Noted: University of Wisconsin Administration: Up to $5.7 million to create a “workforce-ready curriculum” for students who are incarcerated “to teach employable skills to students while incarcerated and continue supporting them post-release through program completion and career placement.” The program will pilot at UW-Oshkosh, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside, UW-Green Bay, and UW-Madison.
Quoted: Greg DeMuri is a pediatric epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has also been advising the Madison Metropolitan School District on its testing program. He said it took some time to get the program up and running, but it’s starting to work well.
“It is very, very useful,” he said. “They are seeing cases there, and detecting cases, and they’re able to keep (sick) kids out of school because of it, so it’s a big asset to the schools and to the community.”
Quoted: Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said no one is discouraging the use of the remedies Johnson is proposing but the public should know they are not proven to be effective in protecting against COVID-19 infection.
“Things like home remedies, vitamins and supplements, new diets have been advertised to and used by people in our society for decades, centuries even, for all sorts of ailments. No one is discouraging their use, but they do not provide tangible benefit against Covid, and they are not a substitute for vaccination,” Sethi said.
Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program, said the NIH relies on proven treatments.
“Simply put, the NIH and other researchers set a high bar for proving that a treatment is effective. Studies done in the lab or in animals, or clinical anecdotes play an important part in the research process, and lead to hypotheses that are then tested in rigorous, controlled trials,” Remington said.
Noted: The union represents trade workers at University of Wisconsin campuses, prisons and other state facilities. In many cases, they make about $41 an hour, according to state records.
As with trade workers around the country, they are paid a lower wage as apprentices. They all make the same wage once they complete their apprenticeships and become journeymen.
Kathy Thompson worked for 20 years as a steamfitter for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She recently started working for the private sector because the pay was much better, she said.
Quoted: Jeff Buhrandt, UW System vice president for the Office of University Relations, pointed out to the committee that state universities have always strived to promote free speech and diversity of thought on campus.
“Our current policy recognizes that each institution has a solemn responsibility not only to promote lively and fearless exploration, deliberation and debate of ideas, but also to protect those freedoms when others attempt to restrict them,” said Buhrandt.
Quoted: The Republican resolution passed the Senate and Assembly on party-line votes, and when Republicans released their maps in October, they were pretty true to its principles.
Because of that, the 2021 map looked a lot like the 2011 map. In the world of redistricting shorthand, this is often referred to as “core retention.” But Rob Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, has a different name for it: “gerrylaundering.”
“‘Gerrylaundering’ is an attempt to perpetuate an existing biased map by carrying forward the existing lines with as little change as you can get away with,” Yablon said.
Noted: A 2019 report from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute that examined gaps in the state’s behavioral health system found that 55 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties had a significant shortage of psychiatrists, particularly of those who could provide support for both mental health and substance use issues.
While Assembly Bill 413 does not refer to critical race theory by name, it does prohibit “instruction to students that promotes race or sex stereotyping in any course or as part of any curriculum.”
Written by Meredith Whye, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former early childhood teacher.
Quoted: Staffen said it’s unclear how many Connecticut warblers have historically been found in Wisconsin. There are around 1.5 to 2 million birds worldwide, said Stan Temple, professor emeritus of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Temple noted Connecticut warblers and other species like spruce grouse and boreal chickadees are occupying the southern edge of their range in northern Wisconsin. Those forest-dwelling species are contending with habitat loss as climate change is causing those forests to shift further north. In the next several decades, the southern limits of the songbirds’ range likely will no longer include Wisconsin.
“So in the long term, assuming that climate change continues unabated, the bird is destined to disappear from the Wisconsin landscape, regardless pretty much of what we do,” said Temple.
’We have opened up more options for people to get an exam done and have evidence collected,’ associate professor says.
System officials are asking the UW Board of Regents this week to extend the current test-optional policy through the 2024-25 school year. The policy was implemented just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic when many students were unable to take the test because of extremely limited testing site availability.
Quoted: “It feels a lot like the criticism we heard five or six years ago of the GAB,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center director Barry Burden said in a recent interview.
What is the fairest and most efficient way for citizens to pay for police and fire protection, safe streets, libraries, parks and other public services cities provide?
