University of Wisconsin-Madison
From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
Template:RedirectTemplate:Infobox UniversityThe University of Wisconsin–Madison (also known as UW–Madison, Madison, University of Wisconsin, or UW) is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded in 1848, it is the largest university in the state with a total enrollment of over 41,000 students, of whom approximately 29,000 are undergraduates.[1]
A public, land-grant institution, UW–Madison offers a wide spectrum of liberal arts studies, professional programs, and student activities. The school is frequently called a "public Ivy," and in 2007 US News and World Report ranked UW the seventh best public university in the United States.[2] The school has a number of specific programs that are ranked among the best in the US (e.g. sociology, education).
Wisconsin's NCAA Division I athletic teams are called the Badgers. They compete in the Big Ten Conference in all sports except ice hockey, which is a part of Western Collegiate Hockey Association. Wisconsin's football team won the Rose Bowl in 1994, 1999, and 2000. Its men's basketball team won the NCAA National Championship in 1941, and made it to the Final Four in 2000. Both the men's and women's hockey teams won the national championship in 2006.
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History
The university had its official beginnings when Wisconsin was incorporated as a state in 1848. Article X, Section B of the Wisconsin 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 at Madison Female Academy on February 5, 1849. Regents continued to discuss the construction of the university and soon a campus site was selected. It was an area of 50 acres (200,000 m²) "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.
Bascom Hall
As one of the most recognizable buildings on campus, Bascom Hall,[3] at the top of Bascom Hill, is one of the icons of the UW campus and is often considered the "heart of the campus." Built in 1857, the structure has been added to several times over the years although a decorative dome atop the structure was destroyed by fire. The building currently houses the office of the university's chancellor and vice chancellors. Bascom Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing building within the Bascom Hill Historic District.[4]
Music Hall
This Victorian Gothic building, built in 1878, was initially named Assembly Hall and was designed to house an 800-seat auditorium, a library, and a clock tower. Dedicated on March 2, 1880, the building originally held conventions, dances, and commencement ceremonies, along with its primary purpose of a library. After the library moved to different buildings on campus, a portion of the hall was assigned to the School of Music in 1900. Shortly after renovations in the early 1900s, the building was officially named Music Hall in 1910, where it still remains an important music venue.[5]
The Wisconsin Idea
Students, faculty and staff are motivated by a tradition known as the Wisconsin Idea, first started by UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904, when he declared that he would "never be content until the beneficent influence of the university [is] available to every home in the state."[6] The Wisconsin Idea holds that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state, and that the research conducted at UW should be applied to solve problems and improve health, quality of life, the environment, and agriculture for all citizens of the state. The Wisconsin Idea permeates the university’s work and helps forge close working relationships among university faculty and students, and the state’s industries and government.[7]
Student activism
In the years 1966 through 1970, the UW-Madison 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. Authorities used force to quell the disturbance. The struggle was documented in the PBS documentary "Two Days in October", as well as the book, "They Marched Into Sunlight". Among the students injured in the protest was future Madison mayor Paul Soglin.
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 AM, a van filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture was detonated next to Sterling Hall. Despite the late hour, a post-doc was in the lab; that man, physics researcher Robert Fassnacht, was killed in the explosion. The physics department was hit worse than the intended target, the AMRC. Those responsible were Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt. Leo Burt has never been found.
Timeline of notable events
Other notable historical moments in Wisconsin's first century include:
- On April 4, 1892, the campus's first student-run newspaper began publishing The Daily Cardinal.
- 1898 saw UW music instructor Henry Dyke Sleeper write Varsity, the university’s traditional alma mater song.
- In 1904-1905, the UW-Madison Graduate School was established. The "Wisconsin Idea" becomes a living doctrine. Voiced by President Charles Van Hise, the idea sought to make "the beneficent influence of the University available to every home in the State."
- The Wisconsin Union was founded in 1907, second only to Harvard's among U.S. universities.
- William Purdy and Paul Beck wrote On, Wisconsin in 1909, which became the fight song for UW-Madison 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 UW-Madison 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 to some extent 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 domestic terrorism, a bomb was exploded outside the Sterling Hall physics building, killing post-doctoral researcher Robert Fassnacht (see Sterling Hall bombing)
- 1988 The Onion is founded by two UW juniors, Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson; they will sell it to colleagues the next year.
Academics
The University of Wisconsin–Madison, 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 business, engineering, education, agriculture, and letters and sciences. The university also maintains professional schools in law, medicine, veterinary medicine, environmental studies, urban and regional planning, journalism, and pharmacy.
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[8] that instruct students and carry out research in a wide variety of fields such as biology, astronomy, history, geography, linguistics, and economics.
