Welcome to the first edition of Notes from the Chancellor, a roughly every-other-month chance for me to share a few thoughts and a behind-the-scenes peek at some of what I’m working on and thinking about here on Bascom Hill.

Homecoming Festivities

It was a true delight to connect with so many of you over Homecoming weekend and be part of our 80,000-person Badger cheering squad at Camp Randall on Saturday.

I grant that the football score was not the highlight of the weekend. But the spirit of community was nonetheless out in full force, from the happy crowds lining the streets for our annual parade to the gorgeous fireworks over Lake Mendota.

Bringing the Wisconsin Idea to Life

Our 175th anniversary celebration has come to an end, and just when we’d all learned to say demisemiseptcentennial! If you appreciated the linguistic challenge, stay tuned for the quasquibicentennial celebration in 2073.

I’ll continue to travel around Wisconsin to hear about what alums, community members, industry leaders, and legislators think we are doing well and where we might have room for improvement.

I stopped this month in Green County to see the work of UW-trained master cheesemakers and got to try the fragrant (!) Limburger cheese sandwich at Baumgartner’s. (Cheese-centric travel is a definite perk of my job, though candidly, I won’t be rushing back for the super-pungent Limburger.)

On a trip to the Northwoods, I visited with UW scientists at two of our 12 research stations and learned more about our innovative research to protect our precious lakes (there are 2,500 of them in the vicinity of the research station!) and how we work to support the management and sustainable use of Wisconsin’s forests. I was lucky enough to time my visit with stunning fall foliage, and seeing our impact on the state and the opportunities these projects create for both undergraduates and graduate students is quite inspiring.

I also learned, while wading into a cranberry marsh (and, fortunately, not falling in), about how our research on disease resistance, new hybrids, and much more helps support the farmers who make Wisconsin the number-one cranberry producer in the nation — food for thought as we prepare so many delicious cranberry-themed recipes this fall! Take a look at more examples of the Wisconsin Idea in action in every one of the state’s 72 counties by visiting the Wisconsin Idea Database.

Commitment to Excellence in Badger Athletics

You may have seen the news earlier this month of a legal settlement that will, if finalized, give teams like ours the possibility of sharing revenues with some of our student athletes. We are in a moment of considerable — even transformative — change in intercollegiate athletics, but our fundamental commitment to both athletic and scholarly excellence will remain steadfast.

A New Approach to Institutional Statements

You may have heard that university leaders have been increasingly called upon to make statements and take positions on a range of situations, including about national and global issues. I’ve come to believe that this practice is not a good idea. Statements risk oversimplifying complex subjects and pull our institution out of its appropriate “lane” of supporting extraordinary education and research. In addition, doing so risks crowding out other points of view and potentially chilling the robust exchange of ideas — the sifting and winnowing — that’s so critical to our mission.

At the start of this school year, we announced a new policy on institutional statements. I believe this commitment to institutional restraint will, in fact, make space for more of the dialogue and debate that have characterized our intellectual community since our founding.

To be clear, there are times when the university’s voice (or my or another leader’s voice on behalf of the university) is necessary — for example, on issues directly affecting our operation or mission. And, of course, we encourage our researchers, instructors, and students to continue to share their expertise and views publicly — that’s what both academic freedom and freedom of speech are about.

Band Together

Finally, have you seen our new television ads running in Wisconsin and nationally during Big Ten broadcasts? You might just recognize a former classmate in one of them. You can read more here about the role they play in our statewide outreach strategy. The first ad is called “Band Together” and features UW Marching Band alumni and our wonderful band director, Corey Pompey.

On, Wisconsin!

Jennifer L. Mnookin
Chancellor

* * * *

Chancellor’s Choice

• Ahead of Veterans Day, I want to express my gratitude to the thousands of Badgers who’ve served our country and protected our freedoms — especially those on our Gold Star Honor Roll, who made the ultimate sacrifice.
• Our outstanding UW School of Nursing is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. Join the centennial celebration livestream on November 8 to learn from nursing faculty about the leading-edge work happening there.
• Did you know UW–Madison is home to the country’s oldest university glassblowing program? The Chazen Museum’s exhibition “Look What Harvey Did: Harvey K. Littleton’s Legacy in the Simona and Jerome Chazen Studio Glass Collection” celebrates this legacy through May 1, 2025. If you can’t make it in person, dive into the Meet Me at the Chazen podcast for fascinating discussions of exhibitions, events, and works of art.

Sept. 3, 2024

Thank you, Provost Isbell for that kind welcome, and hello new Badgers! I am delighted to welcome you to one of the world’s greatest universities — the University of Wisconsin–Madison!

Thanks also to Vice Chancellors Lori Reesor and LaVar Charleston, and our amazing student speaker Amanjot Kaur — let’s give them all a round of applause.

Students, you are an exceptional group with a plurality of talents — a dizzying and impressive range of backgrounds and experiences that you bring here to UW–Madison. Let me tell you just a little about yourselves:

• There are nearly 10,000 of you — about 8,500 freshmen (freshmen, make some noise!) and 1,400 transfer students (let’s hear from you!).
• We selected each of you from an avalanche — a tsunami! — of more than 70,000 applicants. That’s a new record! You are now part of one of the most accomplished and competitive classes in our 176-year history.
• You come from 48 states, Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories (anyone remember the states we’re missing?  That’s right — West Virginia and Mississippi — if you have friends there, tell them we said ‘hi!’)
• Now let’s hear from the top states outside of Wisconsin represented in this class:
• #5 and #4 go together — the tri-state area — New York, New Jersey (and let’s not leave out Connecticut), where are you?
• #3 — California — make some noise!
• #2 — Minnesota — let’s hear it!
• #1 — you know who you are … Illinois, where are you? Congrats!
• We also have international students from more than 60 nations around the globe, let’s hear from you!
• OK, Wisconsin, it’s your turn. If you’re from the great state of Wisconsin, make some noise!
• And here’s something I’m really proud of — nearly one out of every five of you is the first in your family to go to college. Let’s hear it for our first-generation scholars!

I have a request of you. You heard the provost say the next time you may all be together again will be graduation — a few years down the road! So I want a photo!

(Selfie with the students)

Your first official UW portrait! I’ll post it on Instagram if you want to follow me: @UWChancellor.

* * * *

In the days and weeks to come you’re going to meet so many new people. You’ll find out where they’re from, what they want to major in … but I’m challenging you to do more — question deeper. Be on the lookout for what makes each of you unique, because this is an amazing class!

Just a few of the things you might learn about your classmates this year if you ask them about themselves:

• One of them is this year’s Madison Youth Poet Laureate.
• Another represented her home nation of Chile at the international UNESCO Youth Forum.
• One of your classmates just competed in the men’s diving competition at the Summer Olympics (and will now be on our fabulous UW Swimming & Diving Team)

Impressive for sure, and that only scratches the surface. In this class are national merit scholars … athletes … performers … published authors … Eagle Scouts … community volunteers … and I could go on.

You can — and you will — meet amazing fellow students here, and you can and you will learn so much from them.

But if that sounds at all intimidating, please don’t let it feel that way. Wherever you are from, whatever you’ve done already, and wherever you aim to go: You belong here.

The plurality of talent that makes UW–Madison so special includes you. Emphatically. You create the tapestry that makes us who we are.

You will learn an incredible amount from each other. And you will also have the chance to learn so much from our spectacular faculty. Let me introduce just three of them.

Slide: Lynda Barry

Professor Lynda Barry of the art department teaches courses in comics.

Slide: Lynda Barry in the classroom

She’s renowned around the world for the way in which she uses art to teach all students (sometimes especially students from the STEM fields) new ways of tapping into their creativity to solve problems.

Slide: Jonathan Martin

Professor Jon Martin of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. His courses are rigorous and he is a favorite teacher on our campus.

If you see a group of students standing on top of that tall building by Union South with all the satellite dishes on the roof sometime this December? That’s Professor Martin and his class, looking for steam devils on Lake Mendota. If you don’t know what those are, take his class and you’ll find out!

Slide: Hantang Qin 

And Professor Hantang Qin. See that plane behind them?  It’s specially modified to simulate weightlessness.

Slide:  Students floating inside plane

Dr. Chin and his students were testing a 3-D printer they invented to print electronic components on the nano scale in zero gravity — the first of its kind in the world!

The goal is to give astronauts a way to fabricate their own replacement parts as they journey through space.

These are just three of the more than 2,000 incredible scholars on our faculty. All of them are eager to welcome you here! All of them — and we, and you — are dedicated to something we call the Wisconsin Idea — our mission to innovate for the public good.

You heard Amanjot Kaur say we don’t believe in sitting on the sidelines at UW. We don’t believe in waiting for someone else to step up. Because trying to make a difference in all kinds of ways requires ALL of us — which is why we selected you to be part of this great class.

Free expression & pluralism

Earlier I said that you represent a plurality of talent. That plurality encompasses your identities … your background … your beliefs … basically everything you brought with you that you didn’t have to haul into your residence hall last week in a bag or a box.

Together, you’re going to explore many different issues and ideas across many different academic fields. You are going to encounter ideas you agree with and ideas you might strongly disagree with.

And when you encounter new ideas, whether they seem “right on” to you or downright misguided and wrong, either way, you should bring curiosity, compassion, and critical thinking to those encounters.

Bringing curiosity and compassion to these conversations doesn’t mean you just need to nod and smile. Or pretend that you agree when you don’t. You should feel empowered to disagree with one another, and with your professors and with me.

That’s free expression! And it can feel uncomfortable at times. And there’s no doubt it’s a whole heck of a lot easier to believe in the value of free speech when you agree with the speaker. But it might be most important when you don’t.

But when you have strong views, I’d also like to remind you that it’s equally important to disagree with respect for our common humanity. So start out with curiosity rather than condemnation and generosity before judgment.

And know that the point isn’t to change what you believe, though sometimes you might. The point is to engage with a great diversity of ideas. That’s how you gain a stronger, more nuanced and deeper understanding of what you believe and why.

So that you can produce work that’s not just good, but exceptional.

And I’ll let you in on a little secret: As essential as free expression is, it’s really one part of something still bigger and absolutely critical, called pluralism.

Slide: Pluralism

Pluralism is a truly defining characteristic of what makes a university great. Here’s one way to think about it:

Imagine a music group — it could be rock, folk, jazz, hip hop, whatever you like. The members of the group might come from entirely different musical backgrounds.

Some have been practicing since they were kids; some learned more recently. Some might have spent years studying classical music; others might be self-taught, or learned by watching YouTube or jamming with friends in the basement. But in this group they each contribute to the whole.

Their practices might sound pretty cacophonous at times.  But the musicians share a goal of creating something better than any one of them could create on their own. And their best chance of doing that comes from respecting what the others bring to the group and finding ways to work together even when they disagree.

Pluralism is about bringing people with many different backgrounds and sometimes conflicting perspectives and ideas together to discuss and debate, or, as we sometimes talk about it here at UW–Madison, to sift and winnow — our way of describing a kind of inquiry that generates insights and discoveries.

And here’s why that’s so valuable:

Think about the last time you rode in a car. It had airbags, right? Did you spend any time at all worrying that the airbag could explode and cause life-threatening injuries? Probably not!

But that was a very serious concern when your parents were riding around in cars with first-generation airbags. Because the engineers and designers were nearly all men. And the airbags they produced were optimized for someone 5’9” and 170 pounds.

For people smaller than that — often women— they could be dangerous and even deadly. Bringing more and different voices into the design room led to significant improvements in safety.

So when we think about discovery and invention, and about education that transforms you and helps you build a fuller understanding of our complicated world, pluralism is an absolutely essential ingredient.

Along with your relentless curiosity!

And so, Badgers: Welcome to every one of you. Starting today, you all share a new identity — as Badgers.

Babcock & Bucky

So let’s celebrate with two time-honored Badger traditions — singing Varsity and eating Babcock ice cream.

Of course, we can’t do both at once.

We’ll sing here and eat ice cream — courtesy of the Wisconsin Alumni Association — afterwards at Alumni Park, next to Memorial Union.

And this year, for the first time ever, we have printed the W Project photo you took last week into a poster — we’ll be distributing them on the way out. This is the only place you can get one, so be sure to grab yours.

We can’t do this without Bucky! Please join me in welcoming one very special Badger!

(Bucky enters)

Now I ask you to rise as you are able to sing Varsity and remain standing for the faculty recession.

May 11, 2024

Thank you, Kenny, and thanks to all of our senior class officers who have worked so hard to create unforgettable experiences for all of you — today and throughout the year.

Good afternoon, everyone!

Welcome to the 171st commencement of the University of Wisconsin–Madison!

And welcome to Camp Randall Stadium, where fans have been cheering for the Badgers for 107 years. For the record: the very first game in Camp Randall was a shutout. We clobbered Minnesota!

Family and friends: We feel your love and pride today. We have so much to celebrate. Please join me in another big congratulations for the amazing Class of 2024!

Graduates: You walked through those gates today as students, and when you walk through them again, it will be as alumni of one of the greatest universities in the world. Let’s show some love for the family and friends who helped you get here!

I also want to acknowledge that, for many members of this class, this is also a really hard day.

For some of you, there are classmates, friends, and family members who were with you at the start of this journey but cannot be here today. We remember them all.

And for many in our campus community, there is pain and grief over the devastating destruction, injustice, and loss of life in Israel and Gaza. Some of you have had to navigate this final year of your degree amid anguishing worry about friends and relatives there and around the world.

Please know that you are not alone at this incredibly difficult time.

* * * *

Class of 2024:

Today we confer 7,868 degrees, making this one of the larger commencement ceremonies in our 175-year history!

238 of you have earned law degrees — where are our Law School graduates? Congratulations!

1,382 of you have earned master’s degrees — where are the master’s graduates? Congratulations!

And 6,236 of you have earned bachelor’s degrees — make some noise!

We have an excellent keynote speaker for you today: UW alumna, Badger sports legend, and three-time Olympic medalist Meghan Duggan is here with her wife (also an Olympic gold medalist!) and their three children.

Welcome home to Madison, Meghan!

A milestone event in a milestone year

Every UW–Madison commencement is special, but this one feels even a step more special because we’re also celebrating the 175th anniversary of our founding. It’s our demi-semi-sept-centennial!

Our university was created in 1848, the same year that Wisconsin became a state, and the first students arrived here in 1849. Our first commencement was five years later, in 1854. There were six speeches … and just two graduates … a three-to-one ratio. And one of those speeches was in Latin!

As part of our anniversary celebration, we’ve decided to follow that tradition today — I hope you won’t mind listening to 24,000 speeches this afternoon?

OK, the truth is, we have far better commencement traditions now, including this one:

If you are part of the first generation in your family to earn a college degree please stand as you’re able and make some noise!

