At the same time as the University of Wisconsin-Madison prepares to welcome back students living in residence halls next week and students into classrooms Sept. 2, two Midwestern universities have reversed course and gone virtual because of COVID-19 outbreaks.
“Nothing is certain about this fall,” Blank said. “We’ll have a testing regime in place that allows us to monitor the rate of infection among different groups on campus. If the infections appear to be growing rather than stable, we will shut down activities on some or all parts of campus.”
The head of the University of Wisconsin System will propose its Board of Regents support a 3.5% increase to its 2021-23 state budget in the hope of funding several new initiatives, including a statewide free tuition scholarship program for some Wisconsin students.
The program offers its students financial support including in-state tuition, fees and testing certification costs in exchange for the students teaching for three or four years at a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school in Wisconsin.
As Wisconsin continues to face diminishing enrollment in teacher education programs, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education hopes to financially support over 1,500 students to study and work as teachers in the state over the next five years.
Sierrena Taylor-Seals expected to take out thousands of dollars in student loans to earn her education degree from UW-Madison.
Interim University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson will request a 3.5% operating budget increase for the 2021-23 biennium, alongside ten key initiatives to be presented to Gov. Tony Evers Thursday.
The University of Wisconsin System wants nearly $100 million more in the next state budget to cushion COVID-19’s financial blow to campuses and cover tuition for Wisconsin students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year.
In a shaded parking lot on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, so-called spit concierges guide volunteers though giving a saliva sample. On the other side of the parking lot is a pared-down biology lab where scientists test the spit-filled plastic vials for the virus that causes COVID-19.
They’ll have the results within one or two hours.
The scene looked like it always does this time of year when tens of thousands of UW-Madison students’ off-campus leases turn over.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank delivered a sobering message Wednesday about the state’s flagship campus as the fall semester looms, saying “we’re in a real financial crisis” due to the coronavirus pandemic.
How bad the crisis will be depends on several factors, Blank said in an online presentation at the Rotary Club of Madison. Those include whether students who are enrolled for the fall semester actually show up, how deep state budget cuts are and whether the Legislature gives the university the authority to borrow money.
The Big Ten Conference won’t be playing football this fall because of concerns about COVID-19.
The University of Wisconsin System will reduce central office spending by $10 million over the next two years in an effort to streamline administration and refocus resources on students, its leader announced Tuesday.
Bracing for more financial losses associated with COVID-19, the University of Wisconsin System announced on Tuesday a series of additional cost-cutting measures for its roughly 600 administrative employees, including some layoffs.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first on-campus COVID-19 testing location is now operating on an appointment basis, with at least two more sites expected to open for the fall semester.
The Big Ten is likely to cancel fall sports, including football, over coronavirus concerns, according to several reports. A formal announcement is expected Tuesday.
An already-battered Madison hospitality industry could take another hit worth tens of millions of dollars if the Big Ten Conference ultimately decides to cancel the fall football season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the past 72 hours, conference presidents and athletic directors have grappled with the decision to delay, postpone or cancel the season, while coaches and players have pleaded for the chance to play.
Democrat Joe Biden led GOP President Donald Trump in Wisconsin and two other battleground states in a poll released Monday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“All three states remain battlegrounds that should not be ignored by either campaign,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center, in a news release Monday.
Gov. Tony Evers has allocated about $32 million to University of Wisconsin System schools for COVID-19 testing and protection — a significant savings from the original request — based on the availability of a rapid, less costly test.
If the college football season is able to be played this fall, the University of Wisconsin football team now knows who it’ll face and when.
The lead mechanical engineer for a recently launched Mars rover mission is a UW-Madison alumnus who, for the second time, is playing an integral role in the search for life on the Red Planet.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has joined all other UW colleges in waiving its test score requirements for fall 2021 admission as students nationwide struggle to access the ACT and SAT during the pandemic.
Shortly after finding out about the money from the county, Mt. Zion lead pastor Rev. Marcus Allen called University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gloria Ladson-Billings about getting something started. “Like this,” he said while snapping his fingers, “she had a whole acronym and everything ready to go.” Ladson-Billings said she’s “been thinking about questions of summer slide for a while,” and this was a good opportunity to put some of those thoughts into practice.
High school seniors applying to UW-Madison this fall can opt out of the standardized testing admissions requirement. Students can still submit ACT or SAT scores, but they won’t be penalized in the admissions process if they choose not to, the university announced Wednesday.
For the ninth year in a row, University of Wisconsin Hospitals, including University Hospital and UW Health at the American Center, have been ranked #1 by U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals.”
The University of Wisconsin System announced a $2 million anonymous donation Monday that will help improve online classes and academic advising.
The University of Wisconsin System received a $2 million anonymous donation to improve online education as campuses try to make classes more engaging than was offered in the spring.
UW-Madison’s University Housing division plans to reopen all 21 of its residential halls next month. The dorms are set to hold between 7,300 and 7,500 undergraduate students and university leaders finalized a series of changes that aim to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between students and out into the community.
As University of Wisconsin System students grapple with the realization that most of their classes will again be online this fall, many hold out hope for some form of tuition relief to offset what they see as an inferior learning experience.
