In addition to an established relationship with the local power company, he said the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the area’s “skilled workforce” made the county an attractive location.
“I just come here and try to be me and try to help Toby give us the best opportunity to win, whether we’re talking during the week, working on setups, different ideas,” said Majeski, who studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin before fulltime racing called.
Earlier this year, Dean Robbins brought his zeal and skill for succinct communication to his first book for adults, “Wisconsin Idols: 100 Heroes Who Changed the State, the World and Me” (Wisconsin Historical Society Press).
Author Kashana Cauley began her career as an attorney before shifting to writing for TV (including the animated Fox series “The Great North” and “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”) and as a novelist.
“I’m a first-generation college student, so nobody in my family really knew what college was for, how to get there or what it is you might do with such a degree. I don’t think that’s uncommon among Black American families; only two or three generations of us have been going to college. So I did my undergrad in economics and political science at the University of Wisconsin, but I had no idea how you got a job because I didn’t know you were supposed to get jobs through your friends’ parents; my parents sent me to college so I didn’t have to work on the assembly line at General Motors like my dad, so I was completely confused.”
Russell, who was Madison’s 2024-2025 youth poet laureate and is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described the collectives’ long-term goal to create infrastructure that supports creative careers.
Connaughton included a series of photos from his Bucks tenure, including photos of him with the Larry O’Brien Trophy commemorating the championship; images with his young child, teammates and former coaches; plus even a couple shots from his experience in the NBA slam-dunk competition in 2020, a shot of him delivering a commencement address at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and glimpses of his real-estate and charity work.
“Evers got most of what he wanted. He is now in a position to say, ‘I’ve done what I needed to do. I got funding back to UW [the University of Wisconsin system], I got funding for child care, we’ve saved the kids in Wisconsin.’ We’ve got a kids budget — I think that gives him an out,” said Brandon Scholz, a Wisconsin Republican strategist. “He can go out on top.”
A UW-Madison alumnus and former Badgers football player, Peters began his career in Madison in the early 1960s and was a prominent figure in the city’s development scene into the 2000s. He designed and built two of the high-rise condominiums now overlooking Lake Monona, including the metallic Marina building, among numerous other distinctive projects Downtown, on the UW-Madison campus and throughout the region. Many are still standing — and standing out — today.
“I feel like the river and the bluffs just rise up out of the landscape,” said Alanna Thelen who works at the McBurney Disability Resource Center at UW-Madison. “It really feels like a retreat.”
A balloon release vigil was held at Rufus King High School in Milwaukee to honor Nate White, a former Rufus King and Badger running back who died last week.
After playing at Rufus King High School and then UW Madison, White then transferred to South Dakota State and played there for six months. Throughout his time out of state, family and friends said White kept in close contact with the community in Wisconsin.
White, a 20-year-old former University of Wisconsin football player and Rufus King graduate died June 25 at his apartment in Brookings, South Dakota, where he was a student-athlete at South Dakota State. He transferred schools in January after two years with the Badgers.
On the last weekend in June, artist and recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Ava Albelo organized “Cog in the Machine” at Next Wave Studios, a multimedia production space on Madison’s east side.
Albelo said she funded the project with a grant from the UW-Madison Art Department. She hoped younger people would come to the show “and be interested in the artwork and ask questions and enjoy the music.”
He graduated from Wauwatosa East High School in 1979 and earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance, Investments and Banking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1989.
In the final weeks of Walter’s life, he and his family established a focused strategy to advance pancreatic immunology research at the UW Carbone Cancer Center. In lieu of flowers, the family invites memorial gifts to support this initiative.
Nigel Hayes-Davis has worked his way back to the NBA.
The former University of Wisconsin star, who hasn’t played in the league since 2018, has signed a fully guaranteed one-year contract with the Phoenix Suns, ESPN insider Shams Charania reported June 30.
Born Darnell Wayne Lukas on Sept. 2, 1935, in Antigo, Wisconsin as the second of three children, he was raised on a small farm near Antigo and grew up with an interest in horses.
He earned a master’s degree in education at UW-Madison, then taught at La Crosse Logan High School, where he was head basketball coach.
