A large oak tree toppled Friday morning into the path of a car on Oregon’s Main street, crushing and killing the car’s driver, a UW researcher in the physics department.
Authorities said the victim was Roch Kendrick, 46, of New Glarus.
The tragic news is still sinking in for those who knew Roch Kendrick.
The only thing harder to believe than how it happened, who it happened to.
The scene is still hard to believe for those who were there. The accident is even tougher to comprehend.
A UW-Madison researcher was killed when a large part of a tree fell on his car as he was driving through strong winds in the village of Oregon early Friday.
Roch D. Kendrick, 46, of New Glarus, was pronounced dead just after 9 a.m. by the Dane County Coroner’s Office after the accident about 45 minutes earlier in the 400 block of North Main Street.
Kendrick was a “vibrant person who was incredibly sharp, knowledgeable, well-spoken and incredibly bright,” said Cam Choy, an art professor at UW-La Crosse who knew Kendrick socially. In 2001, Kendrick used his experience working with molten iron to help Choy create an annual event for artists at UW-La Crosse.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison says a new agreement with Google will expand public access to its library collection.
The university says readers across the country will be able to preview its books for free and buy access to the full texts online.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google have expanded their agreement to make more of the university’s huge collection of books available to the public, researchers and libraries and other universities.
The expanded project came about when Google reached a settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers in 2008 to put their works online.
It’s been two years since 22-year-old Kelly Nolan’s body was found in a wooded area south of Madison.
Two years later, Madison police are actively investigating the crime: with two full-time detectives on the case.
UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan was working in Madison for the summer when she vanished in June of 2007, after a night out with friends.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is expanding its relationship with Google and its online book search.
The university began working with Google in 2006 to digitize documents and historical materials in the university’s collection and make them available online.
So far, about 200,000 works are searchable.
The new agreement would make even more books available and allow purchased access to view the entire text of a copyrighted book.
Six accomplished University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni have been named to the board of directors of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
Turns out Austin King, the progressive activist who became Madison City Council president at age 24, was only getting started.
Now, at 28, after two years in New Orleans, heâ??s headed back to school, earning scholarships at New York Universityâ??s School of Law and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
In Madison, King often was at the center of action, fighting for social justice causes while a UW-Madison student.
UW-Madison students will see a tuition increase of $618 a year under rates proposed by UW System President Kevin Reilly this afternoon.
Madison, a liberal college town that doubles as the capital of a politically complicated state, pulls its disparate elements together into a spirited reality all its own, a funky amalgam of hard-partying students, socially conscious activists, sports fans, outdoor warriors, politicos from both sides of the aisle, artists, foodies and more. Long pigeonholed as a hotbed for frat parties and activism, Madison has a vibrant but much more tempered side brimming with arts, culture and food. In a city with so many types to keep happy, itâ??s impossible not to find something that suits your fancy.
Before venturing into Madisonâ??s nightlife nine years ago as a UW-Madison student, Justin Karter and a friend considered where to start among the cityâ??s many clubs geared toward the college-age crowd. The choices were as plentiful as options on a drink menu.
Karterâ??s friend considered their options. â??Wouldnâ??t it be cool,â? he said, â??to see the bar scene before we went out?â?
Nitty Gritty owner Marsh Shapiro has sold 400,000 hamburgers and has been in business in downtown Madison for 40 years.
So, he said he thinks it’s time to move on, a decision that has prompted him to list his popular restaurant near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus for sale.
University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff were given the right to form unions with collective bargaining powers under the state budget signed Monday by Gov. Jim Doyle. Or were they? “This is all getting a little frustrating,” David Ahrens, who holds an academic staff position at UW-Madison, told the Cap Times Tuesday afternoon. “It’s turning into a bittersweet event.”
Help people get to where they want to go on Picnic Point so they donâ??t go where they shouldnâ??t.
Thatâ??s the smart strategy UW-Madison is proposing for the cherished peninsula that curves nearly a mile into Lake Mendota.
The public should support the Picnic Point improvement plan and thank the Ebling Charitable Trust for covering the estimated $750,000 expense.
Governor Doyle praised lawmakers for timely work as he signed a state budget which resolves A $6.6 billion deficit with spending cuts, state worker furloughs and lay offs, and tax and fee increases.
Doyle said he defied pundits by balancing the books without raising the state sales tax, nor hiking the income tax for the middle class.
Gov. Jim Doyle signed the state’s two-year budget on Monday, but not before using his partial veto power to block various measures.
