Quick Takes: Fall 2013

UW System President Kevin Reilly announced in July that he will step down at the end of the year. Reilly has led the twenty-six-campus System since September 2004. In January 2014, he will become a presidential adviser for leadership at the American Council on Education.

Paul DeLuca, the UW’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, announced that he will step down from those positions and return to the faculty. DeLuca, a professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health, has served as provost since June 2009.

CALS Communications

A team of food science students from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences reached the finals in a competition at the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists in May. The group invented a gluten-free, chocolate-and-raspberry frozen waffle.

Penguin Group

A Tale for the Time Being is the first novel selected by Go Big Read, UW–Madison’s common-reading program. Author Ruth Ozeki will visit campus this fall to meet with students and give a public talk on October 28 about the book, which draws on history, myth, quantum physics, and Zen philosophy.

UW Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka has received an $18 million grant to lead a study of deadly viruses, such as influenza, Ebola, and West Nile. The research group includes scientists in Madison; at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; and at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

UW alumni are among the best in the nation when it comes to re-paying student loans. According to the U.S. Department of Education, Badger grads had a default rate of just 1.16 percent in 2012, down from 1.82 percent in 2011 and well below the national average of 11 percent.

Jeff Miller

UW–Madison is Instagrammatic! The website Nitrogram rated the top seventy most popular universities on the social media photo-sharing site Instagram, and declared the UW the second most popular. Number one went to Boston University.

Jeff Miller

City of Madison and UW officials used a low-tech approach over the summer to get public feedback on reconstructing Library Mall: three chalkboards and supplies of chalk for passersby to share their suggestions. Ideas ranged from the serious (a bike lane) to the comical (a cheese fountain).

Published in the Fall 2013 issue