Gov. Jim Doyle has appointed an Eau Claire lawyer to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents. Doyle's appointment of Edmund Manydeeds is being praised by lawmakers from northwestern Wisconsin, who have complained their area lacks adequate representation on the board that governs state universities...Manydeeds, a trial lawyer who has served on the governor's judicial selection committee, will replace Eileen Connolly-Keesler of Neenah. Her term expires May 1. Separately, Doyle reappointed Wausau lawyer Mark Bradley to a second seven-year term.

Gov. Jim Doyle has re-appointed Wausau resident Mark Bradley to the University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents. Bradley, who has served on the Board of Regents since 2003, will serve a term that expires May 1, 2017...

Diogenes can put down his lantern. A recent deposition secures former UW Chancellor John Wiley's reputation as an honest man. The deposition was taken Feb. 16 as part of a lawsuit filed by the owners of Brothers Bar&Grill against the UW Board of Regents. The owners, Marc and Eric Fortney, are trying to block the regents' attempt to seize their property through condemnation; the UW wants to use the property for a future School of Music...

Faculty at University of Wisconsin campuses in Eau Claire and Superior could be the first to form unions under a new law giving academic workers that right, organizers said Wednesday. Organizers on both campuses said they collected cards from 70 percent or more of faculty members saying they wanted to form unions affiliated with AFT-Wisconsin. They have asked the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission to verify that the response meets the 30 percent threshold required and to set a date for elections, which could occur as early as May...

The National Science Foundation has awarded $675,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Marquette University to form an Industry&University Cooperative Research Center over the next five years focused on freshwater research, UWM said Thursday in a news release...

Back in my college days, the campus protests were usually against apartheid and for disinvesting from South Africa...When a group of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students clashed with police and security outside a campus office last week, it was a reminder of the days when it was the norm for college students to protest...

Wisconsin companies hoping to develop their export business could receive help from a partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the state Department of Commerce. The university’s Global Business Resource Center will collaborate with the state Bureau of Export Development to help Wisconsin businesses that want to gain a share of the fast-growing global marketplace. UW-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer and Commerce Secretary Richard Leinenkugel announced the export development agreement Wednesday...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan will deliver a commencement speech to University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates this spring. The university announced Wednesday that Duncan will speak at the morning commencement on May 15 at the Kohl Center...

UW-Madison is partnering with some of the world’s leading business schools to create a first-of-its-kind graduate degree in global real estate. The unique model for the new Global Real Estate Master will start American and foreign students at one of three international schools and then bring all the participants together for a final semester at the Wisconsin School of Business at UW-Madison...

It was the video that stunned Milwaukee: 16 people detained and 15 arrested during an afternoon rally at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But senior Rachel Mattesen says the video doesn't tell the whole story...

Joel Lee Hoffman was already wearing blue rubber gloves when he knocked on the door of a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student's apartment last month, walked inside and began to sexually assault the woman, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday...

Preliminary discussions regarding the installation of a liberal studies program in the University of Wisconsin’s College of Letters and Sciences began Monday, although UW officials said no concrete decisions have been made. Michael Morgan, UW professor and chair of the Curriculum Committee, said the proposed major would entail taking a wide variety of more general classes within L&S instead of specializing in one specific field. The conversation started from a similar liberal studies major proposal at UW-Eau Claire...

Class registration for fall semester 2010 is about to change with the introduction of a new software program. A project that started about three years ago is coming to fruition as Learning Technology Services and the Registrar office work together to implement a new registration software. Oracle's PeopleSoft Campus Solutions software or CampS, is a similar program used on other UW campuses...

A bill in the state Legislature would restore some college tuition benefits for Wisconsin veterans that were eliminated in the latest state budget. Under legislation sponsored by Rep. Steve Hilgenberg, D-Dodgeville, some state veterans who attend Wisconsin public colleges and universities would be eligible for roughly six years of college tuition-free, an increase from about four years under current state law...

With tuition costs climbing and family pocketbooks stretched thin by the recession, making the right college decision up front is more important than ever. For students still undecided, the Fox Valley College Fair may offer some options...

What was a year ago an emerging idea about how to reduce college costs and better serve students has begun to take hold at colleges across the United States, as more institutions introduce three-year bachelor’s degrees. On Wednesday, Stanley Ikenberry, interim president of the University of Illinois, said that the university had begun studying whether it would make sense to offer three-year bachelor’s degrees and would release a report in six months. In just the past month, Arcadia University, Holy Family University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and, in partnership, Georgia Perimeter College and Georgia Southwestern State University have all introduced formal three-year programs that will begin this fall...

With Democratic Congressional leaders and the White House struggling on Wednesday to finalize the details of major health care legislation, House Democrats were desperately trying to prevent another of President Obama's  top legislative priorities – an ambitious overhaul of student loan programs – from becoming a casualty of the health care battle...

...A new study points to another factor: the role of black college instructors in encouraging black science students to persist as science majors. The study finds a statistically significant relationship between black students who plan to be a science major having at least one black science instructor as freshmen and then sticking to their plans. The finding could be significant because many students (in particular members of under-represented minority groups) who start off as science majors fail to continue on that path -- so a change in retention of science majors could have a major impact...

A year-long effort to lay out the first national standards for schoolchildren in the USA got a full-scale airing Wednesday, as groups developing the measures posted detailed drafts of math and English standards online...The move comes as education reformers and lawmakers complain that many states have watered-down expectations in the face of a decade-long federal push to get greater percentages of students scoring higher on state skills tests...

The National Science Foundation is re-evaluating its approach to helping minority college students, proposing a consolidation of programs that currently assist specific racial and ethnic groups. The new direction was set out by the Obama administration in its budget recommendatino for the 2011 fiscal year, which calls for the outright elimination of three NSF programs: the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation, and the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program. In place of those programs, the science foundation would get $103-million to run a program called Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM, in which "STEM" refers to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics...

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn pitched a 33 percent income tax increase Wednesday, framing the debate as a choice between finding more money or hurting schoolchildren. But the governor's challenge to lawmakers immediately ran into Republican criticism that Quinn is holding students hostage and into a Democratic dose of political reality...

Community college advocates are encouraging their constituents to put aside their minor disagreements about the structure of the American Graduation Initiative for the moment and lobby collectively for its quick passage, now that it may be considered alongside healthcare reform via the contentious budget reconciliation process...

...While the energy-services industry has had a successful record in higher education for many years, stories like this one serve as timely cautionary tales. With dwindling state resources, tight budgets, and a renewed focus on energy efficiency, more colleges are turning to energy-services companies, commonly known as ESCO's, for facilities projects. At the same time, companies that have not traditionally worked as ESCO's are joining that market, raising risks that colleges will be stuck with deals that overpromise and underdeliver...