Since this is Homecoming for the Wisconsin Badgers football team, the alumni making their annual pilgrimage to campus will be seeking answers to two hot-button questions during the Badgers’ game against Illinois Saturday.
Do they still have beer gardens near Camp Randall Stadium?
And …
What the heck happened to the football team?
With the Wisconsin Badgers football team winless four games into the Big Ten Conference season, the changeover is now complete.
UW is a basketball school.
It may be for this year only, but, as they do at Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and other basketball-first schools, UW fans have largely pulled the plug on football and are eagerly anticipating the start of the men’s basketball season.
So are the Badgers, though it has nothing to do with football.
Remember the long-running controversy over the construction of Monona Terrace? How about the drive to build the South Beltline, an even more contentious public debate?
Author: Pete Nowak is a professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the UW-Madison.
President George W. Bush was hoping to calm financial markets and the American people when he addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce early Friday morning, yet he still felt compelled to express discomfort with his own administration’s Wall Street bailout.
“I know many Americans have reservations about the government’s approach, especially about allowing the government to hold shares in private banks,” Bush said. “As a strong believer in free markets, I would oppose such measures under ordinary circumstances. But these are not ordinary circumstances. We took this measure as a last resort.
Author: Colleen A. Dunlavy teaches the history of capitalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
During this season of open enrollment for health insurance, when state employees may re-consider their insurance options, I am writing to ask people in Madison and Dane County to consider their choices seriously.
You might think all health plans, all HMOs, all hospitals, all doctors are pretty much the same.
But you would be wrong. Perhaps even dead wrong.
(Meg Gaines is the founder and director of the nationally recognized, award-winning Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a clinical professor of law.0
On Friday, Oct. 3, UW Band director Mike Leckrone and Dean of Students Lori Berquam announced the suspension of the band amidst hazing allegations. Six days later allegations were confirmed, and the suspension was lifted, under the provision that the band would not travel â??for the time being,â? according to Berquam. Six days later, that restriction was lifted as well. See a pattern emerging?
Thereâ??s an elephant in the room, but the university would sooner shove you outside than let you talk about it. For an institution that supposedly values discussion that sifts and winnows through ideas, it has refused to talk about the enormous pachyderm squatting right in front of its face.
“Forgiveness” is not a word that has much traction in American society right now. “Anger” and “blame” and “retribution” are much more in vogue.
Wisconsin-Madison, started the International Forgiveness Institute here in 1994 to build on the pioneering social science research he had done.
The American public does not seem to be in a mood to talk about forgiveness when it comes to the economic meltdown.
….Madison has actually become a hotbed of sorts into academic research on forgiveness.
The Badger Herald reported yesterday (â??UW apologizes for showing film with racial slurs,â? Oct. 15) that a black student objected to clips from â??Blazing Saddlesâ? shown at a recent â??training seminar.â?
Quoted: UW-Madison comparative biologist Hannah Carey.
It would probably help Anatole Beck get a street in Madison named for Karl Paul Link if he, Beck, had his own radio show.
The last successful drive to have a street renamed for someone in Madison came more than 20 years ago, and it was fueled by a popular morning radio host.
Author: Sarinna Areethamsirikul is a PhD candidate in Development Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States.
Madison, Wis. – At next week’s Badger Career Expo in Minneapolis, several hundred University of Wisconsin alumni in the Twin Cities area will talk with Wisconsin-based companies bent on luring them home. Meanwhile, University Research Park in Madison has launched a campaign to persuade UW grads in the science and technology worlds to expand, relocate, or start a new company in the state’s signature high-tech business park.
Five people give their responses to the question.
As someone who despises public relations on a general moral principle, it takes a lot for me to say this: I want to see a press release from or written on behalf of University of Wisconsin Chancellor Biddy Martin.
Madison, Wis. – One of the speakers at last month’s World Stem Cell Summit in Madison wasn’t a scientist, a patient advocate, or a university administrator. She was an investor – an encouraging sign that human embryonic stem-cell research has entered a new and transformative phase.
Linda Powers of Toucan Capital, a Maryland-based investment firm, is like other venture capitalists in at least one major way – she invests to make money. But Powers is different from most other venture capitalists in at least one respect – she thinks she can make money by investing in stem cell companies.
