Holloway Schar had deep UW roots and strongly believed in the power of individuals to better the world. C&N Photography

Soyeon Shim, dean of the School of Human Ecology (SoHE), has received one of the highest honors in academia — an endowed deanship. It’s named after the late Elizabeth Holloway Schar ’75, marking the first time in the university’s history that such a deanship has been named solely in honor of a woman.

Shim: “I see a future where all UW students will graduate with a human-centered approach to problem-solving and strategic thinking.” Courtesy of School of Human Ecology

Endowed deanships provide funds for current and future deans to support the strategic direction of their school. Because deanships are not limited to a particular program or research area, they give the school flexibility in fulfilling its mission.

The Elizabeth Holloway Schar Deanship fund was made possible by a visionary group of donors, including Linda Ahlers ’72; Leola Culver; Lynn ’69 and Gary Mecklenburg; Nancy Nicholas ’55; Dorothy O’Brien ’70; Richard Antoine ’69; Elizabeth ’75 and Mark Schar; Jane ’72 and Patrick ’72 Thiele; and one anonymous contributor.

Schar had deep UW roots and strongly believed in the power of individuals to better the world, demonstrating a lifelong commitment to making a difference. Her loved ones described her as humble, curious, and compassionate. She was also a SoHE Board of Visitors chair emerita and a campaign committee chair for the All Ways Forward campaign.

“Elizabeth was such an inspirational leader and close friend to all of us as well as a distinguished alumna and a human ecologist through and through,” says Shim. “She has left a huge legacy, and it is up to us to live up to that.”

The gift will ensure the school’s future, help it to recruit and retain a diverse community of outstanding scholars, and foster innovative approaches to solving societal problems. It will reflect the mission of its namesake by enhancing the school’s ability to improve the well-being of children, families, and communities.

“I see a future where all UW students will graduate with a human-centered approach to problem-solving and strategic thinking,” Shim says. “I welcome the challenges the future might bring because I am confident this is the time for human ecology to dream big and for our faculty, students, alumni, and friends to take bold steps to move forward toward a shared vision of excellence.”

“We can improve the standard of living by ensuring that students don’t have a lot of student loan debt,” says Hess. Bryce Richter

As America — and Wisconsin — try to navigate a deepening shortage of K–12 teachers, the UW–Madison School of Education is working to inspire more people to enter the profession. The Wisconsin Teacher Pledge gives students a chance to have their tuition waived if they promise to spend several years teaching at Wisconsin schools.

The National Education Association estimates that the United States has 300,000 fewer teachers than it needs, and in Wisconsin, 74 percent of school districts report being unable to fill positions. In August 2020, the School of Education announced the Teacher Pledge as part of its Impact 2030 campaign: tuition forgiveness for all students who promise to teach in the state for at least four years, or three years in high-need subjects or school districts.

“Salaries in Wisconsin are very low for teachers,” says Diana Hess, the dean of the School of Education. “We can’t do anything directly to improve the salaries, but we can improve the standard of living by ensuring that students don’t have a lot of student loan debt.”

To be eligible for tuition forgiveness, students make the pledge when they’re admitted to a teacher education program, usually after their sophomore year or when they enter as graduate students. The school gives those students a loan that covers tuition and then forgives a percentage of that loan as the students fulfill each year of teaching after they graduate. Hess believes that, after at least three years of working as a teacher, people are likely to commit to the profession for much longer.

But Hess says that the pledge is about more than attracting people into the teaching profession. It’s also a live study to see if the loan forgiveness program really does keep teachers in the profession long-term.

“We’re trying to find out, essentially, does it work and does it work to hit those goals?” Hess says. If the data back that up, she hopes to see the pledge program expand.

Currently about 500 students have taken the Teacher Pledge, and Hess is seeking funding to continue the program into the future.

After unexpected construction delays, students returned to spring-semester classes in the new, state-of-the-art Chemistry Building, which includes a nine-story tower that adds much-needed space to the old facility.

More than half of UW–Madison undergraduates take at least one chemistry class, and with the previous inadequate building, some of them were reduced to taking core classes at other universities, while others experienced delays in earning a degree.

The $133 million upgrade, which began in 2018, allows the university to meet an increased demand for courses required by students majoring in STEM fields.