If you are a United States veteran or serving on active duty or in the Reserves — whether you’re graduating or celebrating our graduates — please stand as you’re able so we may thank you for your service!

Class of 2024, you came here four (or five or six or three) years ago from all over Wisconsin, around the U.S. and around the world. You arrived on this campus with very different backgrounds and identities and beliefs. And you found common ground around your shared identity as Badgers.

Among you are national debate champions … winners of major national scholarships … national championship athletes … and students who are forever grateful to have made it through some of the most challenging courses anywhere!

Comp Sci 577 anyone? Physics 335?

You are driven to succeed academically AND you are deeply engaged in solving problems out in the world, in our proud Wisconsin Idea tradition.

That’s how the Class of 2024 helped to make UW–Madison — for the first time in a number of years — the #1 university in the nation for Peace Corps volunteers!

Changing the question

Class of 2024, you are without a doubt graduating during tumultuous times — on campuses, in our nation, and across the globe. And it can sometimes feel hard to know how to move forward in a messy and complicated world.

But here’s one piece of advice: If you feel stuck, or like you don’t have any answers — perhaps you should try changing the question.

Because sometimes, asking a different question can open grand new possibilities. And, class of 2024, I think this is something for which you’ve already shown a talent. You have shown you are already good at changing the question — asking something new that invites us to explore possibilities we might never have thought of.

• A great many of you began your time here during COVID. And you missed out on things — like senior prom, or a traditional high school graduation. But just this spring, as you looked forward, instead of dwelling on what you didn’t have, a chance to do, you asked, “Is it too late to have that senior prom we missed four years ago?”
• Together we answered with a resounding “No, it is not!” More than 800 of you attended our first (and perhaps first of many) Madison senior prom “with some twists.” I hear it was quite a celebration!
• And this isn’t the first year our students have asked, “Why doesn’t the university have a curling team?” But this year a freshman changed the question. He asked: “Who will help me start a curling team?” Members of this class stepped up, and in their very first season the new team won a national championship.
• And on a much more serious note, at a time of great political and social upheaval, members of this class have looked for new ways to bring people with very different beliefs together to talk and to listen — respectfully and thoughtfully.
• Chandra Chouhan asked why our Indian and Pakistani student organizations had never collaborated on a joint event. And the result was our first-ever Interfaith Iftar (an evening meal shared during Ramadan). Thank you, Chandra!
• And in a very different arena, Rosalie Powell asked how we might bring environmentalists and landowners together to work toward a more sustainable planet. She met with people from very different perspectives but with a shared belief in the importance of conservation and laid the groundwork for some important changes to help protect our precious water and soil. Thank you Rosalie!

The questions you’ve asked also have helped define your studies here.

Evan Wooldridge is one of our Posse Scholars. He helped to ask a different question about how a certain kind of beetle that destroys thousands of acres of potato and tomato crops is staying one step ahead of us. Together with our faculty, he used RNA testing to move us closer to the day when we’ll be able to outsmart this pest rather than just out-spraying it. Evan, where are you? Congratulations!

Nick Lawton, Canyon Pergande, and Drew Levin asked a very different question — they saw classmates frustrated in their search for a college job and local businesses frustrated in their search for employees and asked: What if we created a platform to help these people find each other? So they did.  It’s called SideShift. Nick, Canyon, and Drew, where are you? Congratulations!

You and I can’t know today what questions each of you will ask in your lives and careers. But I can tell you this: The questions that challenge what we are certain we already know to be true are often the ones that drive extraordinary innovation.

In fact, they’re the questions that have propelled this campus forward for 175 years:

• To produce 26 Pulitzer Prize winners and 20 Nobel laureates.
• To produce the scholars who organized the national park system … created weather satellite technology … discovered Vitamin D … and isolated human stem cells for the first time.
• To tackle some of the most complex social issues facing our world.
• To set the standard for excellence in the arts.
• And to harness the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to help people live better.

That’s what comes from asking great questions. So as you embark on your next adventure, hold fast to this simple mantra: Tell less. Ask more. And when you can’t find an answer that satisfies, don’t hesitate to ask a new and different question.

Conclusion

I opened by sharing a story about our first graduates in 1854. They were (as you might have guessed) both men.

It was 15 years later that we had our first women graduates.

In honor of this historic year, I want to close with a passage from a letter one of them wrote to her grandparents shortly before her graduation. Her name was Clara Bewick, and she went on to become a nationally known journalist and women’s rights activist.

She wrote:

How strange it is that the years fly so quickly by. 

 The close of each year brings us to a stopping place, where just for a moment we may tarry and glance back over the road we have passed; a milestone measuring off the past from the future …

 [Before we] turn to a new leaf, as yet clean and bright.  [And begin to] run with patience the race set before us.”

Class of 2024, I hope as you turn to this new leaf you keep your sense of curiosity and purpose … your commitment to helping make the world a better place … and your courage to continue asking questions no one else is asking.

I hope that you will continue to be there for one another.

And I certainly hope you’ll come back and visit us. We want to know how you’re doing!

Congratulations, Class of 2024, and On, Wisconsin!

May 10, 2024

Thank you, Provost Isbell, and good evening, everyone!

I am tremendously happy to welcome you all to the 171st spring commencement of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Congratulations, graduates!

Thank you, Ryan, for that beautiful performance.

There are the stars of today’s ceremony, seated here before us in academic regalia. And then there are the people up in the stands who helped make sure these stars could shine as brightly as possible.

So let me add my personal welcome and thank you to the proud parents, spouses, partners, children, siblings, family, and friends joining us from across the country and around the world — some of you here in person, others with us on the livestream.

Graduates, let’s give them one more round of applause!

Acknowledgments

If friends and family helped make this long journey possible, there is another group that made it incredibly worthwhile: the members of the faculty and staff who have taught and advised and mentored you.

Your strongest supporters and, sometimes, your toughest critics. They have challenged you to reach beyond what you might have imagined you could achieve, and today they are extraordinarily proud.

Faculty and staff, will you please stand as you are able? Let’s give them a round of applause!

I want to recognize that this celebration is also bittersweet.

For a number of you, there are friends, colleagues, and family members you are missing today, whose love and support helped bring you to this place. We remember them, too, on this day.

Many in our campus community are also feeling heartbroken over the devastating destruction, injustice, and loss of life in Israel and Gaza. Some of you have had to navigate this final year of your degree amid anguishing worry about friends and relatives there.

Please know that you are not alone in your pain and grief at this incredibly difficult time.

* * * *

I want to note that today’s program includes two special guests who have spent a lifetime working for justice in very different ways.

Amy Blumenfeld Bogost is a civil rights attorney and vice president of the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents (and a proud UW alumna whose three children are also Badgers!).

And the Reverend Dr. Alexander Gee, Jr., also an alum, whose life story of resilience, commitment, and extraordinary achievement is grounded here in Madison but extends so far beyond, is our 2024 honorary doctoral degree recipient.

Dr. Gee describes himself as an author, agitator, thinker, healer, and reconciler — and (as you will hear shortly) that’s just the start.

We are truly grateful to you both for being here today.

175 years

Every UW–Madison commencement is special, but this commencement is extra-special because you are graduating in an historic moment, as we mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of this great institution.

UW–Madison was created when the state was created, a recognition from the start that the engine of a great state is a great university. That’s as true today as it was in 1848. And across nearly two centuries, we’ve held fast to a tradition of honoring the especially noteworthy achievements of our graduates.

So if you are receiving a graduate degree today as a member of the first generation in your family to go to college or earn a graduate degree, please stand as you are able and make some noise.  Congratulations!

If you are a veteran or serving on active duty or in the reserves — family and friends, I’m talking to you, too — please stand as you are able so that we may thank you for service.

And I want to call out one member of this class whose resilience and perseverance are truly an inspiration. Tim Fish is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. He grew up on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma, and it was a hard life, with little thought about education. He dropped out of high school and landed here in Madison, where he eventually found his way to Madison College, and then to UW–Madison. He says that education not only changed his life — it saved his life.

And today, at age 51, having already earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees here, Tim is the flag bearer for our Graduate School and will receive a PhD from our School of Human Ecology. Congratulations, Tim!

An exceptional university

All of you are now part of the legacy of this exceptional university. A place whose commitment to public service — which we call the Wisconsin Idea — has allowed us to push the boundaries of knowledge and understanding across almost every field of human endeavor for 175 years.

Consider just a few of the stunning advances we’ve achieved just in your time here:

• At our School of Medicine and Public Health, neuroscience researchers devised a way using 3-D printers to arrange neurons — brain cells grown in a lab — into complex matrices in which the living cells communicate with one another, opening up a world of possibilities for understanding the signaling between cells in people affected by Down syndrome or Alzheimer’s, or evaluating the efficacy of new medications.
• At the same time, researchers at our College of Engineering innovated a new way to forecast the growth of life-threatening cyanobacteria (better known here in Madison as blue-green algae), giving communities across the country and around the world that depend upon clean lakes for health and recreation precious time to plan their mitigation strategies.
• Meanwhile, our College of Agricultural and Life Sciences is developing new techniques for cranberry cultivation so growers can save crops threatened by increasingly unpredictable weather patterns — vital work in a state that grows more than half of the entire world’s supply of cranberries!
• And those of you who have worked on international research collaborations know that you sometimes need to be able to communicate in languages that aren’t commonly taught (in Africa alone, there are more than 2,000 languages spoken!). Researchers in our College of Letters and Science have led the nation in innovating ways to help people acquire new languages. And now they’re putting that expertise to work in partnership with our African Languages Program to develop an approach to self-instruction that will help this university and many others to expand their language offerings.

Bona fides

Whether you have completed an MD or an MFA, a DVM or a PhD, or one of the other top degrees we’ll confer this evening, you have well and truly earned your bona fides.

Which is a funny term. Bona fides is one of those expressions that has come down to us across the centuries from the Latin. We now take it to mean “the real thing,” like the credential each of you will receive today.

But there is also a deeper meaning. Literally translated, bona fides means “good faith.” And good faith is something beyond a credential. It’s a way to be in the world.

It’s about honesty. Integrity. Transparency.

So while your credentials are sterling, your good faith is golden.

Today as you set forth, I can tell you that you are bound to stumble. You will make mistakes, as we all do. But if you do your work in good faith — keeping your promises, being direct and forthright but also kind — your family, friends, and colleagues will give you grace.

Graduates, for every late night … every early morning … every weekend spent monitoring experiments … every paper you graded … every work of art you created … and for all of those many hours spent struggling to wrestle your research into the right intellectual framework — this day is for you.

You’ve earned your bona fides.

Thank you for being part of our wonderful UW–Madison community.

I hope you will stay connected to your fellow graduate students, your friends for life who share this indelible connection to one of the greatest universities in the world.

And I hope, wherever life takes you next, that you’ll come back and visit us often here in your Madison home.

Congratulations … and On, Wisconsin!

The full text of her speech, as prepared, is below. The full set of slides from Chancellor Mnookin’s presentation are available for download, and a recording of her presentation is available on YouTube.

Good afternoon. I am delighted to welcome you all to UW–Madison on this beautiful day. It’s wonderful to be here with you. This has been — as you know — a year of a great many challenges, so I want to begin with a brief story of hope.

A couple of months ago, I had the privilege of sitting in on a fascinating and sometimes uncomfortable discussion right here in this room. Picture 120 students from different backgrounds, different majors, different places on the political spectrum, gathered in groups of 10, each with a trained faculty facilitator, eating dinner together and having a meaningful conversation about an important issue — in this case, the flat tax. In months to come, it’ll continue to be a range of topics, including quite polarizing issues like abortion and gun rights.

This is a program we’re piloting this year called Deliberation Dinners designed by our Dean of the School of Education, Diana Hess. It’s not meant to change minds or help participants reach a consensus, but to give them skills to engage with each other productively and respectfully, even when they disagree. To engage across difference, which needs to be a key part of the university experience.

The night I sat in, there was plenty of disagreement. The students were raising hard questions about how to define fairness, and what strangers owe one another, and debating different ways of contributing to the greater good. At the end, I saw students who had vehemently disagreed with one another walk out of this room together, chatting about the best places to study for finals.

I don’t yet know whether this pilot program will turn into something bigger. But I do know that we need better ways to help our students connect across their differences as we navigate the really challenging times we are living in, where what is happening on a global, national, and state level will certainly continue to affect us.

Globally, the brutal attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians and the ongoing devastating war in Gaza continue to have a grave and complex impact on our faculty, staff, students, and alumni. We’ve seen a deeply concerning rise across this country in antisemitism and Islamophobia, which we unequivocally condemn. And here on our campus, I have heard from Jewish and Muslim students that they have felt, at times, unseen and unheard, or judged or stereotyped based on their identities.

At the same time, we’ve been fortunate compared to a great many other schools where these issues have caused a deeper and uglier divide, which is not to say we haven’t dealt with some major challenges here, too. And these have sometimes been made more complex by divisive politics nationally as well.

One of the things all of higher education will need to reckon with is the intersection between the First Amendment and Title VI, which protects students’ right to an educational experience free of severe and pervasive forms of discrimination and harassment. These important values can come into tension with one another, and indeed, the Department of Education has opened an investigation at more than 100 campuses across the country, including ours, to find out more about how they have been handling these issues.

And here in Wisconsin, we’re navigating state politics in challenging times, and I want to acknowledge that this has not been easy and express my appreciation to all of you for your thoughtful approaches.

I also want to be clear that diversity of all kinds is a core value for us, and we cannot and will not stop our work in this realm. Full stop. At the same time, we can and should take a fresh look at what we want to accomplish, and assess what we’ve achieved over years of investment, and where there might be space, or the need, to try something different.

I believe that within the agreement we have reached with the legislature, we can stay true to the values that sustain us and continue to build inclusive excellence. So that, no matter your background, identity, experience, beliefs, or perspective, you can feel that you belong at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

These issues will challenge us. And we will rise to meet those challenges in many different ways, including with programs like the Deliberation Dinners, programs built around the Wisconsin Idea tradition of innovation for the public good that’s allowed us to make the world a better place for 175 years.

So let me give you a brief tour of some of the spaces where we’re currently excellent and the spaces where we are going to try some new innovative things to bring us into a future that’s even brighter than our storied past.

To begin, it’s been a year of excellence in education. There’s a national narrative that students enroll in college, rack up a lot of debt, and then don’t graduate. That’s sure not true here!

Our four-year graduation rate rose to 75.5%, highest ever. Our six-year graduation rate rose to just over 89%, the highest ever. We’re one of top 10 public universities in the U.S. in this category. And as some of you heard this morning, our student-athlete graduation success rate also hit a record high this year (93% graduate w/in six years)!