I think the world of UW Band Director Mike Leckrone. He and his marching band have been nationwide ambassadors for the University of Wisconsin for decades, adding color and excitement to everything from athletic events to the wildly popular spring concerts at the Kohl Center.
Sports purists hate this, but some people actually go to football games to hear the band first, watch the team second. The band is, after all, one of the best bands in the land, if not THE best.
I’m disappointed, though, in Leckrone’s decision to suspend the entire band for the misdeeds of what appears to be a handful of members.
When I listen to some politicians that support stem cell research, especially embryonic stem cell research, I understand why stem cell research pioneers like Dr. James Thomson try to be realistic when talking about its potential benefits, and the timetable on which these benefits will reach us.
It is the political season, and in the coming weeks we’ll hear a lot about the potential cures and treatments that stem cell research could produce. Be prepared, however, for snake oil salesmen (and women) that trot out families whose members suffer from debilitating conditions and make it sound as though stem cell research will produce cures that are just around the corner.
The Milwaukee region is home to a concentration of water companies. They include nine different facilities for five of the world’s 11 largest water companies.
But it’s equally clear that those companies lack the collaborative research capacities to act as a global player, at least at this stage. Rather, they operate mostly in isolation, without any tradition of working with the local universities – a serious shortcoming, when one considers the contributions that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made to biotech development and the role that Silicon Valley universities played in advancing computer science.
Milwaukee, by contrast, has failed to generate a meaningful number of patents for water innovations, although the big companies boast their own labs. The Great Lakes WATER Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee focuses on ecology, not water-treatment technologies.
As a student in my final year at UW-Madison, I am proud of our campus and all that it represents.
The 2008 football season has been a wonderful opportunity for me to show my pride by helping Wisconsin and visiting team fans enjoy their game-day experience at Camp Randall Stadium. I have been able to do this because I am the coordinator of the university’s Rolling Out the Red Carpet program.
Like many Americans, I was deeply saddened by the crash of an emergency medical services Eurocopter Dauphin II helicopter last weekend in suburban Washington that killed four people and left another person in critical condition. But as a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, I was not shocked.
EMS helicopters are among the most dangerous aircraft in the skies. While major airline crashes have declined over the past decade, EMS helicopter fatalities have increased. Until this year, the worst annual record belonged to 2004, with 18 killed. So far in 2008 there have been 20 deaths. Clearly, things are getting worse.
UW-Madison prides itself on numerous aspects that allow it to stand out amongst other major universities, such as the revolutionary research it conducts or its reputation for competitive sports programs. Unfortunately, the latter mention tends to outdo the first in terms of campus notoriety.
George W. Bush rode to the White House pledging high standards for all students. Heâ??ll leave Washington with the nationâ??s public education system focused on teaching basic skills to disadvantaged student populations, with the United States lagging in international comparisons of educational attainment, and with his signature education law plagued by so many problems and mired in so much controversy that it has put at serious risk two decades of work to improve public schooling by making educators accountable for their studentsâ?? success.
Douglas N. Harris is a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Next semester, Jon Roll, 43, will teach a new class in bacteriology that might just become one of the more popular courses on the UW-Madison campus: “Fermentation and Zymurgy,” aka a beer brewing class.
He and microbiology student Brandy Day are developing the course after MillerCoors donated $100,000 worth of brewing equipment plus brewer training, which they took over the summer in Milwaukee.
For most of my professional life, Iâ??ve felt that one of the most underappreciated â??lawsâ? of economics was J.B. Sayâ??s maxim that supply creates its own demand. It seems that in projecting where the economy will go next, too many people focus on the trees that make up demand and not the forest that is supply.
For the past five years, Tom Tierney has volunteered as “visiting team football liaison” for teams coming into Camp Randall to play the Badgers, which means Tierney is responsible for making sure the visitors’ equipment gets unloaded properly; that the team gets an early walk-through to see the field and other facilities; that their post-game meal is set up in the right place; and, yes, that the assistant coaches make it safely down from the press box to the locker room at halftime.
Margaret Trost was on her second visit to Haiti when the relationship between public policies and personal catastrophes became crystal clear to her.
Trost, 45, earned her master’s in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked in production at WHA-TV. She first went to Haiti in early 2000 to try to find some meaning in her life after the sudden death of her husband from an asthma attack at their Cottage Grove home in September 1997.
