UW-Madison is revamping its Law School public defender training program after dismissing the program’s director as part of budget cuts.
Students have circulated a petition condemning the decision to lay off the director and have called on the university to halt the changes, but to no avail.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents Nov. 19 approved two policy documents established in the 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, regarding general education requirements and teacher workloads, according to an update from UW News.
The proposed policy document regarding UW general education requirements aims to define the Core General Education Requirements for Universities of Wisconsin and the way they transfer between the different universities, according to the Board of Regents meeting notes.
The good news amid the rancor is that people are not only studying why we’re so polarized, but they are also working on ways to fix it. I learned that fact during my recent interview with Susan Yackee, director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW–Madison.
The school is launching a new undergraduate public policy program in the fall of 2026, including a required course titled Advancing Public Policy in a Divided America.
In it, students literally practice talking across ideological divides. “If I don’t work out my bicep, it’s just not gonna get strong, right? It’s the same thing with our students and their skills in talking across differences,” Yackee told me. “[It’s] super easy for them to be siloed in their own little social media environments and not hear or have to interact with people that think differently than them. So we’re gonna force that in the class.”
Though the regular full-time student does not meet the requirements for SNAP, there are special opportunities for students with different circumstances, like students in a work study program or who have a child caretaking role.
“There are certain exemptions that make students able to access SNAP … working in a work study job, if you have a caretaking role or if you have a certain kind of disabilities,” said University of Wisconsin assistant director for student engagement Kasie Strahl. “Finally, if you work more than an average of 80 hours a month, you qualify.”
Dr. Jim Conway, medical director of UW Health’s immunization program, said he thinks health care providers and public health officials have done a good job communicating the risks of flu and other respiratory illnesses for seniors.
“But it is a little bit troubling that they do seem to be, even for that group, a little bit behind,” he said.
Extending enhanced tax credits for Affordable Care Act Health Insurance Marketplace plans was what Democrats were holding out for in the government shutdown that ended on Nov. 12. The continuing resolution put forth by Republican lawmakers ended up passing without that extension, and ACA policyholders are girding for premium hikes that could more than double.
“There’s really no uncertainty about that — it’s basically pretty straightforward, simple math,” said Justin Sydnor, a professor of risk and insurance at the Wisconsin School of Business. “The way the tax credits work is that they’re tied to a share of the percent of your income, and the enhanced tax credits increased or decreased the share you would have to pay, and increase the income range for people who are eligible. So they’ll definitely go up. The share that you’re responsible for paying goes up if those subsidies expire — how much depends a lot on your income level.
The competition has grown so much, in fact, that it’s too big for the five staff members of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association to handle. They’re now handing the reins to the Universities of Wisconsin, which has sponsored the event since its inception.
The games will be overseen by the university system’s Wisconsin Institute for Citizenship and Civil Dialogue, which will soon become the Office of Civic Engagement, said Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman. Separately, that office will host civic education workshops for teachers across the state over the next three years, funded by a $1.1 million grant through the U.S. Department of Education’s American History & Civics Seminars program.
The insects have killed millions of trees in the eastern U.S. and threaten 80 million eastern hemlock trees in Wisconsin. A single egg sac may contain as many as 300 eggs. Hundreds of thousands of the insects can feed on the trees with their needle-like mouth parts, said PJ Liesch, an entomologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.
“It’s a whole bunch of them ganging up on the trees,” Liesch said. “Together, that combined feeding damage over time causes those hemlock trees to decline and ultimately die.”
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said political messaging votes can have impacts on elections, especially in what will be some of the close Senate races in 2026.
“It’s kind of a messaging opportunity, not really a policymaking opportunity. It’s also maybe a way for Republicans to let off some steam,” Burden said.
“It’s another sign Democrats have the edge in general going into 2026,” Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said about the election outcomes.
The state budget passed this summer increased the UW system’s budget by $256 million but came with strings, including requiring all core general education courses be transferable between UW campuses and satisfy general education requirements at the receiving institution by fall 2026.
Universities of Wisconsin students will have an easier time transferring general education credits from one campus to another after the Board of Regents approved a new core general education policy this week.
