At least half of the citizen members on the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents would have to come from different parts of the state under a bill passed by the Legislature. Fourteen citizen members currently serve on the board. The bill would carve the state into seven geographic districts. At least one citizen member would have to live in each district. The governor would have to begin making appointments to meet the new standards in 2012. Both the Senate and Assembly passed the measure Thursday. It now heads to Gov. Jim Doyle for his consideration.

In 1959, a small group of about 20 high school girls met with women researchers at UW-Madison to learn about science careers. Then, it was rare to see a woman in a lab coat on college campuses...Fifty years later, the program is still going strong. Now called Expanding Your Horizons, it has grown and evolved over the years. The conference will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Saturday at UW-Madison...

Jeremi Suri is on a mission. He wants the UW-Madison, where he's a rising-star history professor, to be bolder, more daring, more adept at reaching out. Unafraid of controversy. More, come to think of it, like Suri himself...On campus, there is much talk about the Wisconsin Idea — making the boundaries of the university as wide as the boundaries of the state — and plenty of good work that does happen. Yet there's also institutional conservatism in some quarters, a sense that coasting on tradition is good enough. For Suri, "good enough" doesn't cut it...

Timothy Baker has a problem with psychology today. He thinks it bears a dangerous resemblance to the medicine of yesteryear: anecdotal, unscientific, as likely to hurt as help. "[D]espite compelling research support for the merits of specific interventions for specific problems, clinical psychology, as a field, has failed to embrace these treatments," writes Baker, a professor of medicine at the UW-Madison's School of Medicine and Public Health, in a paper that's generating national attention and controversy...

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has said he will declare next Tuesday "On, Wisconsin!" Day, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first performance of the song...

Andy Dodge was surprised by the food prices at Drumlin Hall, the dining facility near his dorm on the UW-Whitewater campus. The freshman journalism major uses the meal plan on his HawkCard to purchase breakfast, lunch and dinner and dorm room snacks and groceries...He compared prices of menu items and groceries at Drumlin Hall to those at local fast-food restaurants and big-box retailers...But he found a big difference in the prices of grocery items...

Despite the current state of the economy, the value of scholarships distributed this year by the UW-Oshkosh Foundation was only 14 percent lower than the value of scholarships distributed in the years prior to the economic downturn. During the 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years, the value of scholarships issued by the foundation averaged $599,000 per year.  This year, the foundation will distribute $515,000 in scholarships...

UW-River Falls, along with three other UW System schools, is participating in a campus-wide survey to assess the attitudes of students and staff towards the University environment. The Campus Climate Survey is available now until the end of this semester and focuses on questions that will provide information to help the University ensure that the environment is conducive to working, living and learning...

Some UW-Stout students are doing their part to help children in war-torn northern Uganda...Students staffing the table are accepting $10 donations for T-shirts imprinted with "Invisible Children" and "Find Them: Invisible Children"...

Busy adults in the area will have a new opportunity to earn a degree at UW-Baraboo/Sauk County starting in January, as the campus unrolls a flexible "FastTrack" program to improve access for nontraditional students. The program, which will provide a two-year track to the campus associate’s degree with a business emphasis, will offer students condensed classes only seven to eight weeks long, combining evening meetings with online interaction and materials, UW-BSC Returning Adult Advisor Bobbie Boettcher said...

...Kudos to UW Oshkosh for beginning work on a campus transportation plan as part of its sustainability efforts. Schreiber Anderson Associates (SAA) of Madison will provide technical assistance to help the University improve bicycle and pedestrian facilities on campus. SAA is also working with the city of Oshkosh to update the city's Pedestrian and Bicycle Circulation Plan.It is a positive step because selecting the same firm will improve integration of planning and coordination between the city and university...

Student test data can be used to evaluate performance but not to discipline or dismiss teacher, under a bill lawmakers forwarded to Gov. Jim Doyle early Friday. Doyle is expected to sign the measure along with other education-related measures approved by the Legislature. The Senate passed the bill on test data Thursday and the Assembly narrowly signed off on it at 3:30 a.m. Friday after meeting behind closed doors about the bill for three hours. Both houses are controlled by Doyle’s fellow Democrats...

The Labor Department's report on jobs today shows continuation of a trend we spotted last month: College grads are becoming unemployed at a faster rate than high school dropouts...

...Teachers say failure is something so-called Gen Y students want to hear more about. "They are very concerned with failure," said Rich Honack, a lecturer at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and expert in generational cultures. Current 20-somethings "have always succeeded. They've always gotten trophies when they go out for a sports team. They've always gotten 'A's. Their parents have told them be the best and protected them from failure." But in a way that makes failure all the more terrifying...

"Dumb public policies," like mandatory-sentencing laws that drive up states' costs for prisons and leave less for education, may be part of the reason colleges are in such financial straits, the leader of the California State University system said at a forum here on Thursday, but that's just a piece of the problem. The bigger issue is that most colleges are too concerned with trying to compete for prestige rather than serve their students and their communities, said Cal State's chancellor, Charles B. Reed...

...Forty-seven percent of Canadians have a postsecondary degree of some kind, compared to 39 percent of Americans, and the numbers look worse (or better, if you're Canadian) when you look at citizens aged 25 to 34, as 55 percent of Canadians and 39 percent of Americans in that group have degrees (placing the U.S. 10th). Why is that so? Several reasons, structural, societal and otherwise, the Canadian researchers asserted...