University of Wisconsin Director of Community Relations Brenda González has been chosen by voters as the 2022 Woman of Excellence in the Wisconsin Leadership Community Choice Awards.
University of Wisconsin Director of Community Relations Brenda González has been chosen by voters as the 2022 Woman of Excellence in the Wisconsin Leadership Community Choice Awards.
As director of community relations, González serves as UW-Madison’s primary point of contact with local community and nonprofit organizations. She is responsible for developing strategies to ensure the university is engaged with these organizations and the broader community.
Quoted: In her research on multilingual and English learners, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Mariana Pacheco said children as young as 6 or 7 can pick up on the double standard that white, English-dominant students can be placed in a bilingual classroom and be celebrated for their bilingualism, while the same isn’t true for their Spanish-dominant counterparts.
As someone who studies language, Pacheco has always been fascinated with how people who are bilingual learn social knowledge by living in the margins between cultures. Having to code-switch can teach them how society and power function.
“We shouldn’t forget that that consciousness is a resource for them,” she said.
She hopes it serves them in the careers they pursue someday and the policies they support, but perhaps what she admires most is the way they keep trying in the face of resistance.
“They’re not paralyzed by it,” she said.
Noted: Patty Cisneros Prevo is Diversity & Inclusion Manager at the University of Wisconsin School of Business Undergraduate Program. She previously served as Assistant Director of Inclusion & Engagement with Wisconsin Athletics, where she assisted in the development and execution of the DEI Strategic Plan and created programs and initiatives to support a more diverse and inclusive Athletics Department. She’s also won five National Wheelchair Basketball Association Championships, and became the first female head coach of a collegiate wheelchair basketball team with the University of Illinois, winning the national championship that same year.
Driving a university-owned van, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Morgan Barlin traverses the campus, making stops at three dining halls on a spring afternoon.
At each stop, Barlin is met by kitchen staff who present her with various leftover foods, from sweet potatoes to breakfast omelets. These foods, which would have otherwise been thrown away, will be redistributed to students at no cost.
At the end of her route, Barlin records the weight of each donation. Her calculations show that on this day, she saved 271 pounds of food from ending up in the landfill. Barlin’s organization, the Food Recovery Network at the UW-Madison, uses the recovered food to provide free community meals.
Beyond efforts on the UW-Madison campus, other programs in Wisconsin intercept still-edible food from grocery and convenience stores and restaurants that would normally be heading to the dumpster. In Madison, The River Food Pantry operates a food recovery program that collects food from more than 100 stores around Dane County.
Driving a university-owned van, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Morgan Barlin traverses the campus, making stops at three dining halls on a spring afternoon.
At each stop, Barlin is met by kitchen staff who present her with various leftover foods, from sweet potatoes to breakfast omelets. These foods, which would have otherwise been thrown away, will be redistributed to students at no cost.
At the end of her route, Barlin records the weight of each donation. Her calculations show that on this day, she saved 271 pounds of food from ending up in the landfill. Barlin’s organization, the Food Recovery Network at the UW-Madison, uses the recovered food to provide free community meals.
Hub, James among locations to raise prices, sparking anxiety from students already grappling with recent price hikes.
Quoted: But mobile markets can struggle to stay financially afloat. One researcher who has studied mobile markets for over a decade likens them to “revolving doors” because of how frequently mobile market projects start up and then stall.
“There’s often funding to start them,” said Lydia Zepeda, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. “The question is trying to find a model that is financially sustainable — because they’re expensive.”
Noted: Even before the pandemic, nearly 20% of adults in Wisconsin had mental health needs, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. That percentage translated to about 830,000 people.
At about the same time — again, before the pandemic — a report by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute found significant coverage gaps across the state. The report said 55 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties had “significant shortages” of psychiatrists and 31 counties need more than two additional full-time psychiatrists to make up for the shortage.
On the other hand, some worry the mental health care workforce just isn’t there to support the spate of new patients who’ll test positive for anxiety disorders.
