Dominique Sicard has watched four older sisters and one brother go off to college, and now that it is her turn, she cannot wait.
ââ?¬Å?Iââ?¬â?¢m not really nervous,ââ?¬Â said the 18-year-old Neenah High School graduate who will study ââ?¬Å?something probably math-relatedââ?¬Â at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Proponents of social-norms strategies to reduce high-risk drinking have new data to support their approach
Enough. Enough already!” said a capital-campaign donor when the performing-arts center came back seeking a gift for its third campaign in less than five years.
More and more nonprofit organizations are joining the capital-campaign bandwagon. Once the purview primarily of educational institutions and hospitals, capital campaigns are now frequently run by organizations of all sizes and types and in all nonprofit fields. Some organizations seem to be continuously in capital-campaign mode — either preparing for one, in the midst of one, or coming off the last and readying for the next.
Californiaââ?¬â?¢s colleges have seen the (possible) future ââ?¬â?? in Colorado ââ?¬â?? and they donââ?¬â?¢t like the looks of it.
If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, Californians will vote in November to put strict constitutional limits on growth in state spending. The ââ?¬Å?California Live Within Our Means Act,ââ?¬Â as the measure is called, would restrict what the state government spends in any fiscal year to what it spent the year before plus the average rate of growth in certain spending over the three previous years
Like cockroaches, spam may be impossible to defeat completely. But colleges on Tuesday won an important tool in their quest to limit spam�s intrusions into campus e-mail boxes. A federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment and a federal law do not limit the ability of a public college to block spam from reaching users� e-mail accounts.
AT a June orientation briefing for parents at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, talk turned quickly to technology. Five students had given up their Sunday afternoon to address issues that the fretful parents might have had about sending their children to college – finding a balance between study and fun, Greek life, campus safety, binge drinking. But many parents had other questions: which operating system is best; is a laptop or desktop preferable; how good is the wireless access; and is it necessary to bring a printer?
LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. – Class clowns moved into their dormitory rooms determined to reinvent themselves as deep souls. The socially awkward looked ahead to college life as a social butterfly. Everyone sized up one another for potential friendships.
For nearly 200 Rider University freshmen, a day last month brought the usual jitters, along with several wrinkles. Classes did not begin for two months, mom and dad were moving into a neighboring dorm and everyone would be heading home the next day.
The state auditor Tuesday called on Gateway Technical College to stop paying a former administrator more than $135,000 a year for what is often less than 80 hours a month of legal counsel – a compensation level that exceeds what he made as a full-time employee.
The El Paso, Tex., suburbs stretch west, across the Rio Grande and into New Mexico. Just on the other side of the river lies this community of 2,500 people. In a gated housing development here, not far from a golf course and around the corner from a swimming pool, Steven Best lives alone — just him and his 10 cats.
Not even that famously descriptive Jewish word “chutzpah” is strong enough to describe the gall of some Wisconsin legislators.
In all my years covering and writing about the Wisconsin Legislature, I can’t recall a more sorry bunch of hypocrites than the cabal that controls both houses in the State Capitol these days.
U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, the majority leader, blocked a vote on Thursday on a bill to expand President Bush’s limits on federal financing of stem-cell research, effectively delaying any vote until at least September. Dr. Frist said he was still working with other senators to package that proposal with related bills, at least one of which has been criticized by researchers.
It will come as no shock that high school students spend a lot of time online. But a new survey of juniors suggests that they have mixed feelings about using colleges� Web sites to pick places to apply.
For instance, 56 percent of those surveyed said that they prefer looking at a college Web site to reading a brochure that comes in the mail. But while only 44 percent of all juniors prefer viewbooks to Web sites, that number rises 49 percent for students with A averages.
A UW-Madison professor arrested while trying to meet a 14-year-old Greendale boy last March will spend 30 days in jail for sending the boy sexually explicit material.
Lewis Keith Cohen, 60, pleaded no contest and was found guilty Wednesday of a felony charge of exposing a child to harmful material. As part of a plea deal, felony charges of using a computer to facilitate a sex crime and child enticement, each of which carried a sentence of up to 25 years, were dropped.