Rankings
Wisconsin has been one of the leading public universities in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century and ranks as one of the great research universities of the world.[9]
In U.S. News & World Reports ranking of national universities in 2007, Wisconsin ranked 34th.[10] Among U.S. universities, UW-Madison is frequently listed as one of the "public Ivies"—publicly-funded universities providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League.[11] In addition to being a top-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 university in the United States.
Washington Monthly's 2006 college rankings placed Wisconsin 11th, based not only on academic measures, but also student research, public service and social mobility.[12]
In the Gourman report on undergraduate programs, the University of Wisconsin was ranked the third-best public university, after the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Additionally, it was ranked the seventh-best university in the United States for overall strength of the undergraduate programs. According to the National Research Council there are over 70 programs at UW-Madison ranked in the top 10 nationally. According to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings,[13] the University of Wisconsin-Madison was ranked the 16th best university the world over.
In a 2004 study by Bloomberg Market News, researchers found that UW-Madison tied Harvard for producing the most CEOs at Standard & Poor’s 500 companies.[14] UW-Madison is second only to Harvard in the number of alumni receiving doctorates, and leads the nation by numbers of alumni in the Peace Corps.[15] The University is one of 60 elected members of the Association of American Universities.
Research
Since its founding as a land-grant university, Wisconsin has been at the forefront of research. In 2003-2004, the school allocated $721 million towards research on campus. This meant UW-Madison ranked as the 4th largest research university in the country behind Johns Hopkins University, University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.[16]
The University is considered a major academic center for embryonic stem cell research. UW-Madison Professor James Thomson was the first scientist to isolate human embryonic stem cells. This has brought significant attention and respect for the University's research programs from around the world. The University continues to be a leader in stem cell research, helped in part by the funding of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and promotion of WiCell.[17]
Campus
The university is located in Madison, just blocks from the state capitol, and is situated partially on an isthmus between two lakes, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. The main campus comprises 933 acres (3.77 km²) of land, while the entire campus, including research stations, is over 10,600 acres (42.9 km²) in area. The campus includes many buildings designed or supervised by architects J.T.W. Jennings and Arthur Peabody. 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 also owns the UW Arboretum, which is home to many plants and wildlife.
The campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison was featured in the 1986 movie Back to School (starring Rodney Dangerfield),[18] although in the movie the school is called "Great Lakes University." Portions of the campus (Bascom Hill, the Union Terrace) are also featured in a few scenes of the 2006 movie The Last Kiss, starring Zach Braff, which was set in Madison but filmed primarily in Canada.[19]
The Wisconsin Union
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, unlike many schools, is home to two different student unions. The first, Memorial Union, was built in 1928. The Memorial Union, also known as the Union or the Terrace, has gained a reputation as both one of the most beautiful and rowdy student unions or student centers on a university campus. Memorial Union is located on the shore of Lake Mendota, and it is a popular spot for socializing among students, as well as the public, while gazing at the lake and the sailboats that are often present. The union is known for "der Rathskeller," a German pub that directly connects to the lake terrace. Political debates and backgammon games are common among students over a beer on the terrace. The Rathskeller serves "Rathskeller Ale", a beer brewed expressly for the Terrace. Memorial Union is home to many arts outlets, including several art galleries, a movie theater, and the Wisconsin Union Theater, and the Craftshop, one of the first in the nation. The Memorial Union is also home to the only solely student run and owned business on campus, ASM StudentPrint. Students and Madison community members alike congregate at the Memorial Union, which honors American war veterans, for the films and concerts each week. An advisory referendum (advising the Chancellor, but lacking official power) to renovate and expand Memorial Union has been approved by the student body, and the university is currently in the planning phase for the expansion.[20]
Union South, the second campus union, is at the south end of campus. It was built in the 1960s, to help alleviate the pressure for space on Memorial Union, on an ever-growing campus. Union South has mainly served students, faculty, staff, and other users of the UW-Madison's many science related buildings, but has also become a home for many activities including weekly dances by student groups, weekly music and film series, and several bowling leagues. Plans to knock down and build a new "green" Union South have been approved by the student body and are currently in the planning phase.[21]
The Wisconsin Union also provides a home for the Wisconsin Union Directorate Student Programming Board (WUD). Since the opening of Memorial Union, students have actively participated in programming on campus. WUD provides programs nearly every day of the year, for both students and community members.
