Should impeachment be back on the table? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have taken it off the table months ago, but speakers at UW-Madison’s Memorial Union Monday urged Congress impeach President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.
A legendary figure in higher education. A lightning rod for criticism. A prolific fundraiser. A former engineering professor whose patents have generated millions.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley’s career at the university has spanned four decades, from a graduate student in the 1960s to an engineering professor in the 1970s and ’80s and an administrator since then.
Ask any college student to define a mutual fund or a money market account, and odds are they won’t be able to.
But Christine Muggee, a UW-Madison sophomore majoring in business, will proudly tell you she put hours of research into picking out the best of these two investments for herself.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison last week narrowed its search for a new chief information officer and vice provost for information technology to three finalists.
Margaret Mead once said, â??Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.â?
Especially if that small group includes LaMarr Billups. The go-to guy in so many causes and so many civic issues in Madison, Billups has left town for Washington, D.C., to be a change agent in one of the most troubled cities in the country.
While the UW Madison is already recognized around the world as a leader in stem cell research it is continuing to take steps to enhance that position and we think that’s smart.
This week, the UW announced the establishment of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center, a virtual center that will support communication among the estimated 50 UW faculty working in some form on stem cell research and regenerative medicine. The results are expected to include more effective sharing of resources, training and research, as well as a coordinated focus on fund-raising, advocacy and research.
With all of the smart people over at UW-Madison, they ought to be able to throw a tarp over a pile of coal to protect our lakes.
But they didn’t — even after they were warned by the state Department of Natural Resources.
There is little overt physical evidence now that UW-Madison’s Sterling Hall was the site of a horrific act of domestic terrorism.
To date, there has been nothing to mark the fact that a young post-doctoral student in physics, Robert Fassnacht, lost his life there.
Dear Editor: It seems pathetic that it will take a lawsuit from the Sierra Club for the University of Wisconsin to take action on an ancient power plant that has been polluting our city for years.
The Sierra Club’s filing suit comes after the community has spoken out about our desire for change for years. After nonresponsiveness, I am glad to see someone is taking action to protect our environment and community, and keep the good name of our university.
A construction worker died today from injuries he sustained in an accident Wednesday at a University of Wisconsin building, according to UW police.
Officers responded Wednesday around 1:35 p.m. to Hiram Smith Hall, 1555 Observatory Drive, where an employee of Robinson Brothers Environmental Inc. had fallen from a 10-foot ladder while working on asbestos removal in the building.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chancellor said that he’s irritated that a university-operated power plant has been allowing coal runoff to pollute one of the city’s lakes.
However, John Wiley rejects calls from the Sierra Club and other environmentalists to close the 50-year-old plant and said that the university instead is exploring ways to make the coal burn cleaner.
Wiley said that he has ordered officials in charge of the Charter Street plant to better contain a coal pile that is releasing dust into the neighborhood. When it rains or snows the coal runoff enters storm sewers that drain into Monona Bay, a popular fishing and recreation spot.
A coal-fired power plant operated by UW-Madison has allowed pollution to run into storm sewers that drain into one of the city’s prized lakes, state regulators say.
The Department of Natural Resources warned in a May 8 letter that the plant is violating the Clean Water Act by allowing coal dust into storm sewers that discharge in Monona Bay, a popular fishing and recreation spot.
MADISON, Wis. — In the first of a two-part series, WISC-TV examined the rewards reaped by those who join a community garden effort and the push to go organic.
There are 17 community gardens in the Madison area, which together yield more than a quarter million pounds of fresh produce each year. Across the United States and Canada, there is an estimated 18,000 community gardens, WISC-TV reported.
“For some it’s an ethical, environmental decision. For others it’s just common sense. Some even see local food as a food security issue,” said Larry Johnson, executive director of the Dane County farmer’s market.
The largest of Madison’s community gardens rises above Lake Mendota near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Eagle Heights is believed to be the oldest and largest community garden in the U.S. Gardeners there come from some 50 countries, and all are part of what in a sense is a retro movement, WISC-TV reported.
