The cancellation of in-person classes at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Richland campus next year” should not be read” as a cautionary tale for other branch campuses.
That’s according to UW System President Jay Rothman, who appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show” Thursday. He said the decision was “based on facts” specific to that location.
A ribbon-cutting event for a former storage room marked a milestone for Milwaukee Area Technical College.
MATC converted the small space at its Walker’s Square campus into a food pantry that opened Tuesday. It’s the last of MATC’s five campuses to open a food pantry for students, all of which launched within the last year.
The pantries couldn’t have come at a better time.
Soaring food costs have college students feeling the pinch. The need is especially great at Walker’s Square, which is on the near south side in the heart of Milwaukee’s Latino community. Many students at the campus are enrolled in the GED or English as a Second Language programs while working minimum wage jobs that don’t provide enough to cover rent, gas, groceries and other expenses.
The $20,000 annual commitment is among initiatives that aim to boost community engagement.
Current Interim Chancellor John Chenoweth, previously UW-Whitewater’s provost; UW-Green Bay Vice Chancellor for University Inclusivity and Student Affairs Corey A. King; Minnesota State University-Mankato Vice President for Student Success, Analytics and Integrated Planning Lynn D. Akey; Grand Valley State University Dean Paul Plotkowski; and Auburn University at Montgomery Provost Mrinal Mugdh Varma.
Noted: At UW-Madison, the most selective school in the state, it’s too early to say what, if any, academic recovery will be needed, according to John Zumbrunnen, the university’s vice provost for teaching and learning. There hasn’t been a spike in tutoring sessions. Nor has there been a higher rate of D and F grades awarded. But the university offered two semesters of a pass/fail grading policy, which “muddies the data picture for us.”
That’s not to say Zumbrunnen hasn’t fielded concerns from some instructors. In math, there’s been a slightly larger share of students placing into pre-calculus instead of calculus. A STEM instructor told him this year’s crop of students scored lower on a basic exam than in past years. He’s heard from a social sciences instructor who felt that students this fall weren’t quite as ready to read at a college level than in past years.
This is my 31st and final year as a professor on the campus that Brush Creek runs through. It was UW-Center Richland when I started, then UW-Richland of the UW Colleges, and will end as UW-Platteville Richland. It was recently announced that in-person degree instructional programs at UW-Platteville Richland, about 60 miles northwest of Madison in Richland County, will cease as of July 1, 2023.
The University of Wisconsin System’s smallest campus next fall will no longer offer face-to-face instruction to students, with UW’s top leader citing low enrollment and financial pressures making the sustainability of the campus’ traditional education model “untenable.”
With enrollment declining at the University of Wisconsin System’s two-year branch schools, President Jay Rothman has ordered UW-Platteville to cease degree programs at its Richland Center campus.
Wisconsin’s $6.6 billion surplus is an unparalleled opportunity to shape state policy. Along with the predictable talk of tax cuts and general investments in education, roads and health care, Democratic leaders in Madison should pay particular attention to one of the oldest public institutions in the Dairy State: the University of Wisconsin System.
In a letter Tuesday to UW-Platteville Interim Chancellor Tammy Evetovich, System President Jay Rothman outlined a four-step plan for the Richland Center campus, which includes moving all instructional programs to either the Platteville or Baraboo campuses for fall 2023 while developing a plan to “maintain a suitable presence” at the Richland County campus through such things as enrichment programs or courses for adults.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman ordered UW-Platteville’s chancellor Tuesday to stop offering degree programs at the school’s Richland campus in the face of declining enrollment.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman ordered UW-Platteville’s interim chancellor Tuesday to stop offering degree programs at the school’s Richland campus in the face of declining enrollment. For students attending the school, the news is both surprising and disappointing.
Noted: Additionally, $174,000 in funding will go toward scholarships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Nursing to establish a pipeline for future school nurses.
