Excerpted from Baraboo News Republic
By Ben Bromley

Most Baraboo merchants say business is good, but there’s room for improvement.

In April, volunteers conducted a Business Walk, surveying more than 200 merchants to gauge the pulse of local commerce. Now that the results are in, business leaders are discussing how to act on them.

“We want to see whether there are practical, pragmatic solutions,” said Andy Bingle, who chairs the Baraboo Economic Development Commission’s Business Walk committee.

Ninety-one percent of respondents said business is somewhere between fair and great. They listed friendly customers, Baraboo’s location and support from local business groups as the best things about doing business here.

Business owners listed a lack of parking, along with poor road design and conditions, as a top obstacle. Better marketing of Baraboo in the Wisconsin Dells and Madison markets is needed, as are a more diverse base of businesses, a new hotel and affordable housing.

Bingle said the goal is to pinpoint trends affecting businesses, and enact policies that remove roadblocks. For example, some merchants said city red tape makes it difficult to place signs and expand businesses.

The survey was supported by partners including the city, village of West Baraboo, Baraboo Area Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Baraboo Inc., Madison Region Economic Partnership and Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 25, 2017

MADISON, WI – Career development and exploration activities for students in twelve counties across Southern Wisconsin recently received a significant boost, as Inspire Madison Region and Inspire Rock County have integrated their databases to enhance collaborative talent development and employment engagement activities throughout the greater region.

The Inspire initiatives leverage career development software by Career Cruising that is available in all public school with grades 6-12 and technical colleges in the region. Career Cruising allows students to learn more about specific occupations, while the Inspire add-on to the program connects students to career coaches and local businesses providing experiential learning activities such as job shadows, internships, and youth apprenticeships. Employers, educators, students, parents, and workforce professionals all have access to this combined database and networking system designed to improve the future workforce in the broader region.

With the integration of the Inspire Madison Region and Inspire Rock County databases, students will now have the opportunity to engage with employers in the following South Central and South West Wisconsin counties: Columbia, Crawford, Dane, Dodge, Grant, Green, Iowa, Juneau, Lafayette, Richland, Rock and Sauk. While both Inspire Madison Region and Inspire Rock County (managed by the Madison Region Economic Partnership and Rock 5.0, respectively) will maintain their regional identities, both will benefit from a significant increase in the number of employers, career coaches, and experiential learning activities as the databases come together. With integration, users now have access to:

• 539 Career Coaches
• 477 Company Profiles
• 2,419 Work-Based Learning Activities

For years, employers from Rock County and the Madison Region have expressed the need for ways to connect with their future workforce. Both Inspire initiatives address that need by aligning career exploration and occupational information with real-time data on local employers, their needs, and the opportunities they offer young people to get experience in their industries. At the same time, Inspire also supports the development of robust career pathways and academic and career planning (ACP) that all public school districts in Wisconsin are implementing in the 2017-18 school year.

Going forward in the Madison Region, the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) will work closely with school districts and businesses to develop best-practices around experiential learning activities, and will continue to streamline workflow processes. To address the needs of at-risk populations, MadREP is developing partnerships with community organizations to bring Inspire to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds through mentoring and other career-readiness activities outside of schools.

Since its inception in 2015, Inspire Madison Region has grown to nearly 55,000 active student portfolios, 23,406 of which have at least one saved career and 7,648 portfolios with at least one saved higher-education target. In addition, online career coaches have answered more than 500 questions from students from public schools and the technical college system. With the merger, the joint-initiatives will cover 67 school districts (with the potential for more in South West Wisconsin), four technical colleges, one UW-System College and Beloit College). In addition, MadREP is currently working with its sister economic development regions throughout the state and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) to promote and integrate Inspire statewide.

Contacts
Paul Jadin, pjadin@madisonregion.org, 608.571.0401
Gene Dalhoff, gdalhoff@madisonregion.org, 608.571.0403

Excerpted from uwhealth.org/news

Timothy Gaillard, MHA, FACHE, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for University Hospital, received the American College of Healthcare Executives Champion of Diversity Regent’s Award today at the 2017 ACHE-Wisconsin Chapter Annual Conference in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

The Champion of Diversity Regent’s Award recognizes ACHE members who are experienced in the field and have made significant contributions to the advancement of diversity in healthcare management, their organization, their community, and among ACHE.

Members are evaluated on leadership ability; innovative and creative inclusion strategies; executive capability in advancing diversity in their own organization and in the community; and for their contributions to foster an inclusive environment that recognizes the contributions and supports the advancement of all, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

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Excerpted from BizTimes
By Andrew Weiland

U.S. News & World Report today released its annual university rankings.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the top ranked national university in Wisconsin, according to the U.S. News rankings. UW-Madison ranks 46th in the overall national university rankings and 12th among public universities.

Lawrence University in Appleton is the top ranked national liberal arts college in the state, ranking 58th nationally. Beloit College was the second highest ranked national liberal arts college in the state, ranking 76th nationally. The top ranked national liberal arts college is Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Several Wisconsin universities showed up in the U.S. News engineering school rankings.

For schools that offer an engineering doctorate, UW-Madison’s engineering programs ranked 14th. Marquette and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s engineering programs tied for a ranking of 110. UW-Madison ranked 5th for chemical engineering and 5th for industrial/manufacturing engineering.

In the U.S. News business school rankings, UW-Madison’s undergraduate real estate program ranked third, its undergraduate insurance program also ranked third, and its undergraduate marketing program ranked 10th.

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Excerpted from Xconomy Wisconsin
By Jeff Buchanan

Gener8tor is bringing its latest series of training programs for entrepreneurs to Madison, WI, as part of a new partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s computer sciences department.

Launched in 2012, Wisconsin-based Gener8tor coaches and invests in early-stage businesses through different types of programs. Its most recently introduced series is gALPHA, a three-week hackathon-accelerator hybrid.

Gener8tor said Wednesday it will hold two gALPHA programs in Madison during the upcoming school year. They will be supported in part by a private gift to UW-Madison from an anonymous donor who earned a graduate degree in computer science from the school in 2010, Gener8tor said.

The programs, called “gALPHA + CS,” will match UW-Madison students with experts from across campus, with the goal of helping students develop products and form companies, Gener8tor said.

Like gBETA, gALPHA does not provide funding to entrepreneurs who participate in the program, nor does it take equity in their startups. gALPHA is aimed at helping people with ideas for new companies understand where there’s likely to be demand for their products, and some of the pros and cons of different business models, Gener8tor said.

The inaugural gALPHA program took place earlier this year, in Beloit, WI. Gener8tor may bring gALPHA to other cities if it is able to find sponsors for programs, said Abby Taubner of Gener8tor.

According to U.S. News & World Report, UW-Madison’s computer sciences department is the 11th best in the country. Epic Systems, Propeller Health, and EatStreet are among the local companies launched by those who have studied CS at the school.

The overarching goal is to create another vehicle for students to turn their visions for new products into actual businesses, according to Guri Sohi, who chairs UW-Madison’s computer sciences department.

“Now more than ever, computer scientists have an incredible opportunity to help Wisconsin’s long-term economic well-being,” Sohi said. “We can facilitate the use of knowledge that we create, and help our students learn how to develop their ideas and exploit their computing skills to build innovative companies in Wisconsin.”

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