This is the real question University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Manuel Teodoro indirectly raised in his recent commentary urging elimination of the long-standing practice of municipal water utilities making payments in lieu of taxes — what are known as PILOTs — to municipalities. But Teodoro is mistaken in calling for an end to PILOTs in the absence of making any other changes to how municipalities are funded.
Quoted: Dr. Nasia Safdar, the director of infection control at UW Hospitals and Clinics, said she and other health care experts are wondering whether the omicron variant will be more contagious, how serious infections will be and how effective current vaccines will be in combating it. Safdar said it’s important to remember that even if existing vaccines are less effective on this new strain, they are still likely to offer some protection.
“Every decision that we make in this pandemic is going to be a trade-off between the risk and the benefit, and it’s what can one do to mitigate that risk,” said Safdar. “And of course, we don’t know how this is going to unfold fully yet. But it is a reminder that let’s do everything that we can on our end to mitigate things.”
Quoted: Joe Lauer, agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reviewed historical weather data at the UW Research Station in Arlington to see how dry 2021 was. The statistics date back to 1963.
He found this summer was similar to some of the driest years the station had on record, including 1988 when the station saw some of its worst corn yields.
“In the southern two tiers of counties in Wisconsin, we had some pretty dramatic drought conditions that farmers were experiencing. And it really didn’t let up until probably the end of September,” Lauer said. “We were dry most of that time. But having said that, we seemed to get a little bit of rain … that allowed the crop to keep going.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the people Gableman is meeting with “are all election skeptics who have bought into the big lie.”
Gableman, who last year without evidence claimed the election was stolen, has insisted he has no preconceived ideas about his review and hopes to find that the election was run properly.
“It’s hard to see how he could ever reach such a conclusion given this set of oddballs who he’s working with,” Burden said.
This month, most University of Wisconsin campuses celebrated hitting a threshold of having 70% of students fully-vaccinated against COVID-19 with full pomp and circumstance.
They doled out nearly $500,000 in scholarships through a UW System lottery, with 70 lucky students taking home $7,000 each. Other students won t-shirts, iPads, campus swag and scholarships through campus-sponsored programs aimed at encouraging vaccinations.
But one campus in southwestern Wisconsin — UW-Platteville — fell far short of the 70% goal, illustrating the challenges officials face trying to encourage vaccination in some rural areas.
Quoted: If the child may not be aware of the incident, adults can start with a general question, like, “Were kids at school talking about anything in the news today?” suggested Travis Wright, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If the answer is no, Wright said an adult may end the conversation with an open invitation, like: “Great. Lots of times there are things we hear about in the news that can be scary. If you ever hear anything that makes you feel upset, please know you can always talk to me.”
In some cases, especially if it’s expected that a child will find out about the incident, adults may want to introduce the subject. Wright suggested sharing something like: “There was a parade and someone injured some people at the parade. If you hear about it, I want you to know you can talk to me about it.”
University of Wisconsin System campuses are taking different approaches as COVID-19 vaccine mandate deadlines near for federal contractors.
Two top state Republicans are criticizing mandatory University of Wisconsin-Madison sexual violence prevention training that includes references to privilege, identity and critical race theory. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Tuesday wrote a letter to the school chancellor demanding answers on why graduate students are required to watch the two-hour webinar that university spokesperson John Lucas said includes “a brief reference” to critical race theory, which he said is supported by academic research and noted in the citations.
Quoted: “Wolves are moving south, and they have been for a while,” says Tim Van Deelen, a professor of wildlife ecology at UW-Madison with a focus on large mammals in the Great Lakes region. “We’ve seen wolves go through Chicago. We know one wolf was killed in a cornfield in Indiana. And if you think about the most direct route, they would walk right through Milwaukee. That is part of how wolves disperse. Is it common? No. But is it out of the realm of possibility? No.”
Quoted: What do you know about the Native peoples who have called Wisconsin lands their home for thousands of years?
November is Native American Heritage Month and is a good opportunity to learn about the history, culture and sovereignty of the 11 federally recognized tribes in Wisconsin and the Brothertown Indian Nation, which hopes to regain its federal status.
