UW-Madison announced Wednesday its participation in the first national teach-in on global warming solutions.
â??Focus the Nationâ? will feature a live Web cast produced by the National Wildlife Federation and presented by the Earth Day Network at more than 1400 colleges and universities across the country and at three UW-Madison locations.
Gov. Jim Doyle told students across Wisconsin if they do their part, there is an opportunity for them all in higher education, highlighting educationâ??s role in the Grow Wisconsin strategy he introduced in his State of the State address Wednesday.
More bad news for college officials who say too many parents are micromanaging their children’s lives: Most college-bound kids seem to welcome the involvement.
More than 30 years later, Lori Berquam looks at photographs recovered from the fire that burned her family ‘s home to the ground and swears she can still smell the smoke.
“And your clothes. As many times as you wash your clothes, the smell, it ‘s such a hard thing to get out, ” Berquam said. “And then you think, is the smell really there or am I just imagining it to be there? “
While other University students enjoyed winter break, global studies senior Emily Hassing was hanging out in Zanzibar, Kenya, trying to avoid the postelection violence that had broken out around the country.
Hassing was one of nine students in Kenya for a year with the Minnesota Studies in International Development program on Dec. 27 when the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was accused of rigging the election.
The program serves a group of UW-Madison students.
Dean of Students Lori Berquam, in partnership with the Madison Fire Department, announced a week-long campaign Tuesday to promote fire safety.
Associated Students of Madisonâ??s Shared Governance Committee selected two students to serve as student body representatives on a chancellor search and screen committee late Tuesday.
Senior Jolene Anderson has made the next phase of cutoffs for the Naismith Trophy, an award given to the nation’s top women’s basketball player.
A Catholic student group is suing the University of Wisconsin at Madison, claiming it is being discriminated against because it is a religious organization.
The Roman Catholic Foundation says the university unfairly refused to release funds from student fees to pay for some of its activities. The university has disallowed funds to pay for activities such as printing Lenten booklets, running evangelical Catholic training camps and hosting retreats where counselors were priests and nuns.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison officials are urging students to make sure their smoke detectors are working after two recent off-campus fires.
School officials are handing out nearly 2,000 9-volt batteries at the student union on Tuesday to students who live in houses and apartments.
Dean of Students Lori Berquam said that the goal is to have a safe second semester after two tragic fires in November
With the news that Chancellor John Wiley will step down next September it seems the future of UW-Madison is at a crossroads. In a presentation given to the UW System Board of Regents last Friday, Provost Patrick Farrell said, while UW-Madison has been an extremely successful university, that success is not guaranteed to continue. Farrell is right, but his solutionâ??to increase tuitionâ??is dead wrong.
For the second time, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Roman Catholic Foundation-UW-Madison saying the university cannot refuse to fund certain student religious-based activities.
Two University of Wisconsin alumni donated a record $175 million to start a need-based scholarship foundation for college students in Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin School of Music received a donation last month, allowing the department to provide its first full-ride undergraduate scholarship program for students majoring in piano and voice, specifically sopranos.
There is no telling what University of Wisconsin students could afford if they did not have to spend the nearly $900 average college students spend on textbooks and supplies each year.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly appointed a committee last week that will begin the search for a new UW-Madison chancellor.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — University of Wisconsin-Madison leaders are urging students to make sure their smoke detectors are working after two recent off-campus fires.
The university is handing out nearly 2,000 9-volt batteries at the student union Tuesday to students who live in houses and apartments.
An attack at a UW-Madison dorm room, coupled with the theft of checks from a friend, will mean 10 years in prison for a homeless man.
JOHN QUINLAN
‘Harness the strength we already have’
John Quinlan, 48, of Madison, is host of “Forward Forum” on WTDY and president of Q Solutions, a communications and consulting company.
Returning to school at UW-Madison to finish the undergraduate degree he started in 1978, Quinlan has been impressed by his 20-something classmates who know their history.
MADISON, Wis. — Investigators still aren’t saying much about the questions surrounding the death of a 22-year-old University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student in the Madison area last summer.
Madison Police and Dane County Coroner John Stanley still aren’t saying how or when Kelly Nolan died, or whether her death is believed to have been an intentional act or resulted from someone else’s recklessness or negligence.
