Category: UW-Madison Related

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a $200 million transfer out of a medical malpractice fund to help balance the budget in 2007-08 was illegal.

A special program for young and old turns 10 this year at the UW- Madison. The annual “Grandparents University” has grown beyond organizers? expectations, both on campus and nationally.

One person has died in a crash on Madison?s near east side. UW Police first attempted to stop a swerving car on West Johnson Street around 12:45 a.m. on Wednesday. The car?s driver sped away and police lost contact with it at the intersection of East Johnson and East Mifflin Streets, according to police.

Despite the city of Madison?s promises to toughen enforcement of construction site erosion laws, few non-compliance notices or fines have been issued this year or last, and residents report numerous sites where brown plumes of silt have sluiced into the city?s lakes during rainfalls. While the city has stepped up inspections, those reports show few problems or violations. Erosion problems exist on the UW-Madison campus where, in several locations, streets often are stained with dirt from construction jobs and where the state Department of Natural Resources, responsible for inspection and enforcement of erosion rules for campus building projects, is struggling with oversight responsibilities because of its thin inspection staff.

While the UW-Madison campus seems to be one big construction site this summer, officials with the state Department of Natural Resources say that a stretched inspection staff allows them to visit projects and inspect erosion controls only when they get complaints from the public. “It?s just a matter of staffing,” said Tim Ryan, a water resources engineer who helps oversee the program.

Noted: Kevin Reilly, president of the University of Wisconsin system, noted that Wisconsin is among 31 states that have joined the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of three that have applied to the federal government?s Race to the Top program for funds to build an assessment aligned to the common core.

This week, 12 Wisconsin middle school students and 12 students from the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta participated in Generation Acceleration, a camp in which the students got their (latex-gloved) hands wet working on a variety of stem cell activities in the lab.

“We want to educate and train the next generation of scientists,” said Rupa Shevde, the director of outreach for the Morgridge Institute for Research, the nonprofit biomedical research institute affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison that ran the camp. “Studies have shown when you engage students with science at a younger age, they are more likely to explore a variety of careers later.”

A two-day program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison allows children and their grandparents to learn together.

Noted: On Jan. 20, a partnership that includes Oshkosh Corp. and UW-Madison received a $5 million, five-year Technology Innovation Program grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to study the use of nanocomposites to make large-scale castings of light metals like aluminum and magnesium as strong as cast steel.

In all the frenzied reporting of Michael Morgan?s UW-Madison appointment, I don?t recall questions about the salary itself. How many employees in the UW System are paid in six figures? How many are paid more than our governor? When we demanded our UW System be “run like a business,” was this the unintended consequence ? the corporatization of education and escalating competition for higher administrative compensation? Has the business of education become more important than education?

Madison has a strange relationship with spirits. I?m not talking about ghosts, of course. I mean alcohol ? for better or worse a big part of our city?s history and culture. Taverns and bars line our streets. Micro- and macro-breweries are as prevalent as cheesemakers in other parts of the state. The UW-Madison student union has a German-style drinking hall inside.

President Obama on Wednesday nominated UW-Madison law professor Victoria F. Nourse to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to replace retiring Judge Terence Evans. Nourse, 51, who has been at UW since 1993, has also been a visiting professor at Yale University, New York University and Emory University. At UW-Madison she teaches courses in legislation, statutory interpretation, constitutional history and criminal law and has written extensively on those topics, as well as the separation of powers.

UW-Madison purchased a disputed plot of land at Capitol Court near North Charter Street last year with the intent to significantly expand its primate labs. But an application for $15 million in federal stimulus funds to expand the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center was rejected, said Alan Fish, vice chancellor for facilities, planning and management. That means that the expansion is on hold, he said.

A 23-year-old woman scared off an attacker downtown early Saturday by screaming and kicking after being grabbed from behind, Madison police reported. The woman told police the mugging happened at about 3:15 a.m. Saturday when she was walking near Langdon and Henry streets and a man came up and grabbed her cell phone.

The state?s yawning budget hole has swelled to $2.5 billion, underscoring the massive challenge that awaits the next governor and Legislature, a new report released Friday shows. The projections by the Legislature?s nonpartisan budget office show the expected shortfall for the 2011-?13 budget has grown by $462 million from the just over $2 billion that was expected a year ago.

