According to the Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board, grants are ââ?¬Å?ââ?¬Ë?giftââ?¬â?¢ aid; they do not have to be repaid.ââ?¬Â But if state Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz, R-Menomonee Falls, has her way, grant-funded students will repay each dollar per course in which they earn sub-ââ?¬Ë?Cââ?¬â?¢ grades.
This spring, the UW-Madison history department will welcome a new professor. The position is for U.S. military history, a professorship that has been open for 15 years and is being filled just six months after a conservative journal said: ââ?¬Å?Wisconsin doesnââ?¬â?¢t actually want a military historian on its faculty.ââ?¬Â
After mayor Dave Cieslewicz released his $100,000 Downtown Safety Initiative Tuesday, student organizations and city officials broke down the proposal Wednesday night to strengthen city-campus efforts to fight downtown crime.
As the battle between the understaffed and underfunded in UW-Madison�s Department of Comparative Literature and the College of Letters and Science drags on, the department may be in danger of being phased out, said a recent letter posted on the department�s website.
The dean of students position has been filled on an interim basis since former Dean of Students Luoluo Hong left the University of Wisconsin on a sour note in June 2005. Things will change this semester, however, when Chancellor John Wiley and Provost Patrick Farrell select a permanent replacement.
Race relations have progressed over the years to create and sustain a world that boasts equality and human rights. However, despite the progress, most say the nation has a long way to go.
While many colleges expect students to possess certain verbal and math skills upon admission, a report released last week suggests many students lack these abilities. In an effort to get incoming students on the same level, state universities offer developmental courses that educate the students in their respective subject areas.
Local business owners, community members and city officials presented an update Thursday on the status of the downtown safety initiative aimed at improving security on the University of Wisconsin campus.
A physicist by trade, Chancellor John Wiley describes himself as a numbers guy.
Graphs, statistics, analysis of percentages and averages ââ?¬â? Wiley loves it all. He says he even plays around with different number theories in his spare time.
Ever get bugged during dinner by those earnest students shilling for their university’s endowment fund?
Feel free to use my excellent line: “Sorry, love to help you. But I’m still waiting for my college education to pay off.”
Heh, heh.
UW admissions policies regarding race are currently being debated.While many state officials oppose affirmative action, proponents of ââ?¬Å?comprehensive admissions,ââ?¬Â including Chancellor Wiley, believe it promotes diversity and equality.
Last fall, UW System President Kevin Reilly asked the Board of Regents to implement a ââ?¬Å?holisticââ?¬Â freshman admissions policy at all UW campuses. The policyââ?¬â?which has been used effectively at UW-Madison for yearsââ?¬â?requires admissions officers to consider non-academic factors in evaluating prospective students, while maintaining the primacy of academic factors. Non-academic factors include race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, motivation, leadership qualities and legacy status, among other things.
Wisconsin students attending UW-Madison would pay the same amount of tuition if they chose to attend the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Minnesota students, however, would pay more than Wisconsin students even if they attended their home state�s flagship university.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, along with Police Chief Noble Wray, outlined the details of a $100,000 funding proposal for the Downtown Safety Initiative to members of the police department and Madison citizens Tuesday.
Next week, five UW System campuses are hosting statewide educational forums on a draft policy for freshman admissions. The draft under review is a rewrite of the System’s admissions criteria, some of which are 35 years old. The Board of Regents considered the proposal in December but postponed action. So the System is seeking input on the guidelines for just how applications are reviewed.
The Madison Police Department and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz announced plans Tuesday to increase safety in the downtown and campus area.
Reciprocity between Wisconsin and Minnesota state universities has been around for decades ââ?¬â? but it may soon come to an end.
The University of Minnesota is threatening to pull out of a tuition reciprocity agreement between Minnesota and Wisconsin unless its students from Wisconsin start paying between $1,200 and $2,700 more a year.
Wisconsin has rejected the proposal, but the University of Minnesota is pushing back.
“We would like to reach agreement within the existing agreement,” said Craig Swan, vice provost for undergraduate education at the University of Minnesota. “That’s the preferable outcome. But I don’t want to rule other things out.”
The Board of Regents seems poised to extend UW-Madisonââ?¬â?¢s ââ?¬Å?holisticââ?¬Â approach to admission, which considers race, to all UW System schools. While I believe in the goals of affirmative action, the board should consider this advice before changing system policy: There are politically expedient solutions to UWââ?¬â?¢s diversity problem.
UW-Madison student athletes shattered school records last semester when they scored the highest academic rankings during a fall term in history, school officials announced last Friday.
Undergraduates at UW-Madison�s Business School dreaming of a future filled with plush, high-paying jobs will likely have to pay more in the short term, as the Business School announced to students last Tuesday it would raise tuition in order to remain competitive with other top-notch programs.
Student leaders have begun negotiations with the University of Wisconsin administration to make sure no student organizations go homeless this year.
Thousands of dollars could be deducted from tuition bills around the nation after the U.S. House of Representation passed legislation that would make higher education more affordable.
University of Wisconsin business undergraduates could face a $500 per semester tuition increase if a new proposal announced in an e-mail to Business School students last week passes.
