Category: UW-Madison Related

Thinking did not go dormant inside the East High School greenhouse this winter.

Overlooking bare-branched trees etched on a landscape hinting at spring and the bustle of East Washington traffic, a working garden thrives. Extending from the school’s brick exterior and enclosed by tall, sloping windows, tiers of plants reach out to grab all the energy they can as the low-light days get a little brighter.

Since 1977, when Mary Klecker, the East High agriculture teacher, formed a horticulture class, this greenhouse has been a focal point of the Madison public schools’ only agriculture sciences program.

Nanoscale objects are much too small for us to see them. So, according to educators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, nanotechnology is a research field where blind students and sighted ones are equal.

A Lincoln High School Class of 1955 graduate, Bruce Ellig will receive the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Businessâ??s Distinguished Business Alumnus Award at a dinner Friday night in New York City at the New York Athletic Club.

Eli Judge is running for city council but the University of Wisconsin-Madison residence halls and fraternities heâ??d represent will be mostly empty on election day.

Thatâ??s because, for the first time in recent memory, the April 3 spring election coincides with UW-Madison spring break. Thatâ??s forced Judge, a sophomore, to knock on doors for weeks urging students to vote early.

It seems the real issue is one of jealousy

I’m so tired of reading about people having an issue with what has been labeled the evil sick day perk – in which unused sick leave can be converted into health insurance at retirement. What is the big deal here?

LaMarr Billups, senior special assistant to the chancellor at UW-Madison, is leaving the university for a position at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

LaMarr Billups has had a great ride in Madison, but he’s on his way to Washington, D.C., to a post at another major university.

Billups, 54, has been the UW-Madison’s director of community relations for 11 years and has served as a special assistant to two chancellors. In mid-May, he will become vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown University, providing leadership on a variety of labor-related issues.

He is well known locally as the university’s representative on city and county committees and as a board member of several prominent organizations.

MADISON, Wis. — A senior special assistant to the chancellor and director of community relations at University of Wisconsin-Madison announced he is leaving.

LaMarr Billups will become the assistant vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Lauren Woods, 22, and Eli Judge, 19, are competing to replace Alder Austin King when he steps aside from the Madison Common Council in April. Woods is a senior from Chicago. Judge is a sophomore, also from Chicago. They are running for the open seat from downtown Madison’s District 8.

The Greenbush neighborhood is more than a century old.

The “Bush” encompassed a triangle of streets on Madison’s near westside including Washington and Park to Regent Street.

The first Italian immigrant settled there in 1905. But, the “Bush” was also home to Jews and African Americans.

LaMarr Billups, senior special assistant to the chancellor at the UW-Madison, is leaving for a position at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He has been the director of community relations for the University of Wisconsin for 11 years, and has served as a liaison to the city of Madison and several local organizations.

Billups will begin his new post as assistant vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown in mid-May, providing leadership and expertise on labor-related issues.

ONE OF my favorite interviews in a decade of writing columns came in November 2005 when Jeannie Cheatham had her autobiography coming out and I reached her by phone at her home in San Diego. Cheatham’s book – “Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On: My Life in Music” – was a rollicking and candid account of the life that made her a living legend in jazz and blues circles.

I had phoned because Cheatham and her husband, bass trombonist and bandleader Jimmy Cheatham, spent much of the 1970s in Madison. Jimmy’s teaching job at UW-Madison brought them to town, and they established their presence with regular jam sessions at the Inn on the Park on the Capitol Square.

…the Cheathams’ Madison friends have scheduled a memorial jazz jam session to honor Jimmy…the founder and director of the Experimental Improvisational Black Music Ensemble, which continues today under the direction of professor Richard Davis.

The first of what organizers hope will become the annual Greenbush Day celebration will take place Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. at UW-Madison’s new Welcome Center, 21 N. Park St. The event is free and open to the public.

