In a rare moment of drama in the Senate Tuesday, a bill that would give the UW-Madison athletics department millions to pay down debt and free up other money for revenue-sharing with players passed by a single vote that changed just as the legislation appeared doomed.
“Our Town” was adapted as an opera by composer Ned Rorem and librettist J.D. McClatchy in 2005. It premiered at Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theater in 2006.
The operatic production is coming to University Opera on March 20 for a four-day run in Music Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Some Wisconsin campuses called off in-person instruction Monday as gusty blizzard winds ripped through the state, while students at other universities trekked to class through the snow.
UW-Madison students took advantage of the snowy weather from the blizzard that swept across Wisconsin on Monday.
The Cap Times will host middle and high school students this July for the 2026 Youth Press Corps, a summer journalism camp coordinated by the Greater Madison Writing Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Following the sports and money theme, the Senate will also consider a bill that would give more than $14 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for athletic facility costs in order to offset the money the school pays student athletes in NIL deals.
Conservative-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar discussed judicial impartiality, gerrymandering and the importance of freedom of speech for University of Wisconsin-Madison students in an interview with The Daily Cardinal Friday.
The Cap Times recently spoke with Gronert and Zhang — both sophomores at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — about their campaigns and hopes for the district, which includes much of the UW-Madison campus and an off-campus area north of Regent Street.
The candidates said housing affordability, transit access and public safety are top priorities. They talked about rising food insecurity, as well as how the university is responding to concerns about the impact of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
Richard Leffler never heard of The University League before meeting his wife, Joan, and for years, he attended events only as her guest. When she became president, he watched her lead the nonprofit through the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home to keep programs afloat.
“She worked all day on that computer. She got her own Zoom subscription. Anything she did, she did 100%,” Leffler said.
Since its founding in 1901, the organization has grown from a small social group of faculty wives into a nonprofit that awards scholarships to University of Wisconsin-Madison students and sustains a vibrant community of members. It awarded over $166,000 in scholarships last year.
John Zumbrunnen doesn’t pretend to have all the answers as the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new provost. He doesn’t actually think he should.
A provost’s job, he said, is to “make sure that campus is asking the right, big strategic questions” and bring together teams in “search for the answers.”
That’s the pitch Zumbrunnen recently made as he sought to become UW-Madison’s next chief academic officer and the second-highest ranking leader on campus.
The Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin held a seminar March 11. It focused on the relationship between the effects of fires and habitat fragmentation on population dynamics of narrow-leaved purple coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia, on the ever fragmenting prairies of western Minnesota. The seminar was hosted by research ecologist at the UW Arboretum Jared Beck.
A Flock Safety camera installed near Memorial Union sparked confusion between the City of Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Madison over who owns the pole supporting the device — and whether the camera complies with city regulations.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Dance Department is celebrating its 100th year of operation, making it the oldest in the United States to offer an accredited dance degree. While the program was established in June 1926, founder Margaret H’Doubler began her instruction nine years prior.
One of the groups experiencing the “Wild West” of current college athletics wants even less oversight.
Big Ten Conference leaders want the NCAA to pause investigations and possible punishments against teams for tampering with athletes around transfer portal windows, according to a letter sent by the Big Ten to the NCAA that was obtained Wednesday by ESPN. The conference, which includes the University of Wisconsin, believes the rules regarding contact with transfers can’t keep up with the rest of the changes made to the landscape of college sports.
In response to questions from the State Journal, DOA spokesperson Tatyana Warrick wrote in an email that the RFP “was posted in error.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the request was simply posted prematurely or the state has reconsidered the idea. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers’ administration did not respond to requests for comment from the State Journal.
Chef Lauren Montelbano has worked as Wisconsin Union’s first chef-in-residence since last April, expanding vegetarian and vegan options across Union restaurants and collaborating with Union chefs to develop recipes and culinary programs for the Madison community.
Over the past year, she designed dishes for the catering menus, Grab ‘N’ Go areas and the Rathskeller and hosted a cooking demo and class through WUD Cuisine to teach more about vegan food preparation.
“I had the opportunity to collaborate and learn from the highly skilled and talented chefs that have made the Union their home,” Montelbano said. “Their attention to detail, passion for teaching and ability to manage multiple high volume businesses at once was inspiring to witness and be a small part of.”
The University League is celebrating 125 years of providing student scholarships to UW-Madison students, while also promoting volunteer, educational and social activities for its members.
The league has 31 endowed scholarships, along with a general scholarship fund.
Entrepreneurs launching startups through UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation will soon have a larger presence on the West Coast.
The university and WARF, the campus’ nonprofit patent licensing arm, are partnering with seven other schools to open a two-year pilot workspace in San Francisco that university-founded startups and teams traveling to the Bay Area can use for work and to meet with investors.
UW-Madison’s dance department celebrates its one-hundredth anniversary this year. A century of history comes with challenges faced along the way. Much of the department’s success is accredited to innovative contributions by founder Margaret H’Doubler and student dancers.
Angelina Vang said she knew she wanted to go to college since her freshman year.
She has choices – she’s been accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Loyola University and DePaul University. She’s looking to study medicine and become an emergency physician.
