What are you studying at UW?

Right now, I’m in the School of Public Affairs, getting a Master’s in Public Affairs, which is public policy, and I’m also doing a Master’s in Public Health at the School of Medicine and Public Health.

What draws you to those fields?

One is because I recognize that health is power. Your ability to live your best life. If you’re not healthy, if you don’t have access to being a healthy person, that has large effects on who you are as a person and your ability to thrive as a person in this world. And I also know that policy dictates that a lot. So thinking about access to health care, thinking about the environment that you live in, thinking about your access to healthy foods, and that’s why I really like my studies.

I’m trying to really focus on the concept of health and all policies, recognizing that all policies affect your health in one way or another, whether that be education, whether that be transportation, whether that be healthcare. So that’s something that I’m very passionate about and excited about in my studies.

What do you do for the Campus Area Neighborhood Association?

As the President of CANA, I’ve been lucky to be part of a team of people that I’m really invested in and really excited about, engaging students, engaging local community members in what is going on in Madison — specifically around the topics of housing, voting and general civic engagement. We’re really trying to build community and get people aware of how they can impact their community and how they have a lot of power as someone who is living in the community — especially in Madison, where neighborhood associations and local government can be influenced just by people showing up.

How many volunteers work with CANA?

It really depends on the project, sometimes it can get up to 30 people volunteering to work on a project. But I would say we have a dedicated core of eight people. There’s also so many people outside CANA who we couldn’t do this without.

What is the importance of what CANA does for the UW community?

We provide a bridge to local government, in a way. We work really closely with all the alders in the downtown area that represent District 8, District 4 and District 2, to figure out what is happening in local government. I think what’s difficult is that if students don’t show up, there’s a lot of people on City Council and in the community that think that students don’t care about Madison, and students don’t have a say in what’s going on in Madison. Challenging those beliefs takes organizing, and it takes a neighborhood association that should be there to at least hold some space for that to happen.

What is one thing you want students to know about CANA?

In one sentence, we try to make Madison seem a lot more accessible in terms of government and events.

What is one thing you want students to know about you?

I’m not afraid to rock the boat or stir things up when something needs to get done.

What else do you do for work?

I’m a Suicide Prevention Project Assistant at UHS. I guess a line through a lot of my work is trying to make the world a better place. And trying to make people feel cared for. I feel like one thing I do in a lot of my work is find links. Trying to spread the love, in a way, and showing people that there’s a lot of stuff out there that you will be accepted in, and people want you to be there. I try to bring that in all different realms of my work in a way through stuff I do at UHS, stuff I do at CANA, even stuff I do in school to try and be a good person.

Where can people expect to bump into you on campus?

I’d say you probably see me in Memorial Library. No doubt. I love the grad lounge there. I like going to the Union — cliche UW stuff. You probably see me walking around East Campus Mall because I walk through there for class, I walk through there for work, we do tabling there for CANA.

What can students come to you for?

If they saw me out and about and they want to know what has gone on in Madison, I can tell them what is going on in Madison. Volunteer opportunities, what’s the scoop in local government. Students can even come to me for my work at UHS, learning more about how to support others. I guess in a way they always come to me for a laugh. I’m a goofy person so I would have a stupid joke or something to say. I feel like I try my best to spread some sunshine. So come to me for news, a laugh or good vibes.

What’s next for you?

After the CANA elections are over, I will not be the president of CANA but I will be the president of Capitol Neighborhoods Inc., a conglomerate of neighborhood associations that covers Mansion Hill, Miffland, the Bassett District and James Madison.

The post People of UW: CANA President Eli Tsarovsky talks local government, student voices appeared first on The Badger Herald.

Eilers came to UW from Racine, Wisconsin, where, though she was surrounded by a diverse population, history was not talked about from the angle of diversity.

“There’s a diverse population there, but we were not taught anything surrounding diverse histories,” Eilers said. “So coming to UW was really my first exposure, despite being Afro-Latinx. I didn’t really have any exposure to my own history.”

Eilers earned a certificate in Chican@ and Latin@ Studies as an undergraduate student. Now, she is the senior advisor for the program — overseeing the 230 students declared in the certificate. This fall, Eilers will begin declaring interested students in the CLS major, which was approved in the spring.

Students in the CLS program enter a variety of career fields — from engineering, to nursing, to social work. The knowledge and skills students gain through CLS classes prepares them to be culturally informed and to work with diverse populations, Eilers said.

Since many courses offered by the CLS program fulfill UW’s current Ethnic Studies Requirement, which aims to help students foster an understanding and appreciation of diversity, students outside of the program can also enroll in CLS courses. Eilers said 20-25% of students in introductory-level CLS courses are declared in the certificate. This number rises in upper-level CLS courses, where the majority of students — about 75-80% — are declared in the certificate.

Ethnic studies is important in helping students learn to value their own cultural identity, while also understanding and appreciating the identities of those around them, according to the National Education Association.

