Some UW-System officials, who are technically state employees, make more than Doyle, including certain athletic officials chancellors and clinical research faculty, UW-System spokesperson David Giroux said. UW-Madison head football coach Bret Bielema has a current salary of $1.3 million while Chancellor Wiley earns $327,417 according to UW-Madison University Communications.
The UW-System is part of the executive branch in Wisconsin, with Gov. Jim Doyle appointing the Board of Regents that oversees the 26 campuses statewide. Doyle has also previously said increasing access to higher education is a priority in his administration. A UW-Madison alumnus, Doyle said the person to succeed Chancellor John Wiley must have several important attributes.
The state Department of Corrections is seeking to have a Madison man who is considered a material witness in the killing of University of Wisconsin student Brittany Zimmermann returned to prison for a year.
The move to pull him off the streets appears unrelated to the murder investigation.
David Kahl, 42, has been held in jail since his arrest the night of April 2, the day that Zimmermann was found dead in her West Doty Street apartment.
Kahl is considered a material witness because, after his arrest, he provided police with the names of two men who went door to door in the Doty Street area trying to raise money by scamming people or stealing from apartments.
The governor is the highest-paid state worker, right?
Not exactly.
It turns out that at least 119 state employees – including dozens of psychiatrists, physicians and state pension investors – grossed more last year than the states CEO.
Incomes of graduates of Wisconsin technical colleges grew substantially over the past five years, according to a survey of those who graduated in the 2001-02 school year.
Annual median salaries of those responding to the survey grew by 48 percent over a five-year period, to nearly $40,000. The Consumer Price Index rose by 16 percent in the same period.
The study by the Wisconsin Technical College System also found that three-fourths of the graduates who responded were working in their fields of training.
If you felt a little shook up early this morning, you were not alone.
An earthquake, estimated at a magnitude of 5.2 and centered in southeastern Illinois, shook much of the Midwest just before 4:37 a.m. The tremors were felt in Madison, and as far away as Ontario, Canada.
Quoted: Clifford Thurber, UW-Madison professor of geophysics
DE PERE â?? For PaHoua Moua, it means studying education at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. For Brigitta Hammond, it’s pursuing a degree from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
The Wisconsin Covenant means something a little different to each of the 120 or so eighth-graders who gathered Thursday at St. Norbert College.
But the message for each is the same, Gov. Jim Doyle told the assembled students. “You can get to college,” he said, “and here is a clear path to do it.”
The testing of some of the most potentially dangerous substances is being done in outdated and overcrowded state labs, the State Building Commission was told Wednesday.
In response, the commission approved $1.18 million to plan a $58 million facility that, starting in 2012, could house both the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene and the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection laboratories.
The state hygiene lab, built in 1953, has a heating and ventilation system that has never been upgraded and remains in imminent danger of failing, according to information supplied to the commission. Wide temperature swings result from the inadequate system, and affect the integrity of the samples in the lab tests.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced Tuesday a plan to increase the protection of residentsâ?? personal information stored by government agencies.
The family of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann has established a scholarship in her name and is conducting a fund drive to raise money for the scholarship.
“Dollars for Brittany” is the fund drive, coordinated through the Marshfield Medical Center Credit Union.
Julie Foley, manager of the crime response program in the Dane County District Attorney’s Office, is spearheading efforts here for the fund drive in Zimmermann’s name.
“This scholarship will give the opportunity to a student who has as much drive as Brittany and who has the financial need,” Foley said today.
WHITEWATER, Wis. — A boiler apparently exploded on Wednesday afternoon in the heating building on the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus, according to a campus police employee. The explosion took place at about 12:15 p.m. in the building, which is located near North Prairie Street and Esker Dining Hall.
The force of the explosion blew out windows in the building. The explosion apparently shook buildings in the area.
There are no confirmed reports of injuries, according to the campus police employee.
(This is the full story as of 1:25 p.m.)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Jim Doyle wants all state agencies to stop using Social Security numbers as soon as possible to improve the protection of private information.
