“I think that those that are in the blue states are not following the law,” said Tommy G. Thompson, the University of Wisconsin system’s interim president, who previously served in George W. Bush’s cabinet as secretary of health and human services, which includes the F.D.A. “All those individuals that have mandated it are really on thin ice.”
Beloit College joined a growing number of institutions across the country to require its students receive the COVID-19 vaccine in time for the fall semester.
Noted: The Second District Democrat has requested nine earmarks for road and bridge projects totaling $20 million and 30 earmarks for community projects totaling $56 million. The most expensive of these community projects is a $24 million plant research facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to replace a plant breeding facility that Pocan described as an “outdated World War Two building.”
Some of the other requests: $4 million to support the replacement of a 69-year-old hospital in Darlington (Lafayette County); $2.2 million for technology and equipment for the Baraboo fire and ambulance service; $1 million for a new Madison homeless shelter; $1 million toward a new Center for Black Excellence and Culture in Madison; $2.5 million for traumatic brain injury research at UW-Madison; $220,000 for a Reedsburg community center, $848,000 to upgrade Fitchburg’s stormwater management; and $400,000 for a machine shop and shed at the Wisconsin Cranberry Research Station in Black River Falls.
Bob Meyer, who retired as chancellor of UW-Stout in August 2019, worked as a System consultant from late 2019 through March 2021, according to a contract obtained under the state’s public records law. Former System president Ray Cross hired him at 40% of his chancellor pay, or about $8,445 monthly.
When Clint Myrick graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2010, he left with two consequential pieces of paper: a diploma for a bachelor’s degree in music education — and an eye-popping student loan bill.
Noted: In her complaint, Tina Virgil — head of the Division of Law Enforcement Services — disclosed that Kaul brought in an outside agency last year to look into working conditions at the Department of Justice after staffers raised concerns about possible harassment. The outside agency was the University of Wisconsin System.
Noted: At University of Wisconsin campuses, interim President Tommy Thompson has said that vaccination against COVID-19 won’t be required, especially not while the medicines are under emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
A UW-systems security expert said it depends on how it’s used and who is using it.“The truth is your face, along with the face of 117 million other Americans is already in one of the largest facial recognition databases in the world,” Nicholas Davis, UW-Systems chief information security officer said.
Column by Kraus, UW-River Falls professor.
University of Wisconsin System auditors identified a range of missteps in the bidding process for an information technology project at UW-Madison, including two perceived conflicts of interest and several violations of state procurement policy.
Democrats criticized a report created by the Chair of the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges that recommended consolidation within the UW System and ending the tuition freeze on Friday.
The University of Wisconsin System has already announced that campuses will encourage but not require the vaccine as a condition of enrollment. Interim System President Tommy Thompson cited legal restrictions, noting that the shots are authorized for emergency use. The former Republican governor also said that it’s unhelpful to prevent people with religious, political or ideological reasons against getting the vaccine from going to college. Dorms, however, add another layer to colleges’ conversations about vaccines.
Column by Hesselbein, D-Middleton, who represents the 79th Assembly District and is ranking Democratic member on the Assembly Committee for Colleges and Universities.
Column by Theo, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Realtors Association, and O’Connell, executive director of the Wisconsin Counties Association.
The system canceled its youth programs and camps last summer as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country.System officials said Thursday that they feel they can resume the programs and camps this year thanks to renewed demand and better knowledge of how to contain the disease. The system plans to require pre-arrival testing, symptom screening, masks, social distancing and train instructors on safety protocols.
A new state Senate report calls for further restructuring of all University of Wisconsin System campuses except UW-Madison. The plan recommends “regionalization” of the state’s 12 other universities to achieve 15 percent spending reductions and avoid “the closure of several comprehensive campuses.”
Laurent Heller, vice chancellor for finance and administration at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has been named senior vice president for finance and administration at the Johns Hopkins University.
The leader of the state Senate’s higher education committee is recommending sweeping changes to the University of Wisconsin System, including grouping campuses into four regions and eliminating a longstanding tuition freeze.
Noted: The two-year state budget plan also won’t allow the University of Wisconsin System to borrow for operational expenses, restore collective bargaining for public employees, make Juneteenth a state holiday, create a so-called red flag law for gun owners or adopt maps from the governor’s redistricting commission, among other proposals.
