Category: Opinion

I’ve been writing for daily newspapers since I joined the staff of The Daily Cardinal at UW-Madison in 1960. That’s pushing close to a half-century, but who’s counting?

A recent article from The Associated Press cited concerns of University of Wisconsin faculty and administration alike over the state’s pay plan for UW faculty and academic staff. The plan results in a pay reduction when viewed in “real dollars.”

This has raised concerns among many people in the UW community about UW’s ability to stay competitive with peer institutions. It’s no secret that the UW System is facing a crisis in faculty retention. UW-Madison, for example, has a 57 percent success rate in retaining faculty who had received an outside offer, a significant drop from the previous six-year average of 75 percent retained.

I HATE to do this. I mean, I really hate to do this. But in the interest of fairness, I must.

It appears there is a possibility — I stress, a possibility — that there has been a breakthrough in one of the most confounding mysteries of our time.

What ought we do about how badly poor children lag in school?

I can tell you what Annemarie Ketterhagen is doing. She’s helping run a new school at 12th and Garfield.

Ketterhagen, who grew up in the ‘burbs, says she long wanted to be in education. She went off to Madison and got a University of Wisconsin education degree. Then a friend changed her life by going to a Teach for America recruiting talk.

Madison, Wis. – Ask the average Wisconsin citizen how the University of Wisconsin-Madison touches his or her life, and you’re likely to hear something about Badger football, perhaps a mention of the UW Hospital, and maybe a gripe about nephew Steve being turned down for admission even though he posted a 3.8 grade point average in high school.

During his tenure as chancellor of Wisconsin’s flagship public campus, John Wiley has done what he could to expand the list of commonly held (and positive) UW-Madison perceptions. He hasn’t always been successful, but he will leave a solid foundation for his successor when he retires in September 2008.

What we need to do as a university and a community is quit the posturing and rhetoric. Quit the debating about the necessity of diversity education programs or positions promoting diversity and campus climate. Quit focusing too much on recruitment and start focusing on retention. We need to quit talking, quit stalling and Just Bust.

When I was a struggling junior faculty member, every publication mattered so much that rejection letters felt like physical blows. And it wasnâ??t only the brute fact of the rejections that caused pain: Readersâ?? reports on my manuscripts were often written in a tone of sharp annoyance. Touchy and ill-tempered, they seemed to see only the flaws. It was as if Iâ??d somehow insulted these readers, breaking rules that I didnâ??t know existed. Thereâ??s no question that Iâ??ve had much to learn about framing, pursuing, and clinching an argument. But Iâ??ve certainly never had any intention of irritating my readers.

Caroline Levine is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The news media have presented Iraq and the war on terror as a disaster. As an American civilian and a soldier twice deployed in this conflict, I see it as an opportunity. Capt. James Pickart, a Madison native and graduate of UW-Madison, is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves and a veterinarian in Fairplay, Colo.

WALTER J. Blaedel didn’t want a memorial service, but he wanted to be remembered. His paid obituary in October said he wished that “family, friends, students and co-workers remember me occasionally, for having shared work, ideals, love, joy and sadness, success and failure.”

Blaedel, who died Oct. 8 at 91, was a brilliant chemistry professor who lived in Madison for 60 years and knew plenty about success and failure. After a bitter dispute with the University of Wisconsin department of chemistry that began in the 1970s and ended with his forced retirement in the early ’80s, Blaedel refused to go quietly.

For several decades, the topic of educational accountability has dominated K-12 policy discussions. The issue is again heating up as Congress considers the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The six principles of NCLB redesign outlined in the â??discussion draftâ? released by the House Education and Labor Committee all focus in one way or another on incentives for holding public schools and public officials accountable.

Patricia Burch is an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As a young graduate student attending UW-Madison in 1930, Ruth Gruber says she “never foresaw or imagined ” she ‘d end up in harrowing situations, dedicating her life to working with Jewish people around the globe in struggles against oppression.
“All I knew then was that I wanted to be a writer. “