If you’re finalizing a late-summer itinerary for Paris or planning a fall foliage tour through Japan, you may be thinking about how you can best learn a little French or Japanese before you go — and with good reason. Learning a language for travel not only helps with logistics like getting directions but also fosters deeper connections with a country’s people and culture.
For a long time, Megan Kokalj refused to jump into the water at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Soderholm Family Aquatic Center from any point higher than the 5-meter platform.
Here’s what guests on the June 12, 2026 episode said about a PFAS settlement, housing help for renters, the State Health Assessment and UW tuition hikes.
The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) is seeking state approval to change how it ranks high school students for the Wisconsin Guarantee program, potentially affecting how many students are automatically admitted into University of Wisconsin-system schools.
Students who place in the top 10% of their class at the end of the 11th grade are automatically admitted to all UW universities, save for UW-Madison, under a state program known as the Wisconsin Guarantee, provided they apply by the regular deadlines. Students who apply by the early deadline and rank in the top 5% of their class are automatically admitted to UW-Madison.
On August 15, 2025, five former University of Wisconsin women’s basketball players filed a federal lawsuit claiming they experienced psychological abuse and discrimination by former head coach Marisa Moseley. The suit also alleges the university failed to respond appropriately and includes claims of retaliation, emotional harm, and disability discrimination.
The Wisconsin Dive Club held its final practice at the Soderholm Family Aquatic Center, ending a three-and-a-half-year run at the downtown Madison facility.
The club, which serves nearly 90 families, will no longer have access to the pool this fall after the University of Wisconsin-Madison denied its specific request for pool time.
Katie Knill said her son joined the club almost a year ago.
So much of rowing is working together as one, often when nobody is watching. As such, it’s a sport where it’s possible for stars to get overlooked.
All of those things serve as the backdrop to an idea that has been brewing inside the Wisconsin Rowing Stewards of 1874 for about a year: The creation of the Wisconsin Rowing Hall of Fame.
Participating in physical activity, particularly while surrounded by “elements of nature,” can improve classroom focus and concentration for young students, said Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a UW professor of pediatrics and human development and family studies. Yet environmental and economic disparities can prove significant barriers to many, he said.
Infleqtion, a leading quantum tech firm with offices in Madison, is accelerating with $550 million in new funding after going public earlier this year.
Chief Scientist and UW-Madison physics Prof. Mark Saffman addressed attendees of yesterday’s launch event for the Wisconsin Quantum Alliance in Madison, organized by the Wisconsin Technology Council. The initiative aims to accelerate tech development and commercialization of quantum in Wisconsin, as well as preparing for future workforce needs.
From bus routes to a new train service, University of Wisconsin-Madison students are fueling alternative transportation options in Madison.
A 2023 UW Transportation Services survey showed 70% of students walk or ride the bus on good weather days and 80% on bad weather days.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (UCIS) announced a new policy memo May 22 stating that individuals seeking a green card must return to their home countries to complete the process. Students who arrive on visas and stay for longer than its validity will be among those most affected.
The USCIS memo describes obtaining a green card, or an “adjustment of status,” as an “extraordinary act of administrative grace,” and a privilege granted by the government rather than a right.
Teams of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison spent months submitting proposals to the Department of Energy’s vast new Genesis Mission — an initiative centered around artificial intelligence (AI) but naming research goals in fields as varied as nuclear fusion and molecular biology. Many of UW-Madison’s proposals center around one burgeoning cross-college priority: quantum.
The winningest NCAA women’s hockey coach no longer is the highest paid in the sport.
Temporarily, at least.
‘Had to pinch myself’: Badgers great discusses dream year at AmFam Championship
The University of Wisconsin’s Mark Johnson in March became the first to 700 women’s hockey wins and the first in college hockey to win nine NCAA championships.
In Philadelphia, New York and Boston, American colonists were preparing to pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to declare their independence from an oppressive monarch.
But in the faraway frontier territory that would later become Wisconsin, Native and European peoples were on a wholly different journey in 1776.
