Category: UW-Madison Related

University of Wisconsin Madison officials evacuated the chemistry building on campus after reports of a leaking liquid nitrogen tank Monday night.

So what could be cooler than being a young techie in Madison? These prototypical urbanistas — bike-riders, app-writers, coffee-shop habitués and craft beer aficionados — are the exemplars of the young innovators populating the downtown and maybe building Dane County?s 2lst-century economy.

Jessie Reeder has been a student at UW-Madison for seven years. She?s also a regular Madison Metro bus rider. In all those years, she?s never once been asked to show an ID to prove her student bus pass is legit.

A nationally recognized figure in diversity, leadership and organizational change, Damon Williams will take on an “epic opportunity” as senior vice president for programs, training and youth development for the Atlanta-based Boys & Girls Clubs of America, working with close to 5,000 clubs around the world.

Teaching writing behind bars is transformational work for the teacher as well as the taught. The intense focus of a locked room and locked life creates a tension that resonates deeply in the teaching and learning process, as revealed in Helen Elaine Lee?s essay ?Visible Men? (June 16).

Kenosha native Michael Falbo?s own path to a higher education was a circuitous one, including a detour to Vietnam and nine years of night school.

Luminosity ranked Madison one of the smartest cities in the U.S. based on raw cognitive performance.

Folks on both sides of the affirmative action debate were hoping that Monday?s U.S. Supreme Court ruling would provide a definitive direction on college admissions policies. Instead, observers were left in a puddle of ambiguity.

The 61-year-old man died at 10:14 p.m. Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin Hospital, Madison police said early Thursday.

A review of the nations teacher-training programs suggests that many University of Wisconsin System education schools are of middling quality.

Recently, the Joint Finance Committee included a provision in its 2013-15 state budget bill that would forbid the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from occupying its current offices on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and prohibit UW faculty from doing any work related to the center as part of its job requirements.

The current state budget as proposed makes no sense. The Legislature, in a desperate effort to make themselves look good, plans to give back hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts that will cost the taxpayers dearly in the future.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents have elected new leadership. Regent Michael J. Falbo of Franklin was elected President, and Regent Regina Millner of Madison was elected to serve as Vice President, by the Regents at the board?s meeting in Milwaukee on Friday.

Several regents of the University of Wisconsin System say UW officials should have been more transparent about their financial numbers, so lawmakers wouldnt have felt blindsided by news of a cash surplus.

Madison — The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism would have to leave the UW-Madison campus, under a Republican motion before the Legislature?s budget committee.

The Legislature?s petty attempt to evict the Center for Investigative Journalism from the UW-Madison campus has quickly backfired.

Checks totaling more than $1 million have been sent to 74 area nonprofits and to 17 project managers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by The Evjue Foundation, the charitable arm of The Capital Times.

I have been following the case of the lawsuit and investigation against pioneering spinal surgeon Dr. Thomas Zdeblick of UW-Madison for the past year. It boggles my mind why anyone would pursue this.

A sweeping plan to grant UW-Madison more flexibility in how it classifies, recruits, pays and evaluates its 20,000 employees has run into a legislative roadblock just a month before its planned July rollout, leaving administrators and union chiefs with the same question ? now what? ? but different reactions.

Student dormitories and unions on University of Wisconsin campuses produce much-needed revenue for the universities. Dorms, in particular, provide room and board at direct reasonable cost for students, parents and scholarship providers.

I spent Memorial Day weekend with Team Rubicon, the great veterans disaster relief organization. We fought the battle of SW 7th Street in Moore, Oklahoma.

Cops are carping about koi gone missing on the UW-Madison campus.

Police at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, are investigating something fishy.Authorities say that sometime between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, someone made off with eight large koi fish from the campus garden pond. Only two of the pond?s koi fish remain.

Something fishy happened last week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ? literally. Authorities are currently tying to solve the mystery of the koi fish caper.

UW-Madison Police are searching for eight missing koi that appear to have been stolen from the Botany Gardens.

Dear Editor: When dealing with known quantities like Rep. Steve Nass and the rest, the UW has to be smart enough not to throw them a fat one right over the middle. There is no way to rationalize growing a huge reserve (which UW has never done before) when you are claiming severe budget hardship. It begs all credibility and plays right into their well-known hateful hands. I do not blame the haters for doing what they do. That?s like blaming a wolf for killing sheep. But the UW HAS to be smarter and not make themselves such a fat and easy target. I also think students who paid all that tuition and got nothing in return have been abused, as have the faculty and staff who have been told no money is available. It was available and the UW lied to everyone by omission or commission.

Madison ? The Legislature?s budget committee in a bipartisan vote Thursday froze tuition and tax dollars for the University of Wisconsin System over the next two years and delayed new flexibilities promised in the last state budget, leaving public universities to fund several new initiatives from recently discovered cash reserves that triggered a firestorm at the Capitol.

Thursday will be a day of reckoning for the beleaguered University of Wisconsin System as the Legislature?s budget-writing committee debates how much money to give public universities in the 2013-?15 state budget.