If you were a news junkie in Chicago the past several decades, you knew the name Les Brownlee. He was, after all, the first black person to break into the otherwise all-white Chicago newspaper market and then became the city’s first African-American television reporter on WLS-TV.
He was a tough journalist, exposing drug dealers in poor parts of town and ferreting out crooked cops in the Chicago precincts.
….Interestingly, his journalism career really started at the University of Wisconsin, right here in Madison.
THE ANSWER to the question of what becomes a legend most depends on the legend.
In the case of the late UW history professor Harvey Goldberg — whose passionate lectures formed the basis of his legend — there could be nothing better than hearing him in the classroom.
The charismatic Goldberg died 20 years ago, but on Friday, “Harvey Goldberg: The Bootleg Lectures, Madison, Wis., 1974-76,” a remastered CD compilation of more than 20 Goldberg lectures, will be released and launched with an event at the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative from 7-9 p.m.
Dear Editor: On April 3 Dr. Amna Buttar, associate professor at the UW School of Medicine, was physically and sexually assaulted in Pakistan by the elite police of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. She was participating in a peaceful demonstration protesting the suspension and house arrest of Pakistan Chief Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar.
….We cannot sit by and let such a despicable action go unchallenged.
….there is one legal reform that people on all sides of the gun debate should be able to agree upon.
In the aftermath of the horrific shooting spree at Virginia Tech University, which left 32 innocent victims and a deeply troubled gun owner dead, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is considering implementation of an executive order that would provide gun sellers with more information about the mental health of gun buyers. And, significantly, the Democratic governor is getting encouragement from legislators who champion the right to bear arms.
MySpace, the popular social networking Web site, announced Thursday that it will be holding a series of town hall meetings with presidential candidates on college campuses across the country from September to December, right before the first 2008 primaries.
Each presidential candidate will hold an hourlong session, streamed live online, before 100 to 200 people, answering their questions as well as unfiltered questions sent online by MySpace users via instant messaging. The schedule and participating colleges have yet to be determined.
Dear Editor: Melissa Tedrowe’s letter regarding the work of Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka contains serious inaccuracies. It misrepresents not only a very important line of research intended to mitigate the effects of potential future flu pandemics, but also the processes and mechanisms in place to oversee work involving serious pathogens such as influenza.
The most serious inaccuracy is the assertion that Dr. Kawaoka’s group has been conducting work on campus with live 1918 or Spanish flu virus. Dr. Kawaoka’s group has indeed reconstituted the virus, but work with the live, infectious agent has not taken place on the Madison campus. That work was conducted in Canada, in high-level biosafety facilities that do not exist in Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison does offer a computer science program where students can learn those skills. Courses are offered on computer animation and game technologies. Associate professor Mike Gleicher teaches them and does research on things like motion capture, WISC-TV reported.
“I think if you wanted to look at what games (we) would be doing in five years you could look to the kind of things we’re doing here,” said Gleicher.
University of Wisconsin System officials said Thursday that they were crafting guidelines that would eliminate ties between financial aid offices and private lenders of student loans that pose conflicts of interest.
Harry Spiegelberg will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Association tonight.
Spiegelberg (whose name means â??looking-glass mountainâ? in German) earned his bachelorâ??s degree in chemical engineering from UW-Madison in 1959. He spent his entire career – mostly in R&D – with Kimberly-Clark. He retired in 1996 as vice president for technology transfer.
WisBusiness.com editor Brian Clark spoke with Spiegelberg recently about his work and his honor.
The City of Madison wants to head ’em up and move ’em…downtown.
The city’s working with the UW, Saint Mary’s Hospital and Meriter Hospital to try and entice employees to relocate.
They want to bring people back to some older neighborhoods near the isthmus that are emptying out.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz says neighborhoods like Vilas are changing. He says students are moving out and freeing up housing.
When he first lived in Madison three decades ago, fellow blacks were so rare that once while he was waiting at a stoplight at Gammon and Mineral Point roads with his first wife, a black man he didn’t know spied them, bent to take a look in the car and waved, LaMarr Billups recalled.
Should University of Wisconsin campuses be able to discipline students for offenses committed off-campus?