Madison’s City Council approved plans Tuesday to redesign Regent Street near Camp Randall Stadium, following months of debate over a new layout for one of Madison’s main cultural hubs and one of the west side’s major east-west connector streets.
UW-Madison Wisconsin Center for Education Research scientist Bradley Carl explains the basis for school districts holding referendums and the choices faced by voters being asked to raise local taxes.
Q: I eat frozen yogurt regularly, assuming it’s better for me than ice cream. Is it?
Since frozen yogurt took off in the 1970s, it has been pitched as a healthier alternative to ice cream. In TCBY advertisements from the 1990s, their low-calorie, nonfat version was said to have “all of the pleasure, none of the guilt.” Today, some Greek yogurt shops tout gut-friendly probiotic benefits.
The Universities of Wisconsin’s search for UW-Madison’s next chancellor is kicking off with public input sessions starting next week.
The 23-member committee leading the search to identify former Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s successor will gather feedback from the faculty, staff, students and the public on Monday and June 22 at two listening sessions, the university announced Tuesday.
A new federal rule aimed at increasing access to nutritious foods for SNAP recipients is raising questions for some small grocery stores in rural communities.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in May that retailers participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will be required to carry a wider variety of staple foods beginning in November.
Here is what Milwaukee community members said as a statewide listening tour kicked off at UWM.
Newly disclosed records have put a new focus on the beagles used in research facilities. At UW-Madison, dogs were involved in 2023 experiments that included injections of blue dye before the animals were euthanized and dissected.
Those records, secured by the animal advocacy organization Rise for Animals and first reported by FOX6 News, intensify the continuing attention on Ridglan Farms and broader animal-welfare concerns.
Last month, when the Trump administration reached an agreement with Bayer to curb what officials lambasted as anticompetitive practices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins hailed it as a win for farmers. But she cautioned the concentrated nature of the seed industry required continued antitrust vigilance.
A plant in one of UW-Madison’s greenhouses is making a dramatic exit.
The Botany Garden and Greenhouse’s Agave victoriae-reginae plant, which is about 30 years old, has erected a towering 15-foot “death bloom,” which looks like a spikey, oversized stalk of asparagus, as a finale to its multigenerational lifespan.
Aid for childcare providers is expiring, the Universities of Wisconsin raises tuition, and the state reaches a $10 million PFAS settlement — Inside Wisconsin Politics reviews a busy start to summer.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers a handy tool that uses data from a NOAA satellite and other resources to track the Saharan air layer as it ebbs and flows across the globe.
By inducing specific patterns of activity in small portions of the brain in awake mice, researchers have triggered a recalibration of neural connections that normally only occurs during sleep. This new approach offset the effects of sleep deprivation on memory tasks and revealed features of sleep that are key to its restorative effect.
A new report from the University of Wisconsin says tuition in the state is actually too low.
UW regents last week voted for a 2% tuition increase across the UW System, but the report from the university’s Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy said that tuition increase is modest at best.
The University of Wisconsin board has approved a tuition increase of 2% for the 2026-2027 academic year. That decision has some lawmakers in disagreement.
A researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has published a paper that demonstrates hybrid combinations of lignocellulosic feedstock pretreatment methods can achieve high glucose yields with reduced energy consumption.
In his article in The Atlantic, grimly titled, “America is sliding toward illiteracy,” Idrees Kahloon uses data largely from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, to reflect on the recent degradation of American education. Kahloon uses this data to test theories as to why K-12 test scores have plummeted since 2007 after a brief but substantive window of improvement.
Before documents detailing its use of Ridglan Farms beagles in a 2023 study could become public, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine released a statement June 5 alongside a letter to clients of UW Veterinary Care, an animal hospital run by the university.
What we know:
In January 2023, the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine bought six, 11-month-old beagles from Ridglan Farms.
More than 1,600 beagles once caged at Ridglan Farms are getting a second chance at life. But for every Bailey, Milo, Lucy, or Ginger, there are countless others whose fate looks different.
While Republicans are decrying the recently approved 2% UW tuition hike that Regents call “balanced and modest,” a new report from a UW-Madison think tank argues the university’s in-state tuition isn’t high enough.