Noted: Minutes after Evers announced the plan, University of Wisconsin interim president and former Gov. Tommy Thompson pointed out that the system’s campuses had already absorbed more than half of the first round of cutting and signaled the system would have trouble with further reductions.
“Our universities are doing everything we can to provide in-person classes safely this fall and reductions in state support for the UW System are an obstacle to that work,” Thompson said in a statement.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, study of Asian jumping worms began after they were discovered on the grounds in 2013. “They may have a cascading, behind-the-scenes impact that might not happen tomorrow, but that will eventually affect other organisms at a higher trophic level,” said Bradley M. Herrick, a plant ecologist and the research program manager at the arboretum.
Shiva Bidar, UW Health chief diversity officer and a Madison City Council member, confirmed that Wisconsin residents can come to their health facilities and receive care, no questions asked. “We’ll make sure they go where they need care and nobody’s asking them to pay up front for anything,” Bidar said. “We will figure out on the back end what we need to do to make sure that their bills are covered.”
Equipped with a laptop, legal pad and smartphone, Merta Maaneb de Macedo this week called a UW-Madison student whose roommate recently tested positive for COVID-19.
An infectious disease epidemiologist who teaches a course called “Conspiracies in Public Health,” Ajay Sethi has paid close attention to misinformation related to COVID-19.
“It’s for cases where people want to be able to see faces,” said Lennon Rodgers, director of the Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It could be a teacher talking to their students, seeing smiles, things like this that are important, some people say, for developmental reasons.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Athletic Department has announced student-athletes will wear black crest logos on their jerseys next season as a symbol of solidarity with the school’s minority communities.
Wisconsin plans to have its sports teams wear a university crest logo with a black “W” to show solidarity with Black and other underrepresented communities on campus.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has unveiled a series of changes aimed at improving the racial climate on campus, including a mandatory cultural competency workshop for new undergraduate students and a $10 million fundraising campaign to recruit and hire more students and employees of color.
“Today’s announcement is encouraging news for all college students and for American universities,” UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in a statement. “Universities need flexibility to educate students in the most effective manner possible during the pandemic and international students deserve stability and support as they pursue their degrees here.”
UW-Madison remains committed to preserving elements of in-person teaching, with physical distancing requirements and widespread testing. However, as families and faculty continue to ask more specific questions about what school will look like, the university has about five weeks to hash out the details. “This is a big lift,” Blank said at a University Committee meeting Monday. “We’re going to be running the university in virtually every area differently than it’s ever been run before.”
The rule threatens to upend the legal status of thousands of international students in Wisconsin, including roughly 5,800 on the UW-Madison campus.
UW Health patients will be among those testing an experimental antibody treatment heavily backed by the federal government to see if it can treat and prevent COVID-19.
The University of Wisconsin System has asked the governor for $110 million to fund COVID-19 testing and personal protective equipment, as campuses look to open this fall and the number of coronavirus cases in Wisconsin continues to rise.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that all of the roughly 1 million international students currently enrolled in the U.S. must attend at least one in-person class this fall or be denied visas. We hear student reaction, and Jeffrey Brown talks to Rebecca Blank of University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The UW Board of Regents unanimously passed the mask mandate Thursday, a few weeks after UW System guidelines recommended masks but stopped short of requiring them.
After spending years studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Linh Nguyen, an international student from Vietnam, watched in recent days as his life fell into limbo.
“As someone who has benefited from White privilege, my first action must be to listen with humility and empathy – to faculty and staff, to students, and to others who love UW and also recognize its shortcomings,” Blank said in the statement. “Although the Black Lives Matter movement was the catalyst, these conversations touched on many issues and identities – Asian and Asian-American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Native American and people with disabilities.”
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank addressed racial inequities on campus in a blog post Wednesday.She shared a number of additional commitments the university is making to ensure success of all students. She also said these commitments will require financial support, which may mean cutting other programs.
Statement outlines actions UW plans to take to address racial inequality.
The homemade face covering that best contains respiratory droplets like those from COVID-19 is a neck-gaiter-style mask combining a nose piece with an elastic cord wearers can toggle to snug the mask to their face, according to a UW-Madison engineer.
Thousands of international students pursuing degrees at UW-Madison may be forced to leave the country, risk deportation or transfer to another institution if the university moves all of its classes online this fall in the interest of public health.
The homemade face covering that best contains respiratory droplets like those from COVID-19 is a neck-gaiter-style mask combining a nose piece with an elastic cord wearers can toggle to snug the mask to their face, according to a UW-Madison engineer.
Instead of a traditional, two-day summer visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, incoming students are completing orientation and academic advising online in their own homes.
Some University of Wisconsin-Madison students of color want the university to remove one of its most iconic landmarks, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, because of what they see as the former president’s anti-Indigenous and anti-Black history despite Lincoln’s legacy of ending slavery in the U.S.
When Jeff Pothof, who grew up in Randolph, goes to the store to get some milk or supplies for a weekend project he wears a face mask.
Jake Baggott doesn’t remember precisely where he was or on what day he first heard the term “COVID-19,” but the coronavirus has since consumed most of his waking hours.
Dane County is reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus cases, with 279 people testing positive for COVID-19 in the last five days.
Half of those new cases involve people in their 20s, and multiple cases have been linked to businesses near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, local health officials said Thursday.
