Category: State news

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley defended the practice of providing top university executives with back up positions, in the event of a demotion, resignation or firing.

“Those people need some place to return to, they also have mortgages,” said Wiley. “You can’t get anyone to take a job like that if they don’t have a job to return to, if they are suddenly terminated.”

The joint committee on employment relations signed off on contracts for UW faculty and staff…as well as some non-represented state employees. UW Library Sciences professor Louise Robbins told lawmakers they would only be able to “tread water.”

O’Neil Walker is one of a small number of black students at Middlebury College in Vermont. He was scheduled to graduate this summer, but was suspended after Middlebury said he violated the school’s behavior code. Nina Keck reports.

Gov. Jim Doyle will use his veto pen to restore $43 million of funding he proposed for the University of Wisconsin System and student financial aid after Republican lawmakers reduced both in the budget they approved this month.
Doyle on Tuesday also pledged to eliminate a requirement for nonunion state employees – including university faculty members and staff – to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their pensions.

A Republican legislator wants to create a law to ban schools in the University of Wisconsin System from giving administrators paid leave and backup jobs when they resign.

Rep. Rob Kreibich, R-Eau Claire, the head of the Assembly’s colleges and universities committee, said the leaves aren’t appropriate at a time when state funding is tight and the university system is complaining of being shortchanged by the Legislature.

About 20,000 members of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have ratified contracts for the two-year budget period that ended last month.

The four WSEU contracts cover workers in administrative support, blue collar and non-building trades, security, public safety and technical work. Seven other bargaining units in other unions representing 4,500 workers – including UW teaching assistants, engineers, public defenders, state attorneys, research professionals and others – have not settled their contracts.

Quoted: John Stier, turf expert at the UW-Madison’s O.J. Noer Center for Turfgrass Research.

The head of the Assembly’s higher education committee said he is drafting a bill that would ban schools in the University of Wisconsin System from granting administrators paid leave after they resign and from guaranteeing them backup jobs.

By Ryan J. Foley
Associated Press

The American Civil Liberties Union and the state’s attorney general are making similar legal arguments in asking a judge to turn down the Legislature’s request to intervene in a major gay rights case.

They are on different sides of the dispute, but both agree the Legislature has no legal grounds to fight the lawsuit aimed at getting the state to pay for health care benefits for the partners of gay state employees.

WASHINGTON – When 20-year-old Nathan Bush was pulled over in Kenosha last October with drug paraphernalia plainly visible in his car, he lost his driver’s license – and tens of thousands of dollars in financial aid.

Bush, an incoming junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he could have been slapped with the far more serious charge of possession of marijuana, but instead had all of his federal dollars taken away in courtroom negotiations.

….As part of this year’s reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which a congressional committee is expected to consider this week, the so-called “retroactivity clause” could be repealed – in other words, the government could no longer legally withhold tuition assistance from students who were convicted of drug-related offenses before they filed their first application.

Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to sign a law that would waive tuition at state public universities for children of Wisconsin soldiers killed while on duty and eliminate the property tax burden for their widowed spouses. The proposals are part of a larger package that contains some benefits that also would apply to disabled veterans and their spouses.

One provision would have the state pay half the tuition at state public universities and colleges for all the state’s 497,000 military veterans.

Who’s up for some granola?

OK, not everybody. But even if you’re not a health nut, what would you think if it was shaped like a tart, filled with strawberry-flavored yogurt, then topped with strawberries and blueberries?

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has four top job openings, and WARF officials credit the success of their organization for each one.

“It’s a time of exciting growth, and we’re just looking for people to help us build on that growth in a responsible way,” said WARF spokesman Andy Cohn

As if the stem cell debate wasn’t murky enough, we now have the economic aspect of this political and religious hot topic creeping its way into the news (“Economics enters cloning debate” July 13).

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned convictions in a 1981 Madison rape and homicide case, based on DNA testing of evidence used to convict a man who has been serving a life sentence in prison for the crimes. Also quotes Keith Findley, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the UW Law School, which filed an amicus brief in the case.

Chronic wasting disease has been in the U.S. deer herd for at least the past 30 years. Questions about why it got there and how it spreads have been around for just as long.

Experts on the disease are gathering in Madison this week to share their research on the disease found in the Wisconsin herd in February 2002, the first time it was discovered east of the Mississippi.

