Morgridge Hall, the new home of the School of Computer, Data and Information Science, at UW-Madison seen from University Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin, on the first morning of classes, Sept. 3, 2025.
Exploding interest in computer and data sciences over the last decade at the University of Wisconsin-Madison led to hundreds of students on course waitlists and a lack of lecture halls large enough to accommodate demand.
The growing pains will begin to ease with the opening of Morgridge Hall this semester. The gleaming seven-story building is the home of the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences. It houses the two most popular majors on this 50,000-student campus.
UW-Madison Housing & Dining hosted a “resident appreciation” dinner across campus on May 1, offering thousands of lobsters to students on meal plans. Staff even set up lobster-cracking stations to help students navigate the shells. At Liz Waters dining hall, salmon and steak were served instead.
Records obtained by The Cardinal show the university purchased about 2,354 pounds of lobster at $15.69 per pound, totaling more than $36,000 — excluding shipping and travel costs. The expense came from UW Dining’s $46 million annual operating budget, funded through housing contracts, meal plans and dining sales.
Switching from months of relaxation over the summer straight into heavy course loads and overwhelming numbers of due dates is stressful for anyone. Keeping track of a new schedule and planning for the weeks ahead can make adjusting to the new school year seem nearly impossible, and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s current first week setup might be to blame for this syllabus shock.
University of Wisconsin- Madison seniors offer advice and support to the incoming freshman class as the school year begins.
“Don’t lose yourself,” Jason Craft, a UW-Madison senior said. “Whatever you think you can do, you can do, and they’re going to be people supporting you from all corners of life.”
The new building for the School of Computer, Data, and Information Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has opened its doors.
This facility, called Morgridge Hall, brings various departments together under one roof for the first time. It inspires collaboration, as students and colleagues can simply bump into each other in the hall and get ideas for projects they are working on.
UW-Madison students Wednesday morning shuffled into their first day of classes in the university’s newest building — funded entirely by private donations — to house its growing School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences.
Morgridge Hall, a $267 million, 343,000-square-foot facility, is UW-Madison’s largest privately funded building and puts all the disciplines seeing the most growth at the university under one roof.
New Jersey father Anthony Verdura received a homesick call from his daughter last fall when she was five weeks into her first semester at UW-Madison.
That’s when Mary Morgan came in.
Verdura hired Morgan through her concierge business, Miss Mary Delivery, which caters to the university’s students and families, to surprise his daughter with a care package.
UW-Madison welcomed freshmen and transfer students to campus on Tuesday at a new student convocation.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, campus leadership, faculty and staff all helped with the kickoff event at the Kohl Center.
Pema Hutter-Rennilson and her friend, Lupine Wolf, sit together on a sidewalk bench on State Street on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. The two wear long army-green bottoms, tank tops and statement jewelry.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison students say they like to curate their own fashion sense.
“It helps me be more confident,” Hutter-Rennilson said about having their own style.
Lexi Westley comes from a family of coaches and athletes. But it took what she calls a “terrifying” experience with a coach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to motivate her to pursue coaching herself.
A little more than three years after coach Mackenzie Wartenberger resigned from her position as head coach of the UW-Madison women’s cross country team, Westley and four of her teammates are coming forward about what they call abusive behavior by Wartenberger.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor and dean Jon Audhya considers how deep cuts to federal research funding are affecting scientific work and training of students.
More Madison School District students could be eligible for automatic admission to the Universities of Wisconsin under a district policy that avoids having to break ties among top-ranked students.
The district says its approach the new Wisconsin Guarantee program complies with the law that created it, while the primary author of the law said neither her bill nor the law addresses Madison’s approach and it would take a court challenge to determine whether it is legal.
Prices might be going up elsewhere but it costs the same to buy a beer at Camp Randall Stadium this season as it did in 2024.
Cans of Coors Light, Varsity Golden Ale, Modelo and other beers were priced at $11.99 when the University of Wisconsin football team opened the 2025 season Thursday night. Other alcoholic beverages like Blue Moon, Ninja Dust and Nutrl were listed at $12.49.
The University of Wisconsin’s new indoor practice facility has a name: the Kellner Family Athletic Center.
Wisconsin officially unveiled the moniker for the $285 million facility at an event before Thursday’s football season opener against Miami (Ohio) at Camp Randall Stadium.
Downtown Madison turned into a sea of red Thursday as fans celebrated the first Badger game day of the season. From early morning tailgates to downtown bars, thousands filled the streets to mark the return of Wisconsin football.
Hera Salehi’s adjustment to college life wasn’t easy. Salehi grew up in Afghanistan. Although she had been living in the United States for a while, she had trouble finding her place when she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison two years ago.
