The Board of Regents honored two professors and an academic department at three University of Wisconsin System universities with their 2009 Teaching Excellence awards...

UW-Madison and other UW System schools may receive grants or funding for job-related initiatives if a new bill introduced by Senate Democrats makes it to the floor in the next legislative session. The bill, co-authored by state Sen. Julie Lassa, D-Stevens Point, and state Sen. Pat Kreitlow, D-Chippewa Falls, focuses on expanding tax credit opportunities to businesses and offering grants aimed at education and workforce training. The Connecting, Opportunity, Research, and Entrepreneurship Jobs Act may offer grants to campuses within the UW System which intend to “commercialize new technologies faster,” according to a statement...

...Holland works at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where about 90 percent of all staff are white. But that percentage may be about to drop. UW-L has launched two initiatives this year to recruit more diverse faculty and staff, said Carmen Wilson, special assistant to the chancellor and affirmative action officer. There's more opportunity to pursue diversity thanks to a Growth, Quality and Access plan approved in December 2007. It increased tuition to fund more staff positions and bring in more students...

The proposed tuition increase at UW-Eau Claire could cost students an additional $1,500 annually phased in over four years, Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich said Monday...The proposal will go before the Student Senate in December, according to university officials. If approved by elected student leaders, it will then go to the Regents for consideration in February...

A University of Wisconsin(-Parkside) professor is opening his classroom to the public this month, to hear stories about the Iraq War from peace activists, an Iraqi refugee and a military journalist...

Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall effectively crumbled, taking with it the iron curtain that closed off Communist Eastern Europe from the rest of the world. Two professors at UW-Oshkosh were there that day in 1989, one on the Western side, the other on the Eastern...

Some college groups have called for rallies today to call attention to concerns amid record enrollments amid diminished campus resources across the country. One of 10 demonstrations planned nationwide is scheduled to run from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. outside the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Chapman Hall...About 15 student, faculty and staff organizations have formed the UWM Education Rights Campaign to present informational picketing and speeches at the rally...

...Polzin, the son of George and Marie Polzin of Cadott, was one of four summer interns for the National Farmers Union...Polzin, 23, a fourth-year student majoring in dairy science and agricultural business at UW-River Falls, saw the job as a way to study another facet of U.S. agriculture...

...This is a column in praise of two public institutions -- one that solicits and deserves a lot of praise and one that's sometimes taken for granted: public radio and the Cooperative Extension Service, a program of the University of Wisconsin-Extension...

The latest project in UW-Stout’s master campus plan is well underway in North Menomonie. Not only is the Hovlid Hall dormitory under renovation, it will also feature the new dining hall addition seen under construction here...

With UW-Madison moving forward on a new diversity initiative, officials are examining the effectiveness of past efforts such as Plan 2008...But was Plan 2008 successful overall?  The results varied.  The APA said although the plan saw an increase in minority students, it was not supported with an increase in financial aid.  And although there was an increase in hired minority staff, their tenures were not established at a higher rate...

In one weekend, the University of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood County campus was host to the cultures of both India and Germany. On Oct. 24, Central Wisconsin residents celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of light...Late that night, the Berliner Cappella, a 65-member choir from Germany, rolled into town...

Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill Monday allowing teachers to be evaluated - but not disciplined or dismissed - based on student performance. The bill, along with others Doyle signed Monday, improves Wisconsin's chances of landing a share of $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top funds...The other bills Doyle signed will: Require the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Technical College System and the Department of Public Instruction to establish a system to track student data from preschool programs through postsecondary education...

Rob Meyer can't help but get excited when he hears President Barack Obama talking about the need for states to start measuring whether their teachers, schools and districts are doing enough to help students succeed. "What he's talking about is what we are doing," says Meyer, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Value-Added Research Center...Crunching numbers and producing statistical models that measure these things is what Meyer and his staff of 50 educators, researchers and various stakeholders do at the Value-Added Research Center...

...Fifty years later, the ACT is still a milestone event for teens planning for college and careers, but even Brusewitz is surprised at how seriously college-bound students and their parents pursue high scores today, from taking it multiple times to getting extra tutoring to bring their scores up...

The state legislature closed out its fall session early Friday morning with a late blitz of business that helped make the state eligible for a chunk of the $4.5 billion federal Race to the Top education grants...While we were supportive of the change – no sense in missing out on Obama bucks – we did so with some reservation. First, the inclusion of student test scores in teacher evaluation should be a local decision to be determined through the collective bargaining process, not a blanket mandate from the state. Second, the state must not go down the path of allowing test scores to be used in teacher discipline or termination...

Schools are being given a chance for the first time to use student tests to help evaluate teachers, but the state's school boards group is telling administrators not to try it...

...But here and elsewhere across the landscape of big-time, big-budgeted college athletics, these are sensitive times. Higher education is in crisis, staggered by a depressed economy that has shrunk state appropriations, endowments and overall institutional budgets...Most sports programs, though, spend on. Starting with football coaches' salaries...

The American Association of University Professors is embarking on a campaign to protect academic freedom at public colleges in response to recent federal-court decisions seen as eroding faculty members' speech rights. The new campaign urges national faculty unions and higher-education associations, as well as individual public colleges' faculty groups and administrators, to push such institutions to adopt policies broadly protecting faculty speech dealing with academic matters, institutional governance, teaching, research, and issues outside the workplace...