UW-Baraboo-Sauk County Dean Tom Pleger will push state officials to get a “green” dorm and conference hall included on Gov. Jim Doyle’s list of projects that could use federal funding.
In a letter to Sauk County and city of Baraboo officials, Pleger asked for support in lobbying for the $15.5 million project.
Robert Kraig, director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, has long been a fan of politics, as his poster and button collection in his Milwaukee office demonstrates.
His job description last fall included appearing at presidential campaign rallies in Wisconsin with a person dressed in a cow costume. The stunt was part of the “Got Health Care” campaign by Citizen Action of Wisconsin, a grass-roots group that largely focuses on health care reform, labor unions and other organizations.
That the program director for Citizen Action would be attending rallies dressed as a cow isn’t surprising. Less expected is that Kraig also is the author of a book selected by The Wall Street Journal last month as the best study on presidential rhetoric.
The book, “Woodrow Wilson and the Lost World of the Oratorical Statesman,” was ranked first in a weekly feature that asks an expert to list the five best books on a topic.
The book was an outgrowth of Kraig’s dissertation for a doctorate in rhetoric from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the product of 10 years of work – the last four spent in libraries from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. doing original research. Kraig shares credit for the book with Stephen Lucas, his adviser at UW.
Sandy Wilcox is doing his best to remain upbeat.
Yet the longtime president of the University of Wisconsin Foundation — a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation that is the official fundraising arm for UW-Madison — realizes there is no good way to sugarcoat the current global financial and economic crisis and the impact it’s having on his organization.
A Dane County judge has ruled that recordings of the Brittany Zimmermann 911 call should not be released at this time because Madison police say keeping the audio secret could help them catch the University of Wisconsin-Madison student’s killer.
A judge refused Monday to order Dane County to release a 911 call made from a murdered college student’s cell phone around the time she was killed.
But the judge said the county must make public portions of a 911 call made by her fiancé when he discovered her body.
UW-Madison students graduating this month will take part in two commencement ceremonies Sunday at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Kohl Center.
For eight years, a small Fitchburg company has been working to create inexpensive portable sensors that detect deadly gases, pesticide exposure, even rotting fish and meat.
The challenge now is to perfect a product that companies and consumers want to buy.
The idea for the sensors grew out of a breakthrough made by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in 2001.
A police captain testified Friday that releasing an edited tape of a 911 call from a murdered college student’s cellular phone wouldn’t hamper the investigation into the killing. But other officials said that making public even part of the tape could jeopardize their hunt for the killer.
In other tech milestones, Microsoft and Google opened Madison facilities, plans took shape for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the Wisconsin Angel Network garnered national attention, and a national stem cell bank was established here. The city hosted the World Stem Cell Summit, and University Research Park–already planning a second west-side park–announced a future downtown urban site.
A detective investigating the slaying of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student urged a judge Friday not to release audio of the 911 call she made before her death.
The recording of the call from Brittany Zimmermann is a crucial piece of evidence â?? a digital witness to the crime â?? and releasing it will “hinder our police department from apprehending the perpetrator,” detective John Summers said.
Tuition at the state’s flagship public university will continue to climb despite the flagging economy, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin said in an e-mail today to faculty, staff and students.
The UW-Madison has decided not to file as an intervenor in American Transmission Company’s request to build a 345-kilovolt power line across Dane County. Being an intervenor would allow the UW to be more involved with the Public Service Commission’s decision-making process. But the UW says its concerns are already being addressed.
“We feel like at this time, we’re having our issues heard,” says UW spokeswoman Dawn Crim. She notes that the PSC required ATC to evaluate burying the line underground, if the route chosen would go along the Beltline, past the UW Arboretum.
After years of growth and earlier predictions that higher-education fund raising would escape the brunt of the economic crash, the recession has started to affect colleges’ efforts in that area, according to results of a Chronicle of Higher Educationâ??Moody’s Investors Service survey. Predictions are that 2009 may be even tougher, with shrinking annual funds and even job cuts among fund raisers.
VistaGen Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in South San Francisco, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation have signed a license for human embryonic stem cell patents for the development and commercialization of stem cell-based research tools.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A state law designed to shed light on millions of dollars in state government contracts is not working properly more than two years after it was passed.
The law requires all state contracts to be made public on the Internet, but many are missing from the Contract Sunshine Web site that went online in January.
A Madison city committee is quietly working on ways to end the violence in the streets around bars in the central city.
The Downtown Hospitality Council is a group of bar owners, business owners, and cops. It has been meeting for a few months.
The idea discussed by the group include expanding the police department’s safety classes of liquor license holders, creating an award program for establishments with clean security records, and establishing management practices prohibiting alcohol consumption by tavern staff members while they are on duty.
The unsolved murder of slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann will be featured by CNN’s Nancy Grace on the national news network at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tuesday.