“Bait bikes,” rigged with GPS-tracking technology, are popping up on college campuses across the nation in an effort to reduce bike theft, though the results have been mixed.

Chris Rickert?s May 19 column, “Surplus of blame encircles UW fund,” doesn?t state what he means by “professorial stars.” But data is available suggesting comparisons between CEO and university faculty salaries are ridiculous.

The Legislature?s budget committee Tuesday approved a measure meant to discourage public employees from collecting a pension and a paycheck at the same time.

Scott Johanek is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now, he?s also a co-founder of Muto Brands.

Madison – Following a furor among lawmakers over the University of Wisconsin System?s sizable financial reserves, Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday recommended freezing tuition and scaling back his proposed budget increase for state universities and colleges by $94 million over the next two years.

Gov. Scott Walker announced Wednesday night that he?ll cut about $94 million out of the $181 million budget boost earlier proposed for the University of Wisconsin System, in addition to freezing tuition as a result of revelations that the System kept hundreds of millions of dollars in cash reserves in recent years.

In a state that is divided on one political issue after another, there?s at least an apparent point of agreement that unites Badgers: freezing tuition at the University of Wisconsin.

On his blog, businessman John Torinus takes a look at the University of Wisconsin System?s many assets and suggests that it work at more transparency and include the balance sheets of such entities as the UW Foundation and WARF, the foundation that markets the school?s patents. It needs to build trust, says Torinus, and suggests that it find a way to work with the state ? ala the Wisconsin Idea ? to help in that regard.

MADISON WKOW– The 66th Alice in Dairyland was announced Friday evening by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. This year Kristin Natzke Olson will be the agencys ambassador as she travels throughout the state.

Three months ago Joan Houston Hall, editor for 38 years of the Madison-based Dictionary of American Regional English, sat down to write what seemed likely to be her publication?s obituary: layoff letters for all six longtime staff. Then one for herself.

One man was robbed of his cellphone when a man pointed a gun at him while he was walking down the street early Tuesday morning near the UW campus.

Here?s how five citizens answered this week?s question posed by Capital Times freelancer Kevin Murphy. What do you think? Please join the discussion.

Mike Ellis, the irascible Republican state senator, provided a revealing window into the GOP?s desired populist narrative in attacking the University of Wisconsin System these past two weeks.

Well, this could end well. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic freshman Rep. Marc Pocan are set to square off Thursday in a budget debate on the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

MADISON, Wis. — A former University of Wisconsin-Madison plant researcher who grew marijuana in a campus lab was sentenced Friday to two years of probation after pleading guilty to four charges.

UW-Madison senior Matt Warnert was stabbed at the 2011 Mifflin Street Block Party, but he describes efforts on the part of the Madison Police Department to shut down the annual festival as an “iron fist” approach.

?Federal Spigot Flows as Farmers Claim Bias? underplays the history of racial dispossession, uses cherry-picked examples, and creates needless antipathy to the lawsuit and the settlement with black farmers. Focusing on fraud and invoking familiar, racially freighted stereotypes of undeserving opportunists serve to throw into question all payouts rather than explaining why they were ordered in the first place. Signer includes Thomas Mitchell of the UW Law School.

Eau Claire Leader-Telegram Editor Don Huebscher writes that the state needs to get a full picture of the UW System?s reserve funds and determine how much is enough. It?s unfair to parents and students if tuition costs are higher than they need be, but do we know for certain how much should be held in reserve?, he asks. We should answer that question before making bad decisions.

Think about traveling through the major airline hubs in Minneapolis, Chicago or Detroit. You might hate the airlines stomp out United! and the experience of being packed into the plane, but youd probably have to admit that the airports themselves have come a long way in the last couple of decades.

With the proposed redevelopment by the Mullins Group and Core Campus of Chicago of much of the 500 block of State Street, including the University Inn property (technically with a Frances Street address) and a building at 529 State St., the campus area stands to lose several longstanding and well-loved locally owned restaurants. Kabul Afghani and Mediterranean restaurant, Hüsnüs Turkish restaurant, and Buraka East African Cuisine are at street level or basement level below the hotel. Also located at the street level are Campus Candy and an outlet of Jimmy John?s sub sandwich chain. Roast Public House occupies 529 State.

The origins of a nightmarish last week for University of Wisconsin System officials can be traced to a meeting of accountants earlier this year at the state Capitol.

In the wake of campus shootings the past five years, police throughout the nation are using text alerts to deliver warnings and advice to students in emergency situations.

By all accounts, Gerda Lerner was a serious scholar with a fierce intellect. She was also a trailblazing feminist, a mentor to generations of graduate students, a taskmaster, a poet, a nature lover.

Even though it?s been decades since Louis Uccellini was a University of Wisconsin-Madison student, he vividly remembers the state?s weather and quickly rattles off details of three blizzards that hit his senior year.

Representatives from the city and the UW-Madison kicked off plans to redevelop the 700 and 800 blocks of State Street near Library Mall Tuesday with a public input meeting. The plan is part of a larger movement that will change the appearance State Street, with the 100 block currently under construction and the Mullins Group recently announcing broad changes to the 500 block.