Pro-Palestinian student protesters at UW-Madison agreed Friday to dismantle their illegal encampment on Library Mall and refrain from disrupting this weekend’s commencement after campus officials agreed to several of their demands, including helping students present their concerns to decision-makers about how the university’s endowment is invested.
This month, roughly 23,000 students across the UW system will receive their diplomas as the graduating class of 2024. Those at River Falls and Stout have already walked across the stage, while the rest will follow in the coming days and weeks.
“It is the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive folksong field collection ever made for the Library of Congress,” said James P. Leary, professor emeritus of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies at UW-Madison. It reminds “us that we cannot fully grasp the richness of American roots music without recognizing the many peoples, tongues, and sounds that – whether past or present, from mainstream or margins, deservedly acknowledged or unjustly ignored – have always made America great.”
Tensions persist between students and administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison over an encampment at Library Mall, now in its tenth day of protest. Demonstrators are calling for the university to sever all ties with Israeli institutions.
UW-Madison officials and pro-Palestinian protesters said they’re willing to meet again Thursday, a day after protest leaders walked out of discussions.
America’s Ivy League institutions have faced complaints in recent years over admissions policies and, in response, Forbes recently introduced its list of the “New Ivies”— the 10 public and 10 private universities it says are producing successful and driven graduates.
On the list is the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which also ranks among the top national universities in the state, and across the country.
In the waning weeks of spring semester, some University of Wisconsin-Madison students prepared for final exams and graduation ceremonies. Several dozen others camped on the campus’ Library Mall to push the university to sever ties with funding and programs linked to Israeli institutions and the war in Gaza.
Lauren Kyriazes has her graduation photo taken by Cooper Gonzalez sitting on the Abraham Lincoln statue at the top of Bascom Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Monday.
UW-Madison made Forbes’ list of the “New Ivies,” a group of 10 public universities and 10 private colleges where students get great educations as employers sour on the elite old guard, the magazine said.
UW-Madison officials selected “Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body” by Kansas author Rebekah Taussig for this year’s featured text for Go Big Read, a reading initiative through the university, UW-Madison spokesperson Käri Knutson said in a statement Friday.
The newest graduates from the UW-Madison Odyssey Project all have big plans for the future: One student wants to write an autobiography, one hopes to become a dental hygienist and another is going into social work.
A day after police arrested more than 30 pro-Palestinian protesters, university leaders met privately to talk with student organizers and agreed to let an encampment in the heart of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus stand for at least another day.
Aday after police broke up an illegal campsite on campus, UW-Madison administrators have pledged not to have police intervene in the rebuilt pro-Palestinian encampment on Library Mall until school officials and protest leadership meet on Friday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has concluded its investigation into former UW Police Chief Kristen Roman, finding she violated a number of policies, including failing to immediately report her romantic relationship with an employee to whom she later gave special advantages.
When she resigned as chief of the UW-Madison police department, Kristen Roman was facing allegations of nepotism toward a romantic partner, inappropriate fleet vehicle use, and misreporting of outside-of-work earnings.
Wednesday marked day three of a demonstration on UW-Milwaukee’s campus. Despite tension at UW-Madison, there are no signs of the Milwaukee encampment shutting down.
Campus and state police officers broke up University of Wisconsin-Madison students’ anti-war encampment protest Wednesday morning — physically removing tents and arresting several protesters in the process.
Police swarmed a University of Wisconsin-Madison encampment Wednesday morning and arrested 34 people, two days after pro-Palestinian protesters took over Library Mall.
A day after police had largely dismantled it, a pro-Palestine encampment on Library Mall at UW-Madison has returned with 28 tents as of 7:30 Thursday morning.
Police cleared out a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison early Wednesday morning, just two days after the student protest began.
Multiple arrests are underway on UW-Madison’s Library Mall as protesters try to prevent police removing an illegal tent encampment.
Protesters calling for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to cut any ties with Israel filled the campus Library Mall on Monday and set up tents, ignoring the university’s warning that camping there is against state law.
