The University Square project, taking shape in the 700 block of University Avenue, encompasses both office and retail space as well as housing. Plans include two floors of shops, restaurants and other businesses, nine floors of UW-Madison offices and a 10-story apartment tower. About $35 million of the $190 million project received construction permits in 2007.
City and university police urged Downtown residents and students to take safety precautions after a 21-year-old UW-Madison student was killed Wednesday in her West Doty Street apartment.
“There’s every indication there’s a killer among us,” said City Council President Mike Verveer, who lives half a block away from the green-shingled two-flat at 517 W. Doty St. where Brittany Sue Zimmermann was found dead Wednesday afternoon.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse confirmed Tuesday they have received a record number of applications to attend the university for fall 2008.
Dear Editor: About 300 people came to the 2nd Annual Greenbush Day celebration on March 25. The success of this event is largely due to the generous financial support of Meriter Hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital, Italian Workmen’s Club, and the Italian-American Women’s Club, and the in-kind support of the University of Wisconsin, Bayview Foundation, and other neighborhood organizations.
As a participant and community member, I really appreciate the generosity of these sponsors in supporting an event so important in our community. The performers, exhibitors and audience members demonstrated how dynamic Greenbush remains.
A former Madison East High School principal and member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents died of cancer Saturday night at the age of 68.
We share the sentiment of Gov. Jim Doyle, who says of former East High School Principal Milt McPike: “Milt was an exceptional educator, and an inspiration to generations of young people. He built a sense of pride not just in the classroom, but in the community and state as well.”
Doyle, who knew McPike for three decades, celebrated the former principal’s service not just to the Madison Metropolitan School District but to the whole of Wisconsin as a member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. “No one cared more about getting kids to college than Milt did. He dedicated his life to ensuring every student could reach his or her greatest potential,” the governor said after McPike’s death from a rare form of cancer.
UW-Oshkosh has placed an employee on administrative leave after a federal grand jury indicted him on two child-pornography charges.
A UW-Oshkosh official says 55-year-old Craig W. Lesage has been placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the outcome of the investigation.
At the end of every semester at UW-Madison, thousands of graduates are forced to decide what to do with their lives.
Among the graduates in December 2007 were childhood friends Julia Piernot and Brianna Bakker, who met in grade school in New Berlin. These two, along with a couple of friends, chose to go on one final adventure before entering the working world. And what an adventure it was.
Madison police are declaring some success after increased attention to Downtown and the Allied Drive neighborhood appears to have reduced robberies in both areas last year.
A series of violent street robberies Downtown were the main feature of a disturbing citywide spike in robberies in 2006. But statistics released by police earlier this month bear out what they’ve been saying recently â?? that the extra attention they have been giving the problem is paying off.
Milton McPike, a giant in the Madison educational community, died Saturday night at HospiceCare Center in Fitchburg, surrounded by his family. He was 68. At 6-foot-4, the former San Francisco 49er cut an imposing figure at East High School, where he served as principal for 23 years.
Even after he retired from East in 2002, McPike continued to contribute to the community by being a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents….
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said that McPike’s values of hard work, education and family made Madison a richer place.
“We will miss his commitment to young people, his open-hearted service and the way he inspired generations of students to achieve and succeed,” Wiley said in a statement. “He was a guiding force for students, teaching them to embrace diversity, overcome bias and build their lives through learning.”
The Wisconsin Film Festival this year has programmed a series of documentaries about Iraq and Afghanistan.
In addition to the Oscar-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side,” there’s Civia Tamarkin’s “Jerabek,” which looks at a Green Bay couple who lose their son in Iraq, and Nina Davenport’s “Operation Filmmaker,” in which a well-intentioned program to fund an Iraqi film student backfires on his Hollywood backers.
Two Wisconsin cities made this year’s list of “100 Best Places to Live and Launch” as Fortune Small Business this week unveiled its rankings.
Madison was named 46th on the list and Brookfield was 72nd.
“The University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus provides a talented, educated labor pool for startups: Madison boasts an unusually high density of PhDs,” Fortune said of the city. “Entrepreneurs also benefit from tax incentives such as the Angel Investment and Venture Capital Tax Credit, which is available to investors in small tech companies.”
MADISON — Gov. Jim Doyle today announced the appointments of John Drew and Betty Womack to the UW System Board of Regents.
Womack’s appointment is effective immediately. Drew’s is effective June 1. Both terms expire May 1, 2014. The Governor also reappointed Danae Davis for a term to expire May 1, 2011, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
Fred Ludwig and Peter Talen were living in the same off-campus house when it caught fire in November 2006.
Both University of Wisconsin-La Crosse students escaped that day without injury, Ludwig said.
