Badgers for Life

WAA prepares students of today to become alumni of tomorrow.

Bucky Badger was on hand to help students at Gordon Commons celebrate UW-Madison’s 161st birthday on February 5. Each year, WAA staff serve cake to students in the residence halls to raise awareness of Founders’ Day, which commemorates the founding of the university. Photo: Andy Manis

With academic responsibilities to contend with and Badger games beckoning, today’s UW-Madison students are focused on being, well, students. At the same time, however, WAA gives them a glimpse of what it will feel like to carry their Badger spirit into the world as alumni.

Thanks to a variety of WAA student initiatives, these future alumni get to experience firsthand the value of being a Badger — on campus and beyond. That was definitely the case when WAA’s registered student organization, the Wisconsin Alumni Student Board (WASB), held the first-ever Bare It All for Charity 5K Run/Walk in November 2009.

The run, which encouraged participants to donate gently used clothing instead of paying a registration fee, drew nearly three hundred participants who donated an estimated five hundred pounds of clothing to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

“We weren’t sure what to expect with this being a new event,” says WASB member Tom Llaurado x’11. “But alumni and members of the Madison community really stepped up and made the run a great success.”

Senior Week, held in early April, is another way that WAA lets students know that their connections to campus never end. The week is filled with educational, financial, and career-related events designed to prepare seniors for life after the UW.

Outside of campus, WAA alumni chapters across the country hold student sendoffs each summer that bring together incoming students, their parents, and local alumni to learn about the university and share some Badger traditions in a casual atmosphere. These are just a sampling of the programs and events that WAA sponsors to motivate students to stay involved with the university. You can learn more about WAA’s student initiatives by visiting uwalumni.com/students.

Published in the Spring 2010 issue