a giant paper mache boot to Chancellor John Wileyâ??s office last week.
SLAC has been a longtime supporter of the rights of workers in a particular El Salvador factory that produces Adidas clothing.
While the factory closed more than two years ago, several investigations said nearly 63 workers remain unpaid and on a blacklist.
IT can take years, sometimes decades, for the commercial applications of a scientific or intellectual breakthrough to become apparent â?? like the notion that brainless bacteria communicate through networks to cause diseases that can also wreak social or economic havoc. [. . .]
Quorum sensing has captured the interest of a new generation of scientific researchers. One of them is Helen E. Blackwell, an organic chemist and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received her bachelorâ??s in chemistry in 1994, when quorum sensing was on the rise, and then earned a doctorate in organic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and received a post-doctoral appointment at Harvard, but she did not hear of quorum sensing until she joined the faculty at Wisconsin in 2002.
When the subject of money comes up, most college students talk about how much they – or their parents – have spent to pursue a degree.
That’s not the case for UW- Madison students Ben Fiechtner and Troy Vosseller, who turned their college experience into a money-making venture by forming the campus clothing company Sconnie in 2005.
“You buy, we fly.” That’s the motto of a new Madison business that caters to the late night whims of University of Wisconsin campus area residents.
Every night except Monday and Tuesday until as late as 4 a.m., Madtown Munchies delivers everything from soda and chips to cigarettes and condoms to an area between lakes Monona and Mendota from roughly Camp Randall Stadium on the west to James Madison Park on the east.
Lawmakers and activists encouraged the Wisconsin State Investment Board to divest from companies that facilitate genocide at the Capitol Wednesday.
A bipartisan bill spear-headed by state Sen. Shelia Harsdorf, R-River Falls, and state Rep. Fredrick Kessler, D-Milwaukee, stipulates that state money be invested in companies that donâ??t indirectly fund genocide in Sudan.
Members of the Student Labor Action Coalition delivered a giant boot to Chancellor John Wiley Wednesday, urging him to â??give Adidas the bootâ? in protest of alleged workersâ?? rights violations in Adidas factories.
In a symbol of political protest against the alleged genocide in Sudan, Wisconsin legislators introduced a bill Wednesday that aims to divest state funds from companies associated with the countryâ??s central government.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Cracking down on college students, the music industry is sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year as it targets music illegally downloaded over campus computer networks.
A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall — significant increases over the past school year. For students who are caught, punishments vary from e-mail warnings to semester-long suspensions from classes.
The eight winners of a campus-wide competition for $3 million in Discovery Seed Grants offer an early look at the breadth and scope of the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at UW-Madison.
“The seed grants are a wonderful way to begin the program of the institutes,” said Marsha Mailick Seltzer, interim director of the institutes’ public half, known as the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), and director of the UW-Madison Waisman Center.
At least two dozen universities each earned more than $10-million from their licensing of rights to new drugs, software, and other inventions in the 2005 fiscal year, according to a survey released Tuesday night, while the number of institutions creating large numbers of spinoff companies based on their researchers’ inventions apparently dropped off sharply from the previous year.
The findings are drawn from a report on a survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers.
In a break from past years’ practice, however, the association did not release summary data for all colleges and universities that participated in the survey (there were 160 respondents for 2005). But it did provide selective information from the 151 institutions that agreed to have their name and responses published.
With Wisconsin ascending to the top of the heap in men’s college basketball, it’s time to look at other No. 1 rankings attained by the Badger State.
….Beyond boosting the state with its basketball program, the University of Wisconsin has its own list of superlatives. For starters, it has more CEOs of Standard & Poor 500 companies than anywhere else.
The UW is also the school that “parties the heartiest,” according to Playboy magazine.
And, making sure no category is too specialized to brag about, the Financial Times says that Wisconsin has the best food and accommodations for executive education facilities in the country.
An effort to replace an aging radio tower on the southeastern edge of the UW Arboretum has some wondering about moving it out of the environmentally sensitive area altogether.
Last year, officials learned the WHA-AM tower, which broadcasts Wisconsin Public Radio throughout Dane County, is in an “unsafe and unreliable condition” due to internal corrosion. As a result, the state plans to build a new tower in the same vicinity, just south of Martin Street, and tear down the tower.
Jon Foley was a sixth-grader in Bangor, Maine when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
Though he was just 11, Foley says he remembers how it was front-page news for days and how relieved everyone was when disaster was finally averted.