But UW’s ESR only accounts for three credits of a student’s 120-credit degree, and advocates have long pressed for the expansion of the requirement, or that some of the topics taught in ethnic studies courses be woven into curricula across campus.

“I just wish I would have experienced more or sooner, rather than having to take advantage of an ethnic studies class [at UW] to cover some of that content,” Eilers said.

A harrowing history

The ESR at UW formed in response to racist incidents on and around the UW campus.

In May 1987, students arrived in blackface to a “Fiji Island” party, where a large caricature of a “native” Black man with distorted lips and a bone through his nose greeted them on the Phi Gamma Delta lawn.

The display drew outrage and a protest at the house. The Black Student Union issued a statement denouncing this as racist and demanding UW take action to prevent such behavior from recurring. Despite their demands, this event was later cited in an October 1988 New York Times report that detailed another incident involving a UW fraternity who “stirred racial unrest” on campus — a “slave auction.”

BSU and several other organizations, including the Pacific and Asian Women’s Alliance, the Chicano Graduate Student Organization and Union Puertorriqueña, formed the Minority Coalition in June 1987.

The following month, then-acting vice chancellor Phillip Certain appointed a Steering Committee on Minority Affairs composed of faculty, students and academic staff from areas across campus. Both graduate and undergraduate members of the Minority Coalition were appointed to the Steering Committee.

Chaired by undergraduate student Charles Holley, the Committee issued what became known as the “Holley Report” on Dec. 1, 1987. The report included several recommendations — among them, the development of an ethnic studies requirement and ethnic studies programs.

“[t]he University must implement a mandatory six credit ethnic studies course requirement; and create and develop various Ethnic Studies Programs,” the report said. “These measures will recognize the contributions of ethnic minorities of American society and promote cross-cultural understanding and respect among the entire student body.”

April 18, 1988, the L&S Faculty Senate adopted a three-credit ESR to “better prepare students for life and careers in an increasingly multicultural U.S. environment, add breadth and depth to the university curriculum and improve the campus climate.”

While UW was thrust into the national spotlight following the New York Times report, a staggering 92 percent of undergraduate students were white in the fall of 1989. This requirement went into effect for all students entering L&S for the first semester of the 1989-90 academic year.

Other UW schools and colleges adopted the L&S ESR in years that followed, and a three-credit ESR for all incoming freshmen and transfer students was approved in May 1994.

In 2002, an Ethnic Studies Review Committee made recommendations surrounding ethnic studies courses, which were then turned into actionable items by an Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee beginning in 2003. Now, an Ethnic Studies Subcommittee with a rotating chairperson conducts reviews of ethnic studies courses — ensuring they meet guidelines and expectations for the ESR.

Defining the ESR

UW’s current ESR has four learning outcomes that are ultimately aimed at fostering an understanding and appreciation of diversity. Unlike other general education requirements, the ESR cannot be fulfilled with advanced standing credits from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams. The ESR must be fulfilled with a course taken in residence at UW.

In addition to fulfilling the ESR in residence, students must also complete an OurWisconsin module, which consists of an online inclusion course, follow-up survey and in-person programming opportunities, according to UW Student Affairs.

The four learning outcomes of the ESR are that students will: “articulate how the past has affected present day circumstances regarding race and racial inequities in the U.S., recognize and question cultural assumptions and knowledge claims as they relate to race and ethnicity, demonstrate self-awareness and empathy toward the cultural perspectives and worldview of others, and apply course concepts to their lives outside the classroom by respectfully participating in our multicultural society.”

There are over 200 courses available on UW’s campus at a variety of levels on a variety of topics that fulfill the ESR. Courses that fulfill the requirement are primarily focused on race and racism in the U.S., according to Lori Lopez, former committee chair of the Ethnic Studies Subcommittee and professor in the Communication Arts, Asian American Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies departments.

Ethnic studies courses should look at the experiences of persistently marginalized communities, Lopez said. This includes courses offered by the American Indian & Indigenous Studies, African American Studies, Chican@ & Latin@ Studies and Asian American Studies departments, along with courses outside of these departments that also fulfill the four learning outcomes.

“It has to involve critical thinking skills to help students think about their own positionality, to help students think about their place in our multicultural society — things like that,” Lopez said.

But despite the wide array of courses, a 2016-17 Ethnic Studies Subcommittee review found three courses account for 32% of all ESR course enrollments — Cultural Anthropology and Human Diversity (Anthropology 104), Sociology of Race & Ethnicity in the United States (Sociology 134) and Population Problems (Sociology 170).

The ESR is expected to be fulfilled within a student’s first 60 undergraduate credits at UW, according to UW General Education Requirements, and a 2011 review found over half of students were fulfilling the requirement in their first four semesters.

Because of this, undergraduate advisor for International Studies Molly Donnellen said many students are encouraged to fulfill the requirement early on in their time on campus.

“It’s a requirement everybody’s going to need and there are a wide number of courses that are available to meet the requirement,” Donnellen said. “It’s usually a pretty safe recommendation in those first semesters if course access is tight.”