Most people know little to nothing about Native Americans, said Aaron Bird Bear, director of tribal relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Keeping ourselves ignorant about Indigenous nations, about our shared history and our treaty-based relationships with Indigenous nations is a form of collective amnesia,” Bird Bear said.
“One thing we would hope is that people really think deeply during Native American Heritage Month of how they can interrupt or arrest settler colonialism itself, which is a process by which the vast majority of U.S. society knows little to nothing about the people who’ve lived here for 20,000 years and counting.”
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has joined current gubernatorial candidate and former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in attacking the University of Wisconsin-Madison for including references to critical race theory in a training course for graduate students.
Quoted: “The idea is is that they will discuss the evidence, share their opinions with one another, spend time discussing whether they think the prosecution has met their burden of proof, but they don’t really get a blueprint for how to go about doing that other than to just discuss the evidence and listen to one another and keep an open mind,” said John Gross.
Gross is a UW-Madison Law School professor who has more than twenty years of experience serving as a criminal defense attorney. Gross expects jurors will spend a great deal of time sifting through video evidence.
“The jury is going to be able to look at that video as much as they would like in their jury room and figure out what they think you can see and hear and then conclude from all of that video evidence,” he said.
In a letter sent Tuesday to UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said it was “unacceptable” and “appalling” to mandate training that “instills the university’s negative opinion of white students and the idea that students should feel guilty simply because of their race.”
Quoted: Keith Findley, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, called the lack of decision “odd.”
“The only reason I can think of for waiting is perhaps he wants to give the jury a chance to acquit so he doesn’t have to, but that’s speculation on my part,” Findley, co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said in an interview.
Hospitals in Wisconsin and across the country have implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates for their staff. Now, UW Health Hospitals is requiring some patients to be protected against the disease as well.
Written by Jordan S. Ellenberg, a mathematics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a new book “Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy and Everything Else,” Penguin Random House, May 2021.”
The University of Wisconsin System early this year came out against a mandate, a stance that frustrates some students and staff who believe a requirement would not only provide a much safer environment for working and learning but also increase overall vaccination rates. The System instead requires unvaccinated students to test regularly. It has also incentivized students to get the shot by offering $7,000 scholarships to 70 vaccinated students enrolled at a campus that reached a 70% vaccination goal by Oct. 31. At UW-Madison, which did not participate in the incentive campaign and does not have a mandate, 95% of the student body is vaccinated, far and away the best outcome statewide among responding campuses that followed neither route.
Manuel P. Teodoro is an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. He works with water sector leaders across the United States on management, policy, and finance.
Noted: University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Lathrop created a state seal that was so hated that no record of it exists. It was then that Gov. Nelson Dewey and Chief Justice E.G. Ryan redesigned it to feature badgers — of both the four-legged and miner variety. This design stuck.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison began using the badger as its mascot in 1889 when intercollegiate football began, after the state’s nickname. The university used to keep a live animal before it was deemed too dangerous.
Quoted: “I think we are in a very good position because of the number of dollars that are flowing in this direction. The federal government is now turning on the hose,” said one of Tuesday’s panelists, Barry Orton, professor emeritus, telecommunications, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I would say that for municipalities and other public entities that are looking to provide broadband to their citizens, this is going to be their window of opportunity,” Orton said.
Cruz planned to speak last month at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, but the event was moved off campus because organizers refused to comply with the university’s policy requiring masks, WKOW-TV reported.
The University of Wisconsin System’s small branch campuses continue to hemorrhage students with enrollment declining 42% since a restructuring four years ago that was designed to keep them afloat by merging with nearby four-year schools.
The state Capitol will have its first statue commemoration of a prominent Wisconsin African American trailblazer with a vote Monday to honor Vel Phillips.
Quoted: Madison’s freezing temperatures are arriving about a month behind normal, said David Stevens, curator of the Longenecker Horticultural Gardens at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum.
Wisconsin’s unseasonably warm fall has had an impact on animal and plant life, including the arboretum’s lilacs, which usually bloom in the spring.
