Category: UW-Madison Related

After spending five years and $25 million on a new payroll system for the University of Wisconsin System, UW officials still face significant challenges with its development and implementation. With some state lawmakers criticizing the UW System for the expensive new payroll software and the fact that it is months past deadline, UW officials stressed its complexity and breadth made it more difficult to execute than they had first thought.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison, $1.563-billion as of August 10 (increase of $17.6-million in the last month); the goal was $1.5-billion by 2007.

This Labor Day, it is heartening to note that jobs – especially high-income jobs – are returning to Wisconsin.
Key economic sectors, including manufacturing and high-tech, are rebounding and developing. Wisconsin’s businesses, workers and government deserve credit.

The state’s July unemployment rate of 4.6 percent was better than last year’s rate of 4.8 percent and well below the national rate of 5.2 percent.

Wisconsin has to do more to invest in existing high-tech industries and attract others. While Madison, with its university and highly-educated workforce, is a natural draw for high-tech business, other areas of Wisconsin can compete through tax and other incentives.

Colleges and universities across the United States are offering admission for the fall semester to undergraduates and graduate students whose hurricane-battered campuses will remain closed for months.

I am writing in response to Mary Cruz’s Aug. 29 letter, “Students need to think about their future,” and I would like to address a few of the concerns brought up about my quote in the Aug. 23 article she cited.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has reopened its stock pavilion as a place where groups can meet and eat, four years after an E. coli outbreak at a pancake breakfast there sickened 35 people.

The Healthy Families, Healthy City Campaign is proposing a city mandate requiring paid sick leave for all employees, allowing lower-income workers the ability to visit a doctor or recover from an illness without worrying about getting fired or falling short on rent or utility bills.

With the fall semester starting in a matter of days, the University of Wisconsin announced Tuesday that the investigation into the controversy that has engulfed the school throughout the summer is complete.

A Dane County jury’s $24.3 million award in a 1999 construction accident was upheld today by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Terry Staskal, a construction worker for Kramer Brothers, was trapped for three hours and 15 minutes on June 9, 1999, by a collapse of a section of the fourth floor during construction of the University of Wisconsin Pharmacy Building.

The Dane County jury had awarded $8.8 million in compensatory damages, another $500,000 for his wife, and a $15 million punitive damages award.

An ominous tally of flooded buildings, ripped roofs, and shattered lives emerged on college and university campuses across the Gulf Coast region on Wednesday as officials began to assess the extent of the damage from Hurricane Katrina.

In New Orleans, where authorities say thousands of people may have died, no one could guess when colleges would be able to reopen. Along the coast of Mississippi, where entire communities have disappeared, the outlook was also grim.

The catchiest quote from a public meeting on paid sick leave last week in Madison helps show why city leaders should not force employers to offer the benefit.
A UW-Madison teaching assistant said the university pays him for days he misses because of illness. But the tavern where he works as a bartender at night doesn’t offer sick pay. So he stays home sick from his day job but goes to his night job because he needs the money.

A Republican lawmaker is ripping the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its plans to bring two high-profile anti-war speakers to campus.

The UW will host actress and activist Jane Fonda and British Parliament member George Galloway at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. Fonda is expected to give a 20-minute introduction and speak out against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. She was a prominent anti-war activist during the Vietnam years.

It was a clash between the University of Cincinnati’s biggest names: popular men’s basketball coach vs. ambitious university president.

Now that it’s over, and a $3 million buyout has been reached, two things are clear.

Bob Huggins is gone.

And Nancy Zimpher is on trial.

How many Buckys can fit on the head of a pin? Well, if it’s Nano Bucky, created in the research lab of UW-Madison chemistry professor Robert Hamers, the answer is up to 9,000. “Bucky is made from very small carbon hairs,” explained Hamers. “These nanofiber hairs are about fifty nanometers in diamater, about one one-thousandth the width of a human hair.” (Audio.)

Wisconsin lawmakers should encourage Madison’s nanotechnology industry so it can continue to attract much-needed research dollars and jobs to the state.
Madison researchers and companies are pioneering this science of building electronic circuits and devices from single atoms and molecules.

But government support hasn’t kept pace with either the industry’s successes or what the neighboring states of Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan are offering their nanotech industries.

The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity chapter at UW- Whitewater was suspended for two years Sunday night because of out-of-control drinking last year, including a “drinking olympics,” a university official said Monday.

“Over the course of the year, there was lots of alcohol, underage drinking and sale of alcohol without a license,” said Mary Beth Mackin, assistant dean of student life. “It’s a culmination of things, of unsafe behavior and a failure to respond to the university. . . . We are incredibly concerned about safety and lack thereof, about any student getting hurt or killed.”

