A 23-year-old Madison man has been arrested after authorities say he crashed his vehicle into a college building in an apparent alcohol-related accident.
University of Wisconsin-Madison police say the man was driving near the campus Saturday morning about 3:30 a.m. when his sport utility vehicle struck the mechanical-engineering building.
David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Walt Bogdanich of The New York Times have some striking similarities. Both are distinguished journalists and University of Wisconsin alumni, and both were announced winners of Pulitzer Prizes in journalism earlier this month.
When it rains, it pours for the University of Wisconsin System, which now has open chancellor positions at more than one-third of its four-year schools.
They help young women get prenatal care, and they encourage struggling students to stay in school. One has a background in the military. Another is CEO of the largest woman-owned business in Wisconsin. Two are lawyers.
Social justice is high on their list of priorities, and they believe that all teens, including those from low-income families, should be allowed to pursue their dreams. So it’s not surprising that, individually, they work on various fundraisers for scholarships for children in need.
(Among the honorees is UW Law School adjunct professor and alumna Cheryl Rosen Weston)
The University of Wisconsin System has announced the five finalists for the open chancellor position at UW-Whitewater.
A 22-member search and screen committee recommended the names to University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly on Monday.
The finalists are: Nancy Kleniewski, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts; Alfred J. Guillaume Jr., vice chancellor of academic affairs at Indiana University at South Bend; Kenneth W. Borland, interim president of East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania; Richard Telfer, interim chancellor of UW-Whitewater; and John W. Folkins, chief executive officer of Bowling Green State University Research Institute in Ohio.
Larger utility customers are putting conservation programs in place that dramatically reduce the amount of water they purchase from the utility. UW-Madison has reduced its use of water by 30 percent.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=742001
Local philanthropists Sheldon and Marianne Lubar are among seven University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni to be honored next month with the 2008 Distinguished Alumni Awards, presented by the Wisconsin Alumni Association. [See Wisconsin news briefs]
One internal candidate and four outside applicants are finalists for the chancellor position at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, officials announced Monday.
When Brittany Seabloom’s entry shared first place for creating the most value in the Wiscontrepreneur 100-Hour Challenge, her project’s value was immediately available.
Shortly after seeing the art student’s “Impregnated Wall Sconce,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley bought it with a personal check for $300.
“I thought it was gorgeous,” Wiley said.
http://wistechnology.com/articles/4694/
Madison, Wis. – In the tradition of squeaky wheels getting all the grease, state technology failures – and the waste in tax dollars that result – have been getting a lot of attention. Media coverage, state audits, and legislative hearings all have accompanied the State of Wisconsin’s technology frustrations.
There are, however, exceptions to the rule. Case in point: the recently completed (almost on time and definitely on budget) PeopleSoft module for grant management and tracking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, and UW Extension campuses.
Shuttle bus service is available for people heading to the Kohl Center for the UW-Madison Varsity Band spring concerts.
Madison Metro will start the shuttle bus service at 5:30 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday, with shuttles running every 10 to 15 minutes, two hours before and one hour after the concerts.
Start listing UW grad Allee Willis’ show business credits â?? hit songwriter, renowned artist, acclaimed Broadway tunesmith, multimedia pioneer and kitsch singer â?? and she responds about her behind-the-scenes, unknown status with a big laugh.
“I’m the best-kept secret,” Willis bursts out.
WHITEWATER, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is cleaning up after an explosion damaged the university’s boiler in the power plant on the north side of campus Wednesday afternoon.
The explosion took place at about 12:15 p.m. in the building, which is located near North Prairie Street and Esker Dining Hall. The force of the explosion blew out windows in the building.
The “2008 Southern Wisconsin Farm Fresh Atlas,” which will be available at the Downtown market information booth at the top of State Street and at www.reapfoodgroup.org, lists 41 farmers’ markets, in contrast to 26 in the first such atlas in 2003. That includes twice as many in the city of Madison, where the Dane County Farmers’ Market, Hilldale and the Eastside market were the only 2003 sites.
It’s official: Madison is the smartest city in the United States. Now those of us living here must decide whether that’s a good thing.
A new study by Bizjournals, the online media division of American City Business Journals, ranking the brainpower level of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, listed Madison first, followed in order by Washington, D.C.; San Jose, Calif.; Bridgeport-Stanford, Conn.; and Boston.
