Indiana started sending letters to students detailing what their loan totals and eventual monthly payments would be after graduation. That led to a $31 million reduction in federal undergraduate Stafford loan disbursements at Indiana universities.
More controversial will be the possible sale of 32 heating and cooling plants, an idea that was previously debated and dropped. One of the plants is UW-Madison?s Charter Street facility. Is selling the plants and contracting for their operation a good deal for taxpayers in the long run? That will require more convincing.
I have stopped using New York Times data visualizations in my training presentations to educators and students. Don?t get me wrong. They?re spectacular. This one setting winter Olympic event finishes to music completely changed my understanding of timed events. I learned about the nightmare of balancing the federal budget. And I figured out why World Cup soccer confuses me.
It is becoming vividly clear that global warming and climate change pose unprecedented threats to humanity. The scientific evidence that these fundamental changes are due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels is rigorous, extensive, and conclusive.
A June 25 editorial in the journal Nature should give Madisonians pause. The editors voiced serious concern over influenza research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Free-speech controversy is riveting higher education again. Major schools recently dis-invited graduation speakers whom activists deemed ?improper? to their notions of justice. And many institutions have begun formally to institute?or consider instituting??trigger warnings.?
For-profit colleges seek to fill their coffers with the benefits our veterans have earned from their service and sacrifice.
I have more than 25 years of research experience with swine, avian and human influenza, and I appreciate and support the pioneering research of Yoshihiro Kawaoka and his colleagues.
In a world filled with advanced medical devices, cutting-edge research and innovative medications, it may seem surprising that one of the most useful tools in pediatrics is a children?s book. Why would colorful pictures and simple words on a dog-eared page be so important to pediatric medicine today?
The warnings mount: Without drastic action, we face a future in which antibiotics often will fail, with much unnecessary suffering and death. The usually measured British Prime Minister David Cameron warns of the coming medical “dark ages.”
At UW-Madison, we do not take lightly our responsibility for its safe and secure conduct. The Influenza Research Institute is a high-level biosafety facility designated Biosafety Level 3 Agriculture, the highest in the Level 3 category. It operates under conditions very different from most other Biosafety Level 3 labs and was constructed expressly for the influenza work performed there.
Noted: David Wallinga, M.D., is director of Healthy Food Action, a network of 15,000 health professionals trying to make health the future of food and farming. Gerald Ryan, M.D., is medical director of University Health Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Reading Sunday?s article “Biosafety expert: Work ?scary,?” about UW-Madison?s Yoshihiro Kawaoka?s research with deadly flu viruses, reminds me of old-fashioned vampire movies.
Emily Stanley, a UW-Madison limnologist and zoologist, acknowledged that it can feel like we?re merely treading water in the Yahara chain of lakes, not making the water clean enough to tread in the first place. She said it could take from three to 10 years to start seeing results from the county?s renewed push for lake health. But the alternative is far worse.
The writer, professor emeritus at UW-Eau Claire and a protege of the late UW primate researcher Harry Harlow, defends Harlow’s research techniques.
Menzie Chinn, a professor of Public Affairs and Economics at UW-Madison, recently looked into whether Governor Walker?s pro-business policies spurred employment growth. As we all remember, Walker claimed that his tax cuts and his dismantling of public sector unions would lead to an employment boom for Wisconsin. But as Chinn?s data shows, Walker?s policies have done nothing to improve job growth. The rate of growth when Walker took office in 2011 was 1.3%, and now after three years of his policies being in effect, the rate is still at 1.3% and weaker than the country?s growth as a whole.
The news last week of an accident involving live anthrax bacteria at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, is troubling. Some 84 workers were potentially exposed to the deadly Ames strain at three CDC labs. But the incident will cause much wider ripples: it highlights the risks of the current proliferation of biocontainment labs and work on dangerous pathogens. If an accident can happen at the CDC, then it can happen anywhere.
