UW-Madison in the Media

A selection of media coverage about the university and its people.

• Teaching 9/11: How educators are responding 10 years later Christian Science Monitor Sept. 9, 2011 As Diana Hess learned that airplanes had slammed into the twin towers in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, her first instinct was to cancel her classes for the day. But before she could, the University of Wisconsin education professor began receiving frantic calls from her students – pleading with her to hold class as planned.
• City counties ranked healthier than rural CBSNews.com Sept. 8, 2011 Many people think of the city lifestyle as unhealthy, associating it with noise, pollution, crime, dense populations, a fast pace, and high stress levels. Many aspire to leaving the city for the country and the healthier lifestyle they think more tranquility brings. Fresh air, open spaces and chirping birds should be conducive to a much healthier lifestyle, or so the thinking goes. But, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano, a new study seems to dispel those notions.Cities once infamous for pollution, crime, crowding and infectious diseases have cleaned up their act. "They may have a better educational system," says Patrick Remington, project director of County Health Rankings, a report published by the University of Wisconsin that ranks more than 3,000 counties nationwide against others in their states.
• The 9/11 Decade - Lessons Differ Around the World New York Times Sept. 8, 2011 Noted: Diana E. Hess, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, analyzed nine American high school textbooks that together are used by almost half of American students. She found that while they used dramatic labels (“horrendous plot” or “crime against humanity”) to describe the attacks, they provided little information about what actually happened. Most of the textbooks did not even say how many people were killed or who was responsible for the attacks.
• When law takes effect, guns will be legal on UW campuses, but not in buildings Wisconsin State Journal Sept. 6, 2011 Come November, Badger fans may tailgate while armed but will still be forbidden from bringing their guns inside stadiums, classrooms or any other buildings at the flagship UW-Madison campus and the University of Wisconsin System’s 26 campuses statewide, officials confirmed Thursday. "I would like that," said UW-Madison sophomore Roxolana Sklepova of keeping buildings weapon-free. "You would hope people wouldn’t bring guns to those places anyway." The shift — currently guns are barred on system campuses — comes to accommodate the state’s concealed carry law and will likely change the look of campuses, with large "Firearms Prohibited in Building" signs expected to adorn every entrance to every campus building in accordance with the new law.
• 5 Other Surprise Attacks That Changed History National Public Radio Sept. 7, 2011 Noted: Compiling such a list can be a complex undertaking. "Issues of scale, era and location complicate the question, as do the criteria for a ’sneak attack’ — which is often viewed as a preemptive strike by those who launch it," observes military historian John W. Hall at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Rarely are such affairs complete and total surprises. In hindsight, it often emerges that the indicators for an attack were present but overlooked, or not placed in the proper context."
• Ask the Weather Guys: Was the forecast of Irene a success? Wisconsin State Journal Sept. 6, 2011 Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
• Walking could power your next cell phone, researchers say CNN.com Aug. 25, 2011 Will you be able to charge your next mobile phone simply by walking around? A group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hope so.
• A Faculty (Led) Search Inside Higher Education Aug. 25, 2011 Everyone wants a seat at the table when a campus picks a new leader, and it’s rare that groups say they have enough representation. With so many campus constituencies -- including faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees, and community members -- finding enough seats is tough, and more often than not, faculty members say they’re not given their fair share.
• Scientists find lager beer's missing link — in Patagonia Los Angeles Times Aug. 23, 2011 How did lager beer come to be? After pondering the question for decades, scientists have found that an elusive species of yeast isolated in the forests of Argentina was key to the invention of the crisp-tasting German beer 600 years ago.
• IBM pursues chips that behave like brains Associated Press Aug. 18, 2011 The challenge in training a computer to behave like a human brain is technological and physiological, testing the limits of computer and brain science. But researchers from IBM Corp. say they’ve made a key step toward combining the two worlds. But what's important is not what the chips are doing, but how they're doing it, says Giulio Tononi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who worked with IBM on the project.
• UW-Madison search: Chancellor vacancies aplenty at other schools Wisconsin State Journal Aug. 15, 2011 UW-Madison will face stiff competition for the best national candidates as it searches for a new chancellor, according to higher education experts. That’s because an “extraordinary” number of similar universities also are looking for new leaders, said Jan Greenwood, a search consultant who specializes in university presidencies. Finding the right candidate is important because university presidents must be able to fill a range of roles: CEO and academic, politician and cheerleader, public speaker and master fundraiser.
• Campus Connection: University of Wisconsin-Madison 19th in world rankings Capital Times Aug. 15, 2011 The University of Wisconsin-Madison is slotted 19th in this year’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, which is compiled by Jiaotong University in Shanghai. UW-Madison is the top-ranked Big Ten Conference school, with the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor next at No. 22. However, UW-Madison dropped two spots from a year ago, when it was 17th.
• UW Hospitals and Clinics named one of 10 Best Companies for Kids Wisconsin State Journal Aug. 16, 2011 When one of Nikki Engledow’s two sons is too sick for school and she can’t stay home, or her child care arrangements fall through, she takes advantage of the backup care benefit offered to her as an employee of UW Hospital and Clinics. "I’ve called in the middle of the night or the morning of when one of the boys has been ill ... and they have been able to arrange child care without a problem," said Engledow, a clinical nurse manager. The backup care benefit, which provides employees access to a service that finds last-minute care for their children, spouse, partner or elderly parents, has helped UW Hospital and Clinics earn a spot on Working Mother Magazine’s list of 10 Best Companies for Kids for 2011.
