University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost Charles Isbell Jr. has been named the 11th chancellor of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and vice president of the University of Illinois System.
UW-Madison Provost Charles Isbell Jr. is leaving to become the next chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the university announced Thursday, ending a near two-year tenure that saw a torrent of federal and state attacks on UW-Madison’s diversity programs, research apparatus and the university’s academic mission.
UW-Madison Provost Charles Isbell, Jr. is moving south and getting a big promotion. He’ll be the next chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Isbell, who has been a provost at UW since 2023, will also serve as the vice president of the University of Illinois System. He starts work on July 16.
International students, a particular target of the Trump administration in recent months, could also be affected by the travel ban. Iranians made up the fourth-largest international student contingent at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in fall 2024, according to university data, with 61 students. At UW-Madison, there were 57 Iranian students last semester.
The Board of Regents, which oversees UW-Madison and the state’s 12 other public universities, is set to hear a proposal Thursday that would increase UW-Madison’s undergraduate application fee from $70 to $80 starting in August.
President Donald Trump’s administration has issued a dizzying number of executive orders on colleges and universities since taking office, including threats to federal research and limitations on student visas, impacting universities around the country.
The Trump administration’s plans to pause new international student visas, revoke the visas of Chinese students and ban travel from a dozen countries could wreak havoc on higher education in Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison stands to lose the most, with about 15% of its student body coming from overseas. UW-Milwaukee and Concordia University each enroll more than a thousand international students and would also be affected.
‘Badger Meet-Ups’ are returning this summer starting Friday.
These events offer alumni, friends and fans of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to enjoy spend time along the shore of Lake Mendota.
Remington, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate, was pursuing a career as a pilot when she was killed in a small plane crash near Janesville in 2021. She was only 26 years old.
Knowing their daughter was passionate about teaching and mentoring young pilots, Remington’s parents decided to create the scholarship in her name.
Cap Times higher education reporter Becky Jacobs detailed this past week how drastically the UW is being challenged by the Trump administration’s indiscriminate cuts to American higher education.
It isn’t just Harvard that’s in the crosshairs, but premier universities throughout the country are being defunded. It’s as if the country’s own government has for mysterious reasons decided to declare war on its world-renowned citadels of learning.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is responding after the Trump administration announced plans on Wednesday to revoke visas from some Chinese international students.
We also found something we did not expect: a gender gap in how students respond to rising housing prices. University enrollment among male students drops sharply as housing costs rise. For female students, the pattern is different. In some cases, female enrollment actually increases, perhaps because women see education as a long-term investment worth making, even in tough times. But when tuition and housing costs rise together, even that resilience begins to falter.
This bill would require the University of Wisconsin System to contract with a vendor to provide virtual mental health services for students, beyond traditional business hours. Campuses have already utilized telehealth, lawmakers note.
“Telehealth services have proven to be effective in shortening waiting times to see a provider, and allow patients to receive care at their convenience,” bill authors wrote.
The College Possible coaches working in Wisconsin were among more than 34,000 people affected by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, which made sweeping cuts to AmeriCorps in late April. AmeriCorps is a federal agency with bipartisan support for deploying young people across the U.S. to work on community service projects.
The University of Wisconsin System alone is seeking $855 million from the state Legislature in an effort to make branch campuses more viable and avoid tuition increases for in-state undergraduate students for the next two school years.
“I do not feel welcome anymore,” said Cao, a student of cognitive psychology at the University of Wisconsin, who was waiting at Seattle’s airport Thursday to board a flight home to China.
Cao spent eight years in the U.S. and once dreamed of staying as a professor. “Now it seems like that dream is falling apart,” he said. “It’s a good time to jump ship and think about what I can give back to my own country.”
Ilstrup says more than 8,000 international students attend UW Madison, and their presence extends well beyond campus boundaries.
The Trump administration’s pause in new student visa interviews could impact enrollment at Wisconsin universities, which had thousands of international students this school year.
University of Wisconsin student Vladyslav Plyaka was planning to visit Poland to see his mother and renew his visa, but he doesn’t know when that will be possible now that visa appointments are suspended. He also doesn’t feel safe leaving the U.S. even when appointments resume.
“I don’t think I have enough trust in the system at this point,” said Plyaka, who came to the U.S. from Ukraine as an exchange student in high school and stayed for college. “I understand it probably is done for security measures, but I would probably just finish my education for the next two or three years and then come back to Ukraine.”
