Rep. Dave Murphy, R-Greenville, and Sen. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, introduced the bill earlier this week to protect Wisconsin students from the possibility of soaring tuition rates when the current freeze ends. Their research found that tuition increased 27% after a single-year freeze in 1967 and 8% after a 1999 freeze.
The Republican head of the state Assembly’s higher education committee wants to limit future University of Wisconsin tuition increases to no more than the rate of inflation, an idea unveiled Tuesday that comes after a decade of frozen tuitions.
In 2021, the DPI and the Wisconsin Center of Education Research at UW-Madison surveyed school districts statewide about the curriculums they use for teaching reading. Participation was voluntary; more than 80% of districts responded. Of those, 79% were using curriculums that were not listed by a national nonprofit organization called EdReports as meeting quality expectations. DPI recommends that districts use programs recommended by the organization.
About $1.8 billion would go to the UW System for brick-and-mortar building projects. Other big-ticket items include $41 million for fiberoptic upgrades to the state Capitol to improve cellular service, an additional $60 million for the new Wisconsin History Museum to offset rising construction costs and $190 million for juvenile corrections facilities that would eventually lead to closing the state’s long-troubled Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons.
Under Evers’ proposal, released Tuesday, nearly $1.8 billion would go to the UW System — about three-quarters of the System’s requested $2.4 billion. In his previous budget two years ago, Evers proposed $1.1 billion for the UW System, with Republicans ultimately approving $629 million.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday proposed spending $3.8 billion on building projects in 28 counties around the state, with nearly half directed toward work across the University of Wisconsin System.
“We thank Governor Evers for prioritizing this critical project,” UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing to work with lawmakers to share the tremendous value of an engineering facility, both to grow our number of engineering graduates and for our world-changing research in areas ranging from clean energy to semiconductors to transportation, areas that are critical to the economic development of the state.”
Gov. Tony Evers announced a significant funding increase for higher education in his much anticipated 2023-25 biennial budget address last Wednesday.
A new scholarship at University of Wisconsin-Madison will support students who want to make a difference in rural health care, and a third-year pharmacy student was the first to receive it.
In a record-setting cohort, the UniverCity Year (UCY) program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced partnerships with nine new communities for the 2022-25 academic years. These collaborations will leverage university resources to move forward with the different communities’ goals to address specific issues facing their residents.
The University of Wisconsin listed a new building for the College of Engineering as a priority in a recent report — citing that the new building would help produce new graduates in fields Wisconsin employers desperately need.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his proposed biennial budget proposal for the 2023-2025 fiscal period Feb. 15. Included in his proposal was a $305 million increase in funding for the University of Wisconsin System, according to the Office of the Governor.
“The idea is that the cost to build a new apartment is the same whether its intended for market rate occupancy or affordable occupancy,” said Kurt Paulsen, UW-Madison professor of urban planning. “If you want developers to build affordable units, you need to provide a capital subsidy.”
Evers’ state budget, announced Wednesday night, would increase the University of Wisconsin System’s budget by $305.9 million over the biennium. But even as the state finds itself in an unprecedented financial position, with a projected $7.1 billion surplus, the number is nearly $130 million less than the UW System’s request of $435.6 million, according to figures from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The long-term prospect of a tuition promise program for low-income University of Wisconsin System students is in jeopardy after a top lawmaker said the Republican-controlled Legislature is unlikely to fund it.
Though you may not have heard of it, shared revenue is a financial lifeline for local governments in Wisconsin — and it’s entered the spotlight as communities scramble to fund essential services.
Wisconsin’s state universities would see a significant funding boost under Gov. Tony Evers’ state budget proposal, with a portion of the money helping pay for a tuition waiver program aimed at students from lower income households. But if past budget battles with the Republican-controlled state Legislature are any guide, the final number for the system is unlikely to match the governor’s wishes.