The average time-to-degree for a bachelor’s degree recipients decreased to 3.84 calendar years, shortest ever. The university conferred a record number of total degrees, 12,407, topping 12,000 for the first time in our history. And 65% — nearly two thirds — of our undergraduates graduated with no student debt last year.

And you’ve heard me say before that a world-class university needs diversity of all kinds. When people of diverse identities, experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs work together, they not only learn from one another, but also drive creativity and innovation, and come up with better solutions to problems.

So I am happy to share that the current class of freshman and new transfer students is the most racially diverse in our history. And the freshman class includes Wisconsin students from tiny rural counties and big urban centers — 71 of the 72 counties are represented (missing Iron) … and students from 49 of the 50 states (missing Maine) … and 60 countries around the world.

This is the kaleidoscopic fabric that makes us great!

It’s also been a fantastic year for research at UW–Madison. We brought in more research dollars last year than in any other year in our history. Big increases can be driven by just one remarkable grant, but that’s not the case here. More than 15 departments and institutes had major increases — from Space Science & Engineering to Plant Pathology to the Population Health Institute. 

Part of this results from getting more strategic — better aligning ourselves with federal funding priorities. Our research related to aging is a great example.  The over-65 population in the U.S. grew faster over the past 10 years than at any time since the late 1800s. We positioned ourselves years ago to become a leader in this arena by building big, interdisciplinary research centers with the right mix of expertise to innovate across disciplines. And some of our biggest leaps in grant funding this year were for our longitudinal studies and work around Alzheimer’s prevention. You might have seen the news just weeks ago about our new $150M grant to lead a national study out of the School of Medicine and Public Health to expand understanding of the full range of problems in the brain that can cause dementia and bring us closer to better treatments. This is the largest NIH grant we have ever received!

We’re now asking: What are the other fields where we can position the university for major discovery and innovation? I’ll tell you about our plans in just a moment. First I want to show you a few numbers.

We maintained our spot as the number-eight-largest research institution in the country — but there’s a bigger story here.

In the past year, we grew faster than anyone else in the top 10 except Duke. And our five-year average growth rate is second only to Johns Hopkins. If you look at the three institutions above us, we gained on all of them. The gap between us and UCSD is now just $10 million. In 2021, we were also just behind UCSD — but we trailed them by $45 million.

We have a couple of strategies to power us forward that I’ll tell you about shortly. And I want to say clearly: Not all first-rate research is grant-funded research. We have many ways that we engage and do work here. So we need to remember that this is an important frame for some — but certainly not all — of what we are aiming to do in our research space.

And a word about our state’s new designation as a regional Technology & Innovation Hub for biohealth and personalized medicine, which you’ll hear about at tomorrow morning’s panel discussion.

This was an opportunity for partners across the state to work together in a next-level way, and it paid off. There were 400 regions across the country competing for this federal designation, and only 31 were selected. Partnership was essential to receiving the designation, but without a doubt, our powerhouse research enterprise played a crucial role in tipping the scales in favor of Wisconsin. We’re now competing for significant funding that will go to probably fewer than 10 of the 31 hubs. We hope to know more by summer, so stay tuned!

One necessary ingredient for bringing in major grants and growing our research is a modern physical infrastructure. This year we made progress on some key facilities.

Babcock Hall and our Center for Dairy Research — our doctors on call to Wisconsin’s dairy industry — had not been updated in any significant way since Harry Truman was president (1951). As of last spring, we have the largest state-of-the-art dairy research facility in the nation! It’s already transforming innovation in research and education, not to mention our work with partners from one of the state’s most important industries.

The long-awaited expansion of the School of Veterinary Medicine is close to completion. The first two floors housing surgery, critical care, imaging and a number of labs are opening this spring, which will transform our ability to provide care for animals large and small.

And it’s been so exciting to see the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences take shape. It’s really coming together (though not quite this fast!) It will be the anchor for our high-tech corridor that’s going to link computing to biomedical research to engineering to medicine. It’ll bring together partners from all over campus and beyond to ignite discovery and innovation to help power Wisconsin’s growing tech sector.

And just as importantly, it’ll be the campus home for our largest major (Computer Science) and our fastest-growing major (Data Science) and a place that welcomes all students from all majors to expand their learning in these critical areas. The ability to synthesize analyze, and translate large, complex sets of data spans nearly all of the disciplines on our campus.

And with the help of the Regents, the state legislature, Gov. Evers, and the biggest, broadest coalition of business and industry partners we’ve ever assembled, I’m hopeful that we are finally on our way to replacing an engineering facility that was last renovated nearly 40 years ago.

As you know, this facility was the UW System’s number-one priority. It will be jointly funded by us and the state. Donors have already indicated interest in funding $110 million, and our already energetic fundraising has now kicked into even higher gear. This building will allow us to create a total of about 1,000 new spaces for undergraduates in engineering at a time when Wisconsin employers urgently need more engineers. We’re sending far too many talented Wisconsin students to Illinois and Purdue! It’ll be a beacon for top scholars from around the world who will drive the kinds of discoveries and innovations that will allow us to take on grand challenges. And it will expand our ability to work with industry partners.

We have some exciting things taking shape with partners from industry all across campus. In November, for example, we announced a new 10-year collaboration between our School of Medicine and Public Health and GE Healthcare.

I want to thank the Regents for approving this agreement. It builds on work we’ve been doing together for the past decade, with a new focus on developing the next frontier of technologies for diagnosing and treating diseases like cancer in ever more personalized and precise ways. Our long partnership with GE Healthcare has now fueled more than 130 research projects! It’s a great example of the ways in which industry investment that aligns with our mission can drive discovery and help us change lives.

So building these partnerships is a substantial priority. We’re No. 8 in total research expenditures, but No. 46 in industry investment in R&D — and that’s up from 52 last year. Perhaps 46^th is more impressive when you know it’s out of 900 institutions — but still we can do better. And we’re on the right track!

If you look at growth in dollars alone ($8.9M), our increase puts us in 7^th place among the top 10. But if you look at percentage growth, we grew by 28%, faster than any other school in the top 10!

And this isn’t just one great year — we’ve outpaced our competitors in the top 10 since 2018. It’s important to note that our industry engagements go well beyond research and well beyond Wisconsin’s major employers. University expertise is helping to build thriving businesses and vibrant downtowns all over the state — that’s the Wisconsin Idea!

And one of our greatest statewide ambassadors is the Division of Extension.

I spent a half-day with a group of Extension employees in November and learned about the incredible range of the work they’re doing in all of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. For example, they recently held facilitated conversations in 32 counties across the state to bring people from different sides of the political spectrum together to talk about hot-button issues. Afterward, participants reported viewing one another as less hypocritical and less selfish than had been their stereotype. And they’re nourishing entrepreneurship in rural areas as well as our cities to create the kinds of opportunities that help people and communities to flourish.

These are just two of the great many projects they do. They’re having a truly significant impact! But they’re so deeply woven into the fabric of the state that people often don’t realize that Extension is UW–Madison. So I have challenged them to do an even better job of sharing the outstanding impact of their work and to sharing that they’re a part of us.

We have a lot to be proud of. My job — our job — is to make this institution even a step stronger by building on our existing excellence and also by thinking in big, bold ways about where we can take a quantum leap forward to serve this state and the world.

Let me tell you about a few of the things in store this year.

First — we’re putting together an outstanding new class. We just received final numbers for applicants for the next freshman class and we’ve continued our 15-year record-setting streak!

Nearly 66,000 students applied for a spot in our freshman class — an increase of 3.7% over last year. Students and families are continuing to recognize that exciting things are happening here at UW–Madison!

We have two initiatives we’ve launched to improve access and remove barriers for talented Wisconsin students with high financial need. A year ago in this space, I announced one of those programs, Bucky’s Pell Pathway, for Wisconsin students who qualify for the federal Pell grant. It’s a last-dollar-in scholarship program that sits on top of the Pell grant and other scholarships. And it covers the full cost of attendance (tuition, room and board, fees, books) for talented UW–Madison students from Wisconsin families who have great need.

I am delighted to tell you that in its first year, BPP is serving 977 students from 65 Wisconsin counties! Our BPP students are truly outstanding— let me introduce you to just one of them. This is Mattie Place. She’s a freshman from Platteville who plans to major in Business.

She was class president for all four years of high school … played the flute in band … and participated in numerous student clubs, all while earning outstanding grades in a rigorous curriculum. In other words — she is exactly the kind of student who belongs at the state’s flagship! But her family’s finances haven’t always been stable. So, when she got word that she’d qualified for Bucky’s Pell Pathway, she told us she was completely shocked. She relayed the excitement of sharing the news with her mom, and the relief she felt knowing she could come here and just focus on being a student without constant worry about bills. That’s the impact of this great program!

The second program we designed in partnership with tribal leaders — you might have seen coverage when we announced it in December. It will cover the full cost of a UW–Madison undergraduate degree for state residents who are members of federally recognized Indian tribes in Wisconsin. For incoming students and current students. And we’ll run a five-year pilot program to cover in-state tuition and fees for enrolled members of tribes in Wisconsin to pursue J.D. and M.D. degrees, given the pressing need for these professions in the Native communities.

Want to thank the tribal leaders who worked in partnership with us to design this program. And one important note: Both Bucky’s Pell Pathway and the Wisconsin Educational Tribal Promise Program are funded fully by the university, without any state tax dollars.

Of course, building educational excellence takes more than recruiting outstanding students and helping them graduate on time. It takes an outstanding experience in the classroom.

You heard this morning about how we’re using AI in education, and how many of our students have transformative experiences in research. But I love that our instructors are always looking also for small things that can make a big difference to improve learning.

This is Prof. Briana Burton. The climbing wall picture is something she shows her students at the start of the semester, to explain her role as an educator. One of the classes she teaches is about 60 students from a wide variety of majors. It covers — among other topics —how different bacteria organize their DNA.

But the process she teaches is so new that there were no textbook images. She was using what you see on the left — pulled from a research article — which required the students to try to visualize a three-dimensional process that was brand new to them. Many found that really hard to do. So the media team at our Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring worked with her to bring the image to life. Here’s what the students see now.

She compared test results from two different classes, before and after, and found that 57% in the hard-copy group demonstrated that they understood the concept compared to 80% in the animation group. You hear more about the bigger, splashier changes we’re making in education, but these small hinges can open big doors!

Moving on to research. Maintaining and advancing discovery on this campus is going to require us to work collectively and strategically to build strength for the future.

And now, I’m pleased to share with you three ways that we’re doing just that. One to nourish and advance entrepreneurship to help bring more UW–Madison research and innovations out of our labs and classrooms and into the world. One to greatly expand our work in, and commitment to, sustainability, which includes creating a new sustainability research hub. And one to catalyze our excellence to address some of the world’s grand challenges.

The first is still in its early stages. Our goal is to take our already thriving hub of innovation and entrepreneurial excellence and make it even stronger.

I’ve appointed this mighty all-star team to take a look at How we can knit together the many programs that already exist on and around this campus to make them easier to tap into, and where we have opportunities to do something new and different to support the many faculty, staff, and students who are interested in entrepreneurship and commercialization.

There are more than 400 companies all over Wisconsin that have their origin stories here at UW–Madison. Industry leaders like Epic and SHINE, small start-ups founded by our students — like Fetch Rewards and EatStreet — and many more, including more than 25 companies founded by faculty and students in our Department of Medical Physics!

Our UW–Madison entrepreneurs are changing lives and communities, creating jobs, and contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the state’s economy. At the same time, our students are pursuing entrepreneurship education like never before. We’ve had 700% growth in enrollment in these classes over the last 15 years!

And this state has emerged as a national powerhouse in high growth areas like the life sciences thanks to the entrepreneurial ecosystems we’ve built here.

It’s clear to me that this is an area where we have opportunities to really magnify our economic impact on Wisconsin and to shepherd life-changing innovations out into the world.

The working group is engaging broadly right now and will bring recommendations to me later this spring, so stay tuned.

Second, I’m excited to announce that we’re launching a major cross-campus initiative around environmental sustainability focused on advancing not only our research but also education and making UW–Madison a living laboratory for sustainable practices.

This is a space where we’ve been pioneers in many ways — from ecology and wildlife biology, to land restoration, to the use of satellite technology to detect changes in the environment. We have an impressive list of accomplishments, but these alone don’t qualify us to be a world leader in sustainability.

What does qualify us to lead is the particular way in which we engage with the work. Which is, quite simply, to start with looking at real-world, concrete problems. Leaning into the pragmatism that is so naturally ‘UW’.

Many of our accomplishments in this space have begun not in a university lab but in the community — wading into trout streams with people who fish, walking the Northwoods with hunters, visiting dairy farms, talking with urban farmers in Milwaukee. The very essence of the Wisconsin Idea! The community engagement drives and shapes the cutting-edge environmental research and scholarship.

This is what we owe to our neighbors and to Wisconsin — as settlers on Native land, as beneficiaries of public funds, and as educators preparing our students to make a real difference in the world.

So I am very excited to announce this initiative, and I want to thank the Nelson Institute and the Office of Sustainability, along with the ASM Student Advisory Council on Sustainability for their leadership.

You can see the goals on this slide. They’re also in your handouts. I won’t take the time to go through all of these, but a few comments on a couple of them:

First, addressing the environmental impact of our campus, which is both imperative and an outstanding opportunity to do some innovative things in education. We’re setting clear, defined campus wide targets for the first time, and that’s essential on a campus the size of a city when you can only succeed if everyone’s working together. Like our environmental research, this initiative will be very community focused — what happens on our campus affects our neighbors!

For example, when we moved from coal power to gas power, Dane County’s air quality improved. Our students are brimming with ideas for making our campus a living laboratory; they’ve already inspired a number of initiatives now underway, from solar panels to ways of reducing food waste. I’m really excited to see how we weave this work more intentionally into the curriculum.

Second —the Sustainability Research Hub. This will be a center of excellence intentionally designed to build on our long tradition of working across. At other universities, these hubs are often embedded in one school or one college. Not so with ours. I am fully funding it initially out of my office to jump-start it and ensure that every researcher in every discipline on this campus has the resources and the opportunity to engage in sustainability research if they wish. We want to break down barriers and tear down siloes!

The final project is our quantum leap, and I’m thrilled to be announcing it today. I want to introduce you to the Wisconsin RISE Initiative. Rise stands for Research, Innovation, and Scholarly Excellence.

We’re going to look at the grand challenges facing our state and the world and grow our faculty in a targeted way that builds on our existing strengths, in places where, with strategy and investment, we can accelerate discovery and world-changing research and education, innovate for the public good and be absolutely best in class.

Because here at UW–Madison, we want to RISE to meet the biggest research challenges of our time.