“The iron fist has come down,” wrote an anonymous Chinese PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison on RedNote on Thursday.
“The good days are over and a new round of hard times will begin for international students.”
Written by Kevin P. Reilly, president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin system. He served as president of the system from 2004 to 2013.
The White House is directing federal agencies to cancel all remaining contracts with Harvard University – about $100 million in all, two senior Trump administration officials told CNN – the latest barb against the school as it refuses to bend to the White House’s barrage of policy demands amid a broader politically charged assault on US colleges.
Wisconsin’s flagship state university is under pressure on a variety of fronts this spring, making it difficult to keep up with developments in the news.
As the Trump administration reshapes the federal government and its relationship with higher education, authorities in courtrooms, the state Capitol and university administration are also tackling big decisions that could affect campus life for years to come.
Brandon Coventry never thought he would consider a scientific career outside the United States. But federal funding cuts and questions over whether new grants will materialize have left him unsure. While reluctant to leave his family and friends, he’s applied to faculty positions in Canada and France.
“I’ve never wanted to necessarily leave the United States, but this is a serious contender for me,” said Coventry, who is a postdoctoral fellow studying neural implants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Joanne Lagatta arrived at the University of Wisconsin in 1995 with a flawless academic record and an achievement on her resumé that she didn’t like to talk about — but that no other undergrad on the sprawling Madison campus could claim: Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.
The bee winner in 1991 at age 13, Lagatta nonetheless struggled adjusting to life outside her rural hometown of Clintonville, Wisconsin — until she got a push from a professor who was a devoted spelling-bee fan.
Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a dishonesty researcher in the business school who was accused of fabricating data, WGBH reported.
The move follows an internal investigation into allegations raised two years ago by the blog Data Colada that Gino had co-authored four academic papers that revealed “evidence of fraud.” Investigators determined that Gino had “engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct” in those papers, manipulating data to support her hypotheses, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Saturday marks the final commencement ceremony for students at Northland College — a private, liberal arts institution on the shore of Lake Superior that’s set to close after 133 years.
Leaders of Wisconsin colleges and universities are speaking out against pending cuts to federal financial aid after they cleared a major legislative hurdle.
The Universities of Wisconsin system would have to provide students with around-the-clock access to virtual mental health providers under a new Republican proposal.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who won his mandate to lead the city-state with the ruling People’s Action Party earlier this month, received a master’s in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2004. He also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan, respectively.
Wisconsin college leaders say potential changes to federal financial aid would put higher education out of reach to more students and make college more expensive.
The May 19 shootings that killed two University of Wisconsin-Platteville students put campus gun policies back in the spotlight about a decade after lawmakers considered a bill loosening restrictions.
Whereas about 5% of University of Wisconsin students play intercollegiate sports, at both Lakeland and Marian that number is more than 50%.
The residence hall deaths of two UW-Platteville students are being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to an update from campus police.
Officers were dispatched to a disturbance in Wilgus Hall, a student housing building, on Monday, where they found two people injured by gunfire.
The two deaths at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville are being investigated as a murder-suicide, campus officials said.
University police responded to Wilgus Hall, a student residence hall, Monday afternoon for reports of a disturbance.
Two University of Wisconsin-Platteville female students died May 19 of gunshot wounds, the university announced May 20.
The university announced May 20 that Kelsie Martin, of Beloit, died from a gunshot wound, and Hallie Helms, of Baraboo, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Wilgus Hall, a dormitory.
More details are emerging about a shooting at UW-Platteville Monday which left two students dead. In a statement released Tuesday, the university said the UW-Platteville Police Department had responded to a call at Wilgus Hall, a student residence hall, for a “disturbance.” When officers arrived, they found two individuals with gunshot wounds.
After an emergency incident at Wilgus Hall dormitory at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville that prompted a shelter-in-place order, people attend a church service at Rolling Hills Church, May 19, 2025 in Platteville, Wisconsin.
Two University of Wisconsin-Platteville students died in a residence hall incident that a school email describes as a “targeted and isolated” incident on May 19.
Wisconsin’s four-year university system receives less state funding and tuition than nearly every state in the nation, according to the latest study of higher education funding.
The Universities of Wisconsin ranked 44th out of 50 states in public funding in 2024 — a drop of one spot from 2023.
Nearly 800 business leaders and organizations have signed a letter urging state lawmakers to increase funding for the University of Wisconsin System.
