On this day, October 5, 1928, Memorial Union opened on UW-Madison’s campus.
The Memorial Union was the first union to serve beer at a public university, according to the Memorial Union.
Where someone lives can shape their health, just as much as the care they receive. That’s why Dr. Amy Kind of her team at UW-Madison have developed the Area Deprivation Index (ADI).
The tool maps health disparities using the impacts of income, housing, education and employment on health.
The Department of Equity, Inclusion and Employee Wellbeing (EIEW) within UW-Madison’s Office of Human Resources (OHR) has ceased operations, a UW spokesperson confirmed Thursday.
UW-Madison has shuttered the equity and well-being department in its human resources office, which worked to retain LGBTQ+ and employees of color.
The university established the Office of Equity, Inclusion and Employee Well-Being in spring 2021 to offer consultation and promote inclusive policies and environments, with a focus on support for traditionally marginalized communities.
New research going on at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is focused on how Black residents find and build community in the City of Madison, which is predominantly white.
About a dozen students are part of the first research lab within UW-Madison’s Department of African American Studies. It’s called the Soulfolk Collective.
Written by Anthony Hernandez, a faculty member in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received a research award from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation for his study on leadership in higher education.
Thirteen winners have been announced in the UW-Madison 2025 Cool Science Image Contest.
Winning snapshots include photos from professors, students, and specialists.
The planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has educated hundreds of thousands of visitors about deep space and the night sky for close to 60 years.
That run is ending in December when the projection room will host its final program.
The University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty hosted a webinar Sept. 30 to examine the impact of housing quality on families and communities — focusing on health, stability and the lasting effects of discriminatory policies such as redlining.
The event featured presentations from senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Erik Hembre, Emory University assistant professor of epidemiology Christine Ekenga and Boston University assistant professor of sociology Steven Schmidt.
It’s Bucky Badger’s birthday.
The design for the mascot was copyrighted on Oct. 2, 1940, after an illustrator sketched the likeness of an upright badger wearing a cardinal and white sweater. The Library of Congress deemed this Bucky’s birthday.
On this day October 2, 1940 “Buckingham Badger,” better known as “Bucky,” was born at UW-Madison.
A Badger mascot has been used by the university since 1889 when intercollegiate football was established.
Wisconsin is welcoming guests from around the globe as the 2025 World Dairy Expo is now underway in Madison.
According to a report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension Farm Management program, Wisconsin exported $3 billion of agricultural products in 2024, making agriculture a major economic driver for the state.
The organization collected its data from several sources, including the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
For nearly a century, Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction has been at the center of environmental research in Wisconsin. Now, a new documentary aims to show how the year-round field station’s work extends far beyond lake shorelines.
Operated by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology, Trout Lake Station has been supporting research since 1925.
PBS Wisconsin Education, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, recently launched Whoopensocker, a new educational resource collection for upper elementary learners that provides an on-ramp to writing through group games and scaffolded lessons.
Whoopensocker was first developed as a six-week teaching artist residency by Erica Halverson, a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at the UW-Madison School of Education. Halverson teamed up with PBS Wisconsin Education to make a multimedia version of the program that’s accessible to more educators around the state and in spaces where an artist residency may not be available.
University of Wisconsin’s iconic mascot Bucky Badger marked his 85th birthday with an unprecedented celebration that brought thousands of Madisonians together across downtown Madison.
The event, which started in 2017 and has gained popularity and significant local business support over the years, will feature inspiring UW Badger Talks guest speaker Zain Abhari, interactive workshops and engaging hands-on activities designed to spark interest in STEM subjects.
One of the University Wisconsin-Madison’s largest student organizations packed a lecture hall in Ingraham with over 200 students in attendance last week. The Badger Cheese Club’s goal is to bring Wisconsin’s cheese culture to their 500 official members.
The club of cheese connoisseurs — established in 2006 — offers its members a smorgasbord of cheese each meeting, educates its members on the differences between all the unique types of cheese made in Wisconsin and builds a strong community among its members with a variety of special events.
Janet Parker, who leads World Beyond War’s Madison chapter, said the group’s main goal was to “abolish war” and push the University of Wisconsin System to “divest from all weapons manufacturing.”
The group’s march was part of a global movement created by World Beyond War, an international organization with chapters campaigning against issues like war profiteering, police militarization and starvation.
UW Health is sharing advice for parents as this week marks Child Passenger Safety Week.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, car crashes are still a leading cause of death among kids. In 2023, UW Health reported more than a 1,000 kids were killed in crashes.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Blk Pwr Coalition (BPC) honored Demartravion “Trey” Reed and Cory Zukatis, the two Mississippi men found dead hanging from trees in different parts of the state on Sept. 15, at a vigil on Library Mall Thursday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first research lab in the African American Studies department is collecting data on spaces where Black people thrive throughout the city.
The UW-Madison research lab, Soulfolk Collective, partnered with the Center of Black Excellence and Culture to determine how to amplify Black voices, stories and lived experiences.
Badgers were spotted at Sandburg Elementary on Monday helping students get excited about reading.