“I support it,” said Dr. Marcia Slattery, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of UW Anxiety Disorders Program. “Anxiety is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder and impacts life globally. The fact that it’s so widespread and there’s really been no coordinated effort to address it, I’m in support of what they’re proposing.”
A new exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art explores stories of racism and resistance on the campus of UW-Madison. Kacie Lucchini Butcher, the curator of the exhibit joins the show to talk about the years-long effort.
University of Wisconsin-Madison administrators are working to educate members of Students for Justice in Palestine on the harm caused by their antisemitic messages, after the messages were chalked around campus overnight before the first day of the fall 2022 semester, according to officials.
Quoted: Dr. Patricia Tellez-Giron, family medicine physician at UW Health, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Latino Health Council chair, has been practicing family medicine for 25 years. In that time, she’s been able to uniquely observe intergenerational care as her patients grow from infancy into new family systems as adults.
Tellez-Giron said it’s common, especially for Hispanic or Latino children, to be split between two cultures, which can feel like navigating two worlds simultaneously. This speaks to an absence in diverse counselors, Tellez-Giron said, and specifically, culturally competent counselors — that is, health care providers who understand and can uplift a client’s cultural identity.
“Often, the therapist does not understand our culture, why we are protective, how we all raise the kids together,” Tellez-Giron said. “And then (the therapists) tell the kids, ‘You have to be independent. You have to demand your independence.’ That creates, definitely, tension in the family.”
A college degree can be an important step for starting a career, but many colleges and universities struggle to create a welcoming environment for students of color. Angela Fitzgerald sits down with Tiffany Tardy from All-In Milwaukee, a nonprofit working to improve college retention and graduation rates for students from underserved communities.
Tardy is the Program Director for All-In Milwaukee, an organization providing financial aid, advising, program and career support for limited-income college students from the Milwaukee area. She has a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Noted: The State Street area near the University of Wisconsin Madison’s campus had been a destination for Halloween revelers for decades prior to the pandemic, although the festival had changed over time.
Wisconsin Watch is joining a nationwide project led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers that aims to protect democracy by limiting the spread and impact of misinformation.
With a newly announced $5 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program, researchers will continue development of Course Correct, a tool designed at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication to help journalists identify and combat misinformation online.
Before the legendary Vel Phillips accomplished her many firsts in the City of Milwaukee and Wisconsin, there was Mabel Emily Watson Raimey.
Raimey was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned a B.A. in English in 1918 and was the first African American woman to attend Marquette University Law School. There is a marker at 11th and Wisconsin honoring her.
Danielle Yancey will moderate a panel titled “Lasting Impacts: How the Pandemic has Amplified our Health Inequities” on Tuesday, October 11, the second day of the 2022 Wisconsin Leadership Summit.
Danielle Yancey (Menominee/Santee) has worked in public service for nearly twenty years focusing on programs that promote social justice, education access, and equity. Currently, she serves as the director for the Native American Center for Health Professions at the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Danielle grew up on the Menominee Indian reservation in north central Wisconsin. She is an alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with undergraduate degrees in women’s studies and social welfare, Master of Science in urban and regional planning, and holds a sustainability leadership graduate certificate from Edgewood College.
Thursday afternoon, a group of alumni, faculty and students from UW-Madison’s art and art history departments will read an open letter outside the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
They’ll be there to protest the mistreatment of artists during this year’s Wisconsin Triennial exhibition, which was the first Triennial in the museum’s history to focus exclusively on the experiences of Black women, femmes, and gender non-conforming artists.
Thursday afternoon outside the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, a group of alumni, faculty and students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s art and art history departments will gather in support of Black women artists.
What Amy Kind observed during her residency as a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston often frustrated and angered her.
She could admit a poor person to the hospital again and again, each time potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars.
“Yet changing someone’s ability to have safe housing — even getting an air conditioner for someone with breathing problems — was not something I could do,” said Kind, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Today, a new exhibit is being opened to the public at the Chazen Museum of Art on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The culmination of multiple years of research and planning, the UW-Madison Public History Project exhibit looks to ask questions about the real history of UW-Madison itself. The Public History Project looks to give voice to a lesser-known history of UW-Madison through students, staff, and associates of the university who have been affected by marginalization across identities.