“While it’s not uncommon to see a few flowers pop on these common lilacs in late summer, early fall, this year was pretty extreme,” Stevens said. “We’re seeing quite a few flowers throughout our collection that we normally would not see.”
Noted: She earned both an undergraduate and law degree from the University of Wisconsin, and is a former president of the Wisconsin Hispanic Lawyers Association. She said she is “grateful, honored and humbled” by Evers’ appointment.
Quoted: Dramatic shifts in water levels on Lakes Michigan and Huron, as a result, will likely become increasingly common — even if average levels stay roughly the same, said Michael Notaro, associate director of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research.
Beyond speeding up coastal erosion, more frequent, intense storms bring heavier rains that increase the runoff of fertilizer into lakes, feeding algal blooms on nutrient-rich lakes that harm fish and other wildlife.
“It’s not really (a question of) when it’s going to happen. It’s already happening,” said Notaro.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said while Trump and other Republicans complained about the practice there isn’t a single definition of what “ballot harvesting” refers to.
“To most observers, harvesting is done by a private, partisan group or individual when they gather ballots from individuals and then deliver them to an election office,” Burden said in an email. “Kleefisch claims that Democrats do this sort of thing ‘non-stop,’ but I am not aware of widespread ballot collection by Democratic volunteers or operatives in Wisconsin.”
Quoted: “When the list was first brought up in 2019 going into the 2020 election, there was a lot of concern,” Barry Burden, Director of Elections Research at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, said. “You heard outcry and eventually lawsuits to try to move things along. But that’s completely different from the regular list maintenance that the state has done for a number of years.”
Noted: Kigeya is an outreach specialist for the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and a special projects manager with The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. She has served as an intern for United States Sen. Russ Feingold and is currently the co-chair of the Middleton Police Commission. She has also served as commissioner for the Dane County Equal Opportunities Commission, according to a press release, and has been with the City of Madison Affirmative Action Commission.
Jake Dean, director of the Grangier Center for Supply Chain Management at UW-Madison, discusses why the flow of consumer products has slowed across the nation and how it is affecting Wisconsin.
Noted: Joe Lauer is an agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Madison Agronomy and UWEX state corn specialist
Quoted: For many growers and researchers, this points to one thing.
“That is definitely the expression of climate change,” said Professor Amaya Atucha, a fruit crop specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She said increasingly extreme variability in temperature and precipitation is making it difficult for fruit trees to thrive.
Quoted: “There isn’t a lot of evidence in the data that people are staying home,” said Laura Dresser, an economist and associate director of COWS, a University of Wisconsin-Madison policy research center, noting the state’s continued above-average labor force participation.
Other factors, such as the continued difficulty in finding child care, are likely keeping people from working who would otherwise want to do so, she said. One reason for Wisconsin’s higher labor force participation rate is that more women are in the state’s workforce, and are likely to be disproportionately affected by the disruption in child care.
Dissatisfaction over pay and frustration with customers who angrily object to masking have given restaurant and hospitality workers reason to pursue other jobs instead, said Steven Deller, of the UW Extension’s agricultural and applied economics department. “There’s lots of little things going on here,” Deller said. “I think a lot of folks are simply saying, ‘No — do I really want to do that any more?’”
Noted: Julie Underwood, a retired faculty member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education and Law School, said the argument in the lawsuits are based on a claim of negligence: The school districts have a responsibility to provide reasonable care of the child, and failed to do so.
If it’s determined that immunity doesn’t apply here, the next question would be whether it was reasonable for the school boards not to require masks, Underwood said.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s not uncommon for political party leaders to change their views on recall elections.
“For conservatives in Wisconsin, (they) made two keys argument against the 2012 recalls. First was that Governor Walker had only been in office for a year and deserved to have more time to prove himself before facing another election. Second was that the motivation for the recalls was merely a policy debate about labor unions and not over malfeasance in office, which is what recalls should be used for,” Burden said.
Seven facilities on the UW-Madison will receive an upgrade, including in elevators that range in age from 45-56 years old and do not meet current accessibility standards.
Bradley Carl, assistant scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW-Madison, said it would be helpful to have thresholds or criteria that allow districts or even DPI to compare last year’s numbers to pre-pandemic years, but that hasn’t been established, Carl said, so parents, researchers, mayors and others are “left to wonder and make sense of it.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s not uncommon for political party leaders to change their views on recall elections.