A downtown Madison church reported having its Pride flags torn down sometime over the last few weeks, the Madison Police Department said Monday.
Darrell Wayne Lukas was born on Sept. 2, 1935, in Antigo, Wis., where his parents had a farm. He received a master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and became a high school teacher and basketball coach in La Crosse, Wis.
Henry Vilas has a pair of brother badgers named after former University of Wisconsin-Madison basketball players Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker. The stars even visited the zoo to meet their namesakes.
“Ten years later, there are still many Madison people who visit them and recognize the names on the sign. And isn’t that cool — that it’s a badger, and they have Badger basketball names?” Peterson said.
Summerfest’s talent team has been dealing with several cancellations (including from Whiskey Myers, Nessa Barrett, Nettspend, Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony and Milwaukee rap star Chicken P, who was arrested), and finding some solid last-minute replacements, including University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Yung Gravy and Bow Wow.
A series of allegations of overzealous diagnoses of abuse have followed Dr. Barbara Knox from her job leading a child abuse team at the University of Wisconsin to similar positions in Alaska and at the University of Florida.
The child abuse pediatrician community is tightknit. After Knox left Wisconsin, Harper replaced her as an expert witness in some criminal cases. Esernio-Jenssen wrote Harper a nomination letter for a Ray E. Helfer Society award, calling her “an unstoppable force.”
Badri Lankella represents Madison’s west side on the Common Council, winning election earlier this year, and serves as a commissioner of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District. He holds a degree in civil engineering and an MBA from UW-Madison.
“Almost 40 years ago, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison named Gary Milhollin, who had worked as a judge on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had an idea that more needed to be done to prevent countries from building weapons of mass destruction,” said Valerie Lincy, executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. “He created the organization with the mission of stopping the spread of these weapons by stopping trade in items that can be used to make them. We’ve been working with that mission ever since.”
At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Department hosts an elder-in-residence for a week each semester. Writers-in-residence at the Illuminating Discovery Hub, housed within UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, can craft anything from play scripts to music with the Institute’s support — so long as the work features or portrays science in some way.
Artists who don’t fit the bill there can consider two options at UW–Madison’s Division of the Arts: the Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program or the International Visiting Artist Program.
In a joint Instagram post, NFL legend and Wisconsin native JJ Watt and his wife, Kealia, announced the June 14 birth of Niko Benjamin Watt, their second child together.
“News of Nate White’s tragic passing has been sad and difficult to comprehend for all of the Wisconsin Badger Football family,” Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell said. “We remember Nate as a friend and teammate and we stand in support of Nate’s family and loved ones.”
Tariq Saqqaf is the City of Madison’s Racial Equity and Neighborhood Resource Team Coordinator, where he has been instrumental in revitalizing and leading the city’s Neighborhood Resource Teams (NRTs). Born in Trinidad & Tobago and raised across New Jersey, Madison, and Saudi Arabia, he earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology and began medical school at UW–Madison before transitioning to a career in social services.
Erika Gallagher is a teacher of English at Verona High School and the winner of the 2024-25 Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English Diversity and Inclusion Award. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UW-Madison.
“I also love to collect vintage library items, so I suppose my dream find would be any vintage apparel related to the South Central Library System. Years ago, I was lucky to adopt a decommissioned card catalog from UW-Madison, and it now holds my vintage button collection for clothing repair.”
Former University of Wisconsin football player Nate White has died.
Details of White’s death have not yet been released. White’s death was confirmed to BadgerExtra by an official at South Dakota State, the program White transferred to in January. White was in Brookings, South Dakota, at the time of his death, the official confirmed.
Nate White, former Wisconsin Badgers football player and Milwaukee Rufus King graduate, has died. He was 20 years old.
The UW athletic department announced the news in social media posts. Details of the circumstances of White’s death weren’t immediately available. His current program, South Dakota State University, told media outlets that he died in Brookings, South Dakota. No other information was immediately available.
Monarez holds doctorate in microbiology and immunology from the University of Wisconsin, and her postdoctoral training was in microbiology and immunology at Stanford University.
