Skip to main content

Category: Top Stories

Tuition, state funding and diversity: New UW-Madison chancellor’s agenda has familiar ring

Wisconsin State Journal

Jennifer Mnookin spent her first day on campus meeting with students, faculty and campus leaders as she takes on the role as UW-Madison’s 30th chancellor.

Mnookin, who comes to Madison from her previous role as dean of the UCLA School of Law, said her primary goal is to have conversations with UW-Madison students and staff and community and state leaders to discuss ways to keep UW-Madison affordable, while also addressing challenges like accessibility, funding and diversity.

Teacher shortages loom ahead of the new school year. UW-Madison’s School of Education is trying to help.

Channel 3000

Kimber Wilkerson is the faculty director of UW-Madison’s Teacher Education Center. She says there are many reasons hiring teachers is difficult right now.

“A critique of the teaching profession is the pay,” said Wilkerson. “I think COVID has exacerbated that experience by making the working conditions for teachers even more challenging.”

A Navajo scientist couldn’t translate his work to his family. Now, because of a UW-Madison project he co-founded, he can.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

That’s when Martin and his colleagues — Joanna Bundus, a biology post-doctoral fellow at UW-Madison, and Susana Wadgymar, an assistant professor of biology at Davidson College in North Carolina — founded Project ENABLE (Enriching Navajo As a Biology Language for Education), an online dictionary of biology terms translated from English to Diné Bizaad, a Navajo language.

UW Alzheimer’s doctor, researcher inspired by father’s diagnosis with the disease

Wisconsin State Journal

Dr. Nathaniel Chin, who grew up in Watertown and got undergraduate and medical degrees from UW-Madison, planned to specialize in infectious diseases. But during his internal medicine residency at the University of California-San Diego, his father — a family medicine doctor in Watertown — was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Four arrested, including 15-year-old, in attack on UW Ph.D. student

WISC-TV 3

Four people who police said attacked a UW-Madison Ph.D. student who was walking in downtown Madison Tuesday night were arrested Saturday. One of the suspects is 15 years old.Madison police said the fifth-year doctoral student was walking in the 400 block of West Gilman Street at around 10:15 p.m. Tuesday when he was allegedly punched by a group of men. The men then kicked and punched him after he fell to the ground.

‘A lasting and influential impact’: Karen Walsh elected president of UW Board of Regents

Wisconsin State Journal

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents elected Karen Walsh to serve as its president on Friday, filling the role after its former holder declined to run for the seat again earlier this year.

Also on Friday, the board elected Amy Blumenfeld Bogost to the role of vice president. Bogost works as a federal Title IX lawyer and joined the board in May 2020.

Lifelong learners: For older students at UW-Madison, guest auditing keeps them young

The Capital Times

Steve Holtzman is easy to spot on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. At the back of a classroom in the psychology building, he and his wife Jane sit amid students decades younger than them as they take notes for a lecture on the Civil War. “You won’t have any problems seeing us,” Holtzman said, laughing. “We’re the only old folks in there.”

Ancient canoe from Lake Mendota undergoes high tech scan

Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison announced Tuesday that Lennon Rodgers, who directs the Grainger Engineering Design and Innovation Laboratory, conducted the scans at the invitation of Wisconsin State Archaeologist James Skibo and Scott Roller, a senior collections manager for the Wisconsin Historical Society. The canoe, being preserved and housed at the Wisconsin State Archive Preservation Facility on Madison’s Near East Side, was out of its tank for about a day in order for Rodgers, who oversees the College of Engineering’s makerspace, to do his work.

Cutting fossil fuel air pollution saves lives

NPR

“These [particles] get deep into the lungs and cause both respiratory and cardiac ailments,” says Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the authors of the study. “They are pretty much the worst pollutant when it comes to mortality and hospitalization.”

Full UW-Madison commencement thunders back to Camp Randall

Wisconsin State Journal

After years of the COVID-19 pandemic’s shuttering of dear traditions, UW-Madison had its first proper spring commencement in three years on Saturday. As the smiling faces of friends and families packed the stands at Camp Randall, the theme of change, for students and the university, ran through the words of speakers and the audience of 42,000 people.

Outgoing UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank suggests ‘persistence and stubbornness’ for successor

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On the cusp of leaving the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chancellor Rebecca Blank used a final news conference Wednesday to take somewhat of a victory lap, saying she is leaving the university on strong financial footing and in a much better place.

But she also took the opportunity to highlight “unfinished agenda” items, such as increasing diversity and students’ sense of belonging on campus.

Blank holds final media briefing as UW-Madison chancellor

WISC-TV 3

Blank, at times emotional, touted the university’s accomplishments during her nine-year tenure, including efforts to make UW-Madison more financially stable. She highlighted the university’s work in expanding summer programs, increasing research dollars and fundraising, which have allowed it to invest in high-need areas like increasing staff salaries and scholarship opportunities.

