Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: Timothy Smeeding at the Institute for Research on Poverty, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells the Journal Sentinel “the middle class is taking a beating.”

Quoted: Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, said that another factor is that a lot of white households, especially among baby boomers, were more heavily staked in the stock market, through retirement funds or other accounts. And Wall Street, though battered, has bounced back more quickly since 2008 than the housing market.

Noted: Environmental studies/sustainability: Programs in environmental studies are spreading as energy, water, food, and climate promise to be defining issues of the century. Starting this fall, students at the University of Wisconsin?Madison can major in either environmental studies or environmental sciences, for example. Environmental studies is an interdisciplinary degree, requiring students to select among courses in food and agriculture, health, energy, biodiversity, climate, history and culture, land use, and policy.

Quoted: “This change in the policy has real implications for how people operate so we want to be a good community partner in that,” said Gabriel Javier, Director of UW?s LGBT Campus Center.

Quoted: In the meantime, economists operate without a code of ethics. At the very least, it?s something journalists need to be aware of, according to Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: ?We?re trying to figure that all out,? said Jon Martin, professor and chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?We have a renewed sense of urgency and interest in this question after this horrible spring. Whether this is part of a larger cycle is very hard to discern simply because the record of actually counting these things and having reasonable statistics is not that long.?

Quoted: ?I think it is clear that the Republican party has shifted to the right, since 2001 when Governor Thompson was last in office,? said Charles Franklin, a political science professor at UW Madison. ?He may have a harder time selling some of the interest groups and activist groups within the party and outside the party, that he really is walking the walk and not just talking the talk, on this new, considerably more conservative Republican party.?

Noted: The surge in the number of independent candidates represents a desire for peaceful transition away from authoritarianism and toward greater government accountability, said Edward Friedman, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Quoted: “Educational progress sort of atrophied,” University of Wisconsin economist Tim Smeeding says. “So, in other words, we have not been graduating people from college as fast as we should have.”

Noted: Mr. Cronon, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was recently the subject of an unusual public-records request by a political group. The Republican Party of Wisconsin asked the university to turn over a batch of e-mail messages by the professor containing certain keywords, as The Chronicle reported, after he wrote a blog post examining how conservative groups had helped craft controversial legislation, including the 2011 measure to strip Wisconsin public employees of collective-bargaining rights.

Quoted: ?Gen Y people are more relaxed about their bodies, so there?s more attention to products that people would have been embarrassed to talk about before,? says Deborah Mitchell, executive director for the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. ?It?s part of this trend of women saying, ?Hey, we?re not embarrassed to talk about this.? ?

A: Spiders make different kinds of silk for different purposes, says Phil Pellitteri, a distinguished faculty associate in the Department of Entomology at UW-Madison.

Noted: The city?s rankings, using a methodology called value-added modeling, have been produced by a center affiliated with the University of Wisconsin. Not producing them this year will save the city about $200,000, city officials said. Doug N. Harris, an economist affiliated with the center, said he thought the decision to end the contract  ?was more broadly a political issue than about whose model is better.?

Quoted: “Gen Y people are more relaxed about their bodies, so there?s more attention to products that people would have been embarrassed to talk about before,” says Deborah Mitchell, executive director for the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business.

Quoted: ?The big hurt has been in the manufacturing and construction industries, which were big in the Midwest and West,? said Timothy Smeeding, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

An economist hailing from Washington D.C. with a background in health research will take the reins of the University of Wisconsins La Follette School of Public Affairs this fall.

Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, professor of public affairs and applied economics at the UW-Madison?s La Follette Institute of Public Affairs.

Quoted: If that is the case ? that Republicans will continue pursuing what they say most voters elected them to do — is bipartisanship in the Legislature?s future? ?Well, I think you?ll see more than you have in the last eight months, because you couldn?t see any less,? says UW-Madison political scientist John Witte.

Quoted: Robin Tanner, an assistant professor of marketing at UW-Madison.

Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

Letter from Jim LaGro, UW-Madison department of urban and regional planning.

Quoted: Local businesses said politics have little to do with hiring decisions and, nationally, it?s more about consumer confidence, said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: Gardening doesn?t necessarily lead to better health, of course. But Bridget C. Booske, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, said Morgan County, where West Liberty is, seemed to be better off than its neighbors.

Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, would favor an even bigger jobs package for an economy that grew at an annual rate of just 0.7 percent in the first six months of the year and didn?t add jobs in August.

Quoted: “Some of these rural areas are quite depressed, impoverished, with poor social and economic factors, and they have bad health outcomes,” Patrick Remington of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute said on Thursday.

A new study by professors from UW-Madison and the College of William and Mary reveals that, 10 years later, there?s still no consensus on how to teach about the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in schools. Co-authors Jeremy Stoddard and Diana Hess have conducted numerous studies of 9/11 curriculum since 2007. Their latest study, released Thursday, concluded Wisconsin provides little guidance for teachers on the topic.

Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, would favor an even bigger jobs package for an economy that grew at an annual rate of just 0.7 percent in the first six months of the year and created zero net jobs in August.

Quoted: “This was a tough decision for him, for something he didn?t do,” said John Pray of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, who helped represent Vandenberg in court.

Quoted: A list of 30 creditors that NewPage owes the most money in unsecured debt includes four Wisconsin companies. Unsecured debt simply means there isn?t collateral, said Jonathan Lipson, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor and expert on corporate bankruptcy. An example of secured debt would be a car loan that would allow the company to take the car if the loan is not repaid. An example of unsecured debt would be a student loan, where there is nothing to take back.

Noted: “Another class member is now a prominent professor at the University of Wisconsin. I asked him what it was like in Madison during last summer?s demonstrations and he said, “Heck, I was in them. We?ve got an absolutely insane governor in this state, Governor Walker. The man is crazy. He wants to gut the entire system. We were out there to stop him.”

Noted: Diana E. Hess, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, analyzed nine American high school textbooks that together are used by almost half of American students. She found that while they used dramatic labels (?horrendous plot? or ?crime against humanity?) to describe the attacks, they provided little information about what actually happened. Most of the textbooks did not even say how many people were killed or who was responsible for the attacks.

Noted: Compiling such a list can be a complex undertaking. “Issues of scale, era and location complicate the question, as do the criteria for a ?sneak attack? ? which is often viewed as a preemptive strike by those who launch it,” observes military historian John W. Hall at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Rarely are such affairs complete and total surprises. In hindsight, it often emerges that the indicators for an attack were present but overlooked, or not placed in the proper context.”

Quoted: Justices returned to passionate, yet civil, debate during oral arguments. The big question is whether they?ll remain civil in private, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Donald Downs said.

Quoted: Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in income inequality, called the outlook for younger adults in the U.S. especially troubling. He pointed to youth discontent in other parts of the world, such as England, where he says high unemployment and widening inequality contributed to recent rioting.

Quoted: Will Jones, a noted labor historian and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, pointed out that Labor Day began as an almost militant demonstration for workers? rights in the 1880s. Since then, it slowly morphed into parties like Monday?s as unions gained acceptance. Now, Jones said more than just union workers have found themselves backed into a corner again.