Beyond politics, Wisconsin should feel blessed by generosity. UW-Madison alumni John and Tashia Morgridge just announced a $100 million gift to the university to attract and keep top professors and researchers. That’s on top of hundreds of millions more in past gifts by the couple for UW buildings, research and System-wide student grants.
Noted: I am all for research, but the column I read in the Journal Sentinel about two researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison being awarded a grant of $1.6 million in the first year and a recommended total of $7.7 million over five years to study the brain action of sleeping fruit flies and mice really irritated me “Are sleep studies a wake-up call?”
I was saddened by Bill Lueders’ article about UW-Madison’s ethically questionable experimentation on the baby monkeys “On the death of my monkey,” Nov. 13.
To be clear, we realize there continue to be major gaps in achievement in schools across Wisconsin, and we must continually strive to find better and more effective ways to make sure every child has access to a free, high-quality education. But disinvesting in public education is not the answer.
I’d like to introduce Norm Doll, a consulting engineer and adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Doll also sits on the Heifer International Board of Directors as Chair of the Heifer Foundation, the global partner whose mission is to grow and oversee an endowment to support the work of Heifer International. Norm is going to tell you a little bit about toilets. His post originally appeared on the Heifer Blog.
Back in the 1980s, three economics professors, Robert Wilson of Stanford, Paul Milgrom of Northwestern and R. Preston McAfee University of Texas, worked together conducting research on “game theory and auctions.” It was just the sort of seemingly trivial, silly-sounding research that critics of universities point to, but it became crucial in 1993, when Congress granted the Federal Communications Commission authority to auction portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The three profs helped design the auction, helping pave the way for the telecommunications revolution.
In a word: Wow!
UW Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank used the word “transformative” to describe the $100 Million gift to the University John and Tashia Morgridge made last week.
I am a UW-Madison student studying elementary education. To earn my degree and follow my dream, I borrowed $17,000 and I will be paying back $46,000 with interest over the next 20 years. To me, it’s worth it. I
Quoted: “We are only going to move forward if we can work together. And we are already collaborating on a number of fronts,” UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank told a conference crowd. “If you are going to have a state and a region filled with entrepreneurs and innovators, you have to have a university close by. Universities are also idea factories.”
Thumbs Down: To Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Burlington, for disparaging University of Wisconsin research.
After living in this new town with new people for only about two months’ time, much of the student body here on the University of Wisconsin campus has begun to feel the pressures of finding a place to live next year. They’re being bombarded with flyers and propaganda screaming that the race is on to select a home for the coming academic year.
When you listen to dozens of political candidates during the last weeks of the campaign, you hear themes. When your mind wanders, you even hear entire songs.
The recent announcement of a multimillion-dollar federal grant to study the sleep habits of mice and fruit flies has Darold Treffert aroused.
I recently read something that has changed me: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” (Mia Sato is an Appleton resident and a University of Wisconsin-Madison student.)
As the election returns came in last week and we learned the Republicans strengthened their hold on state government, I began to wonder what new catastrophes the legislators could dream up.
Then there is Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, threatening to tie University of Wisconsin funding to job creation. The university is not a job training school; it is a world-class research institution that is providing us the evidence to implement policies to combat climate change and eradicate disease through stem cell research.
Even as we react to this current [Ebola] crisis, we must also step back and look at the broader context. How can we develop better treatments for this and much more common diseases afflicting millions of Americans? Better yet, how can we prevent them?
A report by the labor union-backed Center on Wisconsin Strategy COWS, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that the state is awash in low-paying jobs.
Noted: He also should keep a watchful eye on the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the statewide economic development agency that faltered badly on his watch during his first term; push for a larger state venture capital fund $25 million is paltry; advocate for better alignment between the jobs that exist and the training workers need; push the University of Wisconsin System to be more focused on entrepreneurs; and commit to developing a true alternative campus to UW-Madison in Milwaukee, the industrial center of the state.
Citizens against UW-Madison’s monkey experiments will hold a protest prior to the Board of Regents meeting Nov. 6 from 7:30 – 9:00 a.m. at the intersection of Johnson Street and Lake Street on the UW-Madison campus.
Many props to UW Health for deciding to stop selling soda and other sugary drinks … (but) … UW’s decision to ditch the cafeteria deep fryers, on the other hand, feels rash.