Gov. Tony Evers’ budget leaves the University of Wisconsin System about $130 million short of what regents say they need to run their campuses over the next two years, raising questions about whether they may raise tuition to make up the shortfall.
The Democratic governor on Wednesday proposed a $305 million increase for University of Wisconsin System campuses over the next two fiscal years. That’s less than the $435 million UW System asked for, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Even so, top UW leaders praised the proposal, saying it would help schools educate the state’s future workforce.
Most public- and private-sector workers in Wisconsin would be eligible for 12 weeks of paid family leave under Gov. Tony Evers’ two-year spending plan, which also includes tax cuts for low- and middle-income residents and increased spending on public schools.
Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2023-25 budget would provide the University of Wisconsin System with a boost that still falls short of what it sought as it grapples with rising costs.
The budget would attempt to address the state’s teaching shortage through investments in “grow your own” programs that allow current staff to pursue additional higher education credits or licenses, or cover college costs for students who commit to teaching in their district of attendance after graduation. It would also provide stipends to student teachers and interns and those who agree to train and oversee them.
The Lyle L. Vandenberg Rural Health Scholarship was created by UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association, the American Medical Association Foundation and Homeward, a rural health care company started last year. It is named after a 1959 UW-Madison pharmacy graduate who provided pharmacy services in northeastern Wisconsin for many years before his death in 2021.
The spending plan also would: Require state technical colleges and University of Wisconsin System schools to ensure they issue IDs that are valid for voting purposes.
The counties, who jointly manage the UW-Oshkosh at Fox Cities campus, are requesting a guarantee that, if they sink millions into renovating the campus’ 60-year-old cafeteria, and then the University of Wisconsin System shuts down the campus within the next five years, the System will pay the counties back for the renovations.
UW-Madison will aggressively seek a new College of Engineering building as its top priority in the upcoming state budget cycle as growth stagnates and faculty compete with one another for coveted and increasingly limited lab space.
The Bucky’s Pell Pathway program, introduced on Thursday, will meet full financial needs for four years for new first-year Wisconsin residents students who quality for Pell Grants. Transfer students can also take advantage of the program and receive funding for two years if they meet the same criteria.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is expanding its tuition promise program to cover not only tuition for some low-income students, but nearly all other college costs that can derail progress toward a degree, such as room and board.
The program, which Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin introduced Thursday to the Board of Regents, will meet the full financial need for those who qualify for Pell grants. Those federal dollars are limited to undergraduates with exceptional financial need but often don’t cover the full cost of school, causing many recipients to take out extra loans.
The goal of the program, called Bucky’s Pell Pathway, is to help alleviate the disadvantages students from low-income families frequently face. The assistance is only available to in-state students, and no state funds are used for either the Pell Pathway or the Tuition Promise program.
Proposal includes $2.8 million over the biennium to University of Wisconsin System campuses to provide services tailored to veterans, military personnel and their families.
While the difference was offset in some years with aid that did not apply to the revenue limit, public school advocate and former University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education dean Julie Underwood said numbers like that justify a major increase in budgets ahead.
She characterized the state of education funding in Wisconsin as “really abysmal,” suggesting that the state is “so far behind” where it should be given the increasing costs of the past decade. “We need a ladder up to where we should have been,” Underwood said.
Christy Remucal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UW-Madison, said addressing PFAS can be “very tricky.” While the chemicals can be tested for and identified, there is not yet a way to conduct large-scale removal and destruction of the contaminant.
Quoted: “The election is primarily an opportunity for liberals and a risk for conservatives,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Referendums are increasingly being used by both political parties, particularly with non-partisan spring elections, which sneak up on people after the holidays and don’t typically generate great voter turnout, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“These elections just don’t generate the same level of media coverage or public discussion so these gimmicks are one way to get the attention of the voter,” Burden said. “The effect on overall turnout probably won’t be great, but in Wisconsin, most people assume elections are going to be close, so even a change in the balance of things by a percentage point or two could tip the race and tip the balance of the Supreme Court itself.”
