The inspiration for one of four new public art proposals on the edge of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus came from a 6-year-old boy named Luke.
“We go birding when we’re in Madison,” said artist Jason Klimoski, who with his wife, Lesley Chang, founded the architecture firm StudioKCA. “When we go to the Arboretum or Vilas Park, robins make that ‘cheerio’ sound: ‘Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio.'”
The BerbeeWalsh Emergency Department at University Hospital will now have its own dedicated address, UW Health announced on Thursday.
The emergency department’s new address is 1565 Highland Ave., in Madison.
UW Health explained the emergency department had shared the previous same address as the hospital’s main entrance.
The new address allows for patients and families to get to the department quicker.
The University of Wisconsin- Madison School of Veterinary Medicine is warning dog owners about signs of sickness they might miss.
This comes after Madison Parks learned through social media that a dog died after visiting Warner Park’s off-leash dog park.
It’s gearing up to be an action-packed summer at the Kohl Center.
UW Athletics and FPC Live announced this week that Shinedown and Phish will perform at the venue later this year. Shinedown is coming to town on May 16 while Phish will have shows on July 7 and 8.
Tickets for Shinedown will go on sale on Friday and tickets for Phish go on sale Feb. 27.
Music educator and violinist Zeynep Alpan believes music is more than entertainment — it teaches “life.”
Alpan, who works on music education programming with the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center, is the co-founder of Global Impact Musician (GIM), a nonprofit based in New York and partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison that works with young professional musicians in East Africa.
The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team gathered tonight for a meaningful celebration of resilience, faith, and community as they attended a premiere.
After experiencing increased demand in recent years, organizers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student food pantry are asking campus leaders for help.
The Open Seat Food Pantry is run by eight part-time student employees who distribute over 32,000 pounds of food to hundreds of students each month.
A new $5 million grant is set to bring more mental health professionals to Milwaukee Public Schools.
The U.S. Department of Education awarded MPS the four-year grant to help the district recruit and train school psychologists through partnerships with Alverno College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sara Richie, who works to promote aging-friendly communities as the Life Span program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, said it’s important for communities to be inclusive and healthy places for older residents.
“(The community groups) are ensuring that people have an opportunity to lead fulfilling and connected lives and have access to the things that they need to age in place,” Richie said. “They provide an opportunity to celebrate the strengths and contributions of older adults, and have an infrastructure that supports them, and the services to meet their needs as well.”
“For schools that were looking for ways to provide cheap and nutritious meals for school children, one of the easiest ways to do that was just to provide milk, even before they were able to provide meals,” explained Andrew Ruis, research scientist in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book “Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat: The Origins of School Lunch in the United States.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison community members from Minnesota say the recent escalation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis has left them feeling frightened, angry and helpless — while also prompting renewed conversations about community, resistance and collective action.
Many Badgers come from Minnesota due to an in-state tuition reciprocity agreement, with about 10%of the UW-Madison undergraduate population calling Minnesota home.
The Universities of Wisconsin has named a temporary successor for UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.
College of Letters and Science Dean Eric Wilcots will serve as interim chancellor starting May 17 as Mnookin begins her departure to lead Columbia University, UW system President Jay Rothman announced Wednesday.
Tyler Hagen is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who celebrated his 21st birthday while at college and away from his home in San Diego.
He said having someone like Morgan work alongside his mom to make his milestone birthday memorable was important to him.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted a stop on a traveling euchre competition, bringing players together to celebrate the popular Midwest card game.
Campus winners received $1,000 in scholarship funds and will advance to regional competition for a chance to qualify for the 2026 World Euchre Championship in New Glarus, Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Habitat for Humanity organization celebrated a milestone on Saturday with its 30th annual Souper Bowl fundraiser, bringing together community members and students for a family-friendly tradition that supports affordable housing in Dane County.
The event, held at Madison West High School, offered attendees the opportunity to purchase tickets and choose from more than 100 handmade ceramic bowls to fill with soup and take home as keepsakes.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison recently held its Winter Carnival on Saturday, a cherished campus tradition organized by Hoofer clubs.
The event featured Rail Jam, a freestyle skiing and snowboarding competition that attracted large crowds of competitors and spectators. Dave Elsmo, director for Outdoor UW, highlighted the event’s deep roots and organization.
hile house calls may seem to belong in the past, they’re trending upward at UW-Madison.
Wisconsin-based company Pivotal Health, which UW-Madison alumni Sal Braico and Pete Johnson launched, has, since 2021, brought nurse practitioners to patients’ living rooms — or dorms — to provide primary and urgent health care.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison began its three-day Winter Carnival Thursday with outdoor activities on campus.