Doyle also called for a new training program for state workers, appointment of privacy officers in every agency and annual risk assessments. He was responding Tuesday to a new analysis of the state’s privacy protection efforts done by Milwaukee-based Metavante, Inc.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Jim Doyle called on Madison-area eighth-graders on Monday to sign the Wisconsin Covenant and ensure a spot for themselves in a state college or university.
Doyle spoke about the Covenant project, a program that he nurtured into existence in 2007, at its ceremonial kickoff held at the Red Gym on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Last year, 17,000 students joined the program, representing all 72 Wisconsin counties, WISC-TV reported.
The Governor says time is running out for lawmakers to reach a compromise on a budget repair bill.
Legislative leaders have been holding closed door meetings to discuss how to plug a $527 million budget hole. Governor Jim Doyle says they need to reach a deal soon. Even though he doesn’t want to set an “absolute deadline,” Doyle says an agreement should be reached within the next eight to ten days.
‘”Jeopardy!” is a polished, crafted piece of Americana, from the men and women’s powdered faces to the set’s elaborate plaster trappings of academia to the crowd’s exuberant applause.
And this year’s filming of the “Jeopardy! College Championship” was no different. Over 120 “Jeopardy!” crew and tons of equipment traveled to Madison for two days of filming five shows that would decide the winner of intellectual bragging rights and a $100,000 prize.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s own Suchita Shah and Danielle Zsenak of Marquette University were competing Friday and today among a group of 15 peers. Media were asked not to divulge who did and did not advance in the five segments.
Jon C. Pevehouse had not even finished his first year as a tenure-track professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2001 when other universities began trying to lure him away. By last year, Mr. Pevehouse decided it was time to consider the offers seriously. He quickly ended up more than doubling his salary, with a move to the University of Chicago.
Mr. Pevehouse was considered an up-and-comer, and his departure last spring was a blow to Madison’s political-science department. But he wasn’t alone: In all, nine political scientists, more than a fifth of the department, left Madison last year.
“It was a body blow,” says Donald A. Downs, a longtime professor of political science there. “People worry about holding down the fort.”
The University of Wisconsin System has met the majority of its benchmarks but has fallen short of its goal to increase the number of students served by multicultural and disadvantaged pre-college programs, according to a report reviewed Friday by the Board of Regents.
It’s an answer-and-question game that sometimes seemingly takes a genius to win. But when it comes to explaining the success of “Jeopardy!”, well, that’s a no-brainer.
“It’s the simplicity of the format,” says Executive Producer Harry Friedman. “It’s a really solid quiz show that some days will challenge you because you are asked for information you don’t know, and then other days you will find information you do know and then can feel pretty good about yourself.”
For the next two days in Madison, it will be college students who might end up feeling pretty good about themselves. “The 2008 Jeopardy! College Championship” will be taped at the Kohl Center today and Saturday for shows that will begin to air on May 5. The University of Wisconsin will be represented by Suchita Shah, a senior majoring in neurobiology.
The choice of the UW wasn’t tough, Friedman said.
“It’s a great, classic campus, and we like everything about Wisconsin and what it represents,” he said.
Friedman knows this firsthand. His wife, Judy, is from Fond du Lac, and his father-in-law, Nate Manis, was on the UW Athletic Board from 1971 to 1975.
The University of Wisconsin System plans to embark on a private fundraising campaign to provide need-based money for college tuition, following a recent wave of private financial aid gifts in Wisconsin.
The System awards about $6 million a year in privately funded financial aid for low-and-moderate income students, said Kevin Reilly, system president.
While Wall Street investors are frantically dumping their nose-diving stocks and panicky homeowners are watching house values plummet, some experts say most Wisconsin residents can take a deep breath and relax.
The state of Wisconsin restructured almost $1 billion in pension bonds this month, to reduce interest rates that spiked because of turmoil in the financial markets.
Frank Hoadley, capital finance director for the state, said the $948 million worth of variable rate bonds were sold in December 2003 to fund half of a $1.8 billion unfunded liability for prior service.
The other half was fixed rate bonds.
The money actually is a small piece of the total pension picture for the $88 billion Wisconsin Retirement System, which includes employees and retirees of the state and numerous local governments.
Wisconsin’s rich keep getting richer much faster than poor and middle-income households, according to reports released today.