In the above photo, two general chemistry students meet with their TA (at right) in one of the seventh-floor write-up rooms. The remodeled facility accommodates modern computers, equipment, and safety and teaching standards — including more collaborative learning. Every lab has a connected room where students can write up lab results, which they often had to do while sitting in the hallways of the old building. Classrooms and other spaces feature moveable tables, swivel seats, and similar innovations to enhance group work.

Shrey Ramesh x’24, above, operates a rotary evaporator in the Witting Lab for organic chemistry on the building’s eighth floor. The evaporator quickly removes solvents from reaction mixtures by means of a vacuum. The new building provides a number of the valuable evaporators for organic chemistry students. And, Ramesh says, “Going from online labs last semester to this in-person lab was a huge upgrade!” Another building amenity is a “library of the future” where students access information solely online.

Alumni contributed some $43,000 to the SVM Charter Class of 1987 Scholarship Fund for those who want to be veterinarians. Bryce Richter

The inaugural class at the UW’s School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) led the way as the first graduates in 1987, and now they’re leading the way again, in supporting others who want to become veterinarians.

Brad Poff DVM’87, one of the members of that first class, thought it would be a great idea for the class to create an endowed scholarship.

“We’re at an age when we’re retiring, we’re setting up estate plans— so it seemed like a great time to establish our charter class scholarship,” he says.

Poff rallied his peers to give some $43,000 to the SVM Charter Class of 1987 Scholarship Fund. “I hadn’t really been in contact with many of these folks for a long time,” he says. “I spent hours on the phone with people that I hadn’t talked to since vet school — it was a fun experience.”

Pete Gaveras DVM’87, who was one of the first to jump on board, agrees. “I personally am very proud of how our class came together with a common goal,” he says. The exchange of jokes and banter “kind of brought us back 30 years to some of the enjoyable times we had as classmates. It was just really touching.”

Gaveras, who sometimes refers his clients’ pets for treatment at SVM, has given scholarship gifts in memory of these pets, and fund donors can also give in honor of people. “I thought that was a nice touch,” he says.

“We had a unique relationship with the school as a class,” Gaveras adds, noting that, as the first students, they were able to provide considerable input and help shape the program. “As a result, a lot of us have maintained relationships with the school, and we appreciate being able to give back to a profession that has given so much to us.”

This wasn’t the first time that Poff has given back. Because he was a married father of two when he attended the UW’s veterinary school, he knew how hard it was to complete coursework while working — which he felt compelled to do in order to provide health insurance for his family. So, several years ago, he and his wife started a scholarship for students in similar circumstances. But Poff, who has spent his career in medical-device development, says, “I wanted to try to figure out how to do more — and the idea of a doing a class scholarship popped into my head.”

His veterinary school education, he says, “changed not just my life — it changed a bunch of people’s lives. Let’s pay that forward.”

UW–Madison’s six-year graduation rate is now 89.2 percent, putting it in the top 10 among public research universities. Bryce Richter

More UW–Madison undergrads than ever are graduating, and they’re taking less time to complete their degrees.

The university’s six-year and four-year graduation rates are at record highs. The six-year rate is now 89.2 percent, up from 88.5 percent the prior year — putting it in the top 10 among public research universities. The four-year rate rose to 71.8 percent, up from 71.2 percent.

The gap in six-year graduation rates between underrepresented students of color and the overall rate has been cut by two-thirds over the last 10 years, from 18 percentage points for the 2006 entering cohort to 6 percentage points for the 2015 entering cohort.

The average time-to-degree for 2020–21 bachelor’s degree recipients has also shortened again, to 3.89 years, setting another UW–Madison record. Undergraduate retention rates have remained robust, and the total number of degrees conferred, including bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, rose to 11,663, the highest ever.

“It’s impressive that all of these metrics continue to be so strong despite the impacts of a global pandemic,” says Provost Karl Scholz. “This could not have happened without the extra efforts of our faculty and staff and the hard work of our students during this exceptionally challenging time.”

“Games are really powerful, complex experiences,” says UW–Madison psychology professor C. Shawn Green. Danielle Lawry

New research reveals that playing video games that are heavy on action can make you better at some new tasks, teaching players to be quicker learners.