Outdoor UW hosted a learn-to-skate session on Lake Mendota Thursday afternoon. People of all ages participated in the ice-skating activity.
The Wisconsin Historical Society has reopened and expanded its hip hop exhibit for Black History Month, offering visitors a deeper look into more than five decades of hip hop culture in Wisconsin.
Phase two of the “Lead Between the Rhymes” exhibit now includes recognition of University of Wisconsin artists, students, professors and student organizations that partnered with Madison’s hip hop scene. These collaborations helped organize events including the “Hip Hop as a Movement” conference and other significant cultural gatherings.
Tensions rose in discussion over a bipartisan bill that would require state agencies, including the University of Wisconsin System, to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism for any “law, ordinance or policy” when evaluating possible discriminatory intent at a Jan. 28 public hearing.
Daniel Hummel, a research fellow with the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on U.S. relations with Israel, said there has been increased “antisemitic rhetoric around campus” since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Global Health Institute convened experts from around the world with UW-Madison faculty for a Jan. 27 webinar examining the growing complexities of infectious disease control.
The discussion, moderated by Daniel Shirley, an infectious diseases professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, brought together researchers working across human, animal and global health systems to address two converging crises: antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and declining childhood vaccination rates.
Clint Sprott, a UW-Madison physics professor who retired in 2008, started the show in 1984 as a free, public lecture. He still attends the show every year.
“[My] most favorite is seeing the smiles and enthusiasm of the audience,” Sprott said. “The show was a major part of my life for 40 years, and it is certainly fun to be something of a celebrity.”
Questions remain unanswered days after a Findorff construction worker was seriously hurt falling 50 feet from an almost 30,000-pound beam in downtown Madison.
Findorff said operations were paused on the site and the company is working closely with authorities to determine the cause of the incident. The company issued this update to WMTV on Saturday.
Even after 20 years of performing kidney transplants, Dr. Nikole Neidlinger is still awestruck and humbled by the role she plays between the donors and recipients of these organs.
“The operation takes two to three hours,” said Neidlinger, director of Organ and Tissue Donation at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “When we attach a kidney and open it up to blood flow, it just starts functioning. I’ve seen it thousands of times now, but every time I’m like, ‘This is a miracle. This is amazing.’”
The Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Black Affinity Group launched Black History Month with Legacy and Libations, an event celebrating the Black community in Madison.
This year’s theme, “Taking Flight,” highlighted UW-Madison student projects and alumni-owned businesses. The event featured the SoulFolk Collective, a recently established research department at UW-Madison focused on documenting Madison’s Black community stories through research.
The Epsilon Delta Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. kicked off Black History Month by hosting its 21st Style and Grace Founders Day event.
The event was held at UW-Madison’s Memorial Union on Sunday evening. This year’s theme was Black Female Empowerment.
The award honors PBS Wisconsin’s station-wide culture of innovation – from immersive storytelling and collaborative experimentation to cross-departmental strategies that reimagine how public media can serve, engage and evolve. The award recognized a range of projects that have expanded the organization’s reach, deepened its engagement and sparked new collaborations across platforms, including:
Leaders in Wisconsin agriculture are warning the state’s farmers to brace for another tough year for trade and market conditions.
The discussion at the annual Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused both on the economic hardships weighing on farmers and what some producers are doing to try to get ahead.
Hundreds gathered in negative windchill in solidarity with the city of Minneapolis and rallied for no Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence on UW’s campus at Library Mall, Jan. 27.
Madison Students for a Democratic Society held the rally in response to the presence of ICE operations across the U.S. and ICE agents killing two Minneapolis residents, according to their Instagram.
Professor Laura Albert, a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has studied EMS deployment and logistics for decades. She said many departments are being asked to stretch limited resources further than ever before.
“So often these public service agencies like EMS departments are asked to do more and more with less,” Albert said. “You can do that up to a point, but this is kind of hitting a crisis point.”
American Red Cross is hosting “Bucky’s Blood Drive” this week amid a severe blood shortage.
The drive is happening Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Nicholas Recreation Center on University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus.
Statewide, school enrollment data tells a similar story: throughout the 2000s and 2010s, enrollment in suburban school districts increased, while rural school enrollment continually declined, according to Sarah Kemp, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Lab. Urban school districts, including Milwaukee, saw relatively steady enrollment through the 2010s, but the pandemic brought a sharp decline in student enrollment in most Wisconsin cities.