Noted: Danielle Nabak is the healthy communities coordinator for the University of Wisconsin Extension Milwaukee County’s FoodWIse program. Like some other experts, she prefers the term food apartheid to food deserts because of histories including redlining, economic disinvestment and freeway expansions that isolated marginalized communities.
“I think that really gets at more of the active disinvestment and the active oppression that occurred to create the conditions that we’re really talking about when we talk about a food desert,” Nabak said.
UW-Madison wants to reimagine and energize Library Mall in the heart of campus with stylish walkways, native plants, shade trees and splashing water.
The university’s $6 million plan looks good so far, with a fundraising campaign on the way.
As a teenager in the 1990s, Erika Rosales moved from a small town in Mexico to Madison. Then, as she grew older, her immigration status risked creating barriers for her education and work.
Rosales now leads The Center for DREAMers at UW-Madison, which provides resources to immigrants living without documentation across the state.
“I’m happy that I’m at a point where I can support others that have a similar story,” she said.
In October, Rosales collaborated with Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the UW-Madison Law School, to create the DREAMers center. It’s funded by a two-year grant offered from the university.
“We will never turn someone away if they are undocumented,” Barbato said. “If someone contacts a school and says, ‘I want to apply for this program’ — whether it’s law school or medical school — those administrators can contact us for the information before giving someone incorrect information or the runaround.”
The Latino community is the fastest-growing segment of the population in Wisconsin, but the number of physicians from that community has been declining nationwide over the past 30 years. Fewer than five percent of physicians in the US identify as Hispanic or Latino.
“We know in medicine that if you see a physician that looks like you, that understands culturally where you’re coming from, the health outcomes are better,” UW Health family physician Dr. Patricia Tellez-Girón told Madison365. “But we need to start growing our own because we don’t see that the society at large is really aiming for that.”
The greater Madison community is invited to the UW South Madison Partnership (SMP) this afternoon to help celebrate its third annual Community Celebration, a family-friendly event will feature a complimentary food truck, music, games, face painting, and a visit from Bucky Badger.
The UW South Madison Partnership is inviting the community to attend a celebration Thursday featuring food, music, games and visits from UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and Bucky Badger at the Village on Park mall.
Applying to paint a series of murals inside a Madison building just seemed natural to Lilada Gee.On Thursday, those murals went from concept to creation.
A local artist and volunteers partnered together to put the finishing touches on a UW-Madison building on the south side of the city.
Thanks to Cami Kronish, art and hockey will merge.
The senior goaltender for the Wisconsin women’s hockey team has invited fans entering the eighth grade or younger to design the mask she’ll wear during the upcoming season.
The mask design should incorporate the University of Wisconsin, city of Madison and state of Wisconsin on all three sides. The deadline for entries is Sept. 1, 2022.
This event is organized by the University of Wisconsin, Oregon State University, Artisan Grain Collaborative and Cornell University.
Noted: That is why rather than skyrocketing, food insecurity rates remained largely unchanged during the pandemic, said Judi Bartfeld, project coordinator for the Wisconsin Food Security Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said the “robust” federal response kept people fed, despite widespread unemployment.
The programming also includes guest speakers such as local master gardeners and folks from some of Urban Triage’s partners like UW-Extension, Rooted-Troy Gardens and the Farley Center.
Kimber Wilkerson is the faculty director of UW-Madison’s Teacher Education Center. She says there are many reasons hiring teachers is difficult right now.
“A critique of the teaching profession is the pay,” said Wilkerson. “I think COVID has exacerbated that experience by making the working conditions for teachers even more challenging.”
We’ve never seen anything quite like this in our politics.
There have been bitter divisions in the past — the Civil War and Vietnam Era come to mind — but at no time in our history has politics been so fraught with anger, distrust and disinformation — and turbocharged by algorithms that reward fighting and conflict and discourage deliberation.
We need to find our way through this thicket, and I think it begins with encouraging thoughtful discussion.