In March, The Washington Post reported that University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank sought to move a conversation around the COVID-19 pandemic and students returning to campus in the fall to a private portal used by presidents and chancellors of the 14 Big Ten universities.
Four campuses within the University of Wisconsin System have seen spring enrollments decline by more than 10 percent since 2019. UW-Platteville saw spring enrollments drop by more than 17 percent in the last three years.
Noted: The two-year state budget plan also won’t allow the University of Wisconsin System to borrow for operational expenses, restore collective bargaining for public employees, make Juneteenth a state holiday, create a so-called red flag law for gun owners or adopt maps from the governor’s redistricting commission.
It was a comment to that effect by Rebecca Blank, the chancellor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, that helped ignite the debate in her state over faculty course loads. Blank started a political firestorm by saying that, when top faculty got job offers from other institutions, she sometimes reduced the number of courses they had to teach as a way to get them to stay.
Other items Republicans intend to remove include freezing enrollment in the private school voucher program and allowing the University of Wisconsin System to borrow for operational expenses. That is a top priority of university officials, who said it was needed to deal with short-term losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Tony Evers on Friday appointed a medical group CEO to the UW Board of Regents, tipping the political balance of a board long led by Republican appointees who passed policies for University of Wisconsin System campuses opposed by many faculty and staff.
Republicans are also stripping the budget of proposals to allow the University of Wisconsin System to borrow money for operational expenses. They also stripped a provision that would have expanded a tuition promise program to all of the state’s universities and their branch campuses, building off a UW-Madison tuition promise, which provides free tuition to students from families making up to $60,000.
Column by Thompson, president of the University of Wisconsin System.
One issue is whether there can be only one flagship per state. Flagship is a nautical metaphor. The flagship is the grandest vessel in a flotilla; the leader. In this metaphor, the flagship is the “top” campus in a university system. For some states, this makes sense. The University of Wisconsin at Madison leads the University of Wisconsin system. In other states, two universities claim flagship status, such as the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses for the University of California system. Some states have two or more major university systems. The University of Texas at Austin is the University of Texas system’s flagship, but the College Station campus is the Texas A&M system’s flagship.
Classes on six UW System campuses start Sept. 7 or 8, while Rosh Hashanah begins on the evening of Sept. 6, ends sundown Sept. 8.
Wisconsin college leaders will take a close look in the coming weeks at President Joe Biden’s plan for a free community college program, which could influence already precarious enrollment patterns at schools struggling to fill seats.
UWM’s Sandra McLellan and MIT’s Eric Alm are among the world’s foremost experts at detecting very small organisms in very large quantities of sewage — a useful tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite their similar research capabilities, Alm’s work is having a wider impact and creating more economic value and high-paying jobs.
This summer could see the launch of a renewed search for the next president of the University of Wisconsin System. It would come just over a year after a controversial, failed search in 2020 that included candidates who said they would only seek the job if they could be named as a sole finalist.
The FFI was founded in 2013 and is part of the University of Wisconsin System’s Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship. The organization focuses on building and funding profitable businesses in the food, beverage and value-added agriculture sector through training, coaching, resources, tools and mentoring programs.
For the Class of 2021, graduation may have felt like a long time coming, but the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving one last reminder of how little has been normal in their recent college years.
The leaders of the University of Wisconsin System’s two largest schools aren’t embracing President Joe Biden’s plans to forgive student debt.
Among major public universities, U-Md. has one of the highest six-year graduation rates for Black students: 81 percent in 2019. That’s just behind the University of Michigan — 84 percent — and ahead of the University of Florida’s 77 percent. Black graduation rates for the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin were 76 percent
Column by Kevin Reilly, former president of the University of Wisconsin System and a senior fellow at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.
Wisconsin technical colleges could more easily establish general education degree programs under a Republican bill that the University of Wisconsin System says would threaten the existence of some of its smallest campuses.
Written by John B. Diamond, the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education and a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s education school, and Jennifer Cheatham, a senior lecturer on education and the co-chair of the Public Education Leadership Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former superintendent of the Madison school district in Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin System has a similar program for its students called the Ben R. Lawton Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant, which lists the same eligibility criteria. Lennington said WILL is looking at that program as well.
Several Madison residents on Thursday sued the state board that awards scholarships and loans to college students, alleging a grant program restricted to certain students of color is unconstitutional.