An emerging dilemma at UW-Madison involves the state government’s two-year ban on raising tuition, not only for in-state undergraduates, but for out-of-state students of all descriptions including professional school students in fields such as medicine, veterinary science, business and pharmacy.
To the editor: It angers me that there has been no real discussion of the damage Gov. Scott Walker has done to the University of Wisconsin System, and how he has made it harder for Wisconsin students to get a college degree that will help get them decent paying jobs.
7, 2, 0, 12, 4, 0, 7, 1, 17, 3,345. These are, as we write, the number of comments on 10 recent posts at the Monkey Cage. Which contribution hit Internet pay dirt? Jesse Richman and David Earnest’s “Could non-citizens decide the November election?”
The UW Madison’s Waisman Center maintains its status as a world class center dedicated to advancing knowledge about human development, developmental disabilities and neurodegenerative diseases through research, teaching and service.
Column notes that members of blue-collar and graduate employee unions at UW-Madison will march at 4 p.m. Wednesday from the Institutes for Discovery to Bascom Hall to ask for raises for all campus employees. Authors Eleni Schirmer and Michael Billeaux are graduate students at UW-Madison and co-presidents of the Teaching Assistants’ Association, Local 3220 of the AFL-CIO.
Noted: She would work with the University of Wisconsin System to build on UW-Madison?s Discovery to Product initiative with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. She would take steps to boost the number of college degree holders ? including providing more state money to universities and creating a way for students to refinance their college loans and raising the college tax deduction.
Letter from Dr. Ruth A. Decker, an alumna of UW?s Medical School.
Many of us know that if we want to become more physically healthy, we can exercise. What if we want to improve our emotional health? Are there ways to train emotional ?muscles? such as compassion? Would such training improve our lives?
Noted: Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism www.wisconsinwatch.org, which produces the project in partnership with MapLight. The center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Dissatisfied with their jobs and daydreaming of new careers in other intriguing fields, workers sometimes face a double-barreled anxiety: Fear of the unknown and uncertainty about where to start.
Noted: Robert E. Drechsel is the James E. Burgess chair and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Steven G. Salaita says the University of Illinois destroyed his career. The Palestinian-American professor was invited to teach in the university?s American Indian studies program earlier this year, but the board of trustees voted to block his appointment to the tenure-track position following ?a campaign by pro-Israel students, faculty members and donors who contended that his Twitter comments on the bombardment of Gaza this summer were anti-Semitic,? according to The New York Times?s Robert Mackey. (You can read a selection of the offending tweets in Mr. Mackey?s story.)
Noted: At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, for example, 72% of 2012 graduates have outstanding student loans, with the average debt about $32,000. It?s only slightly better with 2012 UW-Madison graduates, with 49% still paying off student loans, owing an average of $24,700.
As if we didn?t already have enough evidence of the ill affects of the heavy burden of student loan debt, there was new evidence last week that the damage isn?t just confined to students themselves.
Anxiety and depression are serious. I?m well aware of the despair it can cause. I don?t believe harming monkeys will lead to a treatment so novel it will have a major impact on humanity.
Noted: As he notes, tax law complexity inhibits the development of start-ups. Thats a shame, given the efforts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UWM, as well as elsewhere in the state, to nurture start-ups. Whats the point of trying to create new, dynamic businesses, if they are susceptible to die aborning because of our abstruse and oppressive tax laws?
Researchers at UW-Madison are preparing to use maternal deprivation to create a primate model of adversity-induced anxious and depressive disorders in human children. Led by Ned Kalin, they hope to discover new therapies by dissecting and analyzing the brains of baby monkeys who have been intentionally traumatized.
Recent news reports indicate that graduating college seniors are not the only seniors facing college debt.
Like most Wisconsinites, we?re pretty proud of the University of Wisconsin System. Whether it?s in academics or athletics, the state?s public universities do a generally great job for students. But there is one ranking where we would like the University of Wisconsin-Madison to finish lower; in fact, a lot lower.
Scotland is poised to vote on the merits of its union with England, but not for the first time. (Michelle Schwarze is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.)
It may smack as a bit elitist and unfair that the only people who can drink at University of Wisconsin-Madison football games are those sitting in the premium seats, aka luxury boxes. Anyone caught imbibing in the bleachers risks arrest.
The importance of a second research hub for Wisconsin was part of a message delivered last week in Milwaukee by UW-Madison Chancellor Becky Blank, who spoke to a meeting of the Wisconsin Innovation Network.