Some were fueled by alcohol, others by a yearning to deface police property. They range in severity from bank robberies to reckless driving. But what really sets these crimes of the past year or so apart is, well, a certain lack of planning on the part of the perpetrators â?? or for those cases not yet completed, alleged perpetrators.
To compile this lofty list, several Capital Times reporters sifted through a year’s worth of stories. The criteria are somewhat vague to make the top eight of 2008, but you know them when you read them.
1. Krispy Kreme caper (UW Police chase)
Just a few months ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison zoology Professor James Pawley was hoping to keep working for another couple of years, figuring he would stay on as a full-time faculty member until his wife, who is also a professor, retires in 2011.
But due to tanking stock markets and concerns about a prolonged recession and how his state retirement benefits are calculated, Pawley decided the time was right to step down and start collecting his monthly payouts from the Wisconsin Retirement System.
When David DeWitt gave the closing keynote address at last month’s annual Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference, it was the first time he addressed a large audience of database developers and administrators.
DeWitt spent the past 32 years lecturing in computer science classrooms.
President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he values his choice for education secretary, Arne Duncan, for his dogged determination to use data to drive his decisions about how he sought to improve the Chicago Public Schools.
Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obamaâ??s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.
Quoted: Allan R. Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, heads a project that is studying how school districts recruit, assign and train their principals and teachers. He said Chicago had made considerable progress under Mr. Duncan.
MADISON, Wis. — The parents of slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann are pleading with a judge not to release a recording of her 911 call that was apparently made prior to her death.
Brittany Zimmerman, a 21-year-old college student who wanted to be a doctor, called 911 as she was being attacked by a stranger, police say.
But the police did not come for 48 minutes. By that time, Zimmerman was dead. Her fiance found her body.
Although the dispatcher claimed later to have heard nothing, the 911 tape captured screams, gasps and what sounds like a struggle, according to the court documents.
Slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann would not have wanted her final moments broadcast publicly, her parents have written to a Dane County Circuit judge in a letter released Monday.
In the face of a budget crisis, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin said the state’s flagship university will likely have to make choices that “won’t feel good to do but will make the university stronger.”
Martin made the statement at the first of three forums for University of Wisconsin-Madison students, faculty and staff to discuss the university’s future in a slumping economy.
According to the warrant, a UW-Madison police officer spotted the car about 10 p.m. at Monroe and Spooner streets and recognized it as belonging to a man whose driver’s license was suspended.
UW-Madison students turned out in huge numbers for last month’s presidential election.
Yet only 6 percent of students took the time to vote on a plan to build a new campus student center two years ago.
Now a group of several hundred students is upset that the new building will cost $96 per student, per semester. Over a college career, that could total $800 or more.
The lesson — for voters of all ages — is simple: Local elections and referendums matter. They can even have more effect than state or national elections on ordinary people’s lives, services and expenses.
Wisconsin’s projected budget deficit is actually a large but manageable $1.25 billion — not the frightening $5.4 billion that has caused consternation at the Capitol and around the state.
That conclusion offers a useful, attitude-adjusting way for Gov. Jim Doyle, state lawmakers and taxpayers to approach the 2009-2011 budget.
Wisconsin’s projected $5.4 billion budget shortfall would at least double the number of unfilled state jobs if Wisconsin doesn’t get financial help from Washington, Gov. Jim Doyle told federal lawmakers last week.
Doyle testified before the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wausau, about the need for a federal bailout for states facing fiscal challenges.
Some University of Wisconsin-Madison students are preparing to beat a world record for snowball fights.
More and more companies are cutting back and unfortunately that means laying off workers, but today graduates at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse tried to put the fears of finding a job behind them to accept their diplomas.
741 students earned degrees during three different ceremonies at the University’s winter commencement Sunday.
An emergency test reveals UW Police now have it figured out after a system that could save lives was failing for too many people.
But they are facing a different challenge.
Instant information in the palm of your hand is a pretty valuable tool but it doesn’t do much good if the message isn’t getting through and the message can’t get through if the students don’t sign up.
Two homicides at bar close in recent months have bar patrons in downtown Madison a little on edge.
Justin Kaatz’s friend Juan Bernal was killed outside the Plaza in September, and another friend, Roynell Fuller, is accused of murdering a man outside the Crave earlier this month.
“I think it’s unnecessary. Juan Burnell, for instance, lost his life over a fight over a jukebox. That’s ridiculous,” said Kaatz at State Street Brats on Friday.
The 911 operator who answered the call from Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone told her supervisor she heard background noise and voices, but the “scream” on the audio recording “didn’t register as a scream.”
UW-Madison graduate Jim Yeadon quietly broke ground in Wisconsin, trying to make sexual orientation “a non-issue” as he campaigned and served on the City Council.
