UW-Madison in the Media

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

  • Job outlook improving for graduating seniors WKOW-TV 27 May 9, 2011 The past few years have been very discouraging for graduating seniors. But, for the class of 2011 at UW-Madison, it’s a better story. Across campus, UW career advisors say they’re not surprised and overall more companies are hiring.
  • UW School of Nursing gets unexpected $1 million donation in connection with Badgers' spring game Wisconsin State Journal May 10, 2011 The University of Wisconsin athletic department contributed about $50,000 to the School of Nursing building project with funds generated from ticket sales at the spring football game. School of Nursing dean Katharyn May believes a $1 million donation received about three weeks prior to the spring game probably would not have happened without the affiliation with the football program. Fans were charged $5 for admission to the spring game, which had been free in past years. The official crowd was a disappointing 11,169, though UW athletic director Barry Alvarez remains committed to using the game as a fundraiser for campus projects. Proceeds from next year’s game will go to the Human Ecology department.
  • John Roberts: UW-Madison is different, not elitist Wisconsin State Journal May 10, 2011 We are competing against research organizations and universities throughout the world for top researchers, students and research dollars. UW-Madison competes for and wins over $1 billion in research funds per year. This reflects the significant difference in the mission of UW-Madison and UW-Oshkosh. This is not elitism. The campuses are not better or worse than the other, just different. These different missions drive the need for a different set of operating rules.
  • Carpenter: Autonomy allows Madison campus to compete Superior Telegram May 5, 2011 Freshwaters are Wisconsin’s crown jewel. Lakes and rivers of our forests and farmlands provide natural beauty, fisheries, water sports and other benefits. Bordered by two Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, and with thousands of inland lakes and streams, Wisconsin is truly a place where land, people and water meet.
  • UW-Madison Professors React To Bin Laden's Death WISC-TV 3 May 2, 2011 It’s been a mission that’s taken ten years -- Sunday night, two leading professors at the UW-Madison reacted to the news that 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been killed. (Video.)
  • Wisconsin's Political Split Hardens Into Great Divide National Public Radio May 2, 2011 Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kathy Cramer Walsh says voters here have always had their disagreements, "but Wisconsinites, in general, are good at sort of smoothing over differences and getting along. And right now we’re not getting along, and it’s blown out into the open. I’d say it’s pretty different. It feels un-Wisconsin-like to me."
  • Giving the UW-Madison more freedom makes sense Isthmus April 28, 2011 Since I graduated from the UW-Madison last May, my sense of attachment to the university has actually increased. Still, I couldnt help but feel like a poseur as I filled out a Wisconsin Alumni Association membership form online.
  • College campuses add language immersion programs USA Today April 29, 2011 Next fall, a group of 10-12 students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will live together in a dorm dubbed the Russian House.
  • Sleep-deprived brains turn themselves off USA Today April 28, 2011 A team of researchers in Wisconsin and Italy has found that in rats kept awake past their bed times, their brains begin to turn themselves off, neuron by neuron, though the rat is still awake. Not only that, but the neurons that we use the most during the day are the ones that appear most likely to go offline. "It’s very worrisome. It means that even before we have obvious global signs of sleepiness, there are more local signs of tiredness and they have consequences on performance," says Chiara Cirelli, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the researchers.
  • Barry Alvarez: Give UW-Madison tools to compete Wisconsin State Journal April 25, 2011 Right now the UW-Madison is operating on an uneven field that, if not corrected, will slowly erode our great university’s ability to compete - for students, faculty and research dollars, just to name a few - not only nationally, but around the world as well. We all know how economically challenging these past few years have been for our country. Those challenges exist on college campuses as well, including UW-Madison. I always taught my players to meet challenges head-on and that’s what is necessary now. Chancellor Biddy Martin has a plan that would give UW-Madison some of the decision-making flexibility necessary for our university to continue to compete on a national and international level.
  • A fitting grand marshal: Elroy was always running to see his best girl Madison.com April 25, 2011 The Crazylegs Classic will be held this Saturday for the 30th time, and Elroy Hirsch's widow is the grand marshal. "I can't believe it started 30 years ago," Ruth Hirsch, 86, said with a shake of her head. "I'm not that old."
  • Union South gets it right Isthmus April 25, 2011 Living in Madison, it can be easy to take the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union for granted. Doesn’t every college town have a massive student center perched on a glorious swath of lakefront, with sailboats lazily gliding by in the summer? (I love to sip a New Glarus brew and watch for the Holstein-spotted one to go by.)
  • UW-Madison celebrates 40 years of Afro-American Studies Madison Times April 25, 2011 Black students at the University of Wisconsin– Madison reacted to the murder of Dr. King by orchestrating a series of strikes intended to force the university’s administration to institute a program of study about African Americans. A year later, in April 1969, then UW Chancellor Edwin Young appointed a steering committee for what would become the Department of Afro-American Studies, which, after being approved, offered its first classes in the Fall of 1970.
  • Mitman: Jobs grow in a healthy environment Milwaukee Journal Sentinel April 22, 2011 Yet as we celebrate the 41st anniversary of Earth Day - founded by Wisconsin’s own Gaylord Nelson - the jobs-vs.-environment argument has surfaced again. It is a more dubious claim than ever. Case in point: recycling, mandated by the state in 1990 after a long, contentious political battle. Just 20 years later, Wisconsin municipalities recycle more than 700,000 tons of material each year - waste that otherwise would go to landfills. The environmental benefits of keeping plastic, metals and other materials out of the ground are many and obvious, including protecting the quality of our groundwater and conserving valuable resources. [A column by Gregg Mitman, interim director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison].