And while the gap between the rich and poor isn’t as wide in Wisconsin as in the country overall, the disparity is growing, according to the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families, both based in Madison.
Lawmakers looking to close a gaping hole in the state budget shouldn’t look to the University of Wisconsin’s growth agenda. UW-Milwaukee could be hit particularly hard.
UWM won a $9.6 million boost in the previous state budget, and the school plans to build a new engineering campus and research park. UWM is in negotiations with Milwaukee County to purchase 83 acres at the County Grounds in Wauwatosa and has begun interviewing faculty. Chancellor Carlos Santiago, who has made boosting the research profile of UWM Job 1 since he was hired four years ago, has persuaded philanthropist Michael Cudahy to donate the money to buy the county land.
About 50 years after Charles Van Hise came up with the Wisconsin Idea, the concept got a roof in Madison, physically and figuratively.
Van Hise, while president of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1904, expressed his belief that education should extend beyond the traditional classroom setting. The opening of the Wisconsin Center for Adult Education in 1958 gave adult learners a specific space to congregate for that purpose. It would be the first of the three UW Extension Conference Centers in Madison.
The UW System Board of Regents and invited guests on Thursday will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first facility (now the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St.) with a reception that will feature the products of six that have utilized UW Extension services.
Lawmakers looking to close a gaping hole in the state budget shouldn’t look to the University of Wisconsin’s growth agenda. UW-Milwaukee could be hit particularly hard.
UWM won a $9.6 million boost in the previous state budget, and the school plans to build a new engineering campus and research park. UWM is in negotiations with Milwaukee County to purchase 83 acres at the County Grounds in Wauwatosa and has begun interviewing faculty. Chancellor Carlos Santiago, who has made boosting the research profile of UWM Job 1 since he was hired four years ago, has persuaded philanthropist Michael Cudahy to donate the money to buy the county land.
Black children in Wisconsin had the lowest average score in the nation on the latest student achievement tests, which also showed a growing gap between black and white students here.
The housing market remains very slow throughout southern Wisconsin, with some areas starting to show some significant price drops.
Quoted: UW-Madison real estate professor Morris Davis
Amy Johnson is a film festival junkie with tickets to 16 shows over four days.
“I like movies,” Johnson shrugged, standing in the Orpheum Theatre on Thursday night for the opening of the Wisconsin Film Festival, where she was buying a festival sweatshirt. She opened her day planner, which was jam-packed with movie titles, times and venues.
Tope Awe said she thought her interview at the Department of Homeland Security office in Milwaukee last week was dragging on a bit too long. And then, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student recalled, in came the plastic bags.
“As soon as I saw the plastic bags, I realized what was happening,” Awe recalled in an interview. Immigration agents suddenly entered the interview room carrying the bags to collect personal belongings from her and her brother, Benga Awe. “I don’t even know how to describe it. I had no idea what to do,” said the 22-year-old Pharmacy School student, who remembered breaking down in tears.
On Thursday, Awe was back at school, trying to catch up on her missed classes after being released two days earlier from the Dodge County Jail, where she and her brother were detained on an immigration hold.
Police are stepping up downtown patrols today after what may be the second random killing in the city this year — a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student found dead Wednesday in her campus-area apartment.
“We’ve not determined who a suspect might be at this time, and we cannot rule out that this was a random act,” Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said. “That is why we’ve placed additional resources in the neighborhood.”
UW police also have increased the number of officers on the street in the wake of the death of Brittany Sue Zimmermann.
Wisconsin agencies received a record $9.6 billion in funding from the federal government in fiscal year 2007, and though they had some accounting problems, the University of Wisconsin System received $1.3 billion.
This won’t come as a surprise to the unemployed, under-employed or otherwise underpaid citizens of Wisconsin. But the state is falling even further behind the national averages in income, creating jobs and launching new private sector businesses, according to a report released Monday.
Wisconsin’s per capita income — one key measure of a state’s relative economic health — now stands at $34,476 compared to $36,629 for the nation as a whole. That puts the state 5.9% below the national average, the lowest ranking since 1991 when incomes here lagged the nation by 6.7%.
….These sobering figures come not from a left-leaning UW think tank but rather via the annual report of Competitive Wisconsin Inc., a nonpartisan consortium of agriculture, business, education and labor leaders.
