2011 National Science Olympiad Tournament
Project Leaders: Paul Peercy, Dean, College of Engineering and Steven Cramer, Associate Dean, College of Engineering
Duration: Three years
The College of Engineering has supported outreach efforts to area middle and high schools with Science Olympiad teams since 2005 by supporting undergraduate student organizations that provide advising and mentoring help to school teams compete in state an national tournaments. Science Olympiad is a national, state, and regional competition that motivates students to expand their knowledge and competence in science; increases students’ insight into the investigative process by enabling them to “do” science through hands-on activities and inquiry-based investigation; raises students’ interest in science and science-related careers; generates enthusiasm in teachers and advisors as they experience their students excitement for science; and recognizes outstanding achievement in science education for both students and teachers. Building from the strong relationship the College of Engineering has with state middle and high schools in helping them prepare for the national Science Olympiad competitions, UW–Madison is hosting the 2011 National Science Olympiad Tournament May 19-21.
Artist-in-Residence Program: Making Art Transforms Hospital Patients and Staff
Project Leader: Sarah G Petto, Artist in Residence, Family Medicine/Integrative Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, and UW Hospitals and Clinics
Duration: Three years
This artist-in-residence program adds a valuable dimension to the promotion of healing and wellness in the patients at UW Hospitals and Clinics (UWHC). The outcome of a pilot project in art making with patients at UWHC has shown promise as a successful model for restoring wellness in patients. Making art enlivened the hospital atmosphere, and engaged patients and staff in conversations about art that translated into listening to patients’ stories and concerns. Patients participating in an artistic activity reported being pain free or experiencing less pain while working on their art. Patients in the project expressed their personal views about their art and asserted their individuality with the staff. Making art affirmed their self-image and helped them to focus on the more positive aspects of their lives. Patients continued to work on their art on weekends, reducing boredom when they did not have formal therapy sessions scheduled — and many patients demonstrated an elevated sense of self-esteem upon discharge. This model provides a creative outlet for patients through the hands-on use of art materials. This project will expand this model for incorporating the arts into healthcare within the UWHC’s surgical and burn units and the Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UWHC Surgical and Burn Units, continue its development in the Physical Medicine and Acute Rehabilitation Unit, and adapt the patient artist program to off-campus clinical settings. The activities will include direct service to patients, workshops and training sessions with healthcare professionals, patients, and students, and professional communications at regional and national conferences.
Bringing Rigorous Research and Dispassionate Analysis to State Policymakers: Policy Options for Building Wisconsin’s Economy
Project Leader: Karen Bogenschneider, Rothermel Bascom Professor of Human Ecology, School of Human Ecology
Duration: Three years
By providing rigorous research and dispassionate analysis, this project will help state policymakers consider policy options for building the state economy. Seminars, discussion sessions, and briefing reports will be provided for state policymakers including legislators, legislative aides, Governor’s office representatives, legislative service agency staff, state agency officials, and University researchers. A group of 14 economic experts from UW–Madison, UW–Milwaukee, the state legislature, and several state agencies will help extend the award-winning Family Impact Seminar from family to economic policy. In evaluations, we expect that policymakers will report increased knowledge of research on economic issues and greater awareness of policy options that are useful in their decision making and will have the potential to shape the development and enactment of economic policy in the state. Funding for this project has also been provided by the UW–Madison Division of Continuing Studies.
Engineering Development within the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
Project Leaders: Alison Sanders, Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduate Student, and Matthew McLaughlin, Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Student, College of Engineering
Duration: Two years
The Engineers Without Borders UW–Madison Domestic Project group will partner with the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to help provide sustainable engineering solutions to flooding problems in a tribal cemetery and housing development. The cemetery redesign will include the implementation of a French drain and drainage tile running underneath the site in order to lower the water table. Flood prevention methods in the housing development will include improvement of current drainage and gutter systems and soil grading near the houses. The Engineers Without Boarders student group will partner with the tribal cemetery committee, several public health and local community groups, and members in Red Cliff to ensure community approval and involvement in the project.
