The national economy will perform well this year, but Wisconsin’s will perform better, about 100 people attending the semi-annual Economic Outlook conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were told Friday. “We are in the sectors that are doing well,” said Donald Nichols, a UW economics professor and an expert on the state’s economy.
The UW-Waukesha campus may be graduating to a new mission sooner than people have anticipated. Waukesha County Executive Daniel Finley testified in Madison on Wednesday in support of merging the two-year campus with UW-Milwaukee. It would be part of a larger plan being considered by the state Legislature to merge all 13 two-year campuses.
Ten months after their last negotiations, the Teaching Assistants Association is back at the table with the state. But there does not yet appear to be any real progress toward a contract.
By this summer, the term of the contract they are now trying to settle will be over. With that in mind, the teaching assistants said they pitched a new proposal at Wednesday’s meeting with state negotiators: maintain the terms of the interim contract they’ve been working under.
Madison film fans, get your economy-sized bottles of Visine now. With 151 films spread over just four days, the Wisconsin Film Festival won’t give you much time to blink.
The seventh annual festival, which runs from March 31 through April 3, will kick off with an opening night screening at the Orpheum Theatre of maverick director Samuel Fuller’s 1980 World War II epic “The Big Red One.”
Thanks in large part to the use of cutting edge information technology, American business has realized impressive productivity gains over the past decade. Productivity in the U.S. economy is up 26 percent since 1994, outpacing both Japan and Germany.
“That kind of performance is unheard of, especially when you consider the U.S. economy was already in the lead,” said Michael Knetter, dean of the UW-Madison business school. But realizing the same kinds of productivity improvement in the public sector will prove much more challenging, he told business leaders Wednesday at a forum hosted by WTN Media.
The future of the UW’s two-year campuses is up for debate.
The Higher Education committee heard about two rival plans for finding cost savings within the UW System Wednesday.
UW System President Kevin Reilly testified that consolidating some of the administration between the twoââ?¬â??year campuses and the UW Extension Program is the best way to go right now. That plan would save $300,000.
By Charles Hoslet
I was driving along I-94 from Madison to Milwaukee the other day and crashed right through a large brick wall. I noticed that other drivers were also getting through�in both directions.
The brick wall, of course, was just a figment of my imagination, one of those old “truths” we are taught to believe, but just aren’t true any more. The old idea is that Madison and Milwaukee are very different places, have little in common, and frankly don’t much like each other. We pick on each other almost as much as we do those Bears fans to the south.
The usage of state-owned cell phones by state employees fell under scrutiny last week when the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau released a report detailing nearly $3 million in charges for the 2003-2004 fiscal year.
The Office of State Employee Relations and University of Wisconsin�s Teaching Assistants� Association began contract negotiations Wednesday after a nine-month impasse during which neither group met to discuss working terms for the 2003-05 biennium.
Small companies and public sector agencies still have a ways to go before they can match the technology-fueled productivity gains of their corporate peers, agreed experts gathered in Madison for an information technology conference Wednesday.
Wisconsin has built a more reliable electrical system and there are no fears of widespread power losses during the peak summer season, a state Public Service Commission official told legislators Tuesday. Mentions West Campus Cogeneration Facility.
State Rep. Robin Krelbich may have found a guinea pig willing to experiment with his idea of merging the state’s two-year colleges with the nearest four-year university campuses.
The University of Wisconsin-Waukesha campus got a vote of confidence Wednesday from Waukesha County supervisors who voiced disappointment that classroom renovations were being temporarily halted.
A handful of University of Wisconsin System officials are speaking out against a legislator’s proposal to make the system’s 13 two-year college campuses satellites of its 13 four-year schools, but they’re getting plenty of push back.
WHITEWATER – Ward Churchill was defiant. He was bold. He was passionate.
And he spent the better part of his 75-minute speech here defending controversial comments he made in a 3-year-old essay that has ignited a national firestorm in the past month.
The University of Wisconsin athletic department will seek the authority to spend more than $2.1 million in additional funds to finish the Camp Randall Stadium renovation.
That will replenish a contingency fund that has been depleted after unforeseen expenses, said Alan Fish, assistant vice chancellor for facilities, planning and development.
The additional money will come from gifts to the athletic department, not taxpayer dollars or ticket receipts, Fish said.
The additional expenses will boost the total cost of the renovation to just over $109 million, Fish said.
MADISON ââ?¬â?? It’s not Sundance or Cannes, but the Wisconsin Film Festival is growing in importance in Midwestern arts circles.
