Category Employee News
UW botanist harnesses the grid to illuminate crop growth
With help from the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC), botany Professor Edgar Spalding is applying this astronomical sense of scale to our understanding of corn. Spalding uses the HTC capabilities pioneered by Miron Livny, Morgridge Institute for Research chief technology officer, to quantify the incredibly complex process of corn growth from seed to vigorous seedling — not just one at a time, but over thousands of samples. Read More
Innovative teaching practices encourage students in STEM
Like many seniors majoring in biology, Christian Hernandez is pursuing the pre-med track. However, he nearly didn’t make it past his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison As a Latino first-generation college student, Hernandez says he had no role models to help him achieve his career goal: to change the face of medicine in the United States. But then he took Physiology 335. Read More
Learning lessons by following Madison’s foxes and coyotes
Last year, a family of foxes — complete with roly-poly kits — took up residence on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus and made the city its playground. With winter in full swing, the foxes and their larger dog-like counterparts, coyotes, are out there again, roaming the wilder (and often not so wild) parts of the city and campus. This year, David Drake, a UW–Madison associate professor of forest and wildlife ecology, is welcoming the public to join him and his research team as they go out and radio collar the animals in an effort to track and better understand these urban canids. Read More
UW officials: Teaching is one important part of faculty duties
Teaching is a vital part of the role of faculty and instructional staff. But the job includes many other worthy activities, UW–Madison officials noted Wednesday in response to suggestions from Gov. Scott Walker about increasing faculty workload. Read More
Last stand of the President’s Oak: A tree’s life remembered
After a tall and green life, Quercus macrocarpa, better known to friends as the President’s Oak, was taken down on Jan. 14, 2015, following a lengthy illness. Read More
South Madison Partnership opens for business
The UW South Madison Partnership is an important new resource for encouraging mutually beneficial relationships between the university and the South Madison community. Read More
New $3M distinguished chair at UW–Madison honors influential alumnus
A newly established professorship will allow the University of Wisconsin–Madison to hire new faculty to build upon its widely recognized leadership in chemical and biological engineering. Supported by a $3 million commitment from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the Ernest Micek Distinguished Chair in Chemical and Biological Engineering will honor a UW–Madison graduate with a long record of service to UW–Madison. Read More
Calculating the future of solar-fuel refineries
A team of University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers has developed a new tool to help plot the future of solar fuels. In a paper recently published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, a team led by chemical and biological engineering Professors Christos Maravelias and George Huber outlined a tool to help engineers better gauge the overall yield, efficiency and costs associated with scaling solar-fuel production processes up into large-scale refineries. Read More
Study shows Brazil’s Soy Moratorium still needed to preserve Amazon
Today, fewer chicken nuggets can trace their roots to cleared Amazon rain forest. Read More
UW–Madison offers free Leopold’s land ethic online course and February event
The University of Wisconsin–Madison will offer its next round of six Massive Open Online Courses beginning Jan. 26 with “The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold and Conservation.” MOOCs are free online, noncredit learning experiences that allow people from around the globe to participate. Participants watch educational videos, engage in discussion forums, read articles and often take quizzes or complete educational activities. More than 135,000 registrants from approximately 140 countries and all 50 states signed up for UW–Madison’s previous phase one pilot of four courses. Read More
UW-Madison to participate in national sexual assault climate survey
Taking action in response to concerns about sexual assault, UW–Madison will take part in a national effort to gather data on the campus climate as it relates to sexual violence. Read More
Rare neurological disease shines light on health of essential nerve cells
Ian Duncan is a Scotsman with the iron discipline and stamina of a competitive marathoner, triathlete and cross-country skier. As a neuroscientist at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he's applied his tenacity to a rare genetic disorder. Read More
Two Administrative Improvement Award teams will receive supplemental funding from campus
Two teams have been chosen to receive funds that will support initiatives related to projects that won UW–Madison’s 2014 Administrative Improvement Awards. These supplements are a new component of the Administrative Improvement Awards, which were launched in 2013 to recognize the essential role of administrative work and a culture of continuous improvement in the success of university missions. Team recipients of the 2014 awards were eligible to apply for supplemental investment funds. Read More
Doing it for the team: Business study tests motivational techniques
Noah Lim, an associate marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, is shedding light on sales incentives that could help managers devise incentive programs with better returns on investment. Read More
Multicultural Student Center welcomes conversation
UW-Madison, like many communities, is grappling with how to promote such a dialogue in the wake of events in Ferguson, Staten Island and elsewhere. And the Multicultural Student Center offers a safe place to have those complicated conversations, says director Joshua Moon Johnson. Read More
Outsized attendance marks first Conversation on Diversity and Inclusion
Organizers of the first Conversation on Diversity and Inclusion hoped that around 200 people might show up to the discussion, held Tuesday afternoon in Union South’s Varsity Hall. Nearly twice that number attended. Read More
UW experts forecasting 2015 Wisconsin agriculture trends
In 2014, the total net farm income in Wisconsin reached an all-time high of more than $4 billion, but agricultural experts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are predicting some changes in 2015. Bruce Jones, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, will be among a handful of UW–Madison and UW-Extension experts to recap the status of Wisconsin’s agricultural enterprise in 2014 and discuss trends developing for 2015 at the Wisconsin Agricultural Economic Outlook Forum on Wednesday, Jan. 21. Read More