A group of Wisconsin lawmakers is joining a national campaign of Republicans pushing back against a decades-old theory that examines how slavery affected the way societal institutions treat Black people more than a century later.
The University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents elected Regent Edmund Manydeeds III as its next president, bringing an end to an uncharacteristically tense process of transitioning the board’s leadership.
In just the sixth contested election in University of Wisconsin System history, the UW Board of Regents elected an appointee of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers as board president for the next year.
With the tuition freeze in place, UW-Madison found ways to increase their revenue stream during the freeze period by enrolling more out-of-state students who pay more in tuition than their in-state counterparts.
A group of Wisconsin Republicans is joining the nationwide conservative push against teaching about aspects of race and gender in classrooms.
The draft bills introduced Thursday would prevent University of Wisconsin System campuses, state technical colleges, public K-12 schools and independent charter schools from teaching “critical race theory,” which argues that racism is baked into social structures and policies.
It is the first contested election for president of the Board of Regents in nearly a decade and comes as the board prepares to launch a search for a new UW System president. Only about one in 10 of the past 51 board president elections has been contested.
A proposal by state Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, would restructure the UW System into four regions plus UW-Madison. We discuss the vision and what challenges it seeks to address.
Schools in the University of Wisconsin System pledged to return to in-person learning next fall. At a meeting of the UW System Board of Regents on Thursday, individual school chancellors gave more details about what that will look like.
Quoted: Supporters of the endowment are hopeful the funding will help students graduate college with a little less debt. Wisconsin falls in the middle when it comes to tuition costs for 4-year and technical colleges, said Nicholas Hillman, an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education who directs the Student Success through Applied Research Lab.
Wisconsin employers couldn’t require employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, and so-called vaccine passports would be prohibited under GOP-backed bills that received a public hearing at the state Capitol Wednesday.
Another proposal would prevent the University of Wisconsin System from requiring COVID-19 vaccines or testing.
The UW System Board of Regents on Wednesday morning approved a contract with McIntosh, 44, a former Badgers football player who will be only the third UW athletic director in 32 years.
Jewish leaders wrote to the University of Wisconsin system leadership asking the system to direct six UW campuses that plan to commence their fall semesters during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah to move their start dates. The UW campuses at La Crosse, Madison, Oshkosh, Parkside, Stout and Superior all have scheduled their semesters to begin during Rosh Hashanah, which this year will begin Sept. 6 and end Sept. 8.
As colleges and universities ease restrictions aimed at preventing outbreaks of COVID-19, the University of Wisconsin System has announced it is bringing back pre-college and summer youth programs this summer.
Democracy requires widely available, high-quality public education. But the consolidation of wealth by elite, mostly private schools has gone hand in hand with damaging politically motivated state disinvestments that have weakened even the country’s greatest public universities, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of California at Berkeley.
Right on the water between two lakes, Madison, WI features a walkable downtown that’s been basically built around the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While walking along Triangle Market, you’ll find everything from shops and cafés to galleries and bars, but if it’s warm-weather activities you’re looking for, just hop in the lake! In Madison, people boat, kayak, fish, swim, and paddle-board for fun and for work post-graduation, there are ample job opportunities at Google, Microsoft, and more.
Stephen Jansen of Milwaukee graduated with over $100,000 in student debt from undergraduate and graduate school in 2016, and struggled to find work in his field of public administration. When he was able to find a job, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee would not release his transcripts required for the job over student debt.
Attention this week turns to the UW Board of Regents, which finds itself at an interesting inflection point in the political power struggle over control of the University of Wisconsin System with the board holding its first contested election in nearly a decade.
“When our communities needed them, our students stepped up to help us beat back the pandemic,” says UW System President Tommy Thompson. “I am so very proud of them, and I am very grateful to the excellent nursing and pharmacy faculty, staff, and deans who helped make this possible.”
The UW System announced in January that any nursing and pharmacy students who worked at COVID-19 vaccination sites could earn a $500 tuition credit while getting in-the-field experience. UW System President Tommy Thompson announced Friday that a total of 1,042 nursing and pharmacy students participated in the program.
In a 2020 report, the non-partisan Wisconsin Policy Forum found Wisconsin’s public colleges and universities falling behind the nation in a number of metrics, including funding and enrollment. While state funding lagged behind the norms, its enrollment decreased at double the national rate in the last decade.
Republicans who control the Legislature set in motion a plan Thursday to end the freeze on in-state tuition that has been in place for eight years at University of Wisconsin schools.
The Wisconsin Legislature’s powerful budget committee declined to extend a tuition freeze for in-state undergraduate students, a move that would allow the University of Wisconsin System to raise the costs for attending its institutions for the first time in eight years.
The Republican-controlled budget-writing committee declined to extend a tuition freeze at University of Wisconsin System schools for the next two academic years, setting the stage for students to potentially pay more for their education as soon as this fall.
A number of universities and higher education systems have established task forces and committees to address the effects of the pandemic. For example, the University of Denver has a COVID-19 Accommodations Committee, while the University of Wisconsin system has a Caregiving Task Force. These bodies identify the challenges, recommend best practices and ensure a transparent communication flow.
The president of the Wisconsin Senate doesn’t want to increase general aid for schools in the next two years because they have received billions of dollars in federal aid since 2020.
Alyssa Huglen’s May 17 story in the Journal Sentinel highlights a problem that has long concerned us at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Students with limited financial resources take longer to graduate and are less likely to graduate than their peers, and many struggle with debt from college loans. But what the story did not address are the extensive efforts UWM is making to help students from low-income families.
“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.