While there, she discovered an opportunity to help a priest in Port-au-Prince start a lunch program for the very hungry children who inhabit this poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. A few months later, she was back trying to learn more.
Perhaps more than any other top campus administrator, the chief diversity officer is a lightning rod for criticism. Of course, some people simply oppose efforts to increase access, equity, multiculturalism, and inclusion. But even people committed to diversity can object to the presence of these officers.
Some critics believe that hiring a chief diversity officer removes the responsibility for diversity and inclusion from the university’s president, other leaders, faculty members, and the campus as a whole. The institution now has a “diversity messiah,” who is singularly responsible for advancing campus-diversity efforts and is nothing more than a symbolic figurehead.
Damon Williams is the the vice provost for diversity and climate at UW-Madison.
As I travel around Wisconsin, the question I hear more than any other is, “What does it take to get into UW-Madison?”
It’s not an easy question to answer because earning a seat in our freshman class isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes hard work — over a student’s entire high school career and when completing the application itself.
Is this a great day to be a University of Wisconsin football fan or what?
Tom Heberlein is the former chair of the Department of Rural Sociology at UW-Madison and is currently a professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He divides his time between Sweden and Wisconsin.
During a Q & A session following a presentation about the Wisconsin School of Business and its connections to local economic development, I made some remarks about the price of tuition at UW-Madison that were picked up by a Wisconsin State Journal reporter and then repeated more broadly in the media.
While the reporting was not inaccurate, the issues are sensitive and have a rich context, some of which is inevitably lost in a brief account.
During a Q & A session following a presentation about the Wisconsin School of Business and its connections to local economic development, I made some remarks about the price of tuition at UW-Madison that were picked up by a Wisconsin State Journal reporter and then repeated more broadly in the media.
While the reporting was not inaccurate, the issues are sensitive and have a rich context, some of which is inevitably lost in a brief account.
There is an elephant in the room, and I don’t mean the GOP. I’m referring to an issue that looms large in America’s future but is presently being overlooked by both presidential candidates: the significant decline in the percentage of Americans earning degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the proportion of students obtaining STEM degrees from American universities has dropped from 32 percent to 27 percent over the past decade. At the same time, the percentage of non-American students earning these degrees from American universities has increased dramatically.
(Bill Costello is training director of Making Minds Matter, Bowie, Md., and teaches parents and teachers the best strategies for educating boys.)
Millions of young Americans are off to college, and many will rely on those institutions for health care. But that reliance might be misplaced, because our college health systems are gravely ill. Unless colleges address widespread problems with insurance coverage, students risk being one disease or accident away from losing the potential for getting the education they are paying for.
(Bryan A. Liang is professor of law and executive director of the Institute of Health Law Studies at California Western School of Law in San Diego. This column first appeared in the Baltimore Sun.)
John Wiley, former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked so hard to connect the university to the business life of the state that it was disheartening to see him leave on a sour note.
Wiley loves the university, and he loves the state. His expectations were so high, perhaps, that frustration was inevitable.
Feature on Nina Camic, law professor at the University of Wisconsin.
….Today, the United States is tangled in a triple knot: a shaky economy, battered by volatile energy prices; world politics weighed down by issues of energy consumption and security; and mounting evidence of global climate change.
Building on the wisdom of Vannevar Bush, I believe we can address all three problems at once with dramatic new federal investment in energy research and development. If one advance could transform America’s prospects, it would be ready access, at scale, to a range of affordable, renewable, low-carbon energy technologies — from large-scale solar and wind energy to safe nuclear power.
You know I never resist a chance to hype a story about the positive effects of gaming on youth. It is mostly because: (1) Non-gaming organizations are consistently warning us that games make our youth just a button-push away from becoming mass murderers; (2) My colleagues in the mainstream press rarely mention the positive angles of the gaming experience.
So, when I read a story on Wired magazine’s Web site about University of Wisconsin professor Constance Steinkuehler’s startling observations about her fellow gamers, it was a no-brainer to put it right at the top of this column.
Soon after I transferred to this campus, I heard talk of a large, puzzling organization. While walking to class, students behind tables tried to convince me to come to this organizationâ??s kickoff, promising me new experiences and opportunities. However, it was not until I got involved in ASM that I began to truly understand the meaning of this mysterious acronym.
http://badgerherald.com/oped/2008/09/09/universitys_legislat.php
There is a disease infecting this university, and like many preventable diseases, this one could have been avoided.
