...After surviving a nerve-wracking interview and learning she won the coveted award, Alexis Brown had to set aside her excitement momentarily to finish the task at hand: a paper due before Thanksgiving break...Brown is one of only 32 American students to be awarded the prestigious prize — previously won by the likes of President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. The award is so competitive, Brown is the first student to win from UW-Madison in 11 years...

...Thanks to a combination of scientific research, an entrepreneurial spirit among farmers, and the spread of knowledge through institutions like the University of Wisconsin-Extension, America produces an unprecedented quantity of safe, high-quality food... (Author: UW Colleges and UW-Extension Chancellor Ray Cross)

A handful of adult students have returned to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to complete their degrees, thanks to a new program aimed at bringing them back. The university partnered with Fox Valley Technical College to encourage former University of Wisconsin System students to finish their degrees through the Return to the U initiative...Return to the U received about 100 inquiries, and 13 students signed up for the fall semester, said Steve VandenAvond, associate provost of outreach and adult access at UW-Green Bay...

..."There are many companies developing advanced textiles that will allow the body to function better and still look fashionable," said Gindy Neidermyer, apparel design and development program director and associate professor at UW-Stout...Last spring students worked on ballistic undergarments for the Marine Corps. The garments offer "impact protection underneath" if, for example, a Marine would walk over a land mine...Another project involved students developing a suit to help make a dangerous occupation safer. Their creation, the Underground Mine Suit, earned first prize in the international 2011 Safety Products Student Design Challenge...

Wayne Feltz is a self-described weather geek. Last week, he stood one afternoon on the wind-whipped roof of UW-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center, where he works as a researcher, and stared up through the canopy of dish antennas that top the building like some crazy, bristly hairdo. "We're running out of room!" Feltz shouted...Hunched over their computers, scientists here have advanced meteorology to where we can now literally peer into the future and predict everything from the landfall of hurricanes to the formation of tornados...

Wisconsin's new voter identification law has colleges and universities looking to make sure students are eligible to vote...UWGB students from out of state or those without a Wisconsin driver's license will now be able to get a free photo ID that has a photo of the student, the student's signature and clearly marked expiration date two years after issuance...

...Yet major efforts already are underway to make sure college students who want to vote will be able to do so under the state's new voter ID law. State elections chief Kevin Kennedy says the law is the biggest administrative change for voting since 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote in 1971. Some fear that it could keep students away from the polls. "While the law is not a positive in terms of helping students vote, I think it has spurred a sense of motivation and determination that will hopefully allow us to spread the word to students across Madison about what they'll need to do to be able to register and then vote next year," says Sam Polstein, a UW-Madison junior who helped form the Madison Student Vote Coalition, a non-partisan organization dedicated to registering and motivating area students to vote...

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered a molecular mechanism that could open the door to new approaches to fighting cancer. The research, which was published this week in the journal Nature, focuses on the body's penchant for producing its own hydrogen peroxide at the site of wounds...

Taking a cue from the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, two University of Wisconsin-Madison juniors are aiming to lift people out of poverty by lending them money. The Madison Fund, founded by Alex Rosenthal and Andrew Tapper, recently made its first loan to a local man who used the money to apply for U.S. citizenship...The fund expects to make most of its loans in the $1,500 to $2,500 range, but could lend as much as $5,000 or as little as $500, Rosenthal said...

A UW-Madison student has started a nonprofit organization offering microloans to budding entrepreneurs. The Madison Fund was incorporated in September 2010 but just began operating in June, said founder Alex Rosenthal. "Our ultimate goal is to create jobs in Madison," said Rosenthal, 20, a junior at the UW...

A new group, led by two University of Wisconsin-Madison students, has been formed to try to give a helping hand to people in Madison who might not be able to be helped through traditional lending practices. Alex Rosenthal and Andrew Tapper started the Madison Fund, an organization to making loans of $500 to $5,000 to people in the Madison community...

The UW-River Falls Art Department presents its Annual Scholarship Sale in Gallery 101 of the Kleinpell Fine Arts building Nov. 30-Dec. 14...

Construction could begin in December on a proposed $2 million, 17-unit private student housing project near the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley...

Occasionally someone asks Wyatt Hrudka what brand of bike he's riding. He tells them it's his own. His name's right there to prove it. Earlier this year, Hrudka, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, launched his own bicycle company -- Wyatt Bicycles...

UW-Green Bay's Adult Degree Program offers college degrees and certificates for working adults seeking new career opportunities, increased earning potential and a better life for themselves and their families...

Shawn F. Peters was so captivated by the HBO series "The Wire," he was sure his students would be, too. So the UW-Madison instructor decided to make the Baltimore-centric drama the centerpiece of his fall course, Integrated Liberal Studies 275: Narratives of Justice and Equality in Multicultural America...

University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez is urging fans to show "class and dignity" on Saturday when the 15th-ranked Badgers football team host No. 20 Penn State. Alvarez said the school has hung a large blue ribbon on the outside, south wall of the UW Field House, near Camp Randall Stadium, to encourage awareness of the "serious issue of child abuse." Blue is the ribbon color used to highlight child abuse awareness...

Some local colleges will issue new photo IDs so students can use campus identification to vote. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is among eight of 13 four-year University of Wisconsin System campuses to finalize plans for new IDs...

