Category: UW-Madison Related

Gifts and grants to area educational, cultural and civic organizations totaling more than $1.9 million were announced by The Evjue Foundation, the charitable arm of The Capital Times.

The grants, which are made possible by the will of the late William T. Evjue, the founder and longtime editor and publisher of The Capital Times, includes $818,400 to the University of Wisconsin for 29 special projects and programs during the coming year and $1,097,524 to 87 cultural and nonprofit organizations, mostly in Madison and Dane County.

When Alta Charo received a job offer in February from the University of California at Berkeley that included a raise of roughly $45,000, many assumed the high-profile law and bioethics professor would join the list of talented people leaving town for seemingly greener pastures.

Even Charo, a native of New York City, figured it might be a golden opportunity to ditch the small-town feel of Madison for something a little more fast-paced.

The 911 call received from the cell phone of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student slain last month may contain additional evidence that hasn’t been explored yet, which has police considering whether a forensic analysis of the call would yield more information.

The embattled Dane County 911 center should hire two extra dispatchers this year, Dane County leaders agreed Wednesday, though questions remain about the center’s current staffing needs.

A University of Louisville dean considered a leader in education is the top pick for chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

UW System President Kevin Reilly and a regents committee on Thursday recommended Robert Felner, dean of Louisvilles College of Education and Human Development.

Some Madison officials want to make it harder for people to get a cheap buzz and cause problems Downtown.

The move comes amid rising concern about aggressive behaviors and panhandling by chronic alcoholics.

MADISON, Wis. — Florence Chenoweth, who has been a Badger alum for nearly four decades, is the focus of WISC-TV’s Inspiring Women series.

After getting her Masters in agricultural economics In 1970, Chenoweth went back home to Liberia to serve as the country’s Minister of Agriculture.

Civil war in Liberia left her a refugee in Sierra Leone, but that didn’t stop Chenoweth from returning to Madison.

Madison, Dane County and 74 other municipalities, school districts, colleges and universities will share more than $1.4 million in federal disaster aid stemming from the major winter storms that hit south-central Wisconsin Feb. 5-7.

“These federal dollars will help cover expenses from a winter that was historic in terms of snow and cleanup costs,” said Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk in announcing the FEMA aid today.

If you are from Wisconsin, you might want to say so when you visit the Stanley Lambert winery in Australia’s Barossa Valley.

“Wisconsin visitors actually get special treatment. If I’m not already there, they call me up and I come in to see them,” said winery owner Jim Lambert. “They get a VIP tour. If they want, they come out to the vineyard and get a special tour.”

That is, unless this Wisconsin native is back home visiting friends and family. (And it was during his recent visit to Milwaukee that I met him and tasted the latest releases from Stanley Lambert.)

Lambert grew up on a farm in Manitowoc and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a couple of degrees in engineering. I

Kohl’s Corp. will donate $3 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to establish the Kohl’s Department Stores Center for Retailing Excellence.

MADISON, Wis. — The no. 2 official in the University of Wisconsin System is retiring in June, and that’s letting system officials do some reorganization.

Don Mash has been the system’s senior executive vice president since 2005. He was in charge of the daily operations of the UW System, which includes 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges.

MADISON, Wis. — A vice president at Texas Tech University will soon become a top administrator in the University of Wisconsin System, officials said Monday.

UW System President Kevin Reilly named Thomas Anderes senior vice president for administration and fiscal affairs. Anderes has held a similar position at Texas Tech since 2004.

Kohl’s Department Stores said Monday that it is donating $3 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to establish the Kohl’s Department Stores Center for Retailing Excellence.

Kohl’s Corp. is donating $3 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its retail center.

The gift will fund a state-of-the-art facility within an expanded and renovated School of Human Ecology building, part of the $48 million expansion of the human ecology building. It’s the largest corporate gift to the school.

Kohl’s President Kevin Mansell says the company aggressively recruits retail students from UW-Madison, about 70 miles from Kohl’s Menomonee Falls headquarters. About 10 percent of Kohl’s executives are UW-Madison graduates, Mansell said.