Daniel Gengler of the National Fire Sprnkler Association talks about how fire spreads in a room to UWL students the dorm room on the righ had a sprinkler system, and the one on the left did not . The room was engulfed by flames in four minutes. Dick Riniker photo
But a year later, the 23-year-old Talen lost his life in a house fire near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus while visiting his younger brother, a UW student.
His death last November inspired a fire safety campaign on the UW-L campus this week.
As supporters call it a â??true compromise,â? the Democratic-controlled Senate voted Tuesday to pass its budget plan in an effort to offset the stateâ??s projected $652 million shortfall.
‘The war in Iraq is not coming to an end anytime soon, no matter what any politician says, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions told a Madison audience Tuesday night.
Both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president are lying when they talk about the war, said Reza Aslan during a Distinguished Lecture Series conversation he shared with the Madison-born Gideon Yago, a writer and former correspondent for MTV News. The two men addressed an audience of about 350 in the Union Theater.
“This war is not coming to an end, no matter who the next president is,” said Aslan.
Two UW-Madison projects were approved by a state commission on Wednesday — a coffee shop at Memorial Union and a holding facility for mice and rats at the future Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Construction on Peet ‘s Coffee & Tea, a national chain based in California, will begin in August on the first floor of Memorial Union, in the space formerly occupied by STA Travel. The shop will open by mid-October, said Paul Brodhead, assistant director of facilities. The state Building Commission approved $550,000 in funds.
Steve Ingham, a 47-year-old food safety specialist at UW-Madison, favors an analytical and collaborative approach to solving complicated problems. His top priorities include addressing traffic concerns, cleaning up county lakes and encouraging smart and orderly growth.
If you thought you saw more TV ads backing Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton in the Dayton area during Ohio’s Democratic presidential primary, you were right.
In the Dayton media market, about $450,000 was spent on TV ads for Obama, compared to about $300,000 on Clinton’s behalf from Feb. 1 through March 4, Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, said Monday, March 17.
Story on Bush’s nominee to be ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin.
At UW-Platteville’s Pioneer Haus Brew Pub, one of the nation’s smallest commercial breweries, hops are measured in ounces, the brewmaster is a retired high school shop teacher and the German-made brew kettles are next to a pair of electronic dartboards.
Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. phone call” ad has been parsed again and again since the March 4 primaries, with most pundits using it to launch their quadrennial protests that campaign ad negativity weakens the very fabric of our democracy by manipulating and misinforming voters. But tirades against negativity reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of elections. Negativity is essential to democratic politics and ultimately yields a more engaged and better-informed public. [A column co-authored by Ken Goldstein, professor of political science at UW-Madison]
About 8,000 UW-Madison faculty and staff members who still hold outdated Social Security number-based ID cards will be receiving an e-mail from the chancellor telling them their cards are being phased out.
“Protecting privacy is a growing issue and challenge in our increasingly electronic world,” said Ron Kraemer, chief information officer for the university. “This is one of many steps we are taking in the coming months and years to safeguard our campus community.”
The old cards will be invalid after April 15.
The University of Wisconsin is increasing its stock of courtside seating at the Kohl Center for men’s basketball games by 33 percent, with half of the 16 additions close enough to the Badgers’ bench that you might be able to hear coach Bo Ryan shout instructions during timeouts.
And make no mistake, these $10,000 per year investments — introduced via e-mail alert to fans just three days after the Badgers claimed the outright Big Ten Conference regular-season championship — were not built on spec.
“We’re confident that interest is high enough to put them in there next year,” UW associate athletic director Vince Sweeney said.
Barack Obama lost the key battleground of Ohio on March 4 despite a 2-to-1 advantage in ad spending over Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a new study by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project.
Assembly Republicans passed a last-minute plan to plug a hole in the state budget late Wednesday that would reduce state spending by $250 million through mid-2009.
The bill, which passed 51-46 mostly along party lines, would also nearly empty the state’s rainy-day accounts and beef up an accounting trick by $125 million.
Local health-care providers said Monday they support a key component of Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s budget repair bill that calls for an increased assessment of hospitals.
People feel strongly about their religious faith and are deeply offended if you insult it, Oxford University scientist Richard Dawkins told a full house Tuesday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater.
Dawkins asked: Why is it that people are so offended when you insult their religion but don’t get as upset if you insult the music, art or books they like?
“What is so special about religion?” he asked, noting that it’s respected even by the nonreligious among us.
The British biologist and atheist wrote the best-selling book “The God Delusion” in 2006 and is on a university tour speaking out against organized religion.
An evolutionary biologist from Oxford University known for his books on atheism spoke at UW-Madison Tuesday of his goal to “raise consciousness ” and advocated Darwin ‘s theory as a “stunningly powerful ” alternative to religion.
