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.
Those of us who use the “Shell” next to Camp Randall for our daily exercise routine watched in amusement this spring as construction barrels were unloaded to barricade all but one lane of Monroe Street in front of the stadium and then absolutely nothing happened for two full weeks.
We joked that construction plans were obviously on hold to make sure that the street wouldn’t be finished in time for the first University of Wisconsin football game Aug. 30. After all, isn’t that what the city does every year?
Column by law Professor Donald A. Downs:
The fall campaigns are heating up, and citizens are gripped by conflicting feelings of hope and deep concern for the country’s domestic and global condition — a tension that only seems to heighten the excitement.
One of the greatest of all UW football players, and certainly the most mysterious, was Pat O’Dea, an Australian who near the turn of the 20th century set kicking records in Madison that reverberated across the country, and then disappeared, only to be found 17 years later living under an assumed name in northern California.
O’Dea’s story, and many others, can be found in a new book, “Wisconsin Football Vault,” which might be described as a kind of next generation coffee table book.
WASHINGTON — The conventional wisdom on certain subjects is so deeply rooted that no amount of evidence disturbs its hold. That’s how it is with those dreary predictions that young Americans just won’t vote.
Since the late 1960s, the same chorus has been heard from election to election: The young don’t care. They’re disengaged. They’re too wrapped up in their music, their favorite sports and their parties to care about politics. Predicting that the young will vote in large numbers is like saying the Cubs will finally win the World Series.
As it happens, the Cubs are doing well this season, and the evidence is overwhelming that this year, the young really will vote in large numbers — and they just might tip the election.
John Wiley is leaving Bascom Hall, moving his faculty position from engineering to education and, for starters, acting as interim director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, teaching in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, and doing work for the Wisconsin Center for Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE). Ah, the leisurely joys of retirement.
As a Wisconsin taxpayer, I am grateful and proud of Dr. James Thomson and UW-Madison’s bioscience community for their human embryonic stem cell discoveries. But as I study the funding issues relating to Wisconsin’s stem cell enterprise, I have become increasingly concerned with how our state is managing the intellectual property associated with these potentially lucrative discoveries.
One of my questions has to do with why did Wisconsin agree to give exclusive rights to the Geron Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., for using Wisconsin-patented stem cells to treat heart disease, diabetes and neurological disorders? My concerns have to do with both the nature of the diseases chosen and the potential economic and health care implications involved.
I am also concerned with the potential conflict of interest involved and exactly by who and why this decision was made and whose interests are best being served.
A new book, “Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin ‘Bud’ Shrake Reader,” contains a column Shrake wrote for the Dallas Morning News about a plot to sabotage the halftime show of a Cowboys-Redskins game in Washington.
I have long been a connoisseur of stories about unusual happenings at sports stadiums, and am proud to say that Camp Randall and Madison figure in a few of them.
The Wisconsin State Employees Union has raised more than a few eyebrows over its dogged insistence that its union contract can trump the state’s open records law.
Although it has lost in Circuit Court, it has now appealed all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to defend contracts with the state — contracts that should never have been accepted by the state in the first place — that prohibit the public release of the names of its rank-and-file members.
It was just after he moved to Madison in 2005 that Jordan Ellenberg signed on as a script consultant with the television show “Numb3rs,” which airs Fridays on CBS.
Ellenberg, 36, who is an energetic and engaging associate professor of mathematics at UW-Madison, likes “Numb3rs” because the hero is an energetic and engaging math professor who helps his cop brother solve crimes.
Recent news coverage and editorial opinions have suggested that the University of Wisconsin system must increase the salaries of its chancellors statewide. Writers imply that the departure of six campus chancellors the past year was due to their sub-national-average salaries.
For example, Bruce Shepard, who earned about $210,000 at UW-Green Bay, has taken a position at Western Washington University for more than $300,000. Similar salary increases were in store for the other campus chancellors who left the UW system this past year. Proponents of higher salaries suggest that greater pay will somehow improve retention of our chancellors.
But consider another distinct possibility. Perhaps after 6-8 years leading a specific campus, a chancellor will look for a new challenge no matter what his or her salary.
Column by Robert Booth Fowler, emeritus political science professor.
The wild goose chase is an occupational hazard of journalism, and some of us are more susceptible than others. Some of us, and I count myself in their number, can get a little obsessed.
On Wednesday, the following, datelined Paris, appeared in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which is the global edition of The New York Times: “Harry Rosenbaum, a 24-year-old student from Madison, Wis., was arrested in front of a bookshop at 30 boulevard Saint-Michel Friday night and charged with the theft of a book, it became known yesterday.”
If citizens want to know how much front-line public employees are paid, it ‘s not hard to find out. Pay ranges are public record.
If a newspaper wants to find out if law enforcement officers are among those who no longer are allowed to drive state cars, a reporter can request and find out the job classifications of those covered by the prohibition.
But if the newspaper wants to know exactly what a particular state correctional officer is paid, or exactly who is being prohibited from driving, that ‘s when the line is crossed between legitimate public knowledge and the protection of personal privacy.
Most of the stateâ??s economic indicators get dragged down by the performance in the city of Milwaukee. Hence, all strategies need to align our investments in development toward more jobs in the biggest and most stressed city in the state.
Thatâ??s not the only place we need more job creation, but Milwaukee ought to be priority No. 1. Is the powerful University of Wisconsin-Madison doing enough in that regard? Most observers would say no.
Is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeâ??s mission of becoming a top research institution going in the right direction? Most would say yes. Eventually, that research and the resulting technology transfer should spell more start-ups and jobs.