PBS Wisconsin’s University Place will record “An Overview of the Geology of Wisconsin,” a presentation by Sue Swanson, Ph.D., Director of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey (WGNHS) and State Geologist.
A game-changing administrative catalyst in the University of Wisconsin athletic department and football turnaround of the ‘90s has some thoughts on today’s challenges.
The ongoing chaos in the present college model holds some personal intrigue and piqued the curiosity of Al Fish, one of 12 inductees to the 2026 UW Athletics Hall of Fame.
The University of Wisconsin football team was falling behind its Big Ten peers. It needed a better place to practice when weather wasn’t cooperating.
The mid-1980s plan to solve that problem initially was to install a translucent dome over the Camp Randall Stadium field for the offseason. The Athletic Board got on board — briefly, anyway.
Question: What is the prediction for the 2026 hurricane season?
Answer: Tropical cyclones are large, whirling storms that obtain their energy from warm ocean waters.
UW-Madison’s new chancellor will be stepping onto campus within the next year.
The search is underway after Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin left UW-Madison in May to lead Columbia University, closing a four-year tenure marked by the growth of the university’s research enterprise, historic enrollment, federal policy changes and several controversial high-profile decisions.
Janet (Huff) Dyer followed her sister to the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team. Now she’s following her into the Badgers’ hall of fame.
Badgers star back leads Wisconsin’s 2026 hall of fame class
“It was definitely surprising,” Dyer said. “I never expected it. But it was a very important moment for me.”
Roughly 20 million Americans live in manufactured houses, which are made in factories.
Though they’re often called mobile homes or trailers, that’s really a misnomer because their owners can’t easily relocate them. Typically, the people who own them rent the land underneath the houses from the owners of parks for manufactured home. Sometimes an owner will rent their home to someone else while paying to rent the land as well.
The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved a proposal to increase resident undergraduate tuition by 2 percent for the 2026–27 academic year.
“This 2 percent tuition increase represents a balanced and measured approach to addressing the rising costs our UW universities face,” said Regent President Amy B. Bogost.
The decision, by a vote of 15-1, comes after several years of significant financial restructuring across UW universities, including reductions in structural deficits, operational changes, and campus-level cost containment efforts designed to strengthen long-term financial stability.
In-state students will once again pay a higher tuition rate to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison — but their cost remains lower than at peer schools.
On Thursday, the UW system’s Board of Regents approved a 2% tuition increase for resident undergraduates next school year. Tim Nixon was the only regent to vote against the measure.
“We’ve increased tuition four years in a row. I personally have not been provided with sufficient information to believe it is again necessary. No matter how reasonable the increase, the burden on students, parents and the public is real,” Nixon said at the board’s meeting at UW-Milwaukee.
Several Republican lawmakers are upset with the University of Wisconsin System’s proposal to increase tuition by 2% a year after a 5% increase.
Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, went as far as saying that a pair of trustees “lied to all our faces” in committee testimony when they said that tuition would not be raised again this soon.
“Unfortunately, students and their families are the ones who will be paying the price for this dishonesty,” Testin said in a statement. “At least we now know that we can no longer take the UW Board of Regents at their word.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison is investigating whether the student group Animal Advocacy encouraged members to participate in an illegal raid of a puppy mill earlier this spring, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Wednesday was a bittersweet day for the UW-Madison Police Department.
After nine years, K9 Ritter is retiring.
The furry friend joined UWPD in 2017 alongside officer Justin Zurbuchen as an explosives-detection and human-tracking team.
Ritter has helped keep the UW campus safe through 327 deployments, special events and every Badger football game.
The Joint Committee on Finance approved the $10 million sale of the state’s former Human Services building to Landmark Development Tuesday, bringing Madison one step closer to getting Amtrak service.
A key part of the company’s plan is to bridge gaps between Madison and other Midwestern cities.
“Madison is ideally situated amongst the sort of arc of bigger cities within the Midwest. We really can play a key position economically, culturally, politically, by the location we have,” Jason Ilstrup, the president of Downtown Madison Inc., said.
