The UW Board of Regents approved 2% raises for chancellors and the University of Wisconsin System president in a closed-door meeting on Thursday. The $87,250 in leadership raises range from $12,123 for UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank to $4,669 for UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow. Raises for chancellors do not require legislative approval.
In her farewell address to the UW Board of Regents Thursday, Rebecca Blank also took aim at state involvement in campus building projects, criticized some “one-size-fits-all” University of Wisconsin System policies and again called for raising in-state undergraduate tuition.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s outgoing chancellor is warning regents that the state’s political polarization is the greatest threat to the school’s existence.
The $32,500 Kendi received to speak virtually to the university was more than $10,000 less than what he received in September from the University of Wisconsin to deliver a closed-door ticketed lecture.
Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College has seen enrollment in teacher prep programs increase every fall since 2017, according to data provided by the college. University officials partly attribute the rise to a state-funded scholarship that allows young educators to finish their program debt-free if they commit to teaching in schools across the state for a certain amount of time. (Other universities, like the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s program, have similar offers of financial support if students pledge to teach in the state for three to four years.)
More than 70 percent of Wisconsin college students who enrolled in 2015 graduated within six years, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The state outperformed national averages in all institutional categories, but significant graduation rate gaps still exist between racial groups.
An effort to expand higher education offerings for state prison inmates is taking shape under interim University of Wisconsin President Tommy Thompson, who oversaw the largest expansion of prisons in the state’s history during his 14 years as governor.
A two-year push to make college education more accessible to Wisconsin inmates has gained momentum with nearly $6 million in public and private grants.
The funding will help matriculate inmates and “break the back of recidivism,” Tommy Thompson, University of Wisconsin System interim president and former governor, said.
Thompson first announced his Prison Education Initiative in December 2020. The pitch was simple: build UW System degree programs at state prisons and ultimately turn one into an “educational institution.”
The details are fuzzy, but Tommy Thompson’s idea to “turn a prison into a university” is starting to take shape. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. late last year awarded the University of Wisconsin System and the Department of Corrections a $5.7 million grant to expand college pathways for inmates. The grant provides a much-needed boost for the project, which Republicans declined to fund in the state budget passed last summer.
What is a rural college? And where can such institutions be found? The questions seem simple, but in higher education, the answers are surprisingly complex. Now two new reports aim to clarify them.
The first, released in December, comes from the University of Wisconsin and is titled “Mapping Rural Colleges and Their Communities.” Nicholas Hillman, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who spearheaded the report, says the research was born out of the question “Where are rural colleges located?”
People from outside Wisconsin would qualify for in-state tuition at University of Wisconsin System schools under a new Republican bill, so long as their parents are UW alumni. Authors say the bill would address declining enrollment at state schools and address workforce shortages, while opponents say it would cut college funding and raise fairness issues.
Noted: In addition, Evers would provide $611 million for K-12 education, $111 million for the University of Wisconsin System and $28 million for the state’s technical colleges.
Reading the Roth Report, released by the Wisconsin Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges last May, one would be led to believe that the state is on the verge of collapse. There’s a “looming demographic crisis,” according to the report, which will lead to catastrophic decline.
Bobby Engram’s hire as the University of Wisconsin football team’s offensive coordinator is imminent and could become official as soon as Friday.
Dear Editor: I find it disappointing that the a Foley and Lardner lawyer was chosen as president of UW.
When David K. Wilson was asked in 2010 to apply for the presidency of Morgan State University, a historically Black institution in Baltimore, he was reluctant to leave his perch as a chancellor in the University of Wisconsin system.
“In the atmosphere we’re in now, post–Me Too movement, boards are just much more vigilant,” said Kevin Reilly, president emeritus and regent professor at the University of Wisconsin system. “I think they have to act—and act quickly and decisively—in cases of sexual harassment.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW System also negotiated deals with the committee calling for the same raises for their tradespeople.
Jake Baggott, executive director of University Health Services at UW-Madison, describes campus preparations for students starting the spring 2022 semester as COVID-19’s omicron surge continues.
Milwaukee lawyer Jay Rothman was selected as the next president of the UW System on Friday in a unanimous vote by the UW System Board of Regents. The decision ends the system’s second search for a new president in a multi-year process that has frequently sparked derision and criticism from members of campus communities about the openness and transparency of the search.