UW-Madison in October installed naloxone kits in dorms and dining areas, in an effort to reverse overdoses. The kits, known as Nalox-ZONE boxes, contain nasal spray naloxone, instructions on how to administer it and a breathing mask.
Other campuses, starting last year with UW-Oshkosh, have installed the kits in an effort organized by Wisconsin Voices for Recovery. The parents of Cade Reddington, 18, of Waunakee, and Logan Rachwal, 19, of Pewaukee, UW-Milwaukee students who died from overdoses involving fentanyl last year, urged campus officials to make the kits widely available.
“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 University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire employee has filed a racial discrimination complaint that alleges she was harassed and demoted because she is white.
The complaint follows the firing of a former vice chancellor for equity, diversity, inclusion who alleges students and employees of color were opposed to white individuals having leadership roles in the campus’s multicultural affairs office.
But this is not just about one post-secondary system. Microcredentials are growing in other public higher education systems as well. The University of Wisconsin, Kansas State, and the University of Texas are but a few examples of other public systems where microcredentials are rapidly growing. This work is moving rapidly in the private higher-education space as well.
Program aims to boost confidence in women in male-dominated careers.
Quoted: In fact, the state’s higher education system is a major reason the industry is thriving, according to Dr. Zachary Morris, a researcher and associate professor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
He said colleges and universities throughout Wisconsin are producing the highly-skilled workers that the biohealth sector needs, and research being done at those institutions also is helping to strengthen the industry.
“The universities, through the faculty, are in many cases steering or developing innovative technologies that these companies are then helping to spin out and commercialize,” he said.
The University of Wisconsin System sent a survey to students on Monday looking for their feelings about the state of free speech on the system’s campuses across the state.
The survey had previously been planned for May, but objections from chancellors, including by UW-Whitewater Chancellor James Henderson, who criticized the survey when he resigned from his post, caused it to be delayed.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a search for a new provost, an administrative position ranking just second to the chancellor in terms of importance.
The current provost, John Karl Scholz, will serve until the end of the school year and then return to the economics department, where he has taught since 1988. A new provost is expected to start sometime next summer, UW-Madison announced Tuesday.
A random sample of students in the UW System will be asked to complete the survey, which includes questions about students’ attitudes toward free speech, viewpoint diversity, and self-censorship on campus.
UW-Madison upholds the consideration of race among many other factors in admissions.
The latest version of the survey asks students their perceptions of viewpoint diversity, self-censorship and freedom of expression on campus. Students and faculty previously feared Republican legislators could misuse its results, saying the survey comprised “leading questions” and signaled political interference in the System.
The survey, which is meant to gauge student attitudes toward free speech on campuses, will be sent to a random selection of students — anywhere from 2,500 to 7,500 at each of the 13 System universities — starting Monday. Researchers from the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, a unit of the System, are looking to gather 500 responses from each campus.
It looks as if the University of Wisconsin-Madison is getting ready to close down the School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, which has graduated almost 600 budding farmers after training them in grazing practices as well as business planning for their new operations.
The school was founded and directed by Dick Cates, a Spring Green beef farmer who also served on the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection’s citizen policy board and various state sustainability panels.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison was within its right to hide some negative comments from its social media platforms because the criticisms were off topic to the posts at hand, a federal judge ruled this month.
Noted: Over 270 sessions were offered at the conference, including a keynote address by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, one of the world’s most prolific educational researchers. Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita and former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor in Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The widening racial disparities between Blacks and whites is dramatic, noted Ladson-Billings, who pointed out that in 2019, about 30% of Black children lived in poverty, with 1 and 4 Black children facing severe food insecurity. With regard to public schools, she noted that 45% of Black students attend high-poverty schools compared to 8% of white children.
During the COVID pandemic, a number of Black children were only able to access the internet through their smart phones.
“Think about remote learning,” she said, adding that children struggled to receive their lessons via a small phone screen. “But that’s the reality.”