Wisconsin just received four reminders of where the state ‘s economy is heading: toward growth generated by innovations in science and technology and away from the old foundation of traditional manufacturing.
Policymakers — from the Doyle administration to Thrive, the economic development arm for the Madison region — ought to pay close attention.
It’s time to confess — I am a musical theater fanatic. I was raised on the classics: “Sound of Music,” “South Pacific” and “Camelot.” I grew up with “Rent” and, later, “The Last Five Years” and “Avenue Q.”
Most recently, “Spring Awakening” and — dare I say it? — “Legally Blonde: The Musical” have been in rotation on my mp3 player.
So when University Theatre’s “Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)” proclaims in the first number its intention to spoof Broadway’s most beloved composers, I know I am the perfect audience. I will get every joke, catch every reference.
….The problem? Hearing parodies of Rogers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Kander and Ebb leaves me unfulfilled. I want to hear the real stuff.
Madison-area readers may suspect what is coming next, and, yes, it’s true.
Donald Lipski is about to strike again.
Let me be the 437th person to congratulate the Big Ten Network and Comcast on their pending nuptials.
The Aug. 15 wedding is right around the corner, so if anyone has a good gift idea – or wants to meet me at Target to chip in on something appropriate – you know where to find me.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t think these guys would ever find their way to the altar.
Madison, Wis. – A state that has experienced historic floods and the announcement of a major plant closing within the past two weeks could use some good news. Perhaps it’s found in the steady growth of Wisconsin’s biotechnology industry.
Mark Twain once remarked about a man with two sons: One went to sea, the other became vice president, and neither was heard of again.
We have scant evidence that vice presidential nominees influence voters very much. Will possible John McCain voters be swayed by an added choice of Mitt Romney, Charles Crist, Bobby Jindal or any other equally insignificant? Some Democrats yearn for Hillary Clinton’s nomination, envisioning an irresistible union of race and gender politics. An office once mocked as totally obscure now has become a desirable prize.
(UW-Madison professor emeritus of history Stanley Kutler is the author of “Wars of Watergate” and of numerous writings on American constitutional law and the presidency. This column first appeared on truthdig.com.)
What was your reaction when it was announced last week that University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez was getting a $150,000 raise, boosting his salary to $750,000 for 2008-09?
“Good for you, big guy?”
“Boy, that sure is a lot of coin?”
“What the heck?”
“Why I oughta â?¦?”
Here’s mine: UW chancellor John Wiley is the one retiring, so why is Alvarez the one getting the going-away present?
What was your reaction when it was announced last week that University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez was getting a $150,000 raise, boosting his salary to $750,000 for 2008-09?
“Good for you, big guy?”
“Boy, that sure is a lot of coin?”
“What the heck?”
“Why I oughta â?¦?”
Here’s mine: UW chancellor John Wiley is the one retiring, so why is Alvarez the one getting the going-away present?
Wiley, as is his wont, went before the UW Board of Regents and lobbied for the 25 percent raise for Alvarez, citing “long-term performance and the market,” according to a board member.
Everyone agrees that for Wisconsin to flourish in the 21st century the UW System must at minimum remain one of the worldâ??s foremost educational and research institutions.
Unfortunately, the Board of Regentsâ?? decision last week to provide exorbitant pay increases to top administrators, drastically increase tuition rates for students, and provide minuscule raises to UW System faculty and staff, demonstrates that they misunderstand the economic realities distressing Wisconsinâ??s residents and the political and organizational imperatives facing the UW System.
UW’s national titles in rowing should be lauded, even if they’re not of the NCAA variety.
The last time the University of Wisconsin scored men’s and women’s national championships in the same sport at the same moment, grand words and gestures ruled the day.
Nobody asked me, but I would have said the Kollege Klub — for breakfast. Only a few of us knew the popular campus night spot was open weekday mornings. It was great to sink into a booth with coffee and the Chicago newspapers — purchased a half block away at Rennebohm’s — and try to remember (or forget) the indiscretions of the night before.
The summer 2008 issue of On Wisconsin, the magazine of the Wisconsin Alumni Association, just out, includes a fun piece by Jenny Price in which she asks nine prominent UW-Madison alums to recall their “favorite place” in Madison during their years at UW.
….He was an old school journalism throwback to a faraway day when people read and newspapers mattered — when personal accountability carried far more weight than internet access, and excess.
“When the air gets a little crisper and leaves turn to flame, excitement mounts around the old Civil War training ground called Camp Randall,” Butler wrote in his book “The Badger Game.” He was a historian who took great pride in the many traditions that have defined University of Wisconsin athletics, especially football.
“Society likes to identify with something — a church affiliation, a lodge, a club, an athletic team,” Butler wrote. “Badger football, which started more than a century ago, remains a favorite tradition to thousands …”
Amna Buttar was in Madison the other morning and a remarkable thing happened — nothing.
Buttar took her daughter to the dentist and then met a friend to chat. She spoke with passion about her new life — she ‘s now a successful politician in her native Pakistan — but for the first time in recent memory there was no global controversy, no assault or assassination to discuss. It has been a frenzied few years for Buttar, and she welcomes the relative calm.
The great challenge facing the great state University of Wisconsin is to forge a 21st century variation on the Wisconsin Idea — the relationship between the UW and the state that enriched both during much of the 20th century.
That the linkage has been weakened is beyond debate.
While there remain some institutions within the university that are engaged with the state and its citizens — such as the Center on Wisconsin Strategies on the UW-Madison campus — the vital connection that once existed has frayed.
There is plenty of blame to go around.