Wisconsin?s next governor will have to continue keeping state government afloat ? with a lot less money. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau reports state government will be $2.5 billion dollars short of what it needs to meet current spending commitments in the next state budget, which begins next July. A year ago, the next deficit was projected to be around $2 billions, meaning it has grown by $462 million.

Todd Taylor of Lodi must have been cleaning out his old magazines and came across letters to the editor in Life Magazine a few weeks after Life?s Sept. 6, 1948, cover story, ?The Good Life in Madison, Wisconsin.?

The Huffington Post is venturing into the wonky but increasingly popular territory of opinion poll analysis, purchasing Pollster.com, a widely respected aggregator of poll data that has been a major draw for the Web site of The National Journal.

The ongoing ecological restoration along the shoreline of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has reached a hillside near Eagle Heights that was once the summer home to hundreds of graduate students.

Do not get your underwear in a bundle over the Michael Morgan hiring flap. As I recall, UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez did something very similar when he hired Bret Bielema as UW-Madison?s head football coach.

For years, I have resented the pot shots that Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, has taken at the University of Wisconsin. But now I have to thank him for calling for an investigation of UW System President Kevin Reilly?s appointment of Michael Morgan as senior vice president of the System.

The declaration of cooperation between stem cell programs in California and Wisconsin at the meeting of the Society for Stem Cell Research was great news to me and those with debilitating diseases.

Noted: The tower, completed in 1995 at a cost of $10 million, was constructed to reduce the number of towers needed on Madison?s skyline. It is owned by the UW Board of Regents and managed by the UW-Madison University Research Park.

A few years ago, two things could be counted on at the University of Wisconsin. Chris Solinsky could be found barreling around a track, and onlookers could be found wondering who he was.

Dear Editor: Why shouldn?t UW employees pay for their bus passes? There aren?t many employees who get free bus passes or free parking these days. UW employees get good wages and many other benefits and perks that many other people do not get.

Gov. Jim Doyle doesn?t have anything bad to say about his top aide getting a plum job at the University of Wisconsin that comes with a $108,000 pay increase.

Dane County Sheriff?s Office divers continued their search for missing swimmer Sara Carpenter tonight. But yesterday it was another life saving group first on the scene when the 911 call came in. This is now a recovery mission and there isn?t much hope of finding Carpenter alive but the quick response of the UW Lifesaving Team yesterday proves just how valuable they are, especially heading into a busy and often dangerous holiday weekend.

UW-Madison unveiled a new website this week, the first make-over for the Big Ten school?s home page in five years.

The Dane County Sheriffâ??s Office dive team planned to resume searching for a missing swimmer in Lake Mendota on Wednesday morning, after efforts to find the swimmer were unsuccessful Tuesday evening. The sheriffâ??s department called off its recovery effort around 8:30 p.m. The Maple Bluff Fire Department and the UW-Madison Lifesaving Station also participated in the search.

Unfortunately, many faculty have decided to leave the University of Wisconsin System. Iâ??ve witnessed some of the most gifted, irreplaceable teachers take positions at other universities. National searches to replace faculty cost thousands of dollars and often fail for lack of a competitive offer. The cause stems from inadequate funding of the system as a whole over the past decade. This has created a salary gap resulting in difficulty hiring and keeping talented educators.

A 21-year-old woman lost her purse in a mugging downtown as she was walking home early Tuesday morning, Madison police reported. The mugging happened at about 3 a.m., but police said they didnâ??t learn of it until shortly before 5 a.m. when the victim was found kicking at a security door at her apartment building because she couldnâ??t get in.

The mugging happened in the 500 block of West Johnson Street. The woman lives in the 100 block of West Gorham Street.

Regarding a Thursday letter questioning the stateâ??s Charter Street Biomass Plant, this plant will transform our energy and environmental landscape…Just last week 25 volunteers ranging from UW-Madison students to state agency leaders successfully planted 3,000 willow trees in what had been a marginal-yield cornfield…We endured the blazing sun to plant these trees for biomass because the buffer will reduce flood waters, provide cleaner lakes, fuel and feed to local farmers, habitat for people and wildlife, and give us cleaner energy than coal. The $275 million Charter Street investment will create projects like this all over southern Wisconsin and create new, needed jobs.