The partnership between the Wisconsin Badger football program and Madison Metropolitan School District helps UW athletes give back to the community through the support of the district’s reading literacy initiative.
People walked, ran and biked for the tenth annual Badger Challenge fundraiser at UW Health Eastpark Medical Center on Sunday.
The challenge raises money to support cancer research and treatments at the UW Health Carbone Cancer Center.
Perry didn’t set out for a career in health care. But while working as an officer with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department, he found himself repeatedly looking in the rearview mirror when transporting men — especially Black men like himself — and wondering, “What could be different to keep you from being in the back seat of this cruiser in the future?”
This weekend, the annual fundraiser supporting the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center will take place with a bike, run/walk and community events to honor cancer patients.
Now a creative writing major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ikard was recently named Madison’s fourth Youth Poet Laureate. The city of Madison will honor them at a reading on Tuesday, Sept. 16.
The Latine Heritage Month planning committee, Latine Cultural Center and the Program in Chicanx/e and Latinx/e Studies hosted their annual March Up Bascom event on Friday. Over 100 students came together to celebrate Latine heritage — walking up Bascom Hill and partaking in Mercadito festivities afterward.
A host of prominent developers in the Madison area have new projects currently underway, including Core Spaces, a Chicago-based development company that previously built The James and Hub Madison, and Steve Brown Apartments, a Madison-based development company that previously built the Lucky apartments and several smaller complexes.
The Badger Challenge kicks off this week, bringing the community together to support cancer research at UW-Madison.
With the University of Wisconsin-Madison student body growing each year, excess demand for housing has prompted developers to bring new projects to Madison.
Compass, offered at UW Health’s 1102 S. Park St. clinic, provides walk-in care for substance use disorder. The team includes a doctor, physician assistant, nurse, a peer support specialist, a social worker and a medical assistant.
“We work to make sure that we can get people pretty immediate access to any medications that might be needed related to their substance use disorder,” Salisbury-Afshar said. “We also offer some other medical services that we know people who use drugs often really struggle to be able to access. Specifically, things like Hepatitis C treatment, family planning, wound care, STI (sexually transmitted infection) testing and treatment.”
The camps, run through the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Climatic Research, have drawn middle and high school students from more than 35 communities across Wisconsin and Illinois since 2022. With sensory-friendly, nature-based activities ranging from NASA citizen science projects to outdoor exploration, the programs aim to foster neurodiversity and encourage students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
Editor’s note: People of UW is a human interest series produced by The Badger Herald staff members. The series aims to highlight a student or student group at the University of Wisconsin making an impact on the campus community.
Parents struggle to help teens deal with online racism. Online racism is different from in-person racism because the people behaving that way usually hide behind fake names, making it hard to stop them. Studies found that teens of color see more untargeted racism – memes, jokes, comments – and racism targeting others online than racism targeted directly at them. But vicarious racism hurts, too.
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.
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.
Written by rofessor of human development & family studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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.
Catalina Toma is a communication professor at UW-Madison and says that preventative measures like this are beneficial.
“By some accounts, amongst American teenagers, about a third have suffered some sort of cyberbullying victimization online. And about 15%, according to the latest reports, have engaged in cyberbullying. So these incidents do happen, and there’s a lot of evidence about how damaging cyberbullying can be,” said Toma.
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.
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.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s scholarship program, First Wave, brings hip-hop pedagogy into the community by encouraging their scholars to engage with Madison’s youth. Meanwhile, an artist-led youth movement seeks to cultivate an underground hip-hop scene that directly engages with Madison’s unofficial “hip-hop ban” during the 2010s.
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.
“It’s an absolutely gorgeous church (with) great historic distinction,” said Barbara Copeland Buenger, a member of the church’s roof committee and a professor of art history emerita at UW-Madison. “To have something of such beauty and historical value is really magnificent given the modern character of the city.”
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%.
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.
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.
“Our hope is that some of them will choose to remain here in Madison and work in Madison schools, where they have had a shortage of school psychologists,” said Katie Eklund, a professor in UW-Madison’s School Psychology program who led the project.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that automation apps, like iPhone’s ‘shortcuts’, can be a vehicle potential abusers use to control their partner’s activities on their mobile device.
Rahul Chatterjee, an assistant professor of computer science at UW and founder of the Madison Tech Clinic, said Madison Tech Clinic helps individuals who have been virtually stalked or harassed by their partners.
Embracing an attitude of lifelong learning can help seniors combat the effects of aging and find meaning in every day. In a study by Scientific American, seniors who regularly engaged in learning over three months performed similarly to adults 30 years younger on cognitive tests.
Whether it’s online learning, art classes or stargazing in Wisconsin state parks, educational opportunities can help make your golden years shine.
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.
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.
Edith Noriega never intended to become a teacher. But after working with students, Noriega transitioned to a bilingual resource specialist role at Schenk Elementary School on the city’s east side. She also enrolled last year in the school district’s new Grow Your Own program.
The program provides tuition, a $17,000 stipend and benefits for Madison Metropolitan School District staff to work toward an associate’s degree from Madison College. Participants are then guaranteed admission to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to work toward a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and teaching credentials.
Written by rofessor of cultural anthropology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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.
