Students, faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are proposing everything from mandatory diversity classes to a board game to address issues of race and discrimination on campus.
Offering mandatory courses in cultural studies, improving campus housing security and formally addressing the larger community about bias incidents are a few of the ideas put forth for improving the climate on the UW-Madison campus, according to proposals released Thursday by university officials.
Noted: In addition to the Habitat bike program, Pacific Cycle has partnered with the Wisconsin Bike Federation on various local rides and programs, including the UW-Madison Department of Human Oncology/Carbone Cancer Center on the first ever “The Ride”, scheduled for Sept. 16.
Memory loss impacts the lives of more than 5 million Americans according to the Alzheimer’s Association. To address the growing need for care, the University Of Wisconsin School Of Nursing has begun teaching students how to utilize music and memory.
Noted: The keynote speaker for the event will be Gail Ford. Over the past 13 years, Ford has worked in non-profits and post-secondary institutions to advocate for systematic changes to better align K-12 education programming with college-ready expectations. In March of 2015, she was asked to serve as the Interim Assistant Director for the Pre-College Enrichment Program for Leaning Excellence (PEOPLE) at UW-Madison. Her work with youth and professionals afforded her the opportunity to attend First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Beating the Odds Summit” at The White House in July 2015.
While there is much concern over the balance of retail and bars, restaurants and coffee shops on State Street, a big addition to the retail scene opened its doors Thursday.
UW-Madison sophomore Tyriek Mack was among those who introduced recommendations.
If you come out to the Union South Varsity Hall tonight for the University of Wisconsin Odyssey Project’s graduation ceremony, you will hear some amazing life stories. Be prepared to laugh, and probably cry.
Tamara Thompson Moore was at a crossroads in her life when she was pressured, she says, to apply for the Odyssey Project. Like many of this year’s grads, she knew people who had gone through the program and was familiar with its quality. A counselor at the Parental Stress Center long ago encouraged her to consider her own goals in life, as well as the needs of her children. At last she has done that.
Every parent wonders at some point: How do you get kids to eat their vegetables? The answer: You make them grow the vegetables too!
Quoted: “Madison has had African Americans in prominent leadership positions before — two police chiefs and I believe at least two school board presidents,” said UW Professor of Education Gloria Ladson-Billings. “However, none of that matters without the backing of other decision makers. The President of the United States is a Black man who has been stymied at every turn. More important than ONE person’s election or appointment is the mobilization of an electorate who will get behind the person and their agenda.”
Bill Mulligan, a valedictorian and Eagle Scout, from the Lake Mills High School Class of 2012 was selected as a finalist for the 2016 Rhodes Scholarship. The Rhodes Scholarship is an extremely competitive award. It is the oldest and most celebrated international fellowship award in the world. Each year only 32 students from the United States are selected as Rhodes Scholars. These Scholars are chosen for their outstanding scholarly achievements, character, commitment to others, and potential for leadership. UW-Madison is allowed to submit two students for the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships.
Madison Area Technical College trustees voted Wednesday to begin the process of leasing the land beneath the college’s downtown facility and investing in a comprehensive campus in south Madison.
Noted: Student volunteers make this an even unique experience. The 11 volunteers are mostly PT and occupational therapy students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison but there are also students from Madison College and other community members. . . Sarah Mattingly, a first-year PT student, will soon hold a class on her own through Madison School & Community Recreation. This will in fact be the first class to branch off from the program.
“I’m interested in taking my skills as a teacher and implementing them in [fall prevention]. In particular I like working with older populations. We’ll have student volunteers, and we need as many as we can,” Mattingly said.
My colleague David Dahmer from Madison365 and I were talking about the many individual efforts to address racial disparities in Madison and we both mentioned the Odyssey Project as one particularly successful effort.
In 11th-hour fashion, Mayor Paul Soglin is telling Madison Area Technical College officials they should retain their Downtown campus in addition to expanding on the South Side.
Noted: Yet another study commissioned by the DOT found that on 12 Wisconsin highways that were expanded from two to four lanes, crashes were reduced, according to Andrea Bill, a research program manager for the Transportation Operations and Safety Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If you’ve ran the Crazylegs Classic before you’d know it’s a lot of work. But at the fourth mile, there’s a group that’s been putting a little pep in your step for the last 30 years.
Quoted: When talking about the sense of community with alumni, Chong Moua, the UW humanities fellow behind the study, says people recall positive experiences with race equity efforts. “They were really young when they went through some of these programs, but now that they’ve had some time to look back, that’s really what they really remember,” says Moua. “[Those] things make for really powerful language, that you can talk about impact and give us a way to talk about evaluation.”
When, as they have in recent years, 15,000 or more people show up Downtown for the annual Crazylegs Classic, they stand (then move forward en masse) as representatives of the unofficial start of the running season in the Madison area.