State lawmakers gave final approval to the $62 billion spending plan early Friday evening. The budget closes a record $6.6 billion shortfall that was brought on because state agencies’ spending requests outpace projected revenue.
For the first time since 1977, Wisconsin’s state budget has been signed into law before the end of the fiscal year.
Governor Jim Doyle signed the budget bill Monday morning during a ceremony at the Executive Residence. Doyle says the $62 billion spending plan protects his top priorities, while making some of the deepest cuts ever in state history.
While Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed items in the state budget, at least one legislator was protesting a university decision to deny a UW-Madison student group funding.
Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, a group that advocates for smaller government to solve environmental problems, was denied funding last year by a UW-Madison student government committee in charge of doling out student fees.
They were one of a number of groups â?? including Vets for Vets, Engineers Without Borders, the Legal Information Center, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Student Council â?? that lost funding last year because of stricter criteria.
Here are some interesting tidbits that I’ve been sitting on. Just thought I’d share them with you.
***According to a UW-Madison press release, a university biomedical engineer and colleagues have developed a method that — applied in MRI scans of the breast — could spare some women with increased breast cancer risk the pain and stress of having to endure a biopsy of a questionable lump or lesion.
*** The Daily Camera is reporting that the University of Colorado might start asking fans at Buffs football games to text-message donations to the school.
University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff were given the right to form unions with collective bargaining powers under the state budget signed Monday by Gov. Jim Doyle. “The right for faculty and academic staff to unionize is in there,” said University of Wisconsin System spokesperson David Giroux.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – A University of Wisconsin-Madison club says the school cut its funding because it disagrees with the group’s conservative stance on global warming and other issues.
Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow believes environmental issues are better handled by the free market, not by government interference.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Monday vetoed 81 items worth $10 million out of the two-year $62 billion state budget.
Doyle announced the vetoes the same day he signed into law the new budget, which plugs a record $6.6 billion shortfall. It marks the first time since 1977 that a state budget has passed the Legislature and been signed into law before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.
Doyle’s vetoes leave intact most of the major parts of the budget deal reached by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, including a new 75-cent tax on cigarettes and a 75-cent monthly fee on all phone users.
After years of trying, it is likely UW System employees will be allowed to form unions under the next state budget, but it wonâ??t come for free.
UW System officials estimated that they would need to hire 32 staffers at a cost of $2.2 million annually to negotiate and administer collective bargaining agreements for UW faculty and academic staff, according to a May report by the stateâ??s Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The estimate includes an assumption that there would be 30 separate collective bargaining units across the UW System for some 20,000 employees.
My grandson is a student at UW-Madison. He had to be at his summer job painting houses last Monday at 8 a.m. so he had no opportunity to get on his computer at 8:30 a.m. to apply for football tickets when they went on sale.
In her review of Anne Nelsonâ??s â??Red Orchestraâ? (June 7), Dagmar Herzog chose Libertas Schulze-Boysen to represent members of the German resistance executed by the Nazis. Another victim of interest to American readers was her comrade Mildred Fish Harnack, who was also beheaded in Berlinâ??s Plötzensee prison. She was a University of Wisconsin graduate who taught literature in Germany after marrying Arvid Harnack (also executed) and was the only United States citizen executed on Hitlerâ??s personal orders. A school in former East Berlin is named for her.
A judge has ruled in favor of the Journal Sentinel and several other media outlets that had been involved in a legal battle over records in the case of a murdered University of Wisconsin-Madison student.
Dane County must pay attorney fees and court costs to the outlets, which sought the release of 911 tapes and other records in the case of Brittany Zimmermann, according to the decision Friday by Dane County Circuit Judge Richard G. Niess.
Gov. Doyle’s office says he is expected to sign the fiscal year 2009-2011 state budget tomorrow at the Executive Mansion.
If this goes through, it would be the first time a budget has been completed on time since 1977.
A budget that closes the biggest deficit in Wisconsin history with tax increases, one-time federal stimulus cash, cuts in aid for schools and local governments, and furloughs for state workers was passed by the state Senate early Friday.
Noted: Thankfully the acceptance letter from the University of Wisconsin-Madison arrived shortly after (in retrospect a fantastic school that in every aspect is as good and in many ways a much better university experience).
The first road cycling course proposed for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid began in the city’s suburbs and wound its way through some hilly terrain before building to a big finish downtown in the heart of the Olympic village.
It was roundly rejected as being too easy.
That sent former professional cyclist and Chicago-area resident Robbie Ventura back to the drawing board.