UW-Madison researchers at a new federally funded center on campus will examine how aging influences diseases, such as cancer and neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s.
The Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging will fund new research that examines how metabolic changes associated with aging are linked to disease. The center’s researchers aim to develop improved treatments or methodologies that physicians can use to better address their patients’ conditions.
A new collaboration between UW-Madison, Microsoft, and TitletownTech is set to boost scientific research in Wisconsin. The partnership will leverage advanced AI tools to help researchers tackle major challenges more efficiently.
The UW Board of Regents on Nov. 19 approved controversial changes to a teaching workload policy despite some criticism and concern from faculty.
Under the proposal, full-time instructors would be required to teach at least 24 credits every school year, or four three-credit classes each semester. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, where professors are expected to produce more research, the minimum load is 12 credits per year, or two classes per semester.
The UW Board of Regents on Wednesday approved minimum teaching requirements for Universities of Wisconsin professors and a redesign of general education courses to make them easier to transfer between schools.
Lawmakers also took up a measure to penalize the UW system and the state technical college system if they’re found to have violated the free speech rights of their students and staff. Another bill would require the UW system to drop any fees it levies for online-only classes. Both passed largely along party lines.
In the Republican race for governor, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann has some big ideas for the state’s public universities.
He said he is open to eliminating tenure protections for professors, would consider closing a four-year public university and sees merit in spinning off the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the Universities of Wisconsin, also known as the UW system.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez discussed her support for increased funding for the University of Wisconsin System, saying tuition hikes are a “burden” for families in an interview with The Daily Cardinal Monday.
When lawmakers passed a new state budget this year, they approved a roughly $256 million increase in funding for Wisconsin’s 13 public universities. But that money came with strings attached, including new requirements for how much faculty need to teach.
QTS, the company planning to build a data center in the DeForest area, on Friday announced a $1.5 million partnership with UW-Madison.
The money will go towards a new research initiative focused on data center sustainability.
QTS Data Centers is partnering with the University of Wisconsin–Madison to advance sustainable digital infrastructure.
The initiative, Advancing Data Center Sustainability, involves a $1.5 million investment from QTS, aimed at driving innovation in responsible data center development.
QTS Data Centers is partnering with University of Wisconsin-Madison to invest $1.5 million in a new research initiative.
The new initiative, Advancing Data Center Sustainability, will help the university advance sustainable digital infrastructure though research and innovation.
A conservative nonprofit on Wednesday filed a complaint against UW-Madisonover a university policy intended to allow those on campus, such as transgender and gender-nonconforming students or visitors, to use the restroom of their choice.
Three companies behind planned and ongoing data center developments on Thursday separately announced efforts aimed at supporting Wisconsin researchers and communities.
The announcements come as new polling shows most Wisconsin voters believe the costs associated with data center projects outweigh the benefits of those developments.
Republican lawmakers have introduced a package of bills aimed at preventing foreign adversaries from causing harm in Wisconsin, including new regulations for the University of Wisconsin, medical research and telecommunications technology.
Local pharmacies across the state are playing a bigger role in preventing people from dying from opioid overdoses, largely because of the work of a Madison-based program that started one year ago. The Wisconsin Opioid Overdose Response Center estimates it has brought more than 185,000 residents into contact with a variety of expanded services since launching last year.
UW-Madison has shuttered the equity and well-being department in its human resources office, which worked to retain LGBTQ+ and employees of color.
The university established the Office of Equity, Inclusion and Employee Well-Being in spring 2021 to offer consultation and promote inclusive policies and environments, with a focus on support for traditionally marginalized communities.
It’s 7:30 a.m. on a Thursday, and class for the Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums program at UW-Madison is just getting started.
Program director Cassy Leeport, a descendant of the Grand Portage Band of Ojibwe, pulls up to a university parking lot and greets her student Cheyenne Woerman as she hops into the UW-Madison-issued minivan scented with cut sweetgrass ready for braiding.
Leslie Falcon, Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Ho-Chunk Educational Materials Director, speaks on the impact that UW-Madison students from the Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums program have had on building the first Ho-Chunk library.
