The opening salvos have been volleyed. The snipers are poised in the masts, and the grappling hooks are at the ready.
No, not Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar. We’re talking about Gov. Jim Doyle, the Legislature’s Democrats and Republicans and the potential for open warfare anew as all parties dive back into the state budget to take care of a projected $650 million shortfall.
MADISON â?? Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker is defending his decision to delay a bill that would increase financial aid at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Decker spokeswoman Carrie Lynch says the plan to transfer about $600,000 to use for financial aid must be reviewed by the Joint Finance Committee like other spending bills.
She denied that politics were behind the delay as some have suggested. She added that the measure could still pass.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) The state Assembly has voted to outlaw stalking people with Global Positioning System devices.
The chamber passed a bill that would make putting a GPS device on someone else’s car a felony punishable by up to three years and six months in prison and $10,000 in fines.
The Assembly passed the measure on a voice vote Tuesday night. It goes to the state Senate.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison suspended an employee in February for stalking his wife by secretly installing a GPS unit on his car.
There finally may be some light at the end of the tunnel for Charter Communications and the Big Ten Network. But if there is, it’s still dim, said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who closely follows cable issues.
BTN appears poised to land a carriage deal with Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal reported Monday.
….Such a deal could provide a framework for a deal between BTN and Charter and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two major cable providers, Orton said.
MADISON â?? Gov. Jim Doyle released his plan for solving the stateâ??s $527 million budget shortfall on Monday, but without agreement from the Democrats who control the state Senate or the Republican majority in the Assembly, its prospects are dim.
Doyleâ??s plan relies on a hospital tax that Republicans blocked last year, a transfer from the stateâ??s transportation fund and a variety of other cuts. Layoffs and dramatic reductions in state services would not be necessary, Doyle said.
Gov. Jim Doyle offered a $527 million package Monday to repair the state budget by cutting or delaying programs, as well as taxing hospitals and transferring $243 million from the state’s transportation fund.
One lawmakerâ??s refusal to move forward a bill that would provide University of Wisconsin faculty with collective bargaining rights drew complaints from a group representing educators statewide late last week.
University Research Park in Madison announced Friday that it has published “The First Fifteen Years: 1984-1999” a retrospective about the award-winning research park.
The non-profit research and technology park was established in 1984 and now is home to more than 114 companies that employ more than 4,000 people. Many of the companies are the result of research done at UW-Madison. It contributes more than $680 million each year to the state’s economy.
WASHINGTON — Colleges and universities are anxiously taking steps to address a projected drop in the number of high school graduates in much of the nation starting next year and a dramatic change in the racial and ethnic makeup of the student population.
In Wisconsin, the number of high school graduates is at a peak of 67,283 this year and is projected to drop by 8 percent by 2018, according to the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education. The high school graduating class of 2018 also will be more racially diverse — down from 88 percent white to 78 percent, fueled almost entirely by rapid growth in the number of Hispanic students, UW-Madison officials said in interviews.
HAYWARD, Calif. â?? California State University, East Bay, has never had the cachet of nearby Berkeley. But it has a great location overlooking the San Francisco Bay and aspires to raise its profile and grow.
Mohammad H. Qayoumi, president of California State University, East Bay, sees the university as a microcosm of the world.
So starting this year it is trying something different to lure applicants: participating in a regional program resulting in lower tuition for students from Washington, Oregon, Montana and a dozen other Western states.
In some states, cuts in tuition for out-of-state students have led to political battles. After the University of Wisconsin system in 2006 reduced out-of-state tuition by an average of nearly $2,000 at all its campuses except the Madison flagship â?? a move that followed years of tuition increases â?? the issue became a hot topic in the governorâ??s race. The debate still percolates.
The head of the state’s 13 two-year colleges told the UW System Board of Regents Thursday that those institutions should be able to provide a type of bachelor’s degree for place-bound or under-served students.
