In his last day on the job, the head of Wisconsin’s technical colleges urged board members Thursday to end an internal power struggle that he warned could leave the college system “destabilized, politicized and weakened.”
Category: State news
State to start auctioning cars at end of July (AP)
MADISON, Wis. – About 150 cars will be up for auction at the end of the month as part of efforts to reduce the state’s fleet of vehicles.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced the auction on Thursday. It is set for July 31 at the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Research Station in Arlington.
Patriot Act sends ACLU ranks soaring (The Capital Times)
Fear of losing civil liberties since the Patriot Act was enacted in October 2001 has caused a huge surge in membership in the American Civil Liberties Union in Wisconsin and nationally. (UW-Madison & UW Sytem employees quoted.)
Texan ends bid for UW’s top job (The Capital Times)
David Smith pulled out of the search for a new University of Wisconsin System president today, one day before he and the other three finalists were to interview for the job.
Crazy for ice cream (1 ton, if you’re ‘average’) (The Capital Times)
All-American or overly offensive? Your attitude about the ice cream cone, introduced in the Midwest 100 years ago this week, will hint at how much you think like Leon Kass. (Babcock ice cream is included in this feature article by Mary Bergin.)
Campaign TV ads hit state hard (Wisc. State Journal)
Political Science Professor Ken Goldstein points to Wisconsin as a key battleground state. He points to the large amount of ad time being purchased here as a key indicator.
Candidate pool for UW System leader draws some criticism
The head of one of Texas’ smaller, lesser-known university systems. The chancellor of Wisconsin’s university extension. The newly minted second-in-command at the State University of New York. And a former U.S. congressman with strong Wisconsin ties but no doctorate.
One of these folks, or maybe someone else, will be the next president of the 26-campus University of Wisconsin System. The list of finalists is expected to be released today.
Lawmakers support Amato, Want him on technical college board, regents (Capital Times)
Six Dane County Democratic legislators are urging the state Technical College System Board to retain Nino Amato, a Republican appointee from Madison, as its president when it meets later this month, saying “He has been an outspoken voice for students and faculty as well as a watchdog for taxpayers.” (See 7/15/04 print edition)
Doyle Denies Pressuring Board For Amato’s Defeat
A spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday compared next week’s election of a leader for the Wisconsin Technical College System Board to “any student council election” and said Doyle had no big stake in the outcome.
Health group to disclose prices
By fall, the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality is to provide cost information on the normal delivery of a baby in the collaborative’s 16 participating hospitals and the cost of a typical visit to a doctor’s office.
Four under scrutiny to head UW System
A vice-chancellor of the State University of New York is one of four top contenders for the presidency of the University of Wisconsin System, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today. (An AP report in the 7/13 Capital Times print edition)
Capital Times photo: New academy fellows
Among the five fellows inducted into the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters during ceremonies Sunday, July 11, at Monona Terrace were: Michael Fiore, who has pioneered smoking cessation at UW Hospital & Clinics; UW Professor Richard Davidson, who has pioneered Eastern spiritual practices in physical and mental health; and UW Professor Richard Davis, nationally acclaimed jazz bassist. Other inductees were Ellen Kort, Wisconsin’s poet laureate, and Tom Uttech, a renowned landscape painter who taught art for 30 years at UW-Milwaukee. (Caption only)
High Tuition Inversely Affects Students
The Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance released a report Friday that found tuition had increased at University of Wisconsin System schools 26.6 percent from the 1998-99 to the 2002-03 school years. Financial aid was up 16.3 percent in that same period.
UW tuition hikes outpace financial aid (7/10/04 Capital Times)
Financial aid is not keeping pace with tuition increases for University of Wisconsin System students, according to a report released Friday. That has contributed to poorer families now making up a smaller percentage of the student body than they did a decade ago, said Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance President Todd Berry. Continue reading
Few upset by state service cuts
In ways large and small, measures taken last year to eliminate a $3.2 billion budget deficit have taken a toll on services provided by state government.
Hands off Amato, Common Cause warns governor (Capital Times)
A good-government group says Gov. Jim Doyle should keep his hands off the Wisconsin Technical College System Board elections. Continue reading
Dave Zweifel: How about less stress for history chief? (Capital Times)
I had a delightful lunch this week with the new director of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Ellsworth Brown, who is impressed by what he’s seen so far of Madison. Continue reading
State Support for Public Higher Education Is Stronger Than Believed, Report Says
State governments are not backing away from their commitment to financially support public higher education, according to a new report by a group of top state higher-education officials. (Subscription required.)
