As college students locally and nationally struggle to feed themselves due to rising costs and other challenges, schools have tried to find ways to address the growing needs. UW-Madison and Madison College recently expanded their pantries and offerings, and UW-Madison hired a full-time employee just to concentrate on students’ basic needs.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension is ending its 30-year-old FoodWIse nutrition education program and laying off more than 90 people after losing a federal grant.
Michael Notaro, director of UW–Madison’s Center for Climatic Research launched STEM camps in Beloit, Wisconsin Dells and at Madison’s Henry Vilas Zoo with a simple mission: make science accessible to all children with neurodivergences – but the camps are at risk.
“The main goals of the camps is to support the kind of interest and pursuit of science, degrees and careers, to foster and support neurodiversity and to celebrate it,” Notaro said.
UW-Madison Extension will wind down its FoodWIse programming following federal funding cuts, administrators announced Friday.
The move comes after the passage of President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which eliminated funding for the National Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program (SNAP-Ed). The funding cuts go into effect on Sept. 30.
The camp is organized in collaboration with Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With prior funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Notaro and his team have led similar camps in Beloit, Madison, and Wisconsin Dells.
However, future programming is uncertain. Federal support for the camps ended earlier this year when NSF grants were discontinued. While funding remains in place for this summer’s sessions, organizers are seeking alternative sources to continue beyond 2025.
If you are not feeling well and need an urgent care appointment, UW Health has an app letting you know the wait times at each clinic.
FoodWIse, a statewide program providing nutrition education to low-income families and community organizations, announced on Friday that its federal funding is being eliminated.
Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, launched the program several years ago.
“I think that’s inspired by my son Hayden,” Notaro said. “He’s autistic and a wonderful boy. My wife is also autistic. And based on my desire to support and foster neurodiversity, we created three STEM camps.”
After three successful shows in the last month at Camp Randall — the first in 28 years — Madison is back on the map for the biggest musical acts. The city, its boosters and the university should do everything it can to keep it that way.
Hardtke said the department recognizes the importance of education and books as part of rehabilitation and maintains libraries at all institutions, offers books on electronic tablets and has educational partnerships with the University of Wisconsin System and the state’s technical colleges.
Most of the money goes to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, which offers programming in 70 of the state’s 72 counties. While UW Extension is exploring ways to sustain some SNAP-Ed capacity through alternative funding sources, it has already begun winding down operations. Layoff notices went out to 92 SNAP-Ed educators, UW Extension director Karl Martin said.
Henderson brushed off the experience, hoping it was a fluke. But after matching into residency at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, she overheard a medical student lamenting about their housing struggles and something clicked.
“The lightbulb went off in my head,” Henderson said. “I realized I think this is a nationwide issue and then really started to look into it from there.”
Coldplay performed their first-ever Madison concert on Saturday with a sold-out show at Camp Randall Stadium.
The concert was one of the first Camp Randall has seen since The Rolling Stones in 1997 and was the band’s first performance in Wisconsin since 2009.
Two Madison Area Technical College students had just left the Kollege Klub bar near the UW-Madison campus early Saturday when one of them thought she recognized Coldplay’s lead singer.
Coldplay’s sold-out Madison show at Camp Randall Stadium Saturday had about 58,000 attendees, according to a UW-Madison official. It was the latest stop in the band’s Music of the Spheres world tour, which began in 2022 and spans 225 nights in 80 cities across 43 countries.
All in all, Coldplay at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison July 19 went off without a hitch — and without a viral moment.
There were only two arrests and no other ejections at the concert, according to Marc Lovicott, the executive director of communication for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department.
Smokers can earn $380 if they are willing to kick cigarettes for four weeks and participate in a University of Wisconsin-Madison study.
The UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention is assessing whether nicotine pouches, like Zyn, can replace smoking.
Wisconsin’s new budget boosts some of the funding available to local communities, including those that are home to state buildings.
State buildings are exempt from property taxes, but Wisconsin does compensate the cities, villages and townships where those facilities are located. The increased funding will affect hundreds of communities that house state facilities ranging from prisons to universities to office buildings.
