Very few students are taking advantage of a new law that allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at University of Wisconsin System schools, according to university data...Only two such students at UW-Madison filed paperwork for resident tuition, four at UW-Oshkosh, one at UW-Whitewater and one at UW-Stevens Point, according to information from those universities. There were none at UW-La Crosse...

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has announced in a news release that a $5.5 million gift from the family of the late Fort Howard Paper Co. founder Austin E. Cofrin will result in creation of the University’s second fully endowed chair, a permanent endowment to fund academic enhancements, and a new name for the school’s business program. It is the largest academic gift in school history...

The push is on to convince the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that the best location for its new School of Freshwater Sciences is near the university’s existing Great Lakes Water Institute on East Greenfield Avenue. Milwaukee officials are scrambling to find grants, loans and other sources of public funding that can be earmarked for developing the School of Freshwater Sciences near the Greenfield Avenue location...

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is establishing an institute for American Indian education. It's named for a Stockbridge Mohican woman Electa Quinney, who is also a Wisconsin educator...

The Nelson Institutes Center for Culture, History, and Environment at the University of Wisconsin is hosting a free environmental film festival starting November 6th...Festival director Gregg Mitman says he hopes to make it a national model, using film to inspire community action on issues like food, health, energy, climate and bio diversity...

...It's an appropriate production to open the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley's 2009-10 theater season in a new facility, say those involved in staging the production in the Lucia Baehman Theatre inside the recently opened Communication Arts Center on campus. The show is the center's first full-scale theatrical production...

The nursing program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Marshfield site is now requiring students to become certified nursing assistants before stepping through their doors. To help students make that step, UW-Marshfield/Wood County is now offering a 120-hour, three-credit CNA course...

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is preparing to formally welcome its new chancellor with a series of events next week...

UW-Madison faculty, staff and students continued to scrutinize Provost Paul DeLuca’s graduate school restructuring proposal at his fifth and final town hall meeting Friday, while Chancellor Biddy Martin offered several reassurances...

The last of five town hall meetings for the proposed restructuring of the graduate school brought hundreds of faculty and community members to the Humanities building Friday. Also present for the first time were Chancellor Biddy Martin and Dean of the Graduate school Martin Cadwallader. Though their roles seemed to be largely observant, Martin did weigh in on the debate on several occasions, particularly when the future and health of the humanities under the restructure were questioned...

The Madison Initiative for Undergraduates took a meaningful step forward Friday when the Madison Initiative Student Board and Madison Initiative Oversight Committee presented their reviews and ratings for the first 27 accepted proposals to the chancellor and provost...

Few topics elicit more heated discussion among University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty leaders than the school's athletic department. And to a certain degree, says David McDonald, that's understandable...Although the athletic department is mostly a self-sustaining entity - thanks in large part to ticket sales, gift funds from boosters and distributions in shared revenues from the Big Ten Conference - its $83 million operating budget nonetheless is an eye-opener...

The UW-Milwaukee has established an academic agreement with the University of Bialystok as part of an ongoing dialogue with universities abroad. The University of Bialystok, established in 1997, has 15,000 students. The university was operating as a division of the University of Warszawa for 30 years prior to 1997. The move continues a long relationship, as Milwaukee has been involved in Poland for nearly 20 years...

Despite some inconvenience to the public, state officials say mandated employee furlough days have gone according to plan...That means the Department of Motor Vehicles, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the Green Bay Correctional Institution, among other state agencies, must find ways to schedule time off for hundreds of workers...

When state Department of Natural Resources Secretary Scott Hassett resigned suddenly in the summer of 2007, Gov. Jim Doyle's office announced Hassett was leaving to "write, travel and consult on environmental and regulatory issues." Privately, however, Hassett told a different story: That Doyle, a fellow Democrat, forced him out of the top spot at the DNR because of the agency's insistence that the state clean up UW-Madison's coal-burning Charter Street heating plant - a move now expected to cost Wisconsin more than $200 million...

Textbooks can put great strain on a student’s budget. But students receiving financial aid at Williams College will soon be able to swipe their identification cards and get their books free. The college has announced a new procedure, effective next February, by which students receiving financial assistance will have no out-of-pocket cost for textbooks...

Freshman orientation is over. The fall tuition bills have most likely been settled, and your first-year college student is deep into her first semester of classes. So the struggle with financial aid forms and tax documents and expected family contributions is over, right? College financial aid counselors want students and parents to know that that is definitely not the case...

...The federal Student Support Services program, launched during the Nixon administration, is part of a larger effort to help disadvantaged students overcome academic and cultural barriers to success in higher education. The program is part of TRIO, a group of national initiatives that have proven their ability to raise the odds that a disadvantaged student will stay in college, get good grades and graduate. Yet supporters say the programs have languished through years of fiscal neglect...

The recent arrest of a UCLA student in the brutal stabbing of a classmate in a campus chemistry lab has again focused attention on an issue that gripped the nation after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech: the mental health of troubled college students...Since then, campuses in California and around the country say they watch their students ever more closely for signs of possible mental illness or other problems. They have set up teams of counselors, police and administrators to screen reports about potentially troubled students and to discuss treatment or discipline. And many colleges are prepared to act more quickly than in the past, particularly if there is any explicit warning of violence, college mental health and other experts say...

The financial meltdown that has caused seismic upheavals in many other corners of the economy hasn't changed much about how colleges operate. College leaders may be thinking about new strategies for doing more with less, and a few are actually putting those new approaches into practice. But as the country passes the first year of a supposed New Normal, few signs of revolutionary change are apparent...

Colleges are organizing their efforts to improve retention, but the resources they are using may not be equal to the task. That's the assessment Jerome A. Lucido, vice provost for enrollment policy and management at the University of Southern California, shared at a session of the College Board Forum here on Friday...