As UW-Madison students return to campus for the spring semester and head out to restock the homefront supplies, here’s a tip: don’t forget the soap.
A young Minnesota man was undoubtedly happy when his Gophers won a hard-fought 1-0 victory over the University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team on Jan. 13 at the Kohl Center. But a felony charge of battery to a police officer probably dampened his spirits quickly.
Ryan T. Hartwell, 19, of the Minneapolis suburb of Lakeville, was charged with both the felony count and a misdemeanor of obstructing an officer after a wild chase through the Kohl Center hallways in which his running style was said to be like a football player and it took several officers and fans to finally stop him.
….From an upcoming Chazen Museum exhibit on Pompeii to the HBO series “Rome” to enrollment in Greek language classes at the UW, one thing is clear: The classics are hot these days.
(Several UW-Madison professors and a student are quoted in this article.)
A look at the experiences of three UW-Milwaukee freshmen.
A single-car crash in in the Town of Blue Mounds kills a father and his daughter. It happened just before midnight Friday on North Road near Mt. Horeb.
According to the Dane County Sheriff’s Department, the driver of the car, 21-year-old Euricky Eduardo Tanuwidjaja of Madison, was traveling south on North Road when he lost control and struck a tree.
Tanuwidgaga and his 19-year-old front-seat passenger, Ian Santosa, received minor injuries and were treated at UW Hospital.
A legislative critic of a new UW admissions policy says he’s not backing off. Representative Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) says admissions criteria like community service, motivation, special talents and student experiences can’t disguise the real intentions of UW administrators. “They are hiding behind a lot of other verbiage in their policy, to get at race-based admissions,” says Nass.
When Shawn Cassiman got divorced, she knew it was time to go to college to be better able to support herself and her children.
A high school dropout with an equivalency diploma, she enrolled at UW-Superior at age 40. Commuting from Ashland, she worked at a pizza joint as well as work-study jobs between classes, before gaining her bachelor’s degree in 2002.
Now Cassiman has a master’s degree and is working toward a Ph.D. in social welfare at the UW-Madison. She says she was “lucky” to get scholarships and to find the mentors she needed to gain her degrees. But the University of Wisconsin System is launching a new Adult Student Initiative aimed at taking much of the luck out of the equation for older “nontraditional” students such as Cassiman.
How to solve Wisconsinââ?¬â?¢s ââ?¬Å?brain drainââ?¬Â? Looming over the head of the state Legislature for years, the ââ?¬Å?brain drainââ?¬Â conundrum is a complex problem to solve. One definitively wrong way to solve it? Free tuition.
UW System admission policies are under scrutiny after the Board of Regents postponed a decision to enforce the UW-Madison comprehensive admission process presented by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley in December 2006.
For the first time in over 20 years, UW-Madison is not the top-producing institution for Peace Corps volunteers.
The University of Washington, with 110 alumni volunteers, narrowly gained the top position over UW-Madison, which had 106 alumni participants. UW-Madison still holds the No. 2 overall ranking, with 2,764 alumni serving since 1961.
For many students, winter break was spent visiting family and friends, but for one UW-Madison student, the break brought heroism.
While backpacking in New Mexico, UW-Madison junior Peter Kottke and his older brother Albert rescued a woman in the Gila National Forest who had been alone for approximately five weeks.
Just days before the fall semester ended, Madison police arrested Antonio L. Pope for the two campus sexual assaults that took place only weeks earlier.
The criminal complaint filed against Pope details the charges against him in the Nov. 29 and Dec. 9 sexual assaults.
A successful career in student leadership at Michigan State University just might lead to a dean of students position at the University of Wisconsin for Timothy Gordon.
As tuition costs continue to rise and college becomes less and less affordable for many students, the debate over the increasing influx of out-of-state students accepted into the University of Wisconsin remains a hot issue.
After a reported rise in textbook thefts on the University of Wisconsin campus, city officials have proposed an ordinance that would require used bookstores to participate in a crime prevention effort.
The possibility of free tuition for University of Wisconsin students who promise to stay in state after graduation has raised many questions about the proposal’s potential implications.
The UW System and legislators have already started sparring over the proposed change in admissions policy. Now the UW wants to hear from you.
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According to the UW System’s Dave Jiroux, grade points and class rankings aren’t the only things you’ll need to get into a UW school. Admissions counselors will look at the applicant’s entire life experience.
Concerns about higher education costs in the state rose earlier this month, as the University of Wisconsin slipped 10 spots in a nationwide survey on college affordability.
D’s and F’s could become even more costly for some University of Wisconsin students.
A bill that would penalize UW students receiving state financial aid for getting any grade lower than a C could come before the state Legislature in the near future.
Capt. Kevin Kryst, a 2001 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, became the first UW alumnus to die in the Iraq war when he was killed in combat in the Al Anbar province Dec. 18.
Madison police believe they have caught the man who sexually assaulted two University of Wisconsin students on or near campus late last semester.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has come under close scrutiny in recent weeks for considering allowing race as a factor in admissions decisions at all UW System schools.