C. Shawn Green, a UW–Madison psychology professor who studies how people learn, likens the concept to the way that general physical training can help players learn new sports more quickly by increasing their athleticism.

“If you’re increasing the equivalent of athleticism for perceptual cognitive abilities — like visual attention or speed of processing — that should allow you to learn faster when you’ve got a new task that calls on those abilities,” Green says.

The results will help researchers understand how gaming — which is used to train laparoscopic surgeons and drone pilots, and to help people with amblyopia (sometimes called “lazy eye”) and attention deficit disorders — creates some of its well-documented positive effects.

“Games are really powerful, complex experiences,” says Green, who collaborated on the study with researchers from several other universities. “We know they produce interesting changes in behavior, but their level of complexity makes them hard to study.”

In a pair of experiments, participants were separated into roughly equal groups assigned to play 45 hours of either action video games (such as those from the Call of Duty series) or other popular video games that unfold at a different pace without relying so much on visual attention and reaction speed (such as Sims and Zoo Tycoon).

Before the players began their gaming assignments, they were tested with tasks that measured their visual perception and working memory skills. Both groups came out relatively even in the initial tests. But after their contrasting gaming experiences, the action game players “had a slight advantage right away,” says Green. “But the bigger effect was that they improved faster at these orientation and memory tasks than the people who played other games.”

The findings will help future game designers who are focused on maximizing the training aspects of the popular form of entertainment.

Graaskamp (left) built models that showed why successful development always respected people, society, and the environment. Norman Lenburg, UW Archives S08450

To students, James Graaskamp PhD’65 was “The Chief.” A brilliant scholar, he espoused an ethical approach to real estate development that put the UW atop national rankings.

“The successful real estate deal is nothing more than a series of crises tied together by a critical path,” he said.

Graaskamp built a legacy as a determined, creative problem-solver, a master teacher, and a devoted mentor. As a professor and department chair, he led the UW’s real estate faculty from 1964 to 1988.

Graaskamp’s approach to real estate development built on the legacy of the Wisconsin Idea. He prioritized ethics over profits, building models that showed why successful development always respected people, society, and the environment.

Practitioners remain inspired by Graaskamp’s portfolio-management theory as well as his seminal works, Fundamentals of Real Estate Development and A Guide to Feasibility Analysis. But those who knew him were equally inspired by his scholarship and spirit.

“He pursued life with unbridled enthusiasm, energy, curiosity, and courage,” one colleague said. “His positive outlook and lack of self-pity were living testimony to the potential of the human spirit.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing at Rollins College, an MBA at Marquette University, and a PhD at the UW in urban land economics and risk management before accepting a full-time faculty position. He also ran his own private consultancy, Landmark Research, and advised policymakers who oversaw Wisconsin’s rapid development during the 1970s and ’80s.

Graaskamp lost the use of his arms and legs after contracting polio in high school, and he used a wheelchair during his adult life. He hired trusted students as “materials handlers” to assist him in his day-to-day activities, which included work, travel, and occasional deep-sea fishing. As a teacher, Graaskamp could be demanding, but he captured students’ attention with his mentorship, intellect, and quotable lectures, using his teeth to hold an 18-inch stick — his “magic wand” — to turn paper notes.

His contributions are fittingly honored on campus through the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate and in the McBurney Disability Resource Center, which ensures access to students with disabilities.

Just as he believed that real estate could bring about good for society, he was also outspoken about support for the university’s people: “When you’re asked to give, give for endowments, not buildings. Just as the church is the congregation, not the structure, a university is a fellowship of motivated scholars, not an indoor athletic facility and column-free temple for graduation speeches.”

Graaskamp died in 1988 while he was still department chair. The university had great difficulty appointing a worthy successor.

Help is here, courtesy of some of UW–Madison’s newest faculty members. As part of their introduction to campus, we asked them: “What’s something interesting about your area of expertise you can share that will make us sound smarter at parties?”

Whether you use the information to impress your friends or just learn something interesting for yourself, consider this a bit of the Wisconsin Idea you can bring to your next social gathering.

