If Chancellor Carlos Santiago leaves the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, it will be a loss for the region.
But if he goes, his ideas must stay and be brought to fruition. We respect Santiago, but the ideas – putting UWM on the research map and making the school a major economic driver for the region – are bigger than the man.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago has advanced to become one of four finalists for the position of president at Florida International University, officials announced Monday night.
The news came after Florida International officials said Friday that Santiago was among 13 candidates for the top job at the 38,000-student university in Miami.
Charisma. Energy level. Passion. All were mentioned Monday as a presidential search committee looking for Florida International University’s next president pared the list down to four candidates.
On Monday, the remaining of 11 candidates walked into a ballroom at Hotel Sofitel and tackled the first question from the 26-member Presidential Advisory Search Committee:
“Why do you want to be FIU’s next president?”
Chancellor Linda Bunnell wants to move fundraising for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point under the supervision of the university.
That would leave the current body in charge, the UWSP Foundation, in a mostly passive role, as university staff members assume primary responsibility for fundraising.
Rich Mintz thinks college fund raising needs serious help.
Bureaucracies are byzantine, messages leave alumni cold, and methods of delivering them are ineffective.
“Frankly,” says Mr. Mintz, a bushy-haired fund-raising consultant who once aspired to be a medieval scholar, “I think that a lot of institutions have probably simply given up on getting anything valuable out of their alumni under 40.”
His attitude could come across as off-putting, but Mr. Mintz boasts a unique calling card: The company he works for built the new-media arsenal that helped catapult Barack Obama into the White House.
It’s been a rough couple of months for University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Chancellor Linda Bunnell.
Directors of the university’s fundraising arm have rebelled against her leadership. Student leaders voted no-confidence in her and accidentally posted her credit card number online. She got into an accident in her state vehicle and later acknowledged she had been drinking a bit beforehand.
Some of the world’s smallest art is going on display at the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison.
“Tiny: Art From Microscopes at UW-Madison” starts Friday and runs through Dec. 31.
About 40 images feature cells, molecules and nanoscale structures generated by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists over the last 10 years.
Over the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to witness a group of University of Wisconsin students, their teachers and friends work on a project in our old barnyard.
Before this group of extraordinary young people came to work here, like many, I was worried about the economy and the state our country is in. I worried about the future of our children. Then I found myself in the midst of a group of students with astounding talent. They came upon many roadblocks during the course of this project, but taking the things available to them, they found a way to make it work.
Madison firefighters spent hours fighting grass fires Wednesday afternoon — a situation that is getting more prevalent as grass and soil dry out.
Public Information Officer Bernadette Galvez said 14 grass or brush fires have been reported to the department in April already, including three fires on Wednesday.
The first fire on Wednesday was reported at about 3:50 p.m. between Park Street and Walnut Street along the bike path near Lake Mendota.
….The third grass fire of the day for Madison firefighters was reported at 5:09 p.m. in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum along Fish Hatchery Road north of Carver Street.
As the Wisconsin Legislative Joint Committee on Finance begins its executive hearings on Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s budget proposal today, some of the proposalâ??s most controversial issues are likely to spur debate among lawmakers during the coming months.
Amid criticism over how it handled non-emergency calls that later proved to involve serious incidents, the Dane County 911 center is developing a formal policy that would have operators probe for more information during such calls as they now do with 911 calls.
Madison Police Capt. Carl Gloede said establishing the policy would help satisfy his concerns about two high-profile incidents.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point chancellor bought three alcoholic drinks in the two hours before she left the scene of a car accident but said Wednesday she wasnâ??t impaired.
Chancellor Linda Bunnell acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press she bought a cocktail and two glasses of wine at the Madison Club before the Feb. 17 accident in Downtown Madison. But she said she only had time to drink one of the three and was not tipsy at the time of the crash with her state vehicle.
If “listening to a cow’s beating heart” has been on your to-do list for years, head down to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital on April 26.
The animal hospital, 2015 Linden Drive, is holding its first open house in over six years. Admission is free and the open house is from noon to 4 p.m. Free parking is available on campus in lot 62.
Visitors will be able to listen to a cow’s heart, meet unusual animals and learn what it takes to become a veterinarian.
The Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission has awarded more than $155,000 in grants in support of community arts, culture and local history programs.
The funding includes $148,080 in grants for 54 projects and $7,331 for four capital grants.
The public-private money from the commission is combined with funds from the Evjue Foundation, the American Girl’s Fund for Children, the Endres Manufacturing Company Foundation, the Madison Community Foundation’s Arts Access Fund, the Overture Foundation and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation to total about $1.5 million, with that amount being matched from other sources.
Many people would agree that earning a PhD is hard work worth celebrating. But is a doctoral graduation gown worth $800?
At a time when the economy is rocky and jobs are harder to find, some University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee doctoral students are balking at the price tag of the regalia they’re supposed to wear to spring commencement – a fancy frock that is three times as expensive to rent as doctoral attire at UW-Madison.
MILWAUKEE — A new national report released Monday shows salaries for professors at Wisconsin’s public and private universities are below the national average.
The American Association of University Professors tracked salaries for full professors and found the University of Wisconsin-Madison trails the national average by $6,000.
Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s budget somehow finds $25 million in new financial aid for low-income students. The goal is to â??hold harmlessâ? students from households making less than $60,000 from the tuition increases many UW schools will be forced to implement.
To the average taxpayer, this sounds wonderful. Despite a flagging economy, the governor is still finding ways to support in-need students.
Dear Editor: I’m looking forward to being your 911 director.
…Residents of and visitors to Dane County: 911 service (and thus overall emergency response) is on the upswing. I’m heartened by the plans for near-term improvements and am made confident about the future by seeing many things already being successfully begun. One of the most helpful initiatives thus far was the hiring of nine new staff members who are currently being trained and will be ready for the busy summer season. I pledge to you that the staff and I will work diligently to continuously improve emergency communications and response in Dane County.
Dear Editor: Empire building again. That appears to be what the UW System is up to with its plan for the future of Iraq, making Iraq sort of a sister nation — as if the UW-Madison did not already have enough on its plate. More than enough.
I have over the years watched the UW, obsessed with growth and outreach, chew up the beautiful campus, knock down woods near the tower on Bascom Hill, and continually prostrate itself for the gods of growth — to the detriment of the taxpayers’ ability to pay, and to the environment itself.
Endless growth thrown against a fixed supply of natural resources is an oxymoronic proposition. And the UW should not endorse it.
Are you a Badger without a job?
Perhaps the Wisconsin Alumni Association can help.
What is Wisconsin’s energy future?
Biomass, wind, solar and the strategy to produce and maintain a sustainable homegrown energy plan will be the topics of the day on April 22 during the third annual Earth Day conference at Monona Terrace in Madison.
The conference is put together by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is co-sponsored by American Family Insurance, Madison Gas & Electric, Alliant Energy, the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the British Consulate-General of Chicago.
Four University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni are being honored for their accomplishments in journalism and mass communication.
….The award recipients will be honored at the school’s annual awards dinner April 17 at the Pyle Center on campus.
State Rep. Steve Nass is asking the University of Wisconsin System to review the conduct of UW-Stevens Point Chancellor Linda Bunnell in the wake of a report that she failed to tell police immediately that she had caused a car crash on the UW-Madison campus.
Bunnell was in Madison to attend Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget address and, in a car registered to the UW Board of Regents, hit a parked car and proceeded to the event without notifying police.
Nass said the crash and other behavior by Bunnell, including dissastifaction among students and the school’s fundraising arm, warrant review by UW System President Kevin Reilly.
Two armed men who allegedly robbed a convenience store early Wednesday morning were arrested by Madison and campus police, following a car chase and foot chase on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Antonio Johnson, 27, and an unidentified male were arrested and tentatively charged following the robbery that happened about 1:30 a.m. at the PDQ store at 2538 Fish Hatchery Road.
Even in an intensely watched setting like the UW-Madison campus, information technology staff discovered 20 computers infected with Conficker. “Twenty out of 40,000 isn’t too bad,” said UW IT spokesperson Meg McCall.
“What we then do is cut those machines off immedately from network access, encourage them to work with out help desk or do other maintenance to remove that,” said McCall.
McCall said UW constantly encourages students to pick up free security upgrades on CD. A more directed warning went out back in October, she said.
