News in Brief
LEADERSHIP
 Take our seats, please Workers began reinstalling Wisconsin Union Theater seats in the first complete renovation of seating since the theater opened in 1939. The 1,300 chairs were removed last month and taken to a Michigan company for restoration. Workers will be working feverishly to reinstall the seats before the first performance scheduled later this month. The original color of the seats, called Titian, will be maintained to preserve historical accuracy. Photo: Jeff Miller |
Finalists named for diversity position
Three finalists have been named for the position of assistant vice chancellor for workforce equity and diversity:
Luis A. Piñero, interim assistant vice chancellor/director of the Equity and Diversity Resource Center. Piñero joined the EDRC in 1982, when it was known as the Office of Affirmative Action and Compliance.
Andrea L. Turner, executive director for the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. Turner was previously employed as a special assistant to the chancellor and also as executive director of multicultural affairs at UW-Stevens Point.
Vicki C. Washington, director of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs and assistant to the chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Extension. Washington held several affirmative action-related positions in the public and private sector in North Carolina before joining UW-Extension.
The assistant vice chancellor for workforce equity and diversity promotes increased employee diversity throughout the university; oversees the Equity and Diversity Resource Center; and ensures campus compliance with affirmative action/equal employment opportunity regulations.
The opening was created when Greg Vincent accepted a position last summer as vice provost for campus diversity at Louisiana State University.
University officials expect to fill the position in late January or early February.
LEARNING
IES starts student exchange
New study-abroad opportunities are in the works for next fall, when the Institute for Environmental Studies will offer its first trans-Atlantic exchange program.
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded IES a three-year, $179,598 grant to promote student exchanges in comparative ecosystem studies between three American universities and three in Europe.
The European institutions are the University of Bayreuth, Germany; the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain; and the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. The other two American schools are the University of Missouri-Columbia and San Diego State University.
Enhancing interdisciplinary education in sustainable ecosystems management is the primary goal of the exchange program. Among other things, it will help students learn to work across agency and organizational lines, bridge academic disciplines and bring cultural sensitivity to their career endeavors in environmental fields.
Why Files launches course online
A new university online science course in geology is based on the content of the popular Why Files Web site, http:// whyfiles.news.wisc.edu. The new course, Geology 115, The Science Behind the News – The Universe Around Us, will be taught for the first time next semester.
Intended for non-science majors, the course is the brainchild of Jill Banfield, a professor of geology and geophysics and the recent recipient of a prestigious MacArthur fellowship or “genius award.” Banfield says mining the content of The Why Files – a site that has sought to demystify for popular audiences everything from cloning to earthquakes – would provide a natural matrix for an online science course.
“It’s important that people are introduced to science and that content is accessible to the average person,” Banfield says. “The Why Files does make science accessible in a very friendly way.”
OUTREACH
Anti-smoking effort reaches out statewide
A five-part plan, including a toll-free stop-smoking helpline and a program to prevent smoking among adolescent girls, will send $2 million in state tobacco settlement money to communities around Wisconsin, Medical School officials say.
The school’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (CTRI), a national leader in research efforts to help people stop smoking, received $2 million in the recently passed state budget for tobacco-control efforts. The funds are part of the settlement negotiated with major tobacco companies, which were sued by Wisconsin and many other states.
The five-part plan includes an annual statewide survey tracking tobacco use in Wisconsin; a statewide partnership with the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation to help prevent smoking among young women; a statewide educational and outreach program that includes Milwaukee, Green Bay, Rhinelander, La Crosse and Madison; a “mini-grant” program that will support local research efforts in smoking cessation and prevention; and a toll-free helpline offering counseling to smokers trying to quit.
Adds Director Michael Fiore: “CTRI will work collaboratively with the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, the new state Tobacco Control Board and other entities committed to these efforts.”
RESEARCH
NASA satellite technology to be developed here
Building on a tradition that dates back 35 years to the first geostationary weather satellite, UW–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) has been selected to help NASA develop a new generation of satellite technology that promises to greatly improve weather forecasting and the monitoring of atmospheric pollutants.
NASA selected SSEC as a key partner to help design and build an instrument known as GIFTS (Geostationary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer).
SSEC will receive $10 million over five years from NASA to design and calibrate GIFTS and to write the software codes that will make the instrument’s data useful to forecasters and scientists. Based in part on technology developed at UW–Madison, GIFTS will be a part of NASA’s Earth Observing Mission 3 and will be launched into orbit sometime in 2003.
GIFTS, according to SSEC Interim Director Hank Revercomb, will be capable of dissecting the atmosphere in a far more detailed way than current geostationary weather satellites by looking at the weather across a wide swath of the spectrum of energy that the Earth radiates into space. GIFTS also will permit forecasters to greatly hone the accuracy of three-day weather predictions and extend the duration of forecasts up to five days.
COMMUNITY
Y2K OK: No problems reported
Campus facilities and utility systems did not experience any known Y2K problems, the Physical Plant reports.
Thirty Physical Plant employees and staff members worked overnight Dec. 31 monitoring various campus systems, building equipment, power plants and utility networks.
The Division of Information Technology, which also was staffed through the holiday weekend, says computer glitches that appear this month should be reported to the DoIT Help Desk as usual – and users should not assume problems are Y2K-related.
