Faculty, staff and students follow many different roads to success.

With the help of people like Seema Kapani, the university is getting better at pointing the way.

During her 20 years at UW–Madison, Seema Kapani has experienced the highs and lows of working on a large, dynamic campus. Many times, she sees a community that works well, creating an atmosphere of support and respect that allows people to flourish. Yet, like most human things, it is not perfect. She has faced setbacks and complications — but also opportunities for growth.

In her role coordinating diversity education programs for the UW–Madison community, Kapani embraces those moments. Hundreds of faculty, staff and students have enrolled in professional development seminars she has designed to spur dialogue and change on campus climate issues. Her programs are anything but top-down administrative edicts: They're inclusive, participatory exercises that get people thinking about what kind of place they want this university to be — and how to make it happen.

And they work. Kapani's programs include the Leadership Institute, the Excellence in Diversity Institute, and three arms of a seminar known as Seeking Equity and Educational Diversity. All are open to faculty, staff and students, and all have waiting lists to enroll.

The courses are popular because they offer something useful to participants. As the campus and the world grow more diverse and interconnected, the university must do more to promote a working environment that supports people of all cultures and backgrounds. It's clear that some aspects of institutional culture don't do that — they work for some people, but create barriers that hold others back. To realize the full potential of everyone on campus, the old norms have to change. The university must find new ways of recruiting, teaching, promoting and nurturing its human resources that bring more people to the table and leave no one behind.

"We have tremendous human capital that we have not tapped into," says Kapani. Yet traditionally, there have been few places for leaders to learn how to level the field. Programs such as the Leadership Institute and SEED address that gap by being community-based. They give faculty, staff and students an opportunity to share their experiences and collect insights from peers, leading to new strategies that they can incorporate into their dealings with others.

"Gandhi said, 'You need to model the change you want to see in the world,' " Kapani says. And that is why, even with the promising results of her programs, she continues to push for community awareness and support of climate issues. Every day, UW–Madison gets a little closer to what she envisions it can be.

• UW–Madison's PEOPLE program, initiated to help prepare disadvantaged or underrepresented high school students for college, hit a milestone in 2003 when every student who completed the program graduated from high school and 96 percent went on to college. The program serves 800 high school students in Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Waukesha, the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Menominee Nation.

• Three UW health sciences programs were cited for excellence in recruiting and retaining students of color. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which funds 292 research programs in the United States, cited the UW Chemistry-Biology Interface Predoctoral Program, the Molecular Biosciences Training Grant and the Neuroscience Training Program for enrolling significant percentages of underrepresented minority students.

• The Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education presented a series of workshops and seminars focused on issues of leadership in higher education. Enrolling educational leaders from the UW campus, as well as the larger community, the center is helping refine decision-making and leadership practices and offer new opportunities for professional growth.

• UW–Madison's LEAP program — Launching Entrepreneurial Advisory Panels — connected eight women business owners with successful entrepreneurs who were willing to serve as mentors and help them enrich their professional networks. The program, which has recruited more than 120 professionals to serve on advisory panels, is based on faculty research that shows women entrepreneurs can be at a disadvantage in the marketplace because they often have fewer professional connections than men.

• Continuing a long tradition of support for the university from within its own ranks, faculty and staff have contributed more than $38 million as part of the internal component of Create the Future: The Wisconsin Campaign, the UW Foundation's current capital campaign.