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Category: Community

Coyotes, red foxes ‘coexist peacefully’ in Madison, researchers say

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The Capital Times

David Drake leads the Urban Canid Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 2014, researchers with the project have studied where coyotes and red foxes live in the Madison area, when they are active and how they interact with each other, in addition to humans and pets. University students help Drake set up traps around the city from November to March, so they can put radio collars on animals and track them.

“We’ve gotten some really good data,” said Drake, a professor and Extension wildlife specialist at UW-Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology.

Madison school shooter was 15-year-old girl, police say

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The Capital Times

Fifteen ambulances responded to the shooting. Four victims were transported to St. Mary’s and three to University of Wisconsin-Madison hospitals, Madison Fire Chief Chris Carbon said.

Officers from the Madison Police Department, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department, Wisconsin State Patrol and Dane County Sheriff’s Department were on site. Barnes said he also had been in contact with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Big changes are coming to West Mifflin Street, Madison’s best-known student neighborhood

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Wisconsin State Journal

Miffland, as the neighborhood around West Mifflin Street is known, doesn’t look all that different from a half-century ago. Many of the single-family and multifamily houses with distinctive porches, balconies and yards that were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s are still there — and are still sought after by students. But now the way the neighborhood looks is changing, too.

These disability doulas are helping people navigate life more comfortably

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HuffPost

When I ask Sami Schalk, associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Black Disability Politics,” how disabled people should prepare for the next Trump term, she says, “The state is going to abandon disabled people more than ever. Informal networks of care and support are the only way we survive.”

Learn more about ‘American Indians and the American Dream’ with this ‘University Place’ Q&A and episode

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PBS Wisconsin

In this episode of University Place Presents, host Norman Gilliland and his guest Kasey Keeler, assistant professor of American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discuss the topic, American Indians and the American Dream, which she explores in her book of the same title.

Almost everything around Camp Randall is a parking space for Wisconsin football games

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Wisconsin State Journal

The money that property owners and managers get from packing in cars can add up fast. On South Randall Avenue near the intersection with Regent Street, a landlord had about 35 spaces going for $40 apiece. Some were reserved for friends and one was for the owner’s tailgate party, but it’s still roughly $1,200 of income per game day that goes into the bank account.

Madison police say residents should take caution around coyotes

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Wisconsin State Journal

The University of Wisconsin Canid Project, which studies coyotes and red foxes in the area, has also fielded calls about the coyote. In a post on the Project’s Facebook page Thursday, officials said they believe there are two coyotes roaming the West Side: The one with the leg injury and another with an unknown illness. Recent reports with the Project suggest that the animal with the leg injury might be moving better.

Madison’s Spanish-speaking radio station gives ‘a way of life’ to the Latino community

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Wisconsin Watch

“Community radio plays a really important role in creating the range of voices … from minority communities who wouldn’t have any voice in mass media at all otherwise,” said Lewis Friedland, an emeritus professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Clinical psychologist, researcher holds event to shed light on issues fathers face

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A researcher and clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made it his mission to focus on the challenges fathers face and rebuke stereotypes around Black fathers. Event co-chair Alvin Thomas told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that it is important to discuss and address the problems fathers face.

“We know that if the parent relationship is not a very strong one or not a very healthy one, that more likely than not, the attachment between the child and the father is going to be compromised,” Thomas said. “Which of course will lead to potential negative outcomes for the child, but also for the dad.”

Journal Sentinel’s Main Street Agenda town hall meeting discusses inflation. Here’s what we learned.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Yes, inflation has gone down, says Menzie Chinn, a UW-Madison economics and public affairs professor. But there’s a catch. He said that, though the rate of prices going up has slowed, it doesn’t mean prices are coming down. “Prices are flattening out,” Chinn said. “They are not going up as fast as they were, but they are still going up.”

J. Michael Collins, UW-Madison professor at La Follette School of Public Affairs and School of Human Ecology, said inflation hits people differently across the state, with one in four saying they’ve had trouble meeting expenses, especially rent, which can be a third to half of a person’s income.

The Main Street Agenda project uncovers top issues among Wisconsin residents

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The Main Street Agenda is a project done in partnership between the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison. La Follette Director Susan Yackee told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” the project aims to get people from different political backgrounds talking with one another.

“We need to be able to talk to each other to get to the mission of the La Follette School, which is evidence-based policymaking,” she said. “That oftentimes takes political compromise and we just can’t get to political compromise if people aren’t talking to each other anymore.”

Watch our Main Street Agenda town hall meeting on inflation

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Journal Sentinel partnered with the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio on the Main Street Agenda, a 2024 election project designed to focus on the issues Wisconsin voters care about most. Panelists included Menzie Chinn, professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs and Department of Economics at UW-Madison, and . J. Michael Collins, professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs and School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison.

Study: Over 50% of returned tests in Wisconsin Indigenous community had high levels of radon

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Spectrum News

“We successfully increased knowledge of radon in this community, and more importantly, they could not have afforded the radon mitigation without our project’s support. This community had noted higher rates of cancer among their people for many generations and expressed concern that their land was poisoning them. They were correct,” said lead study author and associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Noelle LoConte in a release.