Campus officials say the glitch-free New Year was a tribute to the many employees who spent a great deal of time investigating and correcting what needed to be fixed over the past year.
“Those preparations obviously paid off,” says Bruce Braun, assistant vice chancellor for facilities planning and management.
NOTABLE
Wordmark replaces sesqui logo
Now that the university sesquicentennial is complete, the Office of University Publications is encouraging schools, colleges and departments to use the official UW–Madison “wordmark” logo if they had switched.
Campus units can continue to use their sesquicentennial letterhead until supplies are exhausted and then switch to letterhead with the wordmark logo, says Al Friedman, director of University Publications. Units should also replace sesquicentennial logos on their web sites, Friedman adds.
As always, University Publications will set up wordmark letterhead and No. 10 business envelopes free of charge and will help coordinate on-campus printing.
In use since 1990, the wordmark typography remains the institutional standard for letterhead, signage, business cards and other visual uses. This standard was established for administrative offices and for units not using their own visual identity programs, Friedman says.
Copies of the wordmark logo and other official UW–Madison trademarks are available on the University Publications web site at http://www.wisc.edu/pubs/. Information: 262-0948.
Editor to join NSF group
Terry Devitt, science editor for the Office of News and Public Affairs, has been invited to participate in the inaugural meeting of the National Science Foundation’s new advisory public affairs network. The meeting will coincide with the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., in February. Devitt also oversees The Why Files, a popular and critically acclaimed web site that explores the science behind the news. The Why Files is part of the UW–Madison Graduate School.
Parallel Press releases “Luck”
“Luck” by Marilyn Annucci is the first chapbook published in 2000 from the Parallel Press, an imprint of the university’s General Library System.
Chapbooks are small-format literary works, usually of poetry or essays. Annucci lives in Madison and teaches at UW-Whitewater in the Department of Languages and Literatures.
Annucci has worked as a writer and editor, and has taught at the Western Pennsylvania Young Writers Institute and the University of Pittsburgh, where she received a master’s of fine arts in poetry. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including Southern Poetry Review, The Journal and Poet Lore.
Annucci will give a reading from “Luck” Friday, Feb. 18, at 6:30 p.m. at A Room of One’s Own Bookstore and Coffeehouse, 307 W. Johnson St.. The book is $10. Information: 263-4929, or visit: http://www.library.wisc.edu/projects/glsdo/parallelpress.html.
ON CAMPUS
Lecture addresses family-work conflict
Can law address the conflict many people experience with the competing demands of family and work?
American University Law Professor Joan Williams will provide her answers to that question during a public lecture Thursday, Jan. 27, at the UW Law School. The lecture starts at 2:15 p.m. in the Sheldon Lubar Faculty Commons, Room 7200 of the Law School, 975 Bascom Mall.
Williams – known for her work on feminist jurisprudence, pragmatism, property and legal history – will argue that workplaces are designed around an ideal worker who takes no time off for childbearing or childrearing.
She offers concrete proposals for changing the way that work is organized and shows how creating “family friendly” workplaces makes sense from an economic as well as ethical point of view.
The lecture is presented in conjunction with the publication of Williams’ book, “Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It” (Oxford University Press, 1999). Williams is also the author (with Curtis Berger) of “Property: Land Ownership and Use” (Aspen, 1998) and more than 35 articles. She is co-director of the Gender, Work and Family Project at the American University Law School.
Classified staff comments sought
During the past six months an Organizing Committee supported by the Provost’s Office has been developing bylaws for a newly formed Council for Non- represented Classified Staff.
A copy of the draft bylaws will be sent soon to all non-represented classified employees. Any of those employees who want to comment on the plan should respond by Feb. 18.
Grant supports animation lab
University students will soon be creating “Toy Story”-caliber animation and computer-generated graphics, thanks to a gift from the Microsoft Corporation.
Valued at more than $77,000, the equipment purchased by Microsoft will be used to develop a new, state-of-the-art Computer Visualization Learning Laboratory in the School of Education’s art department.
“We are very pleased with a gift that will allow students to combine art and technology at such a sophisticated level,” says School of Education Dean Charles Read.
The new facility will support the teaching of Professor George Cramer and other faculty who offer courses that focus on interactive computer art, virtual reality and animation.
Although these courses might suggest Disney animations, Cramer notes this training has a much wider application. Animation is used in commercials and training videos, and is fast becoming a part of scientific studies, where researchers, for example, may need to visualize an explosion in order to analyze its parts.
Defense deal to expand web-based learning
The UW System and the Wisconsin Technical College System sealed an agreement Jan. 10 with the Department of Defense to develop, demonstrate, and evaluate technologies that enable web-based learning.
The agreement establishes a Wisconsin Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory” to serve as a focal point for academia and the workforce in Internet-based distributed learning.
The Wisconsin co-lab, to be housed at the Pyle Center operated by UW-Extension, will be the Defense Department’s first co-lab in an academic environment.
The Defense Department is a major consumer in the education arena, spending approximately $14 billion a year on classroom education for 3 million personnel.
The UW System and Technical College System have been developing web-based instruction to serve the education and training needs of the students served by both systems.