We talk with Greenville Rep. David Murphy on UW systems free speech policy and the state of a new system president. Then, the Wisconsin Supplier Diversity Program director talks about how to increase diversity in the state’s business contracts.
Within hours of Milwaukee attorney Jay Rothman being named the 8th president of the University of Wisconsin System, the first online petition was making the rounds.
To be fair, it was milder than the furious petitions of a year and a half ago, when thousands of faculty, staff, students and alumni called on the system’s Board of Regents to withdraw the single — and in their eyes, deeply flawed — finalist for the job and restart the search from scratch.
A business-minded Milwaukee attorney with no higher education administration experience will lead the University of Wisconsin System as its next president.
The Board of Regents voted unanimously on Friday to offer him the position.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents selected the chairman and CEO of a Milwaukee law firm to lead the state’s public universities into the future. On Friday, regents voted unanimously to offer the system’s top job to Jay O. Rothman after the 62-year-old received the recommendation of their Special Regent Committee.
Rothman, age 62, is an attorney from the Milwaukee area, where he has served as the CEO and chairman of the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP since 2011 after initially joining the firm in 1986. Rothman is a Wisconsin native and holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Marquette and a law degree from Harvard law school.
Law firm CEO to take over as UW System’s eighth president in June.
The next University of Wisconsin System president could be named as soon as Friday. Meanwhile, organizations representing campus employees are criticizing the UW Board of Regents for not holding public interviews with the two finalists.
The Board of Regents is slated to meet Friday afternoon to make their choice between UW-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt and business attorney Jay Rothman.
Tommy Thompson, interim president of the University of Wisconsin system, plans to resign in March.
The University of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents is facing some pushback after the UW System announced Friday that there would be no public interviews of the two finalists named for the role of system president.
Multiple faculty groups are calling on the University of Wisconsin System to hold public forums with the two finalists in its presidential search, a measure that was included even in the widely criticized search that failed two years ago.
A Senate committee passed seven bills Wednesday related to the state colleges, including two that would expand eligibility for in-state tuition and three that are aimed at preventing foreign influence in higher education.
The only bill to pass the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges with unanimous support was Senate Bill 557, which expands the ability of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and the UW System to invest certain revenues.
Emails obtained by The Washington Post reveal that Schlissel may not have understood the full extent of public records laws. In an email conversation with Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Schlissel suggested that Blank could delete emails to avoid potential FOIA disclosures.
“Mark and others—please note that anything that arrives in or is sent from my email can be requested as a public record. I know I’m not the only one for whom this is true,” Blank wrote in an email, according to the Post report. She was alluding to the fact that each state has different sunshine laws that dictate which records can be made publicly available.
Two men from Wisconsin have been named finalists in the search for the next University of Wisconsin System president. A special UW Board of Regents committee has forwarded UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Jim Schmidt and Milwaukee law firm CEO Jay Rothman from a field 44 applicants.
The University of Wisconsin System has named two finalists for the role of system president: UW-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt and Jay Rothman, chairman and chief executive officer of the Foley and Lardner law firm in Milwaukee.
Jay Rothman, chair and CEO of Foley & Lardner, and UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Jim Schmidt were announced Friday as the finalists for the job leading the state’s public university system, its more than 160,000 students, 39,000 employees, 26 campuses and $6.6 billion budget.
UW-Eau Claire Chancellor James C. Schmidt and law firm CEO Jay O. Rothman are the candidates being considered for the position, according to an announcement made Friday.
The two finalists are Jay O. Rothman, chairman and CEO of the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP in Milwaukee, and James C. Schmidt, chancellor at UW-Eau Claire.
The three largest University of Wisconsin System campuses are reporting spikes in positive cases of COVID-19 weeks before the start of spring semester classes. While some of the state’s smaller, private colleges push start dates back, UW campuses say they’re starting on time and in-person.
A bill aimed at punishing colleges and universities for violating free speech and academic freedom rules set by Republicans has passed a legislative committee by a party-line vote. This comes after a GOP author amended the legislation to remove provisions that were potentially unconstitutional.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank told a faculty committee during a Monday meeting that she didn’t know what percentage of the campus community is boosted beyond those who received it at University Health Services. The university will be encouraging students and staff to report if they have been boosted off-campus to get a better picture of booster status across UW-Madison.