Allergies Aren’t Immutable

Often, people think that allergies are predictable, but they can change and evolve over time. You might start out with an allergy to one particular food, like a type of nut, then later on find out that you’re also allergic to other nuts or foods. Reactions can change and evolve pretty dramatically, too, and can become more or less severe over time.

— Anne Ersig, assistant professor, nursing

The Mysteries of Dark Matter

We know very little about the universe that we live in. The observable part of the universe is only about 4 percent. The other 96 percent of it is made of what is called dark matter and dark energy. Many experiments all over the world, including the experiment that I work on at the Large Hadron Collider, are trying to figure out what this overwhelming majority of the universe is made of.

— Tulika Bose, professor, physics

A Moo Point

Cows spend several hours a day ruminating — that is, chewing. The most interesting thing about this process is that ruminants’ brain waves resemble humans’ brain waves while sleeping.

— Luiz Ferraretto MS’11, PhD’15, assistant professor, dairy science; ruminant nutrition specialist, Division of Extension

He Likes It! He Likes It!

Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the Spanish lyrics for the most recent revival of West Side Story. He met composer Stephen Sondheim when he worked on that project, and Sondheim asked him what he was going to do after his hit musical In the Heights. Miranda said he was thinking about a musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton and Miranda said Sondheim threw back his head and said, “That’s a fantastic idea.” That’s what kept Miranda going during the writing of Hamilton when he’d have trouble with something. He knew he was on the right track if Sondheim liked the idea.

— Margaret Butler, associate professor, musicology

Bad Boarding Practice

Many airlines split the passengers into several groups during the boarding. Yet mathematical results indicate that this is actually bad and only slows down the boarding process.

—Vadim Gorin, associate professor, mathematics

Devoted Dads

The idea that Black fathers are generally uninvolved and disinterested in the lives of their children is a cruel fabrication and a fallacy. The research indicates that not only are Black fathers intimately involved and interested in the lives of their children, but that Black fathers who do not share residence with their children are more involved than any of their ethnic counterparts.

— Alvin Thomas, assistant professor, human development and family studies

Park and Bark

The trend in opera today eschews the old style, in which singers essentially stood, sang, and made rather meaningless arm gestures.That old-school practice is commonly known in operatic circles as “park and bark.”

— David Ronis, associate professor, music

Capitol Cause

I always love to tell people about the Capitol Crawl, which was an important moment in disability history. Over 1,000 people marched to the steps of the U.S. Capitol to protest for disability rights and the eventual passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The youngest was an eight-year-old girl, Jennifer Keelan, who got out of her wheelchair and pulled herself up the Capitol steps. You can learn more about it in the movie Crip Camp, which is available on Netflix.

— Carlyn Mueller, assistant professor, rehabilitation psychology and special education

No Accounting for Accounting

To many people’s surprise, there are no right answers in accounting. The judgments and estimates underlying the preparation of financial reports are numerous and can lead to very interesting incentives and a high degree of second-guessing that makes accounting much more a social science than a hard science.

— Tom Linsmeier MBA’80, PhD’85, Thomas Ragatz Accounting and Law Distinguished Chair

Combating Climate Change

The idea of carbon footprints — a process for estimating a person’s individual contribution to climate change — was popularized by the fossil fuel company BP. The problem is that it focuses attention on individual rather than structural change.

— Morgan Edwards, assistant professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs

Science Nonfiction

Unlike humans who can breathe only oxygen (a gas), many microbes can breathe solid compounds.

— Karthik Anantharaman, assistant professor, bacteriology

So Fries are Healthy?

Potato is rich in vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant that can help the human body form and maintain bones, blood vessels, and skin. A five-ounce potato will supply nearly 50 percent of an average adult’s daily requirement for vitamin C.

Yi Wang PhD’12, assistant professor, horticulture; Division of Extension specialist

Mendota Has a Meltdown

Lake Mendota is one of the most studied lakes in the world. For instance, we have more than 150 years of lake-ice data. In the 1850s, Lake Mendota averaged about 120 days a year with lake ice. Recently it has been closer to 80 days, and 2015–16 and 2016–17 had only 62 and 65 days [with lake ice].