Thumbs Up: To the organizations that put together the Brain to Five speaker series, for educating the Fox Cities on early child development.

The Appleton Education Foundation, the Wisconsin Academy of Letters and Sciences and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center teamed up to bring world-class researchers to Appleton for lectures on different aspects of child development.

A former Wisconsin resident working in Shanghai was shaken by last Monday’s tremor in China, but at first he didn’t even realize it was an earthquake.

“I thought I was not feeling well because I suddenly felt dizzy. I felt the room was reeling for no reason,” wrote Frankie Ko, a 1973 University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical engineering graduate working in Shanghai, hundreds of miles from the quake’s epicenter.

Gov. Jim Doyle has used his partial veto power to order state agencies to cut deeper and ensure schools will get promised aid payments on time.

Doyle on Friday signed a bill designed to fill a $527 million deficit in the current state budget brought on by the faltering economy. The bill called for $69 million in cuts to state agencies, delaying $125 million in school aid payments and refinancing the state’s tobacco bonds to capture $209 million.

The governor used his partial veto power to order state agencies to cut another $200 million and wipe out another $180 million for road maintenance legislators tucked into the bill. He also vetoed the delay in school payments.Gov. Jim Doyle has used his partial veto power to order state agencies to cut deeper and ensure schools will get promised aid payments on time.

Doyle on Friday signed a bill designed to fill a $527 million deficit in the current state budget brought on by the faltering economy. The bill called for $69 million in cuts to state agencies, delaying $125 million in school aid payments and refinancing the state’s tobacco bonds to capture $209 million.

The governor used his partial veto power to order state agencies to cut another $200 million and wipe out another $180 million for road maintenance legislators tucked into the bill. He also vetoed the delay in school payments.

Aerial spraying to combat gypsy moths could begin as early as Saturday in 23 areas around Dane County.

….The 23 areas being sprayed this year include 12 areas in Madison, two areas each in the UW-Madison campus, the UW-Madison Arboretum and Sun Prairie and single areas in Monona, Middleton, Sun Prairie, Shorewood Hills, the town of Middleton and Lake Kegonsa State Park.

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While the intrepid John Stofflet and his cameraman were on assignment to shoot an Alaskan surfer, Stofflet also had to give some serious thought to shooting himself. Literally. That was Plan B for a grizzly bear attack. As the surfer was getting ready to jump into the water, he handed Stofflet a rifle and a pistol.

“He says, ‘You’re on the shore and you’re going to have to protect yourself and your photographer,'” Stofflet said. “The rifle is for the bear and the pistol is for you if you miss,’ and he goes like this … “

Don’t envy Mary Nolan because shes articulate, assertive, athletic, attractive and had a job lined up at Gourmet magazine not quite a month after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Envy her because, at 26, she just got her own series on the Food Network.

Those who followed the ultimately ill-fated effort to unionize Madison’s Whole Foods Market a few years ago might remember Debbie Rasmussen, one of the unionizing drive’s lead organizers.

Rasmussen, who received a master’s degree in journalism from UW-Madison, returns to Madison today in her new role as publisher of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, a quarterly magazine devoted to feminist analysis and media criticism. The 12-year-old magazine recently moved from Oakland, Calif., to Portland, Ore., in search of less expensive digs and a better standard of living for its five staffers.

Last week, we gave Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk credit for issuing a public apology to the family of Brittany Zimmermann, the University of Wisconsin student who was murdered a month ago, for the mishandling by the county’s 911 Center of what appears to have been a call for help from Zimmermann.

We also gave Falk credit for publicly pressing 911 Center director Joe Norwick to address troubles within an agency that failed in its most important responsibility.

Some people thought we gave Falk too much credit, suggesting that we were rallying to the defense of a political ally. That was amusing, as this newspaper has not exactly been enthusiastic about Falk or her political ambitions in recent years.