But Salehi saw how student groups and organizations helped nurture community at the large Midwestern university. It inspired her to start the Afghan Student Association to help connect other Afghan students and the larger community.
Wisconsin will host its annual Red-White Scrimmage on Oct. 19 at noon in the Kohl Center, it announced in a release Wednesday afternoon. The intra-squad scrimmage is ticketed, yet free, and fans can redeem their reserved seat tickets online in advance for a first look at this upcoming season’s Badgers team.
New UW–Madison students gathered at Camp Randall Stadium Wednesday evening to learn game day traditions and take the annual “W” photo on the field.
Democrats announced legislation to amend Wisconsin law to prohibit the concealed carry of firearms on college and university campuses in Wisconsin.
The legislation, which has been introduced in previous sessions and failed to advance, would make it a misdemeanor to possess a gun on campus, making the penalty up to nine months in jail and a fine of up to $10,000. The new stipulations would not apply to law enforcement or military personnel, nor anyone who possesses a gun on campus with permission.
Wisconsin Democrats introduced new gun safety reforms on Wednesday, focusing on colleges and universities. Lawmakers proposed extending gun-free zones, currently in place for K-12 schools, to all college campuses to protect students and staff.
Democratic lawmakers want to align gun laws for Wisconsin colleges and universities with those in place for K-12 schools by prohibiting concealed carry on campuses.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Rep. Brienne Brown (D-Whitewater) said during a press conference Wednesday that the bill would help protect students at a time when schools continue to be targets of gun violence.
As students are returning to campus, authorities are investigating false reports of active shooters at more than a dozen universities across the country, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sure, there are other marching band houses on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus: Tuba Haus, Clarinest, Pi Palace (for the saxophones), Bone Zone (trombones). Nine in all. But only Trumpet Haus — Thaus, for short — lays claim to being the unofficial game day hype committee. This is where a lucky few trumpet players in the UW Marching Band call home.
Leaders with Cardiac on Campus, a student-run organization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Madison Fire Department and the City of Madison gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the two AEDs on Tuesday.
Camp Randall Stadium will be aglow in red in a way never seen before for a University of Wisconsin football home game Thursday night.
Wisconsin on Tuesday gave a sneak peek at the stadium’s new LED lights and how they can be programmed to fill the venue with colors and not just light up the field.
Badger Bash begins 2-and-a-half hours before every home football game at Union South.
With the game against Miami of Ohio kicking off at 8 p.m. Thursday, this week’s Badger Bash will start at 5:30 p.m.
While the fall semester of classes at UW-Madison officially commences on Sept. 3, this week offers the chance for nearly 9,000 students to transition into the campus’ 21 residence halls, explore their new surroundings and begin to enjoy university life.
Like so many campuses in the past week, UW-Madison police had a call about an active shooter threat on campus and thanks to preparation, they were able to determine it was false, before panic spread throughout campus.
The fall semester for the Universities of Wisconsin campuses starts next week. But at least 50 students at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee still don’t know if they’ll be able to attend class.
Early in the morning of Aug. 24, 1970, four anti-Vietnam War radicals — Karleton Armstrong, his brother Dwight Armstrong, David Fine and Leo Burt — used a van filled with almost a ton of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to bomb UW-Madison’s Sterling Hall, killing researcher Robert Fassnacht and injuring three others.
The district announced Friday evening that it would not use weighted grading as part of its response to the Wisconsin Guarantee program. Approved by the state Legislature, the program guarantees admission to UW-Madison for students who rank in the top 5% of their class and guarantees admission to the 12 other four-year Universities of Wisconsin campuses for students who rank in the top 10%.
“The reason why it resonated with students … is because it felt like an opportunity for them to be met on their own ground and to have a kind of shared ground with which to meet instructors or meet ideas,” says Nate Marshall, award-winning poet and assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ultimately, like, the role of an educator is to connect the students in order to serve the students. So, if that’s not your way to connect with them, that’s cool. You find other ways.”
Move-in day at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is underway Monday and will continue through Wednesday.
Each student has a designated move-in date and time, which can be found in their “My UW Housing” account.
UW-Madison School of Education professor Nick Hillman explains how provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act set lower borrowing limits for medical and law students while changing other loan rules.
UW–Madison has eliminated a decades-old tutoring program, a move that some campus staff say will leave students without critical academic support.
The Academic Coaching to Thrive and Succeed (ACTS) program had operated for about 30 years, providing personalized tutoring to hundreds of students each year.
On the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, the keffiyeh — a checkered scarf with deep cultural significance for Palestinians — has become a focal point in the debate over free speech and overall student activism.