How about a progressive series of penalties? The first underage drinking citation would trigger a warning and possibly a requirement to attend a meeting. But on the third or fourth offense, the university could impose a serious penalty – maybe even suspension or expulsion.
University officials are asking state residents for their opinions about off-campus discipline. At present, university conduct code violations affect only on-campus behavior.
MADISON, Wis. — Radio frequency identification, or RFID, is a rapidly expanding technology that many people have probably never heard of, but experts say that the public should know about it because it has the potential to help — and perhaps invade — nearly every aspect of our lives.
RFID technology uses radio waves along with microchips and antennas called tags to give an object a unique number. It’s similar to the idea of a Social Security number for items. Receiving devices called readers then remotely track the object from a distance and download information about it, WISC-TV reported.
For industry, RFID is the barcode of the future, but also offers much more and the University of Wisconsin has a connection to this groundbreaking technology.
The final candidates for a high-ranking University of Wisconsin System position were announced Tuesday by UW System President Kevin Reilly.
MADISON, Wis. — An alcohol density resolution that was introduced last fall is now a proposed ordinance making its way through Madison committees with new amendments.
The ordinance would limit the number of liquor licenses in downtown Madison. The Madison Public Safety Board discussed the ordinance on Tuesday night.
The liquor license density ordinance is designed only for new establishments where alcohol would be the No. 1 product.
“What we’re looking at restricting here are stand-alone bars. So, places where the focus is on selling alcohol,” said Joel Plant, alcohol policy coordinator for the city of Madison.
A survey by a higher education association released Friday pegged computer system and campus information technology funding as the No. 1 issue being faced by university information technology departments.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee administration pushed Monday for a policy that would allow all campuses in the UW System to punish students for off-campus misconduct, saying the “escalating negative behavior” of a small number of students had caused the university to become “greatly concerned about the health and safety of its student body and neighboring community.”
True compassion breeds confidence and harmony, the Dalai Lama told a sellout crowd of 12,000 at the Kohl Center.
At the hushed sports arena Friday afternoon, in a 90-minute talk punctuated with laughter, the exiled political and temporal leader of the Tibetan people invited his audience to cultivate true compassion and, by nurturing internal peace, sow the seeds of peace in the world.
The Nobel Laureate, who has made several trips to Madison and the University of Wisconsin because of their proximity to the Deer Park Buddhist Center in the town of Dunn with which he is closely tied, was graciously received by an audience who traveled from nearby dormitories and across the country to hear him.
Having compassion isn’t something you should do just for the benefit of others – it’s a vital part of your own physical and mental well-being, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, told a sold-out audience of 12,000 fans and followers Friday at the Kohl Center.
MADISON, Wis. – This college town will try new regulations to combat the growing national problem of textbook theft, hoping to deter and catch book thieves who sell them to bookstores to make quick cash.
The city council voted Tuesday to require people selling books to show identification and fill out a form listing each book’s title and author. Stores will keep the information and share it with police to help find thieves and recover stolen books.
It almost seemed like a dare last month when Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said he had reached a settlement with the Omaha-based lender, the National Education Loan Network. At a time when New Yorkâ??s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, had been filing subpoenas and dishing out charges against lenders and colleges right and left, the settlement â?? which the Nebraska official said resolved â??very minorâ? mistakes by Nelnet and â??closes the bookâ? on Nelnetâ??s potential legal problems â?? seemed to say: â??Back off, Mr. Cuomo, Iâ??ve got my local lender covered.â?
Thursday, however, Cuomo opened what he called a â??new frontâ? in his ever-expanding investigation into the student loan industry â?? and this time, Nelnet was a central target, as were dozens of college and university alumni associations with which the Nebraska lender has formed partnerships.
MADISON, Wis. — The Dalai Lama arrived in Madison on Wednesday with a message of peace, healing and love.
It’s the sixth trip to Madison for Tibet’s leader, who will spend three days in the Madison area.
The Dalai Lama is not his name, but rather a title. His real name is Tenzin Gyatso, and he is both the spiritual and political leader of Tibet.
