Last spring and summer, as colleges and universities around the state scrambled to adapt to the new realities of educating in a pandemic, one issue kept coming to the fore: student enrollment.
Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, met with a group of lawmakers and University of Wisconsin officials at the state Capitol Friday, at a time when hospitalizations have soared and daily cases of COVID-19 are at an all-time high.
Birx met Friday with UW System officials, including interim President Tommy Thompson and campus chancellors, to encourage the universities to test all students at least weekly in an effort to identify asymptomatic cases earlier that could help stop community spread of the virus to more vulnerable populations.
Wisconsin college students most in need of money to help them through the pandemic were among the least likely to receive it because the federal government’s formula for allocating aid disadvantaged community colleges, experts say.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield toured the University of Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory on Thursday, praising UW campuses and colleges around the nation for tamping down outbreaks of COVID-19 while cases rise in some surrounding communities.
And Addison Lathers provided a vivid description of the night the hammer came down at the University of Wisconsin, and the panic that ensued at two dormitories that each held more than 1,000 students about to be locked down for two weeks.
Fill out the FAFSA — but then reach out to the colleges you’re considering. “Let them know, ’Hey, something’s happened. Our finances are just a little bit different now. What can we do to let you know so you can take a second look?’” recommends Karla Weber, who works in the financial aid office at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Some University of Wisconsin System campuses are expanding their coronavirus antigen testing strategies to include students living off campus.
State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski and the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands announced an annual distribution of $900,000 for scholarships and grants for the University of Wisconsin System this year.
Cases have dropped dramatically at UW System campuses after spikes when classes began.
“SEND HELP” and “FREE US” were written in sticky notes on the windows of a dorm at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a soundtrack from “The Purge” movies — a series of dystopian horror films — boomed from an upper floor.
A new study published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that a majority of students on campus involved in random tests did not engage in discriminatory behaviors toward students from underrepresented groups.
Madison Area Technical College expects to follow the same playbook for the spring semester that it’s using this fall: most classes delivered online and students and employees completing a health survey before they enter campus buildings.
The University of Wisconsin Madison announced early in the semester it would quarantine two dorms on-campus and switch to remote learning for two weeks.
Evers has used his powers to declare three public health emergencies this year. The first came March 12, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, on July 30, led to the first mask mandate and came as COVID-19 cases were beginning to climb. And the third, on Sept. 22, extended the mask mandate as COVID-19 cases were surging on University of Wisconsin campuses.
UW said it will advocate for students, scholars with its peer institutions.
A $212 million plan to standardize administrative functions across University of Wisconsin System campuses has been given the green light by the UW Board of Regents. The project aims to standardize things like payroll, purchasing and human resources by replacing more than 700 different systems with centralized, cloud-based software by 2026.
Shortly after Thompson took office July 1, he hired a new chief of staff and filled a vice president position that had been occupied on an interim basis for more than two years. More recently, he elevated a current System employee to a new, more prominent title. All three have ties to former Republican Gov. Scott Walker or worked with Thompson when he served as Republican governor from 1987 to 2001.
The new hires and pay raises coincide with Thompson’s plan in cutting costs, which includes an unknown number of layoffs of UW System administration employees.
As colleges have seen outbreaks, many have reconfigured their approaches to testing. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after rising cases forced the campus into a two-week lockdown, students living in on-campus housing will now be tested weekly. After a surge in cases at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. — a school that was testing only students who believed they had been exposed or were feeling sick — the university halted in-person classes, sent some students home and hired an outside firm to start a surveillance testing program.
Some of those closures came after students returned to campus or nearby, and COVID-19 cases spiked. James Madison University in Virginia halted in-person classes completely, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison saw an increase in cases that forced the school to enter a two-week lockdown.
Balances in tuition reserve funds across the University of Wisconsin System are at their lowest levels since 2008. Without a significant cushion, some campuses are cutting spending and staff to address financial problems caused by declining enrollment, the coronavirus pandemic and eight years of frozen tuition.
UW-Whitewater Chancellor Dwight Watson will return to his leadership post on Monday after sexual misconduct allegations made against him at a previous job were found to be without merit, according to the University of Wisconsin System.
Across the University of Wisconsin system, some campuses are already reducing fees for their students. UW-Milwaukee has significantly reduced their student fees due to the move to distance learning and online classes. Fees for fall 2020 are 23% less than what was charged in fall 2019.
University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson said in a Thursday interview that the campuses were among the safest places in the state, with extensive testing, tracking and quarantine programs. But he acknowledged there was “some connection” between returning students and the viral wave.
With the UW Board of Regents, we imposed a mask-wearing mandate on campus, and our students are taking it seriously. We’ve seen them — they’re even wearing masks walking down the street or riding their bikes. Our university leadership, faculty and staff also are modeling this important behavior.
The University of Wisconsin—Madison joined the Common Application in 2016 but chose then to suppress the school-discipline question from the material it transfers over into its application review system.
UW System is not able to recoup losses because contract with company did not specify nonpayment if hiring process failed, according to Wisconsin State Journal.
The cost of the University of Wisconsin System’s failed presidential search tallied $216,400.90, according to records obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal.
Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday the University of Wisconsin System faces a budget lapse of $45 million out of a total lapse amount of $300 million in funding to state departments.