In a new partnership unveiled Friday, Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton and State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster plan to spearhead a statewide task force that puts increased emphasis on arts education in Wisconsin schools.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race has attracted the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which admonishes Justice Louis Butler and other court members for making the state an unfriendly environment for business, potentially depressing business activity and discouraging investment in the state.
Over the years that I have studied the patterns and effects of civil litigation, I have never encountered any direct evidence of this, nor evidence that actual Wisconsin businesspeople (as opposed to their lobbyist spokesmen) are despairing about the state’s civil justice system.
(Marc Galanter is a professor emeritus at the UW Law School)
â?¢ Ashley Huibregtse, Plymouth, a senior elementary education and communications major at UW-Madison. She is a member of the UW Association of Women in Agriculture and Badger Dairy Club. She has worked as an event coordinator for first lady Jessica Doyle and served as a “cowstodian” with the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board cow parade. She continues to work on her family’s dairy farm in addition to being a student.
One of my favorite people of all time, longtime Menominee Indian leader and Wisconsin political activist Ada Deer, stopped by the office the other day just to say “hi” and bring me up to date on what she’s up to these days.
Ada, the first member of the Menominee Nation to graduate from the UW-Madison, officially “retired” last year frher job as director of American Indian studies at her alma mater, a job she assumed after serving in Bill Clinton’s administration as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
….She’s now 72, but hasn’t slowed down a bit. In fact, she’s taken up a new cause: Wisconsin’s overburdened prison system, which is consuming so much of the state’s resources.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced Thursday two new appointees to the UW System Board of Regents.
Betty Womack and John Drew were named by the governor to fill two vacant positions on the Board. Womack will begin her term immediately and Drew will begin his appointment June 1.
Gov. Jim Doyle appointed two new members to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents Thursday.
A new task force will examine and advocate plans for the increasingly crucial role of the arts in education and the economy in the 21st century.
Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster announced the formation of the Task Force on Arts and Creativity in Education at a joint press conference today at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
The task force will recommend policies and legislation about the role of the arts in providing a quality education for Wisconsin students. The task force will include arts, education, business, government and community leaders from across the state, and will address how Wisconsin might gain a competitive edge in the 21st century global economy by developing talent for innovation.
Gov. Jim Doyle is appointing a union official and an assistant schools superintendent to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Thursday announced two new appointments to the University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents.
A driver high on cocaine and cognac when she smashed into a car and killed popular UW-Whitewater Professor Paula Poorman last summer was sentenced today to four years in prison to be followed by 10 years of extended supervision.
….At a hearing on Young’s sentencing today, several of Poorman’s relatives told Flanagan of the devastating effect her death has had, not only on them but on the students and colleagues in the UW-Whitewater psychology department, where she worked for 11 years. She had been named a full professor just months before her tragic death.
Michael Neiduski, Marquette University campus leader of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, says the nationwide group was founded after what he refers to as “4/16” the day of the Virginia Tech massacre. He says the organization believes in going through the proper legal channels in obtaining a concealed carry permit to carry a firearm. He’s calling for the “right” for students to exercise their same license on college campuses.
While fewer total high school students will be graduating over the next few years nationwide, a greater percentage of the graduates than ever before will be minority students, according to a study released this month.
Asked what he thinks about calling in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to deal with anti-war protesters, Sen. Russ Feingold says it shouldn’t happen.
“I think that public protest is one of the greatest things that happens in this country,” he told a UW-Madison audience of more than 400 Monday night. “And there should be a lot more of it against this Iraq war.”
The Governor says he wants to avoid drawing “lines in the sand” over fixing the state’s $527 million budget shortfall.
The state Senate will vote on their budget repair bill today, although the measure is expected to end up in a conference committee because of differences with the Assembly version of the bill. The Assembly passed their own budget repair measure before adjourning for the session earlier this month. Governor Jim Doyle says the two sides need to reconcile their differences quickly.
The filming of “Public Enemies” in Wisconsin has our attention because of the star power — leading actor Johnny Depp — but we also have a thick streak of independent movies coming through here.