In the 1940s when Tashia Morgridge – back then Tashia Frankwurth – was growing up in Wauwatosa, her fondest memories were of the carefree afternoons she and friends spent at the Hoyt Park swimming pool. She and her sister would roller skate to the park.

“It was just what you did during the day,” recalls Tashia. “It was a wonderful way to be outside, plunge into the cold water and then dry off on the hot cement around the pool.” And, she recalls, the afternoon would always be topped off with a treat, usually a Hostess Twinkie.

Even though it has been more than 50 years since Morgridge and her husband, John, the chairman emeritus of California-based Cisco Systems, have lived in the area, the pull the couple feels to the community that nurtured them is still strong.

Paul Kamps has been an emergency dispatcher in Dane County longer than the county 911 system has existed.

The 56-year-old said he became a Madison police dispatcher because he gets meaning in his life from helping people – whether that means delivering babies over the phone or comforting someone whose loved one had died.

A genre whirled out of the grist of urban pain and worn as a low-slung hat and baggy jeans has somehow slipped on clown shoes and taken up night classes in pantomime. Its dances are silly, its beats infantile, its rhymes lazy. I am sorry to report this, but hip-hop is no longer cooler than me. I’ve known it to be true for some time but dared not acknowledged it — until I saw Bo Ryan do the “Soulja Boy.” Bo Ryan is the men’s basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin. He is old, he’s white, and he should have nothing to do with pop-cultural relevance. And yet there he is, online, dancing the Soulja Boy, an ongoing craze among young aficionados based on the song “(Crank Dat) Soulja Boy” by an artist of the same name. Soulja Boy’s Internet sales of his 2007 self-titled album have exceeded 3.3 million copies, the most ever on the Web.

Salon.com

A medical helicopter dropped off a patient and then crashed shortly after it took off on its return flight to Madison, killing the surgeon, nurse and pilot on board, officials said Sunday.

Move out week and commencement exercises at the Kohl Center will combine for a perfect storm of traffic this week on Dayton Street and the surrounding area on the eastern edge of the UW-Madison campus.

Motorists not involved in either the move out or graduation are asked to try to avoid driving in the area.

The interim chancellor at UW-Whitewater has been recommended as its next leader. Richard Telfer says he looks forward to leading the university where he has worked 23 years.

The man recommended to become the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s next chancellor has a 23-year career with the university, having worked his way up from assistant professor to interim chancellor.

Richard J. Telfer, 59, was recommended on Friday to become Whitewater’s next chancellor by UW System President Kevin P. Reilly and a special committee of the Board of Regents. The full board is expected to act on the recommendation in June.

Quotes Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and mentions UW-Madison student and superdelegate Awais Khaleel.

Union officials fiercely defended on Wednesday the embattled 911 dispatcher who took Brittany Zimmermann’s phone call the day she was murdered.

Part of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s old Ogg Hall dorm remains standing more than a month after demolition was supposed to be done because the state ended its contract with the demolition company. State officials said the work was behind schedule and unsafe, with a piece of stone from the building smashing a car. The company disputes the accusations.

High crimes? No. Misdemeanors? Maybe.

Raising questions about the limits of impeachability, UW-Madison’s 2008-09 senior-class president was busted a week before he won the post and later was charged with stealing bus tickets from Memorial Union.

It was scheduled to be obliterated by now, but scruffy UW-Madison dormitory Ogg Hall still stands, frozen in a half-demolished state.

The state of Wisconsin ended the contract with the demolition company, Dore and Associates, of Bay City, Mich., because it was behind schedule and posed safety problems, officials said.

Madison taverns may have taken the happy out of happy hour, but they can’t be sued for it, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a decision released Tuesday.
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Two dozen bars near the University of Wisconsin campus bowed to political pressure and agreed in 2002 to limit drink specials offered on Friday and Saturday nights. The political pressure rendered the bar owners immune from state anti-trust laws, the high court found.

What chase next for Warren Whitelightning?

An arrest warrant was issued late Monday afternoon for the apprehension of the man who stole a Krispy Kreme truck in Madison and led police on a low-, medium- and high-speed chase, much of it captured on videotape, crashing into a squad car along the way.