To help keep the thousands of private student laptops clean as well, anyone later discovered to have Conficker, will also be unplugged from UW’s network.
Thereâ??s some not-so-happy news for cows on the UW-Madison campus.
A $3 million proposal to remodel the bovine living quarters likely won’t be getting state funding in the next two years, after state Department of Administration officials rejected the proposal for inclusion in the capital budget.
The project was necessary, officials in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences said, because the cattle center on the west side of campus was built in the 1950s and is now outdated. The stalls are too small for todayâ??s cows and not ventilated properly.
The chancellor of UW-Stevens Point hit a parked car while in Madison to see Gov. Jim Doyle speak and left the scene of the crash without alerting anyone, according to a Madison Police Department report.
Linda Bunnell, who was driving a car registered to the UW Board of Regents, said in a statement Thursday that she was in a hurry to get to the governorâ??s budget address last month and was planning to follow-up with police and her insurance company later that evening.
The chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point wound up with a traffic citation when she visited Madison to hear Gov. Jim Doyle speak last month.
A police report said Chancellor Linda Bunnell hit a parked SUV and left the scene without telling anyone.
She released a statement Thursday saying that when the incident happened around 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 17, she was in a hurry to get to Doyle’s budget address and planned to follow up with police and her insurance company later that evening.
Meanwhile, a witness called police with her car’s license number, and an officer found the car and left a note.
Madison – Most University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduates would eventually pay $1,000 more per year under a plan to improve quality and increase financial aid. Chancellor Biddy Martin has proposed in-state undergrads pay a $250 supplemental tuition charge next school year and out-of-state students pay $750. The charge would go up the following three years.
(Posted in the state-by-state national news top stories.)
While experts across the nation are busy drafting solutions to deal with what some call a national economic crisis, UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin is creating her own strategy for sustaining affordability and academic excellence.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor Biddy Martin announced to a group of student leaders Tuesday an initiative to create differential tuition for all UW undergraduates to increase financial aid and the number of faculty positions.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin is proposing a four-year plan to increase undergraduate tuition to maintain the school’s quality.
Martin wants students from Wisconsin to pay a supplemental tuition charge of $250 starting next school year. The charge would grow by $250 per year through 2013.
Out-of-state students would pay a $750 supplemental charge next fall, and it would increase by that amount through 2013.
Those charges would be on top of any statewide tuition increase.
Despite the economic crisis and a projected $5.7 billion state budget shortfall over the next biennium, it’s looking like the building boom on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will continue for at least the next couple years.
The Higher Education Subcommittee of the state’s Building Commission recommended last week that $580.9 million in building projects across campus move forward during the 2009-11 biennium. This action by the subcommittee is just a first step — but an important one — as the state works toward its budget.
The Plan Commission passed new regulations for a Monroe Street bar Monday night after the establishment received criticism for not complying with city policy.
Is conducting the University of Wisconsin Marching Band on your list of things to do?
You can bid on a chance to do so, plus dozens of other Badger- and UW-related products and services, during the online Big Badger Auction that starts Wednesday and continues through April 8.
A proposal by the governor has lawmakers in the Chippewa Valley wondering if he’s leaving western Wisconsin out in the cold.
The UW System has recommended that UW-Eau Claire’s plan to update its education building be given priority for state funding. But the governor is recomending $240 million worth of projects for UW-Milwaukee’s campus. As a result, UWEC’s project was taken off the list.
“I always drive in the morning and I always see the cranes in the distance at Luther Hospital. And it’s like gee, maybe someday we’ll get some cranes on our campus and actually build something new,” says UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich.
State lawmakers have wrapped up their first round of public hearings on the proposed state budget.
The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee was in Sparta Monday, where hundreds of people turned out to comment on the budget plan. Committee co-chair Mark Pocan (D-Madison) says it provides real feedback on key issues.
In 1962, English professor Frederic Cassidy presented a paper at a scholarly conference called, “The American Dialect Society Dictionary: How soon?”
About 50 years, it turns out.
The Dictionary of American Regional English founded by Cassidy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is nearing completion of its final volume of text covering S to Z. A new federal grant will help the volume get published next year and allow the dictionary that linguists consider a national treasure to prepare to go online.