An investment group led by Hudson businessman David Robson has submitted the highest bid of $1,251,043 for the 16-acre tourism center property on Interstate 94 in Hudson...He said UW-River Falls has expressed interest in building a new Hudson Center on the site, and indicated that he wouldn't oppose that plan. WisDOT opened three bids for the former tourist information center on Tuesday, Nov. 22...

A small number of students at UW-Rock County and across the state are struggling because their tuition more than doubled this year. A change in state law means they have to pay out-of-state tuition, even though they grew up here. They are illegal immigrants. UW-Rock student Maria -- who agreed to an interview on the condition that her real name would not be used -- entered the United States on a tourist visa with her mother when she was 12. They never returned. Others crossed the border before they could walk and grew up here...

Two student entrepreneurs from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater will be visiting the most exclusive address in the United States today. Andrew Hoeft from Onalaska and Daniel Fink from Green Bay are attending an invitation-only event for entrepreneurs at the White House in Washington, D.C. William Dougan, professor of entrepreneurship and management, is also attending. The event, sponsored by the Young Entrepreneur Council, Inc. Magazine and MTV, is from 1 - 4 p.m. and focuses on mentorship...

...But where some students view math, language arts and science degrees as practical, others break free from the crowd with an atypical career we don't usually hear about...Maybe a career in packaging is better fit for you. Can you imagine studying boxes for four years? Well, people apparently do and according to University of Wisconsin-Stout, "the employment rate for graduates from the school year 2009-2010 was 100 percent"...

The University of Wisconsin-Stout School of Art and Design is sponsoring the biannual custom light fixture exhibit "Illuminate" at the Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts...

When the UW-River Falls' Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) Western Show Team travels across the country, it doesn't bring its own horses...

...So it might come as a surprise that metro Milwaukee, which hardly discussed cluster strategy a few years ago, now has no fewer than nine at various stages of development..."Cluster development is a key business climate activity," said Pat O'Brien, director of industrial recruitment at the seven-county Milwaukee 7 economic development consortium...Milwaukee Water Council: Not everyone understands stem-cell technology or the latest Web applications, but everyone intuitively grasps the value of clean water. Much of the cluster's popularity is that it's clean, green, global and growing - a refreshing antidote to Rust Belt gloom. The idea took its greatest leap forward when the region discovered that five of the world's 11 biggest water-tech companies already have operations in metro Milwaukee...

At first glance, a program launched last week that will provide college scholarships for up to 2,600 current ninth-graders attending public schools in Milwaukee looks similar to a growing number of initiatives across the country designed to give students the boost they need to pursue a college degree. But The Degree Project is different in one significant way: It was built from the ground up as a research project to collect data and to examine whether these so-called promise programs are a wise use of funds in an era of limited resources...

Wisconsin needs a new system of school accountability, but implementing effective measures will be difficult because there are so many different ideas about what it takes to make a good school...

In a sense, this movement was inevitable. Higher education has been transformed over the last 50 years, reshaped in many ways that bring into question what it's for, how it works, who should lead it, and most importantly who it is serving. It is the failure of colleges and universities to sufficiently grapple with and address those key questions that led students to Occupy Colleges, and faculty to stand with them, and that set up college administrators to be largely inept in response...

The Oregon Board of Higher Education will hold an emergency meeting this afternoon to discuss one topic: "employment of the University of Oregon president." But by virtually all accounts, the board has already decided to oust President Richard W. Lariviere -- much to the consternation of many of the university's professors and deans and possibly in violation, some assert, of the state's open meetings law...There is a long history, predating Lariviere, of presidents of the University of Oregon clashing with leaders of the state higher education system...

Amazon, which got its start selling books online, announced this year that, for the first time, its digital books had outsold paper books. This trend of going digital does not hold true for all books: While many popular consumer books have successfully made the switch into the new format, textbooks are still widely read on paper. Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers take advantage of the popularity of tablets like the Kindle and iPad, expanding their catalogues and offering products like rental digital books that expire after a semester or two...

...Although their placards bore hundreds of different messages, students throughout the city shared similar concerns. They decried debt and tuition hikes. They lamented their job prospects. And they questioned the very narrative of college—its power to transform the lives of all those who enroll, study, and pay up...

A bid to shrink the ranks of transfer students to the University of Minnesota has opened a rift among the state's public higher-education institutions. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System has sounded alarms over the U's plan to trim transfer student enrollment roughly 8 percent over the next couple of years. MnSCU supplies 45 percent of U transfers...

...Over the past decade, students in Finland have soared on international measures of achievement...The country's education system has come to be regarded as one of the highest-performing in the world, and a growing number of foreigners are trying to figure out if and how they can emulate it...Education at the university level is funded by the government, but the openings are limited, which creates competition. Teacher-studies programs set a particularly high bar for applicants: At the University of Helsinki, a mere 6.7% of those who applied to be primary school teachers were admitted this year to the education school...By comparison, the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee accepted 96% of undergraduate students who applied for the 2011 year, and 88% of post-baccalaureate applicants...

More than 95% of teachers in Finland are unionized, paying 1.2% of their gross salary to support the Trade Union of Education in Finland, OAJ. The organization aims to influence policies that benefit educators, much as the state's largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, does in Wisconsin...

...But unlike in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, where the achievement level of a school can generally be predicted by its ZIP code and student poverty rate, Vesala is part of a national system where the performance gap between the lowest and highest achieving students is one of the narrowest among developed countries, according to a respected international exam. Contrast that with Wisconsin, where the achievement gap between the lowest performing schools in Milwaukee and the average school in the state - or the average school in the suburbs - is dramatic...