University of Wisconsin-Madison student Jordan Gonnering, 22, will be let out of the lease on the apartment where he found his fiancee murdered on April 2. Gonnering had 16 months left on the $790-a-month apartment he shared with Brittany Zimmermann, 21. Under Wisconsin law, renters must fulfill terms of a lease even after a death. But after refusing to discuss the issue last week, landlord Russ Endres said Monday he will release Gonnering from the contract.
The UW-Madison student who found his murdered fiancee in the flat they shared in Downtown Madison may have to keep renting the $790-a-month apartment unless officials are successful in intervening on his behalf.
Kelly Nolan. Joel Marino. Now Brittany Zimmermann. Madison police have been unable to crack those and two other homicide cases in the last 10 months.
Why not?
After some troubling “computer security incidents” on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, it appears that a more serious effort is being made to protect the privacy of faculty, staff and students.
But that can’t be said for the whole of the UW System.
An audit of the state’s public universities says that more needs to be done to defend the great reserves of personal data stored on the computer networks of these schools.
Undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville will pay $100 more in tuition next year to help fund extra services in student retention, mental health, career planning and senior projects under a plan approved Friday by the UW System Board of Regents.
Editorial on patent law quotes Carl E. Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which manages intellectual property for UW-Madison.
Even as advocates for Madison’s homeless population are challenging the larger community to join their battle against the causes of homelessness, anger about the presence of homeless people is bubbling from several quarters.
Service providers, activists and the formerly homeless stood in solidarity in the food pantry of the Community Action Coalition Thursday and, through the local media, challenged Madison to meet the homeless with compassion and work for economic and social justice.
….The news conference was called in response to increasingly hostile public debate over how the city treats homeless people, a dispute magnified by the Madison Police Department’s implication that transients may have been involved in two homicides in recent weeks.
The University of Wisconsin System will soon start a statewide fund-raising campaign aimed at doubling privately funded, need-based financial aid to students to $12 million annually, UW System President Kevin Reilly said Thursday.
MADISON, Wis. — In the wake of the slaying of a college student in a downtown neighborhood frequented by beggars, some said they are concerned that the homeless are being unfairly scrutinized.
Groups that help the homeless said the killing of University of Wisconsin student Brittany Zimmermann last week has started a backlash against the homeless.
MADISON â?? University of Wisconsin campuses should do more to protect the vast amount of personal data stored in their computer networks, according to a recent audit.
Campuses that don’t already have them should hire computer security officers to make sure the issue is a priority, the report by UW System auditors released last week recommends.
Campuses also should follow UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee’s lead and implement written policies identifying data that need additional protection and outlining how to respond to security breaches, the audit recommended. Such policies are important to guarding sensitive data and responding quickly if such information is improperly released, the report said.
In 2005 the University of Wisconsin at Madison adopted a new campus master plan, which called for adding 7 million gross sq ft and 17 acres of green space over the next 20 years.
Since the planâ??s adoption, approximately $600 million in construction has been completed or is under way, and $800 million worth of projects are in the planning stage.
â??This was not a geographical plan but an infill plan to see our capacity for growth,â? says Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities planning and management. â??Itâ??s not just about physical development. Itâ??s about a transportation plan, an open space plan, a utility plan and a new development plan all done concurrently.â?
Efforts to curb aggressive panhandling on State Street have shifted some of that activity into residential neighborhoods such as the one where a 21-year-old UW-Madison student was killed last week, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said Tuesday.
While investigators have not identified a suspect or a motive in the death of Brittany Zimmermann, police say they have arrested “a couple of dozen of people, ” most of them transients who frequent the Bassett neighborhood, on warrants and probation holds, as well as for trespassing, menacing, panhandling and having open intoxicants, in the course of the homicide investigation.
A long-time supporter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine has passed away, leaving the program $6 million in her will. The school says Milwaukee native Barbara Suran became ill with cancer and passed away last month–just three months after signing an agreement to fund the Barbara A. Suran Oncology Research Institute with her estate.
University of Wisconsin River Falls Chancellor Don Betz is leaving June 30 to take over Northeastern State University in Oklahoma.
Betz, chancellor at UW-River Falls since July 2005, spent more than 20 years as a teacher and administrator at Northeastern State.
Several UW System schools still need better-defined policies to protect sensitive data against computer security breaches, an April 4 audit said.
The audit said UW System schools must create policies on what kind of data needs more protection and must perform periodic checks on vulnerabilities in computer networks.
