No men allowed: a group of 1960s female students relaxes in the Elizabeth Waters Residence Hall courtyard. The dorm would be the last on campus to remain segregated by gender. UW Archives 2018s00424

By 2005, Elizabeth Waters Residence Hall was the last standing gender-segregated dorm on campus. For many alumni of that time, it was a familiar arrangement. For many students, it was antiquated — weird, even. Wrote one in the Badger Herald: “The time has come for UW to end this wretched, backward invocation of sexism and mindless promotion of prudery.” A year later, it became a coed dorm, ending a long era.

The UW’s first-ever purpose-built dorm was also its first women’s dorm. Ladies Hall was constructed in 1871 and was later renamed Chadbourne Hall after former chancellor Paul Chadbourne, partly in retribution for his stubborn opposition to coeducation. The paradoxical naming streak continued for the second women’s dorm (and oldest functioning dorm on campus today), Barnard Hall — after former chancellor Henry Barnard, who opposed university housing entirely because of its high costs.

The earliest residents of Ladies Hall needed permission to leave the dorm outside of usual class hours, and they were only allowed to see visitors during scheduled receptions in common areas. The hall’s principal also advised the women on their habits and how to comport themselves in public.

Many strict housing rules continued into the latter half of the 20th century. Between the ’40s and ’70s, parents received a letter from the university before the start of each academic year informing them that female students under the age of 21 were required to live in university-approved housing or provide a guardian’s written permission to live unsupervised off campus.

Curfews were commonplace. According to a 1949 housing document, women who tried to return to their dorms after 10:30 p.m. on weeknights would be locked out. Only a housemother had access to the building’s keys, so residents needed permission to be gone overnight or to stay out past curfew. Late-night studying at the library? Too bad. Freshmen could request a key for curfew extension until 12:30 a.m. once per semester, while seniors earned the luxury of requesting a key twice per week. Exceptions were made for university-sanctioned events and for Daily Cardinal staffers.

For many years, men could only enter women’s dorms during certain evening hours and were never allowed to stay overnight. The board of regents approved coed housing, separated by floor (and later by wing), for select UW residence halls in 1972. All halls are now coed, and most floors and wings stopped being separated by gender in 2011. Students are free to come and go as they please. We suspect they wouldn’t accept anything less.

There had, in fact, been women at the UW prior to this. The Normal Department, which taught teachers, had female students since 1863. But this was not the same as full access to the university. In 1869 — 150 years ago — the UW graduated its first baccalaureate alumnae: Clara Bewick Colby, Anna Headen Erskine, Elizabeth Spencer Haseltine, Jane Nagle Henderson, Helen Noble Peck, and Ellen Turner Pierce. The next year, Chadbourne left, but women stayed.

This year, the UW is celebrating that 150th anniversary. In this special women’s issue, you’ll read about just a few of the amazing women (and one who’s less-than-admirable) who have passed through campus in the last century and a half. We know we’ve missed a lot of influential Badger women. Is there someone we should know about? Write to us.

On, alumnae!

Mackenzie Straub x’22 (pictured) was one of 796 incoming students during the 2018–19 academic year receiving free tuition through Bucky’s Tuition Promise. Jeff Miller

The first brainchild of the UW’s new Student Success Through Applied Research (SSTAR) Lab, Bucky’s Tuition Promise, has provided financial relief to nearly one-quarter of the Wisconsin-resident students in the 2018–19 incoming class.

By identifying a sustainable way to simplify the financial aid process for in-state undergraduates — covering four years of tuition and segregated fees for freshmen meeting income-level criteria — the SSTAR Lab created a solution to help the Office of Student Financial Aid (OSFA) provide more student support.

And it aims to do more. Although the lab began research on Bucky’s Tuition Promise more than a year and a half ago, SSTAR celebrated its grand opening — with a new office and classroom space tucked into OSFA — earlier this year.

“We as financial aid practitioners really were looking for ways to be more creative and innovative with how we do business and how we award funds to students,” says Derek Kindle, the UW’s director of student financial aid. As a result, OSFA decided to bring in Nicholas Hillman — an associate professor in the School of Education who studies higher-education finance and policy research — to provide his expertise and to direct the SSTAR Lab.

With nationwide concerns about college affordability, the SSTAR Lab, which also employs graduate students, aims to conduct financial-aid research that leads to practical and lasting solutions. Its direct partnership with the financial aid office is a rare one in the field — to Hillman’s knowledge, it’s the only lab of its type at a university.

“There’s just a big gap between what we do as academics and what practitioners need to solve problems in real time,” he says. “I think people are doing a lot of really innovative work with financial aid, but nothing in this format where we’re working in partnership with practitioners to help solve problems.”

Blank outlined several key goals and investments for the university. One is to build on educational outcomes by offering greater flexibility for students. An increase in online courses is helping students meet credit requirements while they’re studying abroad or doing an internship. The UW is exploring all-online degree programs for nontraditional students, with the hope of developing at least one undergraduate program by 2020. It’s expanding early-start programs, which allow incoming freshmen to earn credits during the summer, and rolling out gap-year programs, which will accommodate those who earn admission but wish to delay full enrollment so they can travel, work, or volunteer.

A second priority is accessibility. The UW established Bucky’s Tuition Promise last year to reduce the financial burden on low- and middle-income families. Four years of tuition is now covered for any incoming Wisconsin student whose family’s household income is below the state median of $58,000. Noting that the university has tripled its investment in scholarships over the past 10 years, Blank said that it still faces shrinking state and federal aid. “I want every student who can qualify for admission to UW–Madison to be able to afford to come,” she said.