As a result, Donnellen said when most students come to her to declare a major, they have already fulfilled the ESR. And as an advisor of students majoring in international studies, most of the courses students take are focused on non-American topics — leaving little overlap with ethnic studies courses.

But Donnellen’s office is down the hallway from the Chican@ & Latin@ Studies, Asian American Studies and American Indian & Indigenous Studies department offices. Being in such close proximity, she has become familiar with the courses offered in these departments, in addition to the visiting lecturers they bring in and the community building efforts they support.

“In a sense, witnessing that every single day and knowing most students are coming to us with that kind of checked off and pretty much out of their realm is like ‘There’s this great thing going on, you should go check it out — and it’s going to be a valuable experience for you,’” Donnellen said.

PhD student in the School of Education Tony DelaRosa has experience teaching and researching on ethnic studies courses and the effectiveness of them in classrooms.

With UW’s three-credit ESR, DelaRosa said it is likely students treat this material and requirement as a “transactional experience” or a “one-and-done.”

“Once they take a course, their mind — one-and-done,” DelaRosa said. “So they move forward saying ‘You know, I don’t need this anymore’ … After that, what happens next? … You can only really build awareness of the content in the classroom and then maybe practice respecting each other in the classroom. But really, the work happens outside the classroom. That really requires long accountability.”

Donnellen also noted the importance of long-term learning as it pertains to ethnic studies, stating that while there are benefits and logical reasons to students fulfilling their ESR early on in their time on campus, a requirement that pushes students to continue thinking about these topics may allow students to delve deeper into the topics covered in these courses and may be beneficial.

“When you think about students, individual growth and learning, as young scholars and as people, you learn how to think more critically or you learn how to understand information in a different way,” Donnellen said. “You’re taking in a lot of that really substantive and important information at a time when you’re still figuring out how to learn. There is a great benefit to that, but there’s also maybe some lost opportunity in being able to dig into those issues at a more advanced level, or have a second requirement that allows you to continue that thought process and learning.”

An ongoing fight

Students and faculty have long recognized the importance of ethnic studies and have advocated for the expansion of the requirement.

The Ethnic Studies Review Committee of 2016-17, chaired by Lopez, recommended the increase of the undergraduate ESR from three credits to six credits, to include at least one upper-division ESR course.

“From the very origins of this requirement, it was always pitched as if it should be two classes, six credits,” Lopez said. “…But we had to build up the course array so that there would be enough ESR courses so that students could graduate on time if they took two of them or took more than one.”

With the approval of courses to fulfill the ESR in multiple departments across campus, the course array became more than sufficient, according to Lopez.

“There are so many ESR courses all across campus, and we have enough empty seats in them,” Lopez said. “We could encourage [students] to take more than one [ESR course] easily.”

In March 2021, the Associated Students of Madison released a letter endorsing the increase in the ESR, citing acts of hate on the UW campus and UW’s responsibility to provide students with the knowledge to be informed and empathetic individuals.

ASM Equity and Inclusion Committee Chair Emmett Lockwood said in an email statement to The Badger Herald that ASM still endorses this expansion.

Following the release of this letter, Lopez worked with students to have conversations across campus with deans, academic advisors and the faculty teaching ethnic studies courses.

“We went around to every single school and college and talked to either the dean or the person who runs their undergraduate education and had conversations about if they would work to expand the ESR and got mixed responses,” Lopez said. “Some deans thought that would be great for their college and some thought it would be really hard for them.”

But Lopez described the process of changing general education requirements as bureaucratic.

“A small change to the general education requirements has a big effect on every single student, times to graduation and stuff like that,” Lopez said. “A couple of the schools and colleges that feel their curriculum is so tight that students absolutely do not have room for one more class before they graduate are kind of an obstacle.”

Implementing increased ethnic studies credit requirements in individual schools and colleges might be more feasible, according to Lopez.

Lopez said the University Academic Planning Council has begun working on analyzing the expansion of the ESR and considering what policies may be best to recommend. This group will then propose a recommendation to the provost.

Lockwood said the Ethnic Studies Subcommittee, currently chaired by Professor Jerome Camal, has and is continuing to work with officials across campus to increase the number of courses offered.

“The Ethnic Studies Subcommittee has previously and is continuing to work with university officials at the school/college level to increase the number of ethnic studies courses offered in each college and to establish actionable timelines for the expansion of the ESR credit requirements, because as of Summer 2023, the College of Letters and Sciences, according to information given to ASM by the Secretary of the Faculty, was the only school/college offering ethnic studies courses,” Lockwood said.

Troubles with teaching

Lockwood said he understands expanding the ESR is not an automatic fix for racism and other forms of oppression on campus — or that one semester of an ethnic studies course and an OurWisconsin module is not enough to ensure an accepting, safe and inclusive campus.