Over the last months, Provost Isbell and I have been in discussions with the deans and others to arrive at three key goals. First, to recruit top scholars from multiple disciplines at all stages of their careers to bring interdisciplinary perspectives to the many different facets of deeply complex problems. Second, to focus in meaningful part on areas with the potential to attract significant external research funding, as well as philanthropy, to further drive discovery and get us closer to any number of moonshots. And third, to create exciting new educational opportunities for students at all levels.

As this initiative progresses, there will be several foci and each will be interdisciplinary and involve a number of schools and colleges.

We have just defined the first RISE area — Artificial Intelligence — which capitalizes on our strengths in data science and computer science while pulling in social sciences, humanities and human ecology to put people at the center of our solutions.

AI and machine learning are already enhancing human abilities in every one of our disciplines — they’re extraordinarily powerful and essential tools that allows us to sift through enormous quantities of data to find patterns and trends that guide decision-making and help us solve problems.

And our past discoveries and innovations in AI are a launchpad to a dazzling future. For example, Professor Miron Livny, whom you all know, pioneered high-throughput computing techniques that are now powering some of the world’s largest scientific experiments, including the search for cosmic neutrinos and black holes. Today, that work is part of what positions us to move forward in some exciting new directions.

Again, to give just one example, Juan Caicedo is an investigator at the Morgridge Institute who’s now applying Professor Livny’s techniques to biological imaging, which could turbocharge our understanding of cell biology and help us discover new drugs.

And this is just one area. Our faculty, staff, and students are using AI in all sorts of exciting ways. For example, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences is using it to help farmers predict crop yields and detect disease before it spreads. The Center for Healthy Minds is exploring how to develop personalized ‘micro-supports’ delivered through our mobile devices. For example, to engage a student in a breathing exercise just before an exam. And just last week, one of our undergraduate entrepreneurs who’s built his own small consulting gig around the ethical use of AI led a workshop for faculty and staff in our School of Journalism and Mass Communication titled, “AI as your teaching copilot.”

There are tremendous possibilities — and tremendous concerns. AI needs expert human guidance and ethical guardrails, and we are also on the leading edge of scholarship to ensure the ethical, responsible, and trustworthy use of AI.

AI has genuinely transformative potential, with high stakes, great possibilities and significant risks. We also already have a good number of talented faculty in a variety of relevant disciplines working in this space, so we have a very strong foundation on which to build. So, AI was really a natural choice to be the first focus area for our Wisconsin RISE initiative.

We’ll begin hiring as soon as this spring, in phases, with the ultimate goal of hiring up to 50 new faculty into this first initiative in AI. We are fortunate that our growth in enrollment and research gives us the opportunity to grow our faculty, and the necessity to do so.

Wisconsin RISE will open up not just research opportunities but also some exciting new pathways in education, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is simply a fact that every student in every major is going to need to have at least some familiarity and facility with AI.

And investing in this way will give us a virtuous cycle where the university is positioned to compete for research funding (federal and private) on a new level, which we invest in more discovery and innovation, which in turn attracts great faculty, who in turn attract great students.

This AI initiative is the first RISE initiative, but it will be the first of several. We are also rolling out a process that will continue to invite the faculty, staff, and campus leaders to work across disciplines to advance further bold ideas that can change the world.

The deans are helping to spearhead a process to bring the strongest of those ideas to the provost and myself for additional consideration.

I am so excited to see how Wisconsin RISE can help ignite creativity and transform our ability to take on the most pressing challenges of our time. And I want to thank the provost, and the deans, and the considerable number of faculty who already have been deeply involved in putting this together.

So let me conclude with this: I am bullish on this amazing university, and I hope you are too!

This is an incredible institution, and even in challenging times, there is an extraordinary amount to be proud of. We are proud of what we are accomplishing at Madison, and we are proud to be part of the Universities of Wisconsin, committed to providing transformative opportunities to students all over our great state.

We’re meeting the moment — as we have for 175 years — with integrity and discipline and a spirit of cooperation. It’s all thanks to our incredible community of partners including our phenomenally talented faculty, staff, and students; the most loyal and dedicated alumni and donors anywhere; our collaborators across industry and communities — including our partners at the other Universities of Wisconsin campuses and in the UW administration; and all of you, members of the Board of Regents, who provide the leadership to support and guide our work.

These are the ingredients for a truly dazzling future that I look forward to all of us building together!

Today is a celebration of new beginnings, *your* beginnings here at UW–Madison. However, I need to begin by saying a few words about the violent attack on one of our students off campus early Sunday morning. First and foremost, as you heard from the Provost we are holding the student and her family in our hearts at this terrible moment. This is certainly not the way we hoped to begin this new school year, and I know that so many of us in this room (and your parents and families) are feeling grief and anger and anxiety. And you may also be wondering if you can feel safe here. The answer is, mostly, yes, but we know that no place is completely safe, including Madison. I so wish it were otherwise. Vice Chancellor Reesor talked about how to find support if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or helpless. More than anything, I want you to know that you are part of a strong Badger community. We help, and support, and look out for one another, and I ask each of you to do the same. Thank you.

And now, on behalf of the faculty, staff and administration here at UW, I am extremely pleased to officially welcome you to the University of Wisconsin–Madison!

I suspect you’ve probably already met some of the people sitting around you, but let me tell you a little more about yourselves.

• This class is a bit smaller than recent freshman classes, and that’s on purpose to make sure you have access to all of the wonderful opportunities that make this place so special.

• There are about 9,000 of you — 8,000 freshmen (freshmen, make some noise!) and 1,000 transfer students (let’s hear from you!).

• So we have a smaller class but we also had a record number of applicants. Which means you got in in what may be the most competitive year in our entire history. Congratulations!

• Lots of you are from right here in Wisconsin — we have 71 of the 72 counties represented (we’re missing Iron County, way up at the top of the state).

• You come from 49 U.S. states along with Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico (give me some guesses about which state we’re missing. It’s Maine! If you know anyone there, let them know we’re missing them this year).

• Let’s hear from you if you’re from one of our top 5 states outside of Wisconsin: Minnesota (this year Minnesota overtook Illinois as our #1 sending state — but only by a hair) … where are you, Illinois? Next is California. And how about the tri-state area — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut? Welcome!

• International students — you’ve come from 51 nations outside of the U.S. Let’s hear from you!

• OK, Wisconsin students: It’s your turn. Make some noise!

• And more than 15% of you are the first in your family to go to college. A special congratulations to all of you!

To all of you, wherever you are from, wherever you aim to go, I want to say to you: You belong here. You are part of the tapestry that makes us who we are. I welcome you to UW–Madison and to the extraordinary opportunites you will have over these next years.

An historic year, an historic university
Now this class is also making history — you will forever be able to say: I started at UW–Madison on the university’s 175th birthday! You’re going to be involved in lots of celebrations of our amazing — and also sometimes complicated — past, present, and future over the next year. And over the next four years, you’re going to learn from some of the smartest people in the world — people doing truly amazing things, driven by their curiosity, their passion for knowledge and education, and by the drive to make a difference. Let me introduce just three of them.

This is Professor Susanna Widicus Weaver, from our chemistry and astronomy departments. She runs a major research lab here at UW studying the ingredients for life on other planets.

How many of you think there’s a planet outside of our solar system that has the characteristics that could support some life form? Raise your hand!

If you raised your hand — you’re right! But there’s not just one planet that could support life — Professor Weaver knows of 60!

This is Professor Monica Kim from our history department. Dr. Kim is literally re-writing history by examining wars from the perspective of the ordinary people living through them. If you take a class from her, she will challenge you to think in entirely new ways about topics you may have thought you already knew pretty well.

Her work is so important that she recently won one of the greatest awards any scholar can win — the MacArthur Genius Grant.

And this is Professor Faisal Abdu’Allah, an internationally acclaimed artist on the faculty in our art department. If you walk up State Street, you’ll see a statue of him in front of the Overture Center.

Prof. Abdu’Allah worked as a barber to support himself in college, and — as you can see — he is still a barber! He uses these experiences in his artwork, and if you take a class from him, prepare to be challenged to bring your own life experiences into your art.

These are just three of the more than 2,000 renowned scholars on our faculty. People dedicated to something we call the Wisconsin Idea — the notion that this university exists to serve the public by sharing our knowledge and innovations. Because the world needs our help. Wisconsin needs our help. And the planet needs our help.

We don’t sit on the sidelines here at UW. We don’t wait for someone else to
step up and make things better. And you don’t either — that’s why we selected you to be part of this great class.

Sifting & winnowing
Another tradition you’ll hear about is something we call sifting and winnowing. That’s our way of describing the scholarly inquiry that generates insights and discoveries.

You’re going to explore many different issues and ideas across many different academic fields in your time on this campus. You’ll learn to think critically … argue persuasively … listen carefully … and produce work that goes beyond the level of excellence that you’ve already achieved.

And it all starts with curiosity and an open mind. Because here at UW–Madison, we discuss everything — the ideas we agree with and the ideas we strongly disagree with.

This will be exciting. It will stretch you. And there will be days when it might not feel altogether comfortable. The point isn’t to change what you believe — though sometimes you might indeed change your mind. But what’s most important is that by engaging with a great diversity of ideas you will better learn what drives YOU, and you will emerge with a stronger, deeper and more nuanced understanding of what drives you, and what you believe and why.

That’s part of what both academic freedom and freedom of speech are about. And there’s no doubt that freedom of speech is a heck of a lot easier to believe in when you agree with the speaker. But the truth is, it’s most important when you don’t. Now during your time with us, you should feel free to disagree with one another, and with your professors and with me. In fact, that’s part of exactly what you should be doing. But I also ask you to do it productively — with respect for our common humanitiy, and with humbleness instead of hubris. Start with curiosity rather than condemnation, and generosity before judgment.

If you take this advice, and I hope that you will, you have the opportunity while you are with us to learn to engage across difference productively. And at the same time, if we can do this as a community, we can help assure that even as we engage across our differences, everyone here can know that you are supported and that you belong here. Because you do. You belong here when (and maybe even especially when) you’re in discussions with classmates or others who may have a very different world view from your own.

I remember my own first days as an undergraduate — I initially gravitated toward people who were from similar backgrounds and saw the world in the same way. And we all need friends like that, and some of those folks became lifelong friends! But after a while I also got to know other people — people who were nothing like me in terms of background, identity, and viewpoint. And some of them, as well, became some of my very closest lifelong friends.

Many of you have never been — and may never again be — living and working alongside people from so many different states and countries, so many different races, identities, ethnicities, religions, and points of view.

This is an extraordinary opportunity. That’s one of the most exciting parts of being at a big, public university. Take advantage of it. It’s through those engagements that new and unexpected knowledge is produced, and that we — and that YOU — will come up with ideas that change the world.

Go Big Read
One of things that will bring us together as a community this fall is our Go Big Read project — it’s something like a campuswide book club. On your way out today, you’ll pick up a free copy of this year’s book. It’s called How Minds Change by David McRaney.

If you’ve gotten into an argument online (or in person) about politics or some conspiracy theory or an issue you feel strongly about, did you notice that presenting a bunch of evidence about why the other person was wrong and you were right often didn’t change their mind?

The book explores the science behind why that is, and what actually does cause us to re-think long-held beliefs, or be more open to the idea that something you’ve long believed just might not be as certain as you thought. As you read it, I hope you’ll ask yourself why you believe the things you do, and whether and why it matters to you to change other people’s opinions.

Some of your professors will use the book in their classes, and the author will come to campus this fall to lead a discussion about it.

Thinking about what you believe, and why, is part of getting to know yourself better, which is a critical part of what you do in college! In these next four years — maybe more than in any other time in your life — you will get to know yourself … what you’re passionate about … what you’re really good at … and, equally importantly, what you don’t want to do.

And inevitably — and wonderfully — you will leave here a very different person than you are today, enriched by your coursework, by the activities that you throw yourself into, and by the deep friendships made here that will come to be part of your story and ours.

Selfie
We’ve given you a lot to think about — you won’t remember it all, and that’s OK!

You heard Joel Baraka say it was scary coming to this big campus — and that’s true whether you’re coming from Uganda (like Joel) or New York or Fitchburg, Wisconsin! There’s a lot happening here, and it can be easy to feel lost (and to actually get lost!)

Your science class probably isn’t in Science Hall … your music class is almost certainly not in Music Hall … and there are two totally different places named “Grainger.” We even have our own ZIP code! But you will be amazed to see how quickly you find your way here, and come to see this as a new home.

I do have one more thing to ask of you. You heard Provost Isbell say we won’t all be together again in one place until graduation day. And that’s true. So I want a photo!

[pull out phone and take selfie with the students]

Consider this your first official UW portrait … it’ll be on Instagram if you want to follow me @UWChancellor.

Bucky & Babcock
Now it’s time to celebrate! We want to celebrate all of you with two time-honored UW traditions — singing Varsity and eating Babcock Ice Cream.

Of course, we can’t do both at once.

We’ll sing here, and eat ice cream at Alumni Park, next to Memorial Union, courtesy of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.

Now please join me in welcoming one very special Badger… we can’t do this without Bucky!

(Bucky enters)(applause)

After we sing, please remain standing for the faculty recession.

Now rise as you are able and the UW Marching Band will lead us in Varsity.

May 13, 2023

Good afternoon everyone!  It is my great honor to welcome you to Camp Randall Stadium and the 170th commencement of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

It’s not a beautiful and sunny day, but we’ve kept the rain and the lightning at bay, and, you know, if you don’t like the Wisconsin weather — say it with me — just wait a day, and it’ll change!  And so I expect tomorrow it will be absolutely beautiful.  And in the meantime, this is a beautiful day to celebrate the extraordinary Class of 2023!

Today, we confer 7,826 degrees, making this the largest commencement ceremony in the history of this great university!

224 of you have earned law degrees — where are our Law School graduates?  Congratulations!

More than 1,300 of you have earned master’s degrees — where are the master’s graduates?  Congratulations!

And 6,225 of you have earned bachelor’s degrees — let’s hear from you!

Congratulations, graduates!

You have so much to be proud of, but you didn’t get to this day by yourself.  How about another round of applause for the 40,000 very proud family members and friends up in the stands — this is your day, too!  Congratulations!

We have an excellent keynote speaker for you today — former United States Attorney General Eric Holder is here!

His daughter, Brooke, is a Badger.  She introduced her dad to all things UW–Madison … Mr. Attorney General, I understand you’re especially fond of our Starship robots and I’m looking forward to hearing you speak in just a few minutes.  Thank you and welcome!

Every one of you has worked hard to reach this day, but there is one group for whom today has an even more special meaning — if you are part of the first generation in your family to earn a college degree, please stand as you’re able and make some noise!