Last year, the event screened more than 140 films from 26 countries, including 45 by filmmakers with Wisconsin ties. Moviegoers bought 24,000 tickets, up from 21,000 in 2003.
And, with a cash and in-kind operating budget of $614,000, the four-day festival is of no small economic impact to the capital city.
This year’s event will run from March 31 to April 3 and feature experimental films, documentaries, shorts, independent works and productions by many Badger State filmmakers.
Two of the highest monthly cell phone bills flagged by a state audit were the result of interactive art
An audit of the use of state assigned cell phones by more than nine thousand workers found twenty monthly bills of between $311 and $1456.
27 News has uncovered two of those bills were rung up by patrons of a museum.
In September 2004, several exhibits of artist Xu Bing’s work were displayed at Madison’s Elvehjem Museum of Art.
Museum Director Russell Panczenko said the exhibits included expressions of technology’s influence on our culture.
Panczenko said one exhibit consisted of two state cell phones.
A University of Colorado professor defended his essay comparing victims of the September eleventh World Trade Center attacks to Nazis, during his speech at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Tuesday night.
With the thousands of manufacturing jobs that have vanished all through the industrial areas of the Midwest, chasing more smokestack industries is a fool’s errand. Instead, efforts are underway to develop a new breed of companies based on the technological inventions coming out of Wisconsin’s institutes of higher education and private industries.
As Wisconsin’s state-funded institutions fight for ever-scarce taxpayer dollars, discussions are under way about whether it’s time to give the University of Wisconsin System a major overhaul.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin P. Reilly met with Waukesha county executive Dan Finley, UW Colleges Interim Chancellor Margaret Cleek and UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago Friday to talk about a proposal that would offer four-year degrees on two-year campuses.
Quoted: Nancy Mathews, professor at UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
The state has spent between $8 million and $9 million in the last 15 months, paying the employees’ share of health insurance premiums for about 24,000 unionized state workers who are working without labor contracts.
Not even Meryl Streep could accurately mimic the speech of most born-and-raised Wisconsinites, according to a recent study by a team of linguists from UW-Madison.
Listening to Ward Churchill speak must be a lot like watching a train wreck — horrifying yet riveting.
UW Hospital has safety measures to make sure patients get the right medicines and don’t have the wrong body part operated on, efforts that helped it land on two national lists released Monday that spotlight hospitals quality.
As the first Democratic governor of Wisconsin after 16 years of Republican rule, Jim Doyle admits he’s on a mission. Doyle says he’s fighting to preserve the state’s progressive tradition while convincing voters he’s not a wild-eyed tax-and-spend Madison liberal.
The Department of Administration (DOA) contracted a consultant to consider the possible savings of privatizing University of Wisconsin custodians in upcoming years.
In an effort to reduce air pollution, the University of Wisconsin physical plant�s diesel-burning fleet of campus vehicles will be the first in Wisconsin to fill its tanks with a blend of ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) and a soybean-based biodiesel.
Nobody has to remind me that I’m no Ben Bradlee, but I know how he felt after watching President Johnson appoint J. Edgar Hoover director of the FBI for life after Bradlee wrote that Johnson was going to fire the director.
The largest two-year campus in the University of Wisconsin System could be about to graduate into a four-year university or perhaps even a marriage with UW-Milwaukee.
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Jack Miller says he gets offended when he hears people say that Ward Churchill should not be allowed to speak on his campus because it would poison the students’ minds.
To those who believe Wisconsin must accelerate its knowledge-driven economy to keep pace in the 21st century, it was a breakthrough to learn that university leaders broke an anti-war taboo and will pursue classified federal research.
Nearly 400 state employees in a recent month racked up cell phone bills of more than $100 each, including two university coaches who each made $1,400 worth of calls, according to an audit released Friday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professors are frowning at the idea of holding faculty members to new conduct standards. In the wake of controversial remarks made by Colorado Professor Ward Churchill, state Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, wanted the Assembly to ask the UW Board of Regents to review its hiring and tenure policies to make sure they adhered to “honorable academic standards of conduct.”
(Professors Murray Clayton, Mary Metz and James Jones are quoted.)
UW students from around the state want something done about skyrocketing tuition costs and they took their message to the Capitol today. Their message: keep UW doors open to all.
Hundreds of students used actual doors to get their message across. Those doors were signed by thousands of UW students who say they can’t afford to go to school in Wisconsin.