The letter pulls a page from UW-Madison’s playbook. The university in 2023 gathered signatures from dozens of business leaders who supported an engineering building Republicans held up in the previous state budget and shared their support in a statewide campaign.
Sametz, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin—Madison, captured her mother overcome with emotion during a FaceTime call as she, in her cap and gown, prepared for her ceremony with her dad.
Wisconsin’s technical colleges get about 70% more in-state aid per full-time student than the Universities of Wisconsin get for one of theirs, new data shows.
The ongoing gap is a talking point the UW system has used for years to lobby for more state funding.
More than 350 students will graduate in Madison this weekend with a distinction no one else before or after can claim: They are the final graduating class of Edgewood College.
Shocked, disappointed, troubled, concerned, confused — all reactions to news of longtime Wisconsin politician Jim Sensenbrenner being rewarded with an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Still, other researchers argue broad restrictions on gain-of-function research could stifle studies that could ultimately protect people from risky viruses. The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin testified against the bill last year.
“Gain-of-function experiments allow investigators to understand the complex nature of host-pathogen interactions that underlie transmission, infection, and pathogenesis and can help attribute biological function to genes and proteins,” a UW-Madison spokesperson said in a statement to WPR.
UW-Madison conducts a wide range of health and disease studies, including research that helps track viruses like avian influenza. The university is assessing how the order and related NIH guidance might affect research on campus, the spokesperson said.
Nationally, there’s been a flurry of no-confidence votes at universities in recent years, including at two other Wisconsin institutions.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh faculty expressed their disapproval in Chancellor Andrew Leavitt’s leadership last school year. Marquette University professors voted no-confidence in President Kimo Ah Yun last fall.
The American Association of Universities, a national association that UW-Madison belongs to, finds itself in the midst of multiple legal battles with the administration.
Library Mall on UW-Madison’s campus looks much different than it did one year ago as pro-Palestinian protests were stationed there for nearly two weeks.
Protesters were demanding that UW disclose its investments and divest from companies that profit from the war in Gaza. They met with university leaders over the span of their encampment to reach an agreement.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s class of 2025 arrived Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium to celebrate the largest commencement in university history as speakers — including graduates, alumni, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and Wall Street Journal Sports Columnist Jason Gay — emphasized resilience and learning to bridge political divides.
State Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz assured law school graduates Friday that they’re prepared to face this moment of “intense polarization.”
“We are living in a time of impassioned debate about what is and is not allowed in our country, about what should and should not be allowed in our country, and those debates often take place in courtrooms,” Protasiewicz told more than 275 University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates during a ceremony at the Monona Terrace Community & Convention Center.
On Saturday, nearly 7,000 UW-Madison students entered Camp Randall Stadium as students, holding hands and posing for pictures in their caps and gowns. The stadium functioned like a super cocoon, and those same people emerged two hours later as alumni.
UW-Madison had its 172nd spring commencement to celebrate graduating students on Saturday at Camp Randall. According to UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, 8,679 students graduated, making it the largest in the school’s 176-year history.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison held its 2025 Spring Commencement Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium.
More than 8,000 students moved their tassel from right to left at the ceremony. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said this year’s graduation is the university’s largest ceremony.
On Saturday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison celebrated its 172nd spring commencement ceremony.
This year marked the largest commencement celebration in the school’s history. This spring, 8,679 students graduated from UW-Madison.
As of May 3, UW-Madison has been ordered to stop work on three federally funded projects and told to stop work on 10 others involving other organizations. Another 62 research grants have been terminated.
UW-Madison has appealed three of the terminations; one of those has already been denied. The numbers have been in constant flux for weeks as new cancellations are handed down and judges authorize temporary restraining orders.
Evers and Republicans have been talking about a tax cut plan they both could support but have not released details. Republicans argue that most of the state’s roughly $4 billion surplus should be returned as tax cuts rather than used to support spending on K-12 schools, the University of Wisconsin and other state programs.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has joined more than a dozen multistate lawsuits seeking to push back against the Trump administration. The American Association of Universities, a national association that UW-Madison belongs to, also finds itself in the midst of multiple legal battles with the administration.
Earlier this year, Dr. Avtar Roopra, a professor of neuroscience at UW-Madison, published research that shows a drug typically used to treat arthritis halts brain-damaging seizures in mice that have a condition similar to epilepsy. The treatment could be used to provide relief for a subset of people with epilepsy who don’t get relief from other current treatments.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professors have joined their colleagues at Big Ten schools to formally say they’re frustrated by the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and efforts to dictate policy on campus.