If you are a veteran or serving on active duty or in the Reserves — whether you’re graduating or celebrating our graduates, please stand as you’re able.  Thank you for your service to our nation!

Today’s commencement is bittersweet.  There are members of this class who passed away before graduation.  We hold them in our hearts on this day.

We also lost a beloved chancellor.  The person who brought commencement back to Camp Randall Stadium!  Chancellor Blank often said this was her favorite day of the year.  I know she too would be very proud of every one of you.

* * * *

As we mark this day, I also want to acknowledge that it’s been a tough few weeks for our campus community.

A racist video posted online caused pain and anger and frustration.

I know — and I hope you know — that the hateful and harmful words expressed in that video do not represent our campus community.  No matter how loud such voices may seem at times, they are not who we want to be, and we can and must resolve not to let such voices define us.

At the same time, events like this illustrate resoundingly that we still have work to do.  To be all that we aspire to be as a world-class university, UW–Madison must be a place where every person feels they belong and can flourish!

What it means to be a Badger

Now I have to say, this class, the Class of 2023, is particularly special for me because I, too, am graduating (in a manner of speaking) from my first academic year here at UW–Madison.  And you’ve given me lots of good advice about how to be a Badger.

You told me where to look for turtles in the Arboretum … warned me that spring would come in sometimes painful fits and starts (and that it might well snow in April) … showed me how to walk out on the ice to Lady Liberty …  and taught me how to Jump Around!

Now you don’t have to be a Badger fan to be a Badger … but I have to say, I have loved cheering for the Badgers with so many of you!

What’s NOT to love about watching Devyn Robinson spike a volleyball??

Class of 2023, you helped us break every national record for crowd size at women’s sporting events this year!

Members of our seven-time national championship women’s hockey team are well-represented in this class — hockey Badgers, where are you?

Congratulations and thank you for an incredible year!

For many of you, this may your very last week of school EVER.  Others of you will decide to pursue further graduate education, whether immediately or down the road.

Whatever comes next, I know that you have developed the skills, experiences, and connections with others that can guide you and help you on your way.

My hope for you is that your time here at UW–Madison has helped you to find, and stay true to, your own personal GPS.

The Global Positioning System that gives you a values-driven map to direct you.  The GPS that lives within you, but also outside of you, in your family, friends, and throughout your professional life.

Remember not to lose sight of that GPS as you navigate your many choices and opportunities.

I also am using GPS as a shorthand for three qualities that I hope you have meaningfully developed here, and that, on top of all of your academic learning and knowledge, will, I believe, serve you well in the future:  Gratitude, Purpose, and Service to others.

First, Gratitude.  Nothing worthwhile happens alone.  You are here today through your own work and drive, certainly, but every one of you also has been the recipient of the generosity of others — family, friends, professors, mentors, and so many others who have supported and believed in you, sometimes when you didn’t entirely believe in yourself.

So say thank you, often — authentically, and warm-heartedly.  Remember and appreciate the support that helped you along the way — and remember that sometimes, you may even have received a helping hand in ways you are not even aware of.

Second, Purpose.  I wish for each of you a life of purpose that gives you the chance to spend time pursuing things you care about. I’m not saying you need to live with purpose every single minute.  Carve out time for fun and for serendipity.  But do ask yourself, in the words of the poet Mary Oliver:  What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

And finally, Service.  I hope that you will be part of something bigger than yourself.  That’s also what it means to be a Badger!

Every one of you has a story about making a difference.  I’ll tell you just a couple.

Samantha Angelina and Akshay Kalra — where are you?

When Sammy and Akshay learned that people in our community were going hungry because they couldn’t get to the River Food Pantry during regular business hours, they worked with the Pantry to design food lockers that allow the user to pick up food with a limited-time code, reducing food insecurity and giving families a measure of dignity.

Today, they receive bachelor’s degrees from our School of Human Ecology.  Congratulations!

And Maren Seefluth — where are you?

Maren wanted to find a way to help preserve the way of life in the Wisconsin farming community where she grew up, so she developed a research project looking at how we can uplift small Wisconsin dairy farmers while also helping to reduce emissions from the big refrigeration trucks that are so important to the industry.

And then she interned with leaders in the state Assembly who are working on these issues to help create better policy.

Today Maren receives a bachelor’s degree from the Wisconsin School of Business.  Congratulations!

There are also 149 members of this class who have taken the Teacher Pledge and will soon be working in schools all over Wisconsin, helping to address the critical teacher shortage.

To all of you — and to our generous alumni whose support makes this program possible — thank you!

Pandemic impact

Class of ’23, your accomplishments are extra impressive given that most of you were just freshmen when the pandemic hit.

You left on your first spring break and suddenly everything changed.  You had to learn to learn virtually.

You came back to quarantines and face coverings and the Badger Badge and making reservations to go to your favorite State Street hangouts.

The pandemic changed so much, but it couldn’t take away your exceptional accomplishments.

• You won national awards for academic excellence.
• You started businesses.
• You made beautiful music together both literally and figuratively, live and on Zoom.
• You learned how to ask for help when you needed it.
• And when the pandemic ended, you helped us set a new record for numbers of students studying abroad!

You also showed up for each other.  Because that, too, is what it means to be a Badger!

Conclusion

Class of 2023, you walked into Camp Randall today for the last time as students, and you will walk out as alumni of one of the greatest universities in the world.

You are graduating into a world that looks pretty different than the one you might have planned for when you arrived here.

You’ve learned to adapt to monumental change — the one and only thing we know for sure the future will bring.

And you’ve learned what it means to be a Badger.

I hope you’ll continue to find gratitude, live with purpose, and be in service to something bigger than yourself.

And I hope that you will continue to be there for each other.

You share a deep bond that will last a lifetime.

And I certainly hope you’ll come back and visit us.  You will always find a warm welcome here!

Congratulations, Class of 2023, and On, Wisconsin!

May 12, 2023

Good evening and thank you, Provost Wilcots.  I am so happy to welcome you all to the University of Wisconsin–Madison spring commencement.  Congratulations, graduates!

Thank you to Justin Kroll for that beautiful performance.

And a very warm welcome to the many proud parents, spouses, partners, children, siblings, and friends who join us tonight from all over the country and the world —some of you are here in person, others are on our livestream.  Welcome to you all!

Acknowledgments

I also want to acknowledge and thank the members of the faculty who have taught and advised and mentored these graduates.  They have been your strongest supporters and, sometimes, your toughest critics … and they are extraordinarily proud of all that you’ve accomplished.

Faculty and advisors, will you please stand as you are able?  Thank you!

And a special thanks as well to two individuals who lead the University of Wisconsin System with a very “Wisconsin” blend of pragmatism and passion:  Regents President Karen Walsh and UW System President Jay Rothman.  Thank you!

Commencement is also bittersweet.  There are family members, friends, and colleagues who were with you on this journey, and who have passed away.  I know you are holding a place in your hearts for them tonight.

* * * *

I trust that your time with us has had both highs and lows, moments of inspiration and beauty and accomplishment and gratitude, and also moments of challenge.  And I need to say that this has been a difficult couple of weeks for us here at UW–Madison.  I know that some of you are feeling a great deal of hurt and frustration in the wake of the painful and racist video, and I want you to know that I see you and I hear you, and I am committed to doing the hard work that will bring us closer to the day when all people can feel a deep sense of belonging here.

Shout-outs

And speaking of hard work, that is something that you all absolutely know and understand.  Each of you has dedicated years of hard work to reach this moment.  But there is one group I want to call out for special recognition.  If you are here receiving a graduate degree today as a first generation college student — if you are part of the first generation in your family that earned a college degree, I’d like to ask you to please stand as you are able and make some noise.  Congratulations!

And to all of you — graduates as well as those here to celebrate our graduates — if you are a veteran or serving on active duty or in the Reserves — please stand as you are able so that we may thank you for service.

Finally, I want to recognize a group of graduates who earned their degrees 50 years ago but didn’t participate in the ceremony.   Tonight, they will complete that journey they began so many years ago.  Fifty-year graduates, please stand as you’re able.  Congratulations!

Leaning in

Our 2023 commencement is particularly meaningful for me — I am also graduating (in a manner of speaking) from my first academic year here at UW–Madison.

It has been the experience of a lifetime!  There is something wonderful (and sometimes a bit daunting) about starting anew.

When you wake up tomorrow, you, too, will be starting anew.  Getting ready to begin residency, or your career, or a postdoc, or a project that will take your work in a new direction.

Anyone here not feeling a little daunted by this new beginning, this commencement?  I dare you to raise your hand!

But you are entirely ready for the challenges that lie ahead.

Graduates, whether you have completed an MD or an MFA or a DVM or a PhD or one of the many other top degrees we’ll confer this evening, you have achieved something quite extraordinary.

To get here took perseverance.  It took resilience.  It took gumption.

You worked late nights, early mornings, and many, many weekends.  Whether it was monitoring experiments … teaching discussion sections … studying for the qualifying exam … writing your dissertation … doing clinical rotations … starting businesses … creating works of art … and so much more — you rose to the challenge,

I will tell you, candidly, that writing my own dissertation was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  It challenged me intellectually and it was exciting, but it was also really hard.  Wrestling with the right intellectual framework. Trying to say something original while also staying true to my research materials.  Staring at the keyboard when some days the words flowed and some days they didn’t.

I am sure you had tough moments too, but I also know that those challenges, and surmounting them, will be a source of strength for you in the years ahead.

And you have taken part in some truly extraordinary things in your time here:

• Our medical researchers began clinical trials of a new vaccine for the deadliest form of breast cancer.
• Our pharmacists developed an injectable gel that jolts the immune system to kill off cancer cells left behind when surgeons remove a brain tumor.
• Our renewable-energy researchers and dairy scientists developed a way to turn the residues left over from cheesemaking into biodegradable plastics.
• Our veterinarians launched the largest clinical trial in the history of veterinary medicine — testing a vaccine for canine cancers.
• Our experts in business helped companies to retool, refine, and reimagine their products to be more sustainable.
• Our political scientists worked on better ways to run elections.
• And the people on this campus who create things — the engineers, the artists, the musicians — produced an abundance of incredible works.

Let me give you one example.  Monty Little is an Indigenous artist and an Iraq War veteran who served in the Marine Corps.

Monty’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he now has a show at the Chazen that examines the erasure of Indigenous identities in the United States.

He is also a husband and a father, and the winner of our 2023 Prize for an Outstanding MFA Candidate.

And he has worked tirelessly to reach this moment.

Monty, thank you for your tremendous contributions to our campus and congratulations!

A proud legacy

Every one of you has been part of life-changing work in your time here — work that you’ve done despite, and in some cases because of, a global pandemic.  COVID-19 added extraordinary complexity to your work — for some of you, it delayed your graduation.  And for most of you, it made everything that much harder.

And still, you met every moment.

Like the incredible UW people who walked this campus before you.  People like:

Eudora Welty, who won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Medal of Honor.

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, the first person in the U.S. to earn a PhD in Computer Science.

And Cecil Garvin, who recognized that every 10 to 14 days, somewhere in the world, the last speaker of a language dies — and the language dies with them.  And who said:  Not the Ho-Chunk language.  Not on my watch!

Tonight Dr. Garvin will receive one of the highest honors this university bestows — an honorary doctorate.  Congratulations, Dr. Garvin!

Each of you is now part of a legacy of people who have made history by showing up, doing more, and leaning in.

People educated in a place whose sheer intellectual firepower fuels a level of excellence and a passion for making a difference in the world.

That public service mission — which we call the Wisconsin Idea — has given us this virtuous circle that allows knowledge to flow from the campus to the community … and from the community to the campus.

Which is both the right way and the most difficult way to solve problems.

Because it requires us to get out of our lanes, to move not just forward but across.  Across academic disciplines, across the borders of the campus, and with people of every race, religion, nationality and gender.  With ideas, beliefs, and life experiences that may be nothing like your own.

To achieve excellence requires connection.  That is true here at UW–Madison, and it will be true in every moment of your career.

Self-care

To achieve excellence also requires taking care of yourself.

You can’t achieve greatness by ignoring your own health and well-being.  To carve out time for a walk … to play music or plant flowers or cook good food or spend time with loved ones … all of these are essential to human flourishing.  As is supporting one another.

So in the years ahead, I encourage you to lean into excellence, and to rise to the challenges that come along, but equally to take care of yourself, your loved ones, and your community.

Conclusion

Let me close with one more piece of advice.

You are graduating into a world that desperately needs a countervailing approach to belligerent and simplistic assertions of certainty.

A world that desperately needs people with credibility and expertise who can explain scientific principles and challenging ideas about the world without falling back on jargon or academic-speak.

Albert Einstein said:  If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

If you can communicate about your area of expertise in a way that allows you to connect with people outside of your field, you will find yourself in an even better position to make a real difference in the world.

And if you need a pointer, your classmate Kaitlin Moore might be able to help.

Kaitlin won our campus-wide “3-minute thesis” competition by explaining their extraordinarily complex work that brings together poetry and astrophysics to illuminate new ways of thinking time and space, land and ocean, and the human connection.

Kaitlin, thank you for your tremendous contributions to our campus and congratulations!

Graduates, as you leave this campus, I hope you will stay connected to your fellow graduate students, your colleagues for life.  The people who will laugh and cry with you, and who will be there to celebrate successes large and small, no matter how many years go by.

I hope you will take care of yourselves.  And I hope you will continue to do more by doing more.

Thank you for being part of our wonderful UW–Madison community.  Please come back and visit us every so often here in Madison.  We want to know how you’re doing.

Wherever you go next, I hope that this will always be a place that you think of as home.

Congratulations … and On, Wisconsin!

Chancellor Mnookin: Governor Evers, Regent President Walsh, Members of the Board of Regents, President Rothman, my fellow chancellors and presidents, members of the faculty, staff and students, including shared governance leaders, distinguished guests and delegates, family, friends and colleagues:

Let me begin with a story.

A revolutionary discovery

On a hot July day in 1964, a young researcher named Tom Brock, who would soon become a UW–Madison professor, took a road trip out west. He decided to stop at Yellowstone National Park, a place he’d never been.

Most of us entering Yellowstone might marvel at Old Faithful, the mountains, the magnificent waterfalls or the extraordinary wildlife. But not Tom Brock. As a microbiologist, he was gobsmacked by the pink, yellow, and blue-green slime that spread across the runoff from the hot springs.

He asked around, and people shrugged. No one seemed to know much about it.

His curiosity was piqued, and he returned to Yellowstone to do fieldwork and learn more. And he pulled from those hot springs a strain of bacteria no one had ever seen, which changed our understanding of the conditions in which life is possible. He named it Thermus aquaticus.