And when it comes to warning people about flash floods in particular, experts still stress the need to get warnings to people via every means possible.
That’s why a “Swiss cheese” approach to warning people can be most effective in overcoming that last mile, Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and manager of the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains. (And it’s similar to an ideology used to prevent the spread of disease.)
“You know you got slices of Swiss cheese and they’ve got holes in them. Nothing is ever perfect. But if you layer enough pieces of cheese, it reduces the risk because something might go through one hole, but then it gets blocked,” Vagasky says. “We always want people to have multiple ways of receiving warnings.”
Ainehi Edoro, associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the literary blog Brittle Paper, says the novel marked a turning point. “For a long time, queer characters in African literature were either invisible or treated as symbols of crisis, like their presence was a sign that something had gone wrong,” she says. “So when Dibia wrote a novel that centred a gay Nigerian man as a full human being, that mattered. He pushed back against an entire archive of erasure.”
Camp Randall will welcome 58,000 people Saturday night for Coldplay’s first show in Wisconsin in 16 years.
That will be about 8,000 more people in the crowd than at each of Morgan Wallen’s shows last month, according to officials.
The sold-out Coldplay show coming Saturday to Camp Randall Stadium, like the two shows by country music superstar Morgan Wallen at the stadium three weeks earlier, is a game-changer for the city, said the president of Downtown Madison Inc.
Coldplay made Wisconsin history in October when it became the first concert announced at Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium in nearly 28 years.
Now, eight months later, the show is finally here — even though country superstar Morgan Wallen made sure the Chris Martin-led British band wasn’t the first to actually perform there. Wallen had two concerts, on June 28 and 29.
Dr. Jonathan Temte, associate dean for public health and community engagement at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said that the resurgence is partly due to the erosion of public confidence in science and public health systems, fueled by misinformation.
“It really is made more difficult when you don’t have an intact public health system, when you don’t have a population that believes in evidence-based science and is wracked with concerns about conspiracy, and you have people who basically profiteer off misinformation,” Temte said.
In 1873, just before becoming a student at the University of Wisconsin, La Follette heard Edward Ryan, soon to become the state’s Chief Justice, give a commencement speech. Ryan bluntly defined the central questions of the coming era: “Which shall rule—wealth or man; which shall lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?” This question would animate La Follette’s career as he tried to live up to UW president John Bascom’s insistence that students accept the obligations of citizenship and their duty to serve the state.
Andrew Reschovsky, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimates Madison schools will receive about $9.6 million more in special education aid over the next two years. But he said without increases to general aid or equalization aid — other major forms of state funding for schools — Madison must rely more heavily on local taxes for funding.
“Even though special education aid has been increased, it’s still a relatively small part of total state aid,” he said. “At the state level, state aid all together is less than half of total money needed, or total revenues, to support K-12 education.”
“It feels like home when I hear it,” says Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who grew up in Tennessee. “It’s from where I was raised. But it makes me feel included and welcome. And I think that’s part of why people are embracing it, because it has this capacity to make others feel included and welcome.”
A new collaborative grant-making effort administered through the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, dubbed the Orion Initiative, seeks to reverse these trends for rural Wisconsin. Orion Initiative Chief Executive Officer Dr. Amy Kind and U.W. Medicine Associate Professor of Rheumatology Christie Bartels spoke with Monday Buzz host Brian Standing about the project.
Despite the ruling, reproductive care advocates say much work remains to be done to ensure equitable access. Jenny Higgins is a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is the director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity.
University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Miriam Seifter said Planned Parenthood could still try to advance its constitutional arguments in a future case.
“Wisconsin imposes many other restrictions on abortion, and Planned Parenthood or other plaintiffs could decide to tee up the constitutional question by challenging those restrictions,” Seifter said.
In August, Metro Transit plans to collaborate with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Disability Cultural Center to help students on campus, including those with disabilities, to feel comfortable using the bus, added Dentice.
In the 1980s, progressive undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison founded the Democratic Organization of Progressive Engineers and Scientists (DOPES), an anti-war science ethics group dedicated to challenging militarism — and particularly, student and graduate involvement within it.
