Sixteen gallons of hand sanitizer sat in the foyer of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority house at the University of Wisconsin as house mother Karen Mullis reconfigured tables in the dining room to maintain social distancing.
The university is providing free COVID-19 testing for students, faculty and staff. It’s set up on Henry Mall, between University Avenue and Linden Drive.
Quoted: No plan for opening a university can be fool-proof, which leads to UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank being both confident in her campus plan and concerned about the things she – and any university’s chief executive – cannot control no matter how comprehensive a plan’s framework is.
“I admit I am both optimisitc and worried. I think we’ve done everything we need to do. We’ve got a lot of moving parts,” Blank told WTMJ’s John Mercure during Tuesday’s WTMJ Cares Special Roundtable.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first on-campus COVID-19 testing location is now operating on an appointment basis, with at least two more sites expected to open for the fall semester.
Wisconsin State Journal reporter Jim Polzin asked Badgers fans on Twitter what they thought about the Big Ten Conference’s decision to cancel fall sports amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
’I don’t want to have to choose between being safe and having no income, or a disease that has really long terrible health implications even if I survive it,’ graduate student says
The Big Ten is likely to cancel fall sports, including football, over coronavirus concerns, according to several reports. A formal announcement is expected Tuesday.
An already-battered Madison hospitality industry could take another hit worth tens of millions of dollars if the Big Ten Conference ultimately decides to cancel the fall football season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
First, the council demands moving all courses online until there are zero new cases of COVID-19 in Dane County for 14 consecutive days.
Aside from the campuses in Eau Claire, Green Bay and Platteville, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and University of Wisconsin-Madison have introduced required pledges for students too.
A newly formed coalition of University of Wisconsin-Madison worker unions released a statement Wednesday demanding COVID-19 policies that include fully online coursework, payment continuity and hourly student wages.
If the college football season is able to be played this fall, the University of Wisconsin football team now knows who it’ll face and when.
Service will increase by approximately 300 bus hours a day, from 700 to approximately 1,000, not including UW-Madison campus circulators or service for the Madison School District, Metro planning manager Drew Beck said. The pre-COVID-19 level was about 1,300 bus hours a day.
Students who want to vote via an in-person absentee ballot can do so from noon until 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday at several sites on the UW-Madison campus.
Based on the advice of Public Health, voting will take place in tents on Engineering Mall, Library Mall, by the Kohl Center, and near the Natatorium.
In-person absentee voting on campus began Monday at Engineering Mall, Library Mall, near the Kohl Center, and by the Natatorium.
Voters in the city of Madison can complete their absentee ballots in person for the fall elections throughout UW-Madison’s campus as of Monday, according to the city clerk’s office.
Restaurant-reservation software company OpenTable is one vendor that’s seen increased demand, according to COO Andrea Johnston. Schools like Cornell University and University of Wisconsin-Madison have already signed on to use the service to handle dining hall capacity.
Core Spaces, the development team behind a controversial Langdon Street apartment development, is “disappointed” following the Madison Plan Commission’s denial of its application for demolition and conditional use earlier this week.
If anyone in Wisconsin was poised to play a part in the coronavirus pandemic, it was Jonathan Temte. A physician and associate dean with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Temte is also an expert in vaccine and immunization policy who sat on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for eight years and is currently a member of the ACIP COVID-19 Vaccine Work Group, a panel that will help inform the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determine how a COVID-19 vaccine will be deployed.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has joined all other UW colleges in waiving its test score requirements for fall 2021 admission as students nationwide struggle to access the ACT and SAT during the pandemic.
Gracie Lund made her first Today show debut when she was just a child. She is now working remotely as an intern for the show.
A new survey, conducted by the United Faculty and Academic Staff and the Teaching Assistants Association, shows 86.4 percent of UW-Madison workers are uncomfortable with the university’s reopening plan. Most responses came from graduate student workers and faculty, but some undergraduate students feel the same
UW-Madison houses about 8,000 students on a typical year, but Director of Marketing and Communication for University Housing Brendon Dybdahl said they’re expecting between 7,300 and 7,500 students to live on campus for the 2020-2021 school year.
A survey of staff at UW-Madison shows an overwhelming majority are uncomfortable returning to work on campus this fall.
Seamus Rohrer, 17, will study journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, drawn to the prospect of writing for two student newspapers. He will drive northwest with one of his parents from his New York City home come fall, a plan he had made before the coronavirus outbreak.
In response to an anonymous post on a student-run social media page, University of Wisconsin’s Health Services will explore alternative options to police hospital transportation.
Kathy Cramer, who leads the BadgersVote committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that group’s activities have shifted to virtual engagement and absentee voting education.
UW-Madison’s University Housing division plans to reopen all 21 of its residential halls next month. The dorms are set to hold between 7,300 and 7,500 undergraduate students and university leaders finalized a series of changes that aim to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between students and out into the community.
As part of its Back to School webinar series to help college and K-12 dining programs get ready for the fall, Food Management held a session titled “How to Start a Delivery Program on Your Campus” on July 21 featuring Peter Testory, director of dining & culinary services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM), and Darin Schluep, director of Associated Students Dining Services at the University of California-Davis (UCD). It was moderated by FM Group Content Director Becky Schilling
With a little over a month before classes start at UW-Madison, university leaders are working on plans to reopen with in person and online classes.
Students from UW-Madison are teaming with non-profit group WISPIRG in an effort to register 1,000 new voters ahead of the fall election.
Quoted: The effort to de-densify campus could have a public health benefit if the extra space is used to spread people out across classrooms and residence halls, said Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the American College Health Association’s COVID-19 task force.
“If the reduction is being done solely for budget reasons, however,” he said, such as to “keep class sizes the same but have fewer classes with fewer instructors, then I don’t think it’s going to make much difference.”