Blank identified research as an area of concern, with the UW’s expenditures lagging behind its peers over the past decade. Despite an 11 percent increase in research dollars during the past two years, the UW has dropped to sixth in national research expenditures, following decades among the top five universities. To address the trend, the UW is increasing stipends to attract top graduate students and establishing industry partnerships with the likes of GE Healthcare, Johnson Controls, and Foxconn.

Above all, the quality of the university “rests on its faculty,” Blank said. A cluster-hire program, which recruits cross-disciplinary faculty members with aligned interest in high-demand research areas, will hire more than 50 faculty members over five years. Another program is giving departments new tools and financial support to recruit faculty members from underrepresented groups in their respective fields. The biggest barrier remains the lack of competitive pay. “We’re number 14 of the 14 Big Ten schools,” Blank said, noting that UW professors earn, on average, 10.4 percent less than those at peer institutions. “That does not reflect our reputation and our strength.”

All of these key areas, Blank said, require reinvestment from the university as well as a renewed commitment by the state. She concluded by quoting former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “If you want to create a great city” — and a great state, she added — “first create a great university, and then wait 100 years.”

Women have served as UW chancellor for 14 of the last 31 years. Illustration by N. B. Rinehart; photos by Jeff Miller

Donna Shalala

When Donna Shalala entered Bascom Hall at 6 a.m. for her first day on the job in 1988, a security guard told her, “You must have a tough boss.” As it turned out, she was the boss — making history as the first woman to serve as UW–Madison’s chief executive and one of only a few to lead a major research university.

“I’m sure she’s going to shake the place up,” Robert Clodius, a former UW acting president, prophetically told the Wisconsin State Journal after she was hired.

Just as Shalala arrived on campus as chancellor, Mary Rouse became the first woman to hold the title of dean of students. A year later, Shalala created the position of vice chancellor for legal and executive affairs and selected Melany Newby, the UW’s first female vice chancellor and top lawyer. In 1991, Sue Riseling was hired as the director of police and security, becoming the first female campus police chief in the Big Ten and one of just a handful in the country. “I’m a manager who brings about change,” Riseling told the State Journal at the time. Now, a woman entering high office in Bascom Hall is a familiar sight. Between Shalala, Biddy Martin PhD’85, and Rebecca Blank, women have been in charge of the university for almost half of the past three decades. Many other central leadership positions — provost, top administrators for research and student affairs, deans of various schools and colleges — have also been held by women in recent years.

Progress, however, can feel slow. A year after Shalala arrived, students criticized her for hiring three men to fill dean and vice chancellor vacancies. (The only female dean at the time was the School of Nursing’s Vivian Littlefield.) Shalala defended the moves and insisted that the UW was still committed to diversifying leadership. “The proof is what the UW will look like in three years,” she told the Capital Times. “Come back and take a look then.”

Jeff Miller

Say farewell to Nails’ Tales, the sculpture that has stood outside Camp Randall since 2005. A new plan released in March indicates that the 50-foot-tall obelisk created by Donald Lipski will not remain at the stadium.

Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection

This elegant purse was one piece in the original bequest of Professor Helen Louise Allen to form the textile teaching collection that — 50 years on — still bears her name and continues to inform students, researchers, and historians today. This piece has become a talisman for the collection’s golden anniversary, which the School of Human Ecology is celebrating this year. The purse is an example of an ancient art called zardozi, a distinctive metallic embroidery associated with India and the Middle East. Taken from the Persian words for gold (zar) and embroidery (dozi), zardozi is usually formed around natural motifs wrought in silver, gold, and copper wire or metallic threads accented with sequins, beads, pearls, semi-precious stones, and jewels.

Bryce Richter

October 6
Grand opening, 6 p.m.; includes exhibits unveiling, artisan demonstrations, UW Marching Band, and appearances by alumni who are featured in park exhibits

October 7–8
Opening celebrations continue with tours, exhibits, and family- friendly art activities

October 13
Day of Learning programs with alumni who are featured in the park

October 20
Postparade Homecoming block party lights up Alumni Park

October and November
Join weekend tours and open houses

November 3–4
Wisconsin Science Festival programs

November 9–11
Celebrate alumni in public service

November 17
Special Global Hot Spots with Park-featured alumni

For more details, see alumnipark.com.

At least eighteen wild foxes make their home on the UW campus, including this young animal seen (here and in the photos below) roaming the grounds near the Soils Building on a spring morning. The kit and its siblings became social media stars when they were spotted living in the Observatory Hill area beginning in March. Some students took fox sightings as good omens for their exam grades. Photos: Jeff Miller.

The fox is in town and stealing hearts all over Madison.

From the steps of Bascom to the trails of Muir Woods and even atop the Water Science and Engineering Laboratory roof, red foxes recently have claimed the campus for their own. They’ve inspired a Tumblr page and a Twitter hashtag, and now, research projects aimed at understanding these urban canids.

“We think there are a lot around, and their populations are growing,” says David Drake, a UW associate professor of forest and wildlife ecology and an extension wildlife specialist who is studying the foxes. He will soon have a new graduate student working to better understand the wild animals that call the heart of campus home.

At last count, Drake says there were at least eighteen foxes on the UW campus, and he has received calls from people all over the city reporting additional sightings.

Drake wants to know how these nimble creatures coexist in a human-dominated landscape. Where do they go when they roam, whom do they encounter, and how many urban chicken coops and gardens might they be raiding? He plans to get the public involved.

So far, the foxes seem to have adapted well to their bustling environment, taking advantage of ample habitat under campus buildings, and finding plenty of fresh rabbits and other prey to eat. Kits born this spring and raised by their mother will strike out on their own this fall.

How far will they stray? Drake hopes to find out.