The 4th annual conference will be held on Monday, March 2, 2026 at Union South.
The Wisconsin Idea Conference seeks to bring together community-minded people from across the Madison area to discuss creative, mutually beneficial approaches to community-university partnership. The conference reaffirms the importance of collaborating across organizations to make a positive impact in our shared neighborhoods on issues that matter to residents.
This type of community-driven, applied work is at the core of the Wisconsin Idea and the larger founding mission of higher education across the United States. The conference is a multi-disciplinary celebration of the Wisconsin Idea and the relationships it fosters.
Contact: For questions about the event, please reach out to Dave Lassen.
Call for Proposals
- Call for Breakout Session Proposals
- Who Should Submit a Proposal
- Session Formats
- Building a Successful Proposal
Click Here to Submit a Proposal
Submission deadline: Monday, Dec. 1, 2025 at 11:59pm CST.
Click here for an overview of the proposal submission process and required elements.
We welcome sessions on any subject with a clear, collaborative focus and positive community outcomes. Sessions are invited on the conference theme of “Building Creative and Committed Partnerships.”
Proposals should be placed in one of the following content tracks:
- Creative Partnerships
- Empowering Approaches
- Connecting with New Partners
Anyone who wants to share their work, expertise, or experience on issues related to this year’s theme of “Building Creative and Committed Partnerships.”
The conference is designed as a space for wide-ranging discussions of diverse voices. Conference organizers therefore encourage proposals from any organizer, practitioner, or scholar active in community-university partnerships (whether currently, in the past, or work that is planned for the future).
Collaborative sessions that include individuals from both a university and an off-campus community are strongly encouraged.
Conference organizers invite proposals for 75-minute breakout sessions. Sessions that include collaborative teams of community and campus scholars, organizers, and/or practitioners are strongly encouraged. Proposed sessions should be submitted as one of the following:
- Interactive Workshop – These sessions provide interactive discussions and activities focused on a shared goal or subject.
- Panel Discussion – These sessions highlight the voices and experiences of panelists around a shared theme.
- Partnership Model Discussion – These sessions explore the design/structure of a research collaboration, project partnership, or other engagement model.
- Research Project Overview – These sessions explore the results of a community-university research project, including recommendations for successful research projects.
All proposals must include specific learning outcomes that are responsive to the event’s themes/tracks. Proposals must also include a clear plan to dynamically engage with audience members.
Successful proposals will include timely, creative content that addresses some or all of the following:
- The process of building and maintaining community-university partnerships from the ground up, including bumps in the road
- Strategies for collaboration, resource sharing, and capacity bridging
- Leveraging relationships for policy change, partnership, and collective action
- How to go from partnership to policy change and social action
- Insights on and critiques of university practices and policies for partnership
- Challenges to dream boldly and progressively about community-university partnership practices
Proposals are encouraged to include:
- Integrated community voice
- Discussion of best practices of community-engaged partnerships.
- Strategies that audience members can use to improve their own practice
- Opportunities to develop relationships with community-oriented scholars and professionals at the university and/or the community
- Timely questions related to the community-university partnerships
Call for Student Posters
Submission deadline: Monday, Dec. 8, 2025 at 11:59pm CST.
The Wisconsin Idea Conference is pleased to announce an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to present their experience designing and implementing community-engaged projects. The conference will feature a poster session for student work completed either independently, as part of a community-based learning (CBL) course, or a community-based research (CBR) project. If you are a student who has done work in the community during the past year, this session is for you!
The poster session is an opportunity for students to demonstrate their experience collaborating with community organizations in partnerships built on shared leadership/power and focused on creating positive impact in communities. We encourage posters based on work done as part of a community-based learning (CBL) class or independent research.