“This event will celebrate the neighborhood’s past, present and future,” said Ruth Olson of the UW-Madison Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, one of the organizers. “It will provide an opportunity to learn about the rich history of the area, experience its current vitality and see some of the prospective plans for future development.”

Michael Eric Dyson, author of “Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster,” will keynote the second annual Creating Institutional Change conference Friday through Sunday at UW-Madison.

TOWN OF DUNN — In a part of her heart and mind, Ani Lhundub Jampa is still a dancer, although she has not sung or turned a pirouette for years.

Her life is one of unusual balance, sometimes caught between faith and realism, respect for tradition and the trappings of progress. For eight years, Jampa has been a Tibetan Buddhist nun and her community’s bridge between old and new worlds.

MADISON, Wis. – A series of downtown muggings last year contributed to a dramatic increase in violent crime in the city, police said Monday, injecting an issue into the upcoming mayoral election.

Fueled by a record number of robberies, violent crime jumped by 16.5 percent and all parts of the city saw increases, police said.

The first of what organizers hope will become the annual Greenbush Day celebration will be held on Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. at UW-Madison’s new Welcome Center, 21 N. Park St. The event is free and open to the public.
“This event will celebrate the neighborhood’s past, present and future,” said Ruth Olson of the UW-Madison Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, one of the organizers. “It will provide an opportunity to learn about the rich history of the area, experience its current vitality and see some of the prospective plans for future development.”

University of Wisconsin students might see a spike on their tuition bills next year after the Associated Students of Madison Student Council approved several non-allocable campus organizationsâ?? budgets Wednesday night.

Spring break means no more teachers and no more books . . . and no more supervised care and subsidized food, a challenge for many working parents.

As much as I am disappointed in University of Wisconsin professor Leonard Kaplan’s letter to the UW law school dean (I note he has yet to address the Hmong community directly), I am equally disappointed that The Sheboygan Press has decided who is more credible, who is right, and to pass judgment that in fact, professor Kaplan’s words are truth and if anything, only “provocative.”

The students’ first-hand accounts, though represented by a third party, are no less credible than that which was carefully crafted by an attorney and the university over a two-week period.

In a public forum Tuesday at Memorial Union, UW-Madison faculty members discussed the current challenges facing a proposal to offer domestic partner insurance benefits to employees and same-sex partners.

With the state budget now facing a Democratic Senate and a Republican Assembly, the University of Wisconsin is looking to get its foot in the door with an aggressive campaign to secure domestic partnership benefits for its employees.

MADISON, Wis. — As a 20-year-old Madison Area Technical School student clings to life, authorities are searching for the hit-and-run driver who injured him early Saturday morning.

Lucas Peerenboom was out with friends on March 9, socializing at Bucks Bar on Regent Street. Sometime after 2:00 a.m. the group made their out of the tavern. They were on foot and had made it to Park Street.

University of Wisconsin graduate Mary Gilbertson is outraged by the prospect that the tiny Department of Comparative Literature will be closed, despite strong protests from faculty, students and alumni.

Gilbertson, a New York City resident who graduated in 1962, described herself as “an enraged alumnus” speaking for some in the department who are afraid to speak out.

Leaders of Madison’s Hmong community say that the most serious insult against the hundreds of families here is not the words of a University of Wisconsin law professor, but the language of the Patriot Act.

Far more damaging than an alleged slur made in a classroom against their culture, Hmong leaders say that the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act of 2005 threaten a partnership made more than 40 years ago that opened the United States to Hmong refugees.

Contrary to previous reports, the victim of a pedestrian hit-and-run last weekend at the intersection of South Park Street and Regent Street is a student at Madison Area Technical College.

Madison police are investigating a reported sexual assault.

The victim told police early Saturday morning, she was picked up in the downtown area, driven to an unknown location away from the city, assaulted, then dropped off at the Essen Haus on East Wilson Street.

The UW System Board of Regents affirmed the â??Growth Agenda for Wisconsinâ??sâ? progress at its March meeting at UW-Parkside Friday.