TOWN OF DUNN — For two and a half weeks last summer, newspaper headlines blared and the airwaves crackled with the search for Kelly Nolan, a popular 22-year-old UW-Whitewater student who disappeared June 23 after a night of partying in Downtown Madison.
On July 9, a signal from Nolan ‘s cell phone led searchers to a patch of woods in the town of Dunn, about 10 miles south of where she was last seen. There, police found a woman ‘s body later determined to be that of Nolan.
You have to look past all the cement and glass, the red seats, the wide concourses and the funky artwork on the walls to learn why the Kohl Center has been such a great home for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.
It was unsettling that the e-mail addresses, phone numbers and Social Security-based campus ID numbers of more than 200 University of Wisconsin faculty and staff members had been accessible on a campus Internet site. It was even more unsettling that the UW waited more than a month to advise the victims of a breach of their personal security.
Once again a federal judge has ruled that the University of Wisconsin at Madison must provide student-activity funds to a Roman Catholic student organization â?? even though the money will be used for religious purposes like worship services and proselytizing.
In an order issued today, Judge John C. Shabaz of the U.S. District Court in Madison said the university could not deny funds to the UW-Madison Roman Catholi
MADISON, Wis. â?? The University of Wisconsin-Madison can no longer refuse to pay for student activities involving prayer, worship and proselytizing, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge John Shabaz said the schoolâ??s policy of turning down funding requests from student groups for such activities violates their First Amendment right to free speech.
He granted a preliminary injunction sought by the Roman Catholic Foundation, a student group, that calls for the university to immediately stop enforcing the policy.
What started as a T-shirt slogan has become a lifestyle brand touting all things Wisconsin.
Sconnie Nation recently opened a retail location in conjunction with custom printer Underground Printing. In addition, it licensed its trademark Sconnie brand to a separate company offering road trip packages.
What has resulted is a network of enterprises created by students, primarily for students.
IT IS a long way from Madison to Madison Square Garden, and once Willie Ney was there, sitting wide-eyed on the New York Knicks’ bench one night earlier this month, he thought it couldn’t get much better than that.
Ney, executive director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives at UW-Madison, was in Manhattan as part of an extraordinary new program that will bring a New York City high school graduate to Madison next fall on a full college scholarship. The Knicks, New York’s storied National Basketball Association franchise, are involved, along with a New York City UW-Madison alumni group.
Best of all, a bunch of New York high school students with big talent and big dreams are involved. They are writing and performing poetry, proving there is more to hip-hop culture than a scowl and a snarl.
Waiting for word on whether or not a student has been accepted into UW-Madison is always a nail-biter, but this year that waiting game is even more stressful than usual.
Admissions decisions are coming about four to eight weeks later than normal, said admissions director Rob Seltzer, because the office of admissions is still getting up to speed with some major new technology.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison was once again ranked the No. 2 university for producing Peace Corps volunteers, according to a statement posted on the Peace Corps web site yesterday.
UW-Madison sent 99 undergraduate alumni volunteers as of September 2007. Coming in first place for the peace-prize was last year’s big winner, the University of Washington, with 113. Check out the rest of the list here.
How does UW-Madison pump out such a steady stream of do-gooders?
If Plymouth High School freshman Marcus Gamoke can keep up a B average throughout high school, he’s likely to be assured a spot in whatever college, university or technical school he wants to attend. So why would the 15-year-old care whether he’s officially a Wisconsin Cove-nant scholar?
“I think it’s a good idea,” Gamoke said. “There’s a lot of extra stuff.”
Gamoke was one of 16 Plymouth High freshmen who visited with Wisconsin first lady Jessica Doyle Monday and talked about the merits of the brand-new Wisconsin Covenant program, which aims to make it easier for students to get into college.
The University of Washington, for the second year in a row, tops the list of colleges and universities sending the most number of volunteers to the Peace Corps in 2007.
The University of Washington sent 113 volunteers to the 47-year-old, Washington D.C.-based program, ahead of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 99 volunteers and the University of Colorado-Boulder’s 94. The University of Washington also sent the most graduate school volunteers, with 17.