“We heard last year in our Student Council meeting that students have been harmed by microaggressions and other racist acts even in ethnic studies courses, and far too often students of color are expected to provide a ‘learning experience’ for their white peers,” Lockwood said.

DelaRosa, who is Asian American, said he has been put in positions where he has been asked to provide this “learning experience” for his peers, but that professors should survey their students beforehand, to ensure this is something they are comfortable doing.

This may include going over the topics covered in the course and offering students who understand these topics and could help share knowledge the opportunity to share — consensually.

“We don’t just assume that Asian Americans like myself are going to share Asian American experiences,” DelaRosa said. “I might know more about Latinx narratives, I might know more about Black narratives. That survey component is super important for professors.”

And when students do choose to share their narratives in the classroom, DelaRosa said it is important to affirm them and their identities.

“Once you’re looking and you have multicultural narratives, you can use those and you can learn from them, depending on what they’re willing to share with you,” DelaRosa said. “And you want to affirm that. Ethnic studies is also about affirming identities in the classroom. You’re going to want to build your own narratives, your own knowledge of those identities.”

DelaRosa said it is important for instructors to not view their curriculum as stagnant, allowing students to participate in the learning process if they feel comfortable with it.

This pedagogy, known as culturally responsive teaching, enables students to understand their role as change agents in society, according to a 2016 study from Queens College. Culturally responsive teaching encourages students to become more involved in society — when students are able to relate to the lived experiences of others, they may feel more engaged with society at large.

“Half your curriculum walks in the door,” DelaRosa said. “Your curriculum is actually your student’s lived experiences … It’s important to understand students as curriculum too.”

When analyzing ethnic studies courses, DelaRosa said it is important to also analyze the training instructors receive — ensuring they are equipped with the knowledge, the mindset and the pedagogical experience to teach ethnic studies in a critical way, ensuring students benefit significantly from these courses.

DelaRosa’s book, “Teaching the Invisible Race” will be released in October and is designed to be a guide for instructors on how to teach Asian American studies in a pro-Asian American way. Teaching ethnic studies effectively begins with instructors, and DelaRosa encourages instructors not to wait for policy changes to begin teaching in a culturally informed way.

Because of the emphasis on how topics in ethnic studies courses are taught, Lockwood said in the expansion of the ESR, the resources that are provided to faculty and TAs who teach these courses are also reviewed.

“In our expansion of the ESR we are also looking at how courses get made into ethnic studies courses, what additional resources and communities of practice are provided to the faculty and TAs who teach these courses and how we can work towards ensuring that students do not experience incidents of hate and bias in ethnic studies courses,” Lockwood said.

Moving forward

Despite the current obstacles with expanding the ESR, individual advisors, like Donnellen, have taken to encouraging students to take ethnic studies courses beyond their three-credit requirement.

Though the students Donnellen works with have often already fulfilled their ESR, she encourages them to take more ethnic studies classes throughout their undergraduate journey.

“I hear a lot from students that they don’t want to ‘waste’ credits, or they don’t want to take credits just for the sake of taking credit,” Donnellen said. “They want it to count towards a certificate, another major and add some kind of attribute.”

When students approach Donnellen with this situation, she will explore the idea of taking more ethnic studies courses with them — whether it be for a certificate, additional major or to learn more about a community.

“That’s when I’ll broach with students this idea of ‘Oh, you took a CLS course for your ESR, you could chat with them and see what’s going on over there,’” Donnellen said.

Since certificates range between 12 to 18 credits, and introductory level ESR courses often count towards those certificates, obtaining a certificate from a department that offers ethnic studies courses is attainable for many of Donnellen’s students.

And not only do students earn an additional certificate or major, but they also gain a greater understanding of their place in the world — which is especially important for international studies majors, Donnellen said.

“We talk about our students being global citizens, but I think these ESR courses do play a really important role in helping our students understand their place in the world,” Donnellen said. “Or, at least the complexities of how to navigate being an American abroad, coming from a Western education, or how to better understand your own identity, your own background and how that can build some cultural humility and your cultural skills too. I think it very much is relevant to the major even if it’s a different academic program.”

The post Conscious curriculum: The fight for expansion of UW’s Ethnic Studies Requirement appeared first on The Badger Herald.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a rising senior majoring in legal studies and political science. I’m also the District 8 alder, so the City Council representative for the students. My parents live in Brookfield, Wisconsin, so I’m from there. I was born in India and I’ve moved around the United States quite a bit, but most of my time has been here in Wisconsin. I came here mainly for high school and then I also came here for college.

On campus I’ve been involved in the Associated Students of Madison for most of my time, but more heavily for the past year and a half. I’ve been involved in a lot of various groups throughout campus, mostly advocacy groups. I would say a lot of that just comes with being alder as well, and obviously being alder itself is one organization through the city of Madison that I’m involved in.

Why did you decide to run for alder? 

