Category: UW-Madison Related

In March, the century-old Blount Street power plant Downtown will make natural gas – not coal – its primary fuel. As new generation has been built in recent years – including the natural gas-fueled power plant on the UW-Madison campus that provides steam and chilled water to heat and cool campus buildings, in addition to generating up to 150 megawatts of electricity – the Blount Street plant has been relegated to secondary status.

Noted: Alumnus Darold Treffert graduated from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 1958 and did his residency in psychiatry at University Hospital in Madison.

Advocate Magazine and Advocate.com ranked Madison the #5 gayest city in America in its February 2010 issue.

American colleges are slowly beginning to account for their students and faculty members caught up in Tuesdayâ??s devastating earthquake in Haiti, and a handful, including an Arizona State University graduate student whose foot had to be amputated, have made it back to the United States on relief flights.

Bold plans for a new kind of middle school in Madison deserve encouragement and strong consideration.

The proposed Badger Rock Middle School on the South Side would run year-round with green-themed lessons in hands-on gardens and orchards. The unusual school would still teach core subjects such as English and math. But about 120 students would learn amid a working farm, local business and neighborhood sustainability center.

A 74-year-old Madison man suffered what appeared to be non-life-threatening head injuries and a broken leg when he was struck by a taxi Wednesday afternoon in a crosswalk at the bottom of Bascom Hill on the UW-Madison campus, Madison police said.

A list of charitable organizations based in southern Wisconsin working on relief efforts in Haiti includes the UW-Madison chapter of Engineers Without Borders.

UW-Madison officials reported two groups of students are unharmed and accounted for in Haiti, though one group may have to delay its return.

Two volunteers from a Milwaukee church group are safe in Haiti after a powerful earthquake. Volunteers at the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukeeâ??s Haiti Project were trying Tuesday and Wednesday to reach two men who had been working in a small village in the mountains near the community of Jeannette, Haiti.

Three universities will refrain from using Amazonâ??s Kindle DX in the classroom under terms of deals announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice has reached agreements with three more universities regarding the use of e-book readers and blind students.

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Pace University in New York City and Reed College in Portland, Ore. have all agreed not to use the Amazon Kindle DX or any other e-reader until blind students can use the devices as well as sighted students, as per the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Public health officials are trying to prevent a third wave of the H1N1 flu by encouraging more residents to get immunized.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz on Tuesday named Rob Phillips as Madisonâ??s new city engineer.

Phillips, who has been the cityâ??s interim engineer since July, succeeds Larry Nelson, who retired last year after 19 years in the position.

A former registrar at UW-Whitewater has been named interim registrar at UW-Madison.

Dan Edlebeck will begin his year-long appointment on Feb. 1, replacing Joanne Berg, registrar and vice provost for enrollment management, according to a release from UW-Madison.

An alert couple on the cityâ??s west side helped police capture a burglary suspect who could be linked to other break-ins.

“Detectives from both the Madison and University of Wisconsin-Madison police departments were interested in speaking with the suspect about possible involvement in recent burglaries and thefts,” (Madison Police spokesperson Joel) DeSpain said.

A Madison council member, a retired UW-Madison music professor and a senior at Memorial High School are the 2010 recipients of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. awards.

The humanitarian award winners are Shiva Bidar-Sielaff and James Latimer, while the youth leader winner is Jarrel Brandon Luke Montgomery.

Ralph Armstrong, whose convictions for the 1980 rape and murder of a UW-Madison student were overturned in 2005 and charges against him in the case were dismissed in July after he spent almost 30 years in prison, remains in a New Mexico prison on decades-old parole violations.

Armstrong, 57, was transferred in August from Wisconsin to New Mexico after the Dane County district attorneyâ??s office decided not to appeal the dismissal of charges against Armstrong in the death of Charise Kamps.

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claireâ??s plan for a new student union wonâ??t require a tree with historic significance to be cut down or moved after all.

I was disheartened and appalled by the front page article in Fridayâ??s paper regarding inhumane and unsanitary conditions at the animal research lab at UW-Madison.

Two men fell through the ice on Lake Mendota Wednesday within 30 minutes of one another, and while neither was seriously hurt, a Madison Fire Department spokesman said the incidents are a reminder to beware of thin ice.

A Madison commission memberâ??s caution could unravel a developerâ??s strategy to build on property targeted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Madison developer Otto Gebhardt III is planning a 10-story, student housing project on the north side of Spring Street in Madison. The property is on a block the university identified in its 20-year plan for construction of a new academic building.