Student groups from Madison and Green Bay are headed to New Orleans this weekend, and will become the latest of many Wisconsin volunteers helping repair homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Recently, members of a church group from Central Wisconsin helped out in The Big Easy…where much hard work is still ahead to rebuild parts of the city. Chuck Quirmbach reportsâ?¦ (Audio.)
27 News has uncovered UW basketball player Kevin Gullikson has been cited four times for underage drinking in the past two years, including a Minnesota citation, where the case was dismissed, despite Gullikson’s apparent violation of court requirements.
Gullikson remains with the basketball team. Team spokesman Brian Lucas has yet to return a phone call from 27 News. In published reports, Lucas has said Gullikson’s situation is being handled internally.
Records show Gullikson, 20, was most recently cited for underage drinking Jan.6, with a blood alcohol level of .20, more than twice Wisconsin’s legal driving limit of .08.
….On Tuesday you may want to check out WSUM-FM/91.7, the UW-Madison student radio station. As was the case for one day last January, the station — with many students out of town — is being “hijacked” by old guys, including Madison radio veterans Tom Teuber, Rick Murphy and Dave Benson. The day’s programming — from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. — will be coordinated by UW-Madison alum Bruce Ravid, who now lives in Los Angeles, where he runs an executive search firm. Ravid spent years in the music industry, including a stint as promotions director for Capitol Records.
If Madison’s parking operations manager has his way, there will be fewer cars on downtown streets for plows to maneuver around as soon as early next month.
Operations manager Bill Knobeloch is recommending that “non-pay” availability of city parking ramps be expanded by four hours a night during snow emergencies and that the city offer monthly overnight parking passes for the Overture ramp.
Knobeloch sees a market for the 24/7 monthly parking passes among downtown condo owners whose units come with only one parking space, and among university students. “I have had several parents call asking how to get their kids’ cars off the streets at nights and in out of the weather,” he said.
As part of its master plan to redevelop downtown Madison, WI, the University of Wisconsin, along with private businesses, has embarked on the 11-story, 1.1 million-sq.-ft. University Square Project. The project will consolidate several existing services and businesses at one location. The result is a private-public partnership between Executive Management Inc. of Madison and the University. The new $100 million complex will include 350 apartments, 250,000 sq. ft. of University health service offices (known as University Tower), 140,000 sq. ft. of retail space and 420 parking spaces.
Last week, a group of nine students from the University of Wisconsin â?? Madison drove 1,500 miles from the stiff 25-degree chill of the Midwest to Brownsville â?? but they didnâ??t come for the weather.
â??We came on a service learning trip,â? said Cathy Collentine, a 21-year-old political science and Spanish double major at the university. â??But weâ??re really down here for personal learning. Education is the only way to create change.â?
The group of students is part of an organization called Action Environmental Justice, which aims to create more equitable conditions for people living in areas under environmental distress.
Politically driven violence across Kenya, which has claimed more than 500 lives, has forced the country’s universities to shutter their campuses and caused some American colleges to cancel or delay their study-abroad programs there.
Universities in Kenya have postponed their January opening dates for fear that students and academic staff could be caught up in the turmoil that grew out of last month’s presidential elections.
Following last yearâ??s cancellation of the Pub Crawl, the consumption of alcohol by students has been an alarming issue on the minds of the administration, and now theyâ??re going to do something about it.
UW-Oshkosh collaborated with UW-Madison in a program called CHIPs, College Health Intervention Projects, which according to Dr. John Swanson of the Health Center was research that asked students about their alcohol consumption and how their use of alcohol impacted their lives.
“I would like to go to UW Madison cause I’ve always wanted to go there since I was a little kid,” says 17-year-old Jacob Salzmann.
And now, in his senior year of high school, he’s hoping his dream will come true. But after filling out his college application in early October, he’s still waiting now in January to find out if he’s been accepted.
“It’s just disappointing that I’m waiting to hear from them and I haven’t heard anything. I would like to know so I could know if I should pursue my other options yet or not.”
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine ranks three Wisconsin institutions among its 100 best values for public colleges in its February issue:
UW-Madison ranked 19th for in-state students and 23rd for out-of-state students.