The attorney for Paul Barrows says lawmakers have smeared his client like people did in the day of Joseph McCarthy.
“Every single state employee ought to be upset about this. If the legislators can do that to Paul Barrows, they can do it to anybody,” said Lester Pines, attorney for the former University of Wisconsin-Madison vice chancellor for student affairs.
“It’s reminiscent of how legislators used to behave during the McCarthy era, during which they would pick out a person, accuse the person of nefarious conduct and then destroy their career without any evidence,” Pines said, referring to the late Wisconsin U.S. senator who hounded alleged Communists.
The iPod generation will soon be getting some help in selecting which college is the right fit for their music-obsessed lifestyles. Schools that Rock: The Rolling Stone College Guide, which arrived Wednesday, adds a new dimension to selecting a college. The book details music programs, courses and local music scenes at colleges and college towns across the nation.
… the vetoes the governor made have produced a better budget than the one he was handed by the Legislature. It is more in tune with Wisconsin values and, frankly, it is more in tune with mainstream Republican values.
With that in mind, legislators should reject moves to override the vetoes.
Forty-six University of Wisconsin System administration personnel now have job protection ranging from ongoing tenure appointments to traditional civil service protection, according to information obtained by The Capital Times.
The data also show that two former vice presidents – David Olien and Linda Weimer – are serving in what appear to have been limited backup positions for their previous roles.
Admissions numbers not all they could be? Retention statistics poor? Maybe your campus needs better outdoor seating. And fountains or ponds or streams. And an outdoor amphitheater.
Landscapes can influence recruitment and retention, said Phillip S. Waite, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Washington State University, during a presentation here on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning.
A report to be released today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls on the National Collegiate Athletic Association to ban beer advertising at sporting events and during televised sports broadcasts.
The report, “How the NCAA Recruits Kids for the Beer Market,” argues that the NCAA actively tries to attract young consumers to its brand, and by doing so exposes young people to beer advertisers.
The University of Wisconsin System will temporarily stop offering backup appointments to new administrators while the Board of Regents reviews the policy, Regent President David Walsh and UW President Kevin Reilly announced this morning.
Also today, Gov. Jim Doyle weighed in on the matter, saying backup appointments may be justified in some cases but that their use has gotten out of hand.
The University of Wisconsin System has been asked by leaders of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to provide detailed information about paid leaves and backup appointments granted to university administrators.
“We write to express our grave concern over the use of backup positions for UW System employees and the availability of paid leaves to faculty, administrators and staff who have resigned from university positions,” Sen. Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh and Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz, R-Menomonee Falls, the panel’s co-chairs, said in a letter Monday to UW President Kevin Reilly.
Early last month Dan Saftig, president of the Iowa State University Foundation, sat in his office reviewing a list of 8,400 donors, who contributed a combined $2.6-million in May. The records contained the names of donors, the dollar range of each donation, and the designated use for each gift.
A combination of law enforcement and peer education has reduced alcohol abuse throughout the California State University System, according to a report prepared for the Board of Trustees.
The exact steps taken vary from campus to campus, but all involve increased enforcement by police and campus security, and ââ?¬Å?social normsââ?¬Â marketing, which teaches students that not everyone drinks to fit in.
The Republican majorities in the state Assembly and Senate cobbled together a budget that was so woefully irresponsible when it came to the setting of priorities and the allocation of funds for basic services that the easiest – and, we would still argue, wisest – response to the document was a full veto by Gov. Jim Doyle.
….But we recognize and respect the governor’s fear that key legislative players such as Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo, are so out of touch with Wisconsin values and needs that they might not be capable of coming up with a better budget – even with a do-over.
A University of Wisconsin-River Falls public safety officer will keep his job after he pleaded guilty last week to a felony stalking charge.
David Kuether, 45, River Falls, is accused of leaving Carmen Boortz 23 phone messages within 24 hours last December. Boortz, 45, also works at the university in the outreach and graduate studies office.
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle was right to veto millions of dollars in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System made by Republicans who control the Legislature.
Quoted: Joe Lauer, a UW-Madison agronomy professor.