Used book lovers are lining up for the biggest sale in the state starting Wednesday at Memorial Library on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
The semi-annual sale includes more than 15,000 books covering almost any subject, and other media, including CDs, DVDs, video, record albums and maps, will also be on sale.
But it wasn’t until Mark Wagler’s fourth- and fifth-grade classes at Randall Elementary School researched the old Greenbush neighborhood three years ago that the idea of commemorating the triangle’s storied past grew. Thanks to the class’ efforts, the Madison City Council declared an annual “Greenbush Day,” which will be celebrated on Tuesday at the UW Welcome Center. The event will honor past and present neighborhood cultures with groups such as the Madison Yiddish Choir, Woezo (featuring West African drums), and a performance from TAPIT/new works combining Italian food, comedy and drama called “Mangia, Mangia!” Greenbush Day will also feature exhibits and speeches remembering the time when the neighborhood residents overlooked their differences to become a tight-knit community when they were not received by the larger community.
Madison Area Crime Stoppers is using a new type of software that allows people to send tips from cell phones by text message.
The Dane County Sheriff’s Department, along with Madison and University of Wisconsin-Madison police, will utilize new TipSoft technology software from a Texas-based company, which gives people the ability to send leads on crimes to law enforcement with their cell phones via text messages.
John Dejung, a UW-Madison graduate who has worked the past 12 years as 911/311 director for the city of Minneapolis, has been named director of the Dane County Public Safety Communications Center, County Executive Kathleen Falk announced Thursday.
Dejung’s first official day as Dane County Public Safety Communications Director will be June 1. His starting salary will be $120,000.
The Minneapolis 911 Center was awarded the 911 Call Center of the Year for 2008 by the 911 Institute for its handling and emergency response coordination of the Interstate 35 bridge collapse in 2007, according to a news release.
Count Wisconsin Public Radio among the media outlets feeling the pinch from the sour economy.
Support in February’s pledge drive, when program hosts solicit and solicit listeners for donations, actually exceeded its goal of $800,000, raising a total $878,000. But a pledge drive launched last fall, just as stock market losses signaled the depth of the economic downturn, missed its goal, said WPR acting director Mike Crane. And end of year gifts, when listeners who pledge their support during the on-air drives often give again in a mail campaign, were disappointing. All in all, fundraising from listeners is $300,000 off pace this year, Crane reported.
Saturday’s Wisconsin State Journal Business section touts a recent study showing parallel numbers of alumni CEOs for Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin, each with 13 currently heading S&P 500 companies.
What the article fails to point out is the inequality in enrollment figures for the two schools. (2nd item.)
University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s chancellor is retiring after leading the school through a period of tremendous growth.
David Markee announced Tuesday he plans to retire in August after leading the university since 1996.
UW-Platteville is largely known for its engineering program, and under Markee’s leadership, it became the fastest growing university in the state. Its enrollment increased nearly 50 percent over the past 10 years to 7,500 students.
A Madison man given a drunken driving ticket following a crash at the intersection of Observatory Drive and North Park Street late last week made matters much worse when University Police took him to an emergency room to have blood drawn. He now faces two felony counts for hitting a nurse and spitting on a cop.
The spring book sale organized by the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries will be March 25-28 in 116 Memorial Library, 728 State St.
The preview sale, which carries a $5 entry, will be from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on March 25. Book prices will be $5 for hardcover and $3 for paperback.
Gov. Jim Doyle proposed Monday that the state authorize $240â??million for construction projects at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, an unprecedented amount that UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago said would enable the university to reinvent itself as a research and economic force in the metro region.
Laurits (Lau) Christensen, chair of the economic and engineering consulting firm Christensen Associates of Madison, has established a named faculty chair in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Economics, the UW announced.
Christensen, who served on the UW-Madison economics faculty for 20 years, says he made the gift to allow the recruitment and retention of top-flight professors, the UW said in a news release.
If the snow goes, can road construction be far behind?
Monday the city starts rebuilding the Gorham Street-University Avenue corridor, with lengthy delays expected during commuting times all summer.
“The University Avenue project will be a challenging one,” said city traffic engineer and parking manager Dave Dryer. “We will ask people to have patience, use alternative modes if they can. Some may be able to alternate schedules to avoid the most problematic times and use alternate routes.”