An early morning hit-and-run accident at the corner of Park and Regent streets left a University of Wisconsin student in critical condition Saturday.

Six years ago, Lodi native Erik Crary graduated from UW-Madison, moved to Los Angeles and ended up landing what’s got to be one of the more unusual jobs in Hollywood: assistant to David Lynch.

Prevention magazine named Madison â?? 1,300 miles north of sunny Miami â?? as the most walkable of the country’s 100 most populated cities. The list was commissioned by the American Podiatric Medical Association based on certain criteria. It ran in editions of the magazine released this week.

UW-Madison mentioned in story, student quoted, etc.

Encouraged by Gov. Jim Doyleâ??s latest budget proposal, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents praised the governorâ??s â??reinvestmentâ? in higher education Thursday.

As more information emerges on what was said in University of Wisconsin Law School professor Leonard Kaplan’s class, we’re seeing a clearer picture of what took place on Feb. 15.

And the controversy over what was or wasn’t said detracts for the serious issue of how the Hmong and other minorities are treated â?? the issue Kaplan says he was trying to discuss with his students in the class.

With the thermometer hovering at 22, and the wind ripping off a frozen Lake Mendota, Rink DaVee and his brother Jim decided to take a stroll.

And why not? After all, according to a recent top 10 list, there’s no better place in the country for walking than the capital city of a state known more for cheese and beer than exercising.

“It makes you feel better,” DaVee said during a break in his walk Wednesday, standing on the icy, snow-covered trail that extends out over the lake. “It gets you through a cold month of March.”

Wisconsin lawmakers must continue to provide state dollars for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

The first grants for research at the interdisciplinary center show how promising the venture is and why it must be strongly supported.

Lawmakers wisely approved $50 million in state money last year to help build the first phase of the public-private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Restaurant by day…club by night.

It’s becoming a popular trend in downtown Madison some fear opens Pandora’s box of potential problems.

A former club owner, Kami Eshraghi, told us last Sunday more and more restaurants in Madison are pushing aside the tables and clearing the dancefloor after-hours.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents will meet today at UW-Parkside to begin their monthly two-day meeting and debate two new initiatives.

They believe that social justice is everyone’s responsibility. They reach out to minority children, and they fight for multicultural teaching methods.

The six recipients of the YWCA of Madison’s 2007 Women of Distinction awards dedicate a lot of time to helping others. Community service is high on their list of priorities.

Among the six: UW-Madison’s Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor and Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, and Marygold “Margo” Melli, Voss-Bascom Professor of Law and affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty.

The University of Wisconsin System has closed the book on making its salary data readily available online.
As of December, only parts of the System’s budget Redbook – the annual budget summaries for the System and all the individual campuses – are now posted.

Letter writers speak out on the law school controversy.

The agreement by which Minnesota and Wisconsin residents can pay in-state tuition to attend each stateâ??s schools could be in danger. And that would be a shame.Under the terms of the tuition reciprocity agreement between Wisconsin and Minnesota, students from each state pay their own in-state tuition to attend a public university in the other state.

The UW System Board of Regents released an internal report Friday showing that no updates were given to the Regents at board meetings until 2006 regarding a $28.4 million payroll and benefit information technology project.

The University of Wisconsin System neglected to inform the Board of Regents of a failed $28.4 million software project until the system canceled it, according to a report released Friday.

On Friday and Saturday, March 9 and 10, the Morgridge Center for Public Service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will celebrate a decade of achievement at its 10th anniversary conference, titled “Celebrating the Many Faces of Public Service at UW-Madison.”

If a University of Wisconsin professor submitted research for peer review as skimpy on detail and supporting numbers as a recent study by the UW-Waukesha Study Group, it is doubtful that the research would ever see the light of day. University officials need to provide the assumptions and a breakdown of their numbers if they want to quiet critics and allay suspicions that the real purpose of the study was to quash a proposal to merge the four-year UW-Milwaukee with the two-year UW-Waukesha.

