Quick Takes: Fall 2012

In an effort to make a UW education more accessible and affordable, UW System officials and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced a plan to create a UW Flexible Degree. Aimed at adults already in the workforce, the program would leverage online resources and allow students to receive credit for skills they’ve already learned in school or on the job.

Three UW faculty members held key roles in the search to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, announced in July: physics professors Sau Lan Wu and Wesley Smith and computer science professor Miron Livny. The experiments involved thousands of scientists at the subterranean CERN laboratory in Switzerland. First hypothesized in 1960, the Higgs boson is the subatomic particle that is believed to give mass to matter.

Dejope Hall, courtesy University Housing

The UW’s newest residence hall, Dejope, opened in August in the Lakeshore area. Dejope is a Ho-Chunk word meaning four lakes — a reference to Lakes Mendota, Monona, Waubesa, and Kegonsa. The new hall is home to more than 400 students, and it’s the first new hall in the Lakeshore neighborhood since the Elm Drive units opened in 1959.

Lawrence Landweber, emeritus professor of computer science, was inducted into the newly created Internet Hall of Fame. In the 1970s, Landweber helped establish TheoryNet and CSNET (Computer Science Network). He was one of thirty-three people in the Hall of Fame’s inaugural class. Find out more at www.internethalloffame.org.

James Ridge in Richard III, 2012, Carissa Dixon, American Players Theatre

Physicians and therapists from the UW’s Voice and Swallow Clinic took a peek at some professional pipes when they examined actors from the renowned Spring Green, Wisconsin, troupe American Players Theatre. The clinicians performed baseline strobo-scopies on the actors — video recordings of their vocal cords.

The Morgridge Institute for Research has named James Dahlberg, an emeritus professor of biomolecular chemistry, as interim director, following the departure of Sangtae Kim. The Morgridge Institute is the private half of the public-private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which opened in December 2010 and seeks to facilitate research collaborations across the fields of biology, computer science, and bioengineering.

In spring, the Associated Students of Madison, the UW’s student government, announced the creation of the Campus Idea Scholarship. Students could receive up to $3,000 for proposing the best solution to a problem they identify on campus.

UW is #1 . . . in study time. Bryce Richter.

The UW ranks number one in the nation for time that students spend studying, according to a survey published in the Washington Post. UW Freshmen hit the books for 20 hours a week, while seniors typically spend 18 hours a week in study. The national average among college students is 15 hours.

Published in the Fall 2012 issue