Students, faculty and staff could learn by fall who will become the next leader of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We hope to have a new chancellor named … by the end of the calendar year, at the latest,” Jason Beier, who oversees human resources for the broader UW system, recently told a group tasked with finding Jennifer Mnookin’s replacement.
UW Health has delivered prescriptions to their patients’ homes since 2012, but now those deliveries will come much faster.
For patients in Dane County, UW Health can now deliver prescriptions to the patient’s home the day after the order is placed – for free, Aaron Webb, the director of ambulatory care pharmacy services at UW Health said Tuesday.
“We are trying to make this as convenient as possible for patients, by meeting them where they are,” Webb explained.
Prescription home delivery through UW Health used to take several days, using outside vendors such as USPS and UPS.
Brian Posick hasn’t forgotten his first Madison Sports Hall of Fame banquet. It was 30 years ago, and the memory is still fresh.
Former University of Wisconsin sports information director Jim Mott was among the four inductees in 1996, and Posick was drawn to the event because “I admired him.”
Posick was subsequently hooked. “I wanted to see what it was all about,” he said, “and I’ve been there ever since handing out individual awards, whatever they may be.”
This topic, admittedly, is well down the list of ways the transfer portal complicates college sports.
But it’s on there somewhere and entered my mind last week when the UW Athletic Hall of Fame class of 2026 was unveiled.
Roughly 20 million Americans live in manufactured houses, which are homes made in factories.
Although they’re often called mobile homes or trailers, that’s really a misnomer because their owners can’t easily relocate them. Typically, the people who own them rent the land underneath the houses from the owners of manufactured home parks. Sometimes, an owner will rent their home to someone else while paying to rent the land as well.
Civic engagement is all the buzz at UW-Madison.
Just look at any commencement or convocation speech from Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin over the past few years, each of which have mentioned the words pluralism or polarization at least once.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is investigating a student group’s alleged involvement in the raid of a Madison-area beagle breeding facility.
The Office of Student Conduct is determining whether Animal Advocacy encouraged other students to participate in criminal activity. The student group protested animal abuse on a flyer and in a social media post about Ridglan Farms, a Blue Mounds beagle breeding facility that has faced years of accusations of mistreating dogs. Ridglan Farms has long denied mistreating the animals in its care.
Almost 20 years ago, a green, shiny beetle arrived in southern Wisconsin and started eating ash trees to death.
Originally from Asia and known as the emerald ash borer, the bug is smaller than a dime and quickly spread like wildfire, largely fueled by firewood and tree nursery transports.
Summer is here and with children already or about to be on summer break, many parents are looking for productive ways for their children to spend their break.
UW Health Dr. Shilagh Mirgain shares some budget friendly summer activities for children.
While students may be done with homework for the summer, that doesn’t mean they have to stop reading.
Dr. Mirgain suggests visiting a library for books and fun.
Dr. Gregory DeMuri, pediatric infectious disease doctor at UW Health Kids and professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said Lyme disease can cause the rash, and then it can cause arthritis, heart problems and sometimes central nervous system issues.
Question: How important was the weather forecast on D-Day?
Answer: D-Day was the name given to the June 6, 1944, invasion of the beaches at Normandy in northern France by troops of the Allied Forces during World War II. The goal was to cross the narrow, often stormy, English Channel into Nazi-occupied France.
Tuition for in-state students on Universities of Wisconsin campuses may increase again this fall.
The UW Board of Regents will vote Thursday on whether to raise tuition for in-state undergraduate students by 2% for the 2026-27 academic year.
If the plan is approved, in-state students at UW-Madison will pay $210 more next fall, or $10,716 total, and out-of-state students will see a 4% tuition increase, or about $1,701, raising the total to $44,232.
Former University of Wisconsin men’s basketball forward Sam Dekker decided to enter coaching after an 11-year professional basketball career, joining the South Carolina men’s basketball staff in May.
Last week, he discussed the excitement of joining his former assistant coach at Wisconsin, Lamont Paris, and the difficulty of leaving the playing chapter of his career behind him.