— Hilary Dugan, assistant professor, integrative biology

The Martian Invasion

Contrary to popular belief, the 1938 War of the Worlds radio play didn’t cause widespread hysteria. There were some people who misinterpreted the broadcast as a news report about a real Martian invasion, but most of them simply called either the police or their local news outlets to determine the veracity of the broadcast. So while the image of people panicking in the streets and weeping in churches is certainly more entertaining, the reality is that the impact of the incident was largely exaggerated.

— Kate Christy, assistant professor, journalism and mass communication

The Dirt on Dirt

Soil is alive! It’s estimated that 20,000 pounds of living matter exists in the top six inches of an acre of soil. Also, one tablespoon of soil harbors more organisms than there are people on Earth.

— Zac Freedman, assistant professor, soil science, and O. N. Allen Professor of Soil Microbiology

Myths and Misconceptions

In contrast to common knowledge about what an American family looks like, it was only for a short period of time that the American family was composed of a breadwinner, a nonemployed mother, and two children.

— Eunsil Oh, assistant professor, sociology

Musical Notes

What we know as the banjo in the United States is likely a modified version of the ngoni, a string instrument originally from West Africa, which enslaved individuals brought from Africa. You can learn more about the history of the African origins of the banjo in Béla Fleck’s 2008 documentary Throw Down Your Heart.

 — Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué, assistant professor, African cultural studies

Early Influences Rule

Often people think of infancy and toddlerhood as a time when children are unaware of many things happening around them and assume that children will not be deeply impacted by stressors that the family is facing. In fact, early exposures, experiences, and relationships provide the foundations for the child’s developmental trajectory and relational capacities across the life course.

— Tova Walsh, assistant professor, social work

Baby Bookworms

Usually, individuals consider that youngsters [are first taught reading and writing] in early elementary school. However, younger youngsters interact with literacy from their very first weeks and months on this planet! We are able to see emergent literacy practices in their first turns of the pages of a board book, their first phrases, and their — deeply significant — first scribbles on a page.

— Emily Machado, assistant professor, early childhood education

Historic View

In nighttime photographs of Berlin from the International Space Station, the city’s Cold War partition is still visible. West Berlin uses environmentally friendly fluorescent streetlights that give off a white glow, while East Berlin uses older, sodium-vapor lamps that glow orange. It’s a striking reminder of how, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, legacies of that division continue to impact life in the city — and in Germany and Europe more broadly.

— Brandon Bloch, assistant professor, history

High on Health

Cannabis has been used for healing purposes since at least 1500 BC.

— Natalie Schmitz, assistant professor, pharmacy practice

And You Thought 50 Was Old

The earth is about 4.56 billion years old. The oldest mineral fragments that we have preserved from the early earth are up to 4.37 billion years old, and the oldest continental crust that is still intact and for which the age is undisputed is about 4 billion years old. There’s a lot of missing history in the earliest part of the terrestrial rock record, but there are several people at UW–Madison trying to parse out what we can from the little amount of material we have.

— Annie Bauer, assistant professor, geoscience

How Do You Like Them Cranberries?

Wisconsin is the leading producer of cranberries in the U.S.! Cranberries do not grow in water, despite that popular belief. They grow in sandy marshes, and when they are ready for harvest the marshes are flooded and the cranberries float to the top.

— Leslie Holland, assistant professor, plant pathology; fruit crop pathology specialist, Division of Extension

Warfarin’s Namesake

A common medication to prevent strokes is named after the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation: warfarin.

— Amanda Margolis, assistant professor, pharmacy practice

Beauty of Language

Ojibwe, like perhaps all of Wisconsin’s Native languages, is extraordinarily complex and beautiful. Imagine any given verb having several thousand unique forms and expressions. Indigenous languages are also incredibly adaptive. Not only do they give brilliant explanation to the many place names on Wisconsin maps and roads, but they can quite exactly describe and name anything in the modern world.

—Brian McInnes, associate professor, civil society and community studies

Learning Curve

Autism is a relatively new diagnosis. Most people do not know that the first individual diagnosed with it is currently in his 80s. Because the first people diagnosed with autism have only recently reached old age, we do not know much about what the normal life course looks like for them.

— Lauren Bishop-Fitzpatrick, assistant professor, social work; investigator, Waisman Center

Bryce Richter

Below are some of the thank-you letters from students who received scholarships through the All Ways Forward Comprehensive Campaign. Their gratitude shows just one of the ways that the campaign has made a difference — changing not only students’ lives, but the lives of their families as well.

