Quoted: “The recession taught legislators that families will bear the cost of higher tuition, so that sent a signal to the state that it is possible to transfer the buck,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of education policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Now there is little incentive to reinvest.”
Recognizing the importance of Wisconsin’s Native Americans to the state, University of Wisconsin faculty members are reaching out to those communities to strengthen the connection between the state’s flagship university with Wisconsin’s original inhabitants.
A British company plans to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes into neighborhoods in the Florida Keys. Prof. Susan Paskewitz of the Medical Entomology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Entomology says in a phone interview that even more than the mutant dinosaurs, the public still remembers that in the 1950s domestic cats were dropped into Borneo by parachute to kill rodents.
Noted: The proposals, which were floated recently by the White House and Senate DFL leaders in Minnesota, are both designed to lower the barrier to college, says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a University of Wisconsin professor who is credited with inspiring President Obama’s plan, estimated to cost $6 billion a year.
Noted: But some scholars questioned any claims of censorship. Yoshiko M. Herrera, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that submitting the gift to board review was part of a necessary democratic process.
A recently introduced anti-bullying policy at the University of Wisconsin is causing concern among faculty and staff, who worry that an abuse of the policy may infringe on free speech and thinking.
Quoted: Wash scarves and gloves at least once a week, says Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control for University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.
Quoted: “I don’t think the test measures what is most important for students to learn,” said Diana Hess, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, which gives grants in support of education causes. “If all we’re asking students to do is answer very simple questions, we’re not going to be working on the complex understanding that I think students need in order to participate well.”
It can be magical to see a landscape transformed by a layer of pure, white snow. It’s even more enchanting when a weather phenomenon called snow sparkle occurs. Larry Meiller talks to Steve Ackerman, a professor of atmospheric sciences and director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to learn why.
As support for right-to-work laws seems to be dwindling in the state Legislature, a study by the Economic Policy Institute has found that states enforcing the laws have lower standards of living in comparison to Wisconsin.
Noted: Shobe suggested we query University of Wisconsin economist Menzie Chinn who told us by email that he considers such critiques of the rate to be “specious;” Chinn pointed us to his October 2012 blog post taking to task a similar statement by business executive Jack Welch.
Artists tend to be masters at multitasking and “can’t afford to be ivory tower,” according to flute professor Stephanie Jutt, the moderator of “Arts in Madison: An Economic Engine,” co-sponsored by the Advocacy Consortium for Entrepreneurs and the Arts Institute. Also quoted: Ben Reiser, coordinator of the Wisconsin Film Festival; Paula Panczenko, director of Tandem Press; Kurt Squire, professor of education and vice president of research at the UW Learning Games Network; Christopher Taylor, professor of piano.
Pianists Martha Fischer (professor of collaborative piano) and Bill Lutes want to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere at Friday’s “Schubertiade,” a “house party” celebrating music by the 19th-century Austrian composer Franz Schubert.
UW-Madison history professor William P. Jones, who wrote “The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights,” said it is a challenge to try and encapsulate all the nuances of the civil rights movement in a movie that takes place over two weeks. But he was impressed by how accurate it was.
Quoted: Mike Wagner, a professor of journalism and political science at UW-Madison, says Walker can also use successes at the State Capitol to ensure he stays relevant and visible to voters in Wisconsin while exploring a presidential campaign.
Quoted: Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and gender studies at UW Madison, has been doing research in the area of work, life balance. She says it’s hard to say if 80 years would be the accurate measurement of time to close the gender gap, but there are some ways to accelerate the pace of change. One of those would be on employers to help alter the work, life balance. Hyde says they could do so, by offering on-site, affordable child care and three to six months of paid parental leave.
Quoted: Dr. Michael Fiore, founder of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, said the health effects of vaping are still unknown.
Daniel Scheidell’s defense is led by UW-Madison law professor Carrie Sperling, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
Quoted: John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says the similarities between A. africanus and human bones are relatively convincing. “The best explanation is that the difference reflects some powerful thumb-to-finger gripping,” he says.
Dr. Jonathan Temte, professor of family medicine, helps make vaccine recommendations that affect nearly all Americans.
Quoted: Those moves are Walker’s efforts to build up his credentials on international affairs, “the most gaping limitation in his experience,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.
Quoted: “Even if a judgment were obtained in France, it would be impossible under American law to enforce it here,” Robert Drechsel, a professor of media law at the University of Wisconsin at Madison told Reuters.