40 years later, DOPES alumni hope to continue those conversations amid escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the science community. DOPES will host a town hall Friday July 11 at 2:30 p.m. at the Pyle Center. A moderated panel of DOPES members hopes to tackle questions on modern technology issues, like climate change and artificial intelligence.
“We know that COVID — and the isolation related to COVID and the stress and strain of unemployment — was a cause,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, emeritus professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “We also know that there’s a mental health crisis in our nation … alcohol can be used to self-medicate. It’s an attempt to really blunt the pain that comes from depression and or anxiety.”
Richard J. Davidson, founder of the University of Wisconsin Center for Healthy Minds, reflected on the Dalai Lama’s influence on neuroscience.
“When I first met His Holiness in 1992, there were three scientific papers published on the effects of meditation,” he said. “Now there are thousands. This has been a legacy that will live on for many, many years and has transformed our understanding of the human mind and the human heart.”
Russell, who was Madison’s 2024-2025 youth poet laureate and is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described the collectives’ long-term goal to create infrastructure that supports creative careers.
“Regardless of … where a baby is born, we want them to be able to have access to this genomic testing,” said genetic counselor April Hall, who’s an assistant professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
While the Wisconsin dairy industry is known to rely on unauthorized workers (it’s believed about 70% of the workforce is working illegally), the majority in the state actually work elsewhere, said Laura Dresser, a labor economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
From Dresser’s perspective, undocumented workers are especially vulnerable when law enforcement agencies focus more on immigration status and less on violations of workers’ rights.
That culture of fear can create “incentives for some employers to find a way to drive wages and standards down,” Dresser said.
A UW-Madison alumnus and former Badgers football player, Peters began his career in Madison in the early 1960s and was a prominent figure in the city’s development scene into the 2000s. He designed and built two of the high-rise condominiums now overlooking Lake Monona, including the metallic Marina building, among numerous other distinctive projects Downtown, on the UW-Madison campus and throughout the region. Many are still standing — and standing out — today.
“I feel like the river and the bluffs just rise up out of the landscape,” said Alanna Thelen who works at the McBurney Disability Resource Center at UW-Madison. “It really feels like a retreat.”
A balloon release vigil was held at Rufus King High School in Milwaukee to honor Nate White, a former Rufus King and Badger running back who died last week.
After playing at Rufus King High School and then UW Madison, White then transferred to South Dakota State and played there for six months. Throughout his time out of state, family and friends said White kept in close contact with the community in Wisconsin.
When Miso Kwak and Emily Nott met during their early days as doctoral students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a creative and transformative friendship took root.
In 2023, their bond deepened in a feminist disability studies class taught by Prof. Sami Schalk.
Wisconsin’s only bilingual memory clinic is partnering with the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health for a new elective course aimed at boosting doctor training, prevention and treatment to help with dementia in Latino communities.
Dr. Maria Mora Pinzon, an assistant professor of medicine at UW, leads the research team collaborating with the Latino Geriatric Center Memory Clinic. On WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” Mora Pinzon highlighted the center’s over 17 years of experience of working with older Latino adults who are suffering from dementia.
“We could see future cases that argue there is a constitutional right to abortion in Wisconsin and challenge other laws that we have in the state related to abortion,” said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “But those would be a bit more nuanced than challenging an outright ban.”
On the last weekend in June, artist and recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Ava Albelo organized “Cog in the Machine” at Next Wave Studios, a multimedia production space on Madison’s east side.
Albelo said she funded the project with a grant from the UW-Madison Art Department. She hoped younger people would come to the show “and be interested in the artwork and ask questions and enjoy the music.”
He graduated from Wauwatosa East High School in 1979 and earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance, Investments and Banking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1989.
In the final weeks of Walter’s life, he and his family established a focused strategy to advance pancreatic immunology research at the UW Carbone Cancer Center. In lieu of flowers, the family invites memorial gifts to support this initiative.
Dozens of people were ejected during the two Morgan Wallen concerts at Camp Randall Stadium over the weekend, a UW-Madison Police Department spokesperson said.
