University of Wisconsin
From Freepedia
- For the University of Wisconsin system, see University of Wisconsin System.
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The Seal of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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| School type | State university |
| Founded | 1848 |
| Location | Madison, Wisconsin |
| Campus size | 933 acre (3.8 km²) |
| Enrollment | 29,000 undergraduate, 13,000 graduate and post-graduate. |
| Faculty | 2,100 |
| Campus surroundings | Urban |
| Sports teams | Badgers |
| Mascot | Bucky Badger |
The University of Wisconsin was founded in 1848 and is the largest university in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The total Fall 2003 enrollment was 41,588 students, of whom 28,583 are undergraduates.
University of Wisconsin–Madison is the official name of the university, although the campus is routinely called UW, UW–Madison, or Wisconsin.
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Campus
The university is located in Madison, just blocks from the state capitol, and is situated on an isthmus between two lakes, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. The main campus comprises 933 acres (3.8 km²) of land, while the entire campus, including research stations, is over 10,600 acres (43 km²) in area. The main hub of campus life is the Memorial Union.
The campus has its own police force, food service, hospital, recreation facilities, power facilities, and an on-campus dairy. The campus art museum, formerly the Elvehjem Museum of Art, was renamed the Chazen Museum of Art in 2005.
Academics
The University of Wisconsin, the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System, is divided into twenty associated colleges and schools. In addition to traditional undergraduate and graduate divisions in engineering, education, agriculture, and letters and sciences, the university also maintains professional schools in law, medicine, veterinary medicine, and pharmacy.
University divisions
The largest university college, the College of Letters and Science, enrolls approximately half of the undergraduate student body and is made up of thirty-nine departments and five professional schools [1] that instruct students and carry out research in a wide variety of fields such as biology, astronomy, history, and sociology.
Reputation
Wisconsin has been one of the leading public universities in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century (it was a founding member of the Association of American Universities) and ranks as one of the great research universities of the world. Among U.S. universities, the University of Wisconsin is frequently listed as one of the "public Ivies"—publicly-funded universities providing a quality of education comparable to the best private schools. In addition to being a highly-ranked school in education, geography, history, and sociology, the university was recently ranked the second-best college at which to earn an education degree, and the overall seventh-best public school in the United States. In the Gourman report on undergraduate programs, the University of Wisconsin was ranked the third-best public university, right after the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Additionally, it was ranked the eighth-best university in the United States for overall strength of the undergraduate programs. In one study, [2], the University of Wisconsin was assessed as the 16th best among world universities.
UW-Madison has had a reputation as a party school, topping the 2005 Princeton Review's annual party school survey.
Bascom Hall, 1968, with crosses placed by students protesting the Vietnam war, and sign saying
"BASCOM MEMORIAL CEMETERY, CLASS OF 1968"
History
The university had its official beginnings when Wisconsin was incorporated as a state in 1848. Article X, Section B of the state constitution provided for "the establishment of a state university, at or near the seat of state government..." On July 26 1848, Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin's first governor, signed the act that formally created the University of Wisconsin. The board of regents held their initial meeting in the library room of the capitol on October 7, and provided John W. Sterling a $500 per-annum salary to become the university's first professor (mathematics). The first class of 17 students met in a Madison school building on February 5, 1849.
Regents continued to discuss the construction of the university and soon a campus site was selected. It comprised a 50 acre (200,000 m²) tract of land "bounded north by Fourth lake, east by a street to be opened at right angles with King [later State] street, south by Mineral Point Road [University avenue], and west by a carriage-way from said road to the lake." Building plans called for a "main edifice fronting towards the Capitol, three stories high, surmounted by an observatory for astronomical observations." This building, University Hall, now known as Bascom Hall, was finally completed in 1859. A fire later destroyed the building's dome, which was never replaced. North Hall, constructed in 1851, was actually the campus's first building. Finally, in 1854, Levi Booth and Charles T. Wakeley became the first graduates of the university. Academics continued to improve at Wisconsin, and in 1892 the university awarded its first Ph.D. to future university president Charles R. Van Hise.
In the years 1966 through 1970, the University of Wisconsin was shaken by a series of student protests, and by the use of force by authorities in response. The first major demonstrations protested the presence on campus of recruiters for the Dow Chemical Company, which supplied the napalm used in the Vietnam War. Another target of protest was the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC), clearly identified and centrally located on campus in the Sterling Hall physics building. Director J. Barkley Rosser, an eminent logician, publicly minimized any practical role and implied that AMRC pursued only pure mathematics. But the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, obtained quarterly reports that AMRC submitted to the Army. The Cardinal published a series of investigative articles making a convincing case that AMRC was pursuing research that was directly pursuant to specific US Department of Defense requests, and relevant to counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam. AMRC became a magnet for demonstrations, in which protesters chanted "U.S. out of Vietnam! Smash Army Math!"
On August 24, 1970, near 3:40 a.m. a van filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture was detonated next to Sterling Hall. Despite the late night detonation, the explosion killed a physics researcher named Robert Fassnacht. Ironically, the physics department was hit worse than the intended target, the AMRC. Those responsible for the act of terrorism were Karlton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt. Leo Burt has never been found.
The Badger Herald was founded in 1969, debuting as a conservative voice on campus. Born to cover and combat the turmoil of the Vietnam protests, the Herald maintains its maverick spirit, though it has shed the “conservative” reputation. The University of Wisconsin is to this day the only major American university with two daily student newspapers.
Other notable historical moments in Wisconsin's first century include:
- On April 4, 1892, the campus's first student-run newspaper began publishing. Today, The Daily Cardinal is the oldest student-run campus newspaper.
