Category: UW-Madison Related

Madison police and city streets were tied up Wednesday as a vigilant public reported at four suspicious objects in the wake of recent pipe bomb attacks.

“Takes Five” interview with UW-River Falls chancellor Don Betz. Mentions UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley’s attendance at a summit on international education.

….In 1980, the year of one of Burr’s most famous prosecutions – the Barbara Hoffman murder case – he had 25 trials. He has long since stopped counting, but the total must be 500 or more.

….His first jury trial involved four defendants in what became known as the Gordon Commons food riot. “It had anti-war overtones,” Burr said….

Move over, buckyball & biotech: The University of Wisconsin-Madison is about to become famous for, believe it not, cars.

Yup, cars.

The university is leasing three new cars as part of a program that will surely bring, if not fame at least the sincere appreciation of local environmentally conscious types who care about things like energy conservation and global warming and the basic quality of life-as-we-know-it energy issues.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is launching a $100 million fund-raising campaign and has recruited four of Milwaukee’s most prominent businessmen to spearhead it.

Faculty, administrators and others associated with the University of Wisconsin gave $374,054 to political candidates or parties in last year’s federal election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Ninety-six percent of those contributions went to Democrats, the center says.

Gloria Johnson-Powell, associate dean at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, will be the featured speaker at Madison’s annual commemoration of the life and legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Johnson-Powell was a student of civil rights hero James Lawson, one of several young leaders King trained to carry the struggle for civil rights throughout the country. She later became the first black female full professor at Harvard Medical School.

A Latin dance club and sports bar is coming to the vacant Luther’s Blues nightclub space near UW-Madison.
And more options to drink, dine and dance in the city are coming, too.

I just finished watching the Badgers on television and couldn�t believe my ears. We, the taxpayers, are paying $600,000 per year for an athletic director and $750,000 a year for a football coach, and these salaries go up every year for the next five years?

Paul Barrows, the University of Wisconsin-Madison administrator who says he was wrongly demoted, will finally get to face his accusers at an appeals hearing. The former vice chancellor for student affairs learned on Dec. 14 that the Academic Staff Appeals Committee granted his request for a hearing to appeal his demotion.

The burden of proof will be on the university to prove that his June demotion, from a higher-paying backup job to one that only paid half as well, was warranted.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison, $1.619-billion as of December 8 (increase of $10.9-million in the last month); the goal was $1.5-billion by 2007.

The Wisconsin’s State Journal’s editorial board considers the following issues to be among the most important facing Wisconsin in 2006. Throughout this year, we’ll be writing about them and evaluating how Wisconsin is doing in these areas. We also will continue to seek your views and insight.

Following a month of calls for censorship or punishment of the student newspaper, officials at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee are refusing to do so. But they are creating a special panel on the campus that will study the issue of violence against women.

The furor arose from a series of photographs that ran in The Post, the weekly student paper.

It was, by most measures, a difficult year for the University of Wisconsin. The administration endured a series of high-profile embarrassments and budget headaches. But there were research breakthroughs and sweeping new plans for the UW-Madison campus.

The seeds for the university’s biggest problem of 2005 were planted in November 2004, when UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley announced that his longtime vice chancellor for student affairs, Paul Barrows, was stepping down to take a backup job in Bascom Hall, citing vague family considerations.

The myth of salvation through college and professional sports is a blight on poor communities all over the country. Suckered into chasing a chimerical “ticket out of the ghetto,” young people devote every waking moment to athletics while neglecting studies that would actually prepare them for reachable careers. Those who get to college at all often play their hearts out until they are no longer eligible and end up back on the streets – without hope, prospects or even college degrees.

MADISON, Wis. – A lack of funding means police and security units on University of Wisconsin campuses are understaffed and cannot afford crime prevention programs, a new UW System report warns.

Visiting the UW-Madison campus Friday, U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold tore into what he called attacks on Americans’ civil liberties, then laid out how he’ll decide whether to make a much-speculated-on presidential bid in 2008.

Madison Gas and Electric needs to pump pond water into the underground aquifer to replenish what its new co-gen plant currently takes out of Lake Mendota. The efficient co-generational facility opened on the UW campus earlier this spring. MG&E would like to start pumping by late spring 2006.

It’s all about supporting everyday heroes and reaching out to fellow emergency communicators. That’s why police dispatchers in Fitchburg and Middleton and on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus are sending holiday gifts to 911 professionals in New Orleans.

….To make this happen, a connection was made through a national 911 CARES project, which is part of an organization called Public Safety Training Consultants. Helping to coordinate the project here is LeAnn Krieg, communications supervisor with the UW-Madison police department.