Equipped with a laptop, legal pad and smartphone, Merta Maaneb de Macedo this week called a UW-Madison student whose roommate recently tested positive for COVID-19.
Protesters gathered on Library Mall to say the plan does not take students’ safety into account enough.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has unveiled a series of changes aimed at improving the racial climate on campus, including a mandatory cultural competency workshop for new undergraduate students and a $10 million fundraising campaign to recruit and hire more students and employees of color.
“Today’s announcement is encouraging news for all college students and for American universities,” UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in a statement. “Universities need flexibility to educate students in the most effective manner possible during the pandemic and international students deserve stability and support as they pursue their degrees here.”
UW-Madison remains committed to preserving elements of in-person teaching, with physical distancing requirements and widespread testing. However, as families and faculty continue to ask more specific questions about what school will look like, the university has about five weeks to hash out the details. “This is a big lift,” Blank said at a University Committee meeting Monday. “We’re going to be running the university in virtually every area differently than it’s ever been run before.”
The rule threatens to upend the legal status of thousands of international students in Wisconsin, including roughly 5,800 on the UW-Madison campus.
In the middle of a pandemic, international college students have needed more support and sympathy ever before, especially as many have been stranded in Madison for months. But in the United States the Trump administration added to their stress and anxiety by issuing an order to strip students of their US visas and deport them if their courses go entirely online.
The University of Wisconsin System has asked the governor for $110 million to fund COVID-19 testing and personal protective equipment, as campuses look to open this fall and the number of coronavirus cases in Wisconsin continues to rise.
The UW Board of Regents unanimously passed the mask mandate Thursday, a few weeks after UW System guidelines recommended masks but stopped short of requiring them.
For Hannah Arbuckle, a summer internship focused on helping people cultivate wild foods at the Bad River Reservation was an opportunity to help the tribe she belongs to.
It was also the University of Wisconsin-Madison senior’s chance to complete her last requirement for graduation.
But when she called her supervisor at the reservation to ask if her internship was still happening, Arbuckle learned the program had been canceled.
Over 1,800 participants joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s virtual panel discussion dedicated to understanding how racism impacts students and alumni engagement in an event titled “Committed to Change: A Call to Action, Understanding How Racism Shows Up and Impacts Students and Alumni Engagement.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that international students who are enrolled in online only classes for the upcoming semester will have to leave the country or risk deportation.
Those guidelines issued Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement say international students would have to leave the country or transfer to another college if their school goes entirely online this fall. Schools had to do that in the spring semester because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Everyone who visits these campus sites will need to wear a mask or face covering and abide by social distancing guidelines.
Thousands of international students pursuing degrees at UW-Madison may be forced to leave the country, risk deportation or transfer to another institution if the university moves all of its classes online this fall in the interest of public health.
Iris Zhou, an 18-year-old from Wuxi in eastern China, has been admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the coming school year, but the earliest visa appointment she could get when she applied in May was in November.
Most recently, Lewis, who earned his doctorate of education from the University of Wisconsin–Stout, was the higher education director at the Ho-Chunk Nation Education Department where he designed a successful work-based learning internship program and increased the annual college graduation rate by 250 percent.
Instead of picking a single day or two-day period to visit campus as in previous years, students set aside a week to complete the online content. During that week, students meet with an adviser over video conference to enroll in courses and engage in other online events about important resources and campus culture.
UW-Madison spokesman John Lucas said Thursday the plan to offer in-person instruction Sept. 2 remains in place and he dismissed the notion of finances driving the decision to reopen. He also said the plan may help the city because regardless of how UW-Madison operates this fall, many students will return in August when their off-campus housing leases start.
Starting Friday, downtown Madison’s State Street will be closed to vehicular traffic on eight weekends to accommodate businesses expanding their serving areas outside as a part of the city’s Streatery Restaurant Recovery Program.
At risk is University of Wisconsin-Madison’s plan to welcome students back to campus this fall. Jeff Pothof, University of Wisconsin Health chief quality and safety officer, said if local health officials don’t try to stop the spread of the virus in Dane County, in-person instruction could be called off. “If we’re unable to get on top of this current spike and it continues to accelerate, we may be in a position where it won’t make sense to be holding in-person classes,” he said. “It becomes a risk that most of us shouldn’t be taking with our children.”
Both the city and UW-Madison have similar orders in place to ensure people are distancing properly, which will be especially important come late August when the university’s 30,000 students return to campus. “We have been and will be working to ensure people are abiding by the campus order when they are on campus property,” Marc Lovicott of UW-Madison’s Police Department, said. “We have and will issue citations for blatant and/or multiple violations.”
Last month UW officials released their “Smart Restart” plan for opening campus in the fall. It allows in-person teaching with precautions and with instruction moving completely online after Thanksgiving. But officials made clear that if COVID-19 cases spike early in the semester, that shift could happen earlier.
Instead of a traditional, two-day summer visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, incoming students are completing orientation and academic advising online in their own homes.
Some University of Wisconsin-Madison students of color want the university to remove one of its most iconic landmarks, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, because of what they see as the former president’s anti-Indigenous and anti-Black history despite Lincoln’s legacy of ending slavery in the U.S.
The statue, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has sat on top of Bascom Hill, looking down State Street toward the Capitol Dome, since 1906.
While conceding that “like those of all presidents, Lincoln’s legacy is complex and contains actions which, 150 years later, appear flawed,” Blank noted that Lincoln is considered to be “one of our greatest presidents, having issued the Emancipation Proclamation, persuaded Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment ending slavery and preserved the Union during the Civil War.”
“While we can certainly admit that President Lincoln is not perfect when examining him under today’s moral lens over 150 years later, erasing our shared history does not lead to progress,” according to a release from College Republicans.