From Sandbags to Sanity: Lessons from the Midwest Floods of 2008
Project Leaders: Donald Moynihan, Associate Professor, LaFollette School of Public Affairs and Terry Shelton, Outreach Director, LaFollette School of Public Affairs, College of Letters and Science
Duration: One year
When record floods swept through the Midwest in 2007 year localities varied widely in their crisis preparation, response and recovery practices. Some local officials put out a call for extra sandbags as their primary response. Others dusted off incomplete and out-of-date floodplain maps or tried to reinstate municipal flood insurance that had expired. Wisconsin needs better state policies before the next disaster and public officials and the University of Wisconsin are working together to provide better information on everything from hydrology to climate change and intergovernmental collaboration. This project, also funded through the UW–Madison Water Resources Institute, will consist of a 2009 spring seminar that matches the needs of key policymakers within such agencies as the Wisconsin Emergency Management, the Wisconsin Recovery Task Force created by Governor Doyle, the Joint Legislative Council’s Special Committee on Emergency Management, the Wisconsin Counties Association, and the Association of State Floodplain Managers with a broad range of UW expertise. The seminar is timed to enhance legislative and executive branch policy originating from the Wisconsin Recovery Task Force and a special legislative committee. Overall, this partnership project will strengthen interactions between state policy makers and UW researchers, help local officials determine what practices must be upgraded to meet future disasters, and help to shape proposed policy changes. Further, the seminar will bring together UW students interested in crisis management policy with state policy makers, and will facilitate internships, research projects, future education, and job opportunities.
Growing Wisconsin Business Globally: International Business Workshops for Wisconsin Businesses
Project Leaders: Suzanne Dove, outreach director, Central or International Business Education Research/World Affairs and the Global Economy, School of Business, and Alberto Vargas, professor and associate director, Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program, College of Letters and Science Project
Duration: Two years
Critical Sectors of the Wisconsin economy, particularly in smaller communities built around manufacturing, struggle to compete in the face of globalization. Wisconsin companies must learn to take advantage of opportunities to expand their markets outside the United States. To succeed in any international business endeavor, a co9mpany must acquire a solid grounding in the designations market’s economic, political and social context to identify demand for its products and develop a market-entry strategy. Via this partnership with state businesses and business organizations, the Bureau of International Development (Wisconsin Department of Commerce) and other UW System institutions, this project will work to foster international export opportunities in three regions of the state — Eau Claire, Wausau and Janesville.
Interdisciplinary Public Health in Mexico
Project Leader: Lori Diprete-Brown, Faculty Associate, Center for Global Health, School of Medicine and Public Health.
Duration: Three years
The Center for Global Health is engaging faculty and Spanish-speaking graduate students in a public health service-learning program in Tequililla, a small community in rural Mexico. The project expands an ongoing university partnership with the University of Guadalajara at Los Altos in which students and faculty from both institutions work on a variety of health care assessment and service activities. After a successful health fair and agricultural project, trust with community leaders developed and the community identified four areas: youth services; health and nutrition education; sanitation; and income generation as areas of need. This three year project provides opportunities for faculty and students from both universities to show the effectiveness of academically-grounded community-based service-learning in a rural health care setting in Mexico.
Language Matters for Wisconsin: A Community-Based Initiative
Project Leaders: Thomas Purnell, Assistant Professor, Max Kade Institute and Eric Raimy, Assistant Professor, Max Kade Institute, College of Letters and Science
Duration: Three years
All across Wisconsin, “language” is a topic of great interest, perennial discussion and an issue of immediate concern, often related to historical or current immigration, questions of identity, or language use. Language Matters for Wisconsin aims to address these concerns and create a collaborative community model that will provide knowledge and insights so that public debate about language in Wisconsin can proceed in a more informed manner. A previous project called Wisconsin Englishes Project provided a series of outreach talks held across the state, revealing not only tremendous community interest in language issues, but also strong desire by individuals to understand the regional English they speak. This effort builds on that experience and will work closely with public libraries, historical societies, teachers, heritage groups, and others in four areas of Wisconsin (Kenosha-Racine, Rhinelander, Mineral Point, Wausau). Overall the project will identify and showcase the community’s unique regional language features and history and note specific local language issues and concerns; map details about the community and its languages and disseminate them in a community linked Web site; provide knowledge and tools for further linguistic exploration; hold public forums in each community and a statewide meeting in Madison; and produce a general-interest book exploring languages and dialects across Wisconsin, past and present (funded independently of this project).
Piano Pioneers: UW–Madison Music Students Bringing Piano Instruction to Youth and Adults from Low-Income Backgrounds
Project Leaders: Jessica Johnson, Associate Professor, Piano and Piano Pedagogy, School of Music, and Paola Savvidou, Project Assistant, School of Music, College of Letters and Science
Duration: Three years
Learning to play an instrument not only provides several developmental benefits for young learners, but also offers people of all ages the chance to create something new, express themselves and connect with others. Building from a successful Piano Pioneers pilot project, this project will provide children and adults from lower-income Madison families with high-quality group and individual piano instruction, and practice instruments that would otherwise be unaffordable. The goals are to enable talented, enthusiastic students from low-income families to have the same chance for musical success and enjoyment as their more affluent peers, provide piano students opportunities to develop teaching skills for students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and build stronger ties between the University and local communities.