A former UW-Madison student who is serving an eight-year federal prison sentence for jamming Madison police radios in 2003 could face child pornography charges after police on Wednesday finally cracked open encrypted files found on his computerâ??s hard drive.
Rajib K. Mitra, 31, who was convicted of interfering with emergency communications on Halloween weekend in 2003, allegedly stored child pornography on his computer, according to a search warrant filed Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court.
After more than twelve hours behind closed doors, Senate and Assembly democrats released their final version of the budget to the public.
The conference committee met at 8:30 Thursday night– they were scheduled to meet at 8 am to take up the differences between the assembly and senate.
Major resolutions include: no new tax on oil companies, and no driver’s card for illegal immigrants.
Closed door budget negotiations by Democratic legislative leaders come in for harsh criticism, from Senate Minority Leader Scott Fizgerald Thursday night. Fitzgerald said the secrecy was far more extreme than anything the GOP ever did while in the majority. “I don’t ever remember somebody going into . . . that office over there, and not coming out day after day after day, and not coming out with no word on what was being done,” Fitzgerald said to Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker. “I don’t remember that, maybe you do.”
Perks that private companies once offered employees, such as retirement fund matches and generous raises, are a thing of the past, at least until we emerge from this recession. Why should state government operate any differently, especially one saddled with a two-year, $6.6 billion deficit? Specifically, why should it continue to pay the entire contribution to employees’ retirement funds?
A budget agreement reached in secret by Democratic leaders of the state Legislature is expected to be made public on Thursday.
A bipartisan conference committee was expected to vote on the plan in the morning before it heads to the full Senate in the afternoon. The committee met for the first time Wednesday night, but Democrats refused to let Republicans offer any changes to the budget.
In a sign that a potential state budget deal could be approved soon, a special Assembly-Senate conference committee started work late Wednesday on a compromise to send to the full Legislature.
A special committee of lawmakers created to reach a budget deal met for the first time late Wednesday.
But a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker says there is no budget deal. Decker’s spokeswoman Carrie Lynch says members of the conference committee are meeting, but there is no agreement on the budget.
Will the final state budget cut out the governor? A budget conference committee meets this evening. Where does that leave Governor Jim Doyle? Senate Majority Leader, Russ Decker, was asked about that this afternoon. “The governor’s always in play, he’s at the beginning, he’s there at the end, so we’ll be talking to the governor,” said Decker. “Well, the governor’s people, I should say.”
“It sounds like the governor’s been cut out of the whole thing, to me,” said Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. “It’ll be interesting to see if they push this right up to the final minute, ’cause obviously he doesn’t have the ability then to veto anything. So if they give him kind of a bag of goods, that he doesn’t know what’s in it, that’s going to make it very difficult.”
This week marks the centenary of a landmark known to UW-Madison alumni everywhere: the statue of Abraham Lincoln seated in front of Bascom Hall.
The sculpture was a duplicate made by Adolph Weinman, who created the original for Lincolnâ??s birthplace. When he agreed to cast a single replica, requests came from around the nation, but Madison won the bidding. Philanthropist Thomas E. Brittingham covered the cost in honor of the 100th anniversary of Lincolnâ??s birth.
The statue was unveiled at commencement on June 22, 1909, part way down the slope of Bascom Hill. It was moved to the top of the hill only after a decade of wrangling between the University and the Legislature over details concerning its stone base.
Tuesday marks two years since the disappearance of Kelly Nolan. The 22-year-old’s body was found roughly two weeks later – but what happened to her, and who’s responsible, remains a mystery.
The mystery of what happened to 22-year-old Kelly Nolan began with a mother’s plea two years ago.
Nolan, a UW Whitewater communications major who was working in Madison the summer of 2007, was last seen the early morning hours of Saturday, June 23rd.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – Harvard University is cutting 275 staff jobs as fallout continues from the school’s dropping endowment.
The layoffs amount to less than 2% of Harvard’s 16,000 staff and faculty. The school also is reducing hours for 40 staffers. The cuts don’t apply to faculty.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Monday again urged the Legislature to act soon on a budget so that planned spending cuts by state agencies can start as scheduled July 1.
But if the Legislature can’t put a budget on his desk by that date, the governor said, lawmakers might have to pass separate bills on individual spending issues that need to be addressed in the short term.
Time is running out for lawmakers to reach an agreement on the state budget.
Governor Jim Doyle says lawmakers are cutting it close, when it comes to finishing work on the state’s $63 billion budget plan. He says they need to get it to his desk before July 1, or else the state risks losing a significant amount of Medicaid funding.
Occasionally through the years our Evjue Foundation has been able to help fund the publication of books that deal with Wisconsin or Madison history.