….Foley, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, says he tends to believe nuclear experts when they say today’s nuclear plants are far safer than those built 30 years ago.
It’s been just over 50 years since I first laid eyes on – and fell in love with – Wisconsin.
After the dull ride through bleak Illinois, my college buddy, Marty, and I entered the green, rolling, exuberant countryside of Wisconsin in its late spring glory and thought we had suddenly entered paradise. The prosperous-looking farms with their gleaming white houses, bulging Holsteins, just-emerging corn and carpets of new alfalfa quickly erased the gloom of Illinois.
Even the University of Wisconsin was a sort of bucolic haven.
Duke University received $30 million in grants this month to fund its DukeEngage program, which will allow students to participate in civic engagement service learning projects.
VIROQUA, Wis. â?? A former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter will host a writing workshop in Viroqua in the fall.Patrick Strickler, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize while at the Post-Dispatch, lives on a 40-acre farm in Avalanche since retiring in July from communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The prospect of new nuclear power plants rising on the Wisconsin horizon sent sparks flying on the UW-Madison campus Friday.
UW engineering physics professor Michael Corradini irked many in the audience at Grainger Hall with his call for expanding nuclear energy, saying that concerns over safety and waste disposal have been overblown.
….”This is an industry that built two bombs that killed a lot of people and since then they have been trying to make something good out of it,” said Jim Pawley, a UW professor of zoology.
For the third time in five years, a team of UW-Madison accounting students has won a national case competition.
Gov. Jim Doyle says he can’t understand why hospital officials aren’t applauding his plan to tax hospitals.
The two-year state budget proposal envisions a 1 percent tax on gross revenues at the state’s 132 hospitals, which Doyle said would generate $418 million that would bring in $575 million in federal matching funds. Most of the money would be used to increase reimbursements to hospitals for care provided to low-income people under the Medicaid program. The rest would apparently cover other Medicaid and health costs.
…public education must be our highest priority, and somehow we must find the money to fund schools properly; the UW and civil servants could develop a computer system to overhaul Workforce Development, create voter rolls and figure out who is eligible to vote.
We need strong civil service and confidence in our university. Not more outsourcing or privatization.
Gov. Jim Doyle’s request for lawmakers to include health insurance coverage for the domestic partners of state employees, including the UW system, should be made a priority as part of Wisconsin’s 2007-2009 budget.
Gov. Jim Doyle met with a British politician and world-renowned stem cell researchers Monday to discuss research collaboration possibilities between the two countries, closing the gap between Abbey Road and State Street.
British Honorary Consul Michael Bright, the self-described â??eyes and ears of the British government in Wisconsin,â? said the meeting witnessed the first talks between two top stem cell research facilities, the U.K. Stem Cell Bank and the UW-Madison based-WiCell Research Institute.
Yesterday, Gov. Jim Doyle announced a breakthrough collaborative effort between the University of Wisconsinâ??s WiCell stem-cell bank and the United Kingdomâ??s stem-cell bank. For most present, the press conference was another strong push in the direction of improved stem-cell research.
While hosting officials from the United Kingdom at the state Capitol Monday, Gov. Jim Doyle announced University of Wisconsin-affiliated laboratories would team up with its U.K. counterparts on embryonic stem-cell research.
For the third time in five years, a team of UW-Madison accounting students has won a national case competition.
The UW team won the PricewaterhouseCoopers xTAX competition in Washington, D.C. Each student won more than $3,000 and a small silver Tiffany and Co. bowl.
The competition involved teams offering the best solution to a real-world tax policy problem.
TomoTherapy – considered one of Madison’s shining stars in the new tech economy – could also shine on Wall Street, experts said Monday, after the company filed papers seeking to raise up to $201 million in a public stock offering.
MADISON, Wis. – TomoTherapy Inc., which makes radiation equipment used in treating cancer, filed papers Monday seeking to raise as much as $201 million in an initial public offering of its stock.
Following the most successful season in UW-Madison football history, the UW System Board of Regents approved an amended contract for head coach Bret Bielema Friday.
THE ONLY real surprise in this week’s announcement that the UW-Madison Center for Real Estate will be renamed in honor of the late James Graaskamp is that it took this long for it to happen.
….Graaskamp’s students revered him. Time and again I come across news accounts of projects all over the country in which the developer lists Graaskamp as a mentor.
Wisconsin hospitals are preparing to fight a new tax that Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to unveil on Tuesday when he releases his new two-year budget.