The site now hosts the South Madison Health and Family Center – Harambee, UW-Madison, Madison Area Technical College, Edgewood College, a city library branch, Yue Wah Oriental foods and others.

WASHINGTON – A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn’t know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military

It’s time for a boozer tax on Madison’s annual Halloween party on State Street.

Nadeem Siddiqui, a Madison resident and Pakistani native who, along with his wife, Catherine Sheskey, recently returned from a two-and-a-half week visit to the devastated mountainous region.

Quoted: Alfred McCoy, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert in CIA torture methods.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents held its last meeting of the year Friday, with much of the discussion focused on a need to make salaries for top administrative positions more competitive.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents is right to look for ways to help low-income students attend college.

MADISON, Wis. — It was once a happening spot for music, but in July the popular Luther’s Blues closed its doors.
Now two brothers plan to open a Latin nightclub in the space formerly occupied by Luther’s Blues, reported WISC-TV.
“Right now there’s many places but they’re not running these places as full-time,” said future co-owner Javier Palacios. “We’re going to do it as a full-time (business).”

In its semester-long saga to establish a desirable job-security practice, a University of Wisconsin Board of Regents committee voted Thursday to seek the opinion of its chancellors in a possible transition to fixed-term contracts for top administrators.

The tally for Halloween police costs is in, revealing that spending was on par with pre-event estimates released by Madison officials.

David Wilson, associate provost and vice president for outreach at Auburn University, has been recommended to serve as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Extension and the UW Colleges, which includes 13 freshman-sophomore campuses.

A committee designed to evaluate candidates for Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin two-year college and extension schools, recommended David Wilson for the position Monday, according to a UW-System statement.

As the University of Wisconsin football team begins preparation for the Capitol One Bowl against Auburn University next month, the UW System may have wrestled away one of the Tigers� top administrators in the mean time.

Dear Editor: The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center offers its appreciation to The Evjue Foundation for giving a grant of $17,000 for the 2005-2006 academic year.

This funding will allow us to continue providing high-quality individualized writing instruction to members of the local community – many of whom would not otherwise have access to university resources – at two public library branches, the Lakeview Branch on the northeast side of Madison and the South Madison Branch on South Park Street.

UW-Whitewater removed a dean from his administrative post Friday, saying he had misused university funds.

UW-Whitewater hired a dean months after he resigned from Florida State University, where auditors contended he spent thousands of dollars of school money for personal benefit, The Associated Press has learned.

Wisconsinites are among the most tightfisted charitable givers in the country, according to a new national report.

The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater took its first step toward terminating Graduate Studies Dean Lee Jones Friday, demoting him to his contractual concurrent position as a faculty member in the department of educational foundations.

The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater removed a dean from his administrative post Friday and took the first step to strip him of his tenure, saying he had misused university funds.

On one side, there’s the risk: one of the plotters in the first World Trade Center bombing was on a student visa. On the other, there’s the benefit: last year, 565,039 foreign students contributed about $13.3 billion to the United States economy.

Hemmed in by a desire to keep tuition affordable and by a tight state budget, campuses in the UW System have been turning to another source for money to cover the cost of running a college – student fees. A proposal circulating on the UW-Eau Claire campus would take the trend too far.

In the past two years the Busta Tournament has raised more than $50,000 for spinal cord injury research. All proceeds from the auction and tournament will be donated to the Waisman Center through the University of Wisconsin Foundation for research in the areas of spinal cord injuries, as well as other debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS.

Faculty members accused or convicted of serious crimes could be suspended without pay and fired more quickly under a plan being hammered out by a special committee of the UW Board of Regents.

In his brilliant book about his participation in the American political experiment, “Time Present, Time Past,” former New Jersey senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley offered this telling observation about the need for heroes in a democracy:

“…it is in our local communities that the real heroes live. They are individuals like Dorothy Bradley, Deborah Floyd, Ada Deer and Reverend Watley, whose humanity calls out to us….”

Wisconsinites will note the name of Ada Deer on that list of heroes whom Bradley identified during his travels around the country. Deer is the first woman chair of the Menominee Nation who went on to serve as assistant secretary for Indian affairs at the U.S. Interior Department and as director of American Indian studies at UW-Madison.

Only 10 percent of all teachers nationwide are black, Latino, Asian or American Indian. This is because fewer minorities go to college, and fewer still choose education over more lucrative fields, says Gloria Ladson-Billings, a UW-Madison education professor.