Two men fell through the ice on Lake Mendota Wednesday afternoon in separate incidents. The Madison Fire Department Lake Rescue Team responded to a report of an ice fisherman who had fallen through the ice near Picnic Point at 3:10 p.m. Wednesday.

Madison Fire Department Lake Rescue Team rescued a man who had fallen through the ice on Lake Mendota.The call came in just after 3 Wednesday afternoon.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeâ??s proposal to buy and renovate Columbia Hospital goes to the UW System Board of Regents Friday for funding approval.

Robert Felner, who withdrew from his appointment as University of Wisconsin-Parkside chancellor in June 2008 shortly after being named to the post, is expected to plead guilty Friday to defrauding two universities of $2.3 million.

Three University of Wisconsin campuses have been named among the top 100 best values in public colleges for 2009-â??10 by Kiplingerâ??s Personal Finance. UW-Madison is ranked highest in the state, with a No. 14 ranking nationwide for value. UW-La Crosse is ranked 43rd nationally and UW-Eau Claire is ranked 67th nationwide.

Noted: Roweâ??s pragmatism was bred on the dairy farm in Wisconsin where he grew up. He went to a one-room schoolhouse before heading to Madison for both undergraduate and law degrees. He has funded two chairs in history there and is in the process of funding one in virology. “The University of Wisconsin is the only thing I am truly chauvinistic about,” he says.

While humans battle the elements this time of year, native plants and animals in the UW Arboretum are mounting their own struggle to survive.

On a recent â??Nature of the Winterâ? walk, a handful of visitors to the Arboretum explored the prairies, woodlands and savannas near the visitor center to get a glimpse of the survival strategies. The walk is one of several winter educational programs offered by the Arboretum.

The University of Wisconsin’s medical school should release, as a matter of public record, faculty comments about a proposed conflict-of-interest policy.

That the Journal Sentinel would have to resort to a lawsuit to compel this is a telling comment on the school’s willingness to be transparent on how it arrives at its ethics decisions.

People who live near University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are stepping up their campaign to keep Columbia Hospital from being converted into student housing.

Madison Police officers thanked four citizens who helped them catch a robber Monday.Police say a UW-Madison student who was on his way to class, a UW Credit Union customer, a woman who was driving her car, and a local bicyclist, all conspired to catch the robber.

A University of Wisconsin program seeks to solve local poverty problems by offering those with past problems a chance at free higher education. The program, known as the “Odyssey Project,” is a free college humanities course for adults near the poverty level that is funded by UW grants and donations. Every year, 30 students go through the program and continue on to other area schools.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have won a $10 million federal grant for nanotechnology work. The five-year grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology will go toward using nanotechnology to create a new casting technology for commercial production of aluminum and magnesium nanocomposites.

A man is in the Dane County Jail after being arrested on several charges, including his fourth Operating while Intoxicated offense.

A Madison man was arrested for his alleged fourth drunken driving offense early Thursday morning after a UW-Madison police officer watched him drive by with a flat tire.

Why is Wisconsinâ??s Department of Administration hiring out-of-state contractors when our stateâ??s economy is in crisis? In addition to using a Michigan contractor to demolish Ogg Hall, Iâ??ve learned that design contracts for UW-Madisonâ??s new buildings have also been awarded to out-of-state architects.

Letter from professor Darald Hanusa, on behalf of UW-Madison School of Social Work, family violence class.

A developer is asking Shorewood Hills, a lakeside village of mostly single-family homes just west of the UW-Madison campus, to rezone 2.4 acres on University Avenue to build apartments for lower-income renters. But some Shorewood Hills residents say the project would strain the villageâ??s modest police force and other municipal services and be detrimental to its character.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents took an important and timely step Friday when it unanimously approved UW-Milwaukeeâ??s $50 million plan to develop a new School of Freshwater Sciences.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeâ??s preliminary $50 million plan to develop its new School of Freshwater Sciences now calls for a three-story addition to UWMâ??s Great Lakes WATER Institute, on the cityâ??s south side lakefront.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeâ??s preliminary $50 million plan to develop its new School of Freshwater Sciences now calls for a three-story addition to UWMâ??s Great Lakes WATER Institute, on the cityâ??s south side lakefront. Thatâ??s according to a funding request that the UW System Board of Regents is to review at meetings in Madison on Thursday and Friday.