Woman gets second chance at UW-Madison graduation she missed 36 years ago

Wisconsin State Journal

Dawn Proctor made a request in March that she considered to be bold and unusual and unlike her. The UW-Madison alumna graduated in 1986 but circumstances beyond her control prevented her from participating in the commencement ceremony. Now 67 and auditing a full load of courses this semester, being back on campus reminded her over and over again of the missed opportunity.

UW group wins it all in NYC ‘Pitch Perfect’ competition

Wisconsin State Journal

They figured they’d go to New York City and just enjoy the experience: Central Park. The Empire State Building. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the UW-Madison singing group Pitches and Notes also capped off their Big Apple trip last month with an unexpected souvenir: The first-place trophy from the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella.

UW-Madison chancellor finalist Ann Cudd wants to restore confidence in value of college degree

Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison chancellor finalist Ann Cudd is troubled by the statistics that show a large swath of the public believe leading research universities are headed in the wrong direction. “Top research universities need to both ensure and better communicate that most of their students actually graduate on time and their return on investment is, financially and socially, very highly beneficial,” she said.

 

UW-Madison chancellor finalist Jennifer Mnookin’s pitch: Make Wisconsin idea a national model

Wisconsin State Journal

Mnookin, who is one of five finalists vying to become the next UW-Madison chancellor, said she donated a kidney to her father in late 2020. The organ made its way from Los Angeles, where Mnookin leads the University of California Los Angeles law school, to her dad in Boston thanks to a solution developed at UW-Madison that extends the time that an organ can be safely stored outside of a body

UW-Madison chancellor finalist Daniel Reed brings blend of corporate, academic experience

Wisconsin State Journal

As a computer science professor, Daniel Reed often turns to data when arguing about the value of a college degree. But sometimes, he said, those who need convincing don’t want more data points or details. The UW-Madison chancellor finalist said one of the more successful models in advocating for the university is relying on the campus community — the students learning in class, the faculty making life-changing discoveries — to tell that story.

Burned and vandalized: A history of cherry blossoms bearing the brunt of xenophobia

NBC News

But when they arrived in 1910, the Agriculture Department discovered upon inspection that they were diseased and infested with insects, according to the National Park Service. The trees were burned. Some anthropologists, including Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, are skeptical about whether the trees were, indeed, infested.

Meet the Science moms working to save the planet for future generations

Yahoo.com/Parents

Moms may just be one of our most potent weapons against the climate crisis. Dr. Rios-Berrios joined forces with several climate scientists and parents in Science Moms, a nonpartisan group launched by the Potential Energy Coalition in 2021.

“One of the things I love about the Science Moms program is that the website and outreach make it easy for moms to get involved. It takes this complicated topic and breaks it into bite-size pieces,” says Science Mom’s Tracey Holloway, Ph.D., a professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and mom to two.

The human genome is finally complete

The Daily Beast

This is an impressive tour de force and a landmark accomplishment,” Lloyd Smith, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the T2T project, told The Daily Beast. “It takes tremendous commitment, perseverance, and deep technical knowledge to decipher these most difficult to access regions of the genome.”

Barron’s 100 most influential women in finance: Katy Huberty

Barron's/Marketwatch

Katy Huberty has spent two decades at Morgan Stanley analyzing technology hardware stocks. Her coverage has included Apple, Dell Technologies, and Seagate Technology Holdings, among many others. Now director of equity research for the Americas, Huberty is thinking about how to scale her IT hardware team’s data-heavy approach to stock analysis to all of Morgan Stanley’s 49 research teams.

A Morgan Stanley lifer, Huberty, 44, joined the firm after college at the University of Wisconsin. Today, she sees technology diffusing into every corner of the market.

Antarctica hit 70 degrees above average in March, an apparent world record

MSN.com

“Not a good sign when you see that sort of thing happen,” said University of Wisconsin meteorologist Matthew Lazzara.

Lazzara monitors temperatures at East Antarctica’s Dome C-ii and logged 14 degrees (-10 degrees Celsius) Friday, where the normal is -45 degrees (-43 degrees Celsius): “That’s a temperature that you should see in January, not March. January is summer there. That’s dramatic.”

UW study finds rivers emptying PFAS chemicals in Lake Michigan

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Christy Remucal, an associate professor with the UW Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and postdoctoral investigator Sarah Balgooyen looked at the water and sediments within 41 of the tributaries that feed water into the bay, and the impact water from tributaries broadly could be having on the Great Lakes.

Tony Evers calls for education spending, $150 checks to residents in state of the state address

Wisconsin State Journal

Evers, who is seeking a second term this November, also touted the billions of dollars of federal stimulus funds he has allocated over the course of the pandemic to businesses and farmers. Adding to that, he announced on Tuesday plans to spend $25 million of those funds to freeze tuition at University of Wisconsin System for two years and another $5 million to expand counseling and provide mental health programs for members of the Wisconsin National Guard.

UW-Madison chancellor calls political divide the greatest threat to public universities

Wisconsin State Journal

In her farewell address to the UW Board of Regents Thursday, Rebecca Blank also took aim at state involvement in campus building projects, criticized some “one-size-fits-all” University of Wisconsin System policies and again called for raising in-state undergraduate tuition.