To see the economic power of nanotechnology, the science of the small, walk down a humdrum hallway on the third-floor of UW-Madison’s Engineering Hall.

The green floors and white- tiled walls look more like a middle school than a money- maker, but don’t be fooled. A row of four engineers’ offices holds the co-founders of two hot startup companies and the directors of two campus research centers with millions in federal money.

Alfonso Gutierrez smiles as boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese tagged with tiny chips zip around a conveyor belt and pass under a reader that instantly displays information about the product.

“It’s going fast,” said Gutierrez, who heads a new UW- Madison research lab dedicated to helping businesses deploy technology that could one day replace the bar code.

Gutierrez was referring to the speed of the conveyor belt – 600 feet a minute, the speed Wal-Mart uses in its warehouses – but he could have been talking about the rapid acceptance of radio frequency identification, a technology that can revolutionize business but also erode privacy.

In an introductory speech in Madison for anti-war British politician and author George Galloway, actress Jane Fonda will make her first public statement against the occupation of Iraq.

Fonda is scheduled to give her 20-minute introduction for Galloway, a member of Parliament, at the Wisconsin Union Theater Sunday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. She is also scheduled to speak the following night in Chicago as Galloway continues his national speaking tour.

Chris Dols, the local organizer for Galloway’s tour, said these two speeches are the only ones that Fonda will give with Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour Party after making remarks opposing the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Some University of Wisconsin campuses routinely violate a federal privacy law in asking students to disclose Social Security numbers without explaining how they will be used, according to an audit released Thursday.

Scotsman George Galloway, a member of the British Parliament best known in the U.S. for ripping into GOP Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota at a Senate hearing in May, will speak in Madison at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

“I have met with Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times that Donald Rumseld met him,” Galloway, an outspoken critic of Great Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, told Coleman. “The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met to sell him guns.”

I remember the Sterling Hall bomb noise and my house being shaken early in the morning three miles away. I remember a phone call from my boss to help our ironworker foreman locate steel beams and timbers from our yard for temporary shoring of a sheared spandrel beam. I remember crawling through the rubble with a clip board and floor plans of the building after the FBI had cleared the site to survey the damage.

The University of Wisconsin System is finally showing it’s serious about getting to the bottom of — and hopefully putting to rest — controversy surrounding its hiring practices.
UW System President Kevin Reilly this week asked state lawmakers for a state audit of university policies. The probe should concentrate on backup jobs, paid leaves and pay for felons.

Reilly’s support for the audit is on top of the System’s own internal review, the results of which are due next month. Reilly also has suspended backup jobs for new hires.

The T-shirt is a faded lavender, well worn and three decades old. The word “Florida,” in tiny and off-white script, is nearly unreadable. Still bold is the black stenciling. “Free Karl,” it demands, and this is why the garment has survived its original owner’s changes in size, address and attitude.

The T-shirt is one artifact in “Resistance or Terrorism? The 1970 Sterling Hall Bombing,” a case exhibition that opens today at the Wisconsin Historical Museum, 30 N. Carroll St. The opening coincides with the 35th anniversary of the Sterling Hall bombing by anti-war activists.

(MADISON) The first effort to overturn Madison�s new smoking ban failed. Now, there�s another attempt to ease strict rules regulating cigarettes in taverns and restaurants.

Bar owners in particular say Madison�s two month-old smoking ban has driven away customers. Tobacco researchers want proof. David Ahrens from the UW Medical School is checking sales receipts: businesses have to turn in those numbers to the state Department of Revenue for tax purposes, but those figures won�t be out for awhile.

Next year, Madison turns 150.

Fifty or 100 years from now, what will future Madisonians want to know about how life in Mad City is lived today?

Answering that question is the impetus behind a new project sponsored by the Center for Photography at Madison. The project is being spearheaded by two local photographers, (retired UW-Madison geology professor) Carl Bowser and Jackson Tiffany.

It is unconscionable to think that a judge would give a sex offender, UW professor Roberto Coronado, only eight years for assaulting three little girls, one up to 30 times. This monster gave those children a life sentence, but he will be released early and free to follow the regular sex offender pattern.

Equally appalling is that university officials seem to be hiding under their desks waiting for it to go away. Little wonder why the Legislature wants to be involved in administering university policies.

– Francis W. Turner, Beaver Dam

….In answer to the Isthmus headline that asks: Does the UW Humanities Building deserve the city’s scorn?” we would offer a one-word response: “Yes.”