The University of Wisconsin Colleges are open admissions institutions that provide an access point for higher education for much of the state, said David Wilson, chancellor of the UW Colleges and UW-Extension.
But the colleges could do more to help fill the state’s needs for college graduates to build Wisconsin’s economy, he said.
MADISON â?? University of Wisconsin System officials are considering the merits of charging students from well-off families higher tuition to subsidize their lower-income peers.
The Board of Regents debated the issue Thursday as part of a wide-ranging discussion on tuition and financial aid.
An advisory group recommended Thursday that the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents consider new ways to increase tuition revenue at a time when less of the systems funding comes from the state.
According to Wisconsin voters, the war in Iraq is not the top issue on their minds.
However, as the nation approaches the five-year anniversary of the war on March 19, Wisconsin officials and political observers have said it continues to affect the state, even if often indirectly.
The Wisconsin Legislature will meet in a special session next week to repair a budget that has come up short more than $427 million between this year and next.
The phrase “something for everyone” is horrendously overused, but how else can you describe the lineup for the 10th annual Wisconsin Film Festival? How else can you describe a festival that includes a documentary on old Apple Macintoshes, another documentary on Madison urbanites who raise chickens and “Planet of the Apes”?
Those are just three of the 220 films scheduled for this year’s festival, which will run Thursday, April 3, through Sunday, April 6, at 11 screens downtown and on campus, including the Majestic Theatre and Chazen Museum of Art.
Jolene Anderson has an aw-shucks, nothing-fazes-me attitude and probably always will.
When she learned Port Wing officials want to erect a sign proclaiming the village — located along the south shore of Lake Superior, with a population of 481 — as the “home of Jolene Anderson,” the all-time leading scorer in University of Wisconsin basketball history simply smiled and tucked away the information.
When the All-Big Ten Conference awards were announced live on the Big Ten Network, she didn’t tune in, but received news about her media Player of the Year honor in a telephone call from her mother Julie.
UW-Milwaukee senior Amanda Maslowski was one of about 80 undergraduates from throughout the University of Wisconsin System who came to the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday to share the findings of their research at the annual Posters in the Rotunda, an event designed to spread the word about student work to alumni, legislators and other state leaders.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The state Assembly has approved a bill that would block financial aid for college students convicted of drug crimes.
The bill would change state law to mirror restrictions on federal financial aid for those who are convicted of manufacturing, distributing or delivering controlled substances.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Jim Doyle has called a special legislative session next week for lawmakers to deal with a projected $350 million budget shortfall.
Doyle is calling for lawmakers to take up the budget starting on March 13. Doyle has not yet introduced his plan for dealing with the shortfall. Spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner said the governor expects to introduce his bill early next week.
LAKE GENEVA — Stem cell researcher Jamie Thomson, conservationist Aldo Leopold, flamboyant Liberace. Visionary architecture, below-zero tailgating, cheese curds that squeak. House on the Rock, Taliesin, Harley.
Wisconsin is a place where you can feel free to be yourself and express yourself. This is the conclusion of a five-month branding project undertaken by the state Department of Tourism and announced Tuesday night by Gov. Jim Doyle at the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism.
Students voiced their concerns Tuesday at a forum hosted by the Offices of the Dean of Students with proposed changes to state laws addressing student conduct.
The Wisconsin Capitol building will once again find itself full of young researchers today eager to present their findings to state leaders.
Regarding the Wisconsin brand, Kelli Trumble pointed to examples of original thinkers like the employees at Harley-Davidson motorcycles, the late architect Frank Lloyd Wright, cheesemaker Sid Cook at Carr Valley Cheese, stem-cell researcher James Thomson at UW-Madison and environmentalist Aldo Leopold.
Despite rising costs at colleges across the country, a weak national economy and the imminent Wisconsin state budget shortfall, UW-Madison officials said most students will not see an impact on their student loans.