The disease is faculty flight, and one cause is the toxic environment established by the state Legislature. For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, the predominant symptom is an overwhelming urge for talented professors to gather all their possessions and move to universities where they will be appreciated.
As a member of the Executive Board of the Teaching Assistantsâ?? Association, I would like to address some misinformation from the office of state Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, which ran in the Sept. 8, 2008 article â??Baldwin, Democrats applaud teaching assistants.â? Nass spokesperson Mike Mikalsenâ??s assertions that the TAA has no business pushing for better working conditions for its members, that domestic partnership benefits are illegal and that such benefits are â??fiscally irresponsibleâ? arenâ??t simply misleading; they are blatantly incorrect.
Madison, Wis. – At this month’s World Stem Cell Summit in Madison, several nations and even a few states will boast they’re relying on public dollars to propel their cutting-edge research in human embryonic stem cells.
Wisconsin won’t be among them. Beyond the federal dollars allocated for basic research on approved stem cell lines, Wisconsin spends remarkably few tax dollars on breakthrough science that has won its researchers worldwide acclaim.
Based on a fresh report by a major Washington-based â??think tank,â? that’s precisely as it should be.
Having a legal drinking age of 21 reduces but certainly does not eliminate the likelihood of teenage alcohol use. This is where the rest of us must play a role. A colleague and good friend drove her son to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to begin his freshman studies a few years ago. After a loving embrace, she began the journey home. Within a few hours her son had toppled from the second floor of an apartment due to alcohol and suffered severe brain damage. He now functions at a very basic level and can never continue his studies.
Whether we are parents, friends, siblings, co-workers, store merchants, etc., we have the opportunity to help our young people make good lifestyle decisions. If young adults are not legally able to consume alcohol, are they “missing out”? What they won’t experience are the harmful health issues, the embarrassing situations, the hangovers and the potential for injuries or death.
Letâ??s take a minute, step back and take a good look at the amazing university we belong to. Not only do we have phenomenal professors leading cutting-edge research, top-notch academic facilities in all areas of campus and across-the-board excellent arts programs, we also have an amazingly vibrant campus extending beyond the reaches of the academic world.
As UW-Madison students, we literally have hundreds of opportunities to become involved in our campus. Last year alone, there were 750 student organizations registered through the Student Organization Office. Nearly all areas of interest are represented in one way or another in the multiple student-run organizations. Only at UW-Madison are we able to attend meetings about the importance of divestment in Sudan, greener energy solutions, volunteer opportunities in the Madison public schools and martial arts techniquesâ??all on the same night.
Like Jon Foley, I do environmental work. And just as he is leaving the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a better opportunity at the University of Minnesota, I too left Wisconsin at the end of July.
In 1996 I received my doctorate from the UW’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. I own an 8-year-old environmental management consulting firm.
….Rep. Steve Nass might be driving some academics to leave with his disrespect for UW-Madison, but others in the state are proving remarkably effective at driving some of the rest of us away too — or at least not being very shrewd about how to keep us around.
Thinking about ways to spend $30 at several very special campus locations can be pretty fun.
I could buy several paperbacks at the University Bookstore â?? or if Iâ??m lucky maybe a used textbook. I could purchase a series of meals at the Union and maybe even pick up a sandwich from the Ingraham Deli if Iâ??m feeling adventurous. I might hit up the Digital Outpost and pick up some good quality headphones.
As a college student in your late teens or early twenties, your mind is probably a seething cesspool of emotion. Thrust into relative autonomy at the start of college, then into the responsibility of shaping your unpredictable and largely uncontrollable future towards the end, your brain squirms with all the problems that occur in between â?? choosing a major and career, dealing with difficult roommates, hormonal relationships and schoolwork, to name a few. If you feel overwhelmed by these issues, fear not. The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers its students free individual counseling sessions through University Health Services to help you address your personal issues.
The University of Wisconsin System is a vitally important component of state government. The mission of this higher education institution is documented in many places including the stateâ??s historical development, the statutes and its traditional role as positive irritant in the political and social debate of the people.
Steve Prestegard at Marketplace of Ideas has been joining in the sport of taking apart John Wiley, the outgoing UW-Madison chancellor who lately decided that all the political toxemia of Wisconsin can be traced to a business lobby not shutting up.