  • Scott Milfred: Take your pick in UW split -- Gov. Scott Walker or Rep. Steve Nass Wisconsin State Journal April 16, 2011 Chancellor Biddy Martin and Gov. Scott Walker are an odd pair pushing to give UW-Madison autonomy.
  • Big voices on campus: Madhatters sing their way to UW-Madison stardom Isthmus April 16, 2011 Back in high school, not all of the MadHatters were the kinds of guys you’d expect sorority girls to be swooning over in college.
  • Robot makes debut at Engineering Expo Badger Herald April 15, 2011 Students, members of the community and James Cameron fans were on hand to witness the debut of a new robot designed by University of Wisconsin students at the biannual Engineering Expo.
  • Scott Straus: Gbagbo's Blame Game Huffington Post April 13, 2011 Today Laurent Gbagbo was captured, and at long last the Ivorian political crisis looks ready to subside. "The nightmare is over," declared Guillaume Soro, Côte d’Ivoire’s incoming Prime Minister. But if the past is any prelude, we are likely to see a new war of words in the coming days and weeks.
  • UW-Madison's musical 'genius' has visions of an improved double-keyboard piano Wisconsin State Journal April 12, 2011 It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.
  • New Union South brimming with spaces to entertain you Wisconsin State Journal April 12, 2011 Think of the new Union South as a $95 million tree fort. When you were a kid, and you either built a clubhouse up in the oak tree in the backyard or dreamed of it, you wanted to pack it with every cool thing imaginable. “This will be the crime lab where we solve mysteries, this will be the entertainment area where we play video games, then we’ll put the secret trap door exit over here ...” A tour of the new Union South at 1308 E. Dayton St., which officially opens to the public on Friday, brings that feeling, writ large.
  • Editorial: Give UW flagship more freedom Wisconsin State Journal April 10, 2011 UW-Madison needs more freedom and flexibility to remain a world-class institution of higher learning and research.
  • A historic opportunity for the UW System Milwaukee Journal Sentinel April 7, 2011 Wisconsin faces a historic opportunity to evolve its support for higher education and renew the Wisconsin Idea. After more than a decade of significant cuts in state support and shifting costs to student tuition, it is apparent that the old business model for the University of Wisconsin System and its institutions is broken.
  • U.S. nuclear evacuation order based on risk assessment (AP) St. Louis Post-Dispatch April 8, 2011 Quoted: Michael Corradini, chairman of the nuclear engineering program at the University of Wisconsin, said, "You were doing a what-if calculation."Corradini continued, "Thirty-two years ago, if Japan had done a what-if calculation about Three Mile Island and said all the Japanese living within 50 miles of Harrisburg should get out, what would our response be to that?" He referred to the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979.
  • Thrown in a dumpster, Braveheart fights to live -- with help from Wisconsin rescuers Milwaukee Journal Sentinel April 8, 2011 A young dog discarded in a dumpster is fighting for survival – a struggle so heroic his Wisconsin rescuers have named him “Braveheart.” The year-old Labrador/shepherd mix rescued by a Madison couple and being treated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinary Teaching Hospital, was discovered in a public trash bin in Kentucky-- starved, sick and suffering from mange and a massive worm infection. He was so weak he could barely stand.
  • The Battle for Abidjan Huffington Post April 6, 2011 After four months of torturous political deadlock, an endgame is in sight in Côte d’Ivoire. The internationally-recognized winner of the 2010 presidential elections, Alassane Ouattara, gave incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo every opportunity to bow out peacefully. He refused, and Ouattara and his allies correctly concluded that military force was the only option left.The military offensive proceeded faster than anyone anticipated. From their stronghold in the north, the Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire fighting on behalf of Ouattara rolled. In a matter of a few days, they took key towns in the west, east, and center without major military combat or loss of life. Now they are poised to capture the big prize of Abidjan, the commercial and political heart of the country. [Co-authored by UW-Madison political scientist Scott Straus].
  • South campus sensation: New building sets ‘standard for 21st Century’ student union Wisconsin State Journal April 4, 2011 Student unions are called the living rooms of college campuses. But UW-Madison’s new Union South is more like a playground. The opulent, $94.8 million building features a climbing wall, an eight-lane bowling alley, billiards, scores of flat-screen TVs, a 350-seat movie theater, a two-story fireplace, a wine and coffee bar and a banquet hall big enough to seat 1,500 people. The grand opening is set for April 15 with a series of events.
  • UW professor discusses spring election WKOW-TV 27 April 4, 2011 Wake Up Wisconsin Weekend spoke with UW Political Science Professor Charles Franklin about the Supreme Court race, voter turnout, and more.
  • On Campus: UW-Madison reaffirms commitment to transfer programs Wisconsin State Journal March 30, 2011 UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin promised that students from other University of Wisconsin System schools will still be able to transfer into UW-Madison through existing programs, even if the flagship university splits from the rest of the UW System. She sent a series of memos last week to chancellors of other UW System institutions reaffirming existing transfer agreements and other collaborations in response to concerns that those ties would be severed. Under a proposal in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, UW-Madison would become a public authority with its own board of trustees.
  • UW Dance concert makes evocative movement of They Marched Into Sunlight Isthmus March 28, 2011 It’s sad that the performance presented by the UW-Madison dance department and Jin-Wen Yu Dance was a one-night-only event. "March Into Sunlight" deserves to be experienced by more people.
  • Alumni celebrate UW, Peace Corps Badger Herald March 28, 2011 In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps and the University of Wisconsin’s historically strong tradition of providing volunteers to serve abroad, the organization’s national leaders and UW alumni spoke about their personal experiences on campus Saturday.