I come from a low-income family, and without scholarships from donors like you, I wouldn’t be able to get my degree without swimming in debt. I want to change the world of food science, and your help gets me closer to that goal.

— Bea Sutton x’24

I cannot thank the donors enough for their financial support. If I wasn’t [receiving financial assistance], there is no way I could be attending UW–Madison. I grew up in a single-parent, low-income house- hold and wasn’t expected to go far in life. Being a first-generation college student at this prestigious university shows I am beating the odds stacked against me. I am so thankful for the education I am gaining and will not take it for granted.

— Melanie Spencer x’23

This [scholarship] has certainly changed the course of my life, and without it, I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. This [gift] has made it possible for me to get my education and one day change my family’s life. Once I graduate and am able to start making more money, I can then provide more for my family as well.

— Anthony Yang x’25

First and foremost, I am thankful. It has been a mission for me to help my family financially (specifically my mom, who’s in Puerto Rico), after graduating college and getting a job. I first moved to the U.S. back in middle school because I wanted to pursue higher education. … It is something that not many see happen back in Puerto Rico.

— Elliot Lopez-Henriquez x’25

Support for an artist is extremely vital; a lot of people don’t understand how expensive artistic pursuits can be. The scholarship will allow me to change each of my cello strings and bow hairs without struggling to find the funds to do so. Receiving the scholarship validates my purpose and studies in college, and I am forever grateful.

— Ivan Xiong x’24

Most people don’t understand the effects of generational poverty or the immense pride that comes with breaking out of it. To provide someone with that ability is beyond incredible.

— Kora Zoe Quinn x’23

I would say that people who … give like this understand what it is to help other people. They understand that there is a world out there and there are lives beyond their own, and that you don’t have to know or meet someone to be kind to them. They make the world a better place in their own wonderful way, and I hope they know what this means to the people who receive their help.

— Leah Morley x’24

Worrying about finances has been a part of my life since I was a toddler, and even though I believe because of it I am a more responsible, independent person, I do not enjoy continuously thinking about money, or lack thereof. I know that my education has been improved as I have more attention to give it; I know my life has been improved because I’ve seen the struggles of my sisters and my mother with massive student debt. Receiving this scholarship has been monumental, and I appreciate it every single day in some aspect.

— Lowell Harwell x’23

The moment I found out about the scholarship is still one of the best moments of my life.  This opportunity literally changed my life.

— Matthew Dwyer x’23

I want to personally thank the donors for this scholarship, because I come from a generation of immigrants. My parents work their hearts out every day for my brother and me. Therefore, all the help I can get so that my parents don’t have to worry about my college expenses means the world to me.

— Vy Lu x’24

“Our sense of community is stronger than the pandemic,” says Chancellor Rebecca Blank. Bryce Richter

Bascom Hill swarming with students. Camp Randall full of fans. Classrooms and labs teeming with activity.

University officials are increasingly optimistic that many once-common campus sights soon will return. While the pandemic is not over, it’s time to prepare for life after COVID-19, Chancellor Rebecca Blank told the campus community in late March.

“Our students should plan to be in Madison in the fall,” Blank said in a blog post. “Our dining facilities and our academic and research resources will all be open, and our residence halls will be fully occupied.”

Not everything will be the same, of course. “It’s a new normal, not our old normal,” she said.

In February, interim UW System president Tommy Thompson ’63, JD’66 directed campuses to aim for at least 75 percent of all classes being in person in fall 2021. UW–Madison officials say they expect to surpass that goal.

Plans are underway for nearly all of the UW–Madison courses that were offered in person in the fall of 2019 to return to in-person instruction in fall 2021. There will be a smaller number of hybrid and online classes, similar to what the university has offered in the past, and others will integrate technology more directly into an in-person learning experience.

There are still many unknowns, Blank cautioned. Concerns about public health will continue to be top of mind.

“One thing that we’ve learned during this year is that our sense of community is stronger than the pandemic,” Blank said. “Just as we made multiple changes on campus to adjust to the challenges of the past year, we will do the work needed to facilitate our return.”