Quoted: At the 2023 Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum this week, Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said part of the decline is likely from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s move to stop past-due debt collections and farm foreclosures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Quoted: Steven Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said U.S. and global economic activity is expected to decline in 2023. Deller cited the Wall Street Journal’s Monthly Survey of Economic Forecasters, which averages 68 economic forecasts from individuals, organizations and universities, in a recent presentation.
“There’s pretty much consensus that we’re going to go into a slowdown, and that, if we go into a recession, it is going to be a very mild recession,” he said. “There’s actually a significant number of economists that are actually saying, ‘No, we’re not going to go into a recession. We’re going to go into a serious slowdown.'”
Noted: Wisconsin’s wolf population fell around 14 percent to 972 wolves after the 2021 wolf hunt, according to the Wisconsin DNR. Even so, state wildlife managers say data indicates the state’s wolf population is stable. However, some researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say the agency is overestimating the state’s wolf population.
Jermika Jackson believes her son is destined for greatness. From a young age, D’Marion Jackson seemed wise beyond his years. He was a voracious reader who quickly finished handfuls of library books.
He is now a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and that was made possible by the college’s in-state tuition guarantee. D’Marion is one of about 800 freshmen receiving Bucky’s Tuition Promise.
Noted: The term was coined by Lisa Ellinger, the outreach director at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as we debriefed our first Main Street Agenda event in September. During that town hall, our panelists were crowded around a table sitting on stiff, uncomfortable plastic chairs. The set-up wasn’t exactly conducive to our goal of having relaxed conversations where people felt comfortable sitting talking about complex and often deeply held convictions about democracy, inflation or climate change.
The University of Wisconsin System is banning use of the popular social media app TikTok on UW-owned devices, a spokesperson said Tuesday.
The decision comes about 10 days after Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order banning the TikTok app on most state-issued devices. The mandate applied only to the executive branch, which consists of most of the state’s agencies but not the UW System.
In the first State of the State address of his second term, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday proposed boosting mental health spending and increasing funding for public education and local governments — proposals that may see some support from the Republican-controlled Legislature, depending on the price tag.
University of Wisconsin System officials said Tuesday that they will ban the use of TikTok on system devices.
The University of Wisconsin System, which employs 40,000 faculty and staff, is also exempt. But a UW System spokesperson said despite the exemption, the university was conducting a review and moving toward placing restrictions on the app being used on devices in order to protect against serious cybersecurity risks.
The group (Farm Well Wisconsin), founded in 2020, is funded through a five-year grant associated with the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Through trainings, community members work on building empathetic listening skills, connecting people with resources and discussing issues related to farm culture.
Quoted: Andrew Stevens, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said this percentage has been fairly consistent over time and includes forestland, pasture and cropland.
“The analyses that have been done with the data that are currently available really show that foreign ownership of agricultural land in the United States is a pretty miniscule issue, if it’s an issue at all,” he said. “There are no systematic differences across communities with more or less foreign ownership. Land prices don’t seem to systematically differ.”
Noted: In the episode, first airing Jan. 20, Brown tastes “sophisticated Wisconsin cheeses,” is a judge in a mustard-tasting contest and learns about the University of Wisconsin, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Society meeting house, her first supper club (Tornado Club Steak House) and the joys of curling and its Madison roots — the latter with help from Olympian Becca Hamilton, according to publicity material on the episode.
Noted: In a letter to North Shore Classical Academy officials, Vanessa Moran, the University of Wisconsin System’s Office of Educational Opportunity director, said the school’s application “was lacking the necessary detail in each of the five sections of the application to demonstrate that the school would be able to open successfully.”
There might be a new way to think of one particular species of invasive snail being found in Wisconsin’s water: as a part of a gourmet meal.