Robotics Outreach Program
Project Leaders: Jessica Lakosil, Undergraduate student, College of Engineering and Kathy Prem, Assistant Director, Engineering Career Services, College of Engineering
Duration: Three years
This project engages the student Engineering Expo committee and students from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Robotics Team to foster and promote robotics with state high school students. Engineering Expo provides a unique opportunity to expose young students to the world of engineering through viewing numerous exhibits and participating in various competitions, including the Robotics Challenge. This robotics outreach effort will not only engage engineering and robotics students to teach high school students the principles of robotic, but also will create an entirely new robotics competition course that can be used for university and statewide competitions far into the future. The overall goal of this program is to expose high school students to engineering, increasing their understanding and enthusiasm for technology, and allowing them to develop specific skills in engineering robotics.
Tales from Planet Earth
Project Leader: Gregg Mitman, Interim Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and William Coleman Professor of History of Science, Medical History and Bioethics
Duration: Two years
The Center for Culture, History, and Environment and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies present Tales from Planet Earth II (TfPEII), a two-year long expression of the Wisconsin Idea and a model for what can happen when art, academic scholarship, and community service are combined in ways that harness the formative power of film in deepening public understanding and civic engagement with critical environmental issues of our day. Building on the success of 2007, TfPEII includes a year of community and campus-wide outreach, four issue-based film screenings, two graduate student courses, numerous panel and audience discussions, and engagement with filmmakers across the globe, culminating in a three-day celebration on Nov. 6-8, 2009 that highlights the power of film as a force for environmental and social change. The echoes of this event will continue across the state, as a subset of the films are screened throughout 2010 in six Wisconsin communities as part of the Wisconsin Humanities Council’s Making it Home Initiative. Through its community outreach screenings, festival, and Wisconsin tour, TfPE II will provide a critical forum for communities throughout the state to engage in issues ranging from water privatization in the Great Lakes to food equity and social justice to the inequitable consequences of global climate change on poor, urban, communities.
UW-Madison-Mazomanie Science Outreach Outpost
Project Leader: Michelle Harris, Associate Faculty Associate, Biocore, College of Letters and Science
Duration: Three years
The UW–Madison–Mazomanie Science Outreach Outpost will connect university personnel and resources to K–12 teachers, students, and community members from Sauk, Richland, Iowa, Lafayette, Dane, and Green counties. Located in the Wisconsin Heights School District, the outpost will provide K–12 teachers with accessible professional development through development, implementation, and assessment of inquiry-based science curricula; provide a physical location where teachers, students, and community members can meet, plan, and immediately carry out inquiry-based investigations of nearby diverse natural areas in southwestern Wisconsin; and serve as a model for successful partnerships between K–12 schools and UW–System faculty. The science outpost will also build upon a successful teacher-UW–Madison partnership model developed by the Biocore Outreach Ambassadors, Center for Biology Education and Biocore staff. Further, the outreach programs will be rigorously evaluated as a model for involving UW faculty, staff, undergraduates, and graduate students in science education outreach/service learning outside the UW–Madison campus.
Wider Economic Opportunities for Wisconsin Farm Families: Small-Scale Food Processing Training
Project Leaders: Barbara Ingham, Associate Professor, Food Science and Steve Ingham, Professor, Food Science, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Duration: Two years
Wisconsin is a prime agricultural state and increasingly owners of small family farms are diversifying their income through manufacture of processed products such as jams, jellies, salsa and pickles. Many of these food products have found a ready market through outlets such as farm markets and on-farm sales. Other non-profit community groups such as Porchlight, Inc. or the Catholic Multicultural Center (both of Madison), see small-scale food processing as a way to empower clients to develop new skills and change their lives. Food sold to the public must be safe and, effective in July 2008, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection began enforcing regulations which require food safety training for all small-scale food processors. This has effectively prevented the expansion or development of food processing operations by Wisconsin farmers and other groups. This new initiative will develop and implement a training program aimed at helping Wisconsin farmers and others produce safe, high quality processed foods suitable for sale to the general public.
Wisconsin International Year of Astronomy-Galileoscope
Project Leader: James Lattis, Director, UW Space Place, Astronomy, College of Letters and Science
Duration: One year
One Wisconsin contribution to the International Year of Astronomy is the 2009 statewide Galileoscope project. This is a unique opportunity to leverage a range of international, national and statewide science education and outreach for the benefit of the state. The Galileoscope effort will involve family groups and school children in state parks, recreational areas, and communities who will build their own telescopes from available kits and use them to explore the sky. Galileoscope activities will also be available over the web.