The tax would be used to pay for health care costs and other expenses, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal reported in Friday’s editions. Doyle spokesman Matt Canter said Friday he could not confirm that the tax would be proposed in the governor’s budget, but that all sources of federal money were being looked at.
An oft-heard complaint about UW-Madison, justified or otherwise, is that its academic and research fruit falls close to the tree. It has world-class scientists and well-developed mechanisms for turning their best ideas into products or services, but most of that commercialization takes place within a half-hour drive from campus.
It is said that a black panther is able to hunt and kill animals up to 15 times its weight. Conversely, an animal found on the other side of the globe, the timid badger, does not usually seek to attack, but its great muscular power and tough hide render it a formidable opponent.
Faced with these facts, the UW-Milwaukee Panthers should make veritable colleagues for the UW-Madison Badgers in the future, as UW-Milwaukee grows into Wisconsin�s second major research university. The universities� chancellors and state representatives concur.
Several graduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture presented their ââ?¬Å?greenââ?¬Â plans for renovations to UW-Madisonââ?¬â?¢s School of Human Ecology building Wednesday.
Employers can substantially help lower-paid workers by helping them do their taxes, according to new research that has prompted a pilot program in Madison.
University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics is trying out the idea, which came from John Hoffmire, director of the Center on Business and Poverty at the University Innovation Center.
Aruna Biomedical, a Georgia-based maker of neural stem cell kits for researchers, will relocate to Wisconsin if it can raise sufficient amounts of angel capital, the Wisconsin Technology Network reported.
….Aruna is a licensee of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for its human embryonic stem cell technology, and (management team member Jim) Stice told WTN the company would like to relocate to Wisconsin to take advantage of stem cell research synergies offered by the UW.
Economic development in south central Wisconsin is getting a multi-million dollar shot in the arm.
The Capital Region Collaboration Council, a group of volunteer leaders from business, government, education and nonprofit organizations, surpassed its goal of $2.4 million in contributions by raising $2.6 million to be used for improving the economic quality of life in the region.
Madison, Wis. – Wisconsin officials and investors who are trying to come up with the financing that will enable a Georgia life science firm to relocate here have a fight on their hands.
The state Legislature should quickly approve Gov. Jim Doyle’s request to expand tax credits for angel investors.
Public schools are gaining ground as CEO factories. Here’s a trend sure to humble private-school alumni clubs everywhere: The University of Wisconsin churns out more big-time CEOs than Yale.
As a physician and researcher who specializes in alcohol problems, I’d like to inject some science and logic into the discussion on the downtown alcohol density plan.
It’s a fact that most downtown crime, violence and disturbances involve alcohol. It’s a fact that numerous scientific studies show that neighborhoods with high alcohol outlet density have higher rates of crime, violence and disturbances than those with low density.
….Let’s opt for some medicine now while our disease is treatable. Let’s not wait till downtown hits bottom, when urban fright, flight and blight become a vicious circle.
Richard L. Brown, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
After fundraising and gathering support since the late 1990s, Chazen Museum supporters received their first glimpse Thursday night of a 62,000-square foot expansion project.
Already achieving an international reputation for extensive and groundbreaking scientific research, the University of Wisconsin decided to take further strides last year by approving a multi-million dollar project to build a new research facility on University Avenue.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Board Finance Committee proposed raising season football ticket prices for 2007 Tuesday.
State Sen. Ted Kanavas unveiled a new batch of economic development incentives last week that included tax credits for investors in start-up companies and in companies springing from nanotechnology research in the Chippewa Valley. Noticeably absent: the Biomedical Technology Alliance.
The alliance, a consortium of five universities, has been a catalyst for collaborative research since it was launched more than two years ago, and Kanavas (R-Brookfield) has been a key supporter in the past.
Are you looking for a new genetically engineered mouse? Maybe you are seeking a new imaging technique to detect heart disease.
Entrepreneurs or large companies seeking inventions to drive the next blockbuster product and scientists seeking to advance their research have a new way to discover these and other intriguing technologies.
An offshoot of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on Tuesday unveiled a revamped version of its iBridge project. At the heart of the initiative is a Web site, www.ibridgenetwork.org, that provides searchable and clear descriptions of university innovations and how they can be used to advance other research or develop commercial products.
The Regent Street-South Campus area is settled by both student and non-student residents. City officials and residents discussed future plans for the uniquely-arranged neighborhood Monday night.
Meriggioli is on the board of directors of United Way and Second Harvest and on the advisory board for the UW-Madison School of Business Center for Brand and Product Management.