Heralded as ?the mother of all pandemics,? in 1918, the Spanish flu killed some 50 million people. This was the deadliest event in recorded history, which started when an influenza virus that was prominent in birds (known as ?avian flu?) was passed to humans. And now, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created an even deadlier influenza virus that is similar to the 1918 strain.
Federal officials have started paying close attention to sexual assault on college campuses. A White House task force last month issued recommendations on how to combat the problem, and this month the Department of Education published draft rules clarifying how universities can meet federal requirements on campus safety.
I strongly concur with the epidemiologists from Harvard and Yale who warned about the potential release of a possible virulent virus in the June 12 article about UW-Madison flu research.
Noted: Other supposedly secure laboratories are conducting research on even more frightening pathogens that, unlike anthrax, might spread easily and quickly through the air from human to human. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, recently reported that they had produced a new avian influenza virus with some characteristics of the 1918 influenza virus that killed tens of millions of people around the world. They did this work in a laboratory with the same safety rating as the bioterror lab at the C.D.C. A small careless error in these experiments could be devastating.
Wisconsin manufacturers are hustling to stay ahead of global competition. This week?s $25 million grant to the UW-Madison College of Engineering will help the cause.
We are three University of Wisconsin-Madison students soon to be graduating who face entering the workforce with negative worth. Collectively, we hold over $60,000 in student debt and we are currently without the ability to refinance our debt at lower interest rates.
“Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” The idea that anyone could affect the weather seemed ludicrous 20 years ago. It seems less comical now that we know that each of us does affect our weather, locally and globally, every day. We here in the Midwest produce some 5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. So we should think twice about what we do to the weather and, increasingly, what the weather is doing to us.
Camps will be held Friday and Sunday, and some sources say the Badgers will get to at least 10 commitments by Monday. Below are the committed and unoffered recruits that are expected to visit Madison this weekend. We’ll break down the offered prospects the Badgers have been chasing and their chances at landing them.
Houston in the 1980s was a city of vacant office towers. Even as the oil boom turned to glut and the economy sank, real estate developers doubled the size of the office market from 1980 to 1986, according to commercial real estate performance tracker Reis.
Cited: UW-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research.
A tuition freeze at a time when higher education is too costly is at best a Band-Aid, not a cure. If elected officials and UW System administrators are serious, they must address the onerous burden created by student loan debt, as President Obama and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., are attempting to do at the federal level.
The writer opposes research on depression and anxiety that involves the use of monkeys.
The writer, who wrote a previous column critical of the research of Ned Kalin, professor of psychiatry, responds to a column by Robert Golden, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, which defends the research.
The writer salutes track coaches Mick Byrne and (outgoing) distance coach Jim Stintzi following UW’s win at the Big Ten outdoor championships.
The writer agrees with Doug Moe’s Wednesday column, “Maybe sculpture was just a mistake,” about “Nails’ Tales,” the football-related sculpture on Breeze Terrace and Regent Street.
The writer opposes “maternal deprivation experiments” by Ned Kalin, professor of psychiatry.
In Sunday?s Business section, Tom Still?s column, ?Higher education still pays for itself,? cites studies that conclude ?going to college … still makes economic sense for many.” Still recommends college leaders remain publicly accountable and transparent. These leaders have been anything but accountable and transparent on one issue that causes many students to gain a degree yet fail to gain a good education. That issue involves the ability to write, speak and think.
Noted: Donald Moynihan is a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the National Academy of Public Administration. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
Dear Editor: The University of Wisconsin has exhibited a well-coordinated desperate backlash of attacks against Dr. Murry Cohen, who recently wrote against the cruel and regurgitated Harlow-type experiments of maternal deprivation being resurrected at the UW?s Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, with federal funding.
As a psychiatrist and academic medical leader, I feel compelled to respond to the distortions and misleading claims in the May 21 column in the Cap Times by Dr. Murry Cohen.
