How widespread is harassment in academia?

On average, 50 percent of women faculty [in science] have experienced sexual harassment. Between 30 and 50 percent of [all] undergraduate women have experienced sexual harassment, [according to recent studies].

Why is harassment so common?

[Sexual harassment] is about abuse of power. And in science, you have very strong power differentials between the primary investigator, who has access to the grant funding, and students. There’s also a very tight mentoring model. A graduate student is dependent on one person for research funding, which [becomes] tuition; a stipend, which is rent; and access to specialized instrumentation, field sites, and letters of recommendation. We might spend a lot of time in the lab after hours or in the field in remote areas with a small number of people. Sometimes those work–life boundaries are blurred in science.

How does it compromise the research?

The way we treat people is affecting their quality of data. Some people are afraid to go to the lab and collect data. I can’t imagine being out in the field and thinking, “I don’t want to go over there, because then I’m going to be with this person, and I’m afraid of what they’re going to do to me.” How is that not affecting the science? I always tell my students: don’t do important tasks in the lab when you’re tired, because your brain is not thinking clearly. It’s easy to make a mistake. Similarly, [harassment] is going to affect the decisions you’re making.

How can the sciences combat this issue?

We need to have real, professional consequences. Even when accused faculty are encouraged to resign, they’ll often get hired by another university with a higher salary. It’s really important for funding agencies to say, “We’re not going to give you a $1 million grant if you keep harassing students,” and for a professional society to say, “We’re not going to bestow honors or awards on you.” But we’re trying to make [faculty members] realize that it is their responsibility to intervene and check colleagues’ inappropriate comments, because that’s how a lot of harassment starts.

He stressed the o in opinion too much. He drew out the a in bag. He used strange words like bubbler when he was thirsty.

What was a Wisconsin guy — let alone one raised in a big family with a passion for fishing and the Green Bay Packers — to do? Ditch the accent to become more marketable?

Let’s just say Berens did the opposite, and the internet is grateful.

• • •

In June 2017, Berens posted a short video online that he called the “Manitowoc Minute.” Wearing a camouflage jacket that he stole from his dad and sitting at a bare-bones “news” desk, he gave a shout-out to a bait shop in Plover and poked fun at Stevens Point before getting into the headlines: the misconception held by some Americans that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, President Trump’s latest approval rating, and Bill Cosby’s mistrial. Each bit of news served as a setup for a joke, and Berens delivered it all in his thickest Wisconsin accent.

Peppered with comments that would soon become his catchphrases — “Ohmygosh,” “Holy smokes,” and “Keep ’er movin’ ” — he ended with a heartfelt wish — “I hope this was the best minute of your life” — and a none-too-subtle plug for the Packers and a dig at the Chicago Bears.

To date, that first episode has racked up more than a half million views on Facebook, but it almost didn’t happen.

“I was almost hesitant to release it, like, I don’t know that people want to see this,” Berens says. “And then I put it out, and it did well, and then I thought, well, I guess I’m going to do a second episode.”

And he did. And a third and a fourth and another and another each Monday, serving up a mix of headlines from his home state and beyond with a hearty dose of Wisconsin charm. The show, with Berens a constant as the affable host, has garnered fans around the world, inspired a collection of Manitowoc Minute merchandise, and even sparked a tour of sold-out live shows across Wisconsin. • • •

Before Wisconsin culture became the bread and butter of his comedy career, Berens lived it as a kid. The second oldest of 12 siblings, he grew up in New Berlin and Elm Grove, with frequent trips up to Fond du Lac to visit his grandparents. He loved the Packers, waterskiing, hunting, and public-access fishing shows.

At the UW he dabbled in music — “guitar, mandolin, kind of folk stuff,” he says — playing covers and original songs at coffee shop open mics and the Memorial Union Terrace.

During the 2008 presidential election, Berens got a gig with MTV’s Choose or Lose campaign, which deployed “citizen journalists” across the country to serve as correspondents. It opened his eyes to less formal, more entertainment-focused modes of reporting.

After graduating, Berens embarked on a career that took him around the country and had him working as a correspondent for a millennial-focused news website; a reporter and host for a Dallas television station, where he won an Emmy; and a host for entertainment and sports outlets in Los Angeles.

All the while, comedy brewed in the background. Berens had been doing stand-up and writing when he posted a video online in 2016 called “If Jack Dawson Really Was from Wisconsin,” dubbing in his own voice for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Titanic character, said to be from Chippewa Falls, to give him a more “accurate” way of speaking. It’s been viewed more than 13 million times.

The success of the video, as well as how audiences responded when he revealed his exaggerated accent in stand-up, reassured him that the world was ready for more Wisconsin. • • •

To create each episode of the Manitowoc Minute, Berens culls headlines from politics to sports to pop culture. “And that really actually helps with joke writing,” he says. “The news is basically your setup. Every day you have new setups. So it does help to be a little bit of a sponge for pop culture.”

Occasionally he goes out into the field for a segment. He’s gone fishing with his unamused father, water-skied in the summer, downhill skied in the winter, and taken a yoga class with a bottle of beer perched next to his mat. And while in Madison for a performance at the Wisconsin Union Theater in January, he stopped by the state capitol.

“I went to the capitol expecting to hop on a tour or something,” he says, “and ended up really lobbying to get a bipartisan deal done to just change the Wisconsin flag a little bit.”