A few years back when Carlos Santiago was vying to become president of the University of New Mexico, David Gilbert, a colleague and close friend, heaped praise on Santiago. “Everything he has done to this point leads him to being president in the near future,” gushed Gilbert, then a top lobbyist at the University at Albany, where Santiago was provost. Santiago didn’t get the New Mexico gig, but he landed pretty well. He’s now the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And Gilbert? He didn’t do badly, either. He’s a $163,320-a-year consultant to Santiago, ensconced in a UWM office that was redecorated at a cost of nearly $15,000. That’s enough to cover tuition for five in-state students at UWM for this fall semester.

Longtime readers of this column will recall that a Watertown native played a key role in the formation of Social Security.

The Associated Press carried a detailed story Friday about the involvement of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the shaping of that bill, and it noted that the key author of the Social Security legislation was Professor Edwin Witte of the UW staff. The article was written because we are approaching the 70th anniversary of that legislation. The article was accompanied by a photo which showed President Roosevelt in the middle, Arthur Altmeyer on the left, and Witte on the right. It was Altmeyer who suggested to President Roosevelt that Witte was the man for the job and ultimately worked closely with Witte in the formation of the Social Security legislation.

One letter writer says: “Had the university employees with indisputably serious and harmful criminal convictions been working in elementary or secondary education, they would have been dismissed.” Another says: “I hope that calmer heads will prevail and that any law the Legislature proposes will not discriminate against universities and their professors.

In a flash, Leo Burt � onetime altar boy, Marine reservist and college athlete � became an alleged American terrorist. Almost as quickly, he vanished.

MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin economist picked by President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to draft a bill creating Social Security worried about asking for time off to work on it.

Two Wisconsin businesses, with the help of a UW-Madison engineering professor, are working to write a new chapter in computer recycling.

I THINK I can predict with some certainty that an exhibit set to open later this month at the Wisconsin Historical Museum on the Capitol Square will draw a lot of interest.

“Resistance or Terrorism? The 1970 Sterling Hall Bombing” opens Aug. 23 – one day before the 35th anniversary of the bombing of the Army Math Research Center on campus.

The passing years have not diminished interest in the bombing, which was meant as a protest against the U.S. military presence in Vietnam but killed a young physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, who was working late in the building.

Madison’s cherished self-image as a bastion of liberalism may be slipping. A new study released today shows the Mad City isn’t among the top 10 most liberal cities in the country or even among the top 25.

(A spokesperson for the Berkeley-based Bay Area Center for Voting Research said) that while college towns with modest black populations – such as Madison – remain among the most liberal, “these white communities are more reminiscent of penguins clustering together around a shrinking iceberg than of a vibrant and growing political movement.”

Heeding his doctor’s advice to stay home from work during an illness should have been a no-brainer, Madison resident Russell McDaniel said. But low-wage, low-benefit workers like McDaniel find themselves in a tough spot – what’s more important, their health or two days’ pay?

McDaniel, a janitor, stayed home and suffered the financial hit.

But McDaniel and a coalition of labor, housing and religious interests on Wednesday proposed that the city of Madison intervene by requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave for employees.

A coalition of labor, housing and religious interests is launching an effort to get paid sick leave for all employees in Madison.

But some are skeptical about a law that could put a financial burden on businesses already upset about city laws for a minimum wage, smoking ban and making developers put lower- cost housing in projects.

The second quarter also marked the startup of MGE’s new cogeneration power plant on the UW-Madison campus in late April, and the company will see approximately $2.5 million in revenue that plant has already produced in the coming months.

Nobody likes parking tickets, especially state lawmakers who get to park for free on the Capitol Square. Nobody likes rude people, yet plenty of state lawmakers have sizeable tempers. And nobody wants to do something for nothing — yet that’s what at least two lawmakers want to demand.

Reps. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, and Robin Kreibich, R-Eau Claire — acting on a laundry list of Schneider’s personal gripes against the University of Wisconsin System — are pushing a bill that would strictly and ridiculously micromanage UW campuses.

UW-Madison officials expect to know by early next week if they will be able to buy some land that two animal rights groups want for a protest building near the university’s primate research facilities.

“We’ve asked for a quick decision,” said Mark Bugher, director of University Research Park, which would use investment earnings, not state tax dollars, for the purchase. “We didn’t want (the offer) to languish.”

Grandparents� University, inspired by a program at UW-Madison, brings children ages 7-14 and their grandparents together for some one-on-one, get-to-know-you-better time, said Cathy Paynter, director of continuing education at UW-Fox Valley.

It was a mistake that put hundreds of former MATC students at risk for identity theft. The mistake involved old applications, filled with personal information that anyone could have gotten their hands on…including us.

Three friends of Sarah Stellner, who died last spring of a drug overdose, and the woman who allegedly sold them heroin were charged Wednesday with negligent homicide in the death.