Because Camp Randall Stadium undeniably is in the top 10 of college footballâ??s game-day experiences, hereâ??s the analogy that comes to mind for the final game on Wisconsinâ??s 2008 schedule:
Youâ??re at the Cannes Film Festival, day after day of great cinema in an unparalleled setting. Then, to close it out, they screen the Don Knotts opus, â??The Incredible Mr. Limpet.â?
This is not to besmirch Cal Poly, an excellent school that does what it can with football in the division formerly known as I-AA. But this is no way for a place like UW to complete a regular season, much less to honor its seniors.
As you may have read, departing University of Wisconsin-Madison boss John Wiley has undammed the dark waters that had collected behind his reticence. He wrote a 3,000-word essay for Madison Magazine saying why practically everything wrong with Wisconsin politics can be traced to the state’s leading business lobby.
If you haven’t read the piece, you should. It’s weirdly petulant, almost a little Captain Queeq (though the magazine’s editors, if they do say so themselves, call it “extraordinarily honest and poignant”), but it’s a decent exposition of how a certain slice of the state’s political establishment thinks
Wisconsin has lost its way. We’ve lost touch with our traditions and values. Our politics has become a poisonous swill, and the most influential voice for the business community has been taken hostage by partisan ideologues.
As I leave the chancellorship of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I wish I could paint a brighter picture. It’s difficult when two of the institutions with so much ability to drive positive change and growth–the business community and our university–are stuck in a swamp.
A picture, they say, is worth 1,000 words. The television and print photographers who take them play a vital role in keeping the public informed. It’s a job that requires much skill, and sometimes entails great risk.
News photographers in Wisconsin have been attacked, threatened, arrested, and had their cameras and film confiscated. They have been barred from meetings that were open to other members of the public. The hand held up to the camera is unfortunately a familiar image.
Recently, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and Wisconsin News Photographers Association jointly produced a Bill of Rights outlining where and under what circumstances state photographers are allowed.
Many people around Madison are bemoaning the non-conference schedule that brings the University of Akron and Marshall University to Camp Randall on successive Saturdays, beginning Aug. 30.
These people think the Badgers should schedule tougher non-conference opponents.
Remember back in the old days when we used to fret about how girls weren’t doing as well as guys in school, especially in math and science? Ah, that seems so last century.
Gender gap? What gender gap? That’s the message in a new study by five professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California-Berkeley. Although other studies have found similar results, this one is the most sweeping. Comparing math test scores of 7 million students in 10 states from 2005 to 2007, the study found that girls and boys do equally well.
A couple of weeks ago, I raised questions about presidential polling in general and the Quinnipiac University’s polling in particular. Should you rely on polls or not? I was chastised by a University of Wisconsin political science prof for raising questions about Quinnipiac’s polling. Not since I questioned papal infallibility in sixth grade have I been dispatched to the corner so vigorously. I was even told to apologize to Quinnipiac.
I have no beef against Quinnipiac and I wish them well. But I wish them and all the other pollsters more transparency in polling.
In July, the University of California System announced an initiative to measure and report publicly the performance of its 10 campuses. This would be the first such report of its kind for that system. Previously, in June, the Minnesota State Colleges and University System announced a new “accountability dashboard” to monitor its 32 colleges and universities.
These efforts come as people in higher education appreciate having clear, quantifiable performance data. Increasingly, students, lawmakers and taxpayers use such information to evaluate their return on investment.
Wisconsinites sometimes envy places like California and Minnesota. In this instance, however, we can take pride in Wisconsin’s long-standing leadership position in public accountability reporting.
A new exhibit, “The Art of College Humor,” opened last week on the UW-Madison campus and was the subject of a story in Friday’s State Journal.
As the story noted, the exhibit celebrates “the glory years of humor magazines on college campuses,” including UW-Madison’s own, The Octopus, which was published from 1919-1959.
On the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, many human rights activists and observers continue to hope that the Chinese Communist Party’s embrace of odious regimes such as Burma’s and Sudan’s, and its oppression of Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and Falun Gong spiritualists, will lead democratic heads of state to boycott the Olympics, or athletes and spectators to demonstrate on behalf of the victims. I doubt it. The only demonstrations are likely to be those celebrating China’s massive gold medal count.