Libraries
Wisconsin has the 10th largest research library collection in North America, according to a survey by the Association of Research Libraries in 2004-05.[22] Memorial Library, the largest library in Wisconsin, along with more than 40 other professional and special-purpose libraries, serve the campus.[23] In 2004, the campus library collections included more than 7.3 million volumes representing human inquiry through all of history. In addition, there are more than 55,000 serial titles, 6.2 million microfilm items, and hundreds of thousands of government documents, maps, musical scores, audiovisual materials and other items housed in libraries across campus. Nearly 1 million volumes are circulated to library users every year.[24] Memorial Library serves as the principal research facility on campus for the humanities and social sciences. It houses the largest single library collection in the state of Wisconsin—-more than 3.5 million volumes. This library also houses an extensive periodical collection, a large selection of domestic and foreign newspapers, Special Collections,[25] the University Archives,[26] a music library,[27] a letterpress printing museum,[28] and the UW Digital Collections Center.[29]
Undergraduates can also find many of the resources they need at the College Library.[30]Specialized collections include a college catalog collection, women's and minority studies materials, art slides, music and literature tapes and recreational reading paperbacks. College Library also hosts an extensive Media Center with over 200 computer workstations available for student use. The Kurt F. Wendt Library[31] serves the College of Engineering[32] and the Departments of Computer Sciences,[33] Statistics,[34] and Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences.[35] Designated a Patent and Trademark Depository Library, Wendt Library maintains all U.S. utility, design, and plant patents in various formats, and provides reference tools and searching assistance for both the general public and the UW-Madison community. Additionally, Wendt Library houses books, journals, standards, and over 1.5 million technical reports in print and microfiche.
The online catalog for UW-Madison Libraries is MadCat.[36]. MadCat includes bibliographic records for books, periodicals, audiovisual materials, maps, music scores, microforms, and computer databases currently owned by over 30 campus libraries. It also contains records for most of the items which are still on order. It also includes an increasing number of important World Wide Web resources either licensed for UW use or openly available on the World Wide Web.
Museums
The Geology Museum features rocks, minerals, and fossils from around the world. Highlights include a blacklight room, a walk-through cave, and a fragment of the Barringer meteorite. Some noteworthy fossils include the first dinosaur skeleton assembled in Wisconsin (an Edmontosaurus), a shark (Squalicorax) and a floating colony of sea lilies (Uintacrinus), both from the Cretaceous chalk of Kansas, and the Boaz Mastodon, a found on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin in 1897.[37]
The campus art museum, formerly the Elvehjem Museum of Art, was renamed the Chazen Museum of Art in 2005, in recognition of a $20 million donation to fund an expansion.[38]
Athletics
The school's sports teams are named 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. In 2006, both the men's and women's hockey team took home the national title, becoming only the second school to win national championships in both the Men's and Women's division of a sport in the same year (Connecticut Huskies Basketball 2006). The school's highly-ranked men's rowing team (Wisconsin Badgers Crew) competes in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (against the Ivy League). The school's fight song is On, Wisconsin!.
2005-06 marked the first time in school history that four Badgers teams brought home national championships in the same academic year. In the fall, the men's cross country team won its fourth national championship, after finishing second the previous three years. The winter season was highlighted by the men's and women's ice hockey teams both bringing home national titles. The year was capped off in the spring with the women's lightweight crew team winning its third straight Intercollegiate Rowing Association national crown.
Football
Template:MainOne of the most popular sports at 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. After every game, win or lose, the University of Wisconsin Marching Band plays popular songs during the famed Fifth Quarter. The 2005-06 season was the last for the beloved Badger's head coach Barry Alvarez. He will focus on his position as athletic director while Bret Bielema takes over as head coach. The Badgers won three Rose Bowl Championships under Alvarez in 1994, 1999, and 2000. In the 2006 season, Bielema led the Badgers to an eleven-win regular season and to 12 overall wins, both firsts in school history. The Badgers' final win of the season was against SEC runner-up Arkansas at the Capital One Bowl.
Men's basketball
After decades of mediocrity (notwithstanding a 1941 national championship), the men's basketball team has enjoyed success in recent years. They are now a perennial attendee of the NCAA Tournament, reaching the Final Four in 2000. Bo Ryan, a four-time division III national championship coach at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, has coached the team since 2001 after the retirement of venerable Dick Bennett. The Badgers play at the Kohl Center, where the students, known as the Grateful Red, and the fans help to create a huge home-court advantage for Wisconsin. In the 2006-2007 basketball season, the Badgers attained their highest AP ranking (#2) in school history, as well as garnering 21 first-place votes on January 15, 2007.[39]
Ice hockey
First approved as a men varsity sport in 1922 by the UW-Madison athletic council, Badger Ice Hockey has been highly competitive over the years. The sport was dropped after the 1934-35 season before becoming a varsity sport for the 1963-64 season. That first team was coached by John Riley until Bob Johnson, nicknamed 'Badger Bob' by the fans, took over the