• Moving Days beginning in Madison WKOW-TV 27 Aug. 12, 2011 It’s Moving Days in Madison. This weekend, most downtown apartment leases are up.  That means thousands of people will be sorting through their stuff and finding a lot they no longer need.
• Braveheart in Wisconsin State Fair parade WKOW-TV 27 Aug. 11, 2011 Braveheart’s remarkable recovery will be on display on UW-Madison Day at the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis on Wednesday, Aug. 10. In addition, Braveheart, along with UW’s Bucky Badger will lead the daily parade around the fairgrounds that day.
• Analyst Expects Walker Recall Effort to Proceed WUWM Aug. 10, 2011 UW-Madison political scientist David Canon says there were few surprises in Tuesday’s recall elections. He shared his observations with WUWM’s Ann-Elise Henzl.
• Stock Market Plunge Causes Uncertainty For Investors WISC-TV 3 Aug. 9, 2011 Quoted: Ken Kavajecz, associate professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, said there are lots of mixed signals to which Wall Street just doesn’t know how to react.
• Menzie Chinn: The Downgrading of a Debtor Nation New York Times Aug. 9, 2011 The Treasury can cry foul all it wants, but the decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade America’s credit rating by one notch last Friday, and the subsequent plunge in the stock market, are serious symptoms of a loss of confidence — an assessment that is fundamentally political, not economic.
• New wave of Wisconsin recall elections coming Tuesday CNN.com Aug. 9, 2011 Quoted: Ken Goldstein, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, said the amount of money flowing into the races is "extraordinary."
• New Dean to Confront Budget Woes Wall Street Journal Aug. 4, 2011 François Ortalo-Magné takes the helm of the Wisconsin School of Business next month following Wisconsin’s contentious battle over collective bargaining rights for public-employee unions, which has presented challenges for the state university system.
• Shiny pests return for more Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Aug. 3, 2011 You can see them glimmering in gardens, nestled in rose blooms, whether at the Boerner Botanical Gardens or in your own backyard. It’s "the bug from hell," as University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri calls it.
• UW study finds large dairy farms produce higher quality milk more often than small operations Wisconsin State Journal Aug. 2, 2011 A UW-Madison study has found that milk produced on Wisconsin’s large farms, including the controversial industrial-size operations, is often of higher quality than milk from smaller farms. Steve Ingham, who led the study while working as a UW-Madison food science professor, speculated that the bigger farms may have more money to spend on equipment or may be better able to identify and remove cows with illnesses that affect milk production, such as mastitis. Ingham, who is now the food safety division administrator at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, added that all of the state’s farms, whether large or small, produce milk that easily meets federal food safety guidelines.
• Carroll: The Call of the Thylacine — Protect the Wild New York Times Aug. 2, 2011 Kakadu National Park, Australia — Eleven thousand miles from my home in Wisconsin, this national park is one of my favorite places on the planet — a vast area of wetlands, woodlands and rock formations that is home to a fantastic array of wildlife.
• Ominous sign from ancient sea level rise MSNBC.com July 29, 2011 In the whodunit-style search for the culprit behind drastic sea level rise many thousands of years ago, new research may have cleared one falsely accused party  —  but, like any good thriller, the story of the exoneration brings with it an ominous twist, and one that has implications for life on Earth today.
• Meditation: Re-Wiring Your Brain for Happiness ABCNEWS.com July 29, 2011 A quiet explosion of new research indicating that meditation can physically change the brain in astonishing ways has started to push into mainstream. Recently, the Dalai Lama granted permission for his monks, who are master mediators, to have their brains studied at the University of Wisconsin, one of the most high-tech brain labs in the world.
• U.S. Judge Dismisses Lawsuit That Threatened Stem-Cell Research Chronicle of Higher Education July 28, 2011 The federal government can continue to finance research into embryonic stem cells, after a judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop such grants from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
• Social Networking Nudge Inside Higher Education July 29, 2011 Colleges are on social media, regardless of whether they have figured out what it is worth to maintain an institutional presence there. A recent survey by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth found that 98 percent of higher ed institutions are on Facebook, and 84 percent are on Twitter. Those numbers have risen dramatically in the past few years, college recruiters, fund-raisers, and marketers having bought into the value — much of it speculative — of keeping active in those communities.
• Scientists warn that fires could consume Yellowstone forests USA Today July 26, 2011 Increasing waves of severe fires fed by climate change could shift much of the iconic forests of Yellowstone to scrub or grasslands by the end of this century, scientists say. "Frankly, the results really surprised us," says Monica Turner, a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the authors of the paper. The researchers found "more fire and a more rapid rate of change than any of us had anticipated."
• Skilled masons make repairs to 150-year-old North, South halls Wisconsin State Journal July 25, 2011 Two of UW-Madison’s oldest buildings are being painstakingly restored this summer with masonry work that has drawn crowds. The university is spending $2 million to make repairs to North Hall, built in 1851, and South Hall, built in 1855.
• Linda Greene: A Law Degree Is Priceless New York Times July 25, 2011 A fine legal education may indeed be costly, but I reject the idea that its worth should be determined by the number of jobs available in the lucrative realms of the legal profession.