Amazon says it will make the Kindle DX easier to use for visually-impaired individuals by summer 2010. The eReader will be outfitted with an audible menu system and the inclusion of extra large font to allow users who are blind or have limited sight the ability to access books without assistance. The new font will be twice as large as the Kindleâ??s current largest font.

Even with the looming forecast and blizzard warnings, donâ??t be surprised if a hardy soul or two tries to bike in the aftermath of Tuesdayâ??s and Wednesdayâ??s protracted storm.As the snow was falling Tuesday afternoon, we saw plenty of cyclists in the downtown and UW-Madison campus areas.

For the first time in history with records dating back to 1965, the University of Wisconsin cancelled todayâ??s classes due to extreme blizzard conditions. According to the National Weather Service, 10 to 14 inches of snow accumulation is expected by Wednesday afternoon.

The University of Wisconsin is, at first glance, a white school. From the race of our athletes to the majority of the student body to the milk we produce, Wisconsin is white.

Defined as â??the tendency of whites not to think about whiteness or about norms, behaviors, experiences or perspectives that are white-specific,â? the transparency phenomenon of white privilege has negatively impacted the conversations about race, minority and ethnicity issues on campus. This obliviousness to white privilege, and the ignorance towards the role that race plays in the daily lives of minorities, has created the belief that a significant amount of the minorities on campus were admitted solely to reach racial goals.

Amazon.com Inc. will add two features to the Kindle e-book reader to make the gadget more accessible to blind and vision-impaired users. Mondayâ??s announcement comes a month after Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., and the University of Wisconsin-Madison said they would not consider widely deploying the device as an alternative to paper textbooks until Amazon makes it easier for blind students to use. Both universities bought some Kindles to test this fall.

A new report says a lack of funding is delaying major energy conservation projects on University of Wisconsin campuses. The UW System report says the easiest and cheapest energy-saving projects have been implemented, and more funding is needed to make additional progress.

University of Wisconsin Colleges and Extension Chancellor David Wilson will make the transition this summer to Maryland to become the president of Morgan State University.  

While solar and wind power get most of the headlines, geothermal power is quietly gaining traction on college campuses where energy costs can siphon millions each year from the budget. There are 46 schools divvying up millions in federal stimulus dollars to advance technology that uses the temperature of the Earth, rather than coal-fired power plants, to heat and cool buildings.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, which spends about $50 million in climate-control costs a year, is incorporating a geothermal system in a building that opens next fall. The school should recover the $1.25 million cost in 15 to 20 years, said George Austin, the building project manager.

An estimated $34 million dining hall project for the University of Wisconsin-Madison may get snagged in the trees.

The proposed Gordon Commons building has received state approval, but when the project went before Madisonâ??s Urban Design Commission for an informational presentation, some commission members immediately called for more trees to improve aesthetics and safety. â??The unfortunate part of the building is that they have to have a dining hall throughout the construction process,â? said Bruce Woods, commission chairman, â??so the green space wonâ??t happen until the new building is done and the old building can come down.â?

The chancellor of UW-Extension and Colleges announced Friday that he will leave Wisconsin to take a post as president of Morgan State University in Baltimore.

David Wilson, a son of Alabama sharecroppers who earned a doctorate from Harvard and supervises Wisconsinâ??s 13 two-year colleges, will become the 12th president of Morgan State University, school officials announced Thursday.

David Wilson sounds like a man who is seriously considering leaving Madison to become the next president of Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Morgan State announced in early November that Wilson was one of three finalists to lead that institution.

The seventh annual David Busta Basketball Tournament and Silent Auction was Saturday, and Busta feels it was success. Seven years ago, the Busta Benefit started as a way to raise money for spinal cord injury research. All funds are donated to the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Whitewater has named a new provost, the top academic post at the university. Beverly Kopper, the associate provost for academic affairs at the University of Northern Iowa, will start April 1.

Noted: Google said the top search for Madison is “eCOW2,” which leads to a Web-based course management system for the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering.

Debbie Crave, vice president at Waterloo’s Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, recently received an Honorary Recognition award from UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Crave, a UW-Madison forestry and horticulture graduate, has spent her career promoting state agriculture products

A judge has delayed a civil trial for a former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater dean who claims he was audited and demoted because of his race.

The man exonerated in the 1980 rape and murder of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student will remain behind bars in New Mexico. WKOW-TV reports the parole board in New Mexico has denied the release of Ralph Armstrong.