Possible changes to UW-Madisonâ??s parking and transportation services â?? including a proposal to charge UW-Madisonâ??s 20,000 employees to ride the bus â?? could have far-reaching consequences for the campus and city. About one year into the job, UW-Madison transportation director Patrick Kass announced this spring that he needs to make drastic changes or else raise parking rates considerably in order to cover an annual budget deficit of roughly $1 million. One proposal is to begin charging UW-Madison employees between $50 and $150 per year for city bus passes, which have been free for the past seven years. Thatâ??s because the university, which spends about $1.5 million per year on employee bus fare, is facing an expected 21 percent cost increase from Metro Transit.

The University of Wisconsin System president offered Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s top aide a high-level job without reviewing his resume or conducting a background check, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Power is back on at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus, a university spokeswoman said. The campus was without electricity from around 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., but classes went on as scheduled, officials said.

The UW-Madisonâ??s information technology chief, Ron Kraemer, is leaving to take a similar position at the University of Notre Dame, the UW announced. Kraemer, vice provost for information technology and chief information officer, came to the Division of Information Technology (DoIt) in 2005 as associate director, and became chief information officer in 2007.

The Boldt Co. of Appleton has been selected by the state to convert a power plant on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus from coal-burning to biomass. The state Department of Administration announced Monday that Boldt will work alongside British consulting firm AMEC to install the new biomass boiler at the Charter Street heating plant. The project is expected to be done by the spring of 2013.

Dwight Armstrong, one of the men who bombed UW-Madisonâ??s Sterling Hall in August 1970, killing a researcher, died Sunday in Madison after a battle with lung cancer. He was 58.

Spurred by anti-war furor, Armstrong was 18 years old when he, his older brother, Karl, and two others bombed the Army Math Research Center, a Defense Department project, in Sterling Hall on August 24, 1970. Robert Fassnacht, a 33-year-old researcher who was working late, was killed.

Ronald D. Kraemer has been hired as vice president and chief information officer at the University of Notre Dame, effective Aug. 15.

UW-Madison Vice Provost for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer (CIO) Ron Kraemer has accepted a position as vice president and CIO at the University of Notre Dame, effective Aug. 15.

The application, which serves as Madisonâ??s bid for a $97 million high-speed Google fiber-optic network, was due March 26, and Google has not offered a definite schedule of when applicants can expect to hear back, said Preston Austin, a leader in efforts to bring the network to Madison. He said itâ??s expected that Google will make selections this year.The ice cream flavor created to woo Google, MadFiber, didnâ??t even last a month, said Sara Brummel, manager at UW-Madisonâ??s Babcock Dairy.

Wisconsin won more funding Thursday than every state but California when the U.S. Department of Energy awarded $76 million in funds for development of energy-efficiency technologies and careers. Wisconsin was awarded $7.9 million in this round of stimulus funding, the agency said.That includes two projects at Johnson Controls Inc., one at Eaton Corp., two at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one at Milwaukee Area Technical College. UW-Madison will receive $246,249 to work on technology linked to a high performing non-vapor compression cooling system. The $7.9 million for Wisconsin includes $1.6 million for training projects funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That includes $934,712 for a UW-Madison initiative to develop a curriculum to train operations staff working in commercial buildings on ways to manage a buildingâ??s energy consumption and environmental impacts.

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow earns about $50,000 less than the median salary of chancellors at similar schools in the Midwest.

Plans to upgrade UW-Madisonâ??s Charter Street Heating Plant to burn biomass and natural gas instead of coal got the blessing of the cityâ??s Urban Design Commission Wednesday night, while a separate university proposal to build a laboratory building was referred to a later meeting

MADISON, Wis. — A construction worker at the Chazen Art Museum work site in downtown Madison fell 15 to 20 feet, but suffered what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Madison Fire Department.

Officials said emergency responders were called to the construction site at 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday at 750 University Avenue for a report of a fall. Upon arrival, they found a worker who had fallen off of a wall.

A judge says a lawsuit against the University of Wisconsin-Parkside over its handling of an alleged sexual assault can move forward.

The Madison Common Council will take final action Tuesday on the liquor licenses of seven downtown Madison businesses owned by a couple convicted of tax evasion.