The lecture by Richard Dawkins, given before a full house of 1,300 people at Memorial Union, was part of his university tour for his book, “The God Delusion, ” which has sold more than 1.5 million copies.
A police sketch of the man who police believe killed Joel Marino has already led to “lots of good leads” from callers to Crime Stoppers, Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said Tuesday.
There are cheeseheads, and then there are people like Gary Grossen.
Born above a Green County family cheese factory in 1949, he has curds in his genes, one could almost say. He became a master cheesemaker in 1968 and a genuine sense of joy and a deep affection for the process permeate the conversation when he talks about cheesemaking.
Most recently, UW-Madison’s Babcock Hall Dairy Plant has been reaping the benefit of his years of experience, and their list of recent awards stands as proof of his skills.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced his proposal to repair a $652 million budget shortfall Monday, though its effects on the UW System remain unclear.
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle announced his plan Monday to offset the stateâ??s $652 million budget shortfall.
Madison police on Monday night released a sketch of the man they believe fatally stabbed South Side resident Joel Marino in January.
Police also say the killer left his DNA on the knife used in the stabbing and on a backpack they believe he bought on State Street and later dropped near the crime scene, a police spokesman said Monday.
Almost all public- and private-sector employees in the state of Wisconsin have the right to organize a union in their workplace if they win the support of a majority of their co-workers.
Every Monday, a group of University of Wisconsin of students and staff meets for about three hours to work on a building project.
Photo caption: Pedestrians brave high winds and blowing snow as they make their way across the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, Wis., on Feb. 6.
UW-Madison grad Ben Karlin, 36, faces one of the toughest encores in comedy history.
He left Madison almost 12 years ago, after helping lift The Onion toward its meteoric rise. In early 1999, he became head writer of the new Jon Stewart-hosted “Daily Show,” which raised the bar on contemporary humor.
Milwaukee, Wis. – Private sector leaders in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin are trying to bridge the gap between universities and businesses through more effective use of computing and scientific resources, and their vehicle is the new Milwaukee Institute, a non-profit organization that is building a cyber infrastructure of shared, grid-based computing.
The genesis of the institute dates back to the interest of the Wisconsin Technology Council and individuals like Paul Peercy, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to combine educational and research activities in southeastern Wisconsin with the business community. John Byrnes said this has not been effectively done through existing channels, and the institute’s backers have devoted time to closing that gap during the past two years.
If Boston University wants to improve its standing dramatically among U.S. schools, the university must hire deans who not only keep their colleges afloat but steer them into uncharted territory — no institution of higher education achieves a reputation without innovation. In this spirit, the university search committee saw far ahead by hiring University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Hardin Coleman to lead the School of Education.
The University Research Park and CUNA Mutual Group are working on a land swap that would be the first step for a mixed-use development between Mineral Point and Odana roads.
MADISON, Wis. — Milton McPike is stepping down from the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents after spending four years on the board.
McPike spent 28 years in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Gov. Jim Doyle is calling lawmakers into special session next week to take up a budget repair bill that would fix the state’s $650 million deficit.
But with just a week to go before the March 13 special session, exactly how Doyle and lawmakers plan to plug that hole remains unclear.
Aides to Doyle and top legislative leaders say the Democratic governor is still negotiating details of the package with Assembly Republicans and Senate Democrats.
Doyle has said he hopes to put together a plan that will win quick approval from the divided Legislature instead of repeating last summer’s partisan standoff in which passage of the budget was delayed by more than three months.
Cancer has caused popular former East High School Principal Milton McPike to resign from the UW System Board of Regents, which honored him today for “his many life achievements” and service to the board.
McPike, a 23-year principal and one-time pro football player, was appointed to the board in 2004 by Gov. Jim Doyle after retiring from East High in 2002. He has missed meetings in the last few months because of his illness.
He was named one of 10 “American Heroes in Education” by Reader’s Digest in 1990, one year after the U.S. Department of Education named East High a National High School of Excellence.
The UW-Madison Faculty Senate approved a resolution Monday to help support need-based financial-aid fundraising.
The University of Wisconsin Faculty Senate passed a resolution Monday to create a voluntary faculty fund to raise money for need-based scholarships in hopes of promoting diversity on campus.
The UW-Madison Faculty Senate today (Monday) approved a campaign to raise money for need-based scholarships for students as a way of resolving concerns about lack of access to the university for low-income residents.
The senate — the governance body of the university faculty — voted almost unanimously in favor of a resolution that would launch a campaign to provide and raise funds for such scholarships.
The University of Wisconsin Foundation would match contributions to the initiative.