Last fall, Susan Fischer with the UW Financial Services asked the staff responsible for work study to do an audit. They found the University was owed more than 100-thousand dollars.

A water main break caused the streets of Madison to crumble Tuesday and left a massive hole at the intersection of North Lake and State Streets, adjacent to student-laden Library Mall.

Dear Editor:

….Given the political views of most UW Law School faculty and the propensity of minorities in Madison (Jews like me included) to play the bigotry card at the drop of a hat, I would suggest that the Hmong students might have mistaken a rhetorical device – citing contrary mistaken views in an effort to combat them – for a racist polemic.

Dear Editor: It is possible that Professor Leonard Kaplan may have been misunderstood. However, as a professor of Hmong and Southeast Asian history at UW-Milwaukee, I am troubled that someone of his status would use stereotypes about Hmong in such a manner in light of recent violent tragedies in the Wisconsin community.

Dear Editor:

…Len Kaplan is no racist. Rather, he is a person of deep humanitarian instincts. He is one of the kindest, most decent people I know.

Prosperous alumni helped make 2006 a record fundraising year for colleges and universities, which hauled in an all-time high of $28 billion – a 9.4 percent jump from the year before. Among public universities, the University of Wisconsin-Madison raised the most money with $326 million, making it No. 10 on the list of top fundraisers.

There’s nobody hotter in the world of college athletics these days than the University of Florida, the reigning national champion in both football and men’s basketball.

To suggest the University of Wisconsin could equal that unprecedented feat at some point would be incredibly premature. That said, a short list of programs that could pull it off would have to include the Badgers, at least if the magical ride they’re on now is any indication.

Another one bites the dust.

Wisconsin’s miserable record with computer systems claimed another victim this week when it was revealed that the state Department of Revenue is junking a sales-tax tracking system that cost $28.2 million.

Get out the old abacus and we’ll tote up the damages. Let’s see, the University of Wisconsin System abandoned its $26 million payroll computer payroll software system last year after it generated not one paycheck.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison lauds its self-proclaimed progressive tradition. UWâ??s â??Wisconsin Idea,â? set forth in 1904, holds that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state, and that the research conducted at UW should be applied to solve problems and improve health, quality of life, the environment, and agriculture for all citizens of the state. Our failure to sign the American College and University Presidentsâ?? Climate Commitment proposal proves hypocritical to a university with such lofty goals of progress.

The idea that became Tomo-Therapy Inc. grew out of research labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and flourished with the help of timely investment capital from a Madison venture capital fund, which itself was funded by the State of Wisconsin Investment Board.

Merging University of Wisconsin campuses in Milwaukee and Waukesha could cost as much as $25 million a year – more than twice as much as an alternative arrangement that merger opponents favor, UW System administrators said.

The last time she was in Madison, Sarah Vowell said she used her 10 free minutes to get someone to drive her to the Frank Lloyd Wright Unitarian Meeting House.

It was closed but there were two older women outside working on a project, the author said.Vowell tells the story of bolting past them, yelling “Architectural enthusiast passing through town!” She then looked around the sanctuary for a few seconds and sprinted back out.

“Today, I broke into a frat house,” Vowell, 37, told a nearly full audience of UW-Madison students and others during her Distinguished Lecture Series talk at the Union Theater Wednesday night.

More than 1,600 University of Wisconsin students traveled to foreign countries to study abroad in 2004-05 â?? and with the help of a $100,000 contribution, even more will have the opportunity in the future.

The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery research program put the dreams of some researchers into motion Wednesday as the institutes announced the winners of the Discovery Seed Grants competition.

Dear Editor: I note that the concerns expressed regarding the University of Wisconsin admission policy never recognize a central fact. More high school graduates are seeking college admission. Not just in Wisconsin but across the country. So the competition to get into the college of your choice is greater.

If students from the majority are not accepted at the UW campus of their choice, it has far more to do with the number of other applicants from the majority culture than it has to do with the UW considering additional factors in its admission policy.