Additionally, Ladson-Billings noted that 75% of Black students who are considered eligible for advanced placement (AP) courses never take one, in part because so many of these students are enrolled in schools where these accelerated courses are not even offered.
“They’re bright enough, but there’s no access,” she said, adding that too many Black students are frequently discouraged from achieving their full potential by schoolteachers and administrators, even as suspension and expulsion rates for Black children steadily inclines.
Quoted: Administrators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are also coming up with ways to solve the current training problem, but they’re also beginning to worry about future recruitment.
Dr. Laura Jacques, an assistant professor and the director of medical student education at UW-Madison’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said the repercussions could be felt for years.
“I’m worried that we’re going to have a challenging time recruiting the best residents to our program because of these concerns, and not just for obstetrics and gynecology, but for all types of medicine,” she said.
In one of her first public appearances since being diagnosed with cancer this summer, former University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank received recognition from another Big Ten school with a room named in her honor.
Campaign spokesperson Anna Kelly said that Michels would work to “ensure that our education system is working” for all.
Noted: The state’s two other OB-GYN residency programs − at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee − are vulnerable as well.
An Aurora spokesperson said Thursday the hospital also plans to send OB-GYN residents out of state, though they would not provide specifics of the arrangement. A UW doctor said they are in the process of determining a course of action.
“We are committed to following the ACGME mandates of training our residents and putting out well-trained obstetrician gynecologists,” said Dr. Laura Jacques, an assistant professor and academic specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. “We are actively exploring options.”
Schools such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ohio University, University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Michigan are all encouraging students to choose a Halloween costume that does not appropriate another culture.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a webpage dedicated to “Halloween cultural awareness” which states that students should avoid “racist, crude, or culturally insensitive” costumes.
At the University of Wisconsin Madison, where the acceptance rate is about 60 percent, the admissions website states that the school’s holistic application process is designed to help identify “remarkable students” and “diversity in personal background and experience” and does not use “formulas or charts.”
A coalition of private universities in Wisconsin is canceling classes for students on election day as part of an effort to boost voter turnout. We talk about the “Why Bother, Wisconsin?” campaign, and hear why they want other universities to join them.
The tenth “Fill the Hill” fundraiser at the University of Wisconsin-Madison brought in more than $421,000 for various campus initiatives.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison lies on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona and boasts some stellar lakeshore trails, along with some notable historic buildings such as the Neo-Renaissance–style Memorial Union and the castle-like Red Gym.
Overall enrollment across Wisconsin colleges and universities fell around 3 percent this fall, according to preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Researchers say national enrollment declines have slowed to pre-pandemic, but they were surprised by the lack of a rebound.
According to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s SSTAR Lab (Student Success Through Applied Research), more than 715,000 Wisconsin residents owe an average of $32,230 in federal student loan debt.
As the demand for nurses grows across Wisconsin, nursing education programs are struggling to churn out enough graduates — but not for lack of applicants. Instead, schools are facing dwindling numbers of faculty and limited classroom space, forcing them to turn away prospective students.
Quoted: “To get standing, you have to prove that you’re harmed by these actions and so to prove that you’ve been harmed by canceling a loan is a really hard needle to thread,” UW-Madison professor Nick Hillman explained.
Hillman says the lawsuits are attacking the forgiveness plan from all sorts of angles to clear the legal standing hurdle and more lawsuits are expected to come now that the application process is officially open.
Out of the three that are currently still awaiting a court decision, Hillman thinks the one filed jointly by six states has the best chance to undo the forgiveness.
In May, Gov. Tony Evers awarded the System a $5 million grant from federal stimulus dollars to partner with telehealth company Mantra to provide virtual counseling and psychiatry appointments, a crisis helpline and a platform where students can do self-assessments, System Director of Student Behavioral Health John Achter said.
The student leader of the College Republicans chapter at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse resigned from her post this week after group members scrawled an antisemitic message on a campus sidewalk and promoted it on social media.