“There’s maybe not housing available for those young families to move into, or maybe the opportunities aren’t there for young families to find employment, and that may then show up in the school districts with declining enrollment,” Kemp said.
“We don’t have the fountain of youth— nobody ever found it,” said Dudley Lamming, co-director of the Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center (WiNSC) and professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “but can we find ways [to] get to the end of our lives, still fit and functional?”
Through the Senior Guest Auditor Program, Wisconsin residents aged 60 and older take UW-Madison courses free of charge alongside students less than half their age. This fall, the program reached a record enrollment of more than 1,000 auditors, double the number enrolled a decade ago, according to program administrator Anne Niendorf. The program places older adults alongside traditional undergraduates in lecture halls across campus, creating multigenerational classrooms.
Demographer David Egan-Robertson kicked things off in an interview with “Wisconsin Today,” looking at the big trends in the state’s population. Egan-Robertson has followed this story for years in his work with the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Last year, just as she was finishing a teacher residency program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison, federal funding for the project was cut by the Trump administration.
“So we were in the spring semester and we were all like, are we going to be able to continue?” Lind said. “Are we going to still be able to get our teaching license? Are we going to have to pay this back?”
The bill is “is a Band-Aid to stop the bleeding,” said Ryan Poe-Gavlinski, director of UW-Madison’s Restraining Order and Survivor Advocacy Clinic. She said it could fill a critical funding gap until lawmakers figure out a long-term solution.
But the number of victims in need of services is continually on the rise. Wisconsin broke records for domestic violence-related deaths in 2024.
“We’re going to always have victims who need assistance, and there’s just not enough people to help the victims,” Poe-Gavlinski said.
The village will be named for Madison philanthropists Ellen and Peter Johnson, who helped Agrace expand two decades ago and created an endowed professorship at UW-Madison dedicated to improving palliative care. They’re the lead donors with a $7 million donation, as they view the dementia village as a “kinder approach” to memory care.
One of the first signs of trouble came last spring, when the Trump administration abruptly moved to deport scores of international students, including a handful at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University officials were alarmed, well aware that around 8,000 students, 15 percent of its enrollment, were from abroad. And they worried that the looming deportations might spook prospective international students, said Frances Vavrus, the dean of the international division at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A number of University of Wisconsin schools are being recognized for their community engagement.
UW-Madison, UW-Whitewater, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside and UW-Superior are designated as Carnegie Community Engagement Classified campuses.
“It is exciting to bring back something so impactful and reimagine it for a new audience,” said König-Tarasevich, a professor of flute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Parents of transgender children in the Madison region are scrambling for alternatives after two of Wisconsin’s largest pediatric hospitals halted gender-affirming care for minors, leaving scarce options in the state.
Madison-based UW Health and Children’s Wisconsin in Milwaukee confirmed this week that they are pausing gender-affirming care for those under 18 years old. The health systems’ decisions follow pressure from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement on Dec. 18 of new rules and a warning that the federal government could pull funding from hospitals if they offered gender-affirming care to minors.
John H. Van Vleck, who grew up in Madison and attended and taught physics at the University of Wisconsin, won the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on magnetism. In his Nobel lecture, amid a discussion of rare earth elements, one sentence leaps out:
“Miss Frank and I made the relevant calculations.”
Who was Miss Frank? Van Vleck credits her with key work on the quantum mechanics of magnetism, but she is almost absent from the history books.
Berndt received his MFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1969. Since then, he’s traveled and lived in several different places and had several different jobs, including one as a taxidermist at the field museum in Chicago.
Written by Maryellen MacDonald, a professor emerit of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “More Than Words: How Talking Sharpens the Mind and Shapes Our World.”
To prove whether its methods work, the demonstration school would be required to participate in longitudinal studies through the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The school must also share its practices with other schools.
A charter school would be eligible for the designation as a demonstration school only if it is authorized by the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity, which would select the demonstration school. Wittke said lawmakers chose the Universities of Wisconsin as the sole authorizer because it already has the infrastructure to support new techniques and conduct studies through UW-Madison’s education department.
tudents are on track to take classes in a new humanities building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall. And the athletics department plans to finish an indoor football practice facility next to Camp Randall Stadium this summer.
As those two projects wrap up in 2026, Wisconsin’s flagship public university also plans to break ground on a visitor and education center at the Lakeshore Nature Preserve, near Picnic Point.
The awards are given annually to community members who embody “the values of service, equity, and justice that Dr. King championed.” Gift Akere, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, pursuing a degree in electrical engineering, will be honored with an MLK Humanitarian Award in the category of “Youth Leader.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison class started the fall semester with a big question to tackle: Which families are opting not to enroll their children in the Madison school district, and why?