A new proposal in the state Assembly would require all cheese served in University of Wisconsin System campuses to come exclusively from Wisconsin cheese manufacturers.
Juniors Joe Dillenburg and Zach Jones both began attending the University of Wisconsin after serving in the U.S. Army. While Dillenburg fought in Iraq and Jones served in Afghanistan, they both have dealt with physical and mental health problems resulting from their deployments.
Coaches and media from the Big Ten Conference have heaped awards upon Jolene Anderson since the standout joined the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team as a rookie during the 2004-05 season.
As the Port Wing native’s collegiate career winds down, the accolades keep coming her way.
Anderson, who led the Big Ten in scoring for a second straight season, was selected Big Ten Player of the Year Monday night by a 22-member media panel. She is the first Badgers women’s player to earn the honor.
MADISON, Wis. — The affordability of a state university education is on the agenda of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents this week.
System spokesman David Giroux said that the good news is that the university is reasonably affordable, but he said that the bad news is that is doesn’t offer much financial aid
The UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine will receive a $2.5 million tomotherapy center, due to a bill that passed the state Legislature Thursday.
WASHINGTON — Many college students across the nation will begin to see higher costs for loans this spring, while others will be turned away by banks altogether as the credit crisis roiling the U.S. economy spreads into yet another sector, student lenders and Wall Street firms say.
But most students in Wisconsin won’t feel a thing, university and finance officials said today in interviews.
….The situation in Wisconsin is much better than in many other states, so student loans will not be much of a problem here, according to UW-Madison and Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corp. officials.
Susan Fischer, director of student financial services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said today that just 200 students out of about 17,000 who have loans have lenders who will no longer lend.
The state Senate voted in favor of allowing the University of Wisconsin to construct an addition to the School of Veterinary Medicine late last week.
The University of Wisconsin System is looking at a variety of tuition options as a way to increase access to college while also gaining more revenue if state budgets slide.
An advisory committee will recommend to the Board of Regents on Thursday that it consider tuition stratification — charging more for institutions in high demand — and differential tuition — charging more for more expensive programs such as engineering, which is already being done to some extent.
The UW System also already uses tuition stratification to some extent, charging higher tuition for UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee than for other four-year universities and charging less for the two-year UW colleges than the four-year institutions.
Students new to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse next fall will see a $500 tuition increase, but how much extra financial aid they will get depends on what happens in Madison in the next two weeks.
State government needs further study to determine whether 26 maintenance projects at state-run power plants violated federal clean air rules, according to documents made public Friday.
State employees will review whether the projects at 13 coal-fired power plants dating back to 1995 complied with the Clean Air Act. The act requires plants to install modern pollution controls when they undergo major renovations.
MADISON, Wis. â?? The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents should consider raising tuition at high-demand schools and continue a trend of charging more to fund specific programs, according to a report released Friday.
Those options would increase tuition revenue and help the system sustain its goals to educate more students in coming years, the report from a task force concludes.
The UW-System has invited public comment on changes it recommended to rules regarding student conduct, including conduct on university property. The rules are contained in chapters 17 and 18 of the administrative code.
The chapters in question involve what the university can do with a student who is repeatedly in trouble off-campus.
David Giroux, spokesman for the System, said this administrative code has the force of law within the university systems. He said that while it lays out the process for disciplinary problems, it never included a “scope” for these rules cover, which is why they needed to make clarifications.
Countering a poll paid for by the cable industry, an NFL Network-affiliated group has paid for a survey that produced very different results on topics that include a legislative proposal that would create a neutral arbitration process to settle disputes between cable providers and channels such as NFL Network.
The survey of 500 likely Wisconsin voters shows that 65.8 percent of the respondents support and 21.8 percent oppose state legislation creating a neutral arbitration system that could be used to resolve the current programming dispute between cable companies and independent channels like the NFL Network.
