L&S News  Author: L&S News

Johannes Wallman arrived on the UW-Madison campus in 2012, tasked with reviving a dormant program. Under his watch, the university has joined most of the rest of the Big Ten in offering a jazz studies major. However, the impact of the German-born, Canada-raised pianist and composer goes beyond the concrete confines of the Mosse Humanities Building.

The College of Letters & Science enjoyed a fantastic year, from research breakthroughs in every discipline, to breaking ground for a new music center that will transform campus and redefine what it means to pursue a musical education at UW-Madison.

We've compiled a few of the stories from a year defined by great achievements and great generosity.

Michael Reader (B.S.'86, Economics) is someone who is making Wisconsin work. His company, PrecisionPlus in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, manufactures precision parts, including pins, screws, shafts, valve components, spools, gears, and gear blanks. There is little margin for error in this type of manufacturing, and the business partners with some of the best technology companies on the planet to produce some of the most precisely made components you’ll find anywhere.

However, Reader’s educational path was less than precise.

UW-Madison student activist Deshawn McKinney has been named a winner of the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, awarded to 40 American students each year to attend graduate school in any field in the United Kingdom. Last month, McKinney was named a Rhodes Scholar finalist. Scholarship winners go on to graduate studies at Oxford University in England.

Hemant Shah has served as director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism school since 2014, and has been a member of the faculty since 1990. His research focuses on the role of mass media in social change, including the construction of cultural identities and racial anxieties. Shah spoke with the Cap Times about the roles and responsibilities of journalists in covering race relations, particularly in light of the 2016 election.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s family commission is calling for a series of state law and policy changes to alleviate poverty by strengthening families. UW-Madison Professor of Social Work and Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty weighs in on these suggestions.

In a paper published on December 1, 2016 in Science, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and their colleagues provide evidence for a theory in which information can be stored in working memory in an inactive neuronal state. The team’s results suggest that there are multiple ways our brains store short- and longer-term memories, depending on expectations of when that information is likely to be needed.

The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) has named La Follette School Professor Tim Smeeding as its John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow for 2017.

Fellows include sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, and economists as well as scholars and practitioners in communications, education, government, and public policy.

UW-Madison professor of political science David Canon testified at the Wisconsin State Capitol in favor of the Iowa-style model for non-partisan redistricting. Canon appeared on Capitol City Sunday to discuss the recent federal ruling declaring Wisconsin's state Assembly districts unconstitutional.