Quick Takes: Winter 2011

UW–Madison’s economic impact is more direct than educating the future workforce and inventing potential products. The university’s Department of Facilities Planning and Management notes that campus had $600 million in construction projects under way at the start of this academic year, creating an estimated 4,300 jobs.

The Law School’s Wisconsin Innocence Project earned two federal grants totaling $1 million for its work trying to overturn wrongful convictions.

The Daily Beast website ranked the UW as the second most beautiful school in the country. The top spot went to the University of Mississippi.

Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario is the 2011–12 selection for Go Big Read, a common-reading program in which the UW encourages the campus and community to read and talk about the same book. This year’s book tells the tale of a boy’s voyage from Honduras to the United States in search of his mother.

University Housing renamed Friedrick Hall after Vel Phillips LLB’51, the first African-American woman to graduate from the Law School. Built in 1976 to house a conference center for UW Extension, Friedrick Hall was converted to a residence hall in 2008. Extension intends to honor the building’s former namesake, Jacob Friedrick, with a display at its Lowell Conference Center.

The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery has named its new director. David Krakauer, former head of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, takes over leadership from John Wiley MS’65, PhD’68, interim director and former UW chancellor, in November. The institute is the public half of a public-private partnership (along with the Morgridge Institute for Research) for research in the biosciences.

UW–Madison has declared 2011–12 the Year of the Wisconsin Idea to celebrate ways that UW teaching, research, outreach, and public service improve the lives of people everywhere. Find out more at wisconsinidea.wisc.edu/yowi.

Published in the Winter 2011 issue