Since a violent 2011 block party on Mifflin Street spurred Madison officials to crack down on the unsanctioned event, police costs have declined.
As part of the UW-Madison’s campus wide Day of Service, the first ever UW student food pantry, Open Seat, collected donations in exchange for herb and vegetable plants.
If students donated a non-perishable food item or a hygiene product to the pantry, they were given a basil or lettuce plant to take home and grow.
Video: University of Wisconsin-Madison and Edgewood College students partnered with the nonprofit magazine “Literacy” to deliver more than 600 copies of “Highlights” magazine to Midvale Elementary School Wednesday.
Noted: Friday’s event will include a lecture about the progression of the Hmong people over the last 40 years from Yang Sao Xiong, an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, who specialized in Asian American studies, as well as a special performance with a traditional Hmong instrument.
Noted: Best of all, this event is not about selling tickets: Saturday’s Gala is sold out. Rather it’s to acknowledge the generous gifts of funds raised to the UW’s Information Technology Academy, and the supportive collaboration of Quarles and Brady and the Urban League in making Madison truly inclusive.
Noted: Soon after that, with support from fellow students and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Polynice created an initiative that still is helping families become self-sufficient in Haiti more than six years later.
UW-Madison marching band director Mike Leckrone said he’s often compared to a coach. It’s a parallel he agrees with.
Professor Dipesh Navsaria of UW-Madison is the state medical director for the program. He says there’s more to it for doctors and nurses than just handing over books. He says they have to give advice to parents, on how to interact with their kids in a loving and nurturing way.
Since 1969, students have taken to the streets for the biggest block party of the year. This year, police have a plan to keep everyone safe this year on Mifflin Street.
Madison’s police chief says he wants the annual Mifflin Street Block Party to be a thing of the past.
UW-Madison leaders met with community members Monday night at the Urban League of Greater Madison on Park Street. The goal of this community Q&A session was to address recent hate and bias incidents at UW-Madison and to also come up with ways to improve the racial climate on campus.
University of Wisconsin-Madison campus leaders responded to community concerns at a forum Monday night following incidents of racial discrimination culminating in campus protests over the past few months.
Despite a recent stretch of toned-down, relatively tame celebrations, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval is worried that this year’s Mifflin Street block party on Saturday may be a bad one, and increased police presence is planned as alternative programming put on by UW-Madison to divert attention from the spring party shrinks.
The concept of “two Madisons” separated by race and class divisions that has shadowed civic discourse in recent years now has entered the debate around whether Madison Area Technical College should close its downtown facility and expand in south Madison.
Madison Police Chief Mike Koval said this year’s Mifflin Street Block Party will likely see an increase in police presence, coinciding with a scaled back music festival sponsored by the Wisconsin Union. Koval said the police department will continue efforts to downsize and eventually eliminate the event, saying the unsanctioned block party has “all the earmarks of a very real public safety concern.”
City officials should seriously consider creating a pedestrian mall the entire length of State Street, from the UW-Madison campus to the Capitol Square.
Madison Police Chief Mike Koval is worried that this year’s Mifflin Street block party may be a bad one.
Bobbie Kelsey-Grayson, the former UW Madison women’s basketball coach, will join Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County as the interim vice president of corporate and wellness programs, the organization said.
UW leaders have initiated a community conversation on the recent stories of racial climate challenges on campus. We take this as a serious effort by the UW to learn and understand and commit to demonstrable change. It’s an open invitation to the community to discuss campus climate Monday from 6 to 8 at the Urban League. We look forward to the dialogue.
Bobbie Kelsey-Grayson, fired from her position as University of Wisconsin women’s basketball coach last month, is staying in Madison and joining the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County.
Former University of Wisconsin women’s basketball coach Bobbie Kelsey has been hired by the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County as the interim vice president of corporate and wellness programs and will start May 9. A press release from the organization said Kelsey will help fundraising efforts and aid partnerships to support its programs. She will help the organization in its relationships with the UW athletic department, the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Bucks.
Kaleem Caire wrote an open letter with his wife, Lisa Peyton-Caire, both of whom are alumni of UW-Madison; Caire is the former head of the Urban League of Greater Madison. They said they’ve watched with growing concern the response of campus leaders to racially charged incidents and believe the incidents should be handled much differently.
Dr. Patricia Téllez-Girón knows what having your world turned upside down feels like. When she moved to the U.S. after completing medical school in Mexico, she was an immigrant in a place where she couldn’t speak the language and had little money. “I was cleaning houses and caring for people and doing what all of my community has to do initially … I’ve seen discrimination and unfairness,” says Téllez-Girón, associate professor with the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So I decided if I was able to have a position where I would be able to help others, I was going to do it.”
