Volume 14, Number 7
Featured Stories
- UWM alums hope to tackle Milwaukee health disparities through Health Equity Scholars ProgramTwo UW-Milwaukee alumni are among the inaugural cohort of a new program meant to address the health disparities that plague the Milwaukee community. Ciara Ayala, who graduated in 2020 with …
- Critical wit: UWM alumni and Dungeons & Dragons experts talk shop as the game turns 50America’s most popular tabletop role playing game turns 50 this year. Dungeons & Dragons, known for its epic fantasy settings and fateful roles of the dice, was co-created by Gary …
- New cyberpolitics course teaches students about the global policy impact of technology, AIA terrorist group stages a ransomware attack against a large health care network, compromising patient data and financial information. Russian trolls flood social media with AI-generated memes and messaging designed …
- UWM undergraduate students get involved in researchProviding opportunities for undergraduates – not just graduate students – to do research is an important part of UWM’s mission. Whether students interested in science, engineering, the humanities or art, …
- Yazmin Discovered Her Limitless Potential at UWMYazmin, a World Language Education and Spanish double-major, was surprised by how much she learned about herself through exploring everything UWM had to offer. She stepped out of her comfort …
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Alumni Accomplishments
Maggie Polsean (’17, BA Journalism, Advertising, & Media Studies) began her new role this month as an anchor on WIFR News This Morning in Rockford, Illinois. Polsean began her news career at the station as an intern in 2017 and was most recently a morning anchor at 13 WREX.
Danielle Bergner (‘01, BA Economics) was lauded as one of the Milwaukee Business Journal’s “People on the Move” in 2024. Bergner is a shareholder and chair of the real estate practice group at Hall Render, the country’s largest law firm with a focus on the healthcare industry. She has been recognized in Best Lawyers in America and Chambers USA and has several other accolades to her name.
Aaron Roerdink (‘04, PhD Chemistry & Biochemistry) was promoted to dean of faculty at Central College in Pella, Iowa, the college announced in June. Roerdink earned his bachelor’s degree from Central College and most recently been their Associate Dean of Learning Enrichment and Associate Professor-in-Residence of Chemistry.
Sarah Blaskey (‘15, BS History) joined the Washington Post’s rapid response investigation team in June, where she will focus on “urgent topics of intense public interest.” Blaskey most recently worked at the Miami Herald, where she won several awards for her work investigating a condominium collapse in Florida and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plan to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. She is also the co-author of the 2020 book, The Grifter’s Club.
Anna Cannizzo (‘07, BA; ‘07, MS Anthropology) was named the new director of the Oshkosh Public Museum in June, after serving as the interim director. Cannizzo will oversee the museum’s staff, exhibitions, and programs. She previously served as the museum’s curator of collections and assistant curator.
Christie Launius (‘03, PhD, English) has been named associate dean for student success, engagement and undergraduate studies for Kansas State University’s College of Arts and Sciences. Launius has been an associate professor and interim head of the social transformation studies department at KSU.
Britt Gottschalk (‘15, BA, Psychology) is the founder and CEO of Geno.Me, a start-up genetic data exchange service that aims to provide research institutions such as the Medical College of Wisconsin with more robust genetic data sets, particularly from underrepresented community members. The premise is that more data from more people can lead to better medical research outcomes. Geno.Me pays participants $40 each time their data is accessed with a goal of growing their data set from its current level of 3,000 people into the tens of thousands. The business has received over $3 million in investment thus far.
Laurels & Accolades
The Journalism, Advertising, & Media Studies program’s journalism immersion class project, “Beyond the Barricades,” was named a national finalist in the general news reporting – large university category by the Society of Professional Journalists in the 2023 Mark of Excellence Awards. These awards honor the best of student journalism nationwide. Students contributing to the “Beyond the Barricades” project traveled to Lac du Flambeau to report on tribal land issues.