Partnerships between mobile vaccination teams and local agencies helped to fill more than 300 vaccinator requests throughout the state since January, Bauman said. Requests for assistance made by local health departments were fulfilled by volunteers found through WEAVR, the state’s registry of nurses and the University of Wisconsin System.
In the University of Wisconsin System, individual campuses also offer short-term summer programs to meet campus-specific needs for admitted students. National programs last about two to eight weeks and often include housing, allowing students to adapt early to campus life and resources. But when the pandemic started last spring, System campuses transitioned many of these “bridge” programs to a virtual format, while canceling or delaying others until the fall.
“UW regent Robert Atwell, who sits on the board of @HospSistersHS, has chosen to spread incorrect information regarding the vaccine,” the UW BIPOC Coalition tweeted.
Crumbling concrete, rusted rebar and falling facades were among the selling points on a campus tour Monday designed to shore up support for the University of Wisconsin System’s more than $1 billion request to repair or replace aging facilities.
Gov. Tony Evers authorized emergency work on the 19-floor Madison building that houses the University of Wisconsin System’s headquarters Thursday after two precast concrete railing slabs fell from the third floor.
The 10-by-6 foot slabs fell from Van Hise Hall on UW-Madison’s campus Sunday, landing directly in front of the building’s entrance. No one was injured.
Gov. Tony Evers took the unusual step Friday of ordering workers to remove all concrete slabs hanging over the entrances and exists of the University of Wisconsin System headquarters building, days after two slabs fell off the facade and crashed to the sidewalk outside the building’s main doors.
University of Wisconsin System interim President Tommy Thompson is continuing his push for a system-wide approach to online education. Thompson says a unified front on behalf of all UW System campuses is the best way to compete with out-of-state colleges spending heavily in Wisconsin to attract working adults to take courses.
’UW-Madison has been able to increase tuition revenue in ways that other campuses really can’t,’ UW-Milwaukee professor says.
Gov. Tony Evers ordered emergency repair work to Van Hise Hall after concrete slabs broke off the UW-Madison building earlier this week and an engineering company found the building’s remaining panels “pose an immediate threat to public health, welfare and safety.”
A member of the University of Wisconsin System’s governing board says state universities shouldn’t be “compelling or coercing” students to get vaccinated against COVID-19. This comes a day after interim UW System President Tommy Thompson announced a plan to incentivize vaccinations by lifting testing requirements for students that get them.
Wisconsin’s Jewish community is calling on six University of Wisconsin System campuses, including UW-Madison, to reconsider their academic calendars for next year because the first day of classes conflict with Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest holidays on the Jewish calendar.
With college-age students now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, University of Wisconsin campuses have a new rule that leaders hope will encourage young adults to get their shots.
UW System interim President Tommy Thompson asked campus chancellors Wednesday to allow students who have gotten vaccinated against COVID-19 to be exempt from the weekly COVID-19 testing regimen.
“One of the inducements, encouragements to not to have to go through testing is to get vaccinated,” Thompson said.
Noted: University of Wisconsin students who get their vaccines will be exempt from weekly testing requirements under new system guidance.
UW System interim President Tommy Thompson asked campus chancellors Wednesday to allow students who have gotten vaccinated against COVID-19 to be exempt from the weekly COVID-19 testing regimen.
“One of the inducements, encouragements to not to have to go through testing is to get vaccinated,” Thompson said.
University of Wisconsin students who get vaccinated for COVID-19 will no longer have to be tested weekly for the virus under a policy change that interim President Tommy Thompson on Wednesday called an incentive to bolster vaccination rates on campus.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has several times in recent weeks noted her disappointment with the amount of vaccine allocated to University Health Services. Officials have encouraged the campus community to look elsewhere, noting in a Monday social media post that appointments for the week were already full.
Whether to get a COVID shot or not– UW Systems announced it will leave it up to students to decide. “We’re doing everything we can, but we’re not going to mandate it,” President Tommy Thompson told reporters Wednesday.
The collapse of part of a building on UW-Madison’s campus has alarmed UW System officials.
The Regents are scheduled to consider rescinding the policy on all system campuses except UW-Madison during a meeting Thursday. UW-Madison officials would be allowed to their own policy on excess credits.
Aconcrete slab broke off the side of Van Hise Hall on Sunday afternoon, landing almost directly in front of an entrance to one of the most highly trafficked buildings on UW-Madison’s campus.