In 2012, Burden said, conservatives in Wisconsin fought the recall drive by arguing that Walker and Kleefisch had not been in office long enough to be removed and that recall elections were “merely a policy debate about labor unions and not over malfeasance in office.”
Now, he said, conservatives and Republicans can claim they are being consistent by arguing that school board members are violating state law with their public health mandates, such as masks, vaccines and online learning.
“So it is about wrongdoing in office and not just a dispute about local education policy,” Burden said.
Quoted: Erin Barbato, the director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, said that the immigration status of evacuees isn’t tied to remaining at the base, but once they leave, a clock starts on their resettlement benefits, which are only available for eight months after leaving the base.
“Many people are confusing the resettlement process with the immigration process. So, when people are applying for humanitarian parole or for their Special Immigrant Visa or even for asylum, that does not need to be completed on the base,” she said. “The issue is people have now been waiting for a long time at these bases and they don’t want to remain there any longer, but many of them need a resettlement plan in order to get their life started in the United States.”
Noted: This year in Wisconsin, a fall armyworm population is present unlike anything most entomologists have ever seen. The pests are doing damage to alfalfa, winter wheat and other cover crops around the state. Bryan Jensen, UW-Extension Pest Management Specialist, shares that this warmer fall weather has helped to create a perfect storm for fall armyworms to thrive. Fall armyworms are different from the normal armyworms seen during late spring. The good news, according to Jensen, is they will most definitely not over-winter here in Wisconsin: they are a warm weather species, and will not survive the winter
Quoted: Adjusting disease rates for age is a common practice in epidemiology. The practice is crucial for understanding the impacts that a disease like COVID-19 has on a large and varied population.
“We adjust for factors like age because we identify factors like age as being confounders,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: COVID-19 vaccination rates tend to be lower in rural communities, and the same goes for rural areas in Wisconsin. The difference between the most and least vaccinated counties in Wisconsin is as much as 40 percent said Dr. Jonathan Temte, an associate dean with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health who studies vaccine and immunization policy.
Quoted: Mike Wagner, professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the conflict between Vos, Gableman and Brandtjen is typical of recent dynamics within the Republican Party and shows a “crash to be as close to President Trump as possible.”
Former President Donald Trump has continued to push false claims of election fraud across the country in the year following the election.
“It’s really striking to see elected officials and appointed officials engaged in a back-and-forth about who can be more skeptical about an election that was clearly shown repeatedly to be extraordinarily fair and very well conducted,” Wagner said.
After months of grim financial forecasts, University of Wisconsin System leaders presented a much rosier financial outlook this week as campuses settle into another school year shadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Quoted: Every decade, states have to draw new maps after the census to rebalance the population in each district. For more than 50 years, the courts had the final say in Wisconsin because Democrats and Republicans split control of state government.
Not in 2011, when the GOP controlled both the legislative and executive branches.
“That’s when we got these really gerrymandered districts,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor David Canon.
Canon believes federal courts may revisit the issue after the science becomes more established.
“If the state courts can get some consensus on a measure or a couple of measures that show a partisan gerrymander, then maybe 10 years from now, this comes up again, and federal courts will say, ‘The states did this pretty well, and we do have accepted measures,’” Canon said.
Quoted: Power plant and industry emissions didn’t see a steep drop or any decline during stay-at-home orders. The findings are consistent with what one would expect to see from people traveling less during the pandemic, said Tracey Holloway, professor with the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They did not see that much of a change in pollution from power plants and some industries, and that also is consistent because we’re still using electricity,” said Holloway. “We’re still running our air conditioners and the kind of things that drive a lot of demand for electricity were still happening.”
Quoted: Steve Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he thinks the new technology makes the plant a worthwhile investment for state tax credits and will hopefully help the state’s dairy industry move into the future.
“This is a pretty good shot in the arm for the Wisconsin dairy industry,” Deller said. “Any time we see new investment like this is a positive sign because a lot of the growth in the dairy industry has really not been occurring in Wisconsin.”
