Specifically, the report calls for investing in county-based educators employed through UW-Madison’s Extension division. The task force recommended partnering with UW Extension to help every region of the state understand its assets and create an area-specific development strategy.
Few states controlled tuition at their public universities as tightly as Wisconsin has done in recent years and the handful that did offset the squeeze with some additional state money, according to a new report released Tuesday.
A new report on the financial health of Wisconsin’s state universities and technical colleges found lagging state investment, enrollment challenges and — for University of Wisconsin schools — an ongoing tuition freeze as some of several factors threatening their competitiveness.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved 2% raises across the board for campus chancellors during a closed session Thursday afternoon.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents unanimously voted Thursday to approve its 2021-2023 pay plan request, asking Governor Tony Evers to fully fund pay increases for System employees.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is requesting that the Board of Regents approve increased tuition plans for some graduate and professional programs, a process that has taken place every two years since December 2014.
University of Wisconsin System employees would receive 2% and 2.5% pay increases over the next two fiscal years under a plan officials released Monday, but the annual raises require legislative approval and COVID-19 complicates the state budget picture.
Prisons, schools and the University of Wisconsin System are also expected to need more money, adding to the challenges for Evers and lawmakers.
What’s more, the report does not include the projected $1.1 billion cost of maintaining Medicaid services or additional spending on COVID-19 measures or state aid to K-12 schools, the University of Wisconsin System, local governments or prisons.
In Dane County, Wis., home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received nearly 35,000 more votes than the Democratic ticket got four years ago. And in Centre County, Pa., home of Pennsylvania State University, the running mates received 1,800 additional votes over the 2016 count.
Quoted: Joe Lauer, an agronomy professor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said farmers were grateful for more normal weather patterns this year after an extremely wet season in 2019.
“There’s a little more peace of mind, if you will, in kind of going through what I just call an average normal production season,” Lauer said. “We’re going to end up with record yields but it’s just kind of easier psychologically to take.”
Shawn Conley, soybean and wheat specialist for UW-Madison’s Division of Extension, said a lack of precipitation throughout the state at the end of summer caused the USDA to lower their forecasted yields to 53 bushels per acre. That’s six bushels, or almost 13 percent, higher than last year.
But Conley said most farmers were happy to have the dry weather.
“That allowed farmers to have a lot of days in the field that they can push through and get their crops out of the field in a timely manner,” Conley said.
Wisconsin schools across the state are facing a shortage of special education teachers, especially in smaller rural districts. A new UW-Madison masters program is working to fill that gap.
Quoted: Patrick Remington, 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 best approach to tackling the massive outbreak is working together.
“To beat this virus, we have to be united in response,” he said.
Sporting events at UW-Madison, including Camp Randall Stadium, are exempt because state property is not subject to the county’s orders. Nevertheless, UW-Madison has put in place strict protocols for athletic events and doesn’t anticipate changing those in response to the new order, the university said in a statement.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to continue its hybrid learning model next semester with a drastically increased COVID-19 testing capacity, expecting more than 50,000 tests available weekly.
Enrollment at most University of Wisconsin campuses dropped again from last school year, a reflection of both the declining number of traditional high school students for colleges to recruit and the pandemic’s effect on college students.
On Wednesday the University of Wisconsin announced its campuses will open free “surge testing sites” that provide rapid-result COVID-19 tests to off-campus community members, with the aim of alleviating the high demand for testing across the state.
Testing sites will be set up at every University of Wisconsin System campus, including two-year campuses that are often located in more rural areas of the state. Most sites are scheduled to open up next week.
The University of Wisconsin System will pioneer a new, federally funded testing plan by providing 250,000 COVID-19 tests at on-campus sites as early as Thursday.
Leading the way in the record early turnout are the liberal strongholds of Milwaukee and Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin and the state capitol of Madison.