A pro-Palestinian encampment remained in place late Monday night on the UW-Madison campus. Throughout the day, university leaders warned demonstrators any kind of camping on campus was illegal.
Across the U.S., college students are building “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” to demonstrate support for Palestinians. But as tensions rise, many students have wondered what rights they have to demonstrate on the campuses where they live and pay tuition.
Photo coverage of protests.
As pro-Palestinian encampments pop up at colleges across the country, student groups have scheduled Monday morning rallies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Milwaukee.
Program takes mutli-step approach to strengthening sustainability efforts.
The program supports students going into teaching by paying the equivalent of in-state tuition and fees, testing and licensing if the student, once graduated, spends four years teaching in a Wisconsin school district. The extension was made possible by $8 million in donations, according to a statement from the school.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s education school is extending its Wisconsin Teacher Pledge for a third time in an aim to address teacher shortages across the state.
UW-Madison’s College of Engineering expects to grow significantly in the coming years, and it’ll do so under new leadership. Dean Ian Robertson announced Monday morning that he would step down once his successor has been chosen.
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.
Gov. Tony Evers is calling on the GOP-led Legislature to increase funding for the Universities of Wisconsin after the system’s leaders released a slate of third-party financial audits that showed half of its schools are in financial trouble.
UW-Madison’s class of 2024 is reclaiming a bit of what it lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.
UW-Madison is naming its new School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences building Morgridge Hall, in honor of the family that was instrumental in making the project happen.
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.
Library Mall at UW-Madison erupted in cheers and applause Monday at 2:06 p.m., as hundreds gathered to celebrate the much-anticipated solar eclipse.
Scientists at the UW-Madison have helped to make this eye into the past possible.
UW-Madison is celebrating its 175th anniversary with a weekend of open houses and events on campus, for what the university is calling “the ultimate campus experience.”
UW system President Jay Rothman proposed the 3.75% increase last week, and the Board of Regents unanimously approved the hike Thursday at a meeting at UW-Platteville. No one spoke in opposition to the increase during the meeting.
University of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents will meet Thursday at UW-Platteville, and through Zoom. On the table are a number of controversial topics including a four percent tuition increase, paid parental leave, and whether University land can be sold.
The new policies give eligible employees six weeks of paid time off following the birth or adoption of a child. The change comes after UW-Madison faculty and staff lobbied administrators to implement such a policy.
“I’m really happy that we’re in a position to be able to announce this,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin told faculty at a meeting Monday. “This has been something I’ve wanted to bring to conclusion, and there’s been interest in this for a very long time.”
UW-Madison and the Universities of Wisconsin are each proposing a paid parental leave policy granting six weeks of leave for the birth or adoption of a child, following more than a decade of studying its feasibility and increasing pressure from faculty and staff.
UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Monday that adding paid parental leave allows the university to stay competitive in recruiting graduate students and employees, and catch up to other local private businesses and governmental agencies that already offer it.
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.”
Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman on Thursday announced the intent to raise tuition by 3.75%, saying the increase is in line with inflation and is necessary to maintain the UW system’s educational quality.
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.
Republican legislators’ assault on University of Wisconsin System campuses’ diversity, equity and inclusion offices failed to address the problem the politicians purportedly wanted to solve: Ensuring the state’s universities, particularly UW-Madison, help grow Wisconsin’s economy.
On Friday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the launch of its Sustainability Research Hub.
In early Feb. 2024, UW-Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced a new cross-campus initiative focused on environmental sustainability.
“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.”
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will close its Waukesha campus at the end of the spring 2025 semester, eliminating an educational option that has been around since 1966.
The titles of the 150 or so posters on display in the Capitol’s Rotunda sounded just as impressive as what might be found at a symposium of doctoral students — such as “The cost of clean water: An efficiency analysis of Wisconsin’s water utilities” or “Investigating alternatives to antibiotics using phage.”
“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.
