The Universities of Wisconsin has launched a national search to identify UW-Madison’s next chancellor.
Acting UW system head Chris Patton and UW Board of Regents President Amy Bogost appointed a group of 23 faculty, staff, students and people from the Madison area to identify UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s successor.
UX Club at UW-Madison is hosting its final showcase for a redesign project in partnership with the Madison Public Market on Thursday.
Over the course of six workshops, students conducted UX research, developed personas, built wireframes, and produced a fully interactive prototype for what will become Madison Public Market’s primary launch website.
President Donald Trump’s dismissal on Friday of the independent board that advises the National Science Foundation included UW-Madison’s top research leader.
Vice Chancellor for Research Dorota Grejner-Brzezińska was one of the 22 current members on the board that advises Congress and the president on the National Science Foundation’s operations. President Joe Biden appointed her in 2023 when she was working at Ohio State University.
The UW-Madison Odyssey Project works to break the cycle of generational poverty through access to education.
The project has impacted two students who are about to graduate with goals of attending college.
For Lilibeth Sobrevilla, the mother of three emphasized the support she received from the project to help her educational goals.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has named Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau founding dean of the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as the university prepares to launch the new college July 1.
UW-Madison named Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau as founding dean of the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as the school prepares to launch the new college on July 1.
Approved in December by the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents, the college is the first academic division created at UW-Madison in more than 40 years.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received $100 million in private gift commitments for its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, which is set to launch on July 1, 2026.
The donations come from what’s referred to as the Catalyst Collective — a group of alumni, business leaders and corporate partners who have pledged major investments in the college. The alumni donors include Andy Konwinski, cofounder of Laude, Databricks and Perplexity AI; John Morgridge, former chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, and Tashia Morgridge, a retired special education teacher; Signe Ostby, a former marketing executive; and Jeff Tangney, cofounder and CEO of Doximity. The contributors also include Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit; and Epic, a software company based in Verona, Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has named the first dean of the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau was appointed into the new role, the university announced on Monday.
His appointment will begin on July 1.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received $100 million in private gift commitments for its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, which is set to launch on July 1, 2026.
The donations come from what’s referred to as the Catalyst Collective — a group of alumni, business leaders and corporate partners who have pledged major investments in the college. The alumni donors include Andy Konwinski, cofounder of Laude, Databricks and Perplexity AI; John Morgridge, former chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, and Tashia Morgridge, a retired special education teacher; Signe Ostby, a former marketing executive; and Jeff Tangney, cofounder and CEO of Doximity. The contributors also include Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit; and Epic, a software company based in Verona, Wisconsin.
UW-Madison on Monday announced a $100 million donation and dean for the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence that will hold its first classes next fall.
The investment comes from a group of alumni and industry leaders and is intended to help swiftly recruit and hire 50 new faculty, expand research and build programs for the college, which opens July 1.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s core mission has long held that the work of the university should benefit the entire state. A newly released study now quantifies that commitment, estimating that the university, its affiliated organizations and the startup companies it generates contribute $38.9 billion annually to Wisconsin’s economy.
The Mifflin Street Block Party is back in Madison this Saturday, and students showed up in numbers.
To celebrate the week before finals, Badgers at UW-Madison brought their party outdoors, spawning a sea of red across Mifflin Street.
Police at the event said this year’s record turnout is thanks to clear skies and sunshine.
According to Ethan Hafenbredl, it’s giving students the community boost they need to finish out their school year.
Kimaya Soin was diagnosed with celiac disease at age 4, but it took some pushing from her mother.
“My doctors actually weren’t really going to check me for it, so it wasn’t on their radars,” Soin said. “My mom had to research my symptoms. She looked them up, and based on the symptoms I had, it was either likely celiac disease or leukemia, and she had never heard of celiac disease, like most people haven’t.”
One Madison police officer was hurt and another was taken to the hospital after trying to break up a fight on State Street following a busy weekend of events.
The Mifflin Street Block Party brought thousands together Saturday, with crowds later migrating to State Street. Students said State Street had more people than usual, with lines around buildings and the roadway filled with people dressed in Badger gear.
Around framed photos of his dogs and Badger merchandise, a paper name plate on John Zumbrunnen’s desk in Bascom Hall at UW-Madison has the word “interim” crossed out with a pen.
After nine months as interim provost, Zumbrunnen secured his role as the university’s chief academic officer and second-ranking official after a national search this winter. As provost, he oversees academic programs and budget planning.
