Category: Top Stories

Program takes mutli-step approach to strengthening sustainability efforts.

More than 7,200 gifts were made to more than 150 causes across campus.

This year’s Day of the Badger brought in over $1.7 million to support groups and causes around the UW-Madison campus, the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association said Wednesday, a new record for the event.

The Day of the Badger is here! It starts on April 16 at 10:12 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. on the 17, exactly 1,848 minutes– an acknowledgement of the year UW-Madison was founded.

University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Thursday, the new School of Data & Information Sciences Morgridge Hall will be named after UW-Madison alumni John and Tasha Morgridge who started making contributions to the university in the 1960s. The building is slated to open in 2025 and will feature classrooms, research facilities, and collaborative spaces.

A new center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will focus on studying PFAS and finding solutions to environmental contamination by the chemicals. The new center will be launched with federal funding announced last week. Scientists said they hope to be able to identify PFAS they currently can’t measure, and find ways to reverse or stop environmental damage caused by the substances sometimes called “forever chemicals.”

After two federal appropriations packages passed, UW-Madison plans to allocate $56 million to several research initiatives. The set of bipartisan bills was signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 9 and March 23. They will fund the federal government through Sept. 30. Both pieces of legislation included funding for research projects specific to UW–Madison.

“Dr. Gee’s commitment to education, public service and community stewardship is the very essence of the Wisconsin Idea,” chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said. “He richly deserves this honor for his decades of impactful community leadership and passionate advocacy.”

Gee is the longtime senior pastor of Fountain of Life Church on Madison’s South Side, president and founder of the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development and its renowned initiative, Justified Anger.

Starting this fall, UWPD has the ability to quickly press a physical “panic button” that would automatically trigger a WiscAlert emergency notification to all UW students and staff.

“Community outreach, community engagement and community service are central to the university’s guiding principle, the Wisconsin Idea, which sets forth that education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom,” UW-Madison Media Relations and Strategic Communications Director Kelly Tyrrell said in an email. Tyrrell said the university’s South Madison Partnership and the Morgridge Center for Public Service reflect these ideas to foster mutually beneficial relationships. Class projects, internships and other extracurricular opportunities are meant to help students “make lives better for people,” Tyrrell said.

“Meghan Duggan’s career, on and off the ice, is truly exceptional and inspiring,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said in a statement. “Meghan is a born leader whose strength of character, remarkable achievements, and Badger spirit make her a terrific choice to give the charge to the Class of 2024. I’m excited to hear her remarks to our graduates.”

“We can go from this idea to really implementing this vision and have the impact that we want to have on the state,” College of Engineering Associate Dean for Research David Rothamer said.

Gov. Tony Evers signed legislation Wednesday releasing more than $400 million in funding for the projects as well as system-wide utility upgrades and demolition projects. UW-Madison will use the money to build a new engineering building and renovate residence halls. UW-Whitewater will renovate two academic buildings.

The new engineering building is expected to provide more space for about 1,000 more engineering students to graduate each year, according to UW-Madison leaders.

UW-Madison leaders had been pushing for funding for a new engineering building for months, and Democrats in the State Legislature tried to include $197 million for the building in the state’s budget. Legislative Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee rejected that proposal.

UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said the investment into campus infrastructure is extremely important, especially with the engineering campus. “The approval of a new building for UW—Madison’s College of Engineering is a tremendous step forward for our campus, allowing us to educate about 1,000 additional undergraduates in engineering at a time when Wisconsin employers urgently need more engineers, and expanding our engineering faculty’s ability to do innovative, life-changing research,” Mnookin said.

Picnic Point is one of Madison’s most treasured oases; 300 acres of pristinely preserved natural space just a few miles from the heart of downtown. Now, thanks to a $14.3 million dollar gift from UW alumnus Jerry Frautschi, the iconic UW-Madison landmark is getting a brand new visitor and education center.

It’s a level of faculty growth that would have progressed naturally over the next decade, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said, but an increase in university enrollment, which topped 50,000 students last fall, makes it necessary to be more aggressive in hiring.

UW-Madison aims to receive all of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and have net-zero emissions by 2048 — the university’s 200th anniversary — as part of a new sustainability plan to combat climate change.

Growing from 20 to 50,000 students, a lot has changed at UW Madison since their first day of class on February 5, 1849.