College students around Wisconsin gathered on the steps of the Capitol Thursday to protest a proposed 14 percent tuition increase in Governor Doyle’s biennial budget. The protesters held doors signed by students from various UW System schools and marked with “Keep UW Doors Open 2 All.” These doors were delivered to Joint Finance Committees that met with student representatives of state schools.
As most members of the university community are aware, the state legislature is in the early stages of responding to Gov. Doyle�s recent proposed budget
** Chancellor Wiley’s letter to the editor also appears in the February 25th issue of Daily Cardinal.
It is difficult to plan for the future without knowing exactly what resources will be available.
University of Wisconsin students delivered doors to legislators at the Capitol Thursday in protest of tuition increases proposed by Gov. Jim Doyle�s 2005-07 biennial state budget.
Nearly 150 students from universities throughout Wisconsin converged on Madison, rallying for drops in state tuition or tuition caps. They complained about Gov. Doyle’s budget proposal, which calls for tuition hikes of up to 7 percent in each year of the biennium.
State legislators approved a resolution Tuesday requesting a cancellation of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater speech by controversial University of Colorado professor of ethnic studies, Ward Churchill.
The First Amendment in the News.
Four economists will present projections and insights March 4 as part of the UW-Madison’s Economic Outlook at the Fluno Center, 601 University Avenue.
Wisconsin college students have for years been noted for their binge drinking. But a report released this week says it’s the states’ adults who lead the nation.
Five days before the biggest media event in UW- Whitewater history, students are taking sides and staff are planning detailed security measures for what they hope will be a safe and peaceful appearance by embattled Colorado professor Ward Churchill.
Includes coverage of Assembly vote on resolution criticizing Ward Churchill’s March 1 speech at UW-Whitewater.
A Colorado professor scheduled to speak at the University of Hawaii said he will not apologize for controversial remarks he made about those who died in the 9/11 attacks.
Every day in Madison students file into crowded lecture halls and discussion rooms and listen attentively to a speaker while taking copious notes.
Former Gov. Lee Dreyfus had quintuple heart bypass surgery Monday at Waukesha Memorial Hospital. His family said Dreyfus, 78, was in intensive care and a full recovery was expected.
….Dreyfus had been on the University of Wisconsin faculty here and served as chancellor of the Stevens Point campus before resigning to run for governor. He played a large role in 1971 in helping Democratic Gov. Patrick Lucey win legislative approval of the merger of the University of Wisconsin and the old state university system.
Four state Department of Corrections administrators don’t have to pay for personal travel in state cars. The administrators each have round-trip commutes of 60 to 210 miles, costing taxpayers nearly $200 a day when all four drive to their offices.
What price do you put on an education?
How can you possibly place a value upon a family’s first member to graduate from college, or upon the new life granted to a nontraditional student who earns a degree after a midlife setback?
In the Jan. 16 Wisconsin State Journal, guest columnist Don Nichols offered a solution to the state’s property tax dilemma, but it is not good policy.
The state Assembly voted 58-37 Thursday to advance a Republican bill aimed at limiting property tax increases.
Little debate accompanied the controversial proposal, which majority Republicans were sure they could pass and the minority Democrats counted on the Democratic governor vetoing.
The Assembly on Thursday passed a plan that would freeze December property tax bills but wouldn’t earmark any more state aid to public schools next year – an omission that drew a veto promise from Gov. Jim Doyle. Story quotes UW-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky.
One of the issues that gets raised in almost every legislative session is the disparity between college tuition for cross-border students in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The University of Minnesota’s Peter Zetterberg was at the Capitol on Tuesday and, we think, made a good case for changing the system. (Registration required.)
Wisconsin’s dairy farmers received record prices for milk last year, thanks to a combination of weaker supplies and more consumption, but 2005 isn’t expected to be quite as rosy, dairy economists predict in a new report. “For many farmers, 2004 was a very good year,” according to Status of Wisconsin Agriculture 2005, an annual report published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s department of agricultural and applied economics.
After the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s chancellor decided to allow a controversial professor to speak on campus, Nass set out to block the speech.
….Nass, whose acquaintance with the Constitution is not what it ought to be, may not find a lot of takers from his crusade against the Constitution in Wisconsin. But he’s found a forum in New York City.
After nearly four decades of granting reciprocity agreements with nearby states, the University of Minnesota is asking the State Legislature to change the system.
Since 1968, Minnesota has had agreements with Manitoba, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