The office has also supported Yang, who plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“A lot of the students here are first generation,” Yang said. “Having that support really builds our self-esteem and making sure that we know what we want to do in the future and how we can go to college or enter the workforce.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department’s use of Flock security cameras has sparked privacy concerns among faculty and staff, leading to calls for the surveillance technology to be removed from campus.
UW-Madison police adopted the security cameras in July 2025. The department said the cameras help with investigations by identifying license plates and vehicles, but do not identify faces, people, gender or race. The system captures photos rather than videos.
A crowd of over 400 gathered in Van Vleck Hall to hear Grant Sanderson, a STEM content creator known by his YouTube handle 3Blue1Brown, talk about high-dimensional spheres in a Feb. 13 event hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Math Club.
Sanderson’s UW-Madison talk was titled: “Who cares about high-dimensional spheres?” Enough people, a UW-Madison math club member joked, to “outdraw the Harry Styles pre-album release listening party.”
A new housing assessment study reported that private development meets the needs of the University of Madison students and claimed there exists housing accessibility and affordability in Madison, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
As recent changes to immigration policy under the Trump administration lead to a decline in foreign student enrollment across the country, some current and prospective international students feel uncertain about their future in the U.S.
The U.S. saw its largest decline in foreign enrollment in a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic, as international enrollment for the 2025-26 academic year fell by 17%.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, freshman international enrollment declined by 30%, with only 325 students joining this academic year compared to 506 students the year before.
“The World According to Allee Willis” will be screened as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 10 at the Chazen Museum of Art. Fenton, an award-winning creative visualist and writer (she’s won three Emmys and a Grammy) and Willis’ longtime partner, will lead a discussion after the screening.
Willis grew up in Detroit in the 1950s during the height of Motown and was heavily inspired by the music coming out of the city. She studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before moving to Los Angeles.
Academic staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison approved a resolution Monday opposing the university’s use of license plate reader cameras operated by the company Flock Safety.
The resolution, written by Barrett Elward, Co-President of the United Faculty and Academic Staff Union, raises concerns about privacy and the potential for widespread data collection.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Academic Staff Assembly passed a resolution on Monday calling for UWPD to end their contract with Flock Safety and publish all other contracts with surveillance technology companies, like Motorola Safeties and Rhombus.
Fewer than 10 percent of faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison identify as conservative, while 70 percent identify as liberal, according to a new poll from the school’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
The study surveyed 2,388 tenured and tenure-track faculty across all of UW–Madison’s schools and colleges on ideological composition, campus climate, academic freedom, free expression and hiring.
The Trump administration disrupted university research last year by canceling grants, delaying new awards and seeking other policy changes that put millions of dollars in jeopardy both in and beyond Wisconsin.
“There continues to be great volatility and uncertainty around federal funding, which is our largest single source of external revenue,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said at a campus meeting last month.
W-Madison has named John Zumbrunnen provost after he’s served in the interim role since June, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced Monday.
On Feb. 21, the station took home one of the highest awards in college journalism: the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System named WSUM the best college station in the nation.
Kelsey Brannan, the director of student radio at WSUM — one of the station’s two full-time employees — said WSUM’s students provide listeners with authentic shows and music that aren’t replicated on other stations or streaming services.
“You’re hearing students bring in music that you’re not hearing anywhere else,” Brannan said. “They’re telling news stories from their perspective that you’re not getting from the national news or even local outlets — it’s a really unique perspective. You’re hearing sportscasters who are students who are calling the games that their peers are participating in. There’s something really special about that.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, with help from the Madison Anarchist League chapter and several local bands, organized a fundraiser for Sudan at the Mousetrap on Feb. 28.
Current District 8 Alder MGR Govindarajan, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison College Democrats, endorsed sophomore candidate Ellen Zhang in the upcoming Madison Common Council election on Thursday, citing her understanding of city government and ability to build relationships within local leadership.
Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen has been selected to hold the role of provost permanently, beating out finalists Anna Stenport (the University of Georgia) and Charles Martinez Jr. (the University of Texas-Austin), the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Monday.
John Zumbrunnen has been appointed as the provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin announced. The position is the second to the chancellor UW, managing all academic program and budget planning.
John Zumbrunnen, who has served as interim provost for UW-Madison since June 2025, saw that interim tag removed Monday. He was also named the school’s executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced.
John Zumbrunnen has been named the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced Monday.
This year, Mount Mary University became the first college in Wisconsin to offer a reduced-credit bachelor’s degree.
The Universities of Wisconsin could soon follow.
Last week, the Board of Regents Education Committee unanimously approved revising a policy that would allow campuses to offer 90-credit degrees.
The approval on March 5 did not yet establish three-year degrees.
A new report by Alex Tahk, director of the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, reveals the results of an important survey of UW Madison faculty. But there are serious problems with the survey questions, and we need to be careful not to adopt Tahk’s claims about “ideological imbalance and its consequences” uncritically.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Athletic Hall of Fame will have a new, permanent home outside of the Kohl Center, according to a UW Athletics press release. Construction is set to begin early spring and be completed in time for the 2026 Hall class next September.