- 1898 saw UW music instructor Henry Dyke Sleeper write Varsity, the university’s traditional alma mater song.
- The Wisconsin Union was founded in 1907, second only to Harvard's among U.S. universities.
- William Purdy and Carl Beck wrote On, Wisconsin in 1909, which became the fight song for UW athletic teams.
- In 1925, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was chartered to control patenting and patent income on UW inventions.
- The UW Arboretum dedicated itself to restoring lost landscapes, such as prairies, in 1934.
- 1966 through 1970, the University of Wisconsin was shaken by a series of student protests, and by the use of force by authorities in response. The first major demonstrations protested the presence on campus of recruiters for the Dow Chemical Company, which supplied the napalm used in the Vietnam War.
- 1969 The Badger Herald was founded, debuting as a conservative voice on campus. Born to cover and combat the turmoil of the Vietnam protests, the Herald maintains its maverick spirit, though it has shed the “conservative” reputation. The University of Wisconsin is to this day the only major American university with two daily student newspapers.
- 1970 In one of the first major acts of modern terrorism, a bomb exploded outside the Sterling Hall physics building.
- Sub article: Sterling Hall bombing
Sports
The school's sports teams are nicknamed the Wisconsin Badgers. They participate in the NCAA's Division I-A and in the Big Ten Conference; its men's and women's hockey programs compete in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, while its highly-ranked mens' Rowing team competes in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges.
Football
One of the most popular sports at the Wisconsin is college football. Playing at the 80,000-plus capacity Camp Randall Stadium, the Badgers have always drawn large crowds and a loyal following.
Rivalries
The Wisconsin Badgers are very competitive in the Big Ten Conference. Their most notable rivalry is the annual college football game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers for Paul Bunyan's Axe, which is the longest-running rivalry in NCAA sports.
Mascot
The signature mascot is an anthropomorphized badger named Bucky who dons a sweater affixed with the University of Wisconsin athletic logo (currently the red "Motion W"). Beginning in 1890, the university's first Bucky Badger was a live, temperamental and unruly badger who was quickly retired. Although the nickname of the Wisconsin teams remained the "Badgers," it was not until Art Evans drew the early caricature version of Bucky in 1940 that today's recognizable image of Bucky was adopted. In 1949, a contest was held to name the mascot, but no consensus was reached after only a few entries were received. In reaction, the contest committee chose the name Buckingham U. Badger, or "Bucky" for short.
Current university research
Since its founding as a Land-grant university, Wisconsin has always been at the forefront of research.
Stem cells
The University is considered a major academic center for embryonic stem cell research. UW Professor James Thomson was the first scientist to isolate human embryonic stem cells. This has brought significant moral questions to the University from various institutions, with restrictions from the Bush Administration's domestic policy on some research.
Notable people
Related topics
- Camp Randall Stadium — the Badgers' home stadium for football
- Kohl Center — the Badgers' home arena for basketball and hockey
- Undergraduate Projects Lab — organization associated with the Department of Computer Sciences that provides undergraduates the resource to pursue self-motivated research projects
- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation — The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is a significant source of research support, independent of government grants.
- University of Wisconsin Law School — The UW Law School is located on the UW-Madison campus. It is the only public law school in Wisconsin.
External links
- Official site
- Official athletics site
- Survey ranks UW Madison top party school Newsday, August 22, 2005
- The University of Wisconsin Collection. This collection includes images, manuscripts, papers, and books, all relating to the University's history or mission, including selections from the UW archives, Badger yearbooks, and other pertinent resources.
- Badger Yearbooks. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center. The first yearbook of the University of Wisconsin was published in April 1884 and called the Trochos, which is a Greek word for badger. The second yearbook, also called Trochos, was not published until 1887. The first Badger was published in February 1888, and the Badger was published until 2003, with one hiatus in 1973-74. The Alumni Association helped publish volumes for those two years which basically only contain student photographs.
- The University of Wisconsin: A History. A four-volume history covering 1848 to 1971. The first two volumes, covering 1848-1925, were written by Merle Curti and Vernon Carstensen and defined the genre of university histories. The second two volumes (1925-1945, 1945-1971) were written by E. David Cronon and John W. Jenkins.
- The University of Wisconsin Alumni Directory, 1849-1919. The alumni directory published in 1921, which covers 1849-1919, is considered to be the most complete of the early directories. It lists graduates alphabetically by name (including degree granted, date, and where he/she was living in 1920/21), by year of graduation, and by state or country of origin. It also includes a directory of faculty members and officers up to 1919.
- The Wisconsin Alumni Magazine. The Wisconsin Alumni Association has published a magazine continuously since October 1899. The publication was called the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine from 1899 to 1935 (volumes 1-37), the Wisconsin Alumnus from 1936 to 1988 (volumes 38-89), and the Wisconsin Alumni from 1988-90 (volumes 90-91). In 1990 the publication became On Wisconsin.
- The History of Women at the University of Wisconsin. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center, this online collection consists of seven titles published by the UW that document the roles and activities of women students, faculty, and staff and on the development of women's studies throughout the UW System.
- Historic Images from the University of Wisconsin Archives.
- Wisconsin Electronic Reader. Stories, essays, letters, poems, biographies, journals, images and other documentation presenting Wisconsin history. Many first hand accounts - profusely illustrated. Includes much information documenting the history of the University of Wisconsin.
| Big Ten Conference | ||
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| Illinois • Indiana • Iowa • Michigan • Michigan State • Minnesota Northwestern • Ohio State • Penn State • Purdue • Wisconsin | Image:BigTenConference 100.png | |
Categories: Big Ten Conference | Worldwide Universities Network | Association of American Universities | Land-grant universities | University of Wisconsin-Madison