Quoted: Southern Ozaukee County is one of a string of “hot spots” prone to bluff failure on the west shore of Lake Michigan, according to David M. Mickelson, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Source: Kenneth R. Mayer, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quoted: “My colleagues on the Board and the members of the search committee are confident John O’Brien has the right mix of experience, vision and leadership to advance the mission of the association and extend its reach, building on the strong accomplishments Diana and the Educause staff have achieved together during her tenure,” said Bruce Maas, chair of the Educause Board of Directors and vice provost for IT and CIO at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: UW-Madison political expert Barry Burden tells 27 News President Obama may feel like he has nothing to lose heading into this State of the Union address, since the Democrats lost both houses of Congress in November.
Noted: The law, titled ‘the Right to Privacy in the School Setting Act,’ allows school districts and universities to demand the passwords to their students’ social media accounts if they have reasonable cause to believe the student is violating school code both during and after class time. That violates the very privacy the law is named for, according to UW-Madison journalism professor Robert Drechsel.
Quoted: There’s nothing wrong with Turner’s nine approaches “provided none are taken to extreme,” said Toby Campbell, assistant professor of medicine, oncology, palliative care medicine. “My concern is when people with definite advanced cancer shift entirely away from modern medicine in exchange for strategies like these,” he said.
Kari Wisinski, assistant professor of medicine and hematology/oncology, said the term “radical remission” presents challenges because expected responses can vary among cancer types and from different treatments. Also, for patients with incurable cancer, hope shouldn’t be associated only with “beating cancer,” Wisinski said.
Quoted: Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
Quoted: Caitlin Pepperell of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study, questioned the mutation rate the researchers used, which was based on a recent outbreak in Hamburg. “Generally, what we find to be the most clear-cut and unambiguous estimate for rate over thousands of years is a situation where we use ancient bacterial DNA,” she said. Such an estimate came out in 2014, but since the tuberculosis isolated from ancient humans was unexpectedly of seal origin, the field is still waiting for a robust estimate, Pepperell added. “[Wirth and his colleagues] used reasonable ranges and did reasonable things, but I think to be very definitive about dating and correlating tuberculosis history with historical events will probably have to wait for the next ancient DNA study to emerge.”
Noted: “When I was a kid growing up in northern Wisconsin, there weren’t a lot of choices in the grocery store during wintertime,” said James Leary, the director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Before shipping produce from Central and South America, you got a lot more pickled vegetables in the winter. So for relish trays, having pickled cucumbers, corn, mushrooms or root crops such as carrots and radishes are conventional.”
Quoted: “Due process has just completely gone to hell,” said Pamela Oliver, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin who has spent decades studying the states prison system. “When theyre sent back, the vast majority had no new sentence. Even if they are arrested on a new crime, they go back to prison right away, and the new crime might not even be charged.”
Quoted: “It was a lot of people losing their jobs and being knocked out of the field,” said Raymond Fonck, an experimental fusion physicist at the University of Wisconsin who did some work on TFTR. “Some people left the field out of disgust.”
Quoted: “What we did was to prove there was a simultaneous decline for wild boar, brown bear and moose in most regions of Russia at the beginning of the 1990s, which was right after the collapse [of the Soviet Union],” explained co-author Eugenia Bragina from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US.
Quoted: “The way to interpret this is as a warning sign,” Steve Carpenter, a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told VICE News. “We’re running up to the biophysical boundaries that enable human civilization as we know it to exist.”
Interviewed: Michael Xenos has studied the way young people especially engage politically on social media. He’s a professor of Communications Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Making debt payments will take away money that could have been spent on other important areas, affecting “pretty much everything,” said John Wiley, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in higher education finance.
Quoted: UW-Madison economics instructor Richard Shaten points to market speculators for their role in fluctuating oil prices, creating what some call a “crude oil casino.” He says, “You know, I read someplace recently that for every barrel of oil that gets delivered, people buy and sell 30 barrels of oil on paper.” He adds, “Many of these trades are computer programmed. Billions of dollars changing hands over speculation on the price of oil.”
Quoted: Sara Goldrick-Rab is a professor of educational policy studies at UW-Madison. She points to a significant detail Obama mentioned in making his announcement. “President Obama said this is for the young and the young at heart. This is not just directed at people coming out of high school. This is directed at anyone.” Goldrick-Rab points out, “Community colleges serve a wide range of folks. In fact, the average age of a community college student is close to 30.”
Noted: Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor of curriculum and instruction, spoke from her experience in teaching and education research, noting that some things haven’t changed since the time portrayed in the movie “Selma.”
“We have young people in particular in the state of Wisconsin, black children who can’t read,” she said. “That’s a fundamental issue for me; it’s what I’ve devoted my entire life’s work to.”
