Category: UW Experts in the News

Name: Margaret J. Nellis, Ph.D.
City: Monona now – born in Neptune, N.J., and I’ve had 30 addresses since then.
Family: Partner/Husband Fares Kerkeni, native of Tunisia, and stepson, Sam, 21.
Age: 57 Occupation: As an educator at UW-Madison, I am privileged that my job is also a place where I get to invest in my community. I promote student health and learning by connecting students with opportunities to learn from and contribute to the community, especially along the Park Street corridor and the “heart” of South Madison, the gateway to our campus.

Quoted: Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, said the ad was “designed to confuse voters.”

Quoted: “The system could have been up and operating a year ago,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: Morris Davis, assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics at UW-Madison, said any government solution should address the ongoing concern of falling home prices.

Quoted: Ken Goldstein, director of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, which follows ad spending, said he doubted these evening news commercials would have any influence on news coverage or be confusing to viewers.

Quoted: John Coleman, chairman of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched the 90 percent assertion and told me there are a few considerations the CQ data do not include.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Ken Goldstein, who pointed out that there’s no empirical evidence on how race factors into the battle for Jewish votes. “It’s a big, 1,000-ton elephant. It’s not only about Jews. It’s about everybody.”

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison associate political science professor Kathy Walsh.

Quoted: Dietram Scheufele, a life science communication professor.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin said he doubted Republicans would use the checks as a challenge.

Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a polling expert.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Ken Goldstein.

Quoted: “The main explanation for the large number of blacks in Congress from Illinois is the fact that residential segregation patterns in south Chicago created a firmly black-majority district long before they existed in other northern cities,” said David Canon, a University of Wisconsin political science professor. “African-Americans are rarely elected in House districts that are not black majority.”

Quoted: John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says scientists have long expected to find rocks from this time period. “We’ve always been puzzled by our failure to find them. So the question then arises: Were the earliest rocks completely destroyed by some unusual process? Or do these early relics really exist and we just don’t know how to recognize them?”

Experts say the government bailout of banks should make getting a loan easier, freeing up billions of dollars, that would, in theory, jump start the economy.

“The reason that we are in trouble is that the financial system appears to be at the point where its freezing up,” said Mark Ready, Associate Professor of Finance at UW-Madison. “It’s not working properly.”

Quoted: James Leary, a professor of folklore and Scandinavian studies at UW-Madison.

Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the UW-Madison, sees Obama’s outreach to teens as part of a larger Democratic Party strategy to secure its dominance in future elections.

When the U.S. Supreme Court gave a reprieve to a Georgia inmate less than two hours before his scheduled execution Tuesday, the relief was felt around the world and at the UW-Madison Law School, where Wisconsin Innocence Project co-director Keith Findley played a key role.

Quoted: Katherine Cramer Walsh, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of â??Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life.â?

Quoted: John Coleman, chairman of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched the 90 percent assertion and told me there are a few considerations the CQ data do not include.

Quoted: “That strikes me as a de facto decision. With that kind of schedule, it just seems like the immediate question is going to become moot because there isn’t enough time to resolve it,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin. “You can order it, but it’s presumably just not physically possible to do it in that time.”

Quoted: Dr. Minesh Mehta, a professor of human oncology at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: â??Obviously, the â??mea culpaâ?? ad is not a huge genre in American politics,â? said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, a University of Wisconsin project that collects and codes political ads. â??If someone has done something bad enough that they think they need to apologize for it with a television ad, theyâ??ve usually decided not to run.â?

Quoted: “An earmark is just a specific appropriation for spending government dollars on a very specific project,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor David Canon

Quoted: Adam Gamoran, a professor of sociology and educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said his own research found greater test score gains in students who took ninth-grade algebra than those enrolled in general math, no matter their initial math achievement.

Quoted: Michael Leckrone, the longtime director of the University of Wisconsin’s Marching Band, first heard Belkin play at a folk festival in 2005 and immediately invited him to appear as a featured soloist at a band concert.

Quoted: “This is a good example of a top-down approach; it summarises the areas we need to focus on,” says climatologist Jack Williams of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and co-director of the new Big Ten Battleground Poll. Although the poll isn’t directly connected with the network, its first batch of results was announced last week in a 90-minute program on the channel’s air.

Noted: Research from the International Forgiveness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison supports Beach’s contention.

Forgiveness has been proven to reduce and eliminate clinical depression and anxiety and increase people’s sense of hope and self-esteem, says Robert Enright, professor of educational psychology at the university and author of “Forgiveness Is a Choice,” (American Psychological Association, $19.95).

Lawmakers in Washington continue to take a closer look at a $700 billion bailout proposal for Wall Street. A UW-Madison economist says it looks like a good move.

Don Nichols says the instability in the financial sector right now is causing panic and damage to assets, with many driven down to being worthless

Quoted: Ronald Schultz is a professor and chair of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine’s pathobiological sciences department in Madison. He’s also one of the nation’s leading experts on vaccines.

Quoted: “When big guys get bigger, it makes collusion easier,” said Peter Carstensen, a University of Wisconsin law professor who has testified in Congress on competition in the food industry.

Quoted: Stephen Vavrus, an atmospheric scientist and interim director of the Center for Climactic Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor and co-founder of pollster.com, a website devoted to polling.

Quoted: Madsen mentions a theory embraced by B. Bradford Brown, professor of educational psychology in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Brown’s idea is that teens use dating for different functions according to their age: When teens start dating, there’s a lot more pressure about status and approval from one’s peers.

Quoted: John Coleman, chairman of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched the 90 percent assertion and told me there are a few considerations the CQ data do not include.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Adam Gamoran, who has advocated pushing more low-achieving high schoolers into algebra classes, says these students get more from algebra classes than from general math classes. “In their zeal to extend this reform ever more broadly, some mistakes have been made,” he says, but he hopes the findings don’t cause a backlash against challenging low achievers to do harder math.

Quoted: Because the Republican base of support in Wisconsin is in more rural areas and the suburbs of Milwaukee, it’s imperative McCain do well there, said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are in a dead heat across almost the entirety of the battleground Midwest, according to a new eight-state â??Big Tenâ? poll released Thursday.

Yet another series of polls suggest the November election will be exceedingly close in key swing states.

The inaugural Big Ten Battleground Poll released tonight found Barack Obama and John McCain statistically tied in seven of the eight Midwestern states (home to the 11 Big Ten universities) included.

Quoted: Kenneth Streit, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Quoted: Dr. Ben Wedro, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

WASHINGTON â?? Hoosiers are almost evenly split between John McCain and Barack Obama and are heading into the election season with a sour attitude about Washington, the economy and President Bush.

Two polls â?? one that includes Indiana in a survey of Midwestern states and one commissioned by the Indianapolis Star â?? show the candidates in a statistical dead heat among Hoosiers.

A joint polling effort in eight traditional battleground states shows that in all but one â??Barack Obamaâ??s home state of Illinois â?? the presidential race remains a nail-biter.

Eight Big Ten universities have partnered up to conduct presidential polling in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota. In each state, 600 registered voters were surveyed on the race between Obama and John McCain. The polls have a four percentage point margin of error.

The first-ever Big Ten Battleground Poll shows virtual ties almost everywhere between John McCain and Barack Obama – including Ohio.

“There’s swing states, there’s battleground states, and then there’s Ohio,” said the new poll’s co-director, Ken Goldstein, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, when the poll was released this afternoon over the Big Ten Network.