Whitelightning entered no-contest pleas in February to most of the charges that resulted from the University Avenue chase last November, and he was scheduled for a sentencing hearing Monday afternoon in front of Dane County Circuit Court Judge Stuart Schwartz.

Dear Editor: The coal plant on Charter Street must be shut down. This plant produces an immense amount of carbon dioxide, which only increases the rate of global climate change. Not only will acid rain become more prevalent, human health is at risk due to the increased pollution. Particulate pollution is especially a concern for people with asthma. Not only will the skies be cloudier, radioactive isotopes such as uranium are also being released. Mercury is also a heavy pollutant from coal plants that is getting into Madison lakes and bioaccumulating in the fish we eat.

The Mifflin Street block party turns 40 this weekend, and it’s safe to say it’s not going anywhere soon. City officials want it to go away, but as the past shows, the more the government doesn’t want college kids to do something, the more likely they will do it.

I can see where city’s argument stems from. Throughout the years there have been more arrests and citations issued, requiring more police using more force, costing the city lots of money. Where is the middle ground? If you over-police, you’ll have more arrests and citations and higher cost to the city. With no police on Mifflin, the party would spiral into anarchy.

As the video game industry continues to grow, colleges are starting to offer classes aimed towards helping their students break into different areas of the field. Over at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the drama department now has a class on mo-cap acting, designed to teach actors how to act for motion-capture dramatics used in video game

State law says the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents must set chancellors’ pay within about 10% of the median salary of their peers.

The range aims to make salaries competitive while safeguarding against exorbitant pay increases. The structure limits fringe benefits such as deferred compensation or bonuses.

But some public universities are starting to pay chancellors using foundation money from donors.

Has the University of Wisconsin System become a farm team for university leadership?

That’s what outgoing UW-Green Bay Chancellor Bruce Shepard calls it.

He was No.2 at Eastern Oregon University when UW-Green Bay recruited him in 2001. It wasn’t long before search firms started contacting him about open presidencies. He resisted.

A rat hole. Obsolete. Unfit. Ugly.

As the wrecking ball looms for the unpopular Mosse Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus, it’s important to note those less-than-flattering terms weren’t used for that structure. Instead, those were descriptions bandied about for buildings on campus that are now beloved.

That’s the message Arnold Alanen tried to convey Thursday night at the annual awards banquet for the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation. Where the Mosse Humanities Building, 455 N. Park St., sits now is part of a long-term plan for an east campus overhaul. Between that and complaints about the building’s unsuitability, its future looks grim.

The UW-Madison professor of landscape architecture wasn’t so much making a plea to save the building as to give reasons people should respect it just a little bit more.

A college student apparently called 911 from her cellphone shortly before she was killed but a dispatcher hung up, failed to call back and never sent police to investigate, authorities said Thursday.

Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said it was too early to know whether a better response could have prevented the April 2 slaying of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann or helped police capture her killer.

University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly is recommending David J. Ward be appointed interim chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

If approved by the UW System Board of Regents, Ward would assume the interim role June 23. UWGB Chancellor Bruce Shepard, who has led the school since 2001, recently was named the next president of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.

Governor Jim Doyle is hopeful an agreement on a budget repair bill can be reached soon.

The Governor is expected to meet tonight with the Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, in an effort to find common ground on closing a $530 million budget gap. Doyle says they need to reach a deal, and be willing to make compromises.

A 19-year-old Madison man suffered non-life-threatening injuries Wednesday after he was shot outside the Mental Health Center of Dane County located at 625 W. Washington Ave.

Gov. Jim Doyle and leaders of the state Senate and Assembly plan to meet Thursday to discuss the state’s $527 million budget shortfall.

The meeting could signal a breakthrough in the monthlong stalemate to reach a deal. It comes just two days after Doyle returned from an overseas trade mission among reports that legislative leaders were close to reaching agreement but awaited Doyle’s approval.