More than half of the Universities of Wisconsin’s two-year branch campuses in recent years have faced closures or significant structural changes to adapt to shrinking enrollment.
Since 2023, with the closure of UW-Platteville Richland, six branch campuses shuttered or plan to. One campus moved classes online and another is relocating instruction to a nearby technical college.
State legislators representing the La Crosse region have helped author new bills for the Wisconsin Legislature that aim to help students around the state deal with the high cost of tuition.
The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory was activated in 2022 to help the state monitor and track the disease, testing samples from poultry and wild birds across the state. Since then, scientists there have continued running surveillance year-round as detections rise and fall with migration seasons.
“Since then, we’ve lost several hundred million birds,” said Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. “It changes a little bit. Flu changes all the time, right? But this is still considered really the same outbreak that started in 2022. And it’s the biggest foreign animal disease outbreak in U.S. history.”
The legislative package includes $40 million in new funding for advising and retention as well as a “tuition promise” scholarship program for low- and middle-income students attending other University of Wisconsin campuses aside from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Democratic lawmakers are proposing a package of higher education bills to help address affordability for students by investing in a statewide tuition promise program and to support faculty and staff members by reversing Walker-era collective bargaining and tenure policies.
More than a quarter of Wisconsin’s high school students are earning college credits through dual enrollment programs during the school year.
Universities of Wisconsin faculty in high-demand fields of study could get salary bumps under a new policy that’s part of the recent state budget deal.
Last week, the UW Board of Regents approved a proposal detailing how the UW system will dole out $27 million annually for market pay adjustments to attract and keep faculty in growing fields, fulfilling a legislative reform set in the budget agreement. Of that, $2 million is earmarked for UW-Madison to use for faculty who work in “areas that advance diversity of thought and the foundation of free markets.”
Public college is less affordable in Wisconsin than in nearly every other state, according to a new analysis of 2022-23 school year data. The nonprofit National College Attainment Network, which advocates for college access, reports annually on each state’s “affordability gap” between the cost of college and what students and their families can pay.
Dugout canoes discovered in Lake Mendota have been getting much attention in recent years, but a series of burial mounds on the lake’s shoreline are now getting their turn.
The Wisconsin Historical Society has announced that a grouping of burial mounds on the UW-Madison campus has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
A study of Wisconsin school board policies has found that nearly all districts have policies protecting students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and the vast majority protect students from discrimination based on gender identity.
“I don’t think there’s enough work that describes the environment that we’re in. But then the project gained some urgency when we started hearing from educators across the state about the need for some sort of description of the state of guidance affecting teachers and students,” said Mollie McQuillan, lead author of the school board policy research and an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison.
State Democrats introduced legislation Thursday in an effort to ease the financial burden on Universities of Wisconsin students.
The “Higher Education Powers Wisconsin Package” includes a bill to extend Bucky’s Tuition Promise.
Under Bucky’s Tuition Promise, the program covers all tuition and fees for UW-Madison students from Wisconsin whose household income is less than $65,000 per year.
“In Wisconsin overcrowding is a huge issue. Assigning more people to a room than they’re supposed to, which, of course, affects your sleep,” said Farah Kaiksow, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who has researched aging and care in prison.
“Corn is one of the biggest contributors to the dairy industry, both in corn silage crop and a corn grain crop, which is also used for foraging,” said Harkirat Kaur, a corn agronomist with UW-Madison Division of Extension Crops and Soils program. Harvesting grain differs from producing silage because it focuses on using the corn plant’s kernels for human food and animal feed, as well as the basis for ethanol biofuel.
Despite worries over rising temperatures, it turns out anglers have a greater effect on fish populations than global warming. That’s according to a new study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We found that for the majority of the populations so far fishing has far more greater impact than warming on the fish populations,” said Luoliang Xu, postdoctoral researcher at UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology.
Nathan Kalmoe, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, said via email that emphasizing poor economic conditions could be risky for Wisconsin Democrats running in state elections. While Republican lawmakers “may take some blame, the governor is a Democrat,” and voters tend to hold the chief executive responsible for economic conditions, he said.
