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.
While universities attempt to mitigate money loss, students struggle with the idea of paying for Zoom University.
Alarmed by a rise in coronavirus cases on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, Chancellor Rebecca Blank on Monday ordered all undergraduates to restrict their movements for the next two weeks.
As tens of thousands of Wisconsin students return to dorms and off-campus apartments this fall, universities have attempted to plan for just about everything.
Chancellor Dennis Shields spoke in a video on YouTube saying the university is closely monitoring health concerns as it relates to COVID-19 with help from Grant County Health Department, the CDC and student health services.
The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire reports 69 students have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Sunday including 17 students who live on campus in residence halls and 52 students living off-campus. Classes began at the university on Wednesday.
In total, nearly 126,000 students enrolled at the universities that started on-campus instruction on Wednesday. UW System officials said the numbers are unofficial. Officials also said the numbers are fluid due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
As students traversed the UW-Whitewater campus Thursday during the second day of classes, most had their faces covered. What also remained under cover was the reason why the university’s chancellor has been placed on leave amid an investigation into his conduct.
The University of Wisconsin System on Thursday announced that fall enrollment appears to be only slightly down from last year, with nearly 126,000 students enrolled at the 10 universities that have begun on-campus classes.
UW-Whitewater Chancellor Dwight Watson is on paid leave pending an investigation into an unspecified complaint, according to the University of Wisconsin System.
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Dwight Watson was placed on paid administrative leave Thursday pending the outcome of an investigation into an unspecified complaint.
While Thompson has shared plans for how the UW System will handle students’ health and safety in the midst of a pandemic, he has yet to share insights on what would prompt UW schools to close down.
The University of Wisconsin System announced Aug. 11 an untold number of employees would be laid off over the next two years resulting in a total of $10 million in budget cuts. Interim System President Tommy Thomson announced these cuts will reach across UW System Administration only.
Noted: Birx was in Madison to talk to Wisconsin officials and health care representatives about COVID-19 as part of a tour of states. Among those she met with was Tommy Thompson, the University of Wisconsin System president whom she knows from his time as health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush.
“I think he has taken a very serious and public-health approach to this,” Birx said. “He has a plan for surveillance testing, he has a plan for surge testing … and I think equally importantly, he has a plan for caring for students who become positive.”
She suggested that could help UW avoid the problems of colleges that have seen clusters of cases once students arrived on campus.
Wednesday is the first day of classes for University of Wisconsin campuses. UW-Madison has tested about 15% of its students and staff on campus for COVID-19.There have been 124 positive results, about the same number off campus.
Tens of thousands of students started classes Wednesday at most University of Wisconsin System campuses, just months after concerns about COVID-19 led administrators to send them home to take courses online.
Column: Despite our challenges, the state of Wisconsin’s education system can play a role in addressing racist behavior and racial inequality in the state. However, Black faculty, administrators and students are woefully represented across the state often allowed to cycle through campuses.
The coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Deborah Birx talked up the value of masks during a visit on Monday to Wisconsin and praised the University of Wisconsin system’s plans for protecting students.
Column from interim System President Tommy Thompson: If our great state is going to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic poised for growth, we will need to renew the Wisconsin Idea for the 21st century with a real investment in the University of Wisconsin System.
It’s been five months since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered college campuses across the country. Like thousands of other college students, I finished the spring semester on Zoom, attending classes and taking exams in my childhood bedroom in Madison.
Noted: The experience of dairy farmers like Peterson, who also was appointed to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018, is more complicated than the brief appearance at the convention might suggest.
The heads of the University of Wisconsin System, the Tavern League of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association sent an open letter to restaurant and bar owners Monday asking they take precautions to prevent COVID-19 spread as students start to return to campuses across the state.
UW System Interim President Tommy Thompson asked businesses to “help to encourage responsible behavior of our students,” alongside on-campus efforts to bring back a portion of some 170,000 students across 13 UW campuses.
In a letter to Tavern League of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Restaurant Association members, UW System President Tommy Thompson, Tavern League of Wisconsin Executive Director Pete Madland and Wisconsin Restaurant Association President Kristine Hillmer asked that bars and restaurants encourage student patrons to physically distance, wear masks and post signage that encourages the same.
Some Madison-area elected officials are sounding the alarm on UW-Madison’s reopening plan, alleging weak enforcement plans for students to follow public health guidelines and an “inevitable outbreak” on campus that may lead to larger community spread of COVID-19.
Wisconsin doesn’t have the capacity to process the number of coronavirus tests health officials ideally want available when schools and college campuses reopen, Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm said Friday.
Calling the process of building the 2021-23 biennial budget “one of the most significant actions” in the University of Wisconsin System’s history, interim President Tommy Thompson delivered a State of the University address Thursday that urged support for higher education and a reconsideration of System priorities.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents on Thursday unanimously approved a state budget request that would increase spending by 3.5% in each of the next two years, create a new program to cover the tuition of lower-income families and borrow up to $1 billion to mitigate losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Laurie and Scott Dubin, along with their daughter Lindsay, stood outside a rented RV last Saturday with a heap of luggage.
They were about to start the 2,000-mile drive from the San Francisco Bay Area to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Lindsay would start her freshman year at her dream school in the middle of a pandemic.
“I hope school isn’t canceled from Saturday until then,” Laurie Dubin had said earlier that week.
The head of the University of Wisconsin System will propose its Board of Regents support a 3.5% increase to its 2021-23 state budget in the hope of funding several new initiatives, including a statewide free tuition scholarship program for some Wisconsin students.
A program that guarantees free tuition to lower-income students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would be expanded to all UW System universities under a budget request unveiled Tuesday.
According to the study released by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy on Saturday, the UW-Madison came in at 32 out of the top 50 universities.
UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt announced Tuesday that the Frederic March Theatre would be renamed the Theatre Arts Center due to March’s membership in a fraternal organization called the Ku Klux Klan while a student at UW-Madison.
Interim University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson will request a 3.5% operating budget increase for the 2021-23 biennium, alongside ten key initiatives to be presented to Gov. Tony Evers Thursday.
The University of Wisconsin System wants nearly $100 million more in the next state budget to cushion COVID-19’s financial blow to campuses and cover tuition for Wisconsin students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year.