That’s why we’re collaborating this year with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio on a project we’re calling Wisconsin’s Main Street Agenda.
Over the past few weeks, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend has opened two new exhibitions by indigenous artists to the public.
On July 23, the museum opened Ho-Chunk photographer Tom Jones’s first major retrospective, which features 120 photos from sixteen bodies of work over 25 years.
“There’s something that a friend of mine said once,” says Jones, a professor of photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “She came to a show, and she’s like, ‘Your work is so beautiful, but then when you really look at it and get up on it, it slaps you in the face.’”
University of Wisconsin Law Professor Keith Findley is a member of Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board. He says a plethora of research shows that women on the force have a positive impact on police departments and communities. He says they are often better at communicating and de-escalating tense situations.
She was also a project assistant with the university’s RISE program, which still runs to this day. The program creates an employment pipeline for UW-Madison students of color seeking internships. Assefa went on to serve in various directorial and advisory roles for UW-Madison, all in an effort to promote DEI on campus.
Most notably, Assefa was previously the director of the African American Student Academic Services department and an adviser to the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Scholarship program out of the Multicultural Arts Initiatives office, where she eventually became the director.
The event, taking place at Capital Brewery in Middleton on August 14, allows for participants to choose from a 50k, 25k or 5k bike ride as well as a 5k run or two-mile roll and stroll that is open to walkers, scooters, wheelchairs, skateboards and dogs!
Beyond Hunger, a new series by Wisconsin Watch produced by University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students, will launch on July 21 with an evaluation of how pandemic-related programs alleviated a lot of hunger — and what it means for Wisconsin now that those support systems are fading.
Noted: While the deadline to apply has already passed, the city will still allow families to participate in surveys regarding the program, which will be studied to learn more about the success of the program. These surveys will be given out three times at six months apart from each other, and participants will be compensated for their time, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I must say that it is an exploratory project,” said UW-Madison graduate student Maitreyee Sanjiv Marathe. “I will not claim by any means that this is the solution for energy access for people experiencing homelessness or underserved communities, but it is definitely one of the pieces of the puzzle.”
The idea was generated in a UW-Madison competition called the Solympics in summer 2021. The task was to create kiosk prototypes for the Great Lakes Community Conservation Corps, an organization out of Racine that serves young adults and military veterans.
With funding from organizations such as WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation), CUNA Mutual Group, Dane Arts, and the Morgridge Center for Public Service, Karanja and her team were able to bring important conversations to the forefront regarding women of color in STEM fields. These are conversations that Karanja and the Represented Collective look to continue at an event tonight at the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s near east side titled “Legendary: An Evening of Celebration.” It will be a night of cocktails and conversation and commemoration of women in the STEM fields.
With a focus on women of color, the event will feature a group of panelists including Ana Hooker (Senior Vice President & Chief Laboratory Officer at Exact Sciences), Angela Jenkins (Technology Project Manager at American Family Insurance), Ponmozhi Manickavalli Sathappan (IT Manager at CUNA Mutual Group), and Dr. Jasmine Zapata (Chief Medical Officer for Community Health at Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Division of Public Health, and Physician and Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) who will lead a community discussion regarding issues of representation, professionalism, visibility, microaggressions, macroaggressions, and many other topics that affect the experiences of women across the STEM fields.
Along with being able to hear from the panelists, event-goers will also be able to partake in celebrating the accomplishments of Erika Bullock and Maxine McKinney de Royston who are both assistant professors in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education.
Noted: The program was organized in 2021 by Milwaukee Riverkeeper, Milwaukee Water Commons, Milwaukee Community Sailing Center, Coastline Services LLC and University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute. That pilot effort has been renewed this summer.
Noted: Over the next four months, our “Wisconsin Main Street Agenda” project will report on what we’re learning from residents and explain what we know about the mood of the electorate based on that massive survey of Wisconsin residents by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.
The project is a partnership of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Ideas Lab, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio.
Molly Wecker, a second-year medical student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had long planned to be an obstetrics-gynecology doctor in her home state. But with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling last week, the Rock County native is rethinking her plan.