Doyle and Decker, both Democrats, are set to be joined by Republican Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, said Decker’s spokeswoman Carrie Lynch.

A search committee has named four finalists for the chancellor’s position at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha.

The UW System says they are Robert D. Felner, a professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville; T.J. Bryan, an English professor at Fayetteville (N.C.) State University; Gloria J. Gibson, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Arkansas State University-Jonesboro; and Maurice C. Taylor, dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

The candidates will participate in forums with faculty, academic staff, students and community members at UW-Parkside next week.

The University of Wisconsinâ??s controversial relationship with Halliburton Co. again raised eyebrows of UW students this week with the opening of a new research center on campus.

Despite owning a passion for teaching history, Stanley Schultz learned a long time ago that it’s no easy task to keep the undivided attention of the average student. So any opportunity to bring a subject matter to life in a classroom or lecture hall has long been embraced by the emeritus professor of history at UW-Madison.

….A new education project announced Tuesday in downtown Madison could help bring history to life for roughly 50,000 state students in grades 5 through 12.

Called “Life During Wartime,” the $940,000 project is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Not only will the project feature an unprecedented partnership among public school teachers and historians from the UW-Madison and Madison Area Technical College faculty, but those associated with the Wisconsin Veterans Museum will use its vast array of resources to help bring history to life in area schools, including those in the Madison Metropolitan School District.

Two former New York police detectives have compiled a list of college age drowning victims which the former cops believe were actually the victims of a serial killer or killers. Madison foreign exchange student Kenji Ohmi is on the list of forty victims.

But a Madison police official said Ohmi’s death was investigated – and there was no sign of foul play.

The Wisconsin Alumni Association has selected UW-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri as the 2008 recipient of the Ken and Linda Ciriacks Faculty Outreach Excellence Award.

The Wisconsin Alumni Association announced Monday University of Wisconsin history professor Jeremi Suri won an award for his efforts in connecting with alumni.

With just over six months until Election Day, none of the three remaining candidates for president has a majority of support in Wisconsin, a poll released Monday showed.

And so, yet again, the race in Wisconsin appears too close to call.

The University of Wisconsin Survey Center’s Badger Poll shows that among likely voters Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has a lead over Democratic New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 47 percent to 41 percent.

Mentions the latest installment of the Badger Poll, released Monday, showed that McCain gets a split decision among Wisconsin voters in matchups with the remaining Democratic presidential candidates. But both matchups suggest a tight race.

In a head-to-head matchup with Clinton, McCain was favored by 47% of those polled, compared with 44% for Clinton, according to the Badger Poll. Obama topped McCain by 48% to 41%.

There is a saying among urban beekeepers: Keep your fences high, your head down and your neighbor’s honey pot full.

It’s a nod, of course, to the undeserved bad rap of honeybees, those mostly docile pollinators of flowers and fruit trees and vegetables, which are lumped more often than not with their ornery cousins, the hornet and wasp.

The University of Wisconsin Extension is aiming to change that negative perception and bring urban beekeeping out in the open with a new program planned for the Milwaukee County Grounds.

Madison, Wis. – For the second time in a week, a major technology firm has announced the opening of an office in Madison.

Last week, it was Microsoft. This time, it’s search giant Google, which cited the local labor pool and the community’s focus on education for the opening of an engineering office that will concentrate on hardware and software systems design.

A Madison man charged with his second drunken driving offense crashed his car into the University of Wisconsin Mechanical Engineering Building and then reportedly tried to steal a bike early Saturday morning.

A 23-year-old Madison man was arrested Saturday morning on a tentative charges, including drunken driving, after the vehicle he was driving crashed on University Avenue.

Defense attorneys say that the brother of the man accused in the 1980 rape and murder of a UW-Madison student confessed to the crime and that state prosecutors have withheld that information for the past 13 years.

In a motion filed April 17 with the 4th District Court of Appeals, attorneys for Ralph Armstrong also say that a state prosecutor knowingly destroyed DNA evidence that might have proved that it was Armstrong’s brother, Steve, who killed Charise Kamps.