(Debbie McKenzie, a senior scientist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Science, is quoted in this story.)

The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents voted on Friday to centralize the investment of each campus’s cash reserves and to dedicate a portion of the expected increased returns to systemwide strategic initiatives, despite criticism from the Austin campus that the new revenue-sharing policy amounts to a tax on the flagship institution.

The Republican Congressional leadership had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, but it has finally pledged to do the right thing and close an appalling loophole that permits lenders to skim billions from college loans, money that should be going directly to students. The loophole, which guarantees lenders a mammoth 9.5 percent return on loans for which the prevailing rate is 3.5 percent, is especially outrageous at a time when college aid is falling far short of the national need.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin geochemist Thomas Stafford Jr.

Groundbreaking research – what is it worth?
At a time when the Legislature is skimping on state funding for the University of Wisconsin System, a $20 million federal grant awarded last week to UW-Madison researchers should remind lawmakers of UW’s tremendous value. It also should demonstrate why the state must keep UW System financially strong so that it continues to attract top-level researchers and the dollars that follow.

The state Legislature’s budget shortchanges public education – both K-12 and universities – and deals a blow to smart land-use planning.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court goes on the record when it comes to questioning juveniles. It ruled Thursday that police must electronically record juveniles who are detained and interrogated.

Keith Findley, a professor at UW Madison law school says, “With the Wisconsin Innocence Project, we’re involved in representing people who have been wrongly convicted.”

Eleven Republican legislators, not satisfied with the investigation launched into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s handling of the Paul Barrows matter, called on the state’s attorney general Friday to launch her own investigation.

Madison-based Stratatech Corp. has been awarded another federal grant, this one for $4 million for development of its genetically engineered therapeutic human skin substitute with enhanced antimicrobial and angiogeneic properties for use in the treatment of type 1 diabetic skin ulcers.

….The UW-Madison spin-off, which was established in 2000, also is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its flagship StrataGraft engineered skin tissue product for the treatment of burn victims.

Stratatech’s products are based on a patented, unique source of pathogen-free human skin cells identified at UW-Madison as being able to multiply indefinitely.

Quoted: Chang Kuo-cheng, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin

Former University of Wisconsin Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Paul Barrows, when applying for a top position at the University of Texas, submitted a r�©sum�© asserting an April 1 return date to UW. With his consideration by UT extending beyond that date, at least one search committee member claims to have believed Barrows was back at work in Madison.

Brian Agee is feeling rushed.

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh senior from Milwaukee already works at Eastbay and is not eligible for financial aid, so he wants to finish his sociology degree as soon as possible.

Researchers at the Center for Eukaryotic Structural Genomics, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have received a $20 million award to fund Phase II of the Protein Structure Initiative over the next five years. Information from the PSI project, funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will deepen our understanding of a variety of biological processes.

UW-Madison resident undergraduates would pay $364 more for annual tuition in the 2005-06 school year under a resolution before the UW Board of Regents for a vote today.
The dollar amount – about half as much as the yearly hikes students paid the past two school years – equals a 6.9 percent annual tuition increase. Gov. Jim Doyle had proposed a 6.2 percent hike as part of the University of Wisconsin System budget for the fiscal year that started July 1. System officials said they need the extra money to help cover higher-than-expected bills for items such as utilities and debt payments.

A 16-story private dormitory proposed for the corner of Charter and Dayton streets has been rejected by the Madison City Council, which criticized the design for being too dense and lacking a neighborhood plan.

Losers: UW faculty, staff, and students: Lawmakers voted to cut state funding for the UW by an additional $25 million above the $65 million proposed by Doyle. Officials say tuition hikes of 6 to 7 percent are in the works

University of Wisconsin tuition increases of 6.9 percent for resident undergraduates will go to the Board of Regents for approval Thursday.
The proposed increases in the 2005-2006 school year are $364 at Madison, $356 at Milwaukee, and $277 at other four-year campuses, according to materials assembled for the regents.

In one of his last interviews before he stopped speaking publicly at the advice of his attorney, Paul Barrows lamented the fraying of a friendship.

Quoted: Herman Goldstein, law professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin.

New information regarding former Vice Chancellor Paul Barrows’ seven-month paid leave has spurred an independent investigation into the matter, according to a June 30th university statement