I decided to run because I have spent most of my time on campus fighting for things that students really care about. Affordable housing, mental health access, improved transportation, things like that. A lot of my focus used to be on the state level, but then the more and more I worked on it, I realized that these problems are more of a local issue. I’ve always been frustrated with how little of a voice students have on things that affect us specifically when it comes to UW or at the city level. That frustration eventually got the best of me and I decided to run hoping that it would make a real impact and that I would be able to uplift the student voice and get other people to speak up for themselves as well.

What has been your favorite experience since being elected?

There are two experiences that stand out. I do this weekly thing on Instagram, a weekly Q&A kind of feature, which is such a simple thing. But for me, it makes me really happy because students who see it engage and ask questions. I get to share what I’ve been doing and a lot of the time it leads to Instagram DM conversations where I get to talk about what’s happening and even learn a little more about them. So that’s been a recurring favorite thing that’s been happening recently. Another thing is that in the past few weeks, we’ve been having a really healthy discussion in the City Council about affordable housing for students specifically. And that’s a conversation that is long overdue. It’s the key thing that I ran on and something that I felt like students never really had a voice on, even though it affects us directly. And for the first time in a long time, we’re having that conversation. There seem to be some things that are actually changing, so I’m very excited to see how this goes.

What has been the most challenging thing?

The biggest challenge has definitely been my work-life balance. Being alder is supposed to be a part-time job, but it really is something that takes over if you let it, so I’m definitely a little bit nervous for this upcoming semester. Balancing a heavy class load on top of everything else. That’s definitely been the biggest challenge so far.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term?

My main goal outside of policy-related things is just getting students involved. Whether that’s sending an email with comments, showing up to a City Council meeting and speaking in favor or in opposition to anything or sitting on a city committee. That’s my main goal because I really, really believe that students need to be represented more in the city of Madison. We are one sixth of the population and we only have one dedicated seat on the City Council. And there are so few of us on any city committees. This past week has been really amazing because alders have been consistently hearing from students. So that’s my main goal, just making sure that students engage and continue to stay engaged.

How do you balance everything you are involved in?

I would love to say I have the answer, but I’m still working on it. This summer has been a little bit of a trial run if that makes sense. Just because classes obviously are not as heavy of a load. I have been trying to treat the City Council kind of like a 9-to-5, but not every single day. I also have an internship going on. Towards the evening, I try to enjoy my life a little bit and just give myself some me-time.

Who inspires you?

My parents. They both own a small restaurant and worked really hard to get there. As I mentioned before, I moved around a lot before and a lot of that was because my dad would move around with restaurants. I’ve seen them work from the bottom up and now they’re able to own their own restaurant. I’ve seen them persevere through Covid, and so they are really hardworking people and they are the people who inspire me.

Any advice you would like to give to incoming freshmen?

Everyone always says to get involved, but honestly, I feel like that really is the best advice. My freshman year was Covid, so it was really hard to get involved when everything was virtual. So personally, I feel like that is still the one thing I wish I could have done differently. Go to as many organizations and clubs as possible. Try to explore things that are out of your comfort zone, is the biggest piece of advice I would give. I did not get involved in any political organizations in high school, so doing that my freshman year over Zoom was the best thing I’ve done. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t done that. I would say just pick a random club and try it, see how it goes. The worst-case scenario is that you’ll make a few friends but never go to the meetings again.

The post People of UW: District 8 Alder and UW student MGR Govindarajan shares importance of getting involved appeared first on The Badger Herald.

Beginning college means leaving things behind — high school, childhood, constant parental supervision. For many, it also marks the beginning of a number of adult experiences — independence, new friendships, responsibility. And sex.

Movies, TV shows and social media often make college out to be a four-year installment of sex and alcohol — especially at a “top party school” like the University of Wisconsin.

This environment, where students are encouraged by the media, their peers and other groups to participate in brief sexual interactions, is where hookup culture thrives. 

Hookup culture can be a polarizing topic of discussion — is it empowering, degrading to women or dangerous for everyone? According to the chair of the UW–Madison chapter of Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment Dani Rosen, hookup culture lands somewhere in between all three.

“I think it can be empowering, and you’re allowed to hook up with as many people as you want to and feel safe,” Rosen said. “It offers a lot of people an outlet… It becomes a problem when it feels forced, coerced by either school culture or the individual you’re having relations with that can be a huge issue.”

When hookup culture intersects with the popular ideas surrounding parties, alcohol consumption and sex on college campuses, it can create unhealthy pressures to participate in hookups and place students in dangerous situations.

Brief sexual interactions on college campuses are largely facilitated by dating apps, parties and bars. Alcohol consumption, along with dangerous social norms, can intersect with hookup culture to create a dangerous environment.

“Underage drinking, alcohol consumption, hookup culture and sexual assault are intertwined in a very complex and problematic fashion,” associate professor of sociology and gender & women’s studies at Louisiana State University Sarah Becker said.

As the environment and ideals surrounding casual sex shift and change, education is the best solution available to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone enveloped in hookup culture.