PhD student Rakiba Sultana (Geosciences) was awarded a six-month internship, funded by the National Science Foundation, to conduct numerical modeling of groundwater flow and contaminant transport under the guidance of Dr. Michael Fienen at the U.S. Geological Survey Upper Midwest Water Science Center in Madison.
In the Media and Around the Community
Geography professor Woonsup Choi provided expert commentary on “heat islands” to Great Lakes Now. Heat islands refer to the higher temperatures experienced in urban areas due to the infrastructure such as buildings and roads.
As part of the Climates of Inequality exhibit, a traveling exhibition that has most recently visited Milwaukee, Arijit Sen (History) organized a “Gardener’s Summit” to bring together Milwaukee community gardeners. The Shepherd Express told the story.
Professor Emerita Margo Anderson (History) provided information to the USA Today news network to help fact check a social media post that claimed a congressional bill would add representation for non-citizens. The article was published in most of their news outlets around the country including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In June, Joe Peschio (Russian) taught an audience at the Jewish Milwaukee Museum the basics needed to understand Nikolai Gogol’s literary masterpiece, Dead Souls. The novel was a product of the social and economic circumstances in 19th century Russia.
Undergraduate student Owen Ward (Geosciences) reflected on his recent trip to Israel and his thoughts on the Israel-Palestine war on Wisconsin Public Radio.
Carrie “Noni Juice” Mahone (‘18, BA Journalism, Advertising, & Media Studies) is the youngest woman in Milwaukee history to have her own radio show. Shepherd Express featured Mahone and her co-host in a piece highlighting 101.7 The Truth’s show “Jammin’ with Juice.”
The American Physical Society featured UWM’s Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics as it explained how graduate students within the center host monthly gatherings called “CoffeeShop Astrophysics,” where students explain a particular aspect of the cosmos to the general public.
The Ozaukee County News Graphic announced that officials on the Ozaukee County Natural Resources Committee have engaged the services of UWM’s Cultural Resource Management program to conduct cultural resource investigations for an east-west extension of the County’s Interurban Trail.
Students in one of UWM’s conservation and environmental science classes helped transform the face of Kolbach Park in Port Washington, Wisconsin, by designing a rain garden to help the park’s water drainage, the Ozaukee Press reported.
Joel Berkowitz (Jewish Studies) discussed Yiddish drama after the Holocaust at the online conference “Yiddish and the Holocaust: New Approaches” in June.
Kimberly Blaeser (emerita English) co–presented “An Evening of Haiku and Anishinaabe Song” at the Minnesota Humanities Center in June.
It’s not unusual for candidates to wait to announce their running mate until days before the national convention, Kathleen Dolan (Political Science) told Spectrum 1 News.
People in Print
Karolina Hicke and Karolina May-Chu (German). 2024. Translation: Excerpts from Inga Iwasiów’s novel “Bambino” (2008). In TRANSIT (Special Cluster: German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature and Culture, eds. May-Chu and Wojcik), 14(1): 140-48.
Karolina May-Chu (German). 2024. Reimagining the German-Polish Borderlands in Nowa Amerika and Slubfurt. TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World (Special Cluster: German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature and Culture, eds. Karolina May-Chu and Paula Wojcik), 14(1): 54-73.
Karolina May-Chu (German). 2024. Border Poetics in German and Polish Literature: Cosmopolitan Imaginations since 1989. Rochester, NY: Camden House.
Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (Film Studies). 2024. The Right to Sit Still. Film Quarterly, 77(4): 9-18.
Passings
Stephen Byers (‘04, PhD Urban Studies) passed away in June at the age of 81. Byers was a long-time mainstay in Milwaukee journalism, serving as a columnist, reporter and section editor for the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for over three decades, and also as a professor of journalism at Marquette University. Byers was also the co-author of Dear Mrs. Griggs: Women Pour Out Their Hearts from the Heartland, which he wrote with his wife, Genevieve G. McBride, who is a UW-Milwaukee emerita professor of history. Read a full obituary here.