Educational Experience

To physics professor Duncan Carlsmith, a student’s proposal to make a four-rotor helicopter drone was fine fodder for what he calls “garage physics.” But why stop at a quadcopter, he told the undergraduate. Make one that is mind-controlled, so a person with severe movement impairment could think: “Go open the fridge and show me what’s… Read more »

Students shouldn’t just study computers — they should build them. So says UW computer science professor Karu Sankaralingam. The award-winning professor wants his students to not simply be users of technology, but creators. That’s why he employs a hands-on approach to teaching about technology: Sankaralingam has his students build computerized machines and then program them… Read more »

The UW School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) is ranked fifth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. QS World University Rankings puts the school at 24th in the world. And while the SVM’s strong reputation extends across the nation and around the globe, its graduates tend to stay close to home: 70% of… Read more »

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By seeing what participants are capable of, students learn the importance of not setting limitations and come to exhibit a different philosophy and attitude about what is possible for patients with temporary or permanent physical disabilities.

One day Richard King, a shareholder and director at Capital Brewery, asked Thomas O’Guinn, professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Wisconsin School of Business, if his MBA students would be interested in a project on beer.

For Mark Cook, discovery, like life itself, starts with the egg. “There is so much more to the egg beyond its use as a food,” says Cook, a professor of animal sciences. Cook has explored and developed those other uses throughout a career marked by research prowess and entrepreneurial acumen. His technologies based on egg… Read more »

UW-Madison student-athletes continually set the bar high, but their accomplishments off the field are even more of a point of pride for the community. Every year, volunteers spend over 8,000 hours serving the community through the Badgers Give Back program.

Twelve American Indian nations call Wisconsin home. Each has its own customs, its own identity, its own story. A new website, WisconsinFirstNations.org, is helping educators tell those stories to students from kindergarten through high school. Wisconsin Act 31 requires schools to teach American Indian Studies throughout a student’s career and to maintain instructional materials that… Read more »

In South Africa’s fertile rolling hills, it may be difficult to envision that issues such as hunger and sustainability run rampant. But when students and professors from the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) visited, that is exactly what they found. Researchers at the CALS-based Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) are working… Read more »

When it comes to creating an understanding of our world, and constructing a framework of knowledge and critical thinking, few things are as valuable as diving into a good book. Dissecting an author’s intent, cultural background and message has long been a window into other cultures and times.

Creative thinking. Responsible leadership. Being a global citizen. These are qualities we put into practice every day. Undergraduate students in Design Studies, Retailing, and Consumer Science are thinking outside the textbooks to tackle societal issues on an international level by helping artisans in developing nations build better careers and foster strong communities. As part of… Read more »

Sara King couldn’t quite believe her eyes when she walked into her discussion section for an intermediate economics course a few semesters back. Of the 40 or so students in the classroom, she was the only woman. Economics has long been a male-dominated field, and UW-Madison reflects that imbalance. Women account for about 28 percent… Read more »

UW fully funds student veterans during their first year of law school, and also creates opportunities for both veteran and non-veteran students to give back locally by working at the Veteran’s Law Center, a free walk-in legal clinic serving low-income veterans and their families.

A team of researchers from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, UW–Madison School of Nursing, School of Human Ecology, College of Engineering, and School of Medicine and Public Health are developing a new approach that can turn homes into healthcare environments.

In the fall of 2013, Mary Louise Roberts, Lucy Aubrac Professor of History, received an email from a man in France requesting information about Robert Kellett, an American G.I. buried in Épinal military cemetery. The man explained that he was a member of an association that tended to the American graves. Roberts decided that the… Read more »

Badgers are known for their desire to do good: they join the Peace Corps in record numbers, they sign up for Teach For America, and they spend their academic breaks doing service projects. Badgers have good hearts, but do they have good heads — at least when it comes to giving? Thanks to the Philanthropy Lab,… Read more »

When English major Laura Schmitt was a freshman, she got involved with Illumination, an undergraduate literary journal run through the Wisconsin Union Directorate Publications Committee. It was there that she saw how powerful it could be for a young author to be published. This gave Schmitt an idea: What if young writers back in Green… Read more »

Graduation is years away for many students, but it’s never too early to think about what comes next. That’s where Career Kickstart — introduced in fall 2015 — comes in. It offers a head start for those thinking beyond the diploma. Available to students who have completed their first year, Ogg Residence Hall will provide… Read more »