Carlos Bello sent out 60 to 70 job applications early this spring. But with less than two months left before he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he still hadn’t landed a job.
Associated Students of Madison members proposed an amendment to University of Wisconsin’s election day policy to the Faculty Senate for consideration that would extend excused absences for student election officials to include early voting periods, according to ASM vote coordinator Alisha Latham.
Saturday is setting up to be one of the most crowded days of the year in downtown Madison, and several streets will be closed because of different events.
The annual Mifflin Street Block Party will take over the area just outside the UW-Madison campus. The event is unpermitted, but Madison police will close some streets to keep things safe.
Anjon Audhya, PhD, will become the inaugural vice dean for research for the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health effective April 19. The role serves as the chief research officer for the school, charged with articulating the goals and vision of the school’s research enterprise to major stakeholder groups and planning for the long-term success and global impact of research activities.
A philanthropic couple just got a top honor at UW-Madison: their own Babcock Dairy ice cream flavor.
Babcock Dairy on Thursday announced a new, limited-edition flavor in honor of James Patterson, best-selling author and this spring’s commencement speaker, and his wife, Badger alum and longtime donor Sue Patterson.
Ellie Huber sat down with staff writer Henry Matson to discuss longtime UW-Madison faculty member Kristin Eschenfelder’s appointment as L&S dean amid broader leadership changes. In other campus news, student Democrats and Republicans debate foreign policy, free speech and political polarization, and Memorial Union’s sunburst chairs are back on the terrace.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked first on the Peace Corps’ 2026 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list, according to an April 7 Peace Corps press release.
The university also ranked first in 2025 and sustained its second place ranking for all-time volunteer-producing institution
College freshman Nandini Aluri spent a month “all day and all night” painting dozens of designs — a digital camera, the University of Wisconsin-Madison crest, an intricate design in the style of henna — on a matching set of brown corduroy pants and jacket.
She designed this wearable suit for “Becoming,” a fashion show hosted by The Vault. The Vault is a student organization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that focuses on fashion, from design to marketing to business operations.
Several Downtown and UW-Madison campus-area streets will be closed for a time on Saturday to make way for the annual UW Athletics fundraiser known as the Crazylegs Classic.
More than 9,000 people are expected to participate in the event’s 8K wheelchair race, 8K run or 2-mile walk, with the wheelchair race starting at 9:50 a.m., the run at 10 a.m. and the walk at 10:20 a.m.
During his four years at UW-Madison, student Harshet Anand repeated the “painful” and competitive search for housing in Madison with his roommates.
“We’d bounce between Zillow, Apartments.com, Facebook groups, texts from anyone that was older than us,” said Anand, a computer and data science major who graduated in spring 2025. “We’d spend hours and hours comparing listings, waiting days for property managers to respond to emails, scheduling tours around sometimes midterms.”
The police are assigned and the balconies inspected. All that’s left — as much as city leaders might wish otherwise — is for the drinking to begin.
With the Mifflin Street Block Party scheduled for Saturday, Madison officials on Wednesday laid out a series of warnings and plans pertaining to the annual and unsanctioned bacchanalia that traditionally occurs near the end of the UW-Madison spring semester.
UW-Madison is gearing up to bid farewell to its chancellor, Jennifer Mnookin, who is leaving next month to take the helm at Columbia University.
The university is hosting a send-off for Mnookin on May 14 at the Memorial Union Terrace from 2 to 4 p.m. for the campus community, UW-Madison announced Wednesday.
Author Sarah Thankam Mathews spoke about her relationship with writing and her experience immigrating to the U.S. last Thursday as part of the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month keynote speech.
Mathews is a University of Wisconsin-Madison alum who published her debut novel, “All This Could Be Different,” in 2022. The book follows a young woman in Milwaukee in 2008 as she navigates relationships and employment during the Great Recession.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has chosen journalist Eliot Stein’s “Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive” as the Go Big Read book for the 2026-2027 school year, according to UW News.
The Wisconsin Hoofers are getting a new expansion, as the University of Wisconsin plans a $2.7 million renovation to the club’s lake lab, according to Isthmus. The renovation to the lake lab, which is located off the Memorial Union shoreline, would include additional storage for the Hoofers’ sailing facility, an expanded rooftop, and a ramp compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, according to Isthmus.