“People need to understand that hookup culture isn’t inherently a bad thing, but when it becomes coercive and affected by other measures, that is when it is an issue,” Rosen said.

Defining Hookup Culture

“For me, a hookup is kind of just like sex without strings,” UW sophomore Alyssa Bhoopat said. “You’re not dating the person. You’re not in love with this person. You guys just kind of had sex, and you moved on … the hookup itself, it’s just two randos having sex and that’s it.”

“In everyone’s mind it’s something different,” Annabelle Thalken, an athlete at California Polytechnic State University said. “But I think making out with someone at a party isn’t necessarily a hookup. I think it’s like if you go to a different location, and it doesn’t really matter what you do — whether it’s just making out or if you have sex, I think that’s still a hookup if you go somewhere else.”

“I think a hookup is something that usually just involves two people doing something pleasurable in a very routine place,” UW sophomore Guillermo Rojas said. “[Like] just going over to someone’s house and having sex, I guess, or hanging out with each other.”

“My notion is that a hookup is anything that involves physical contact, like making out or anything beyond that,” UW sophomore John Rouse said.

Even for the experts, it’s difficult to define a hookup. Becker said her research team uses existing scales about people’s beliefs on the makeup of hookup culture.

“I would conceptualize [hookup culture] as an environment in which people are encouraged to believe that it is common, acceptable or fun to engage in brief physical interactions for physical sexual interaction with other folks that they may or may not know,” Becker said.

In college, this environment is largely facilitated by the idea of exploration. When students leave their parents and arrive at their freshman year dorm room, it’s as if they’ve entered a whole new world.

“A lot of people are still exploring themselves,” Rouse said. “You don’t even know what you like at this age. So it’s hard for anybody to discover that.”

The media further supports the idea that college is the time to figure out who you are in the bedroom.

But in real life, hookups are not as common as they are widely believed to be. Even in 2008, a study found that students believed their peers were having sex 50 times each year — this guess was 25 times the actual rate.

In fact, the rate of young people having sex is only on the decline. One study found that the percentage of sexually active men between the ages of 18 and 24 decreased from 81.1% to 69.1% between 2000 and 2018. Over the same period of time, the number of sexually active women in the age group decreased from 84.9% to 80.9%.

“The beliefs are really powerful,” Becker said. “But the degree to which people actually engage in the behavior is not necessarily mapping up well on how common people think it is.”

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Social Pressure

The widespread belief that hookup culture is an integral and common aspect of college life applies social pressure on students to participate.

“The belief that hookup culture is more common in terms of behavior than it is [puts] pressure, I think, on young people to think that they’re supposed to be participating not only in having sex, but in having sex in that way,” Becker said.

Movies, news articles and TV shows all contribute to the perception that casual sex and hookups are an integral part of college. Classic films and shows like “American Pie,” “Superbad,” “Gilmore Girls” and “Euphoria” all depict young people engaging in casual sex as a common activity.

When new college students arrive on campus, they are highly aware of the social pressures to hook up. Conversations about sex and partnerships can dominate the halls of dorms, corners of bars and even seats of classrooms.

Even small circles on campus can place pressure on students to hook up. 

“Whenever I meet a new girl, I feel like some of the first questions people are going to ask if you ever go home are, ‘Oh did you guys have sex?’” Rouse said. “So I think in some ways there’s this unconscious pressure that you need to [hook up].”

Large social groups and communities also may influence college students to engage in a hookup.

Athletes, often viewed as celebrities on campus, can often be limited to hanging out with — and hooking up with — the athletic community.

“I feel very limited to the athletic community,” Thalken said. “They’re a little douchey, and they definitely have an ego about them because they play a sport … they’re all just looking for hookups.”

In one 2019 study, athletes hooked up 5.64 times on average, while non-athletes had an average of 3.93 hookups by their senior year.

Greek life is another major proponent of hookup culture engagement. Those involved in Greek life hooked up 6.77 times on average — nearly double their non-affiliated peers.

Social media also plays a role in pushing false perceptions of sex in college. Dating apps which allow people to scroll through hundreds of potential partners at a fast pace promote fundamental beliefs associated with hookup culture.

“The swiping of folks as though they’re an item, an object, rather than a human being — the ability to get onto an app and seek out an informal hookup, explicitly stating, that’s what you’re looking for, of course, is a piece of hookup culture,” Becker said.

Dangerous Norms

While hookup culture can be empowering for some of its participants, it can also be extremely harmful.

“I think the most important part of it is agency, and when that’s lost, that’s when it’s no longer safe and any form of empowerment from it can be lost,” Rosen said.

Around half of students at UW have experienced sexual harassment, and more than a quarter of women were survivors of unwanted sexual contact, according to the university. Transgender and gender-diverse students faced higher rates, as well.

Social norms and beliefs about gender roles can contribute to harmful behaviors.

“Just walking up to somebody and grabbing them is seen as normal,” Becker said. “The ways that those two things fold upon each other to me is very disturbing and worth trying to disentangle.