The family of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann has set up a “Dollars for Brittany” scholarship fund drive in her honor.
“In the days since Brittany’s tragic death, we have searched our hearts for answers that we may never receive. We are grieving her death and we are grieving the future events that we will never celebrate with Brittany,” the family said in a statement.
“One event we will never celebrate with Brittany is her graduation from UW-Madison next fall. Anyone who knew Brittany knew of her love for learning and her ambition and dedication to help others. If you knew her, you would also know of her perpetual positive attitude,” the family said.
University of Wisconsin-River Falls Chancellor Don Betz will resign in June to become president of the three-campus Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla., university officials announced this morning.
University of Wisconsin campuses should do more to protect the vast amount of personal data stored in their computer networks, according to an audit released Friday.
Campuses that don’t already have them should hire computer security officers to make sure the issue is a priority, the report by UW System auditors recommends.
Campuses also should follow UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee’s lead and implement written policies identifying data that need additional protection and outlining how to respond to security breaches, the audit recommended. Such policies are important to guarding sensitive data and responding quickly if such information is improperly release
UW-Platteville wants to set its tuition $100 higher than its peers in the state.
The school in southwestern Wisconsin is asking the UW Board of Regents for permission to implement the $50 per semester tuition charge starting this fall.
As police combed the Downtown area Friday for clues about the murder of a UW-Madison student, more details were released about another unsolved homicide, that of a 65-year-old South Side motel resident known as the “tire man.”
According to the American Association of University Professors, non-tenured instructional staff now account for nearly 70 percent of those teaching at universities and colleges nationwide. Thirty years ago, they were 43 percent.
At UW-Madison, like many large research institutions, the growth of instructional staff is often far less dramatic. Still, about one-third of those standing at the front of classrooms here are not faculty.
“We’re in a recession, no doubt,” Donald Nichols, a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told about 100 business leaders and students gathered in Madison Friday.
At a semi-annual economic outlook conference sponsored by the UW School of Business, Nichols forecast a long, shallow national economic contraction that will be less harsh in Wisconsin.
Madison police are maintaining extra neighborhood patrols as they investigate the slaying of Brittany Sue Zimmermann, 21, who was found dead in her downtown apartment.
Kristy Ludwig, a third-year student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, lives a half-block away from where fellow student Brittany Sue Zimmermann was killed in her apartment on Wednesday.
Investigators believe the fire that killed three University of Wisconsin-Stout students at an off-campus duplex Saturday was accidental, the Menomonie police chief said Sunday.
“We believe it was nothing but a horrific and tragic accident,” Chief Dennis Beety said, but he declined to discuss further details.
It’s hard for Menomonie neighbors and students to believe: a house, seemingly intact, is the scene of what is believed to be the city’s deadliest fire.
Investigators are still searching for answers one day after a fire filled a duplex with smoke, killing three University of Wisconsin-Stout students.
Friends, neighbors and students reeled Thursday in the aftermath of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student’s slaying – shocked by a promising life cut short and shaken by a midafternoon homicide without a suspect.
The University of Wisconsin Alumni Club of Antigo welcomed students from the area planning to attend the distinguished school in Madison, share memories and hear an upbeat message from Darrell Bazzell, vice chancellor for student administration.
Held at Leffelâ??s Supper Club, the dinner drew a full house of U.W. graduates, including the 1954 Bucky Badger, Dr. Ted Fox, and plenty of the universityâ??s friends.
Gary Voytovich, who serves as the president of the aggressive alumni unit in Antigo and the Northwoods, explained that it was a great evening with Bazzell as the speaker and so many students from area high schools planning to continue their education at the university in Madison.
It was a spirited evening with a number of upbeat reports on the local activities with the university and the finances of the local
Among the hundreds of UW-Madison students who trekked to Memorial Union Thursday for the “Jeopardy! ” College Championship tryouts, only one will likely make it on to the show, which will be taped at the Kohl Center next week.
The aspiring contestants had different strategies for conquering the answer-and-question-style quiz — some arrived in the early hours of the morning, others studied in line in last-minute preparation and a few dressed to impress.
Three unsolved killings in less than a year share at least one thread: They’ve spread fear among college students and downtown residents in Wisconsin’s normally laid-back capital.
Madison police are investigating the homicide of a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student found dead Wednesday afternoon in her off-campus apartment.
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.