After a semester of conducting background research, analyzing data and reaching out directly to Madison families for interviews, one key finding was that nearly 1,600 middle and high school students open enrolled out of Madison schools into another public school district over the last three years — with white families being the most likely to leave.
The “Old Timer” is gone.
Jerry Apps told the Wisconsin stories of barns, cheese, one-room school houses and circuses. He encouraged children to eat rutabagas, made regular appearances on Wisconsin Public Television and Radio and, when he was not writing from his home in Madison or teaching at UW-Madison, could be found on his farm property in Waushara County, where deer roamed and he grew potatoes in his garden.
Apps, an award-winning author and one of the most prolific storytellers in Wisconsin history, died Tuesday at Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg. He was 91.
The consulting firm Deloitte is recommending changes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison following the demotion of the school’s diversity leader over financial concerns.
UW-Madison paid Deloitte $395,000 to evaluate its financial and budgetary controls between March and July 2025, according to Mark Pitsch, a spokesperson for the broader UW system, which signed the contract with the firm.
UW-Madison’s Geology Museum
Glowing rocks, dinosaurs and meteorites await visitors to this free museum, offering visitors an up-close look at the minerals and stones that comprise the natural world around them. Dinosaurs and fossils guide guests through physical history, beckoning those who want to know more about extinct species. The museum is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The Food Justice Collective is still in the early stages of exploration. No location has been selected, and no formal business plan has been announced. Instead, the group is focused on learning from past efforts in Milwaukee and from the University of Wisconsin Extension’s Center for Cooperatives.
Aaron Seligman, a Madison native who previously worked for the Universities of Wisconsin, joined the cohort in February when taking on the new title of director of community relations at Madison Hillel.
The 13 professionals “take on the work of being that adult in the room that models and leads in relationship building with administrators, faculty and other Jewish communal professionals,” Simon said.
Seligman is focusing on areas the University of Wisconsin-Madison found specific needs for in the more than two years since Oct. 7. So far, Seligman has been “collaborating with the university administration on campus policies” and “engaging in media around campus climate and antisemitism,” Seligman said.
The Chazen Museum of Art has added 28 photos taken by acclaimed photographer Irving Penn to its collection.
The photos were donated to the museum by the Irving Penn Foundation in Penn’s name. It was a gift in honor of UW-Madison alumnus and former Museum of Modern Art photography director John Szarkowski, according to a statement from museum spokesperson Kirstin Pires.
Starting in the fall 2026 semester, the University of Wisconsin’s Filipino language program will no longer be offered, according to Filipinx American Student Organization Communications Chair Ethan Ham.
The program’s elimination follows federal funding cuts by the Trump administration and the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education’s International and Foreign Language Education program that administers Title VI funding.
Title VI funding was established as part of the Higher Education Act and is used to support foreign language programs.
Deana Wright is the director of older adult programs for MTZ Charitable Organization, Inc., where she oversees programming and services for nearly 300 Black older adults in Madison, and is the founder and president of The Wright Place, a nonprofit focused on culturally responsive, participant-centered programming for aging adults. She previously served as diversity and inclusion manager at NewBridge Madison, where she expanded access to culturally responsive programming, and later worked in outreach with the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, supporting recruitment of Black older adults into brain health research studies. Wright is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and serves as an appointed commissioner on the City of Madison Equal Opportunities Commission.
Dr. Michelle Robinson is the chief programs and partnerships officer for the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. Her recognitions include awards from Church Women United, the Progress Center for Black Women, the Urban League of Greater Madison, the State Council on Affirmative Action, and UW–Madison’s Outstanding Women of Color in Education honor. Robinson holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a B.A. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.
Which performers headlined concerts at Camp Randall Stadium in 2025, marking the venue’s first concerts in decades?
Under the terms of her employment contract, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin received a bonus this year for staying in her job and for “satisfactory” performance. How much did she receive from the bonus?
Mnookin’s base pay surpassed $892,000 by 2024 after pay raises for UW system employees and “catch-up base salary increases” for multiple chancellors. Her annual bonus for staying is set to increase each year, from $150,000 this year up to $350,000 in 2029.
The American Red Cross of Wisconsin is extending heartfelt thanks to blood and platelet donors for their role in helping the University of Wisconsin-Madison secure $1 million through Abbott’s “We Give Blood” competition.
The campaign by Abbott highlights the critical need for regular blood donations. The $1 million award will support health initiatives at UW-Madison, showcasing the power of community action for lifesaving causes.