Expect these choices to widen. The Milwaukee-based Marcus Corp. recently promised to show Wisconsin-made films on more than 600 of its screens. That means automatic distribution in six states, says Scott Robbe, executive director of the nonprofit Film Wisconsin, which works to reel in movie production.
“It will be a great help to independent filmmakers, who will be able to say ‘and I have guaranteed distribution’ of the finished product” as a producer or financing is sought, Robbe says.
In 2003, 23% of loggers surveyed in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula said they did not expect to be in the business in five years, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University.
“Today, there’s definitely less loggers,” said Thomas W. Steele, an associate scientist at UW-Madison and one of the authors of the study.
The Senate Democrats’ plan for solving Wisconsin’s budget shortfall includes a tax on hospitals and the closing of tax loopholes used by corporations.
It also would authorize a car rental tax increase to pay for a three-county rail line.
Republicans, who control the state Assembly, oppose all three ideas. And Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has included only the hospital tax in his plan to plug a $527 million shortfall.
The stage appears set for a battle over budget repair. State Senate Democrats vote next week on their budget repair bill — and that might mean a summer of haggling with Assembly Republicans. “I’m going to do everything possible to prevent that,” says Monona Democrat Mark Miller. Miller chairs the Senate finance committee, which passed the plan Thursday on a 6-2 vote. “The budget repair proposal . . . takes elements of the governor’s proposal, takes elements of the Assembly proposal, and it’s a clear demonstration that we’re commited to a fair and responsible response to the budget shortfall.”
The Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds is one of a group of employee benefit trust funds collaborating to push the adoption of innovations aimed at improving health care quality and lowering costs.
“We’re going to be exploring best practices,” said Tom Korpady, division of insurance services administrator for ETF, which administers retirement and other benefit programs for more than 540,000 Wisconsin Retirement System participants and 1,400 employers.
Korpady added that many things are on the table, “but it’s premature to say exactly what we’re doing,” as the group is just beginning its work.
LA CROSSE — An anti-abortion group is criticizing three college newspapers that refused to run its advertisement that warns students going on spring break about using emergency contraceptives that the ad says can have “deadly” consequences.
Newspapers at 10 other campuses accepted the ad, said Virginia Zignego, a spokeswoman for Brookfield-based Pro-Life Wisconsin, which contends any artificial action that destroys a fertilized egg is akin to abortion.
The Badger Herald on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus ran the ad, according to the Wisconsin State Journal, but the editor of the university’s other student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, told the State Journal that she was unaware of the ad until she saw it in the Herald.
Whether it’s called a hospital tax, assessment or fee, the idea makes good fiscal sense, which is why no one should be terribly surprised to see that support for the idea is gathering momentum among businesspeople in Wisconsin.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Howard Schweber.
By RYAN J. FOLEY
Associated Press Writer
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — James Sturtz is not your ordinary college student struggling to pay tuition.
The 48-year-old rapist is one of Iowa’s most dangerous sex offenders, locked up in a state-run treatment center for fear he will attack again if released. Yet he has received thousands of dollars in federal aid to take college courses through the mail.
Across the nation, dozens of sexual predators have been taking higher education classes at taxpayer expense while confined by the courts to treatment centers. Critics say they are exploiting a loophole to receive Pell Grants, the nation’s premier financial aid program for low-income students.
Flanked by two survivors of sexual assault, one with tears welling in her eyes, Gov. Jim Doyle signed a long awaited bill Thursday that requires hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims.
“This is one bill I’ve been working to get on my desk for a long, long time,” Doyle said.
Competing proposals to fix the broken state budget agree on few principles besides this one — the prospect of more pain for state workers who do everything from guard prisons to process citizen benefits and teach college courses.
Health care reform will have to wait.
So will a statewide smoking ban and a deal to protect Great Lakes water.
Numerous economic development proposals, requiring insurance companies to cover autism, campaign finance reform and solving the state’s $527 million budget gap also have been pushed off, although the budget repair bill is the subject of a continuing special session.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday Madison will play host to the World Stem Cell Summit this September at the Alliant Energy Center. The event will be coordinated by UW-Madison research organizations.
Hundreds of leading researchers, policy advocates and investors will gather in Madison this September for the World Stem Cell Summit, Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday.