When Dan began exploring his identity, he shared with his mother and the pair began seeking care at UW Health’s Gender Clinic.
April is part of a support group for parents of transgender children. The family attends group therapy. Miley receives gender-affirming care at UW Health’s PATH Clinic for Pediatric Gender Identity and the family recently switched churches so that their spiritual community was more welcoming of Miley.
One of the greatest privileges of serving as Alice was working with the Dairy Innovation Hub, a collaboration between UW–Madison, UW–Platteville, and UW–River Falls. This partnership allowed me to highlight the incredible research being done in dairy science, from improving sustainability and animal health to advancing food safety and agricultural technology. These researchers and students are writing the next chapter of our state’s agricultural legacy, one data set at a time.
State Representative Renuka Mayadev is a daughter of immigrants, a maternal child health advocate, and a mother. In January 2025, she made history as the first South Asian to serve in the Wisconsin State Legislature. Before taking office, she worked at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, focusing on maternal and child health.
Lawmakers’ attention was drawn to fusion by three startup companies that have made Wisconsin their home, as well as research by the University of Wisconsin. One of the companies, Realta Fusion, worked with lawmakers as they drafted the legislation.
Abloh was born in Rockford, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, to parents who immigrated from Ghana. A quiet but charming kid who was obsessed with skateboarding and music, he attended Catholic high school, then the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated with a degree in civil engineering. Abloh also received a masters in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and it was in this period when he started to become interested in the intersection of fashion, culture, and music.
Ali Khan is a multimedia producer and digital strategist at PBS Wisconsin, where he creates stories for Wisconsin Life and Why Race Matters. As a student at University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned degrees in political science and digital cinema production, he passed divestment legislation within student government, organized with the Multicultural Student Center, and launched Home is Where WI Aren’t, a viral video campaign uplifting students of color at UW-Madison that gained national attention.
Ryan Estrella is a social worker with Joining Forces for Families and co-president of the board of directors at Just Dane. He was the chair of Fitchburg’s Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative from its founding in 2018 until 2022, and spent two more years as vice chair. He has participated on a number of City of Fitchburg hiring committees and outreach efforts. Mayor Julia Arata-Fratta honored him with the Resident Award in 2024. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sophia Vento, a 2023 Journal Sentinel intern who is now an associate editor at The Hill in Washington, D.C., had recognized Herndon from my latest Facebook post, and introduced herself. Vento, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate, wanted me to know she and Herndon were bonding over their time at the Journal Sentinel.
Sophie Pokela just graduated from the University of Wisconsin with an English degree — and a rigorous education in nutrition.
Pokela grew up thinking she was a healthy eater because she mostly chose foods packed with protein and fiber. It dawned on her a year into college that she didn’t actually know much about what she was consuming.
There’s got to be a convincing reason you’re going to give money to a total stranger, so the “police” text or call you to say that your college kid is in jail, and if you want them out, pay up bail money (which happened earlier this year to parents of University of Wisconsin-Madison students). Or a fake lawyer will contact an immigrant and say they can help them become citizens for very real fees.
Some of the most important political coalitions for Democrats emerge on this map, especially in comparison with 2000. The 2024 map shows the birth of Democratic vote powerhouses in majority-Black DeKalb and Clayton counties in Georgia and in Wisconsin’s Dane County, home of Madison and the University of Wisconsin, with its heavily white and college degree-holding population. Both coalitions are essential to Democratic wins in those states in recent elections.
I also studied my good friend Jason Gay’s recent commencement speech at the University of Wisconsin. He didn’t just talk in abstract, he showed proof. Next commencement season, we’re offering a WSJ columnist 2-for-1 deal. Steve Carell has nothing on us.
Already, a group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Realta Fusion, a Madison-based nuclear startup, have developed a fusion device in Stoughton that creates the same kind of reaction that fuels the sun and stars. The process is much different than fission, the nuclear reaction that powers current nuclear reactors and the atomic bomb.
After graduating, he enrolled at UW-Madison to study journalism where he wrote, beginning in 1962, for The Daily Cardinal student newspaper. He rose to become editor-in-chief, spending so much time there and at his first reporting job for the State Journal, that he flunked an art history class and delayed his college graduation.
