UW-Madison has its own slate of issues. There, a growing population is pitted against on- and off-campus housing availability. I wrote about the tactics used to clear returning students out of the dorms to make room for freshmen, and the frenzy that ensued as students put their lives on hold to secure housing for next fall.
A massive spending plan to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year has been passed by Congress, including millions of dollars in investments for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
On the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, the past year brought a new chancellor, a record-breaking class of students and the removal of a nearly two-year long mask mandate. Get the recap in this round-up of changes to the university in 2022.
Noted: Kurt Rose is director of human resources operations for Madison Metropolitan School District, one of the largest employers in Dane County. Before taking on that role in June 2022, he was interim human resources director for the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, where he had worked since 2018 in a variety of roles with increasing levels of responsibility. He is president of Urban League of Greater Madison Young Professionals, which has dramatically increased its membership over the last few years. Kurt also serves on the board of directors of Madison Ballet.
Dr. Linda Vakunta is Deputy Mayor for the City of Madison, where she assists with housing and human services issues. She previously served as Program Director at the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance International (HAI), where she led, developed, and designed training programs for government, community, and non-governmental organizations to combat trafficking in persons. She holds a PhD in Environmental Studies, a Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Psychology and a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Willie R. Glenn Sr. is the first Black teen librarian at Madison Public Library, where he also previously served as youth services librarian assistant. He began his journey here in Madison as Student Support Service Coordinator for UW-Madison’s PEOPLE program, and later as the Assistant Director at Meadowood Neighborhood center. He has served in several capacities in youth and adult education, including as a lead instructor with UW-Madison’s Odyssey program, Out of School Youth Coordinator for Madison Metropolitan School District and a program coordinator for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee. One of his proudest moments is helping spawn Madison’s “Parks Alive” from his “It Takes A Village Community Resource Fair” which brings people together over the summer months.
Ashley Morse is Rock County Circuit Court Judge, the first Black woman to servein that position. Morse worked for the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office beginning 2010, and was based in Janesville since 2014, representing indigent clients as an assistant state public defender in a variety of criminal and civil proceedings in several counties across the state. Locally, she has served on the Rock County Trauma Task Force, the Rock County Youth Justice Racial Disparities Committee, and has coached the Turner High School Mock Trial Team. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and of the University of Wisconsin Law School. She has worked extensively with the National Juvenile Defender Center (now The Gault Center), including her selection as an Ambassador for Racial Justice.
Alnisa Allgood the founder and executive director of Nonprofit Tech, a company that helps nonprofits use technology to work more efficiently, and Collaboration for Good, a Madison-based company focused on building the capacity of for-profit or not-for-profit community service organizations. Collaboration for Good plans the annual Madison Nonprofit Day Conference, the Social Good Summit, and partners with Forward Fest, Madison’s premier tech and entrepreneurship festival. In the early 1990s, she was the founder and inaugural director of the LGBT Campus Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The past 12 months in higher education have been filled with attention-grabbing headlines and news from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those stories included protests, a professor winning the MacArthur “genius” grant and a mysterious case of toy soldiers appearing on campus.
UW-Madison announced Tuesday it would remain open for final exams through Friday, when wind chills are expected to dip to minus 30 degrees. University Housing said it will accommodate dorm residents who are unable to leave due to weather by the time residence halls are due to close at noon Friday.
A day after being crowned Miss America 2023 Thursday night at a Connecticut resort, UW-Madison student Grace Stanke said she was “kind of on cloud nine right now.”
Speaking by phone from the Mohegan Sun Casino and Resort in Uncasville, Connecticut, where the competition was held, Stanke said she approached the contest like an athlete competing in the Olympics.
Noted: The project will begin with an East-West route, which city leaders hope will be online by late 2024. A proposed map shows a path that cuts through the Capitol city’s downtown and the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus while running from an area near East Towne Mall all the way to West Towne Mall.
Chris Borland follows quest to bring attention to traumatic brain injuries in football.