At least that’s the approach Minneapolis chef Yia Vang and Titus Sielheimer, a fisheries outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant, made this summer, when they filmed themselves harvesting and cooking up Chinese mystery snails in northern Wisconsin.
Noted: Christensen said he chose to open a clinic in Rockford because it would provide a closer option for women in the Madison area than Chicago-area abortion clinics. Rockford is about an hour and a half south of Madison.
He said he also envisioned the yet-to-be-opened surgical clinic as a potential training location for OB-GYN residents in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The Dobbs decision created new hurdles for OB/GYN residency programs across Wisconsin, because the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education requires them to teach abortion-related procedures or face losing accreditation.
The newly crowned Miss America, Grace Stanke, said she wants to spend her term promoting nuclear power as a cleaner way to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
“It doesn’t use a lot of land,” said Stanke, a Wausau native and University of Wisconsin-Madison senior studying nuclear engineering. “As our population continues to grow, we can continue to use that land for farming and agricultural purposes, and we can use that clean, zero-carbon energy coming from nuclear energy to power our cities.”
Noted: Sarah Barry will continue to serve as deputy secretary. Barry holds a master’s degree from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor of Science degree from the UW-Oshkosh and spent 15 years as chief of staff for several state senators.
Wisconsin will join the growing list of states to ban the use of the popular social media site TikTok on all state-issued devices over cybersecurity concerns.
Gov. Tony Evers said Friday he would issue an executive order by early next week. As of Friday, it wasn’t immediately clear what the executive order would include or if the University of Wisconsin System would have to abide by the TikTok ban
Noted: For young voters in Dane County, it was a message that worked. Abortion access was regularly listed to NBC News a top issue motivating voters.
University of Wisconsin student Valerie Howell, who said she supported Democratic candidates, told NBC News that she likely would have turned out to vote in any case, “but I wouldn’t have been as passionate about it.”
Noted: According to an analysis of a national study by the University of Wisconsin Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, health care providers have not performed any abortions in the state since the fall of Roe vs. Wade.
“In April and May of 2022, Wisconsin abortion providers reported 590 and 620 abortions, respectively. In July and August, those numbers fell to zero,” it said.
Scientists at UW-Madison are working to better understand how toxic “forever chemicals” move through the ground, which could help communities like Madison find and clean up the manufactured compounds before they contaminate drinking water.
Christy Remucal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UW-Madison who specializes in PFAS but was not part of Gnesda’s study, said the research is a critical first step to being able to focus cleanup efforts.
Quoted: At the heart of Great Lakes medical physics research is the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Medical Physics. It was the first such department in the country and is the largest in terms of faculty members and graduate students, said Brian Pogue, department chair and a professor in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
“We have close to 100 grad students working on medical imaging technologies,” Pogue said. “We have an army.”
Medical Physics’ faculty are among the university’s top royalty recipients and have developed world class technologies like the tomotherapy radiation technique, the ubiquitous pinnacle radiation treatment planning software, and lunar bone mineral densitometry to detect osteoporosis.
Stanke, a student at the University of Wisconsin, impressed the panel of judges with her classical violin skills. She played “Storm” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Stanke revealed she was eager to follow in her sister’s musical footsteps.
Miss Wisconsin has won the title of Miss America 2023.
Wausau native Grace Stanke, a 20-year-old nuclear engineering student at UW-Madison, is the third woman from Wisconsin to be crowned as Miss America. The others are Laura Koeppeler of Kenosha, who was Miss America in 2012, and Terry Meeuwsen of De Pere, who was Miss America in 1973.
Quoted: “Farm fatality numbers remain alarmingly high, and because a farm is like any other dangerous industrial workplace, the types of hazards are many,” said John Shutske, Ph.D., professor and agricultural safety specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Many continue to be concerned with the high number of deaths on public roadways. Clearly, as farms get bigger and farmers need to spend more time on the road moving from farm to farm/field to field, we are going to see more and more risk on roadways.”