It offered tantalizing clues about the possibility of life on other planets, but its immediate impact was here on earth. This bacterium could reproduce itself in the hot springs at very high heat, and its heat resistant enzyme turned out to be just the thing for powering a molecular copy machine that can amplify a few strands of DNA into amounts large enough to measure.

The impact of Brock’s discovery is dazzling. It paved the way for the invention of polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, a wildly important technique that has transformed scientific fields from biotechnology to forensics. This process requires repeated cycles of extreme heat and an enzyme tough enough to survive those cycles. In my own area of scholarship, expert and scientific evidence, the rise of PCR testing turned DNA testing into a wildly useful investigatory technique both for identifying wrongdoers and bringing wrongful convictions to light.

And in 2020, Thermus aquaticus drove a major breakthrough that everyone in this room has benefitted from: the PCR test for COVID-19.

When an interviewer asked Tom about his monumental discovery, he said simply, “I was just trying to find out what kind of weird critters were living in that boiling water!”

Which strikes me as a very Wisconsin thing to say!

Then, as now, the University of Wisconsin–Madison is simultaneously exceptional and modest. Driven not by a need for glory but by a dedication to excellence that is rooted in and grows from a trio of core commitments: to curiosity, to collaboration and to service.

Gratitude

As I look around this beautiful symphony hall, I see so many people who have nourished this excellence over many years. And I see so many people who have welcomed me warmly over these last eight months, alongside people from whom I have learned so very much over many years.

I am tremendously grateful and humbled to have this opportunity to lead this incredible university in this beautiful place, once called Tejope, as you heard Professor McInnes say. Thank you for your trust in me. And I am also acutely aware that I stand on the shoulders of so very, very many others.

Many thanks to my predecessor chancellors, who made UW–Madison stronger. We — and I — have benefitted from their leadership and wisdom. I also want to recognize and thank my immediate predecessor, the extraordinary Rebecca Blank, who did so much for the university and was enormously generous with me during my first six months here, even as her health was failing.

Let us please take a moment and share a round of applause for the leadership of all our former chancellors, including those who are with us today — chancellors Donna Shalala, David Ward, John Wiley, Biddy Martin — and also Becky Blank.

I thank Regent President Karen Walsh and the Board of Regents for your leadership and for trusting me with this extraordinary opportunity.

Thank you to President Jay Rothman for your confidence in me and your tremendous partnership in what is, for both of us, a first year in a new role.

To the other presidents and chancellor colleagues in the room, both from my sister UW institutions and from elsewhere, the chance to work with you and learn from you is a gift that I treasure.

To Governor Evers, thank you for prioritizing higher education and recognizing its critical importance to our state.

To the many community leaders and elected officials in the room, thank you for understanding the fundamental importance of UW–Madison to our great state and for the warm welcome, the advice and for encouraging us to do more and to be better.

Thank you as well to the faculty and staff who make this expansive, broad-ranging campus extraordinary, and who have helped me over the past eight months to better understand the precious parts of our DNA that must be preserved, as well as the places where we have opportunities to do something differently and better.

I especially want to thank my chief of staff, Jennifer Noyes, who began working with me about a month before I officially started and who has worked indefatigably and with great wisdom ever since.

And Provost Karl Scholz for his work with me this year and his many years of service. Karl, I am going to be cheering you on as you go from being a Badger to a Duck.

And thank you to the vice chancellors, deans, and other leaders of this university for combining a commitment to excellence with a deep service ethos.

A special thank you to the small but mighty team who put together the events of investiture week, most especially Carrie Olson and Deb Curry as well as everyone who worked with them. And huge appreciation, more generally, to the dedicated and talented staff of UW–Madison, whose efforts and persistence and commitment fuel our mission.

I am also grateful for so many of our alumni and friends who are not just loyal but fiercely loyal to this institution and whose generosity gives us a margin of excellence.

And thank you to our students — nearly 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom are the first generation in their family to go to college, who come to us from every county in Wisconsin, every state in U.S., and more than 120 countries around the world — and who inspire me with their passion and curiosity.

I am also so deeply appreciative of the many friends, family and colleagues who are in the room today, many of whom have travelled from so far away to be here with us.

To my UCLA colleagues, from deans to faculty to administrative leaders and alums who came to Madison today even though it’s the very busiest time of the academic year — it means the world to me you made the journey!

Welcome to the Big Ten and Game On!

And to so many others have travelled to be here, from a dear high school friend to my college roommates to intellectual mentors to law school classmates to law faculty and deans from elsewhere — thank you not only for being here, but for being there in so many ways for so many years.

To all of today’s speakers and performers, thank you. And Mike Schill, special thanks for your too-generous words today and for your friendship and your mentorship. Working as your vice dean at UCLA set me on the path that brought me here today. How lucky I am that you are now just a couple hours down the road.

And family. Thank you does not begin to convey how much you mean to me. My parents, Dale and Bob Mnookin, thank you for instilling in me the belief that love and intellectual capital are the two most important currencies. To my younger but taller sister, Allison Mnookin, thank you for knowing when to give advice and knowing when to listen, and thank you so much to the numerous members of my extended family here today as well.

And my children, Sophia and Isaac Dienstag, watching you blossom into amazing young adults has been a blessing beyond belief. And Joshua Dienstag, my wonderful husband, thank you for your tremendous blend of brilliance and support. You are both a deep thinker and a great cook. I am beyond lucky to have you as my partner on this academic leadership journey and in my life.

The multiplier effect

That was a lot of thank-yous and at the same time, far too few.

And let me be clear. I feel enormously grateful to be here, but this day and this celebration, are really not about me. They’re about us, and a university grown from a deep-rooted commitment to making a genuine and positive difference across Wisconsin, our country, and the globe.

What the University of Wisconsin–Madison is, and what it needs to be, for the sake of our students, our state, and our society — those are the subjects we must address.

So let me return for just a moment to our friend Tom Brock.

My own training in the social study of science has always led me to be curious about the similarities and analogies between the processes of science and the larger patterns of our social world. So as I read about Tom Brock and his research, I couldn’t help but note the parallels between the way in which Taq polymerase acts on DNA and the way in which our guiding principle of service to humankind, which we call the Wisconsin Idea, acts on our university.

Both amplify and accelerate; both make something bigger and stronger than it was before. Both have a kind of multiplier effect — one microscopic, the other as big as the world.

The Wisconsin Idea is both anchor and propeller, keeping us grounded to our mission while creating that multiplier effect that allows us to do truly great things at scale. And it must remain at the heart of our goals and aspirations for our beloved university.

Invention and amplification

There is a story many of you know well. Harry Steenbock was a UW professor who invented a process for adding Vitamin D to milk, which virtually eliminated the common childhood disease called rickets.

Steenbock had little desire for personal wealth, but a deep desire to make sure his invention could help people. Which meant keeping it out of the hands of charlatans peddling phony claims and setting prices that would put enriched milk out of reach for most families.

Indeed, before the patents were acquired, ads for “bottled sunshine” at exorbitant prices began popping up.

But Steenbock faced enormous pushback from people who were offended by the idea that a professor here at UW should patent an invention and thereby spoil the beneficence of pure academic research with the potential for moneymaking or profit.

He needed a way to guarantee that the money flowing in would be invested back into the university, and so WARF, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the first of its kind in the country, was born.

WARF was both controversial and groundbreaking, and 98 years after its founding, it has provided more than $4.1 billion to seed research excellence and fuel the kind of discovery and innovation that changes lives.

Making this campus No. 7 in the world for U.S. patents and helping create a hugely powerful economic engine with an impact of more than $31 billion a year on this great state.

That is the multiplier effect of the Wisconsin Idea.

Now, before I had the good fortune of becoming chancellor, I already knew about the Wisconsin Idea. Given that I have spent my career at great public research universities committed in their own ways to the public good, I recognized that the Wisconsin Idea named something so powerful about what a first-rate public university should be, that the idea of the Wisconsin Idea itself traveled far beyond the boundaries of this state.

I also knew about it in a more personal way. As many of you have heard me say, in December 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, the University of Wisconsin Solution made it possible for me to donate my kidney in Los Angeles and have it safely preserved as it traveled on a United Airlines red-eye to Boston and to my father, who was suffering from late stage kidney disease. I’m so grateful that he is now healthy enough to be here today and in fact, to have led today’s academic procession.

Facing the future

The greatness of our university and of our state are indisputably linked. The strength of one rises on the strength of the other. Back in 1904, at a jubilee celebration of UW’s first graduates, Governor Robert LaFollette — Fightin’ Bob — captured the dimensions of our strength while exhorting us to do even more:  “It is not enough that this university shall zealously advance learning or that it shall become a great storehouse of knowledge… or that it shall maintain the highest standards of scholarship and develop every… talent. All these are vitally essential, but the state demands more. The state,” he said,” asks that you give back….”

We have, I think it is fair to say, made good on that promise.

But, what about tomorrow? How can we make sure that our 175-year-old institution will shine even more brightly on its 200^th birthday? That our impact will be not just multiplied but strengthened exponentially?

What obstacles must we remove, and what seeds we must plant, to grow a university that accomplishes these goals and also stays open to the mysteries and surprises that will inevitably come along and shuffle the deck — so we can see and embrace both the magnificent views and the transformative yellow slime?

How we respond to these questions will determine our ability to accelerate our impact and assure our intellectual leadership as one of the world’s greatest universities.

The needs are substantial. We face ongoing threats to public health. Global political instability, racial justice issues, pervasive mental health challenges, growing income inequality, technological advances like AI that raise complicated ethical and moral questions, the perils of social media and disinformation, and of course, climate change.

Not to mention the very substantial political polarization in this country that makes progress on any of these challenging issues a good deal harder still, as all too often it seems like people distrust each other before they even stop to listen to each other.

And speaking of distrust, we have another wrinkle. As Mike Schill noted, in a nation that long viewed public universities as a public good and college degrees as a clear positive, we now see a significant share of people not only turning away from these ideals but questioning some of the bedrock values on which we’ve built this system of higher education that is the envy of the world.

And let me say: Many of the questions people are asking are legitimate! Does college cost too much? Are we adequately preparing students for the workforce and the challenges that they will face? Even if we think that the criticisms are exaggerated or misplaced, we need to recognize them and answer them better than we have in the past.

We need to make sure we are affordable, especially for Wisconsin families.

We need to make sure we are a place where all students can flourish, no matter their backgrounds, their identities, or their political perspectives.

We need to make sure — in the words of Bob LaFollette — that we are not just a “great storehouse of knowledge,” but that we impart that knowledge in a way that engages our students deeply in their learning, and that the degrees we confer reflect not only the successful completion of coursework but a real ability to add something of value to the world.

And we need to strengthen and affirm our efforts to acknowledge that the land under our feet is the ancestral homeland of the Ho-Chunk people and to build strong relationships with the Native Nations who call Wisconsin home.

Wisconsin values

We do not all have to have precisely the same answers about how to create the conditions that will best allow us to address the many issues our world is facing. Indeed, we shouldn’t. But we can, I think, find common ground in what one Illinois politician running for president back in 1952 said in a campaign speech here in Madison that still rings true: “The Wisconsin tradition [means]… a faith in the application of intelligence and reason to the problems of society.”

Intelligence and reason are absolutely necessary ingredients, but insufficient. They are like pieces of a puzzle — parts of a whole.

The other pieces come in a variety of shapes and colors:

• Curiosity;
• Compassion;
• Courage to cross boundaries and work in ways that are radically interdisciplinary;
• Commitment to being a place where ideas are nurtured and explored; and
• A community where all people have a strong enough sense of belonging to engage successfully across differences.

This is a tall order, but if we can manage to put these pieces together, we will multiply our ability to address momentous challenges, here and around the world.

And I have great confidence that we can and will succeed. Because I have seen the strength of our commitment to impact, to excellence, and to collaboration.

Since I arrived, we’ve celebrated an important new financial aid program, Bucky’s Pell Pathway, to help ensure that all of our talented students — regardless of their family’s income — can afford not only to come here but to have a full Wisconsin Experience.

We’ve brought in exciting new coaches in football and hockey, and our women’s hockey team won its seventh national title to become the winningest team in history, while we here at UW–Madison have shown more fan support for women’s sports than any other school in this country.

And we’ve launched a permanent Center for Campus History, the Rebecca M. Blank Center, born out of the important work of the Public History Project to make looking backward, thoughtfully and unflinchingly, part of how we move forward.

Celebrating our strengths

And starting today, let’s celebrate our UW–Madison impact a little more loudly than has sometimes been our wont.

Let’s celebrate the university where engineers work with fashion designers, where economists work with scientists creating new biofuels from poplar trees, and where practicing artists like the incredible Lynda Barry — one of our several MacArthur Genius Award winners — inspire students in the STEM fields to solve problems by making art, a wonderful approach to igniting curiosity.

Let’s celebrate the university that’s engineering ordinary T-cells to be like heat-seeking missiles that find and destroy cancer cells.

Let’s celebrate the university where industry, the government, and researchers come together so that the Center for Dairy Research can serve as the “doctor on call” to Wisconsin’s impressive dairy industry.

Let’s celebrate the university that created the Discussion Project that has trained hundreds of teachers in fields from chemistry to political science to create more engaging classroom discussions while shedding new light on how high-quality classroom discussions impact our students’ learning and sense of belonging.

Let’s celebrate that we are graduating more undergraduate students than ever, with more than 60 percent of them graduating with zero debt, with an average time to graduation of just 3.8 years, and that applications are at all a time high.

Let’s celebrate all of this and more — but let’s never be self-satisfied.

The needs are great, and we must commit to growing our ambitions in the years ahead. To do still more to multiply and amplify our commitments to education, to research, and to service. To meet our challenges head-on, hand-in-hand with strong and motivated partners. Not for ourselves, but for the people we serve.

Moving forward

What will that mean?

It will mean growing our faculty, with a special focus on strategic, cross-disciplinary hiring in places where we can move from good to great and from great to extraordinary.

It will mean amplifying the impressive $1.3 billion of funded research we do each year.

It will mean building deeper partnerships both with industry and with communities all across the state.

It will mean bringing creativity and bold ideas to the critical task of defining a liberal arts education for the 21^st century and beyond.

It will mean a renewed focus on helping our students, staff, and faculty to flourish.

And it will mean redoubling our efforts to create a campus where every student — whether first in their family to go to college or a fourth-generation Badger, whatever their race, sexual orientation or gender identity, whatever their political viewpoint or religion, whether they hail from a big city or a small rural community — knows that they belong and that they are part of the kaleidoscopic fabric that makes us great.

Let us also work to become a national model for how universities can engage across difference. Because this is a problem we cannot ignore.

It’s not a Wisconsin problem, or even a university problem. It’s a problem for our nation and our democracy.

And we’ve seen far too many examples of people on both the right and the left wanting to silence or censor speech and ideas they disagree with.