Quoted: UW-Madison telecommunications professor Barry Orton
UW-Madison medical students lobbied at the state Capitol Wednesday, attempting to gain support for the Healthy Wisconsin legislation. Thirty-five medical students wearing white lab coats held signs supporting the universal health care proposal and lobbied legislators from their home districts.
After years of conservative opposition and, more recently, months of procedural delay, a bill that requires hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims finally passed the state Legislature today. Gov. Jim Doyle has said he would sign the bill.
Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, praised the bill’s passage in a news release after the final vote in the state Senate.
“It was a long and sometimes rocky road getting here, but I am pleased that the Assembly leadership ultimately permitted a vote on this bill,” she said. “The broad bipartisan support it received in both houses shows this is not a partisan matter. It is not a political matter. It is a matter of humanity and compassion.”
State legislators announced Wednesday the characteristics they want to see in the next chancellor of the University of Wisconsin â?? from sound economic skills to quality leadership skills.
University of Wisconsin medical students sounded off in favor of universal health care at the state Capitol Wednesday, voicing their opinions to legislators face-to-face.
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Women’s Foundation is releasing a first-of-its-kind report on Thursday that targets health concerns for women in Wisconsin.
The report targets more than 10 pressing issues related to women’s health. Dr. Teri Woods, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, examined the results.
“I think if we look at areas of tobacco-use, alcohol, obesity, and if we look at sedentary nature of Wisconsin women we can go a long, long way in helping ourselves be strong and healthy,” Woods said.
Dear Editor: What do we want our young people to be able to do once they graduate from college?
If you ask this question to the average parent, they’ll probably say that they want their child to be able to find work in a meaningful career.
But if you were to probe further, they would also agree that a good education would prepare their child for leading a fulfilling life. To that end, no matter what students major in, they should leave our institutions being able to think critically and creatively and to participate as active citizens in their communities.
MILWAUKEE â?? Adults who have some college credits but never finished four-year degrees could earn their diplomas at one of the stateâ??s 13 two-year colleges, under a proposal being developed by University of Wisconsin System officials.
The proposal is part of a growing focus on boosting per-capita income in a job market where recruiters increasingly demand bachelorâ??s degrees.
David Wilson, chancellor of the UW Colleges and UW Extension, expects to submit the proposal at the March meeting of the Board of Regents. Under the plan, the two-year colleges would expand their mission by granting their own four-year degree to a targeted group of adult students.
Reading the first installment of the groundbreaking study on Milwaukee’s school voucher program is like reading the table of contents of a mystery: There are intriguing story lines but no way to know how the story will end. (One of the researchers was UW-Madison professor John Witte).
Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday said Wisconsin will need to brace for another round of fiscal belt-tightening as the national economic slowdown has ripped a hole in the state’s budget.
Faced with a lackluster number of college-educated adults in the state, University of Wisconsin System officials have their eyes on what they say is an under-served market: adults who have some college credits but never finished four-year degrees.
New tax credits have lured Universal Pictures to Wisconsin to film a Johnny Depp film about John Dillinger, Gov. Jim Doyle announced today.
Universal Pictures would spend about $20 million in Wisconsin on “Public Enemies,” garnering about $3.9 million in tax credits, according to the governor. The film stars Depp and Christian Bale and this week’s Best Actress Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard.
The film is being produced and directed by Michael Mann, a University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus.
The first time Dr. Munci Kalayoglu scrubbed and went into the operating room, his realization that he really wanted to be a surgeon was confirmed. But that wasn’t always the case.
Earlier in life he planned to be an architect, but he couldn’t pass the engineering school exam in Turkey, where he was born and raised. So he switched gears, setting his sights on medical school. He passed the medical exam with flying colors.
Instead of focusing on building designs, Kalayoglu (kuh-LIE-uh-loo) has saved more than 1,400 lives as a liver transplant surgeon at University Hospital.
….Kalayoglu’s story is among those told by veteran medical journalist Stephen Busalacchi in his new book “White Coat Wisdom,” described on the cover as a book in which “extraordinary doctors talk about what they do, how they got there and why medicine is so much more than a job.”