I focused on counties with smaller populations, and Sauk County, Wis., came up in my query; I’ve previously suggested Baraboo (the county seat and home to a small two-year institution that is part of the University of Wisconsin system), and it’s just a bit bigger than what you described.
“I’m not going to go off in the sunset and do nothing, I will be looking at my opportunities in the month of April and make a decision,” Thompson told News 3 Now.
The pandemic’s negative impact on enrollment was not ubiquitous, however. Enrollments at elite universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, held steady during the height of the pandemic. Several of the more-prestigious state flagship campuses, such as the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, recorded record freshman-class enrollments. Amid the adversity caused by the pandemic, in that sense, the rich simply got richer.
Tommy Thompson, who is the interim president for the University of Wisconsin System, announced his resignation Jan. 7 in a letter to UW System Board of Regents President Edmund Manydeeds III. Thompson will leave his role on March 18, 2022.
Thompson’s departure is the second major resignation within the UW System that has taken place since this past fall. University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced in October that she will also be leaving the UW System at the end of the spring academic term, vacating another crucial spot.
A series of bills with bipartisan support could give the University of Wisconsin System a new sustainable source of money that is nearly three times more than what campuses received in funding increases in the most recent state budget.
After nearly two years serving as the University of Wisconsin System’s interim president, Tommy Thompson will leave his role on March 18. Thompson, an 80-year-old former Republican governor, has held the position since July 2020, after the UW System failed to hire a permanent successor for Ray Cross.
And while Evers’ seven unconfirmed appointees to the UW Board of Regents have been serving without the Senate’s stamp of approval, the Republican lawmaker chairing the committee charged with confirming them recently warned that some may be in trouble.
Some private colleges and universities in Wisconsin are delaying the start of spring semester classes, requiring negative COVID-19 tests or vaccinations and boosters for students and employees amid a rapid surge of new COVID-19 infections. At the same time, the University of Wisconsin System says students “will return on-time and as normal” for classes starting this month.
University of Wisconsin System interim President Tommy Thompson plans to resign from the position March 18.
The former Wisconsin governor took on the role July 1, 2020, after being hired that June by the system’s Board of Regents. Thompson has been filling the void after a failed search for a replacement for former UW System President Ray Cross, who retired in 2020 after serving as president since 2014. Thompson was 78 at the time of being hired for the interim role.
UW System interim President Tommy Thompson is resigning from his post, effective March 18.
He announced his impending departure to the UW Board on Friday, as the search committee tasked with finding a permanent president anticipated it would name a hire sometime in February.
Tommy Thompson announced that his last day leading the University of Wisconsin System will be March 18. His resignation announcement came Friday, the same day that a committee of UW Board of Regents members meet to select finalists in the presidential search.
The use of online-proctoring tools has exploded since colleges went remote in the spring of 2020. Proctorio’s business reportedly increased ninefold from April 2019 to April 2020, with nearly three million active weekly users as of March 2021. It and other proctoring companies — such as Honorlock and ProctorU — permeated the news cycle just as quickly, drawing widespread ire over concerns with student stress and allegations of bias against people with disabilities or darker skin tones. Students at more than a dozen universities, including the City University of New York, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Washington State University, have circulated petitions protesting the use of the tools.
Data from the University of Wisconsin system show there were 1,710 fewer new first-year, full-time-equivalent students in 2020 compared to 2019. In Ohio, the number of public high school graduates enrolling in a public institution peaked in 2018 at 51,075 students and declined 4 percent to 48,451 in 2020. The Kansas Board of Regents shows enrollment for first-time entering students declining from 16 percent in fall 2019 to 14 percent in fall 2021.
The university announced on Thursday upcoming dates for a series of listening sessions that will take place throughout January, hosted by a 21-person search committee of Regent members, community representatives, administrators, students and faculty.
The committee leading the search for the new University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor is holding listening sessions for the UW-Madison community this month.
A new program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will give youth in three Wisconsin counties the chance to work with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension to explore post-high school educational and work opportunities.
UW-Madison’s semester starts Jan. 25. There are no changes to campus operations at this time, university spokesperson Meredith McGlone said Wednesday.