Here at UW–Madison, we need to remain resolutely committed to that “continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone truth can be found.”

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that not all of our students have the same sense of full belonging, or equally feel that this special place, our university, is, so to speak, for them. And not everyone at UW–Madison feels consistently comfortable sharing their views, whether in the classroom or in the hallways.

Our university must be a place that not only welcomes all points of view and allows for free discussion of ideas but also, simultaneously, helps students develop a strong sense of belonging. So they can flourish and so that they can learn to talk across difference without feeling untethered or unmoored.

I say to you: Free speech and belonging must both be core institutional priorities. They must both be north stars that guide our way. To be sure, they are sometimes in tension with one another. But both must be non-negotiable.

It is urgent that we help build pathways back to civil dialogue across difference. And I firmly believe that this university can be a national leader in supporting both free speech and belonging, by creating the place that the author, activist, and UW alum bell hooks envisioned when she said:

I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility.

Let us, here at UW–Madison, lead the way. Let our future story be dazzling and bright. Let us connect, with curiosity and enthusiasm, across our differences and across our disciplines. Let us grow our partnerships and collaborations to do more and greater things together than we could ever do alone.

What I am calling for will make us stronger in the years ahead, but it will not be easy. Some might even call it impossible. But that cannot and will not deter us.

Conclusion

The renowned historian Bill Cronon retired from UW almost exactly one year ago. I read and admired his books back when I was a graduate student. In his final lecture here, he said this:

There are many things we did together, that were impossible.

They couldn’t be done!

But we didn’t know they couldn’t be done.

So we figured out a way to do them. And that’s the way the world works.

That’s my job as your chancellor. To figure out how to do impossible things. And it is your job too.

Let us bring the same passion and curiosity to the tasks before us that Tom Brock brought to uncovering life in the unlikeliest of places.

Fulfilling our common purpose to do the impossible together for the sake of our state, our country, our students, our people, and our future is a solemn mission, and it is also a most joyful opportunity.

Thank you so much, and On, Wisconsin.

On February 9, 2023, University of Wisconsin–Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin gave her first official presentation to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents. In a talk titled, “UW–Madison: Enhancing Excellence, Overcoming Obstacles, Pursuing Partnerships,” Mnookin shared her vision for the future of the university and made an important announcement to meet the needs of Wisconsin resident students.

Chancellor Mnookin: I want to thank all of you for the warm welcome and for the opportunity to lead this outstanding university. I am even more excited to be here today than I was when I arrived last August.

It’s been a whirlwind six months! Complete with experiences I never knew I was missing – like wading in a cranberry marsh (and trying not to fall over) and hiking through apple and cherry orchards at our ag research stations … seeing Extension hard at work with 4-H at the state fair and holding a piglet at a county fair.

Not to mention learning to “Jump Around” AND helping to set an NCAA record for the most fans at a women’s volleyball game!

In fact, we are the only university in the country to have had more than 8,200 spectators at three different women’s sporting events in the same year: basketball, volleyball, and just last weekend, hockey.

And another record – our 850 student athletes achieved the highest average GPA in our history last year!

But best of all has been meeting extraordinary people on and off this campus who are working to make our communities and our state stronger and better.

My core message: UW–Madison is an extraordinary place, but we can’t take that excellence for granted. It needs to be protected and nurtured – not only for the good of the university, but for the good of our great state of Wisconsin. At the same time, if we work together, in effective partnership, I am confident that we can not only maintain our great strengths, but we – and the entire UW System – can be better tomorrow than we are today.

Let me start with a few words about some of our existing strengths.

Last year was a big year for us! We welcomed the largest and most racially diverse freshman class in our history and conferred one of the largest number of degrees in our history, more than 11,000.

• We just received final numbers for our total applicants for the next freshman class – and we’ve again set a record! More than 60,000 applicants for 8,100 spots.
• Clearly both here in our great state and all across the country, many young people, and their families, recognize that very exciting things are happening here at Wisconsin!
• I am also happy to say that 18,000 of our freshman applicants are students of color – an increase of 18% over last year.
• Over the past four years, we’ve more than doubled the number of undergraduates of color enrolled on this campus, and I hope to see us continue to build on that.

At the same time as we’re serving more students than ever, we’re also improving outcomes.

• We are the No. 6 public university in the country for our 6-year graduation rate. Nearly 90% of our undergraduates complete their degrees in six years. The national average for public universities is 66%.

• Our time-to-degree statistics are down again: Our average is now 3.85 calendar years, six weeks shy of four years.

• In addition, more than 60% of our undergraduates now graduate with zero student debt. The number, statewide, is just 37%.
• We’re also bringing a UW­–Madison degree within reach for more Wisconsin families, thanks to Bucky’s Tuition Promise, and we’re even going to improve on that – stay tuned for an announcement at the end of my remarks today.
• And a research study out last fall puts us among the top 5 producers of tenure-track faculty in the whole U.S. (along with Berkeley, Harvard, Michigan, and Stanford. Pretty good company, I’d say). More than 1 in 8 sitting faculty in the U.S. has a Ph.D. from one of these institutions, which speaks to our profound influence on the cycle of knowledge and the impact we have on this country and the world.

And while we’re sending outstanding future faculty out into the world, we’re also welcoming outstanding new faculty to Madison. We brought in 168 accomplished new faculty members last year – the second highest number in more than a decade.

I want to call out one of our recent hires. Professor Monica Kim – who joined our History Department in 2020 – won a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship (often known as “Genius Grants”). She’s our third MacArthur winner in the past three years, and it’s exciting to see her impressive historical work on untold aspects of international and diplomatic history receive such acclaim and attention.

You already know, I hope, that we are comfortably in the top 10 U.S. universities for total research expenditures – though we aim to grow that further. We’ve had far too many research accomplishments to name, but let me highlight one that’s a model for the kinds of expansive partnerships I want to see more of:

• PANTHER (which stands for Physics-bAsed Neutralization of Threats to Human tissuEs and oRgans) recently won a $10 million grant from the Department of Defense for their work to develop better ways of detecting and preventing traumatic brain injuries.
  
• I’m singling them out because they’re more than a cross-disciplinary project. PANTHER is an entire innovation ecosystem involving us, other universities, and multiple partners from government and industry.

This is the kind of project that will position us to stay on the leading edge of discovery.

And there are many other areas where we’ve reached new levels of excellence this year. To mention just a few:

• The Carbone Cancer Center – the only National Cancer Institute in Wisconsin – just got renewed by the NIH with a grade of ‘outstanding’ which puts it in the top 10-20% of National Cancer Institute centers in the nation.
• The Institute for Research on Poverty has won major grant funding to study the relationship between income and a child’s brain development.
• And the Waisman Center recently published some groundbreaking research that’s moving us closer to understanding what causes Down syndrome.

We’ve also had an outstanding year in public service.

Teddy Roosevelt once wrote: “In no other state in the union has any university done the same work for the community that’s been done in Wisconsin.” (I believe he was running for re-election at the time, but that doesn’t make the statement any less true!)

• Example: Students and faculty are working through our UniverCity Program that asks local leaders: What are the problems you would tackle tomorrow if you could? And then our faculty and students work to do just that.
• The program’s been around for eight years, and it’s a huge win-win. I’ve heard from county administrators and mayors about what powerful, concrete help this program offers, and I’ve heard from students and faculty about how transformative it can be for them.
• It’s also a wonderful example of the power of System-wide partnerships. Over the years we’ve worked with five other System schools (River Falls, Eau Claire, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Parkside) on these projects.

Our Teacher Pledge is another great example. It’s an innovative model for responding to the teacher shortage in Wisconsin, funded entirely by gifts from friends and alumni to the School of Education.

• It covers in-state tuition, fees, and licensing for new grads who pledge to work in a Wisconsin school, for 3-4 years post-graduation.
• We now have 530 pledged students and graduates, 200 of whom are already teaching in school districts across Wisconsin.
• This powerful pilot shows how investment and access to resources can enhance our ability to meet the state’s workforce needs, though to make it permanent may require support from the state.

And our biggest statewide footprint is through the Division of Extension, which has put rocket boosters under our statewide engagement since we brought them back to UW–Madison five years ago.

Their daily presence in all 72 counties is connecting our researchers in a much more direct way to some of the biggest problems this state is facing – like opioid addiction, water contamination, and health disparities. Extension is a bridge between university research and the work happening “on the ground” in our communities, making the work on both sides stronger and better.

This is the very best of the Wisconsin Idea.

So many of the successes I’ve just mentioned were made possible in significant part by Chancellor Emerita Rebecca Blank. I want to thank her for the wisdom she’s shared with me, and for her tireless work on behalf of this great university.

I very much hope you saw the announcement about the Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History. I am pleased that we can celebrate and honor Chancellor Blank in this way, especially given her central role in the creation of the Public History Project.

So: The university is thriving in many ways. We have a lot to be proud of.

But we also need to look in a clear-eyed way at obstacles we need to overcome if we are to maintain and build on our excellence.

There are many, but I’m going to focus today on these five:

1. Creating a physical infrastructure to support ongoing excellence.
2. Helping our students thrive as learners, community members, and people.
3. Bringing outstanding students into Wisconsin and keeping our top students in the state as the number of college-age Wisconsinites shrinks and workforce demands grow.
4. Growing the research enterprise, creating more knowledge with impact on the world, and enhancing the ways we link to industry.
5. Making the case for increased state investment in UW, along with needed flexibilities to let us operate efficiently and effectively.

Obstacle #1: Creating a physical infrastructure to support ongoing excellence

We don’t need the fanciest buildings out there, but we simply can’t be excellent without well-designed, modern spaces that support educational and research needs.

Many of you heard last night at the Chemistry Building how we’ve not been able to expand our research in key areas like pharmaceuticals because of poor ventilation and fire-safety issues in our labs.

So though we have some terrific facilities, and some important plans, we also have ongoing significant challenges in this area, both around STEM and well beyond.

To give you a sense for the STEM-related issues: 20 years ago, fewer than one-third of our undergraduates were enrolled in STEM majors. Today, nearly half are.

Last year’s grads included record-high numbers of bachelor’s degrees in high-needs fields such as Computer Engineering and Nursing.

• On the one hand, this is great news. Wisconsin employers need graduates with these skills.
• On the other hand, this means we have to invest in more high-tech classrooms and research labs, as well as other kinds of infrastructure to support student learning and excellence.
• Over the last 20 years – with the help of both the state and our donors – we’ve invested a little over half a billion dollars in facilities projects that impact or enable our STEM programs – such as the new facilities for Chemistry and the School of Veterinary Medicine.

• And we’re on track to invest another billion over the next several in projects currently in design or under construction.

Those sound like big numbers, and investments worth celebrating. And they are. However, if you look at many of our peers, we are in fact running behind.

Some of you have seen this slide.

• Our facilities unit contracts with a consulting firm that owns the largest verified database of university facilities, and their reporting helps give us insight on how we compare to other institutions.
• This slide shows our average capital reinvestment compared to our goal over a five-year period in academic and research space. You can see that we are way behind our Big 10 peers … and way WAY behind the major private universities who are also our competition for top faculty.
• Their data also shows us that over the last 10 years, our total capital reinvestment has been roughly half of our peers per gross square footage for academic and research space. For every $3 we invested, they, on average, invested $6.
• And our current estimate for deferred maintenance alone is $2.1 billion and growing. That’s escalated from $1.5 billion in just the past four years.

So: We badly need to keep investing in facilities. The College of Engineering is one place where we’re hoping to do just that. Engineering needs a new building, which we hope will be funded jointly by the state and by philanthropy, and which will open up significantly more spots for students at a time when engineers are in high demand in Wisconsin.

Thank you to President Rothman and the System for putting this facility at the top of the priority list of major projects – and thanks to all of you for your support.

I have appreciated the many conversations I’ve had with legislators, industry leaders and others about this facility, and I look forward to working with the Assembly, the Senate, the Governor, the Regents, the System, and the Department of Administration to get this vital project completed.

As fast as demand for engineering is growing, computer science is growing even faster – a roughly 700% increase in undergraduate majors in the past decade, making it our No. 1 undergraduate major.

No other department has grown so much, so quickly, partly because of the huge demand among both students and employers, and partly because we are proud that we make computer science an available area of study to all who choose to pursue it, rather than a program with limited admissions.

I’m happy to tell you that fundraising for the new building is 90% complete. We now have everything staged to start digging, and if all goes according to plan, we’ll open the building in spring 2025.

Keeping up with demand also requires us to recruit new faculty, which is phenomenally difficult in computer science as we’re competing with private employers who can offer 4 or 5 times what we do, as well as an extremely competitive market among strong university programs.

The good news: we’ve netted 24 new faculty in computer, data, and information sciences since 2019, thanks to our top-ranked departments and excellent reputation. But we still have the smallest faculty of any of the top public universities in computer sciences. We have to grow further to meet the demands of our students, our state, and our economy.

This is not to say that all of our growth is in STEM, nor should it be.

We have pressing needs in the arts, which are critical to human flourishing and help us find and express meaning.

I’m proud of our strengths in these areas, but from a facilities perspective, we have an urgent need for a pathway out of our obsolete Humanities Building for both the School of Music and the Art Department.

The Humanities building needs $70 million in immediate repairs – and even then wouldn’t come close to providing the kind of learning environment we would wish for.

So we need to be able to cement plans for a new home for Music and for Art, and if we are able to do so, that will also let us envision exciting possibilities for that prime campus spot that the Humanities Building currently occupies.

And we have numerous campus buildings besides Humanities that serve critical campus needs that are also aging and in clear need of maintenance or replacement. I could list them but unfortunately that list gets long.

One very bright spot is Irving and Dorothy Levy Hall. It’s in the design phase, and when it’s done it’s going to allow us to move the History Department and the Center for Jewish Studies out of Humanities and bring together under one roof six other Letters & Science departments that are now spread out across campus.

This is a very long-awaited project – the last time we built a new academic building for humanities departments in the College of Letters and Science was 50 years ago.

Obstacle #2: Helping our students thrive as learners, community members, and people.

There is no doubt that it’s been a rough few years all around, especially given the many challenges produced by the pandemic, from learning loss, to isolation, to the pressures produced by ubiquitous social media.

To be truly excellent in this moment we have to be intentional about working in new ways to help the students thrive as learners, community members, and people.

This means providing not only modern spaces for learning … and not only impactful educational opportunities and superb teaching … but also investments in high-quality academic support services such as advising and tutoring … ready access to mental health services … and spaces where students can come together in community.

And it also means helping our students develop the tools to engage across difference, and I’ll say more about that in just a few moments.

We conducted three separate campus climate surveys last year for faculty, staff, and students and we learned a lot!