Two Wisconsin natives are among the “top staffers” on Capitol Hill, according to the newspaper Roll Call.John Buckley, of Hartford, Wis., is the Democratic chief tax counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee. The lawyer has been a congressional aide for 36 years and “has had a hand in nearly all the major tax bills,” according to the Capitol Hill-based newsaper. He received a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Ward McCarragher, of Waukesha, Wis., is chief counsel for the House Transporation and Infrastructure Committee. He received both his B.A. and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

President Obama named five panelists to a commission tasked with finding ways to avoid a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 men and started the nationâ??s worst oil spill. Panelist Fran Ulmer is a UW law school grad.

Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Michael Morgan will step down from that post and join the University of Wisconsin System as the systemâ??s senior vice president for administration and fiscal affairs, university system officials announced Friday. The move fills a post being vacated by Tom Anderes, who was appointed to the job two years ago and left to become head of the University of Arizona System. It fills a vital role for the university system as it develops a budget proposal for the 2011-13 biennium, UW System President Kevin Reilly said.

A new UW-Madison Lakeshore dorm, cafeteria and a $245 million rebuild of the Charter Street Heating Plant got approvals to move forward at the UW Board of Regents meeting Thursday. A committee of Regents approved the design reports for the three projects. The full Board of Regents is expected to approve the projects today.

A top aide to Gov. Jim Doyle accepted a position Friday as chief operating officer for the University of Wisconsin System, where his pay will increase by $108,000.

University of Wisconsin System regents are expected to discuss a report Friday that recommends salary increases and changes to the universityâ??s compensation system. A commission of business and higher education leaders appointed by System President Kevin Reilly found that average salaries for most academic employees in Wisconsin lag far behind what comparable schools pay.

A downtown design committee showed interest Thursday night in getting a planned redeveloping of the 700 block of State Street done a year earlier than originally planned.

…WHY IS IT that so many public sector institutions are absolutely tone deaf and clueless to the economic suffering being widely experienced by the people?

The latest example â?? itâ??s an annual ritual, actually â?? comes from the University of Wisconsin system. It is twofold: (1) The system has unburdened itself of yet another study purporting to show that employees and faculty are woefully under-compensated and deserving of big raises; and (2) UW regents will be asked, again this year, to grossly exceed prevailing inflationary figures by enacting a 5.5 percent tuition increase.

Doctors spend almost as much time on the subtleties of billing codes as we do on patient care. Primary care in particular is adversely affected by a fee-for-service system that stifles innovative approaches to managing complex chronic and preventive care in favor of those services insurance companies and Medicare will reimburse.

John J. Frey III, Madison, Wis. The writer, a doctor, is a professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

A 22-year-old downtown resident was so ticked off at the loud bar crowd next door he grabbed a bow and arrow and went out to confront the most boorish of the brood, Madison police reported.

Unfortunately for the modern day Robin Hood, the bow and arrow was disturbing to others, with police being called and an officer eventually drawing his gun at the archer before citing him for disorderly conduct.

U.S. Senator Herb Kohl says he has appointed an 11-member bipartisan task force of Wisconsin legal experts and community leaders to examine the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. The group includes Frank Tuerkheimer, professor, University of Wisconsin Law School
and Brady Williamson, professor, University of Wisconsin Law School and attorney, Godfrey & Kahn.

The liquor licenses of seven downtown Madison businesses owned by a couple convicted of tax evasion are still up in the air.The Alcohol License and Review Committee is considering pulling the liquor licenses for Vineyard Liquor, Churchkey Bar and Grill, Badger Liquor, the Badger Tasting Room, Samba grill, Brickhouse BBQ and Rileyâ??s Wines of the World.

Salaries for University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff have fallen so far behind their peers that they must be increased quickly to remain competitive, a report warned Monday. Average salaries for almost every category of academic employee are now behind what comparable schools pay their employees, a 19-member commission created by UW System President Kevin Reilly concluded. “If not remedied in a timely fashion, the Commission believes that these deficiencies could have a damaging effect on the UW System, the UW Systemâ??s ability to achieve its goals for the Growth Agenda of Wisconsin, and on the quality of life in Wisconsin,” the report warned.