UW-Madison officials are calling the two concerts put on by country music superstar Morgan Wallen at Camp Randall Stadium over the weekend the biggest in state history.
Duke University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are both assigning “James” by Percival Everett as their common reader. The novel is a fiercely satiric and darkly funny reimagining of Mark Twain’s American classic, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” told from Jim’s point of view. It won both the National Book Award for 2024 and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The number of Latinos affected by dementia nationwide is expected to rise nine-fold over the next 30 years, according to Dr. Mora Pinzon, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
And to meet this growing need, UW-Madison’s medical school is launching a new course to better train future doctors in culturally competent care. With around 660 students total currently enrolled, the school plays a significant role in training doctors in the state.
It’s been Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Mike Tyson, Pat McAfee, Tyrese Haliburton, Drake, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brooks & Dunn and Moneybagg Yo, among other notable figures.
Who walked out with Morgan Wallen in Madison on Night 2? Former Packers quarterback Brett Favre.
Diego Adame just finished his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s from Monterey, so he and his dad were excited to attend the match, both wearing Tigres jerseys and calling out to players they knew.
Recently, the Trump administration tried to revoke the student visas of at least 27 Wisconsin students. Adame said his visa remained valid and he tries not to worry about what could happen.
“I just put the work in with studying and that’s about it,” Adame said. “Just stay focused on the grades.”
More than 20 people were ejected from each of country music star Morgan Wallen’s concerts at Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium, on June 28 and 29, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison police.
According to a June brief from the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, if all federal funding to Planned Parenthood was cut, Wisconsin community health centers would need to increase their contraception case loads by 144%, local health departments by 144% and hospitals by 142% to absorb Planned Parenthood patients — which the collaborative called “unrealistic, if not impossible” given current capacity.
Country music superstar Morgan Wallen put on a performance at Camp Randall Stadium Saturday night that started and ended with fireworks.
As part of a pilot program called Wisconsin Rural Scholars, high school students from seven small and rural high schools around the state spent a week at UW-Madison in mid-June aimed at introducing them to the college environment. The program is funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and was free for students to attend.
The grant-funded research will also send University of Wisconsin students to farmers’ markets in Marathon, Portage, Wood, Waupaca and Adams counties this summer through summer 2027 to collect data on things like where are people visiting from, how much money do they intend to spend at the market and other area businesses, and what they love about farmers’ markets, Haack said.
Henry Vilas has a pair of brother badgers named after former University of Wisconsin-Madison basketball players Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker. The stars even visited the zoo to meet their namesakes.
“Ten years later, there are still many Madison people who visit them and recognize the names on the sign. And isn’t that cool — that it’s a badger, and they have Badger basketball names?” Peterson said.
Donning a Badgers football jersey, Wallen led the night’s final singalong in a Wisconsin name-checking “The Way I Talk.” It was a pretty good way to welcome stadium concerts back to Madison.
Badri Lankella represents Madison’s west side on the Common Council, winning election earlier this year, and serves as a commissioner of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District. He holds a degree in civil engineering and an MBA from UW-Madison.
Tariq Saqqaf is the City of Madison’s Racial Equity and Neighborhood Resource Team Coordinator, where he has been instrumental in revitalizing and leading the city’s Neighborhood Resource Teams (NRTs). Born in Trinidad & Tobago and raised across New Jersey, Madison, and Saudi Arabia, he earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology and began medical school at UW–Madison before transitioning to a career in social services.
Erika Gallagher is a teacher of English at Verona High School and the winner of the 2024-25 Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English Diversity and Inclusion Award. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UW-Madison.
LGBTQ+ community members came together at a pride picnic at the UW-Madison Red Gym on Wednesday. June is recognized as Pride Month, and the picnic, hosted by the UW Madison Gender and Sexuality Campus Center, was a way for the community to celebrate.
“It’s just our way of celebrating Pride Month. Being together as a community, welcoming students, community members, faculty and staff to come together,” said Sanders Weinberg, program coordinator for the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center.