A group of UW-Madison faculty and staff is putting pressure on campus police to remove AI-powered license plate-reading surveillance cameras.
UW-Madison installed eight cameras in July 2025 from the Atlanta-based company, Flock Safety. The company operates a network of automated cameras that monitor 24/7 and capture images of the rear of passing cars.
Anna Andrzejewski, an art historian who arrived at UW–Madison in the early 2000s, is the first holder of the Wright professorship, which was inaugurated on July 1, 2025.
Andrzejewski has taught a course on Wright’s architecture and writings since 2016. The endowed professorship — which she calls “utterly transformative and inspiring” — will enhance and expand Andrzejewski’s Wright-related teaching and research while supporting student field trips to Wright-designed buildings in the region.
“As I argue in a new essay for Inquisitive magazine, institutional neutrality as originally formulated by the University of Wisconsin in 1894 is a concept that protects academic freedom by prohibiting colleges from punishing or condemning faculty for their political views. The issue of affirmative institutional statements is a much later, and more minor, concern. But when a university condemns certain political stands, it inevitably creates the danger of suppressing those ideas.”
“Universities ought to return to the 1894 University of Wisconsin approach to the opinionated university, where academic freedom is so important that even denouncing a professor violates standards of neutrality. But when the concept of institutional neutrality is abused by politicians and administrators to silence faculty, then it becomes a cure worse than the disease. Soucek’s book recognizes these dangers and provides a thoughtful approach to trying to address the problems inherent in the inevitable opinions of a university.”
University of Wisconsin junior Noah Warren studies political science with a special interest in geopolitics. But, Warren said he became frustrated when he found no free platform displaying a picture of politics across the globe — so he built one.
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, a new University of Wisconsin policy requires its students to share their vaccination status amidst the recent measles outbreak.
Despite some confusion, according to Jake Baggott, Associate Vice Chancellor & Executive Director of University Health Services, students are not required to be vaccinated but rather obligated to share their status for specific vaccinations, such as Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR), Varicella (Chicken Pox), Hepatitis B and more, according to the UHS Vaccination Records website.
The University of Wisconsin announced Mar. 4 that it created a web page with expanded information and guidance should students or employees encounter someone representing a federal agency in campus facilities or workspaces, according to UW News.
The Open Seat food pantry, located in the UW Student Activity Center, provides food and hygiene products to students experiencing food insecurity. Open to all UW–Madison students without income verification, the pantry aims to remove barriers to basic needs so students can focus on academics instead of worrying about their next meal.
Now, the eight part-time student employees who operate the pantry are calling on Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Lori Reesor to fund a full-time, permanent staff position dedicated solely to pantry operations. Student organizers say the current model — in which students manage every aspect of a large-scale food distribution program — is no longer sustainable.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is addressing the impact of the ongoing conflict in Iran and the broader Middle East. Students who are studying abroad in the region are being moved to new locations, where the university says they will continue their programs. Their plan aims to ensure the safety and well-being of students and staff.
“The situation is evolving rapidly, and we are closely following developments,” said Fran Vavrus, vice provost and dean of the International Division. Vavrus emphasized the university’s commitment to connecting with both international students in Madison and those studying abroad.
When University of Wisconsin-Madison juniors Amelia Wozniak and Kaleb Roessler worked for a moving company last spring, they were shocked by the amount of housing items that were thrown away in good condition. That observation led them to create Badger Reclaim, an organization dedicated to helping other UW-Madison students by recycling and distributing gently used items to those in need.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin called the win “exciting” and highlighted the importance of the partnership in saving lives.
“The Badgers contributed more than 15,400 donations over the course of the competition,” Mnookin said. “That included our students, alumni, community members, anybody who went and donated.”
On Wisconsin! University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the date of this year’s homecoming game on Tuesday. (video)
Three candidates vying to become the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s next provost recently outlined their visions for how to address the university’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.
harles Martinez, a dean at the University of Texas at Austin, says he’s the right person to guide UW-Madison through the upcoming search for the university’s next chancellor.
The Blk Pwr Coalition and non-profit organization Leaders Igniting Transformation reflected on the Black Panther Party’s historical activism and current political challenges at an event Wednesday at the Multicultural Student Center.
The three finalists for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s second-highest academic position — the provost — presented their visions for the role and the future of campus to an audience of faculty, staff and students alike last week.
The University of Wisconsin’s Blk Pwr Coalition held an event in collaboration with the Leaders Igniting Transformation club Wednesday to talk about the history of the Black Power Movement.
A few years after a frenzied off-campus housing search saw UW-Madison students camping overnight to secure apartments, groups representing Madison-area developers and property management companies say there is enough housing for all undergraduates near campus and no need for the university to build another dorm.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department’s Chief of Police Brent Plisch spoke with University Committee members Monday about the presence of eight Flock Safety cameras on campus, addressing their privacy concerns.
After a nine-month search to replace the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s second-highest academic official, three finalists — Anna Stenport, John Zumbrunnen and Charles Martinez Jr. — are presenting their visions for the future of campus this week.