While the president has played down the pandemic in his visits, Wisconsin has been setting records for cases and hospitalizations. The state university’s ranked football team, the University of Wisconsin Badgers, had to cancel its Oct. 31 game against Nebraska when multiple players and the coach tested positive.
In Madison, volunteers who would have knocked on doors to remind people to vote are instead holding signs on busy street corners. At night, the Democratic National Committee is projecting reminders to vote onto the sides of buildings at the University of Wisconsin campuses in both cities.
“It is impossible to think that anything that could happen in a school could happen without echoes in the larger community,” UW-Madison pathology professor David O’Connor said. “The question is: how large are those echoes?”
In another sign that the pandemic is causing major constraints on college budgets, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has announced that the campus would continue with employee furloughs.
“There is not the test infrastructure in the United States to do that,” said Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm.
It signed an $100 million agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and several local agreements to build “innovation centers” in Racine, Green Bay and Eau Claire.
Facing a coronavirus-induced “budget crisis” that exceeds $300 million, UW-Madison announced on Monday another round of furloughs and pay cuts for the first six months of 2021.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will implement more furloughs for spring semester to help offset revenue losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. The first round of unpaid leave, announced in August, ends this month.
Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, met with a group of lawmakers and University of Wisconsin officials at the state Capitol Friday, at a time when hospitalizations have soared and daily cases of COVID-19 are at an all-time high.
Birx met Friday with UW System officials, including interim President Tommy Thompson and campus chancellors, to encourage the universities to test all students at least weekly in an effort to identify asymptomatic cases earlier that could help stop community spread of the virus to more vulnerable populations.
Gov. Tony Evers praised University of Wisconsin-Madison officials for taking COVID-19 precautions “very seriously” by closing down parking lots to prevent tailgating and allowing only essential personnel inside the stadium, reversing an earlier decision to allow parents of players inside Camp Randall.
By the end of the summer, Walker found himself in a tight reelection race against state school superintendent Tony Evers, a critic of the deal. Polling showed that few people felt the project would benefit their local economy, so Walker campaigned to show that all of Wisconsin would feel the effect of the “Foxconn bonus.” He was aided in this message by a string of announcements from Foxconn: a promised gift of $100 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison; partnerships with local companies; and the purchase of buildings in far corners of the state that would become “innovation centers,” which Walker quickly featured in campaign ads.
Aside from the Marquette poll, there is a new local, statewide poll in Wisconsin this year, the 2020 Election Survey from the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Like Marquette, this poll weights for education. Its latest results are similar to Marquette’s latest, showing Biden leading Trump by 4 points among likely voters, with a 4.5 percent margin of error.
Evers has used his powers to declare three public health emergencies this year. The first came March 12, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, on July 30, led to the first mask mandate and came as COVID-19 cases were beginning to climb. And the third, on Sept. 22, extended the mask mandate as COVID-19 cases were surging on University of Wisconsin campuses.
Just Recovery will work to identify and support strategies for responding to COVID-19, recovery efforts and building resilience in communities of color by partnering with community-based organizations and local groups, including other government and social service agencies.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison hired a record number of faculty and graduated a record number of students in the last academic year, Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced Monday.
Schools, colleges and universities are exempt from the order, along with outdoor spaces.
Evers has used the powers to declare three public health emergencies this year. The first came March 12, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, on July 30, led to the first mask mandate and came as COVID-19 cases were beginning to climb. And the third, on Sept. 22, extended the mask mandate as COVID-19 cases were surging on University of Wisconsin campuses.
University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson said in a Thursday interview that the campuses were among the safest places in the state, with extensive testing, tracking and quarantine programs. But he acknowledged there was “some connection” between returning students and the viral wave.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has implemented full and partial layoffs affecting 35 people — or about 18% of the staff — in the Division of Continuing Studies, citing the COVID-19 pandemic’s financial toll.
The state government, along with a university, will work to find strategies to help communities of color respond to, and recover from, COVID-19.
Evers was joined by Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Department of Health Services and Population Health Institute at University of Wisconsin- Madison to discuss the initiative.
Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday the University of Wisconsin System faces a budget lapse of $45 million out of a total lapse amount of $300 million in funding to state departments.
UW System will face a budget lapse of only $45 million, a $24 million decrease compared to the original $69 million cut that Governor Tony Evers ordered in July.
Afederal judge said Wednesday that he won’t rule before the election on a lawsuit that challenged a state law requiring college student IDs to have an expiration date in order for them to be used as a voter’s ID.
With a Big Ten Conference football season back on the schedule, revenue losses for the University of Wisconsin athletic department won’t be as severe as originally thought but still are projected to be significant.
The Wisconsin poll, coordinated by the UW-Madison Elections Research Center in collaboration with the Wisconsin State Journal, found that Biden has the support of half of likely voters — those who say they’re certain to vote. When compared to previous Wisconsin polls this year, one of the standout results is how little voters have changed their minds.
Nearly half the savings, $120 million, is coming from savings under the Medicaid program. UW’s was second highest, followed by $31 million at the Department of Health Services and $28 million at the Department of Corrections.
Evers announced Tuesday the new mask mandate — along with his third public health emergency — in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. Positive cases had begun to drop after Evers’ first mask mandate took effect in July but have been rising, primarily among 18- to 24-year-olds, since students returned to college campuses.
While the sharp increase in cases can partially be attributed to students testing positive at college campuses, it’s unlikely the only factor. As of Friday, the University of Wisconsin Madison – the state’s flagship public university – reported 2,511 new cases on campus, just since the fall semester started last week.
Dane County confirmed 210 new coronavirus cases this morning, as yesterday’s Data Snapshot from Public Health Madison Dane County (PHMDC) reported 72 percent of all new cases the September 1-14 were from UW students and staff. Today’s new cases bring the total for the county to 8,461 as of this morning. There are 6,548 recovered cases while 1,872 are currently active. This brings the percentage of active cases to 22 percent.
Noted: Just over three-quarters of those recent cases were found in University of Wisconsin-Madison students and staff, with students making up the vast majority, 1,808 to 10 for the UW staff, PHMDC data notes indicate. Nearly 1,400 of the total cases were linked to college-age housing clusters, such as forms, apartment complexes with 10 or more cases, and fraternities and sororities.
Noted: Bayfield County is projected to lose 28% of its child population by 2040. Pepin County, 25%; Price County, 20%, according to the Applied Population Laboratory at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Those communities that lose too much of their youth population are in danger of becoming unsustainable,” the university said.
Noted: The new cases come as colleges and universities across the state continue to grapple with outbreaks of the virus on and around their campuses.
Nearly 90% of University of Wisconsin-Madison students who have tested positive for COVID-19 have exhibited symptoms, public health officials said Wednesday.
Gov. Tony Evers and Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm addressed the increasing COVID-19 cases on college campuses in a media briefing Tuesday.
Gov. Tony Evers said Tuesday the University of Wisconsin System has done a good job managing the COVID-19 pandemic so far this academic year. His comment comes as campuses across the state have recently announced clusters of virus cases, temporary shutdowns of in-person classes and dorm quarantines.
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials made the right decision to reopen the campus even though there’s been a surge of COVID-19 cases among students and university employees, Gov. Tony Evers said Tuesday.
Noted: In the last presidential cycle, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim found that Russian-linked disinformation campaigns focused ads on the swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in particular, targeting both sides of the political spectrum with inflammatory posts on race, gun rights and increasingly, feminism.
Cases have spiked in Dane County as the University of Wisconsin-Madison resumes in-person instruction. On Thursday, the county reported 456 new cases of COVID-19, shattering the previous single-day record and accounting for nearly one-third of all new coronavirus cases reported statewide.
In a wide-ranging interview hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club, Evers also defended the University of Wisconsin System’s plans to return to campus and said he wouldn’t change anything about how his administration responded to the recent unrest in Kenosha.