MADISON, Wis. — West Side parents are gathering signatures on petitions requesting that the Madison School Board reconsider the name of the city’s new elementary school.
The board voted to name the school after Hmong leader Gen. Vang Pao.
Pao lead CIA-supported Hmong forces who fought beside U.S. troops in Vietnam. A few years ago, Hmong protested a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor’s book that claims Pao was involved in drug trafficking and war crimes.
Local residents will have their first chance to weigh in on commuter rail for Madison and Dane County Thursday when the Transport 2020 committee rolls out its visions for an improved regional transit system.
The two contending commuter rail routes will be on display during the public information meeting set to start at 5 p.m. at Monona Terrace, with one route stretching from Middleton to Sun Prairie and the other from Middleton to the Dane County Regional Airport.
If the Dalai Lama’s fans ever become less than Zen, police are ready.
Agents with the State Department will keep a “moving security bubble around” his Holiness Tenzin Gyatso at all times while he’s in Madison this week, said Kurt Rice, special agent with the Chicago field office of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which provides protection in 13 Midwestern states.
Geshe Lhundub Sopa, the abbot at the Deer Park Buddhist Center outside Oregon, remembers when Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, first visited Madison in the late 1970s.
UW-Madison is on the short list for a major federal grant to study new strategies for generating biofuels.
The U.S. Department of Energy is expected to invest $125 million over five years at each of two or possibly three new bioenergy research centers, starting as early as this year.
The City Council passed an amendment Tuesday requiring all dealers of used textbooks in Madison to keep records of individuals who sell books to them.
The amendment, originally sponsored by former City Council President Austin King, District 8, was sponsored Tuesday by newly elected Ald. Eli Judge, District 8, and new City Council President Mike Verveer, District 4, among others.
Here are some questions for state legislators:
-Do you think Wisconsin would be better off if more people had college degrees? The percentage of state residents with college degrees was
25 percent in 2005. That compares to 27.7 percent nationwide. Minnesota had 34.2 percent. Could that have anything to do with the fact that Minnesota is well ahead of us in terms of income and the economy?
A disturbing, allegedly drunken burglary spree by a UW-Madison student, could affect his standing on campus.
20 year old Nathan Castner is accused of turning a night of drinking into a somewhat shocking morning of crime.
With a house full of college men hanging out upstairs in Ryan Jelinek’s apartment at 139 Langdon Street early Sunday morning just after bar time, Jelinek told 27 News a stranger snuck in downstairs and looted rooms. “He took two iPods, took a laptop (computer), he took a Play Station-2 out of another room, another iPod, he took an Xbox out of another room and a digital camera.”
Castner made an initial appearance in Dane County court on three felony charges and one misdemeanor charge.
Two years ago, Castner was a valedictorian student at Green Bay Preble High School.
Joel DeSpain, who has spent 25 years as a television reporter in Madison, in the process becoming one of the city’s best-known and well-connected journalists, is leaving WISC-TV/Channel 3 for a job as the Madison Police Department’s public information officer.
John Stier says the 2004 bans on phosphorus-based fertilizers in Madison and Dane County were “well-intentioned,” but questions whether they’ll actually do much to reduce slimy algae blooms in Madison lakes.
Stier, an associate professor in UW-Madison’s horticulture department, was among the skeptics when the bans were first proposed in 2003, having maintained that lawn runoff was a minor source of phosphorus in the lakes. And he remains a skeptic today.
MADISON, Wis. — People stealing textbooks on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and trading them in for cash is a growing problem, and an alderman is proposing an ordinance aimed at helping students.
Alderman Eli Judge said he hopes to push an ordinance through the City Council this week to address the problem.
“What it helps to do is it adds secondhand textbook dealers to a list of other vendors that requires people who are trying to sell a secondhand product, and what it does is make them show a proof of ID,” Judge said.
A member of Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation wants to reform the student loan industry. Congressman Tom Petri (R-WI) says unethical practices among lenders are a growing concern for students across the country. The Wisconsin Republican says Guarantee Loan Programs are largely to blame. That’s because banks and other financial institutions end up taking business that the federal government could already handle at a lower cost.