Noted: Another part of what the Madison Black Chamber of Commerce does is develops collaborative relationships that result in reaching organizations with rich resources and like-minded goals. Since 2004, they have collaborated with more than 25 Wisconsin businesses and agencies such as CDBG with the city of Madison, BMO Harris Bank, WARF, Summit Credit Union, Madison College, UW Small Business Administration and Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative (WBIC).
Dr. Patricia Téllez-Girón knows what having your world turned upside down feels like. When she moved to the U.S. after completing medical school in Mexico, she was an immigrant in a place where she couldn’t speak the language and had little money.
Noted: The students are part of nationwide group called Love Your Melon (LYM), an apparel brand run by college students across the country on a mission to give a hat to every child battling cancer in America. The organization reserved more than 45,000 hats to donate to children battling cancer in the United States. LYM college student ambassadors dress up as superheroes as part of a way to help children laugh and cope when visiting with them.
“I enjoy being Super-girl especially when I see faces like Keegan’s light up,” Anne Murphy, president of LYM at UW-Madison said.
(Video) As part of the UW-Madison athletic department’s “Badgers Give Back” initiative, athletes hosted a special event Friday with patients from the American Family Children’s Hospital to raise awareness of pediatric cancer. The “Badgers Go Bald” event ended with haircuts for some players with a little extra help from special guests…
Video: As part of the UW-Madison athletic department’s “Badgers Give Back” initiative, athletes hosted a special event Friday with patients from the American Family Children’s Hospital to raise awareness of pediatric cancer. The “Badgers Go Bald” event ended with haircuts for some players with a little extra help from special guests.
The garden — it is singular — at Babcock and Observatory Drives may be the most accessible classroom on campus, with the most diverse syllabus. Even on a recent chilly Sunday, the walkers in the 2.5 acres surrounding the vintage 1896 Agriculture Dean’s House ranged from an old man and his dog to curious children to students from the nearby Lakeshore dormitories.
(The clinic) was started by Dr. Mary Landry, a UW School of Medicine and Public Health obstetrician-gynecologist who works at Meriter Hospital and UW-Madison’s University Health Services, and Dr. Katherine O’Rourke, an OB-GYN resident at UW.
Supporters of a Madison Area Technical College proposal to bring a new, comprehensive campus to the city’s South Side are hoping they can convince members of the college’s board, who punted on a similar plan last year, to vote in favor of a shift toward the diverse but historically under-served area.
The MATC south campus would be very close to UW and Edgewood College in a developing residential, business and medical corridor. It would be located in neighborhoods where students, professional workers and families are thriving and is very accessible to transportation routes.
A former Madison heart surgeon finds new life after retirement teaching medical students at the UW-Madison.
Doctor Louis Bernhardt worked as a heart surgeon in Madison, mainly at St. Mary’s hospital, from 1971 to 2004, when he retired.
Since then, he has been teaching courses at the UW-Madison medical school. It’s the same school he graduated from in 1963.
Jonathan Barry, who has served on the Wisconsin Technical College System board and the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents … has joined with former UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley in calling for the college to instead stay in the Downtown campus, make a smaller expansion on the South Side and more thoroughly study its space needs.
“Bringing Bucky Home”. That’s the idea behind a joint effort between UW-Madison and Henry Vilas Zoo.
Wednesday zoo officials, Dane County officials and the UW head men’s basketball Coach Greg Gard came together to announce a new Wisconsin heritage exhibit.
The latest project at Dane County’s zoo will showcase the state animal. In a news conference, Henry Vilas Zoo representatives said Wednesday afternoon that its new exhibit will showcase the badger, which is also the mascot critter for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a football scholarship and graduated with a nonprofit leadership degree in 2014. He returned to Vera Court as a volunteer and helped expand Life as a Boy to include middle school boys before moving on to Kennedy Heights last June.
Badgers, which have long been as synonymous with Wisconsin as cheese, will soon be burrowing into a new home at Vilas Zoo.Zoo, Dane County and UW-Madison officials announced plans Wednesday for a larger exhibit to house the zoo’s two current badgers, with a tentative goal of opening in time for the fall football season. Fundraising efforts are underway for the Wisconsin Heritage Exhibit, with $350,000 of the required $650,000 already collected.
Former UW-Madison chancellor Donna Shalala will be keynote speaker at a global summit for women at the university.
Supporters of newly elected Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell made a joyful noise Tuesday evening, joining with him as he called on them to renew their commitment to making Dane County a place where “everybody is somebody!” Mitchell, director of community relations for University of Wisconsin-Madison, pastor of Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church, community activist and former assistant Dane County District Attorney, ran unopposed. He spoke to a crowd of some 80 supporters at the Goodman Community Center, recalling how in a recent interview he was asked how it was going to feel “working for the man,” sitting on the bench in Dane County Circuit Court and meting out justice. “I’m not going to be working for the man. I am going to be working for the people,” Mitchell told the crowd.