If you find yourself trying a new frozen breakfast/snack product someday – cute little mini-granola shells filled with yogurt and topped with fresh fruit – you’ll have Rachel Prososki and her trusty team of food science students to thank.
Last weekend, for the sixth time in eight years, the team representing the University of Wisconsin-Madison competed in the finals of the Student Product Development Competition sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists.
DAN VAN DER WEIDE did not tell the New Scientist magazine that the covert spectroscopic camera he is working on in his lab in Middleton could have prevented the recent London bombings. “I don’t want to oversell it,” van der Weide, a professor of electrical engineering at UW-Madison, told me Tuesday.
Nevertheless, the July 16 New Scientist did quote van der Weide saying, “If it had been available it could have detected the London bombers.”
Last week another bulls-eye was painted on the UW System’s back when it was revealed that four University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee administrators have received more than $600,000 in salaries after they were granted year-long leaves when they resigned from their administrative positions.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations held up pay raises for more than 30 top University of Wisconsin System administrators until the Board of Regents, which runs the system, responds to controversies over long, costly paid leaves given a few staff and faculty members.
MADISON, Wis. — The UW System is reaching out to lawmakers on the state’s Joint Finance Committee after a News 3 investigation into a new system-wide computer project.
University of Wisconsin System faculty will get a 5 percent raise over the next two years – along with many other state employees – but administrators won’t get a penny more until System officials “get their act together” regarding questionable compensation and leave policies, lawmakers said Tuesday.
“I think the university doesn’t quite get how ticked off elected officials are in this state about what we’ve been reading in the last month,” Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo, said before a legislative committee that sets pay levels for state employees. The committee later voted to deny the raises to administrators until the university completes an internal investigation.
UW-Madison officials refused to release records to 27 News on a student’s claims about the actions of former Vice Chancellor Paul Barrows.
Last month, UW-Madison officials said Barrows’ failed relationship with the student was part of the reason for his seven months of paid leave.
THERE MAY not be anyone anywhere more qualified to write a book on public radio than UW-Madison journalism Professor Jack Mitchell. Samuel G. Freedman said as much in his review of Mitchell’s new book, “Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio,” in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.
Mitchell, who managed Wisconsin Public for two decades beginning in 1976, “has lived much of the history” of public radio himself, Freedman wrote. “He was the first producer of ‘All Things Considered’ and a three-time chairman of NPR’s board of directors.”
Freedman, an author and professor and UW-Madison graduate himself, goes on to call “Listener Supported” “a valuable history of how and why so much talent assembled down on the left end of the FM dial.”
Founded by University of Wisconsin at Madison student Ben Schumaker last October, the Memory Project ââ?¬â? which gives orphans with little or no possessions a lasting memento ââ?¬â? has spread to nearly 150 high schools nationwide.
Two decades ago, few in the booze business believed it would happen here, in the beer capital of the world.
While other, more sober states caved in to the federal government’s order to raise their drinking ages to 21 or lose a portion of highway funds, Wisconsin – insulated by the thick biceps of the Tavern League – would not be easily blackmailed.
Quoted: Susan Crowley, director of PACE (Policy, Alternatives, Community and Education), a 10-year, $1.2 million program aimed at curtailing underage drinking.
GREEN BAY ââ?¬â? For many freshmen, adjusting to college is like living on an island on which forming alliances, hard work and discipline are keys to survival.
No one knows that better than Mike Laskowski, a 20-year-old theater major. Laskowski wasn�t sure he would return to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay for his sophomore year in the fall.
If Doug Chickering wanted to play hardball with the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department, he probably would have been able to take some healthy cuts.
Chickering, the executive director of the WIAA, could have pushed to keep the state girls basketball tournament at the Kohl Center instead of moving it to the Dane County Coliseum starting next year.
Emergency physicians who fear malpractice suits are reportedly more likely to admit and order tests for patients with chest pain or other heart symptoms.
The study involved researchers at the University of Wisconsin, the Medical College of Wisconsin; the University of Rochester; and Tufts-New England Medical Center.
Quoted: Debbie McKenzie, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. (Second item.)