Dear Editor: In the short time since the Virginia Tech massacre occurred, there has been a ton of articles written, many of which have tried to blame the university for failing to prevent this from happening.
It would mean a lot to Madison area Tibetans to see their flag fly over the City-County Building during a visit by the Dalai Lama next week, said Sherab Lhatsang.
“In Tibet, if you possess a Tibetan flag or honor the Dalai Lama, you can be locked up,” Lhatsang said Wednesday.
A prominent critic of government involvement in religion is opposing a request to fly the Tibetan flag over the City-County Building to honor the visit of the Dalai Lama to Madison next week.
The Dalai Lama is a religious, not a governmental, leader, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
“Public officials need to be very careful what precedent they set even if they have the best intentions,” Gaylor said Wednesday.
In Greek mythology, Boreas is the god of the north wind.
But at the UI, BOREAS means up to 1 million times the researching capability of a typical broadband connection.
The UI recently co-founded the new Broadband Optical Research Education and Sciences network, which will connect the UI with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Iowa State University, and the University of Minnesota.
The recently announced BOREAS-net will allow the Midwestern universities to work at a higher and more flexible capacity. It also frees schools from cable or Internet companies’ restrictions, officials said.
The University of Wisconsin recently expanded its licensing agreement with Xythos, developer of content management software, to include seven campuses. The decision was made after initial installation on the university’s Madison and Milwaukee campuses.
After Chancellor John Wiley submitted his grievances with the 2007-08 segregated fee budgets last week, members of the Associated Students of Madison met Monday to formulate a response, including standing their ground on the hotly contested off-campus rent issue.
SOMERSET –Opponents of a proposed huge biological-research facility didn’t get to meet with officials evaluating a Kentucky site for the lab, but gave them an earful nonetheless.
More than 50 people — many wearing bright yellow T-shirts that read “No Kentucky Bio Lab” — gathered yesterday near the site proposed for the lab in Pulaski County to show they oppose the proposal. They waved signs as officials drove down a narrow road to the potential lab spot, then stood in an adjacent field and yelled protests as a federal team evaluated the site.
Huge pans of scrambled eggs, piles of pancakes, platters of sausage patties and buckets of ice cream – they were enough to make people smile as they left the UW-Madison Stock Pavilion after attending Breakfast on the Farm, held Sunday morning.
Although the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance has taken the proposal out of the budget, there’s still a decent chance that faculty and staff in the University of Wisconsin System will finally get what other public employees in Wisconsin have — the right to decide whether they want to have a union.
Under current law, the faculty and staffs at UW campuses are forbidden from forming unions to bargain for pay and benefits, a law that goes back to a day when university employees were thought to be above the “common people’s” need for such blue collar institutions. Attempts to change the law have been beaten back for decades.
But times have changed, and now even the UW-Madison campus isn’t as diametrically opposed to unionization as it once was….
The University of Minnesota, Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have banded together to create the Broadband Optical Research, Education, and Sciences Network (BOREAS-Net), a high-speed optical network to share data and collaborate with other institutions.
Financial aid offices on college campuses and the companies that make student loans must keep a proper distance from one another. But on some Wisconsin campuses, the two are entangled, as reporting by the Journal Sentinel’s Megan Twohey has documented. State and federal lawmakers are reviewing the propriety of those relationships in Wisconsin and around the nation, and the result must be laws barring close ties.
The current controversy over highly profitable student loan companies also gives Congress an opportunity to look at whether the companies deserve the generous federal support they get. These firms compete with the government’s own direct-lending program, which costs taxpayers less.
The trial date for a man convicted of murdering a college student in 1980 has been pushed back.Ralph Armstrong was serving a life sentence for the murder of 19-year-old University of Wisconsin student Charise Kamps at her downtown apartment when the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the conviction and said he has the right to a new trial.Armstrong’s defense team maintains that DNA evidence at the crime scene didn’t belong to Armstrong.
A note alluding to a bomb threat prompted the evacuation of a residence hall on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus Wednesday afternoon.