About 900 University of Wisconsin–Madison students are preparing for Humorology, the university’s largest student-run philanthropy and variety show tradition.
Students spend the year writing and performing original mini-musicals in teams made up of Greek life and other campus groups. The final shows will be held April 23–25 at the Wisconsin Union Theater in Madison.
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday announced the addition of Gelsy Verna’s ‘Mother, Father, Please Help Me‘ to its permanent collection.
The piece was one of Verna’s last major works and will be on display as part of an exhibition at MMoCA’s Henry Street Gallery from May 8 to Sept. 27. Verna, a Haitian-born Canadian artist, served as an associate professor at UW-Madison from 2001 to 2008. The school’s art department dedicated a project space in her memory following her death in March 2008.
UW-Madison’s future engineering building just got another major fundraising boost.
Badger alumni and donors John and Tashia Morgridge have donated $25 million toward the university’s 395,000-square-foot engineering building that’s under construction, the Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center, the university announced Tuesday.
A cluster of outdated historic dorms at UW-Madison next to Lake Mendota is getting a major makeover, including new elevators and air conditioning.
Located in UW-Madison’s Lakeshore neighborhood, Humphrey and Jorns halls and Kronshage Residence Hall’s complex — which consists of a main building and eight smaller buildings — will be overhauled with $79.2 million in upgrades starting next fall, according to UW Board of Regents materials.
A UW-Madison School of Journalism Ph.D. student is back home living just outside Tehran. Each day brings fear and uncertainty for Tahereh Rahimi, who does not support the war, nor does she support the regime. She sees her country and people living there being destroyed. Communications are mostly down in the country, so we sent her questions to learn firsthand what it’s like right now. Here’s a sampling of what she said.
The ICE OUT UW Coalition marched up Bascom Hill to demand the University of Wisconsin end surveillance and refuse cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcements on Higher Education Day of Action April 17.
ICE OUT UW is comprised of UW’s United Faculty and Academic Staff union, their graduate student union Teaching Assistant Association and several student groups such as the Socialist Alternative and Voces de la Frontera, according to Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement.
The Transcend UW startup competition hosted student entrepreneurs in the Discovery Building April 16 to 17, according to the Transcend website. At the event, participants pitched ventures and connected with investors and industry professionals, according to Transcend President Siddharth Singh. Prize winners walked away with thousands of dollars for their innovations.
UW Madison hosting Family Gardening Day in May.
This spring, the staff of the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wis., is in the midst of shuffling the deck of its collection, following a well-laid plan but staying open to last-minute inspiration as they go. The museum will be closed for around two months this summer, with the grand reopening scheduled for September.
When in-person classes resumed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison following the COVID-19 pandemic, Liv Romanov found herself on academic probation during her sophomore year.
She knew she needed to make a change and started meeting with an adviser at the McBurney Disability Resource Center, which students at Wisconsin’s flagship campus have increasingly sought out for help in recent years. For Romanov, the center made all of the difference.
University of Wisconsin’s Women in Entrepreneurship hosted TikTok creator Bria Lemirande Thursday to discuss her journey as a content creator and entrepreneur. The event emphasized the importance of connections through an online platform.
To Madison-based writer Alison C. Rollins, poetry is interactive. Her second book, “Black Bell,” includes instructions for reading poems, where the reader is invited to cut them up and rearrange them.
“Some pages are perforated so they can be torn out,” Rollins said. “There are visuals and diagrams. I wanted to expand what people expect from a traditional poetry book.”
This week, Rollins, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor in the English department, was awarded a $50,000 prize for her work. The Whiting Awards were established in 1985 and have been awarded to notable figures such as Ocean Vuong and Colson Whitehead.
Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people of 2026 includes three people with strong Wisconsin connections: Olympic hockey champion and U.S. team captain Hilary Knight, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison star; actor Kate Hudson, who portrayed local singer Claire Sardina in the recent film “Song Sung Blue”; and photojournalist Lynsey Addario, a UW alum renowned for documenting the lives of women and children in conflict zones.
Longtime UW-Madison Law School professor Marc Galanter, an influential legal scholar and mentor to many, died Tuesday. He was 95.
Galanter was born on Feb. 18, 1931, in Philadelphia to his two parents, Jacob and Mary.
He met his wife, Eve Galanter, at the University of Chicago in 1966 after she reached out asking to attend a class he was teaching, but she couldn’t make it to his talk. He offered to put together a reading list for her.