Capital Times view: Retain Amato as a regent
It is no secret that Gov. Jim Doyle and his aides have been trying for some time to come up with a way to get Nino Amato replaced as president of the Wisconsin Technical College System Board. By all acounts, Doyle wants Amato removed from the position he currently holds because it allows him to serve on the UW Board of Regents.
New DNA tests ordered in 1991 double murder (Wisconsin State Journal)
A UW-Madison Law School program that helped free two wrongly convicted men from prison is pursuing new DNA testing on evidence from the murder scene of two elderly sisters.
Stem cell issue divided along party lines
WASHINGTON – When UW-Madison researchers established a collection of human embryonic stem cells six years ago, “Wisconsin became the epicenter of the scientific universe,” according to a recent letter sent to candidates running for state office in November. Despite the breakthrough for the university, however, many of Wisconsin’s Republican candidates view the research as a step in the wrong direction – and are seizing on the issue in their campaigns.
Mike Ivey: High business tax myth dupes Wisconsin
Keep repeating a lie long enough and the public starts to believe it…. The lie is that high taxes in Wisconsin are strangling business development here.
Quoted: UW-Madison economics professor Andrew Reschovsky
DNA tests to reopen murder case
Now, the LaBatte case is being reopened by the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a University of Wisconsin Law School program that has freed two wrongly convicted men from prison. The project has won a court order for a new round of DNA tests that may, for the first time, identify who came to the Cadigans’ home.
It’s a tough job, but getting there is a task all its own
Quoted: Gordon Baldwin, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who advised former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson on Sykes’ nomination to the state court in 1999.
College students testing limits of detox clinics
A 22-year-old man was staggering while walking north on Copeland Avenue at 1:30 a.m. April 27.
A La Crosse police officer stopped the man, who said he was on his way home to Angell Hall on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus.
He was obviously walking in the wrong direction.
A CULTURE OF DRINKING: Binging on the rise
Jordan Wood, a fifth-year senior at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, tells incoming freshmen he drank in high school and came to UW-L with every intention to drink.
Our view: The real problem is extreme intoxication
Two things stood out in Tribune reporter Terry Rindfleisch’s story Sunday about binge drinking.
First were the anecdotes from very drunk students trying to get home but going in wrong directions.
JS Online: The Morning Mail
Third parties, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have conducted environmental impact studies at the site in question. The studies show that water leaving the cranberry marsh is actually cleaner when it re-enters the lake in Sawyer County because of the marsh’s natural ability as a wetland to clean and filter water.
JS Online: Feingold challengers remain almost unknown
Quoted: Badger Poll conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center
Health care workers wanted
Quoted: Tito Izard, also an assistant professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School
Firestorm over Amato gets hotter
The man who blew the whistle on secret pay-range raises by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents last year appears perilously close to being kicked off the board.
The silence of the veterinarian (Isthmus)
The UW School of Veterinary Medicine has silenced its best-known faculty member — purportedly in more ways than one. Sandi Sawchuck, a UW veterinarian and clinical instructor, says she’s been directed not to talk about the school’s decision to pull the plug on her media appearances.
Editorial: Start Early to Close Achievement Gap
Wisconsin schools on the whole graduate the vast majority of their students. But there’s an unacceptably wide gap between white graduation rates (87 percent) and those of African-American students (44 percent) and Hispanic students (55 percent).
Cited: UW-Madison research
New Web site aims to help firms recruit in state
The UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations has created a new Web site that aims to help companies identify potential interns and employees at Wisconsin’s universities and colleges.
Narrowing education gaps
The white-black gap has narrowed in education in Wisconsin, while the Hispanic-Anglo gap has widened. The first trend, of course, is reason to cheer; the second, reason to fret.
Trade Mission To China Pushed State Business Leaders Want Another Trip
Wisconsin needs to send another trade delegation to China and shouldn’t wait too long to do so, business people who took part in the March trade mission agreed Monday.
Miss Madison Wins Again Molly Jean Mcgrath Is The New Miss Wisconsin
Molly Jean McGrath is now the second consecutive Miss Madison to win the Miss Wisconsin pageant.
Search on to fill state court seat
Quoted: Gordon Baldwin, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Former UWS professor gets day in court
WAUSAU, WIS. – A former University of Wisconsin-Superior professor argued Monday that his due process rights were violated before he was fired amid allegations of sexual harassment and other ethics violations.
State lags in 4-year college grads (AP)
MADISON ââ?¬â? Wisconsin ranked in the bottom half of the nation in the number of residents with four-year college degrees, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey released today.