Higher education reporter Kelly Meyerhofer shares her favorite stories of 2021
After a bruising year brimming with horrific headlines, the first story I wrote in 2021 was filled with optimism for the year ahead: UW-Madison received its first COVID-19 vaccines.
The pandemic continued to be a throughline for me (and most every reporter on the planet) this year. I chronicled COVID-19's toll on students' mental health, wrote about the anxiety faculty had in returning to face-to-face classes amid the surging delta variant and reported on the varying vaccination strategies across schools.Â
(4) updates to this series since Updated
A third of UW-Madison’s COVID-19 cases for the entire school year came in the four weeks after students started moving into the dorms.
The torrent of disruption to daily life over the past year has been inescapable.
The nursing student learned about end-of-life care in lectures. She had to put that knowledge to the test last year.Â
Engineering professor Akbar Sayeed left behind a "career-long string of victims," according to a recently released report.Â
COVID-19 complicated the transition for all freshmen last year, but especially for students who started their college careers from home. For one family, those complications were multiplied by four.
A judge last week blocked the vaccine mandate for federal contractors in response to a lawsuit brought by several contractors and conservative states.Â
This marks the first time the UW Board of Regents has exercised this authority since program cuts were controversially added in 2016 as a reason to lay off faculty.
The plan raises salary ranges, not individuals' salaries, between 5% and 32%.
The tentative timeline was laid out by the search committee, which met for the first time on Tuesday.
Two bills together would add about $22.6 million to the System's budget — nearly three times more than what campuses received in funding increases in the most recent state budget.
For nearly 45 years, UW-Madison ranked among the top five every year. But the university was bumped down in 2015 and has ranked 8th for the past several years.
UW-Madison recently concluded a review of how it handled requests made by some of the university's most vulnerable instructors who remain at particularly high risk during the pandemic.
Marquette University has received a $15 million gift from Marcus Lemonis, Camping World CEO and star of CNBC reality TV show “The Profit," who graduated from the Milwaukee school in 1995.
Wisconsin college students and recent graduates are in high demand as state and national unemployment rates continue to drop, according to higher education career placement workers.
The brother of former first lady Michelle Obama and his wife are suing a private Milwaukee school alleging it refused to allow their two sons to re-enroll after they voiced concerns that racism and inappropriate conduct at the school had not been satisfactorily addressed.
UW-Madison chancellor finalist Ann Cudd is troubled by the statistics that show a large swath of the public believe leading research universities are headed in the wrong direction.
On July 16, people with mental health crises can call 988 instead of (800) 273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.Â
They endured a jarring transition to online learning, the strains from teacher shortages and profound disruptions to their home lives.
Two people died in the crash of an experimental airplane in western Wisconsin on Tuesday afternoon, according to federal and local officials.