UW-La Crosse is at least the second Wisconsin school to be hit with antisemitic messages this school year.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison historian on Wednesday won one of the nation’s most prestigious awards, which comes with a no strings attached $800,000 stipend to spend however she sees fit.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named UW-Madison professor Monica Kim, 44, as one of 25 national recipients of the MacArthur fellowship. Also known as the “genius grant,” the awards are given annually to a select group of individuals across a range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity in their work and future ambitions.
Less than half of the University of Georgia’s applicants, 42%, were accepted this fall after the university admitted a historically low number in 2021 at 39%. It previously toted accepting over 40% of students without a test score of any kind. The University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin similarly let in less than half of the applicants. Ten years ago, however, all three of the schools accepted more than 60% of applicants.
The social media campaign aims to promote the FAFSA to Wisconsin high school seniors and prospective college students.
Bascom Hill will soon be covered in loads of plastic lawn flamingos because of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association’s (WFAA) 10th annual Fill the Hill event.
The University of Wisconsin System has been in a tuition freeze for residential undergraduate students since the 2013-14 school year, but tuition isn’t the only bill students must pay to attend college.
For instance, a recent study showed that 80% of all tenure-track faculty members in the United States derived from just 20% of PhD-granting institutions. What’s more, no historically Black colleges and universities were among that 20%. Indeed, one in eight tenure-track faculty members got their PhDs from either Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, or the University of Michigan.
NRC-funded efforts included a training institute last year at the University of Texas, Austin, where teachers of pre-kindergartners through fifth graders were schooled in “(Un)learning patterns of whiteness in literacy teaching.” In May, Stanford University’s Center for Latin American Studies sponsored a webinar about using picture books to initiate “conversations centered on advocacy for LGBT Latina/o(x) youth.” The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia hosted a graduate student who uses critical race theory in her research on Russia and Ukraine.
University of Wisconsin-Superior chemistry professor Michael Waxman has the reputation of a tough instructor. But this year he has students who might say something different.
In late February, Waxman was horrified by the destruction of homes and families in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He felt he had to do something to help.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison saw a substantial increase in first-year enrollment and a 5% increase in overall enrollment. However, while the University of Wisconsin System’s first-year enrollment is up, overall enrollment decreased by 1% this fall.
The University of Wisconsin System’s new tuition-waiver program aims to help the state compete for talent and fill critical worker shortages.
But financial aid applications determine eligibility, and Wisconsin ranks 38th in the nation for the percentage of high school seniors who file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
The University of Wisconsin System is making a new push to encourage more potential college students to apply for federal financial aid. The goal is to get more high school seniors from lower income families to consider enrolling at state universities and ensure qualification for a new tuition promise initiative.
The grants program was established in the 1980s to help minority students overcome barriers to receiving a bachelor’s degree. The University of Wisconsin System has a similar grant program for students that provides a maximum of $3,000 a year for those defined as minority students.
Kristen Roman, chief of police at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that for colleges, one of the advantages of having a police department is that officers are more familiar with the institution’s particulars.“
As a community member, I myself would rather have somebody in a police role who is invested and understands some of the unique challenges of my community,” said Roman, who serves as director-at-large of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators’ Board of Directors
The UW News Service launched last week, providing media packages to news outlets across Wisconsin.
Lawrence University in Appleton on Monday announced “Lawrence Advantage,” a program to use donated funds to “fully meet the demonstrated institutional need of students from Wisconsin and Illinois – the top two states represented among Lawrence’s incoming students,” according to a press release.
More new people signed up for college in the UW System this fall than in the past three years, but overall enrollment is down.
As declining enrollment continues to plague the University of Wisconsin System, UW-Green Bay is experiencing its seventh year of growth.
Based on preliminary data from the first day of classes, UW-Green Bay saw a 3% enrollment increase over last year among its four campuses despite a 1% decrease across the state’s public university system. After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting education, the system expected the drop.
