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Category: Top Stories

Coming full circle at UW-Madison

Madison Magazine

Jo Handelsman had numerous options when she changed jobs this past January. Part of that was because of the position she was leaving: advising former President Barack Obama on science. Not many jobs take you into the Oval Office.

UW-Madison researchers: Types of smiles send different messages in social situations

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A smile, like a picture, is worth a thousand words. Although most commonly associated with happiness, smiles can indicate nervousness, embarrassment and even misery. To add to their mystique and versatility, smiles can express sophisticated messages that influence the behavior of others in social situations.

The original TV chef

Madison Magazine

Ever since I can remember, food has fascinated me. When I was a young child, my parents frequently took me out to eat—to the kinds of places you didn’t take kids. I collected menus and received a subscription to Gourmet magazine on my 10th birthday. It was inevitable that I would want to learn how to cook. My father instigated it when he gave me a meat thermometer and a dollar and told me to take out the Sunday roast before my mother overcooked it. But what would become a lifelong passion began with Carson Gulley and his TV show.

The Designer Baby Era Is Not Upon Us

Atlantic Monthly

“This has been widely reported as the dawn of the era of the designer baby, making it probably the fifth or sixth time people have reported that dawn,” says Alta Charo, an expert on law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And it’s not.”

Foxconn would need thousands of engineers; can the region’s universities supply them?

Milwaukee Business Journal

Specifically, Foxconn would need 1,600 process equipment engineers, 463 integration engineers and 300 computer-integrated manufacturing engineers. Ian Roberston, the dean at the College of Engineering at UW-Madison, said he believes that UW System, along with other schools in the area, would be able to address Foxconn’s workforce needs — as well as those of other companies in the state — but it would require growing the number of engineering students enrolled at undergraduate institutions.

Over the past few years, UW-Madison’s engineering school has completed a series of renovation projects on its laboratory and facilities, Robertson said, and it has the capacity to handle an additional 500 to 600 students.

What it doesn’t have is the necessary faculty and staff numbers to handle an influx of students that large, he said.

“I’m confident that we can increase our capacity, with an appropriate investment, in order to meet that demand,” he said.

Alumni Park opens this fall

Madison Magazine

University of Wisconsin–Madison graduates will have a space devoted to them on campus when Alumni Park officially opens on Oct. 6. The 1.3-acre green space, located between Memorial Union and the Red Gym, will contain more than 50 museum-like exhibits throughout the gardens.

New UW program aims to fill a rural doctor shortage

WQOW

A brand-new, first-of-its-kind program at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health is aiming to fill a shortage of doctors in rural areas.

Experts predict Wisconsin could be facing a shortage of up to four-thousand doctors by the year 2035. The problem is even more extreme in rural areas and in women’s health care.

GOP budget would mean billions in cuts for higher ed

Inside Higher Education

Student aid advocates didn’t find much to like in a House education appropriations bill released last week — lawmakers removed billions from the Pell Grant surplus while taking no significant steps to improve college access. But educators could at least find consolation in the fact that the committee didn’t follow through on the drastic cuts to many aid programs proposed in the White House budget in May.

Campus Rape Policies Get a New Look as the Accused Get DeVos’s Ear

New York Times

WASHINGTON — The letters have come in to her office by the hundreds, heartfelt missives from college students, mostly men, who had been accused of rape or sexual assault. Some had lost scholarships. Some had been expelled. A mother stumbled upon her son trying to take his own life, recalled Candice E. Jackson, the top civil rights official at the Department of Education.

Most Republicans Think Colleges Are Bad for the Country. Why?

Chronicle of Higher Education

A majority of Republicans and right-leaning independents think higher education has a negative effect on the country, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center on Monday. The same study has found a consistent increase in distrust of colleges and universities since 2010, when negative perceptions among Republicans was measured at 32 percent. That number now stands at 58 percent.

Wisconsin Board Leader Wants to Hire Nonacademics

Inside Higher Education

John Behling, the new president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, said Friday that he wants institutions to recruit leaders from the private sector and otherwise “streamline” the process for hiring chancellors and other top administrators. In so doing, he might have shed light on why a state budget proposal includes language — opposed by faculty members — that would ban the regents from ever considering only academics as top administrators.

Local students accepted to UW rural medical training program

Dunn County News

Styer and Quilling have been accepted to the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM) program of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, a nationally recognized initiative that prepares and supports students who intend to practice in rural Wisconsin and help improve the health of those communities.

The program was created due to the shortage of physicians in rural Wisconsin. While 29 percent of Wisconsin residents live in rural locations, only 13 percent of physicians in Wisconsin have rural practices.

Summer Reading Books: The Ties That Bind Colleges

New York Times

At least four schools, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have chosen a best seller written by a young conservative: J. D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” which explores issues of social breakdown among working-class whites, such as drug use and child neglect.

The committee that chose “Hillbilly Elegy” had a “vigorous discussion” about it, said Sheila Stoeckel, director for teaching and learning programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison libraries. “We’re picking books there are not easy answers for. If we picked a book that there was an easy answer for, it wouldn’t be as lively of a discussion or exploration.”

Wisconsin lawmakers slipped in budget language allowing University of Wisconsin System leaders from outside of academia

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Language quietly slipped into the proposed state budget would allow someone from outside academia to become the University of Wisconsin System’s next president or a campus chancellor, potentially moving politics and business interests squarely into future searches for top university leaders.