Noted: Less than three-percent of all current Wisconsin law students are Black women. According to 2022 numbers, there were 17 Black women enrolled at Marquette Law School (out of 594 total students.) There were 16 (out of 757 students) at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
A statue honoring Vel Phillips, the first Black woman to graduate from University of Wisconsin Law School in 1951, is currently under construction for the corner of West Main and South Carroll at the Wisconsin State Capitol (across from the Park Hotel.) Vel broke the state’s color barrier in 1971, when she was named to the Milwaukee County bench as Wisconsin’s first Black female judge. She was also the first woman elected to the Common Council of Milwaukee (in 1956) and the first African American elected Secretary of State in 1978.
Mabel Watson Raimey became the first Black woman to earn a Bachelor’s degree from UW-Madison in 1918, but was fired from her teaching job after her employer found out she was Black (she had white ancestors, so people often assumed she was, too). Mabel then enrolled in Marquette Law School, where she was the first Black woman to attend, and later, the state’s first Black female attorney.
Left-wing college students rip up Bible, eat it in protest of Matt Walsh event
University of Wisconsin-Madison student Harrison Wells joined ’Fox & Friends Weekend’ to discuss the incident and the school’s response to the protests
The University of Wisconsin is based in Madison, and Camp Randall Stadium is one of college sports’ loudest venues. Frank Lloyd Wright created several notable buildings throughout the city, and several large lakes provide numerous recreational opportunities. Madison has won awards for its parks, water quality, and amenities for veterans.
Love it or hate it, Meta has created an alternative to TikTok that scratches the same itch, without being subject to Chinese oversight. The American government should back an American business, over which it has some oversight, instead of a Chinese business over which it has little to none.—Devin Bresser, University of Wisconsin-Madison, electrical engineering
Noted: After graduating from North Division High School, Frank Gatson, Jr. attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and majored in political science.
It was a very welcome thing to me that the Journal Sentinel along with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio brought the Main Street Agenda to “We the People” in Pewaukee.Many people I know (regardless of political affiliation, economic status, or cultural background) are fed up with the incessant blaring ads and speeches blaming whoever the “other” is in order to get us vote for them.The ads say very little of substance about what the core issues are, and even less about how they would go about resolving them, only who to blame − again, so you vote for the candidate running the ad. Nothing useful is gained by them.
Noted: While perfecting her violin skills and earning scholarships, Stanke also grew up watching her father work, inspiring her to want to work in engineering. But what field of engineering was up for debate. She said she heard of nuclear engineering while on a campus tour as a high school junior, and it stuck with her. It sounded fun, she said. As she reached graduation, her scope narrowed to aerospace engineering or nuclear engineering. The University of Wisconsin-Madison happens to only offer nuclear, so she started on that path.
Noted: Madison city officials are studying six potential sites for a new Amtrak station, including spots in the city’s downtown, near the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus, and at the Dane County Regional Airport on the city’s east side.
Madison is a college town (University of Wisconsin-Madison) with a reputation for fun. For two years in a row, Madison has taken the top spot in one national survey for livability.
Noted: Just this month, the University of Wisconsin-Madison broke ground on a new on-campus housing facility that will contain 142 units with a total capacity of 536 residents in rooms ranging from one to five beds.
Noted: Prior to her appointment earlier this year, Timberlake was a partner at Michael Best Strategies, where she advised in areas of public health, health care delivery and healthy community investments. Prior to Michael Best, she served as the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute Director and an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Noted: Winning an Associated Press sports writing contest at Abbot Pennings High School in De Pere sparked Stanley’s pursuit of a career in journalism, which he studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
College is just as afflicted. The other day, I attempted to watch the Wisconsin Badgers defeat the previously-undefeated Maryland Terrapins, and I honestly believe the final two minutes of action took longer than medical school. I’m not kidding: I actually stopped watching the Badger game, and enrolled in medical school at UW-Madison. I’m an orthopedic surgeon now. I’m installing eight new hips on Friday. Sign yourself up.
Chandler, a second-year student from Huntersville, North Carolina, majored in American studies, and was also a wide receiver for the Virginia Cavaliers.He had joined Virginia’s program after transferring from the University of Wisconsin.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenmoon/2022/12/06/its-not-too-late-to-submit-more-college-applications-late-admission-deadlines-for-2022-23/?sh=1671fd9571de
Noted: Carolyn Yeager, a 1978 Menomonee Falls graduate and valedictorian, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Colorado.
She worked for several technology companies developing custom software. That work helped her earn NASA’s Space Act award in 2006 for work she did for the International Space Station, Yeager’s wall description read.
