Everyone’s Badger Mom

Warner: “I want students to feel like they have someone in their corner who understands that this process can be very stressful.” Joel Ninmann/University Housing

Officially, Erin Warner ’95 oversees Off-Campus Housing Services as an assistant director in the Division of University Housing. Unofficially, she strives to be everyone’s Badger mom. In helping students negotiate Madison’s complex and sometimes anxiety-inducing housing market, she brings to bear whatever is needed — TLC, common sense, tough love. Sometimes she sounds like a therapist, other times a 911 operator.

“Okay, first I need you to take a deep breath and stop panicking,” she told a distraught undergraduate who approached her at a recent campus housing forum. The student was having difficulty finding an affordable apartment. “No one has ever gone homeless on my watch, and I’m not about to let you be the first.”

The Division of University Housing established the Off-Campus Housing Services unit in 2023 to help students and families navigate Madison’s increasingly challenging, highly competitive housing market. The effort, which built on a previous program in Campus and Visitor Relations, now has a designated office and full-time staff member.

Warner is the mother of two Badgers, Jamie ’24 and Chase x’26. She approaches her job squarely from the perspective of someone who’s been there, experienced that.

“Trust me, if there was a way to make it complicated, my Badgers found it,” she says. “When I tell students and families that I’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way, I truly mean it.”

Warner prefers meeting students wherever they are — the Starbucks at Smith Residence Hall is a favorite spot. She reviews budgets and housing options and offers suggestions on how to find properties that might make the most sense for them.

“I want students to feel like they have someone in their corner who understands that this process can be very stressful,” she says.

And to all the Badger parents out there across the country or across the world, Warner wants you to know she’s on it.

“I hope that if one of my children ever ends up in your backyard, you’d do the same.”

Published in the Spring 2025 issue