….The latest of these Evjue Foundation-assisted endeavors has just been published — “Mensch,” a biography of the late and deeply loved Madison Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky.
Four campus and downtown Metro bus routes will be detoured starting Tuesday, June 23, because of road construction, while an east side Metro route will be detoured beginning June 29, also due to construction.
A committee of Wisconsin lawmakers is working on the final draft of the state budget.
They are trying to reconcile differences between the assembly and senate versions.
It is less than two weeks away from the budget deadline.
Compromises have to be reached before it heads to Governor Doyle’s desk for consideration.
College life may look different in the not-so-distant future: Students squinting out dirtier windows, faculty offices with full wastebaskets and no phones, sporting events in which opponents never meet, and paper course catalogs existing only as artifacts of the wasteful old days.
Formal action on the state budget will have to wait until next week.
In order to resolve differences between the versions of the budget passed in the Senate and Assembly, lawmakers are expected to meet in a conference committee. However, officials in both chambers say they don’t intend to form the committee until at least next Tuesday.
Does tutoring in public schools really work?
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is getting $3 million to expand her exploration of that question.
Carolyn Heinrich, a professor of public affairs and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, has been awarded a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to expand her research on evaluating tutoring programs mandated under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Her research to date concentrated on the Milwaukee public school system.
Dear Editor: Your headline says: “UW police crack down on speeding through campus.” With all due respect, I find it difficult to believe that people could actually speed through campus or any part of the construction sites because of the extreme and unnecessary traffic congestion.
The state Senate passed a budget Wednesday that kills Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to tax oil companies and instead repeals the tax break on capital gains, which would cost investors $485 million over two years.
The 17-16 vote endorsed a two-year spending plan that totaled $62.5 billion – about $300 million more than the budget recommended by the state Assembly on Saturday.
The state would raise the capital gains tax by nearly a half billion dollars and ditch a tax on oil companies that could have been passed on to consumers under the budget bill passed by Senate Democrats Wednesday.
In a 17-16 vote, Senate Democrats barely approved wide-ranging changes to the $62 billion state spending plan, adding an automatic increase to the state minimum wage but dropping provisions that would have aided illegal immigrants and expanded defendantsâ?? liability in negligence lawsuits.
The Wisconsin Senate passed a $62 billion state budget Wednesday night just before 9 o’clock.
The vote was 17-16, with Democrat Jim Sullivan of Wauwatosa voting with Republicans against the budget.
The senate began debating the budget at about 4:30 Wednesday afternoon.
By a narrow one vote margin, the Wisconsin Senate has passed its version of a state budget. Democrat Jim Sullivan sided with Republican members in the 17-16 vote. A conference committee will resolve differences between this Senate version of the budget and the Assembly version of the $62.2 million spending plan, which passed last weekend.
A second attempt by the University of Wisconsin System to install a new computer payroll program is millions of dollars over budget and a year behind schedule. Moreover, a company fired over subpar work creating Wisconsin’s statewide voter database in 2007 is working as a subcontractor on the project.
The system’s top budget official, Tom Anderes, told the Board of Regents this month that planning for the project alone is now expected to cost $12 million. A year ago, officials had said planning would cost $1.6 million and implementation would begin that fall. In February, they raised the planning budget to $8 million and said it would last through this summer.
MADISON — Three years after the University of Wisconsin System put an end to its first attempt to install a new computer program for payroll, a second try is now months behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget.
A UW System spokesperson says project leaders remain confident the program will succeed, but adds the planning is taking longer and costing more because it’s more complicated than they had anticipated.
A proposal to redevelop the Badger Bus site at the corner of West Washington Avenue and Bedford Street has moved forward, despite pleas from mass transit backers.
Badger Bus co-owner David Meier said 80 percent of his customers now use Memorial Union for a stop. Most customers today also buy their tickets online, he said.
Facing a record deficit that forced them to raise taxes and fees by $2.1 billion to balance the budget, Assembly Democrats added millions for projects they can brag about back home – a $500,000 upgrade for an opera house; $50,000 for a shooting range; and $46,000 for a town’s recycling bins.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin said the approval of the projects made it easier for the 49 Assembly Democrats to vote for the 2009-’11 budget, which will go before the Senate as early as Wednesday.
The state Senate is scheduled to vote on the budget Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader, Wausau area Democrat Russ Decker, is still lining up votes and preparing amendments to the budget. “I think we’re getting closer,” Decker said Tuesday. “We’re narrowing it down and working out some compromises.”