Stellner, 20, was found dead in her Langdon Street apartment on April 26. Her roommate, 18-year-old Morgan E. Fenick, admitted to police that she injected Stellner with heroin.

Can a simple snow fence prevent a blizzard of problems on State Street on Halloween?

The Madison Police Department seems to think so.

Madison Metro’s system of selling discounted tickets to UW-Madison and other institutions has brought more riders. More companies should consider this program, which allows them to buy discounted unlimited passes for employees or members.

In their efforts to avoid another Halloween disturbance, Madison officials say stretching orange plastic snow fencing across the Frances Street entrances to State Street may be the best option.
Police plan to barricade Frances Street – and possibly other streets – to limit access to State Street, said Madison Police Capt. Mary Schauf during a Community Halloween Planning Group meeting Tuesday.

One of the most enduring images from Barry Alvarez’s tenure as Wisconsin football coach was the scene at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1994.
Alvarez’s underdog Badger team had just upset UCLA 21-16 for Wisconsin’s first-ever Rose Bowl win. The estimated 70,000 Badger fans who had turned the stadium – normally UCLA’s home field – into Camp Randall West were cheering amid a flurry of flashbulbs as the team jogged a victory lap.

Everywhere you looked, there was red.

State and federal health officials go to great lengths trying to convince more than 2 million diabetics to carefully and safely dispose of about 1 billion hypodermic needles each year.
It certainly doesn’t help the effort to have Gov. Jim Doyle’s staff casually carrying 1,400 of the used needles around in a grocery bag at the state Capitol and dropping them on a political foe’s front desk.

Gov. Jim Doyle is like the mouse that got away with the cheese, leaving the Legislature standing in shock at the triggered, empty trap they had so carefully set for him.
Doyle sliced and diced the state budget 139 times with one of the nation’s most powerful veto pens this week, shifting huge amounts of money around and often reversing the Legislature’s intent.

When members of the UW Board of Regents start their study of administrative backup jobs in the University of Wisconsin System, they won’t have far to look for examples of the now-controversial practice.

After all, nearly 50 of their top assistants enjoy the perk. From System President Kevin Reilly to board secretary Judith Temby – plus the dozens of planners, directors and assorted vice presidents in between – almost all of the highly paid administrators who scale the System’s bureaucratic heights have backup jobs to act as parachutes if they fall.

The new state budget is putting the squeeze on Madison and other Dane County municipalities.
Many leaders are already talking about service cuts and layoffs.

“We’re starting to get a pretty stark vision of the impact of the state budget on the city of Madison,” a still-fuming Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said Wednesday.

It took more than three years, but now UW Rock County will receive funding for a new electrical engineering degree program.

Governor Jim Doyle approved a budget that will include $370,000 dollars to kick start the four year degree program.

As Gov. Jim Doyle signed one set of state employee union contracts into law (yesterday), he and labor leaders expressed hope that the next round of negotiations — set to begin next month — would go more smoothly.

During a Capitol ceremony, Doyle signed the contracts with four units of the Wisconsin State Employees Union for the 2003-05 contract period, which ended June 30. Negotiations for the current contract period will begin in mid-August.

Investors also usually have to buy more than one discovery to work on a single project. This “stacking” of patents is highly likely in the stem cell field, in which the University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has already patented some of the essential technology.

Quoted: Edward Friedman, a China specialist at the University of Wisconsin.

College administrators call them “helicopter parents” and say their numbers are on the rise: moms and dads who persistently hover around their children during orientation, hampering efforts to help new students begin the transition to life away from home.

The University of Vermont decided to do something about those well-meaning troublemakers: hire “parent bouncers.” The bouncers, who are students, delicately keep parents at bay during orientation sessions as incoming students consult with academic advisers or participate in panel discussions about alcohol and sex.

MIDDLETOWN, Virginia (AP) — During commencement here at Lord Fairfax Community College this spring, M. Gayle Crowder not only stole the show but, for a memorable moment, stopped it

If beer is your beverage, chances are you can relate to the frustration of a slow flow. And if so, you can certainly appreciate the plight of a former University of Wisconsin student who has spent years pouring over the problem.

Today, his solution is certain to leave many a glass half-full. “I got the idea for the product while standing in a beer line at the UW Terrace,” says Matt Younkle.

Matthew Younkle was a senior at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when inspiration struck. What the world really needs, he decided, is a three-second beer.

Ten years later, Younkle, 31 years old, is president and chief technology officer of TurboTap, a company marketing a finger-sized nozzle that attaches to standard beer faucets and pours draft beer at least twice as fast as traditional systems do, and with less spillage.