Alcohol is another major player in the lack of safety on college campuses.

According to the National Institutes of Health, roughly half of sexual assaults on college campuses occur after alcohol consumption. In 2022, the perpetrators and/or survivors of sexual assaults at UW had consumed alcohol in over three of four sexual assaults.

Drinking does not cause or lead to sexual assault. But many people believe it’s normal, acceptable and even legal to provide someone with drinks to remove their ability to consent, Becker said. Because this belief is so normalized, some people may not understand that the conduct is illegal and qualifies as rape. Education must be put into place to protect student safety.

The prevalence of sexual assault rises for students involved in party-heavy environments. Research shows that men in fraternities are three times as likely to sexually assault a woman than students who are not involved in Greek life. Women in sororities are 74% more likely to be raped than women who are not in sororities. These astounding numbers are partially linked to the rates of alcohol consumption within fraternities and sororities, according to Becker. 

“A lot of people also kind of gaslight themselves out of the idea that they’ve been assaulted because they’ve been drinking,” Rosen said. “But at the same time, that is still a huge form of sexual assault as huge form of coercion and inhibits decision-making ability. So it makes it so people at a certain threshold can’t say yes at all.”

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Education

Education is essential for ensuring the safety of college students immersed in hookup culture. Not talking about consent, sexual health and healthy sexuality with young people leads to adverse outcomes, according to Becker.

“When we’re not having these conversations about consent being something that young people can give or not give, and what does it mean, and how does it play out, I think [it] just creates a situation where the outcomes that we’re seeing at colleges around hookup culture and sexual assault are unsurprising,” Becker said.

For many students in the country, an adequate sexual education is hard to come by. According to Planned Parenthood, under half of high schools teach all of the CDC’s essential components of sex education. These components include STI transmission, pregnancy prevention and communication skills. Under half of teens participating in penetrative sex received sex education before having sex for the first time.

In Wisconsin, schools are not required to provide sex education — only education about STIs. Any sex education is left up to districts and must stress abstinence. It does not require discussions about consent or instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“[My school’s sex education] was taught by the high school baseball coach,” Rouse said. “So you can guess it was not very good.”

Despite the potential lack of information about sexual health, consent, pregnancy prevention, sexual orientation and gender identity in schools across the country, young people are using social media and campus organizations to improve education efforts about safe, consensual sex.

Sexual health organizations like Planned Parenthood, professional sex educators and peer sex educators alike use social media to engage with young people. These accounts focus on unintended pregnancies, STIs, sexual violence, sexual pleasure, gender diversity, sexual diversity, sexuality and chronic illness or disability, consent and more.

“I get the sense that there is more conversation about this [recently],” Becker said. “There’s more dialogue, and that’s the sort of upside of social media.”

As a result of limited sex education in high school, continued sex education is extremely important on college campuses.

First-year and transfer students at UW must complete one 90–120 minute module for GetWIse@Home training. The training provides three options for students to choose from — modules about healthy sexuality and sexual assault, respectful relationships and dating violence, or how to support a survivor of violence.

Student organizations on college campuses also strive to improve sex education outcomes for college students.

At UW, students in Sex Out Loud use activism and sex-positive education to empower students and healthy sexuality through programming, events, resources and safe spaces.

Students in PAVE work to prevent sexual assault, dating violence and stalking through activism, workshops, campaigns and support for students. These efforts seek to promote awareness and education about standard intervention, deconstructing rape culture, body politics and more.

“With that attempted awareness, the goal is to eventually have a safe space on campus for people to feel like they can really understand when they’re in a safe situation for sex and if they’re not, and what they can do about it, and also what they can do for others if they see that,” Rosen said.

Resources regarding sexual assault:

• UHS Survivor Services: survivorservices@uhs.wisc.edu, 608-265-5600 ext 3

• www.uhs.wisc.edu/survivor/ Self-schedule using Starfish app

• UHS Survivor Services advocacy services

• UHS Survivor Services Crafty Coping drop-in support group

• UHS Survivor Services forensic nurse exams

• RCC: Sexual Violence Resource Center (608)-251-7273
• Let’s Talk: uhs.wisc.edu/wellness/lets-talk
  • “Sex, Sexuality and Healthy Relationships” section
• Room to be Safe: For Queer survivors of violence: (414) 856-LGBT (5428)
• National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224

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For the approximately 8,000 residents of UW’s student housing, the mandatory dining hall plan places a hefty amount of work onto the school’s Dining and Culinary team — which doesn’t even address the additional customers from off-campus students or Madison locals visiting one of the two student Unions. 

University Housing’s increasing awareness of consumer allergies and special dietary restrictions leads to a large volume of food being produced on-site daily. In producing a diverse range of food in such large quantities, however, the university has grappled with a troubling issue of overproduction, according to UW News.