His proposal: replace the rope and pickax that the flag’s sailor and miner have been holding since 1848 with bottles of Miller Lite and Spotted Cow, swap out one of the guys for a woman, and change the “Forward” motto to “Keep ’Er Movin’.” The state legislature may not have adopted his changes, but a revised flag is now available for purchase on his website.

In addition to the supper clubs, taverns, and other Wisconsin locales that Berens namechecks in his show, he brings his geography background to bear in his favorite segment: the Craigslist Kicker.

“I feel like you can tell a lot about a place just by looking [at] the classifieds,” he says. “For example, there are so many silos for sale. … Coming from the perspective of a geography alum, what does that say about where we live? It’s almost symbolic of the larger farming community — you’re selling your silo? It’s interesting.”

Ultimately, Berens’s goal with the show is bringing folks together.

“When everyone is laughing, we’re all on the same page, even if it’s just for a joke,” he says, adding that the show has become a platform for his audience to donate to causes like Wounded Warriors, the Boys and Girls Club, and Big Brothers Big Sisters. “Fans always seem to jump at the opportunity to support a variety of causes. It’s a great reminder that there’s a lot of common ground we share.”

• • •

These days, Berens and his wife, Alex Wehrley ’09, a communication arts grad and former Miss Wisconsin, split their time between Los Angeles and the Badger State to make the most of this Manitowoc moment.

As he continues to do stand-up, as well as write and produce comedy sketches and pilots, Berens is thinking about what comes next for the web series.

“I think there’s a way to bring the show to outside of Wisconsin, of finding a way to engage and potentially create a network of other people doing similar things around the country,” he says. “So maybe there can be a full-on newsroom. I think it would be fun to have other people who represent where they’re from and do it in the same way the news networks do it.”

What will never change, though, is his love for Wisconsin, and the way he shares it with the world.

“This is who I am,” he says. “I like to laugh at myself, I’m self-deprecating, and I think Wisconsin culturally has that sense of humor. I think people get it. It’s all in good fun.”

UW-Madison Archives S09929

Benjamin Franklin was right. Taxation is an absolute certainty in life — even life near the South Pole.

Fifty years ago, UW researcher Stephen Den Hartog found himself on the bottom of the world when the time came to fill out his Form 1040 for the IRS. This couldn’t have been a great surprise, because Den Hartog had spent several seasons on the southern continent. Den Hartog Peak (near the Ramsey Glacier) is named in his honor. (Though they shared a family name, it’s unlikely that he claimed the mountain as a dependent.)

The UW knows ice sheets. Several researchers have made names for themselves in the Antarctic, including Charles Bentley, who was part of the team that made the first overland traverse of Western Antarctica in 1957, and in the 2000s, he served as principal investigator on an ice-core project that set the record for the deepest core ever drilled out of a glacier.

The UW continues to have an important presence in Antarctica, and it continues to dig deep holes in the southern ice. The university leads the IceCube Collaboration, which runs a vast observatory set up at the South Pole to detect neutrinos. That detector is made up of 5,160 modules embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice.

In September, IceCube’s principal investigator, UW physics professor Francis Halzen, won a 2015 Balzan Prize for his work in astroparticle physics. (It’s worth 1 million Swiss francs, which will almost certainly have an effect on his taxes.)

Editor’s Note: In the original, print version of this article, the subject of the photo was mis-identified as Charles Bentley. We thank his daughter, Molly Bentley, for catching our error.

Cities are diverse environments for humans, but as urban areas grow, they’re likely to come at the expense of diversity in other crucial forms of habitats.

An interdisciplinary team of UW researchers has put together a series of maps to show, for the first time, how different land-use scenarios could affect freshwater biodiversity across the United States.

The team predicts that watershed quality will decline in rapidly growing regions, such as California and the southeastern states, if current urbanization policies remain in place. This could significantly reduce the number of fish and amphibian species in those areas. However, the team also projected that urban growth could be curtailed if cities implemented “smart growth” strategies, thereby protecting water quality and preserving biodiversity.

Sebastián Martinuzzi, a postdoc in forest ecology and management, is the lead author on the report, titled “Land Use Change and Freshwater Conservation,” which was published this fall in the journal Global Change Biology. He acknowledges it isn’t realistic for cities to wholly restrict their growth, but the point is to illustrate that land-use patterns truly do have an impact on surrounding ecosystems.

“For freshwater, what happens on the land matters,” Martinuzzi says. “If we control urban sprawl, it could have some positive impact.”

In addition to urban expansion, Martinuzzi and his team also looked at crop-cover scenarios. If demand for crops increases, then southeastern states are projected to substantially increase crop acreage, which would negatively affect watersheds and, by extension, biodiversity. The Midwest is likely to experience a similar trend, but to a lesser degree.

Predicting the future is a tricky business, but Martinuzzi says the maps show general trends and variations, which could help policymakers — and the general public — better appreciate the environmental impact of land-related economic decisions.

“Maps are very powerful,” he says. “They can show you areas that may be in trouble and where there may be room for conservation.”

July 2, 2010 || July 6, 1937

This poster uses the “time portal” technique to compare how the campus looked nearly seventy-five years ago with how it looks today. Created by the Wisconsin State Cartographer’s Office, it blends a modern color photograph from July 2, 2010, with a historic black-and-white shot from July 6, 1937, using GIS (geographic information system) software.

The poster highlights the dramatic changes that have taken place on campus and the surrounding community during this time period (although current visitors will note that even more changes have occurred since 2010).

You can find the entire image of the 1937 photo and links to other historical images from the State Cartographer’s Office. The “Then and Now” poster is available for $10 from the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey (608-263-7389).