Many Native Americans struggle with poverty. Easing energy regulations could help.

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Reason

The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimated the net value of wind and solar based on a combination of off-reservation leases paid to landowners and taxes received by local governments. They predict that tribes and their members could earn about the same either by leasing the right to wind and sun to an outside developer or by developing themselves.

Wisconsin-based nonprofit Combat Blindness International turns 40

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Combat Blindness International was founded by a Madison-based ophthalmologist and University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus professor Suresh Chandra.

Executive Director Reena Chandra, Suresh Chandra’s daughter, said her father’s “aha” moment was on a medical trip to India, where roughly 50 patients received cataract surgery in the same time it took Suresh to perform one particularly difficult eye surgery on another patient.

Students, faculty say being Black at UW-Madison isn’t easy

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Black student enrollment at the state’s flagship university has never surpassed 3 percent of the student body, according to data from the Universities of Wisconsin. In 2023, 1,327 students out of 50,335 identified as Black, about 2.6 percent.

This year, the percentage of underrepresented students of color in the freshman class dropped by 3.7 percentage points from last year to 14.3 percent, according to UW-Madison data.

Overcoming distrust of West, one tribe in Wisconsin is partnering with UW for health care

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

These historic injustices continue to fuel distrust among Indigenous peoples toward Western institutions.

As a result, University of Wisconsin health officials were pleased when the leadership of one tribal community in northern Wisconsin recently agreed to meet about the possibility of signing up tribal members for clinical health trials. The entire tribal council for the Sokaogon Mole Lake Ojibwe Nation visited with health professionals at UW-Madison Sept. 11 and 12 to help build a cooperative relationship between the tribe and the UW Health system.

Voter frustration fueled by lack of policy details on issues like health care, climate

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The town hall meeting featured a panel discussion with two faculty members from the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison who focus on climate change and health care policy, Morgan Edwards and Yang Wang, and Laura Olson, chief business development officer at Eneration, a subsidiary of Gundersen Health System that helps health care companies reduce their energy costs.

Wisconsin Master Naturalists, Ho-Chunk Nation to host ‘Caring for Grandmother Earth’ volunteer summit

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Wisconsin Public Radio

For more than a decade, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension has been offering the opportunity for people to become Master Naturalists by attending expert-led training sessions and volunteering their time to conservation efforts. Altogether, Master Naturalists volunteer over 25,000 hours of service each year to over 700 organizations across the state.

Wisconsin students failing reading exams, and so are future teachers

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The Capital Times

In 2020, UW-Madison and the Madison Metropolitan School District created a task force to study effective ways to teach literacy. Around that time, test scores showed about 80% of the school district’s students were failing to read proficiently.

Beverly Trezek, a UW-Madison professor who specializes in reading, said university administrators used the research to adjust courses. They added more instruction on topics like spelling and writing, and added opportunities for prospective special education teachers to teach reading in schools, she said.

Higher prices are burden for Wisconsin families. Senate candidates outline their remedies.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A scientific survey of nearly 4,000 Wisconsin residents by the UW Survey Center helped identify the top issues heading into the fall election. Throughout the year, we’ve been publishing opinion pieces from faculty at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison, our partner in the Main Street Agenda, exploring the public policy behind those issues.

What does it mean to be Jewish? Age, upbringing influence response to Israel’s war in Gaza

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Tension would probably be an understatement,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Reuben Berkowitz of Milwaukee.

Berkowitz said his family, who raised him to understand the shared importance of Israeli and Palestinian safety, have supported him as he explored his relationship with Zionism, and chose to participate last spring in UW-Madison’s encampment. His father, Joel, is the director of UW-Milwaukee’s Jewish Studies program.

Wisconsin’s Bizhiki spotlights powwow music and Ojibwe culture, with Justin Vernon’s help

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“We try not to romanticize our culture, but we are unapologetically Indigenous,” said Jennings, who is close to finishing the PhD program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. “There are a lot of statistics about our communities and a lot of negative statistics. Our goal is to showcase and highlight the good things in our communities — the good people, those traditional values our communities still rest upon.”

Main Street Agenda is hitting the road to hear from Wisconsin on issues that matter to you

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Main Street Agenda is here to help you navigate these times. It is an election-year project designed to provide information and civil conversations about the issues Wisconsin voters care most about. The topics come from a UW Survey Center survey, WisconSays, that asked residents about the top issues they face.

Study: Less than one-third of UW-Madison off-campus housing considered affordable

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Wisconsin State Journal

The study confirmed what is largely already known through reams of anecdotal evidence: Nearly 70% of rentals are too expensive, costing individual students $1,000 or more in rent each month per student, often hundreds of dollars above what the students consider affordable; the cheapest apartments are often furthest from campus and more run down; and UW-Madison is one of the most expensive off-campus housing markets in the Big 10 conference.