The University of Wisconsin–Madison ( UW–Madison , Madison , or Wisconsin ) is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866. The 933-acre (3.78 km 2 ) main campus includes four National Historic Landmarks.
UW–Madison is organized into 20 schools which enrolled 29,153 undergraduate, 8,710 graduate, and 2,570 professional students and granted 6,040 bachelor's and 3,328 graduate and professional degrees in 2008. The university employs 2,054 faculty members. Its comprehensive academic program offers 135 undergraduate majors, along with 151 master's degree programs and 107 doctoral programs.
The UW is categorized as an RU/VH Research University (very high research activity) in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. In 2007, it had research expenditures of $913 million, making it the third largest in science and engineering and the largest in non-science expenditures in the nation. Wisconsin is a founding member of the Association of American Universities.
The Wisconsin Badgers compete in 25 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA's Division I Big Ten Conference and have won 27 national championships.
History
The university had its official beginnings when Wisconsin was incorporated as a state in 1848. The Wisconsin Constitution provided for "the establishment of a state university, at or near the seat of state government..." and directed by the state legislature to be governed by a board of regents and administered by a chancellor. On July 26, 1848, Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin's first governor, signed the act that formally created the University of Wisconsin. John H. Lathrop became the university's first chancellor, in the fall of 1849. With John W. Sterling as the university's first professor (mathematics), the first class of 17 students met at Madison Female Academy on February 5, 1849. A permanent campus site was soon selected: 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 street," "south by Mineral Point Road (University Avenue), and west by a carriage-way from said road to the lake." The regents' 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. On October 10, 1916, a fire destroyed the building's dome, which was never replaced. North Hall, constructed in 1851, was actually the first building on campus. In 1854, Levi Booth and Charles T. Wakeley became the first graduates of the university, and in 1892 the university awarded its first Ph.D. to future university president Charles R. Van Hise.
The Wisconsin Idea
Students, faculty and staff are motivated by a tradition known as "the Wisconsin Idea," first conceptualized by UW–Madison President Charles Van Hise in 1904, when he declared "I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every home in the state." The Wisconsin Idea holds that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state, and that the research conducted at UW–Madison 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. Based in Wisconsin's populist history, the Wisconsin Idea continues to inspire the work of the faculty, staff, and students who aim to solve real-world problems by working together across disciplines and demographics.
Expansion
Over time, additional campuses were added to the University. The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee was created in 1956, and UW–Green Bay and UW–Parkside in 1968. Ten freshman-sophomore centers were also added to this system. In 1971, Wisconsin legislators passed a law merging the University of Wisconsin with the nine universities and four freshman-sophomore branch campuses of the Wisconsin State Universities System, creating the University of Wisconsin System and bringing the two higher education systems under a single board of regents.
Student activism
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, UW–Madison was shaken by a series of student protests, and by the use of force by authorities in response, comprehensively documented in the film The War at Home . 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), located in Sterling Hall. The student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal , published a series of investigative articles that made a convincing case that AMRC was pursuing research directly pursuant to US Department of Defense requests, and supportive of military 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 bomb exploded next to Sterling Hall, aimed at destroying the Army Math Research Center. Despite the late hour, a post-doctoral physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, was in the lab and was killed in the explosion. The physics department was damaged worse than the intended target, the AMRC. Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, and David Fine were found responsible for the blast. Leo Burt was identified as a suspect, but was never apprehended or tried. The story of this event is told in the book Rads .
Timeline of notable events
Other notable historical moments in the first 150 years of the University of Wisconsin–Madison include:
- 1863 Women students first admitted to University of Wisconsin during the Civil War ,,
- 1866 State legislature designated the University as the Wisconsin land-grant institution
- April 4, 1892 The first edition of the student-run The Daily Cardinal was published
- 1894 State Board of Regents rejected an effort to purge Professor Richard T. Ely for supporting striking printers, issuing the famous "sifting and winnowing" manifesto in defense of academic freedom, later described as "part of Wisconsin's Magna Carta"
- 1898 UW music instructor Henry Dyke Sleeper wrote Varsity , the university’s alma mater
- 1904–1905 UW Graduate School established
- 1905 – the University awards the first Ph.D. in chemical engineering ever granted, to Oliver Patterson Watts.
- 1907 Wisconsin Union was founded
- 1909 William Purdy and Paul Beck wrote On, Wisconsin the UW–Madison athletic fight song
- 1907–1911 The "Single-grain Experiment" was conducted by Stephen Moulton Babcock and Edwin B. Hart, paving the way for modern nutrition as a science
- 1913 Vitamin A discovered by UW scientist, Elmer V. McCollum
- 1916 Vitamin B discovered by McCollum
- 1919 Radio station 9XM founded on campus (Now WHA (970 AM), it is the oldest continually-operating radio station in the United States)
- 1923 Harry Steenbock invented process for adding vitamin D to milk
- 1925 Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation chartered to control patenting and patent income on UW–Madison inventions
- 1934 The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum, whose mission was to restore lost landscapes, such as prairies, was opened
- 1936 UW–Madison began an artist-in-residence program, the first ever at a university
- 1940–1951 Warfarin (Coumadin) developed at UW. Named after Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
- 1969 The Badger Herald was founded as a conservative student paper
- 1970 Sterling Hall bombing
- 1984 University Research Park founded to encourage technology transfer between university and businesses
- 1988 The Onion founded by two UW–Madison students, Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson
- 1998 UW–Madison's James Thomson (cell biologist) first isolated and cultured human embryonic stem cells
Academics
The University of Wisconsin–Madison, the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin Sy
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