With a 7% budget cut, UW-Madison Libraries is closing the Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics Library at 4 p.m. Friday. The campus Social Work Library will shutter also at the end of the coming school year, and others will have reduced hours.
UW-Madison Police Department is mourning the loss of a beloved former K9 on its police force.
UWPD announced Tuesday K9 Kobalt has reached the end of his watch.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been named the best college in Wisconsin for 2025, according to a recent report from Niche.
The school rankings website analyzed more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the U.S. for its 2025 Best Colleges in America report and related state reports.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students will soon move into their dorms and apartments. Classes will begin early next month. And as a new school year gets underway, a variety of pressing challenges on campus will linger.
JewBelong, a national nonprofit aiming to fight antisemitism, is launching a new billboard campaign near the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The campaign coincides with the August 28 football season opener against Miami of Ohio and targets antisemitism on campus.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students are heading back to campus and getting ready for the upcoming fall semester. Meanwhile, the campus food pantry, Open Seat, is preparing for an increased demand this school year.
Effective in July, UW-Madison ended ACTS, which included its direct coaching services to students, Raul Leon, UW-Madison assistant vice provost for student engagement and scholarship programs, said in an Aug. 1 email to employees that the Wisconsin State Journal obtained.
The clock is winding down to August Moving Days in Madison.
Around this time each year, thousands of college students’ leases end in the Madison area, which means many are moving out while others are moving in.
Parents play a crucial role in setting their children up for success as young adults head off to college. The transition to college is often filled with independence and decision-making that can be challenging.
The athletic department had more than $3 million in alcohol purchases from seven home games last season, the first with sales open to everyone of legal age instead of only those in suites and clubs.
The impact of expanded alcohol sales on businesses around the stadium who also sell beer wasn’t as pronounced as owners and managers feared a year ago. But the Dillises are among those feeling changes on game days.
The top 50 schools for long-term career success:
50. University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Galin Scholars program is welcoming its third cohort of high school students this fall, continuing its expansion of free college prep in the greater Madison area.
The Madison-based nonprofit now supports 15 students from seven high schools. The first five students graduated from high school this summer and will begin college at Northwestern University, Lake Forest College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.
Around this time each year, thousands of college students’ leases end in the Madison area, which means many are moving out while others are moving in.
Police departments in Middleton and at UW-Madison restored their 911 services Monday afternoon after outages earlier in the day.
Around 3:30 p.m., UW-Madison issued an all-clear for the 911 system, which earlier in the day had problems taking calls from landlines. Middleton police Capt. Tyler Loether also confirmed to the Wisconsin State Journal Monday afternoon that the city had restored its 911 system too.
Legislative Republicans nixed a plan to fund a UW-Madison program that recovers the remains of missing service members, but a new proposal would require the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents to pay for it.
A team of students and experts in the Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project at UW-Madison sifts through archives and conducts field excavations in an effort to return the remains of veterans who went missing in combat to their families.
Jake Baggott, UW-Madison associate vice chancellor and executive director of University Health Services, said in a statement that UW-Madison as a campus has been actively preparing over the last year for a potential measles case.
University Health Services led and coordinated a walkthrough exercise with campus, local and state public health officials to simulate their preparedness during a measles outbreak, Baggott said
An organization at UW-Madison is giving gently used college furniture a second life.
“Badger Reclaim” was founded by two UW-Madison students, Amelia Wozniak and Kaleb Roessler.
They started Badger Reclaim during their sophomore year after they noticed the amount of college dorm and apartment items that get thrown on the streets of Madison during student move out.
When Bill Zhu started a computer science major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021, he had no expectation the tech job market would dip, or would dip so soon. Over the previous decade, computer science became one of the most popular majors for new college students.
Fifteen years ago, the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps. The resource provides a “treasure trove” of public data and offers a snapshot on the health of nearly every county in the nation, said Sheri Johnson, the institute’s director.
While more than 700,000 people use the resource each year, Johnson said, County Health Rankings and Roadmaps will soon lose its primary funder. The New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is set to end its support after 2026.
UW-Madison will be hosting swimming and diving squads this winter for the 2025-26 Olympic sports championships and tournaments.
The Big Ten Conference announced the dates and host sites Wednesday. The fall season is kicking off on Oct. 31 at Michigan State, with the Spartans hosting cross country championships from Nov. 6-9.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Wisconsin Pickleball Club, which started two seasons ago, has become so popular that a second on-campus pickleball group has formed.
What’s so special about being a college versus a school or even a department, which is how computing programs at UW-Madison were structured up until six years ago? It’s not about bragging rights or status, but being able to build business relationships, raise money and more quickly carry out a mission that’s in step with the times.
