News

Be the Change Banquet: A Celebration of Service and Community

For the first time ever, the Morgridge Center for Public Service is bringing together our campus and community partners for one celebration. The Be the Change Banquet will be held on Tuesday, May 5, 2015 from 5-7 p.m. at Tripp Commons in Memorial Union. The event will bring together Badger Volunteers, service-learning students, community-engaged faculty …

Six UW-Madison projects honored for engagement beyond campus borders

Six UW–Madison projects spanning four continents have been honored for their engagement with local and global communities beyond university boundaries, by the campus alliance Wisconsin Without Borders. The projects, which earned awards in four different categories, will by honored in a campus ceremony Friday, April 24 from 9-10:30 a.m. in the Wisconsin Idea Room at …

Kathy Cramer named director at the Morgridge Center for Public Service

Kathy Cramer, a professor in the Department of Political Science and longtime active proponent of civic engagement and outreach at UW–Madison, has been named the permanent director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service. Cramer had held the position of interim director at the Morgridge Center since June 2014, after former director Nancy Mathews accepted …

UW-Madison volunteers drive Wheels for Winners into high gear

Alex Lai didn’t even know how to change a flat tire on her bicycle when she first joined Wheels for Winners as a Badger Volunteer during her first year of graduate school at UW–Madison. East Madison nonprofit organization Wheels for Winners, which first opened its doors 23 years ago, rewards bicycles to young people with …

Service Learning classes offer unique academic opportunity at UW-Madison

Service Learning has been a tradition on the UW–Madison campus for decades. Every semester, the University offers as many as 50 classes that incorporate volunteer work and community-engagement into the class. These Service Learning classes are offered in a wide variety of departments across campus. Sophomore Mariel White is one of the many students who have participated …

Brain Drain: A Child’s Brain on Poverty

More than 14.5 million children—just under 1 in 5—were in poverty in the United States in 2013. Living in poverty can put children at risk for health and behavioral problems, but could disadvantage actually affect brain development? Emerging evidence suggests that living in poverty may indeed alter how the brain grows, which may have implications …

Morgridge Center awarded Baldwin Grant

The Morgridge Center for Public Service has been awarded an Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Mini-Grant to further community-campus engagement. The $2,500 Baldwin Mini-Grant will be used to enhance the Wisconsin Idea Exchange, an online interactive database designed to help community groups and UW–Madison faculty and staff find collaborative community-based learning and research projects and partners. Assistant …

Six student projects awarded Wisconsin Idea Fellowships for 2015-16

Six student projects have been selected from among nearly 20 submissions for 2015-16 Wisconsin Idea Undergraduate Fellowships. The 17th year of the Wisconsin Idea Undergraduate Fellowships (WIF) will feature two domestic projects and four international projects. The six projects—to be implemented over the course of the next 12 months—were collectively awarded over $30,000. Wisconsin Idea …

Dolly Ledin honored for career of science outreach in the community

Longtime UW–Madison campus and community outreach champion Dolly Ledin has been awarded the Wisconsin Campus Compact 2015 Sister Joel Read Civic Leadership Award. The award recognizes outstanding faculty or staff members at Wisconsin colleges and universities who have made significant contributions to civic engagement on their campus. Ledin, who serves as the Outreach Director at WISCIENCE, …

Engaged scholarship fulfills passion for action in UW-Madison professor

For Young Mie Kim, being a social scientist is about being social. And engaged. Writing research papers and accumulating citations never seemed enough for the associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I became a social scientist because I’ve been always curious about society and social phenomenon and trying to explain why,” said …