Word of SoHE’s Financial Life Skills (FLS) program has spread across campus, pushing enrollment from 100 students in its first year to 400 students, plus a wait list for year three. What’s driving the surge? In large part it’s the practical instruction in money management that one student described as “valuable information I’ll use the… Read more »

Twenty-six years — and plenty of TV series, movies, and scripts — later, Jill Soloway ’87 still remembers the profound influence of her semester in the capstone production course, Comm Arts 659. “It was a revelation to me. It made me want to be an artist. It made me look at film through the lens… Read more »

What makes a perfect dairy cow? It takes a trained eye to notice bovine features that hold great promise for the milking parlor. A tight udder, yes, but also the more subtle points: lean thighs, a sweeping rear slant to the ribs, a long neck, a fluid stride. And a skilled judge has to back… Read more »

Exonerating the innocent and making right where the justice system has failed: that is what students and faculty in the Wisconsin Innocence Project fight for every day.

Knowing the past is part of any good education, but great education explores the past, illuminates the present, and anticipates tomorrow. By combining all three elements, SoHE prepares graduates for career success in retail, fashion, textiles, and consumer behavior, which means a deep dive into China. As China becomes an increasingly important market for American-made… Read more »

Alan Paberzs ’04, MPA’05’s first significant brush with public service and social justice at UW–Madison was during his sophomore year on an Alternative Spring Break trip in 2001. Ever since that week spent repairing hurricane-damaged homes, he’s really never stopped living his service-minded mission. Ten years removed from his time on campus, Paberzs has built… Read more »

Traditions are incredibly important in Wisconsin, from fish fry on Fridays to deer camp at Thanksgiving, from the cabin up north to the kringle on the breakfast table. While the state motto is “Forward,” Wisconsinites never forget to look back. As their customs change with the times. In, they create something that’s uniquely Wisconsin. This… Read more »

They bear names like “Blissful Bites,” a vanilla yogurt nugget coated with crunchy oats, flax and puffed rice; “Pixie Dust,” freeze-dried, powdered fruit that becomes a smooth, nutritious drink when mixed with milk or water; and “Walking Wok,” a chicken and vegetable stir-fry wrapped in a gluten-free tortilla. But as fun and delicious as these… Read more »

Launching the next successful startup takes more than a good idea and the skills to design a well-built app. That’s why Professor Jignesh Patel of the Department of Computer Sciences organizes the NEST for Emerging Software Technologies competition.

Theoren Loo ’16 would like a drink of good, clean water — not for himself, but for the residents of KuManzimdaka, a village in rural South Africa. As an undergraduate, Loo took a course through the UW’s Global Health Institute called Health Impact Assessment of Global Environmental Change. In it, he learned that about four… Read more »

Children born with single ventricle heart defects—a condition in which the heart only has one functioning pumping chamber—often need to undergo a series of surgeries in the first years of life. Using a selective laser sintering (SLS) machine the size of a compact car, the team creates intricate, highly detailed models that accurately duplicate patients’ distinct heart defects.

In 2013, sixteen UW-Madison students spent a semester delving into the mysteries of a single dusty account book kept by a colonial merchant. The results of their work didn’t emerge for another two years, but when they led to a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, the wait seemed worthwhile. The students and their professor,… Read more »

They talk. They breathe. They bleed. But they are not alive. They are high-fidelity mannequins used in the Center for Technology-Enhanced Nursing (CTEN), a cutting-edge simulation lab in Signe Skott Cooper Hall. The mannequins garner a lot of attention — and for good reason. These human-like interactive tools come as close as possible to being… Read more »

Undergrad Laura Schmitt loves two things: creative writing and Green Bay. With help from the Morgridge Center for Public Service, she’s working to bring the two together. Green Bay is Schmitt’s hometown. Madison is where she’s learning to cultivate her writing skills. But she wanted to share her passion for storytelling with her home community,… Read more »

The Madison nonprofit organization Wheels for Winners has been rewarding young people with strong records of community service with rebuilt and repaired bicycles for 23 years. But without volunteers, the organization would have long ago been stopped in its tracks. “Not a lot of charities can persist on our small operating budget,” says Richard Castelnuovo… Read more »