The UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems has been selected by the EPA as a Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program Champion for 2005. This designation honors CIAS for its efforts to reduce pesticide risk through sustainable agricultural practices such as Integrated Pest Management and organic farming. CIAS also received this national honor in 2003.

Columbia County won the State 4-H Senior Dairy Judging Contest held July 29, 2005 at the Polk County Fair in St. Croix Falls. They earned the right to represent Wisconsin at the National 4-H Contest held at World Dairy Expo in Madison. Polk County finished second and Walworth County was third. Polk County will travel to the Pennsylvania All-American Youth Dairy Judging Contest in Harrisburg, Pa.

A team of students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison created the first place capstone report in the annual Upper Midwest Capstone Competition. Michigan Tech placed second, and a UW-Madison team took third place.

We made it! Our determined group of ten riders completed the 235-mile ride from Cadott to Madison June 24 to June 27 in great spirits … and with only

A group of food science students captured first place this year in a national product development contest for

Ground was broken July 7 for the new Cereal Crops Research Unit on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The new facility is funded and operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

Researchers at the Center for Eukaryotic Structural Genomics, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have received a $20 million award to fund Phase II of the Protein Structure Initiative over the next five years. Information from the PSI project, funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will deepen our understanding of a variety of biological processes.

A grant from the UW-Madison Graduate School’s Technology Transfer Program will fund a project that uses computer mapping and statistical modeling to identify likely habitat of the endangered Karner blue butterfly–which could help Wisconsin land managers save thousands of dollars on field surveys required to protect the rare insect.

A milk pasteurization and process control certification course will be held Aug. 16-17 at the Babcock Dairy Plant on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

William C. Thiesenhusen, emeritus professor of agricultural economics and agricultural journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former director of the university’s Land Tenure Center, died after suffering a heart attack the weekend of June 25-26 at his residence near Madison. He was 68 years old.