A new University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study has found that black students are nearly three times more likely than whites to have off-campus jobs that interfere with their studies.
It is one of several issues uncovered through an experimental new approach to boosting minority enrollment in Wisconsin’s university system.
“It’s ultimately not about what color you are. Everybody brings something to the university community.”
Cydny Black was reflecting on her first semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after starting out last fall with a scholarship from the Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE) program, which recruits, readies and funds tuition for minority and low-income students for the university.
One of three PEOPLE students from Madison high schools interviewed by The Capital Times at the start of the fall semester, the 18-year-old African-American said she has really enjoyed herself on a campus that is more than 80 percent white.
Women are still underrepresented in American boardrooms and they still earn less than men, but U.S. census figures released Thursday show they continue to outnumber men in college classrooms and on commencement day – a trend some call troubling.
About 33% of women ages 25 to 29 had a bachelor’s degree or more education in 2007, compared with 26% of their male counterparts.
Nairobi, Kenya – Jessie Brenden didn’t spend late December celebrating the end of 2007. Instead, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student studying abroad in Kenya holed up in a home until New Year’s Day, watching post-election violence unfold and listening to gunshots outside.
UW-Madison student Ryan Miller (left) and Marvin, whose last name is unknown, perform skits and conduct discussions about social issues in Kisumu, Kenya, through the Tuungane Youth Project. Miller has lived with host families on both ends of the political spectrum.
However, at a restaurant days later, all seems back to normal in Brenden’s life – the nursing major is about to start her internship at a hospital and she’s looking forward to celebrating her 21st birthday Saturday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a host of other colleges are considering saving money by switching student e-mail service to free, professional services like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo.
More than 1,000 colleges have already signed up with such companies, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
But UW-Madison and UW System officials are carefully reviewing the pros and cons of outsourcing e-mail, according to Brian Rust, communications manager for the Division of Information Technology at the UW, and David Giroux, a spokesman for the UW System.
On the coaches’ ballot, University of Wisconsin junior Jack Ikegwuonu, Ohio State junior Malcolm Jenkins, Penn State junior Justin King and Illinois sophomore Vontae Davis made up the first team All-Big Ten secondary.
Davis is coming back for his junior season. He doesn’t have options. But the others may all be headed to the NFL. Ikegwuonu, for sure, is going in that direction, according to Len Pasquarelli of ESPN.com.
Pasquarelli wrote Monday that Ikegwuonu, the former Madison Memorial athlete, has filed the appropriate paperwork with the league office for entry into the draft.
University of Wisconsin men’s basketball player Kevin Gullikson has been ticketed again for underage drinking, according to a citation made public Wednesday.
Team spokesman Brian Lucas told The Capital Times: “We are aware of the situation. We are handling it internally.”
Gullikson practiced with the team Wednesday.
Monona businessman and campus landlord Richard Fritz is proposing a six-story, 36-unit student apartment building at 125 N. Randall Ave.
Located across from the Camp Randall greenspace, the site currently has four rental homes owned by Fritz. Plans call for razing those buildings and replacing them with new construction.
The project is before the City Urban Design Commission tonight for its first public review but developers acknowledge there are issues yet to be resolved. The major hangup is whether the project would conform to the city’s new Regent Street/South Campus Master Plan. That plan, awaiting final approval of the City Council, calls for stepping back the upper floors of new buildings to make them appear less dense.
Charlie Berens, a UW-Madison junior, got his start in campus politics working to start a recycling and conservation program for the Kohl Center and Camp Randall Stadium. This week, he ‘s in New York, training for a different type of political involvement.
Not so long ago, when parents sent their children away to college, their biggest fears probably were of the rowdy party and failing grades variety. That paradigm was shattered last spring when a troubled student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 33 people, including himself, in a rampage that started in a dormitory and continued in an engineering classroom building.
At least two major campuses within the University of Wisconsin system â?? Madison and Green Bay â?? are using the Virginia Tech tragedy as an opportunity to improve their own campus security measures in the event of a shooting or natural disaster.
On Monday morning, the hands of 20 University of Wisconsin students pushed up one wall of a house that will be nearly completed by weekâ??s end.