Rebecca Blank has become an evangelist for her institution?s key role in Wisconsin?s economy during her short time as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The political reporter?s professional toolkit keeps expanding. Journalists are using social science research, ?big data? and innovative alternative story formats to better serve their audience. Journalism education is catching up too, as Vicki Krueger and Katherine Krueger have shown here on EducationShift.
Thirteen years ago I stood in a windowless basement cafeteria at the University of Wisconsin, staring transfixed at a flickering television screen. I watched in horror as men and women leapt from the burning heights of the World Trade Center; moments later I cringed as the second tower fell. My heart sank, and I knew we were at war. Fear — an irrational fear given that I was a thousand miles away in Wisconsin — crept up my spine. I continued to watch as firefighters, police officers and ordinary citizens rushed not away, but rather toward the danger. Courage, I realized, courage would rule the day.
As pediatricians, we take care of children?s physical, social, cognitive and emotional health. One of our biggest concerns is when we see children who fail educationally ? not just in high school or middle school, but in their elementary years. When we delve into their struggles with learning, we often discover that their achievement gap stems from environmental influences in their lives.
You get the sense that Ray Cross, the new president of the University of Wisconsin System, can relate to one of the last scenes in the movie, ?All the President?s Men.?
Consumers have become highly adept at avoiding television advertisements. We switch channels, divert attention to our tablets and phones, and of course fast-forward through ads on our DVRs. Partly in response to this loss of attention, marketers are increasingly focused on product placement as an alternative way of exposing us to their brands. After all, product placement is innately much harder to skip given its integration into the actual program content.
Stories in the news lately include the sexual assault of a 21-year-old woman near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, the investigation of two (maybe three) Brown University football players for sex assault, and the sentencing of a former UW football recruit for sex assault while he was visiting the Madison campus. As the fall semester gets underway, it?s a good time to call attention to this ongoing problem.
Noted: In Wisconsin, the minimum wage has held steady with the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for more than five years. A University of Wisconsin-Madison poll conducted earlier this summer found that more than three out of four Badger State residents support a boost in the state?s minimum wage.
Noted: The plan was developed with input from some of the best local and national experts ? including Don Sykes, the recently retired executive director of the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board; Julie Kerksick, who ran the New Hope Project in Milwaukee and W-2 for the State of Wisconsin; and Tim Smeeding, the economics professor who heads the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty.
The UW System wants a $95 million bump in its next budget, justified with the usual mumbo-jumbo addressing various shortcomings in the system. As always, this includes increasing staff headcounts along with their compensation packages.
Common sense would tell you that when crucial educational programs are cut, people are going to make a lot of noise. But under the noise, Gov. Scott Walker was able to swiftly yet quietly eliminate a program that this state?s students are in dire need of ? the Wisconsin Covenant Scholars program….
Dear Editor: Why would the state of Wisconsin consider selling some or all of the state?s boiler plants? Would you sell your heating and cooling system for your apartment house or office building to a private party who would operate it and charge you for the heating and cooling provided?
Thanks to Dr. Murry J. Cohen for speaking out against UW-Madison?s planned monkey research in last Thursday?s guest column, “UW-Madison?s monkey experiments are doomed to fail.”
Like so many other Americans, I?ve spent the last week watching a chaotic, agonizing situation in Ferguson, Missouri. I?ve spent most of those days hoping for something better and fearing something worse. As tensions have risen between a black community set on demonstrating for its humanity and a police force bent on repressing those protests, as I watch the police and the National Guard dig in their heels, I keep wondering what the way out is. (Simon Balto is a PhD candidate in History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)
Patented and ?indentured? seeds are fast taking over the world?s food supply, write Jack Kloppenburg & Irwin Goldman, terminating farmers? and gardeners? ancient right to develop new varieties, and forcing them to buy seed anew for every crop. Enter the Open Source Seed Initiative …
The riots in Ferguson, Mo., over the shooting of Michael Brown, arrive at a particularly ironic moment?almost 50 years after the Watts riots in the summer of 1965, also spurred by one man?s encounter with law enforcement. That uprising, along with other mass urban insurrections in the 1960s, prompted a raft of riot commissions to examine why these outbreaks had occurred. What?s ironic is that they all came to the same conclusion: The riots were about far more than just the police. (Merlin Chowkwanyun is a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)