Quoted: Jacob Stampen, professor emeritus in educational leadership and policy analysis.
Karma Chávez, an associate professor in the university’s department of communication arts, hosted a lively debate Thursday on whether body cameras can help prevent police violence.
A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.
Quoted: “That’s the challenge,” said Noel Radomski, a professor of higher education governance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You have to look at how much support the president has on campus and in the board. If it’s a wide array of those who lack confidence in him, then it might be in the best interest of the university for the board to encourage him to resign.”
Quoted: Joel Rogers, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of COWS formerly the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a progressive public policy think tank, agrees that states will step up their preemption efforts, given the results of the 2014 elections.
Quoted: Barry Orton, professor of telecommunications, Professional Development and Applied Studies.
“Orton said he’s not quite as optimistic as Soglin that the FCC will have a ruling within a month — or that the ruling will pre-empt the 19 states’ barriers. If they do, he said, there’s going to be significant pushback, legally and politically, from service providers.”
Quoted: Dr. Noelle LoConte, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said because the HPV virus is known to cause cancer, getting the vaccine is one of the surest ways to prevent cancer.
Quoted: “There is strong Muslim cultural discomfort with images of any divinely connected creatures; these would include any of the prophets, as well as God and the angels,” said Asifa Quraishi-Landes, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in comparative Islamic and American constitutional law.
Quoted: “It would mean within a year or two there could be fiber optic service to the home, which no company does now in Madison,” University of Wisconsin telecommunications professor Barry Orton said.
Byars-Winston, a UW–Madison professor and counseling psychologist, and her colleagues, Christine Pfund and Janet Branchaw, were recently awarded a four-year, $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to assess how mentors and mentees define diversity awareness and how important it is to the mentoring relationship.
Quoted: “[W]e now have a framework for understanding how the disease functions within a bat,” Michelle Verant, a study author and researcher at the University of Wisconsin and USGS National Wildlife Health Center scientist, says in a statement. With that understanding, researchers can figure out how to help the bats survive.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin law professor Brad Snyder, the author of a book about the Homestead Grays called “Beyond the Shadow of the Senators,” called the MacPhail report a “historically important document.”
Sara Goldrick-Rab, UW-Madison professor and founding director of the Wisconsin Harvesting Opportunities for Postsecondary Education, or HOPE, Lab, thinks paying for college with need-based government aid is an antiquated model and supports Obama’s proposal. There is “clear evidence that most families are struggling to afford the cost of even community college today,” she said. Still, the existence of students who manage to pay for college without any government help isn’t proof that there isn’t enough help available.
Noted: There’s other good news. While researchers study the tough little holdouts here in Vermont, a wildlife veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin has been cracking the code on how exactly white-nose syndrome kills these animals. The study’s lead author, Michelle Verant, says the fungus causes bats’ bodies to overheat, burning energy too quickly.
As Governor Walker prepares his State of the State speech for tomorrow night, he’s also likely feeling a lot of pressure to announce whether he’ll get in next year’s presidential race. UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer says the governor would be in the running for the Republican nomination.
Quoted: Sara Goldrick-Rab of the University of Wisconsin, one of the education scholars whose research influenced Obama’s plan, tells The Nation via e-mail that she anticipates that “total enrollment will increase and some of that will be from people…who otherwise wouldn’t go to college at all,” and completion rates should also rise. Great, but now the task is ensuring students are supported enough to stay on track.”
President Barack Obama’s proposal to make community college free is “both smart and bold,” says Sara Goldrick-Rab, the UW-Madison education policy analyst who has focused her research on making college affordable.
Two UW-Madison professors last spring proposed making the first two years of college free. “Students will not face any costs for tuition, fees, books or supplies, and will receive a stipend and guaranteed employment at a living wage to cover their living expenses,” wrote Sara Goldrick-Rab and Nancy Kendall, who study educational policy at the university. “Unsubsidized, dischargeable loans of a small amount will also be available for those who need them.”
Quoted: Higher education scholar Sara Goldrick-Rab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has looked at ways to divvy up costs between the federal and state government to save students the headache of covering fees, books and supplies. In a recent research paper, she proposed having the federal government provide grants to schools to cover two years of tuition and states redirect higher ed funding to cover books and supplies. Living expenses, she said, could be covered through 15 hours a week of state or federal work study at a living wage.
Quoted: “Obama probably won’t get this done in the next couple years, but he’s laying the groundwork with his message,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an education policy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who for years has advocated for free tuition during students’ first two years in college. “We didn’t get free high school overnight.”