Three University of Wisconsin–Madison juniors have received 2026 Goldwater Scholarships, the premier undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, engineering and the natural sciences in the United States.
The students are juniors Aletta Bergman, Krithi Gopinath and Eva Stafne.
Last fall, Tahereh Rahimi traveled back to Iran to study local journalism for her dissertation. These days, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Ph.D. candidate finds herself sheltering with her parents, fearing for their lives.
Rahimi returned to her home country in September to conduct field work at a local news organization that has since stopped publishing because of the war. She was excited to be home after years away and looked forward to continuing her doctorate work.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s University Health Services is hosting a free art and history gallery this April highlighting campus sexual assault activism over the past 50 years, featuring student-made artwork for Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The exhibit is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday on the first floor of 333 East Campus Mall as part of a Connect and Reflect series to raise awareness about sexual violence.
University Wisconsin-Madison College Democrats and Republicans debated campus free speech, foreign policy and political polarization at Union South Monday in an event focused on fostering productive conversations between those with differing opinions.
The Wisconsin Union Directorate Society and Politics Committee moderated the conversation.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison American Indian and Indigenous Studies program will host its spring Elder-in-Residence, Leon Valliere, on campus this week as part of an initiative aimed at strengthening connections between students and Indigenous communities, according to the UW Events Calendar.
A local diving club is set to close its doors this summer. On June 11, Wisconsin Dive Club officials announced they will no longer be able to use UW-Madison Rec Well’s Soderholm Family Aquatic Center.
The dive club stated it does not know the reasoning behind the decision; however, the director of UW-Madison’s Rec Well explained that due to high demand, they could not accommodate the club’s preferred times.
Day of the Badger, the University of Wisconsin’s annual giving celebration, took over campus Wednesday.
Alumni, students and friends were asked to pay it forward by donating to a UW program or department of their choice. Donors can choose from more than 150 areas across the university.
UW says the total has topped $2 million, with the money going to programs that support students.
The severe weather in Madison this week couldn’t stop the reemergence of the colorful sunburst chairs at UW-Madison’s Memorial Union Terrace.
Crews unpacked the orange, yellow and green sunburst chairs and tables on Wednesday in preparation for a celebration at 3 p.m. Friday for the official opening of the terrace at the Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is warning about a new invasive plant, the fig buttercup, spreading across the Upper Midwest.
The fig buttercup emerges in early spring for a short period, according to university officials.
The plant has heart-shaped leaves and bright yellow flowers. Officials said it is important to look for it now because there is only a brief window when it can be identified.
Wisconsin has long influenced national policies, ranging from its status as the first state to ratify the 19th amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote to the advent of the school choice program.
Spirited school pride, interactive games and opportunities to double donations are all part of this year’s Day of the Badger, a two-day fundraising effort supporting the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Sponsored by the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association, the annual event brings together alumni, students and supporters through both virtual and in-person activities aimed at raising critical funds for campus programs and initiatives.
Organizers say more than 150 areas across campus are participating this year, including schools, colleges, departments and other causes. Donors can choose where to direct their contributions through the event’s website.
The University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center welcomed the public this weekend for its annual open house, giving visitors a closer look at cancer research and prevention efforts.
The event featured lab tours, interactive exhibits and family-friendly activities, including appearances by Bucky Badger.
Wisconsin has added a definition of antisemitism to state law, joining dozens of other states but drawing sharp criticism from opponents who say it will police free speech rights, specifically on college campuses.
Gov. Tony Evers on March 27 signed Assembly Bill 446, now 2025 Act 143, codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition and examples for antisemitism to help determine discriminatory intent.
Purdue and the University of Wisconsin-Madison each plan to add 50 new faculty positions in AI before 2030.
Ukrainian surgeons are in Madison this week, training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to learn specialized techniques they can take back home to treat patients injured in the war.
Six surgeons are taking part in a two-week intensive training at UW’s Microsurgery Regenerative Medicine Lab, working under microscopes to practice reconnecting tiny blood vessels and nerves.
Civil rights activist Ruby Bridges spoke with University of Wisconsin’s assistant professor Aireale Rodgers at the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s final event of the Distinguished Lecture Series April 8, discussing equality, education and community.
The event, held in Shannon Hall, sold out, and the room was packed with students, faculty and community members.