After college, he was drafted into the Army, where he helped produce a military newspaper at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., from 1967 to 1969. He then returned to the State Journal and covered City Hall, the Capitol, UW-Madison, the bombing of Sterling Hall in 1970 and waves of anti-Vietnam War protests. He was 29 when, in 1973, he was named city editor. He was promoted to managing editor in 1989 and senior managing editor in 2003.
arlier this year, I worked with Gigafact using Parser to process 24 hours from the same hosts the week after this year’s Super Bowl. We came up with a list of claims in two hours.
Wisconsin Watch and Gigafact presented that case study in using AI at a recent Journalism Educators Institute conference hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We’ll present it again this week at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in New Orleans.
The Onion has been making fun of human folly since its founding by two undergrads at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. The mock news site has created satiric pieces so smart some believed them real, others that were just plain silly, and one headline (“‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”) that has achieved a dark fame after being reposted after each U.S. mass shooting since 2014 Isla Vista, Calif., attack.
The Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program through TRIO helped me earn my Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and led to my becoming dean of the Dougherty Family College (DFC) at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. DFC is a mentoring student-focused two-year college, and I have incorporated my research and experiences in TRIO programs into the college’s design.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1981 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Texas at Arlington, DuBay is advocating for scientists to consider using museum specimens as tools for public health and environmental research. He and fellow scientists at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Yale University and the University of Wisconsin published a perspective last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing the need to view museum specimens in a new light.
Panetti died from acute hypoxic respiratory failure on Texas’ death row the morning of May 26, the macabre space he called home for more than 30 years. There, he was known as The Preacher, according to his longtime lawyer, Greg Wiercioch, now a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Panetti was 67 years old. He had four children.
Allan “Bud” Selig, Sheldon Lubar and Stephen Marcus each received the Herb Kohl Service Award from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation on June 11. Roughly 550 people from the Jewish community, and the greater Milwaukee community, attended the Pfister Hotel event.
Each award winner knew Kohl personally from their childhood, or from attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In an interview with WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” Hickey, a University of Wisconsin-Madison alum, said it wasn’t easy writing about the nuances of tribal politics, especially because it was inspired by his own tribal community. He was worried about how the book would be received — whether he was going to get called out for getting something “completely wrong.” Instead, people embraced the story.
Noted historian Gerda Lerner, who practiced and helped build the field of women’s history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, just yards from the doors of the Wisconsin Historical Society, asserted that historical knowledge was power. Only by reclaiming their history could women empower themselves.
Summerfest also said that rapper, frequent visitor and University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Yung Gravy has been added to the lineup, headlining the Miller Lite Oasis at 10 p.m. June 21.
Rodriguez Morris earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in environmental and civil engineering with a specialty in sustainability.
“As an engineer you love to tinker, fix things, and try to learn,” she said, adding that from a sustainability perspective she wants to extend the usable life of items.
Taylor received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. She then attended the University of Wisconsin Law School, graduating in 1995.
On June 7, University of Wisconsin–Madison PhD student Taylan Stulting and two teammates will start a 2,800-mile ocean race, rowing from Monterey, California, to the island of Kauai.
The project was a partnership of the DNR, the Missouri Department of Conservation and the National Wild Turkey Federation. The University of Wisconsin-Madison also provided assistance.
And Allison Prasch, an instructor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is quoted as saying that “Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing.”
Nonsense. Some Democrats trip all over themselves trying to obscure the meaning of what they say. Take referring to felons as part of “justice-involved populations.” Likewise, the term “undocumented person” implies that the problem is one of paperwork. It simply omits the fact that the person resides in the United States illegally.
Remington, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate, was pursuing a career as a pilot when she was killed in a small plane crash near Janesville in 2021. She was only 26 years old.
Knowing their daughter was passionate about teaching and mentoring young pilots, Remington’s parents decided to create the scholarship in her name.
Clausen was born March 28, 1941, in Minneapolis, but grew up in Jamestown, N.D. He earned degrees from North Dakota State University, the University of Wisconsin and Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He later studied film scoring with Earle Hagen and was a two-year member of Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshop.