Winter is winding down.
So that means construction is gearing up.
Monday crews will start working on one of the first projects of the season downtown.
Billy Medley has only been driving on the streets of Madison for about a year and he’s already learned that road construction is a way of life here.
“It’s what I think of Madison. Always being improved. “
The year 1955 was a good one for a student photographer at the University of Wisconsin named Duane Hopp. He took photos of Frank Lloyd Wright in formal wear and Louis Armstrong in his shorts.
The Wright photo ran in Life magazine. The one of Armstrong â?? the only photograph of him in his underwear, according to Satchmo â?? was published in the UW-Madison student yearbook. Now, a half century on, Hopp thinks it might be time to publish them again.
Hopp, 77, has been thinking there might be a book in the best of the thousands of photos he shot over his extraordinary career, which included 26 years at the Photographic Media Center at UW-Madison.
All three finalists for Dane County 911 director have local connections.
A 911 board selection panel this week sent three names to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk for final review: John Dejung, Eddie Goldsmith and Phillip Vorlander.
Dejung, the top choice, who earned his master’s degree in business administration from UW-Madison, has been director of the Minneapolis 911/311 center for 12 years. The center was named the best in the country last year by the Washington-based E9-1-1 Institute for how it handled the Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007.
Madison motorists using a critical downtown corridor might want to consider an alternate route this spring and summer as road construction begins on Gorham Street, University Avenue and Broom Street.
The project is only six blocks long and two blocks wide, but it will tie up an important juncture where Gorham Street, the main westbound one-way street into downtown from the east side, meshes with University Avenue, the key one-way conduit through the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus heading to the west side.
Work begins Monday and is expected to continue through September.
Friday’s article regarding my remarks to the UW Board of Regents concerning the proposed budget lacked some important context. It characterized my view of the university’s fortunes as “grim” when, in fact, the governor’s budget provides many significant advances for our campus.
As my colleagues and I pointed out, it provides new sources of financial aid for low- and middle-income students, funding for research initiatives, resources for faculty retention and recruitment and support for domestic partner health benefits.
The 5 percent cuts mentioned were a worst-case scenario — something that could result if no tuition funds were used to help offset reductions and if there were a 1 percent cut on all funds. I stated that I don’t expect that will be the outcome.
Yes, pay more to protect youth
Thanks for your courageous stand on increasing the beer tax. But let’s not stop at a few pennies per beer. That would hardly start to pay off the annual $5 billion tab for alcohol-related health, social, and legal problems in Wisconsin.
Another reason for a higher tax is that increasing the price of alcohol is the single most effective way to decrease binge drinking by young people. Such drinking in itself causes harm, and for teenagers it poses risk for lifelong alcoholism.
A third reason is that stronger enforcement is only part of a comprehensive package to make our roads safer. In Wisconsin, three-fourths of intoxicated drivers involved in fatal crashes have never before been caught for drunken driving.
I could hardly believe what I was reading on Sunday’s sports page. I agree that there should be incentives and rewards for exceptional performance, but a $100,000 bonus was awarded to UW football coach Bret Bielema for exceptional achievement.
Leaders from across the University of Wisconsin System sounded a collective alarm Thursday during a Board of Regents meeting on the UW-Madison campus, stressing that state budget cuts would deeply impact students.
“Let us take our share of the pain,” UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin told the regents. “But let us not undermine the extraordinary quality of a UW-Madison or UW System degree.”
Due to a projected $5.7 billion state budget shortfall and a deepening recession, UW-Madison would need to absorb $63.4 million in cuts over the next two years if Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s recommended 2009-11 biennium budget passes in its current form. That figure represents more than a third of the UW Systemâ??s potential $174 million in lost funding.
Siavash Sarlati of Milwaukee, 24, a medical student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was one of those taking part in President Obama’s health care summit.
Wednesday evening, at the Sa-Bai Thong restaurant on Odana Road, a distinguished-looking visitor from Thailand eased into a booth and smiled broadly as he was handed a copy of a newspaper story four decades old.
Pongsak Payakvichien is a legend in journalism in Thailand. When the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA) presented him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, they noted that he had “almost single-handedly brought about Thai journalism’s coming-of-age.”