Not every institution is struggling. State flagship schools have been doing particularly well: The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, has its second-largest freshman class in school history.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said the campus will begin to reopen Saturday following a two-week lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19 among undergraduate students.
UW System will face a budget lapse of only $45 million, a $24 million decrease compared to the original $69 million cut that Governor Tony Evers ordered in July.
In Madison, Wis., Dane County Executive Joe Parisi has repeatedly criticized University of Wisconsin officials who decided to bring students back to campus despite the high risk of new infections.
Nearly half the savings, $120 million, is coming from savings under the Medicaid program. UW’s was second highest, followed by $31 million at the Department of Health Services and $28 million at the Department of Corrections.
Evers announced Tuesday the new mask mandate — along with his third public health emergency — in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. Positive cases had begun to drop after Evers’ first mask mandate took effect in July but have been rising, primarily among 18- to 24-year-olds, since students returned to college campuses.
Dane County is again asking the University of Wisconsin-Madison to move classes online for the rest of the semester and send students living in residence halls home to curtail a spike in new coronavirus infections.
As we look for clues, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one to watch. Desperate to contain the virus, the school this month mandated that residents of two dormitories and 22 Greek houses quarantine for two weeks. “I literally felt like I was being arrested,” one student told a TV reporter.
Within weeks of opening, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University reverted to online instruction and sent students home because of outbreaks of Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arizona have urged students to hunker down and shifted classes online, for at least a few weeks, to try to stem the virus’s spread.
Interim UW System President Tommy Thompson joined Capital City Sunday to discuss the outbreaks at several of the system’s campuses.
The Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference has thrown in the towel on sports for the rest of the year. The conference announced Friday that its Council of Chancellors voted unanimously to put winter sports on hold through December 31, 2020.
UW System Interim President Tommy Thompson said Friday some chancellors within the system were against the idea of bringing back students to campus for a fall semester.
Eight Wisconsin cities that are home to University of Wisconsin System schools made the New York Times’ list of metro areas with the fastest growing COVID-19 cases this week.
UW-Madison is a big part of the community, but in a place like Whitewater, the university is almost as big as the city itself.
That’s why UW-Whitewater is encouraging its students to take the pandemic, and their impact on it, seriously.
Eight Wisconsin metro areas have landed on the New York Times’ list of places across the country where new cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest.
La Crosse is number one on the New York Times’ list, which was updated Thursday afternoon. In third is Whitewater, and the Oshkosh-Neenah area is in eighth. Stevens Point, Appleton, Platteville, Madison and Green Bay take up the 15th through 19th spots of the list, respectively.
With the exception of Appleton, all the Wisconsin cities on the list are home to a University of Wisconsin System campus.
Barely a week after the fall 2020 semester kicked off on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus with in-person instruction, new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sept. 10 surged well past previous single-day records in Dane County, home to the university, the state capital and the second largest metro area in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is in the red zone for cases, the ninth highest rate in the country, and the yellow zone for test positivity, both of which have increased over the last week, per the task force.
The task force expresses particular concern with cases in Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin, which, it says, “reported more than 1,400 cases last week, a greater than 200% increase.
“The task force repeated its recommendations to institutions of higher learning.
Gov. Tony Evers and Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm addressed the increasing COVID-19 cases on college campuses in a media briefing Tuesday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials made the right decision to reopen the campus even though there’s been a surge of COVID-19 cases among students and university employees, Gov. Tony Evers said Tuesday.
A new venture capital fund will start investing in Wisconsin’s university and college entrepreneurs this fall after closing on $6 million in fundraising.
A cluster of coronavirus cases at a Marquette University dorm has prompted officials to quarantine the entire residence hall for two weeks.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has suspended in-person undergraduate instruction for two weeks, citing an increase of COVID-19 cases.
As the second University of Wisconsin campus switched to virtual learning because of an alarming rise in coronavirus cases Sunday, statistics show seven state communities where colleges are located are among the fastest-growing COVID-19 outbreaks in the nation.
In response to spiking COVID-19 cases, the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to make classes virtual, restrict other in-person activities and quarantine students living in two residence halls, Sellery and Witte. The decision was made Wednesday and most restrictions will be in place until at least Sept. 25.
The University of Wisconsin System is paying its former president his full monthly salary to perform a list of tasks, including making recommendations on the selection process for high-profile leadership searches.
The same day that the University of Wisconsin-Madison temporarily moved all classes online due to spikes in positive coronavirus tests, UW-Whitewater Interim Chancellor Greg Cook said he believes his campus isn’t far behind. Other UW campuses around the state are also seeing a growing presence of COVID-19 on campus.
Citing rapidly rising COVID-19 cases including two straight days in which one in five student tests came back positive, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank locked down the state’s largest university campus for two weeks.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi is asking the University of Wisconsin-Madison to send students living in residence halls home after the campus has reported more than 1,000 positive cases of COVID-19.
In a wide-ranging interview hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club, Evers also defended the University of Wisconsin System’s plans to return to campus and said he wouldn’t change anything about how his administration responded to the recent unrest in Kenosha.
One day after the University of Wisconsin-Madison said COVID-19 spread was on the verge of jeopardizing plans for in-person instruction, the state’s top Republicans sent a letter to Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren asking that he reconsider the cancellation of the fall 2020 college football season.