Posters should represent student work done in collaboration with community partners and should be presented through the lens of the conference theme: “Building Creative and Committed Partnerships.” Posters should feature student work completed either independently or as part of a community-based learning (CBL) course or a community-based research (CBR) project led by another faculty member, instructor, or researcher. All posters should include:
- An overview of their community-university partnership (including project development and outputs)
- A discussion of the collaborative elements of their community-university partnership (including power sharing and learning from all stakeholders)
- A discussion of the community impact of their community-university partnership
- A discussion of what the student learned from the experience.
Undergraduate and graduate students from any UW campus are encouraged to submit a proposal to present their collaborative work through the lens of this year’s theme: “Building Creative and Committed Partnerships.”
The conference is pleased to announce the offering of undergraduate and graduate student awards for Excellence in Community-Engaged Scholarship. These awards will be given to the poster presentations that most fully demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to excellence in community-university scholarship. Awards will be based on student understanding of community-engaged scholarship and will account for students’ at times limited ability to control the design of the project in which they participated (e.g., a CBL class).
Attending the Conference
Whether you’re from a university department or a community organization, this conference offers a unique opportunity to forge meaningful connections and explore how we can work together to strengthen Wisconsin communities.
- Provide community-university scholars, organizers, and practitioners with strategies, models, and resources to support the development and use of mutually beneficial partnership practices.
- Create spaces for UW faculty, staff, and students to meaningfully connect with members of their local communities to explore mutually beneficial partnerships they can create together.
- Elevate and learn from community voices and highlight exceptional examples of community-university partnership.
- Strengthen relationships among UW community-engaged scholars, practitioners, and students that enhance interdisciplinary collaboration, networking, and the professionalization of excellent community engagement.
The history of the Wisconsin Idea offers a set of values — self-governance, integrity, egalitarianism, truth and interpersonal trust — that serve as a visionary ideal for the University and guides its approach to engaging with local communities. Amid and throughout this history, the Wisconsin Idea has had a complicated history, and opinions on the university’s commitment to the Wisconsin Idea vary widely. Through this conference, we encourage attendees to reflect critically on the role of institutions in communities and the tensions inherent in the Wisconsin Idea.
A few resources for you to explore
Conference Registration
Registration will soon be available.
The Wisconsin Idea Conference brings together innovative minds from both within and beyond campus walls. We welcome:
Community partners
- Nonprofit organizations looking to amplify their impact through university collaboration
- Public sector professionals seeking to bridge research and practice
- Community leaders interested in shaping the future of university-community partnership
University participants
- Faculty and researchers interested in community-engaged scholarship
- Staff members working on outreach and partnership initiatives
- Students passionate about applying their learning to real-world challenge
Hear what attendees had to say about last year’s conference.
Networking Across Campus & Community
- “I liked connecting with people from across campus. That can be challenging to do sometimes and I appreciated getting to learn about the amazing work going on at UW-Madison.”
- “[I enjoyed] getting to meet/talk with other individuals not in my division who do work that promotes the Wisconsin Idea.”
- “I like the mix of community and university attendees.”
Sharing Resources & Best Practices
- “The quality of presentations, resources, strategies, and networking. Time well-spent.”
- “[I appreciated] hearing from the different partners in community-engaged initiatives”
- “I like hearing what others are doing in this space and learning about community engagement in practice.”
To ensure the event is accessible to a variety of attendees, a tiered pricing system is in place. Attendance is free for UW-Madison graduate/undergraduate students and supported options are available for community and campus audiences with financial barriers to attending.
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- Standard Conference Registration | $35
- Recommended for anyone who has professional development funding available.
- Supported Conference Registration | $0
- Recommended for students and any community partners or UW staff without professional development funding available
- Sponsorship-level Conference Registration | $70
- Recommended for those who wish to support conference attendance for students and community partners, as well as for those units interested in receiving recognition as event sponsors.
- Awards Luncheon Only registration | $18
- For those who are ONLY attending the Community University Engagement Awards lunch
- Standard Conference Registration | $35
For questions about conference registration, please contact Cory (sprinkel@wisc.edu)
2025 Sponsors