The Jewish family can be considered the core of Jewish identity. At a four-day event, attendees can develop a rich understanding about the history and function of family in a Jewish context, according to organizers.
“In many ways, the Jewish story is a family story,” said Cara Rock-Singer, co-chair of the Greenfield Institute Committee. “There are so many different formations and meanings of family related to issues about how families function and work to produce and reproduce Jewish life.”
The 22nd annual Greenfield Summer Institute, which is part of the George L. Mosse and Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be held July 11-14, 2022, featuring the theme of “The Jewish Family across Time and Place.”
Noted: When the La Follette School of Public Affairs surveyed Wisconsin residents last fall, researchers found people in the state have far more complicated — and frankly, far more important — issues on their minds, things like climate change, health care, race relations and water quality, precisely the issues that don’t often get covered extensively in political campaigns or can easily be reduced to bumper sticker slogans.
Over the next four months, our “Wisconsin Main Street Agenda” project will report on what we’re learning from residents and explain what we know about the mood of the electorate based on that massive survey of Wisconsin residents by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.
The project is a partnership of the Ideas Lab, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio.
Tiffany Green, a professor of health sciences, obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, joins Live at Four to talk about what the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case means for Wisconsin.
Noted: UW Health on Friday said the loss of safe, legal abortion access would be predominantly felt by underserved rural areas and marginalized populations.
“As we enter a time of rapid change and uncertainty, UW Health will put the needs of our patients first and foremost to ensure they receive not just the best care but the best medical advice related to their care options,” the statement read.
Quoted: Wisconsin’s abortion ban makes the procedure illegal unless deemed medically necessary to save a patient’s life.
Abby Cutler, an OB-GYN on faculty at UW Health said that definition is impossible to pin down.
“Knowing when that line is, when does a patient, when does a mother or a future mother become sick enough or is in enough danger to require life-saving treatment immediately,” Cutler told Wisconsin Public Radio. “I think that’s a really difficult line. There is no line, really.”
Noted: Dr. Soyeon Shim assumed her current position as the Dean of the School of Human Ecology (SoHE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. She has led SoHE’s All Ways Forward campaign and exceeded its campaign goal by 150% by raising $72 million, including 13 endowed chairs and professorships, a deanship, and 10 new graduate fellowship endowments. Dr. Shim’s scholarly research focuses on consumer decision-making and has won competitive grants totaling more than $1.5 million from federal agencies and private foundations. Dr. Shim has received numerous teaching, research, development, and leadership awards, both at the university and state/national level.
The Madison Forward Fund is partnered with the coalition along with the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research.
UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty is partnering with the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania to gather survey data throughout the program. The information collected will be used to help guide policies and future programs, advocate for a national guaranteed income program and aid in the expansion of the social safety net.
Kalkstein’s partnership with Wisconsin forecasters developed through the work of UW-Madison’s UniverCity Alliance, which invited Kalkstein to give a lecture on campus in 2020. That led to a meeting with local officials to talk about ways Madison and Dane County are responding to the urban heat island effect.
When Shekeba Samadzada makes vegetable korma at UW Hospital in Madison, she thinks of her mom. Just about every time. That’s where the recipe came from, after all.
Funding for the restoration will come from Madison and UW grants.
University of Wisconsin-Madison representatives shared concerns about the capacity of buses through the core of campus, so an amendment is committing more peak hour service through the UW campus on Observatory Drive.
These are among $1,571,500 in community and University of Wisconsin grants announced today by the Foundation’s board of directors. Of the total, 56 area nonprofits shared in $1,249,000 while $322,500 went to 26 efforts at UW-Madison. One of those was a $12,500 grant, the first of five installments, for the scholarship endowment at the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication established by Washington Post editor David Maraniss in honor of his late father and editor of The Capital Times, Elliott Maraniss.
University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Greg Gard stood on the main concourse of the Kohl Center with the biggest smile on his face. He was posing for pictures and shaking hands as people arrived for Garding Against Cancer’s gala Saturday, the fifth time the event has been held.