The great majority of people in our community feel respected, supported, and welcome here. But these surveys show that to be less true for groups that have been historically underrepresented and marginalized on this campus.

Those groups rate the campus climate less highly than their peers.

Not long ago, one of our students described her experience in an upper-level math class as feeling like “a fly in the milk.”

It’s sometimes hard to feel like you fit in in a place where you stand out.

And one of the things we hear from our students is: Hire more people who look like me!

You can certainly learn effectively from people very different from yourself. But there’s also no doubt that when you see people in positions of authority – like your professors – who seem more like you, that can dramatically enhance your own sense of both possibility and belonging.

I recently received some impressive new numbers. You can see the details on the slide. We now have:

• Our highest-ever number and percentage of women faculty, faculty of color, and faculty of color from underrepresented groups.

I’m proud of the progress we’re making. At the same time, I also recognize that some aspects of our current approach may be impacted by the upcoming Supreme Court decisions involving race-conscious admissions at Harvard and UNC.

The tools in our toolbox may change, but diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging will remain top priorities.

And let me be clear – to be an outstanding public university, we need diversity of all kinds: Racial and ethnic, first-generation, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, religious, rural/urban, and political and viewpoint diversity. These all matter. And creating a sense of belonging and inclusion across ALL of these kinds of difference needs to be an ongoing priority.

Obstacle #3: Bringing outstanding students into Wisconsin and keeping top students in the state

As I think everyone in this room knows, Wisconsin’s demographics are changing. I recognize that for some of our system campuses that’s been extremely challenging.

As we face a shrinking pool of college-age students in this state, UW–Madison can bring a couple of things to the table.

First, we can keep more top Wisconsin students in Wisconsin. This doesn’t look like a big increase, but it’s the result of a lot of effort by our Admissions team given the smaller numbers of high school graduates in our state.

Also working to our advantage is that post-COVID, many students are eager to have the ‘big school’ experiences that we provide.

Now let me be clear: We want to support the success of our sister schools, the comprehensives, as well. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that much of the time, we are not competing with other System schools for our students – but out-of-state schools like Minnesota and Michigan, as well as private institutions across the country.

Second, and critically, UW–Madison can draw talent into the state in significant numbers.

We have 22,000 undergraduate and graduate students from out-of-state on our campus right now.

Of course, our graduates don’t all stay. But the number who are staying is growing. This is 2016 versus 2022.

• Among students who graduated last academic year and started working, 48% told us that they’re working in Wisconsin – up from 37% just five years ago.
  
• For our in-state students, that number is 62% versus 48% five years ago.
• Among out-of-staters, 22% report they’re employed here, versus 17% five years ago.

I think we can improve on these numbers still further. If we can work with employers to create more great opportunities in the workforce, more of our grads from both in state and out of state will stay.

Obstacle #4: Growing the research enterprise creating more knowledge with impact on the world, and enhancing the ways we link to industry

I’m turning now to challenges in research. As you know, UW–Madison is a research powerhouse and our discoveries are changing lives here in Wisconsin and around the world.

In overall research expenditures, we rank No. 8 nationally. This is very strong – but it’s also down from No. 4 ten years ago. Now I’m a competitive person – seeing UCLA leapfrog us is not the top reason I want to address this, but it is one motivation!

To be clear: we’ve done a good job of increasing our expenditures – they rose by $16 million, or 1.2%, in 2021, despite the pandemic … but our national competitors grew by an average of 4%.

So to move up this chart, we don’t just need to go up – we need to go up faster than our peers.

We have a goal, as part of the UW System strategic plan, to get back to No. 6. This is, I believe, doable but ambitious. It will mean working in some different ways and investing further in our research infrastructure.

It will also mean we need to expand our industry partnerships. I told you that we currently rank No. 8 in research expenditures overall; however, in industry investments in R&D we rank 52nd.

This is an area where we have significant opportunity, and I’m happy to say we are moving in the right direction.

In 2021, we increased our industry R&D expenditures by 6.5% while, nationwide, industry expenditures fell by 1.3%.

But to do more and better, we need to look closely at how to work more effectively with industry in a variety of ways. And this is a place where we need to continue with some internal culture change, while also keeping our mission as a public university as our North Star when we evaluate potential projects.

Obstacle #5: Making the case for increased state investment along with needed flexibilities to let us operate efficiently and effectively

With workforce shortages predicted to grow, and an estimated $7.1 billion state surplus, this is a strong moment to invest.

And we’re a pretty terrific investment!

• UW–Madison now supports one out of every 13 jobs in this state … and our total economic impact on Wisconsin is nearly $31 billion a year.
• According to one study, for every $1 in state money invested in the university, we return $26.73.
• That’s an eye-popping return – and an incredibly low-risk, high value investment in Wisconsin’s future.

We were recognized nationally for our contribution to this state three months ago – we are one of nine universities in the country designated this past year as an ‘Innovation and Economic Prosperity University’.

We’ve been in a position to invest and grow in the past several years, thanks both to tremendous investments by our alumni and friends in a record-breaking capital campaign, and thanks to some effective revenue-building opportunities that have protected us from some pretty strong headwinds.

These resources are vital. They allow us to carry out our mission to transform lives through education and research.

And we’ll keep doing our part to create resources for our future.

But at this point we’ve pulled the most likely and available levers to create new revenues and the challenge is going to be finding additional pathways.

One of those may be redeveloping selected parcels of land, in ways that might simultaneously meet critical needs, for example, for new collaborative spaces for students, faculty, and partners from industry, while also potentially creating new revenue streams.

There are some exciting possibilities here, but our future success will depend on effective partnership.

The state has made deep investments in this university over the past 175 years, but in recent years we’ve fallen behind our peers. We cannot and will not look to the state to solve all of our challenges – at the same time, we unquestionably need ongoing and substantial state support in order to thrive, as well as additional flexibility to allow us to seize opportunities.

In terms of state support, here’s what’s happened over the last 10 years. Many – indeed most – states have outpaced us.

And frozen in-state tuition has made it even more difficult for us to maintain our excellence.

Add to that another significant challenge – we’re the only flagship university in the country that does not have the ability to borrow money without specific legislative approval to do so in each instance.

That means every time we do building renovations or construction, unless it is funded entirely by gifts and grants, we need to go through multiple layers of approval at the other end of State Street, even if all we are hoping to do is, in effect, borrow funds which we will repay from our own revenues.

This system is costing us. It reduces our opportunities to improve our facilities and adds delays that in turn lead to higher construction costs. So we badly need to keep trying to make some form of revenue bonding authority possible, and I appreciate the support of the Regents and President Rothman as we work together to try to achieve this.

Gov. Evers is scheduled to deliver his budget message six days from now. I want to thank the Regents for the strong budget request and tell you that we’ve only just begun our engagement with that process!

We’ll be working with many different stakeholders over the next five months to advocate for a substantial investment in the System, and its flagship institution – which is, in an enormous way, also an investment in the future of our state.

Pursuing Partnerships

Squarely and thoughtfully facing these five challenges will bring the university onto a stronger and better path to the future. There isn’t, of course, a simple or linear, one-size-fits-all answer, but I can tell you that effectively pursuing partnerships, both within UW–Madison and well beyond our walls, needs to be at the heart of our work.

Opportunities to improve education

We know that our student experience is outstanding. We have a 95% freshman to sophomore year retention rate! But we need to be looking to the future and thinking about what teaching and learning look like using strategies that actively engage students.

Our Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring, which opened its doors 18 months ago, is bringing partners from across the campus to work together in new ways. It’s already transforming how we support instructors so that they can connect more deeply with their students.

Another priority is exploring how we hold fast to two values, both centrally and deeply important to our university, and which, if we are candid, can sometimes come into tension with another: our commitment to free speech and our efforts to create a strong sense of belonging for all.

The results of the recently released free speech survey by System, combined with our own campus climate survey, as well as lots of other evidence from across our nation, suggest that we have work to do, to help students engage across difference. The challenge can be especially acute around hot-button issues and across political divides.

This isn’t something people are born knowing how to do. To engage across difference in a civil and constructive way, students need to build the skills necessary to engage in high-quality discussions with one another.

Our School of Education has created a Discussion Project that’s both a professional development course and a research project that has taught over 800 instructors across campus to design and facilitate powerful discussions. Its focus is to ensure that all students – regardless of what they are studying – have opportunities to learn how to talk and listen in ways that enhance learning and create a sense of belonging.

We are also considering developing a student deliberation project specifically focused on teaching students who have a wide variety of views to talk and listen across difference – an especially important skill in this polarized time in our nation.

Opportunities to improve research

On the research side, we already have an interdisciplinary and collaborative culture – indeed, that’s one of our institutional strengths. But we need to go even further and build still more expansive research partnerships.

We’ve already started. One great example is the Dairy Innovation Hub.

We have researchers across three UW campuses talking to one another, mentoring grad students together, and solving problems that no individual campus can solve alone – and we’re already seeing the impact in new research projects and new industry partnerships.

AND we have another even larger-scale example of success in this domain – our achievements in the life sciences.

Madison is one of the top 25 markets in the U.S. in terms of the number of microbiologists, biochemists, and other life sciences workers – and every other city on this graph is at least three times our size.

This is really quite astonishing. And we got to this place through creating synergies and partnerships that crisscross industry, academia and our whole region, to create an impressive national hub for life sciences technology.

The result is that the life sciences here are growing fast, AND we have a virtuous cycle where success breeds success.

With that success, the university is better positioned to compete for research funding (both federal and private) and that helps generate more discovery, innovation and commercialization, which in turn attracts great faculty, which in turn attracts great students …

And they graduate to become talented members of the life sciences workforce and innovation ecosystem, and that in turn attracts life science companies to Madison, which further drives the economy, and draws new talent into the university. It’s win-win-win-win-win.

Here’s just one example of the impact. Back in 2018 we successfully recruited Professor Elizabeth Wright, who’s shown here meeting with a graduate student.

She’s a biochemist who is helping us reach new frontiers in the biosciences by establishing a national cryo-EM center on our campus. Cryo-EM is kind of like an MRI for molecules that gives incredibly crisp, 3D images that show individual atoms.

Morgridge Institute scientists partnered with the center to produce this image. On the left is the coronavirus magnified by a traditional electron microscope. On the far right is an illustration of what the coronavirus crown looks like magnified by cryo-EM.

You can see how cryo-EM is literally changing what we see. Scientists say it’s the difference between seeing the outline of a building and seeing the doorknobs.

So, I want to look ahead and ask: What are the next places where we might create this kind of synergy between job creation, industry, research, and transformative education that will allow us to build a really amazing future for our university AND our state?

We’ve identified a group of areas where we’re strong and where there’s potential to do more – and some examples include:

• Clean energy and energy storage
• Fusion research
• Climate change and sustainability
• Quantum science
• (Potentially) Semiconductors
• And artificial intelligence and machine learning, and especially its application to imaging and data analysis.

To reach the next level of excellence in any or all of these areas will take:

• More strategic efforts to tap into major new sources of federal dollars
• Effective and strategic partnerships with industry
• Investment from the state
• And a kind of working together that we’re not always accustomed to.

If we can further enhance our innovation ecosystems, not only will our university thrive, but we can continue to be an effective engine for the state economy and improve lives for our graduates, and for people throughout our great state.

Opportunities to improve access

I want to close with a bit of news.

In 2018, Chancellor Blank stood before you in this room and announced a new program called Bucky’s Tuition Promise to cover tuition and fees for students whose family income is below the state median.

It’s a wonderful program – yet there continues to be an opportunity and a responsibility to support our highest-needs Wisconsin students in accessing the UW–Madison experience.

One of our recent grads tells the story of coming here and hearing the students in her classes and residence hall talking about experiences that were unavailable to her, like taking an unpaid internship or a summer course. She said:

It seemed like everyone else was having all of these other experiences and I was just working and going to class.

To be sure, there will always be differences in what students can afford. But if we’re going to live our values of creating real access and opportunity, we need to do more for our students from Wisconsin’s lowest-income households – our Pell Grant recipients.

So today, I am happy to make two announcements. First, we are slightly increasing the eligibility requirements for Bucky’s Tuition Promise. Instead of reaching families with adjusted gross incomes of $60,000 or less, we are now increasing that number to $65,000.

Second, I’m excited to announce the creation of Bucky’s Pell Pathway. This program will ensure that our Pell-eligible Wisconsin resident students have a pathway to complete their four-year degree without needing to take on debt to cover their educational expenses.

This is an important additional step in creating opportunities and access here at UW–Madison and working to ensure that the amazing resources of our university offer transformative possibilities to talented students from all across our state, regardless of their means.

Concretely, what does it mean?

We’re going a step further than Bucky’s Tuition Promise for Wisconsin families who are eligible for Federal Pell Grants. For these students, Bucky’s Pell Pathway will cover all remaining financial need, after their Pell Grant and other scholarships. That means not only tuition and fees, but housing, meals, books, and additional funds that will allow these Wisconsin students to be involved and engaged in some of the many life-changing experiences this university offers.

It’s another meaningful step toward improving access and removing barriers for talented students with high financial need.

I want to be clear that there are NO state dollars involved. We will be funding this program through a variety of institutional, private, and external sources.

And I want to call out and appreciate the generosity of a number of our alumni, who have given specifically to support scholarships for students with financial need, and whom I know will continue to support this critical goal. Their recognition of the critical importance of higher education as a pathway to opportunity helps makes this program possible.

I also want to thank our Enrollment Management team for envisioning this goal with me and figuring out how to get it done.

One of the things that brought me here to UW–Madison was the knowledge that this state – while pretty average in population and income – has a flagship university that’s anything but average. UW–Madison’s not just pretty good – we’re outstanding.

I heard recently from one of our alums who now lives thousands of miles away and who said to me:

You might be able to make an argument that School X has academics that are just as good … you might be able to make an argument that School Y has athletics that are just as good … you might be able to make an argument that School Z has a city that’s just as good. But you’re not going to find another school that has all of these extraordinary assets.

This university is extraordinary. It’s one of this state’s most precious and best tools for making a difference in creating positive futures. But it’s also fragile. Without investment by the state … without a willingness to give us the flexibility to be nimble and seize opportunity … without the support of the UW System to preserve and build our excellence … we risk a slow decline.

There is an amazing version of our future, where education, research, and outreach all flourish in an innovation ecosystem built on partnerships that are broad and deep, to the benefit of our students, our university, and our state. This is an achievable future, but it is not an inevitable one. And it depends on all of us.

It’s my job to bring people together to create and nourish that ecosystem, and I look forward to working with all of you, and the many people we serve, to do exactly that. I thank you for giving me this opportunity.

View the full set of slides of Chancellor Mnookin’s presentation or watch video of her presentation.