The 911 dispatcher who took a call from a college student around the time she was slain told investigators she either did not hear a scream on the call or did not recognize the sound as a scream.
The dispatcher, Rita Gahagan, also told investigators the subsequent noise on the call did not strike her as sounds of distress. Police have described the call as containing a scream followed by the sound a struggle.
With extremely poor economic conditions, universities across the country have experienced losses in their endowment funds, and the University of Wisconsin is no exception.
After seeing an increase in the number of complaints about late-night vendors from residents around North Frances Street, a Madison committee contemplating options Wednesday to change the situation.
A Dane County judge Wednesday ordered the release of documents withheld since May related to the Brittany Zimmermann homicide and mishandled 911 call but wants to hear from law enforcement officials before deciding whether to release the call itself.
Many Downtown residents didn’t comply with snow emergency parking rules during Tuesday’s storm, and the city said they would tow violators on Downtown streets Wednesday night and early Thursday.
The start of a commuter rail line between Madison and Milwaukee, a new UW-Madison medical research tower and expansion of Interstate 94 are among the local projects Gov. Jim Doyle says could be started within months if federal lawmakers pass a massive economic stimulus bill for states.
The dean of the Wisconsin School of Business has been asked to craft long-term strategies to boost revenue for the state’s flagship school – part of public universities’ shift toward private sources of aid in an era of declining state support and a national recession.
A Dane County judge ordered the release Wednesday of a full report on the mishandling of a 911 call around the time a college student was murdered, but put off ruling whether audio of the call should be released.
Since arriving on campus in late August, new University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin has stressed the need for public institutions of higher education to reevaluate their funding models.
On Wednesday, Martin took her first major step in helping UW-Madison address this issue.
Princeton University will pay $50-million and almost as much in legal fees to foundations controlled by the heirs of a major donor to the institution, in a settlement that ends a closely watched lawsuit over how strictly colleges must adhere to a donor’s wishes.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison must increase private sources of revenue to remain a world-class university, Chancellor Biddy Martin said Wednesday.
Martin named UW-Madison business school dean Michael Knetter as a special assistant for long-term strategy and development.
MADISON, Wis. — The dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison business school has been tapped to take on a larger role at the university.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin has named Michael Knetter a special assistant for long-term strategy and development. Knetter is an economist who has led the business school since 2002. He will stay on as dean.
While banks and automakers command Washington’s attention, Gov. Jim Doyle this week wants to shift the focus to state governments across the country that face “unprecedented” and “devastating” budget cuts that could weaken their economic competitiveness.
A 20-year-old University of Wisconsin dropout pleaded guilty Monday on a single count of first-degree intentional homicide of a Madison resident.
Former UW-Madison student Adam Peterson pleaded guilty to the charge of first-degree intentional homicide at a hearing Monday for the January stabbing death of Joel Marino.
Already in court in a patent infringement lawsuit, computer chip giant Intel fired back at UW-Madison on Friday with a lawsuit of its own, this one alleging that Intel was denied the use of UW research that the company funded.
After escaping the war zone that was his country, former child soldier Ishmael Beah, now a best-selling author, had forgotten many simple things.
“I had forgotten how to sleep. I had forgotten how to trust people. I had forgotten how to be happy. I had forgotten how to sit in one place more than a few seconds. I was very restless,” the Sierra Leone native told a near-capacity crowd of more than 1,000 people Monday night in the Wisconsin Union Theater during his Distinguished Lecture Series talk.
The UW System Board of Regents approved Friday a proposal to increase UW faculty salaries by 2.5 percent each year for the next two years.
The 2.5 percent increase for University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff for 2009-11 was approved by the Board of Regents Friday and will now move to the UW Department of Administration for approval.
Parts of a previously sealed document released Friday from the Brittany Zimmermann homicide investigation shows the 911 call she made on the day she was killed lasted 57 seconds, but sounds heard on the recording were not clear enough at the time for the dispatcher to hear anything indicating an emergency.
A college dropout pleaded guilty Monday to fatally stabbing a 31-year-old Madison resident in his home – a stranger killing that shocked the city and remains something of a mystery.
Adam Peterson, 20, acknowledged that he walked into Joel Marino’s home near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and used a knife to stab him in the abdomen and chest on Jan. 28. Marino, a musician and employee of a medical device company, was found dying in a nearby alley.
Nearly 11 months after 31-year-old Joel Marino was found dying in an alley between his Madison home and a local hospital, the man responsible for his death has pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide.
A long-time family of supporters of the Wisconsin School of Business recently donated a large sum of money to help begin an endowment deanship.
Former UW-Madison student Adam Peterson, 20, will plead guilty to first-degree intentional homicide Monday for the murder of Madison resident Joel Marino in January.