Kalmoe added that focusing on the economy exclusively at the expense of concerns for the most marginalized or concerns about Trump administration actions that threaten democracy would be “disturbing, and dangerous.”
It’s no secret that Wisconsinites love fishing. But who knew the effects of local anglers on our fisheries were outpacing that of climate change?
That’s exactly what a new study from postdoctoral researcher Luoliang Xu and Prof. Olaf Jensen at UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology found. The discovery was published last week in the journal Science Advances.
“Warming and fishing are happening at the same time, and they both can strongly affect the fish populations,” Xu said. “So the intention of our study is to try to tear apart these two factors.”
In Wisconsin, grain farmers will likely face negative margins in 2025 as expected prices for corn and soybeans are below the estimated break-even points for Wisconsin producers, according to projections by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
In Wisconsin, there were 37,600 women farmers in 2022, accounting for 35.5% of the state’s total producers, according to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. However, some people have a hard time believing that.
Neubauer was elected to the court in 2008, 2014 and 2020. She is an honors graduate from the University of Chicago Law School in 1987, and she earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1979.
UW experts say Japanese stiltgrass can harm forests by growing in a branching, sprawling manner that alters soil composition, reduces wildlife habitat and decreases biodiversity. The DNR says the plant is widespread in the eastern and southern United States and has been negatively impacting forests.
For Jessica Skeesuck, vice chair of the Brothertown Indian Nation, restoring wild rice goes beyond just helping the environment.
“It is an important food from a nutritional value perspective, but also from a very important cultural perspective for many tribes, including Brothertown Indian Nation,” Skeesuck told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
Skeesuck and Jessie Conaway, an outdoor educator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are co-leads on the Intertribal Lake Winnebago Wild Rice Revitalization Project.
Though just 25, Alfonso could scramble the race with his strong ties to Duffy and President Donald Trump. He attended high school in the Wausau area and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to a now-deleted LinkedIn profile.
Universities of Wisconsin proposal to redesign general education curriculum would eliminate requirements that students take an ethnic or cultural studies class.
UW system administrators are trying to standardize general education requirements to comply with reforms approved during the biennial budget negotiations aimed at making it easier for students to transfer credits between the 13 universities.
“I feel like closing loopholes is kind of like this idea of putting Band-Aids on big wounds … it doesn’t seem like it will solve a problem,” said Shelby Ellison.
Ellison, a hemp researcher and assistant professor in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at UW–Madison, proposes that the state could implement age limits, require testing and labeling, and prevent packaging that appeals to children.
“There’s lots of things to do with packaging and marketing that there are no restrictions on in Wisconsin that many other states have … but just that you can’t make it look like Skittles, right?” Ellison said.
The draft legislation calls for the establishment of a registry at the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The registry would include a website with annual reports on the incidence and prevalence of Parkinson’s Disease in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is welcoming guests from around the globe as the 2025 World Dairy Expo is now underway in Madison.
According to a report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension Farm Management program, Wisconsin exported $3 billion of agricultural products in 2024, making agriculture a major economic driver for the state.
The organization collected its data from several sources, including the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, much of the university’s research will continue for the time being, even projects that receive federal funding. But international students and staff may be affected as agencies that oversee passports and visas operate with reduced staffs. Similarly, small business loans and federal research grants will be paused or delayed during a shutdown.
Students applying to the University of Wisconsin-Madison will soon need to complete a second, longer financial aid application if they want a share of the millions of dollars in financial aid the university gives out each year.
Starting this fall, UW-Madison will require applicants to fill out the CSS Profile, an online application used by around 270 colleges, universities and scholarship programs to award institutional aid, separate from a different form used to apply for federal financial aid. Students can start working on their CSS Profile Oct. 1.
PBS Wisconsin Education, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, recently launched Whoopensocker, a new educational resource collection for upper elementary learners that provides an on-ramp to writing through group games and scaffolded lessons.
Whoopensocker was first developed as a six-week teaching artist residency by Erica Halverson, a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at the UW-Madison School of Education. Halverson teamed up with PBS Wisconsin Education to make a multimedia version of the program that’s accessible to more educators around the state and in spaces where an artist residency may not be available.