MADISON – Gov. Jim Doyle today announced that portions of the upcoming film “Public Enemies” will be shot in Wisconsin. The movie will be directed and produced by UW alumnus Michael Mann and will star Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.
Universal Pictures reached agreement today with the Wisconsin Department of Commerce on tax credits from the new Film Production Services Tax Credit Program.
A bill that would expand the state’s oversight of for-profit colleges and universities is on a fast track after a long stalemate.
A “modernization” bill proposed by the Educational Approval Board was almost derailed by opposition from the Department of Public Instruction, which feared that the board would infringe on approval of teacher education programs or cause confusion and unnecessary expense for those seeking a teacher’s license.
But after months of stalemate, the board and DPI reached a compromise that protects the exclusive right of the state superintendent of public instruction to approve programs and schools that lead to licensure of teachers or provide professional development for them. The Colleges and Universities Committee in the Assembly is expected to approve the bill this afternoon.
The study was conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project, part of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The main researchers included John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who conducted studies of the Milwaukee voucher program from 1990 to 1995, before the Legislature dropped the requirement for such studies.
One of the enduring legacies Chancellor John Wiley will leave when he steps down in September is the increased non-state funding he has procured for our university. Our endowment has skyrocketed; over the Wiley years, we have joined an elite group of universities with endowments above $1 billion.
UW women’s basketball: Anderson gets third POW honor
Jolene Anderson netted her third Big Ten Conference Player of the Week honor of the season Monday after leading the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team to three victories in a six-day span.
The leadership of the UW-Madison Faculty Senate is proposing a campaign to raise as much as $1 million for need-based scholarships for students as a way of resolving concerns about lack of access to the university for low-income residents.
The senate — the governance body of the university faculty — will vote on March 3 on a resolution that would launch a campaign to provide and raise funds for such scholarships.
The University of Wisconsin Foundation would match contributions to the initiative.
Rich in intellectual capital but saddled with attitudes that get in the way of leveraging it, Wisconsin needs to change its culture. So says G. Steven Burrill, the chief executive officer at Burrill & Co., a San Francisco venture capital firm whose funds invest nearly $1 billion in life sciences companies.
Burrill says he isn’t buying the state’s standard argument – that it lacks the kind of capital available on the coasts to fund new companies.
“There is more than enough capital in the world to do all the things that need to happen here, you just need to go get it,” said Burrill, who sponsors an annual business plan competition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If you had thousands of great business plans on every street corner in Madison, all the capital in the world would get pretty tired of flying here and they’d set up shop here.”
Burrill & Co. would invest its funds’ entire $1 billion in Wisconsin companies if the opportunities were there, said Burrill, a Madison native who went to UW-Madison and has a vacation home in the state.
Influenza has hit the UW-Madison campus hard this month, and the illness is strengthening statewide.
The number of cases on campus doubled from the weekend ending Feb. 1 to the week of Feb. 11-15, when there were 40 student visits to University Health Services with flu symptoms.
“Flu season on campus has begun,” said UHS epidemiologist Craig Roberts. “We believe that cases will continue to rise.”
Students, faculty and staff are being encouraged to prevent further spread of flu by washing their hands frequently, using soap and water or alcohol-based gel; getting sufficient sleep, exercise and nutrition; covering coughs and sneezes; and staying home if they are sick.
On Thursday night, the state held a town hall meeting to get public input on a study to evaluate the future of public power plants.
One of the most visible plants is on the UW campus. The Charter Street Coal Plant has been a fixture on campus since 1957. It burns coal to produce steam to heat 300 campus buildings in underground tunnels.
UW and state officials are trying to find more eco-friendly ways to heat and cool state buildings.
Thursday night, they asked the public for help.
The town hall meeting is just the beginning of a $1.2-million study on ways to modernize state-owned power plants.