Standing before the Faculty Senate, UW-Madison physics professor Dan McCammon said that supporting the faculty ‘s fundraising campaign to help keep the university ‘s doors open to lower-income students was really “a no-brainer. ”
“It ‘s what this university is all about, ” he said. “We help out what we care about. ”
It turns out plenty of others share McCammon ‘s view.
UW-Madison ‘s Faculty Senate on Monday overwhelmingly approved a faculty fundraising drive to raise money for need-based scholarships to the university.
State government needs further study to determine whether 26 maintenance projects at state-run power plants violated federal clean air rules, according to documents made public Friday.
The controversy is the latest of several dust-ups involving the Doyle administration and air quality.
Last year, Doyle was criticized by environmental groups for asking the EPA to declare all Wisconsin counties in compliance with ozone pollution standards, even though subsequent tougher federal standards put several counties in violation.
Also, the Department of Administration and UW-Madison hastened efforts to clean up the Charter Street Power plant in Madison and other state-owned power plants after a successful lawsuit by the Sierra Club.
Some UW-Madison faculty members are so committed to holding the door open at the university to low-income students that they ‘re willing to reach into their own pockets to help make it happen.
The Faculty Senate will propose on Monday a faculty fundraising drive aimed at raising money for need-based scholarships to the university. UW Foundation, the official fundraising organization for the university, has said it will match donations.
Bowlers from across Wisconsin came out to to raise money for colorectal cancer research.
Sunday marked the 7th annual Bowlin’ for Colons. More than one thousand people came out to four different bowling centers in the Madison area.
Last year, them UW Carbone Cancer Center raised $30,000. Organizers expected to exceed that amount this year.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A new report gives the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents several potentially controversial options to raise more tuition revenue in coming years.
The regents are expected to consider the report but take no action on any of the options at their meeting in Madison next week.
The options include raising the below-average tuition at some in-demand schools and continuing a trend of charging more to fund specific programs and initiatives.
UW-Madison received more fundraising contributions than any other Big Ten school in 2007. The university raised $325.3 million in funds, according to a survey by the Council for Aid to Education.
There was some controversy on the University of Wisconsin campus this week over the scheduling of a speech by Canadian author Wendy McElroy on the topic “Don’t Vote! Why Voting Is Immoral.”
Some people even ripped up posters promoting the event, at which McElroy argued that voting only encourages a corrupt system and its values.
But there was no need for so negative a response.
It may be the ultimate sign of his youth that Ben Schumaker didn ‘t realize he was rather young to be tackling something as ambitious as his Memory Project.
Schumaker had just graduated from UW-Madison in 2003 when he first came up with the project that by the end of this school year will have provided more than 15,000 orphaned children from around the world with a rare something they could call their own — hand-painted portraits of themselves.
A 25 year-old Madison man is in custody after leading UW police on a chase early Wednesday morning.
Cops say Matthew Hale didn’t stop for a red light at University Avenue and Lake Street.
When an officer tried to pull him over, authorities say Hale drove through another red light, and sped up.
Police say Hale ended-up going the wrong way on West Johnson Street.
Hale eventually crashed.
Could there be a finer compliment for a civil rights lawyer than that paid the late Percy Julian Jr. by his friend and fellow attorney Jeff Scott Olson?
“He started out during the time of Martin Luther King Jr. and was one of the people who made the civil rights laws passed in the King era real tools for justice, especially for African-Americans,” Olson said after Julian died Sunday at age 67.
The city of Madison has ticketed 1,300 property owners — starting at $109 — this winter for not clearing snow and ice from the sidewalks in front of their properties, but not the owner of 325 W. Johnson St., where this ankle-bending sheet of ice was photographed Tuesday afternoon.
The owner? The city. The address on a busy stretch off State Street is the home of Fire Department Administration.
Among the Community Comments:
“All the sidewalks on campus are an icy mess. Why doesn’t the city ticket UW and all the landlords in that area of town?”
“The UW campus sidewalks are horrible in many places, but the city cannot touch the UW. And these are arguably some of the most highly used sidewalks in the city.”
Lester Hunt wasn’t expecting hate mail after he sent out an e-mail last week announcing a talk called “Don’t Vote! Why Voting Is Immoral,” being held tonight on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
To his surprise, hostile responses started filling his inbox. “Don’t send me this junk,” demanded one person. Another complained, “It is because of a democracy that loopy liberals such as yourselves can have such ridiculous beliefs and morals.”
Some even used obscenities to describe their feelings about the guest speaker, feminist author and anarchist Wendy McElroy, who argues that to vote to endorse a corrupt system and its values.
Posters for tonight’s event were torn down and ripped up.