In 2008, she started a mentoring program for human trafficking survivors after noticing the pain and suffering survivors experienced, as well as the lack of resources available for them. She received the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies’ Outstanding Advocacy and Service Award in 2014.
She also turned her career toward developing software for trauma recovery, according to Yeager’s wall description. Yeager became the first to graduate with a doctorate in trauma psychology from the University of Colorado and received the university’s Outstanding Ph.D Clinical Graduate Student award in 2018.
Laura Yin, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 2020 as a mechanical engineer, was less picky during her search than she had anticipated, given all the uncertainty surrounding her pandemic life. Even her salary standard dropped.
Hilarious and surprisingly heartwarming, Big Shot stars John Stamos as Marvyn Korn: an intense, well-decorated basketball coach. During one of his games at the University of Wisconsin, Marvyn flips out and ends up fired. Not only that, but he can’t seem to get hired at the college level anywhere else, either. Instead, he finds himself coaching an all-girls high school basketball team – where he clashes with his new players right away. Big Shot may have a somewhat familiar and predictable sports dramedy formula, but it’s still a fun and feel-good watch.
Noted: Even Aldo Leopold, famed author and former University of Wisconsin professor who is considered by many as the “father” of the field of wildlife management and advocated for increased deer harvests to help prevent deer starving in over-browsed Wisconsin forests, was unable to win that battle.
“The real problem is not how we handle the deer in their emergency,” Leopold told Gordon MacQuarrie, former outdoors editor for the Milwaukee Journal. “The real problem is one of human management.”
The 2022 selection is “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America” by Clint Smith. He was at UW Madison in An Evening with Clint Smith, on Nov. 1 , 2022. Smith was interviewed by the new UW Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin.
Bulltail, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is here to demand justice for the kind-hearted young woman she helped raise. According to Bulltail, also a member of the Crow Tribe, her family was notified of Stops Pretty Places’ death almost two weeks after her body was found. They waited 16 weeks for an autopsy report and were never interviewed by law enforcement. They have been left to navigate the justice system on their own, she says.
PHOTO Jeff Miller/University of Wisconsin-Madison
Noted: The survey is not a scientific poll, and its results cannot be generalized to the entire population of Wisconsin, but the responses do provide a snapshot of what was on the mind of voters during the survey period from June 28 to Nov. 8. The project is a collaboration of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (and USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin papers), Wisconsin Public Radio and the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The release of the options Downtown, on the UW-Madison campus, and on the East and North sides is the formal kick-off to the city’s Passenger Rail Station Study. The study is expected to recommend a site to the City Council by May, said Philip Gritzmacher, a planner for Madison’s transportation department.
At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, junior Yasmeen Khalid noticed how organizers urged their peers to cast ballots on campus. She saw people distributing brochures that listed all the reasons why individuals should support the Democratic Party, including the fact that they defend the right to an abortion. She feels satisfied with the outcome of elected Wisconsin governor Tony Evans. “I think this is a huge step for protecting abortion rights in Wisconsin.”
After majoring in interior design in the early 1960s at the University of Washington, a foundation for his collecting aesthetic and artistic vision, Chihuly enrolled in the country’s first glass program at the University of Wisconsin, where he also studied sculpture. Incorporating glass into tapestries to create textile and glass curtains soon gave way to his overriding interest in glassblowing.
A fair number of famous musicians have called Wisconsin home. Les Paul. Al Jarreau. Steve Miller. Justin Vernon.
Now, there’s Yung Gravy.
Matthew Hauri didn’t actually grow up in Wisconsin; he was born in Rochester, Minn. But the now 26-year-old was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when he uploaded his first Yung Gravy EP to SoundCloud in 2016. A year later, he signed a deal with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records (the label behind Taylor Swift, the Weeknd and other A-listers), before graduating in December 2017.
The African Studies certificate is a culmination of nearly two decades of working in partnership with UW-Madison, which has access to federal resources to develop such a curriculum as a designated research institution, UW-Madison African Studies Program Associate Director Aleia McCord said.
According to the grant application, the city will work with three nonprofit organizations and academic advisers at UW-Madison to place pollution sensors in 68 Census tracts across the city and publish the information on the internet.