Wisconsin continues to boost exports, which opens opportunity. So will fast and reliable Internet service in rural communities. Wisconsin?s universities are stressing an entrepreneurial spirit in all fields.
When I was a child, I was a “genius”?the kind you sometimes see profiled on the local news. I started reading at 2. I could multiply two-digit numbers in my head when I was 5. One of my earliest memories is working out a way to generate Pythagorean triples. In third grade, I commuted to the local junior high to take geometry. Kids on the playground would sometimes test me by asking what a million times a million was?and were delighted when I knew the answer.
The acting inspector general?s investigation into delays at Veterans Health Administration facilities points to problems so systemic that they cannot be attributed to a few bad apples. But the report does not tell us why these problems occurred.
In a letter to the editor of The Cap Times, Ron Kalil, UW?Madison professor of neuroscience, questions the newspaper’s judgment in publishing a guest opinion piece by a Virginia psychologist critical of a pair of UW?Madison researchers.
A letter to the editor from Eric Sandgren, director of the UW?Madison Research Animal Resource Center, in response to an opinion piece written by an animal rights advocate about monkey research.
Is economic inequality growing in American higher education? A report just issued by the Institute for Policy Studies ? The One Percent at State U ? indicates that it is.
In February of 1927, the historian Joseph Klausner stood before an audience at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and delivered a lecture on the ?Jewish character? of Baruch Spinoza?s philosophy.
Thailand?s Senate, the country?s only functioning legislative chamber, convened an informal meeting last week to deliberate on ways to end that country?s six-month-old political stalemate.
For America?s worst racial achievement gap to exist within the very shadow of UW should be seen as appalling. Imagine how the American Family Children?s Hospital would feel if Madison had the highest rate of childhood leukemia deaths? You can be sure there would be hell to pay.
Writer attacks idea of “trigger warnings.”
The author congratulates UW-Madison graduates and enjoyed coverage of commencement, but “as a faculty member at Madison College, it was frustrating to see the approximately 1,900 Madison College graduates ignored by the media.”
The author, a Virginia psychiatrist and member of Alliance for Animals, argues that “UW needs to at once ? and forever ? eliminate maternal deprivation from its research activities.”
From my vantage point (higher level seat), it seemed that there were no students of color among the band members. I would like to be wrong on that and would welcome a correction, if I am. I assume that the Varsity Band reflects the diversity of the student body. If that is truly the case, the UW has significant issues to address.
Democrats in Wisconsin want to lower the interest rate on student loans to help make college more affordable.
Wisconsin needs to think big so young people here can get the training and education they need to compete globally ? without being buried in debt.
Am I alone in noticing that the UW Badger football schedule this year, for home games, is the worst I have seen since having season tickets for over 30 years?
Isn?t anyone else disappointed with UW-Madison?s commencement ceremony plans?
Noted: Happily, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that bastion of liberal thinking, has bucked the trend a bit this year by having as its commencement speaker, Jon Huntsman, a generally conservative Republican candidate for president in 2012, as well as former ambassador to China and governor of Utah. To my knowledge, his invitation has not stirred any unrest. Well done, Madison.
Noted: There may be a recovery going on, but Wisconsin still isn?t out of the hole: The poverty level continued to drop in Wisconsin in 2012, thanks to increases in jobs and earnings, according to a new study released by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, the Journal Sentinel reported last week.
You are correct that there needs to be a rational balance between the risks of technology and the ultimate benefit, which in the case of nuclear power is supplying electricity while reducing the effect of climate change. The case for nuclear, as you say, lies in the drawbacks of the competition.
WASHINGTON ? ?TO waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.?
The Red Gym is one of the hubs of diversity on campus; should the new Diversity Plan pass, the very definition of diversity at UW will change.
The Forward Together plan is confusing because it uses two radically different definitions of diversity. One is the traditional definition that focuses on racial and ethnic diversity in students, faculty and staff.