The ninth annual Putnam Habitat for Humanity Blitz build is on, said Jim Melfi, Putnam Habitatâ??s executive director.
Student volunteers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Milwaukee are escaping subfreezing temperatures to help one Palatka family realize their dream of home ownership, he said.
IOWA CITY, Iowa — What to do about college students who drink heavily on Thursday night? Put a price on their heads.
University of Iowa officials are so concerned about binge drinking among students, they’re offering departments extra funds to hold more classes on Fridays. The spur for that? A study that found early Friday classes reduced heavy drinking the night before.
Only around 1,400 classes are held on Fridays, compared with about 2,400 on Mondays through Thursdays. Because professors often schedule classes between Monday and Thursday, many students are free to make merry on Thursday night and recover Friday, thus allowing them to get drunk again that night.
Badger Watch, a voluntary neighborhood watch network that spans the UW-Madison campus, started back in 2002 in just four buildings and now has more than 700 volunteers in more than 30 buildings campus-wide. Most are faculty and staff members but students are also welcome to participate.
Mequon – Weeks after his partially burned body was found in a New Mexico ditch, a memorial service for 22-year-old Michael J. Mowers will be held today in Mequon with his family, and with investigators knowing little more now about the University of Wisconsin-Madison student’s death than they did then.
Mowers’ body was discovered Nov. 21 in a culvert near a construction site in Las Cruces, N.M., by a woman walking her dog. But it took police until Dec. 7 to identify the body, using a national employment fingerprint database.
While six University of Tennessee football players will sit out today’s (Monday’s) Outback Bowl due to academic ineligibility, the Badgers have no such problem.
Could one reason be that University of Wisconsin athletes take many independent “directed study” courses involving one student and one professor that yield a high percentage of top grades?
A review of hundreds of records for directed study courses between summer 2004 and spring 2007 by The Capital Times did not yield conclusive evidence of a problem, but it did reveal patterns that have been viewed as warning signs at other universities around the country.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michael Flowers was sitting on the edge of the couch telling the story to a visitor Tuesday night when he stuck out his left arm and watched hundreds of goose bumps pop up from his elbow to his wrist.
“Every time I think about it I get chills,” said Flowers, whose gentle smile as he stared at his arm provided the perfect punctuation to the special story that took place in Austin, Texas, this past Saturday.
Against the backdrop of a national goal to more than quadruple the number of American undergraduates studying abroad to a million by 2016-17, Cultural Experiences Abroad, a for-profit study abroad provider, has been building a network of study centers best described as independent branch campuses. Once all 12 are fully operational â?? six are open now â?? itâ??s expected that the GlobalCampus Centers combined could accommodate up to 20,000 students a year, assuming every seat were filled every summer, winter and fall. For comparisonâ??s sake, consider that in 2005-6, 223,534 American students studied abroad in all.
A large number of CEAâ??s students are coming from the Big 10 universities, Bannister said, including the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Rob Howell, director of international academic programs and a professor of German at Wisconsin, said that the university does not have a relationship with CEA. But about 300 Wisconsin students do attend non-university programs each year, he said, with about 70 of those heading to Barcelona â?? where Wisconsin doesnâ??t offer any of its own programs because Spanish faculty would prefer that students not study in a Catalan-speaking city. â??Undoubtedly we have students who go on [CEA programs], but theyâ??re not programs we promote,â? Howell said.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) â?? A potentially fatal accident has inspired one University of Wisconsin-Madison student to pursue a career as a firefighter and paramedic.
Bill Schrack spent Saturday scrubbing floors, cleaning the bathroom and washing dishes at Fire Station No. 1. It was his way of thanking the rescue workers who saved his life.
Schrack, 20, of Barrington, Ill., was hurt in a mo-ped accident on July 1. He had been headed home to the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house when his mo-ped hit a dent in the concrete and he vaulted over the handlebars.
Wisconsin high school students got a great Christmas gift last week in the form of a $175 million scholarship endowment from John and Tashia Morgridge.
Their generosity and foresight will enable about 2,000 to 3,000 mainly low-income youth to attend college or technical school through grants of between $1,000 and $5,000 from the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars.