“This is just unprecedented, the idea of having air quality measurements on the neighborhood scale that are real-time and accessible,” said Tim Bertram, a professor of chemistry at UW-Madison and one of the advisers.
Thirty years ago, when Kern Jackson was a graduate student in the African American studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he had a “beautiful experience.”
Except for the snow.
“My first experience with real snow,” Jackson said in a phone interview from Mobile, Alabama, where he is a professor and the director of the African American studies program at the University of South Alabama. “There was a snowstorm, and I called the department secretary, and I said, “I can’t make it in to teach because of the snow. I can’t find my car.”
UW-Madison graduate Paige Skenandore found her identity last fall, in a class about the struggles and successes of American Indigenous people.
An anti-war student activist at UW-Madison became a union organizer on Milwaukee area factory floors in the 1970s and ‘80s. Now a retired lawyer and author of “Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War,” Jon Melrod finds common cause with the workers’ rights movement of today.
Noted: My mother moved to Madison from Chicago just over 50 years ago to pursue a college degree and provide a brighter future for my sister and me. The Gee family now consists of three generations of University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates. The university, and a small but thriving community of Black UW alumni, offered opportunities, resources and friendships that allowed us to create lives of unlimited promise, rooted in Black excellence and Black culture.
A 1992 graduate of Williams College, Friedberg received an MBA and law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1996, according to Martindale, a database of legal professionals. Admitted to the bar in Washington state in 1998, and practicing in Seattle, his specialties were securities, banking, partnerships and, later, cryptocurrencies.
Noted: Well over 200 law enforcement agencies have signed on to the pledge, including five others in Wisconsin: the Dane County Sheriff’s Office and police in Madison, Fitchburg, Middleton and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Emmett Lockwood, 19, is the first openly transgender athlete on the University of Wisconsin-Madison men’s water polo team and proud of it. But it hasn’t been an easy journey.
“It’s Just Coffee” was the brainchild of a UW-Madison student who recognized that amid the political polarization in our country and on our campuses, students of differing backgrounds could discuss difficult topics — politics, religion, economics — in a respectful, civil way if they have a low-key, non-threatening environment for doing so. The program showed that students aren’t just willing but are eager to have meaningful, one-on-one conversations with people with whom they might disagree.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Kahl got his break in television as an intern at Lorimar, the production company best known for the hit series “Dallas” and “Knot’s Landing.”
Jim Leonhard, the University of Wisconsin’s interim head football coach, tweeted that Chandler’s personality “was infectious and he was a joy to be around.”
In 1996, I took one University of Wisconsin screenwriting class, and that was the extent of my screenwriting education. Beyond that, I’m self-taught.
Noted: Triggiano, a Racine native, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1984 and the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1988.
Then there was Devin Chandler, who had come back to his state school after initially heading to the University of Wisconsin. Even as a newcomer, he instantly found a way to make everyone smile. “He was everything you’d want [competitively] out of a person at this level but he was a big kid. Loved to dance, loved to sing … Life of the party.”
Jim Leonhard, the University of Wisconsin’s interim head football coach, tweeted Monday that Chandler “had a lasting impact on his teammates, even after he left UW, which is a testament to the type of person he was.”
Chandler, a junior, played as a wide receiver and kick returner for UVA and had transferred this offseason from the University of Wisconsin.
Noted: Sneha, the narrator and protagonist, is a young Indian immigrant and University of Wisconsin-Madison grad who comes to work in Milwaukee in 2013. She’s a low-level contract consultant doing dehumanizing work at a corporation. Every boss encounter is fraught, because she’d like to be sponsored for permanent residency in the United States.
A 6-foot wide receiver and kick returner from Huntersville, North Carolina, Chandler transferred to Virginia this season from the University of Wisconsin.
And when looking at a couple of key counties where young voters make up a big percentage – say, Dane County in Wisconsin, where the University of Wisconsin is, and Center County in Pennsylvania, where Penn State is – those counties went for Democrats, actually, by smaller margins than they did in 2018.
Perry was a linebacker, while Chandler, a transfer student from the University of Wisconsin, and Davis were wide receivers. The motive for the shooting remains unclear, according to UVA officials.
“Once a badger, always a badger,” Jim Leonhard, the University of Wisconsin’s interim head football coach, tweeted Monday.
