Tag: College of Letters & Science

On August 30, 2015, scholars from across campus as well as across the Atlantic had a hand in “Out of the Shadows: Rediscovering Jewish Music, Literature and Theater,” part of the Performing the Jewish Archive project. The project was part of a larger international research project led by the University of Leeds in England. Campus… Read more »

When assistant math professor Melanie Matchett Wood was in seventh grade, she was surprised to win a citywide math competition in her native Indianapolis. Then she won a state competition, and in eighth grade placed tenth in the country. As Matchett Wood progressed in mathematics, she often found herself in situations where she was the… 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 »

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 »

Phoenix Rice-Johnson remembers growing up in Hawaii without some of the everyday amenities many of us take for granted. “My dad raised me on a mechanic’s income,” she says. “I was accustomed to poverty and unemployment in my household, because it existed throughout my community. I began thinking about a career in public service to help overcome these kinds of inequalities.” Rice-Johnson,… Read more »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »