Author: Correspondent

The City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works (DPW) issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for marketing The Milwaukee Streetcar, with a December 22 deadline for submissions. The initial contract is slated to begin in early 2018 and run for three years, with two possible one-year extensions. The 2.1-mile starter streetcar system (Phase 1) will connect the Milwaukee Intermodal Station with the central business district and the dense housing on the lower East Side, providing service to residential, commercial, employment, parking, and hotel destinations. Construction of Phase 1 is underway, with service slated to begin in Fall 2018. The...

A distinguished UWM professor was recently named one of world’s most cited academic researchers in the field of engineering by Clarivate Analytics, a leading company that monitors scholarly data. Junhong Chen is among 3,300 researchers from 900 institutions who have produced a high number of papers that rank in the top 1 percent most-cited in a field over an 11-year period. This recognition amounts to having “won peer approval in the form of high-citation counts,” according to Clarivate Analytics, and it means the listed researchers’ discoveries inspire and challenge colleagues in their field to further advance the work. Chen...

For Peter Dunn, UWM distinguished professor of biological sciences, bird-watching offers clues to overarching ecological questions like climate change and species survival. He wants to know the purpose behind bird preferences such as feather brightness and why some birds follow the same mating playbook, while others deviate. He and Professor Linda Whittingham are now in their 21st year of studying tree swallows at the UWM Field Station, a 320-acre wetland near Saukville. This has given the ornithologists a long-term perspective on the birds they study, which include common yellowthroats and tree swallows. What attracted you to this work? When...

During Antarctica’s summer, UW-Milwaukee geologists Erik Gulbranson and John Isbell climbed the McIntyre Promontory’s frozen slopes in the Transantarctic Mountains. High above the ice fields, they combed the mountain’s gray rocks for fossils from the continent’s green, forested past. By the trip’s end, the geologists had found fossil fragments of 13 trees. The discovered fossils reveal that the trees are over 260 million years old, meaning that this forest grew at the end of the Permian Period, before the first dinosaurs. “People have known about the fossils in Antarctica since the 1910-12 Robert Falcon Scott expedition,” said Gulbranson, a...

Rebecca Neumann specializes in international finance and macroeconomics, but she also devotes a lot of time to an issue that hits closer to home: preparing students for a life of financial security. Neumann, an associate professor of economics, designed and teaches “The Economics of Personal Finance,” a one-credit, seven-week short course that gives UWM students the basic skills they need to come to grips with their financial situation and, more importantly, to plan for their futures. More than 3,100 students have taken the course so far. “We teach the fundamental concepts and techniques of personal finance,” Neumann says. “Students...

Latino Arts, Inc. announced its upcoming art exhibit titled, “Here We Make Our Home,” which aims to foster an environment for respectful dialogue around journey and immigration stories. The Here We Make Our Home exhibit invites teachers and students to explore the visual, poetic, and metaphoric imagery of a birdhouse. Students involved will create a unique piece of art that tells their personal journey story possessed through family heritage or personal experience. Birdhouses were selected as the vehicle for storytelling to represent the idea of home, settlement and migration. This exhibition employed best practices learned through the Advancing Literacy...