If a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin proclaimed the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, someone in the state Legislature would issue a press release demanding proof.
The state budget sitting on Gov. Jim Doyle’s desk is a dishonest document.
….The bottom line is that the budget passed by the Legislature is a mess. Instead of trying to clean it up, Doyle should veto the whole thing. That puts the responsibility back on the Assembly and Senate, which made the mess in the first place.
Jolene Anderson and Caitlin Gibson should be listed as unofficial recruiters for the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team.
That’s because Anderson and Gibson are doing their best to sell the Badgers’ program to prospective recruits.
(UNDATED) A University of Wisconsin-Madison student working as an intern in the British Parliament was one of thousands of people forced to evacuate the London subway after yesterday�s bombings. Twenty year-old Barry Landy was unharmed on his commute. (First item.)
Quoted: UW-Madison economics professor Steven Durlauf (Second item.)
A 7-percent hike in tuition at University of Wisconsin System schools this fall should hardly be considered modest.
Yet it’s welcome relief compared to the double- digit increases of the past couple of years. And given that state leaders are skimping on state support for highe
Thursday’s attacks on London commuters could strengthen popular support in Britain and the United States for the war on terror, according to some UW-Madison experts.
David Leheny, associate professor of political science, said he believes people will rally around Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British flag, just as Americans rallied around their president and flag after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
It’s too early to determine if the University of Wisconsin Marathon County will cancel a school-sponsored trip to Europe next month, a UWMC spokeswoman said Thursday.
About six students are scheduled to tour Greece and Rome from Aug. 14 through Aug. 22. A group taking responsibility for Thursday’s terrorist attacks in London, however, also has threatened attacks in Italy and Denmark.
Quoted: John S. Hoffmire, director of the Center on Business and Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The UW Madison has its own ambassadors in London, students.
Today’s bombings sent members of the university community into high gear trying to get in touch with them.
MADISON, Wis. – For just the second time in the last nine years, the University of Wisconsin Division of Intercollegiate Athletics can stake its claim as one of the NCAAââ?¬â?¢s Top 20 all-sports programs. (Athletic Communication.)
For nine months a year, students at Furman University have freshly renovated apartments all to themselves. But when summer arrives, they give them up in a hurry for one compelling reason: 10,000 visitors are on their way.
For colleges with programs in London, Thursday was a day of urgent calls and e-mail messages, locating students and notifying parents that everyone was physically OK, if obviously shook up by the terrorist bombings.
Gordon Baldwin, professor emeritus of law at UW- Madison, said he thinks history will treat O’Connor well, remembering her as a pragmatist who had no allegiance to any particular ideology. She looked at the facts of each case and respected precedents, he said.
BEREA, Ky. — Professor Richard K. Olson’s voice swelled with pride as he reached the final stop — the bathroom — on a tour of Berea College’s newest student housing.
“The throne!” he declared, displaying a massive, cream-colored composting toilet.
Dear Editor: Wisconsin’s educational system, K-12 and the University of Wisconsin System, has been the source of great pride throughout our state’s history. Apparently our currently elected state officials (mostly Republicans) believe this to be a false pride. They are willing to be written into history as the dismantlers of progressive, affordable, equitable education for their state’s children.
Most of those who seem to take pleasure in the unraveling of our educational system are themselves graduates of the K-12 system, and 23 Republicans in the Legislature are graduates of the UW System, including some who received degrees in education. How nice for them, able to secure that education borne on the shoulders of those who sustained the system for generations before them.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison put an embattled administrator on paid leave Thursday as officials investigate new allegations of misconduct.
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said he had received new allegations against Paul Barrows during Barrows’ tenure as vice chancellor for student affairs. Wiley would not elaborate, but said the investigation will determine whether additional disciplinary action, including dismissal, would be warranted.
Higher education ââ?¬â? including technical colleges and more traditional universities ââ?¬â? are vital to the economic future of Wisconsin.
That’s not news, but what might surprise some people is the degree to which these very different institutions are working together.
Universities nationwide are racing to lure top biotech scientists and research dollars, resources that could fuel one of this century’s most promising industries.