Regent Tom Loftus wants the University of Wisconsin System to take a hard look at the stock it owns in tobacco-related companies, as well as any research that System campuses do that is funded by tobacco companies.

Fresh from a seven-year stint with the World Health Organization — the public health arm of the United Nations — Loftus said his work as special adviser to the organization’s director general included an emphasis on “big tobacco” companies.

Gov. Jim Doyle’s office says Doyle will sign a measure approved by the Legislature to add a second student regent to the UW Board of Regents.

“It is something he supports,” Doyle spokeswoman Melanie Fonder said.

There is no merit to a lawsuit filed by an African-American dean who wants to block release of an audit of his spending on the grounds that it would harm the public’s interest in diversity on campus, a top administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater said Wednesday.

This is one legal fight Atty. Gen. Peg Lautenschlager will sit out.

She has used her office to go after oil companies, hospitals and even other government agencies, but she is declining to step into a debate over a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire policy banning resident assistants from holding Bible studies in their dorms.

It’s been a struggle for Wisconsin to keep tuition affordable at UW System campuses. So when it turns out that tuition is not the only battleground that student fees are adding as much as $1,148 a year to the cost of going to college it’s time for policy makers to examine what’s going on.
The Board of Regents should pursue a full-scale review of student fees in the UW System.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Minnesota Vikings’ animosity for the Green Bay Packers apparently doesn’t spill over to the Wisconsin Badgers.

One of the Vikings’ owners, David Mandelbaum, is donating $2.5 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Eye Research Institute. It’s to support a joint research initiative with University of Minnesota scientists.

I make no comment about the following facts, save to note that they are piquant:

Martin Cadwallader, chief research officer at UW-Madison, is concerned about possible federal restrictions on foreigners getting research information. He said recently, “We’re sensitive to the needs of national security. On the other hand, universities are cultures that rely on passing ideas back and forth.”

When I was a school child we celebrated America as a nation of immigrants. We admired Andrew Carnegie and Igor Sikorsky, who were born elsewhere yet made huge contributions to our country. In America, anything was possible.

Now, under proposed federal rules to limit access to research, Sikorsky wouldn’t have been allowed to invent the helicopter. In the interest of preventing terrorist attack, our federal government plans to hobble the army of immigrant scientists laboring to stop the next pandemic, or cancer or even obesity all far bigger threats to our lives.

But why pass regulations to further restrict foreign-born students and teachers? They’re already disappearing. Foreign student applications to the UW were down over 30 percent last year. They’re going to places like Germany to create hotbeds of research there, and the brightest Americans will follow them.

The sycophantic adulation of the UW- Madison football coach is disappointing.

First, the average annual expenditure for each UW athlete is more than $50,000, an outrageous expenditure. Second, the football coach has been made a multi-millionaire, wholly inappropriate for any public employee.

Finally, the various laudatory farewells directed at the coach are a bit much, especially given that he isn’t going anywhere except to a different office.

– Daniel R. Bohrod, Madison

EAU CLAIRE – The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation is creating a fund that will invest in Chippewa Valley companies founded by recent graduates.

During a visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in October, Bill Gates – yes, that Bill Gates – said in an interview that the Xbox 360 is among Microsoft’s most important products in the pipeline, behind only its flagship Windows operating system and Office suite of software.

The ordeal of innocent prisoners doesn’t end when they’re released.

Starting a career decades later than one’s peers, finding jobs and housing before criminal records have been expunged, getting reacquainted with family or trying to start one at a later age – those are some of the challenges illuminated by “After Innocence,” a documentary the Wisconsin Innocence Project brought to the Wisconsin Historical Society on Thursday night.

I am a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Wisconsin native who grew up in Mukwonago. Before coming to this university, I knew there would be “Coasties” and there would be differences, but not to this degree.

Some University of Wisconsin-Madison departments do a poor job accounting for how they spend private donations intended for specific projects, an internal report warns.

Instead of creating separate accounts, some departments deposit the gifts into general department accounts, UW-Madison’s internal auditor said. That makes it difficult to monitor whether the departments spend the money as the donors request.

Madison – Some University of Wisconsin-Madison departments do a poor job accounting for how they spend private donations intended for specific projects, an internal report warns.

Instead of creating separate accounts, some departments deposit the gifts into general department accounts, UW-Madison’s internal auditor said. That makes it difficult to monitor whether the departments spend the money as the donors reque

Edwin N. Lightfoot, a professor emeritus in the department of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Lightfoot is being recognized for helping to develop the field of biomedical engineering.