Fewer college freshmen are attending their top choice of schools, and many appear to be doing so not because they were rejected by their first choice but for financial reasons, a national survey shows.More than two-thirds (67.3%) are attending their No. 1 choice, the survey says. Of those who are not, 52.6% said they were accepted and opted not to go.
Wisconsin college students get a sweet deal in Minnesota: If they go to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, they pay $1,200 a year less in tuition than Minnesotans.
It’s a benefit they don’t plan to give up any time soon. After two years of talks, Minnesota officials asked Wisconsin to renegotiate a tuition pact that now makes the University of Minnesota cheaper for Wisconsinites.
Wisconsin recently responded politely: No, thanks.
How do you construct a narrative about college freshmen these days? Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles take their shot annually with a survey of 270,000 entering undergraduates at roughly 400 colleges across the country.
As the U.S. occupation of Iraq nears four years and President Bush promotes a so-called surge of troops to quell the Iraqi resistance and civil war, others want a surge toward peace that doesn’t involve more troops.
One of those others is Paul Pryse, a University of Wisconsin-Madison junior journalism major. Pryse, 20, is a member of the UW-Madison branch of the Campus Antiwar Network and is an elected member of CAN’s national coordinating committee.
He says he got involved in CAN “because I suspected from the beginning that this was a war based on lies, and I turned out to be right.”
University of Wisconsin star cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu entered a plea of not guilty to charges of residential burglary and criminal trespass in a court appearance Wednesday in Sycamore, Ill.
Ikegwuonu, a first-team All-Big Ten Conference performer this past season as a sophomore for the Badgers, was making his initial court appearance after being arrested Nov. 25 in DeKalb, Ill., along with his twin brother Bill, a reserve defensive back at Northern Illinois.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Democrat-controlled House voted overwhelmingly to cut interest rates on need-based student loans Wednesday, steadily whittling its list of early legislative priorities.
The strong bipartisan vote in the House came as a dispute between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate derailed ethics and lobbying reform that the new Democratic majority had made its first legislative initiative.
The House legislation, passed 356-71, would slice rates on the subsidized loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. About 5.5 million students get the loans each year.
At 5:15 a.m., the streets of the UW–Madison campus are silent and deserted. Most typical students have gone to bed a few hours earlier, and won’t wake until their first class sometime around 9 a.m. However, in a few dorm rooms and apartments, members of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps are stirring. They will be showered, dressed, and at the Shell, one of the campus workout facilities, for training by 6:15 a.m. sharp.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, this is the routine of UW students who have chosen to dedicate their time to the Army, Navy, Marines or Air Force. At the UW, some students will not only earn their undergraduate degree, but be proficient in land navigation, how to drive a Humvee, and how to aim and shoot a rifle.
Madison, Wis. – Technology-based businesses and other companies hoping to connect with student intern programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are invited to attend the Jan. 23 luncheon meeting of the Wisconsin Innovation Network in Madison.
WASHINGTON – According to my daughter Joanna, a college student, the world is divided into three basic categories: friends, “Facebook friends,” and everybody else.
I’m trying to get a handle on this. From what I can tell, Facebook friends are not friends in the same way that her pals are friends. In fact, Facebook might well be changing the nature of relationships, making them both more intrusive and yet somehow less intimate at the same time.
For the first time in more than two decades, UW- Madison is not the top- producer of Peace Corps volunteers.
UW-Madison had 106 alumni serve in the program last year – up from 104 last year – but was edged out for the No. 1 spot by the University of Washington in Seattle, which had 110 alumni participating, up from 102 last year.
MADISON, Wis. — After proudly holding the title for 20 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is no longer the No. 1 school in the country for recruiting Peace Corps volunteers.
The University of Washington grabbed the top spot with just four volunteers more than UW-Madison.
Washington had 110 volunteers compared to UW-Madison’s 106.
MADISON, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-Madison student credited with helping save a woman’s life in the New Mexico mountains is being called a hero, but he said it was just a matter of good timing.
Peter Kottke, 20, and his brother Albert were on their annual backpacking trip in New Mexico when they stumbled upon a woman missing for five weeks.
Kottke said he and his brother were looking forward to a third trip into the wilderness, and said they never thought they would come back heroes.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A faint sound made Peter and Albert Kottke stop and look around as they hiked out of the Gila Wilderness at the end of backpacking trip.A figure moved on the other side of the Gila River. As it drew closer, the University of Wisconsin-Madison junior and his older brother saw a woman, hunched over and moving slowly.
The Kottkes crossed the river to find Carolyn Dorn, 52, who had been alone in the Gila National Forest for five weeks after becoming trapped on the wrong side of the rain- and snow-swollen river. The search for her had been called off two weeks ago.
(Peter Kottke is a junior majoring in geological engineering at UW-Madison.)
Jason Carlos Gonzalez, 22, is being honored for his volunteer work at two fire departments and at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Wisconsin. Although he is putting himself through college at UW- Madison, Gonzalez said he has been given many opportunities throughout his life so it’s always been his priority to give back.