This struggle to produce the proper quantities of food for UW’s student body does not stop there. The increased public awareness about the food industry that the National Library of Medicine reported during the pandemic and its role in climate change has inevitably sparked local conversations about food sustainability in Madison.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture places a high threshold in its definition of “food sustainability.” A sustainable food system must deliver “food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for future generations are not compromised.”

According to Malorie Garbe, the sustainability coordinator for University Housing, conversations about food sustainability have become a top priority in the dining halls.

“We’re working toward our goal of zero food waste every single day,” Garbe said. “Our solutions are continuing to evolve.”

UW’s Office of Sustainability launched in March 2012, and after just over a decade of operations, the road to sustainability has grown exponentially. UW’s composting and food waste initiatives have already produced significant results in the last year alone, according to Garbe.

But to truly understand these initiatives and their impacts on sustainability, it is crucial to go back to the fundamentals — namely, the food industry and the concept of food sustainability at large.

From farming, to delivery, to consumer preferences, structural flaws contribute to current unsustainable outcomes in the environmental, social and economic sectors.

On the Farm

The food system starts on the farm. Farms are at the heart of the food industry, and Wisconsin is one of the nation’s biggest farming capitals.

According to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, the state exported $4.22 billion dollars worth of agricultural products internationally in 2022, making it the 12th-largest producer in the nation.

The dairy sector of the agricultural industry alone contributes $45.6 billion to the Wisconsin economy annually, according to those same statistics. The state has over 6,000 dairy farms that house about 1.28 million cows — more than any other state.

With Wisconsin’s booming success in agriculture production, however, comes a host of sustainability concerns.

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Diane Mayerfeld is a sustainable agriculture coordinator working alongside the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems — a research center within UW that works to integrate sustainability into farming systems. She helps local educators and farmers learn about sustainable agriculture techniques and resources, including grants from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program through the USDA. Her biggest concern for Wisconsin’s agriculture regards farm soil quality.

“As the climate changes… a healthy soil is really critical to helping farm resilience,” Mayerfeld said. “It’s pretty good at absorbing rain during extreme rain events, and then it acts like a sponge and holds on to that water.”

As soil improves, crop productivity and farm resilience do, too, according to Mayerfeld.

Mayerfeld is a big proponent of agroforestry, a type of agriculture that intentionally incorporates trees, shrubs and cover crops into crop and animal farming systems. Going beyond a net-neutral form of agriculture, agroforestry is a regenerative farming practice that actively restores soil quality and biodiversity, making it a preferred end goal for farming in the long term.

The issue with Wisconsin’s booming dairy business is that traditional dairy farms are notoriously bad for the environment, as Mayerfeld pointed out. Farms with a dense cow population contribute significant levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

While small amounts of cow manure can be repurposed as fertilizer for nearby crop fields, large-scale operations often produce too much to be dealt with properly. According to Sentient Media, this leads to the pollution of nearby bodies of surface water and groundwater more often than not.

Mayerfeld also noted that continuous overgrazing can be disastrous for soil quality, as cows will deplete the land of the best and most nutritious grass on their pasture first — a concept known as spot grazing, according to Rangeland’s Gateway. This ultimately leads to compacted soil and the elimination of the pasture’s flora biodiversity.

But the battle for sustainability does not end once the food has left the farm.

The Middle Ground

It’s rare to find a farmer who is not interested in becoming more sustainable, according to Mayerfeld.

But it’s not so easy for farmers to simply take these environmental considerations into account when producing their products — at the end of the day, they have to be able to turn a profit.

Andrew Stevens, an expert on applied agricultural and food policy and an assistant professor at UW, explores sustainability from this perspective.

“Sustainability is technically viable but not economically viable,” Stevens said. “Farms are small businesses. They need to make enough money to support their businesses and themselves.”

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For the food industry to be economically sustainable, a farmer must be able to make environmentally responsible choices while continuing to turn a profit. On the consumer end, however, sustainably-sourced food has to be affordable.

Practices like agroforestry have real potential to increase biodiversity and heal arid soil, but even Mayerfeld conceded that it is not the most profitable or efficient farming practice.

More eco-friendly practices like these have another cost — labor.

“Labor is the big issue,” Stevens said. “It requires a lot more human labor per acre to do organically… Under 1% of the current U.S. population goes into farming, and nobody is going to want to go into farming for lower wages.”

Because economics and politics are often intertwined, reforming commercial agriculture may involve encountering barriers at the government level as well.

While writing a check to farmers might be a more efficient solution to push Wisconsin’s agricultural sector toward sustainability, it would not be a politically popular option, according to Stevens.

The economics of the agriculture industry are influenced not just by the farmers on the field, but also another key factor — the consumers in the store.

Farm to Table

Consumers are the final actors to consider within the food system, and for UW’s Dining and Culinary Services team, student consumers play a huge role in the outcome of sustainability efforts. The most obvious way this manifests is in food waste.

Garbe said food waste can be split into two categories — front-door and back-door waste.

Back-door waste refers to food that is discarded by kitchen staff during the preparation or cleanup processes, rather than being repurposed or donated elsewhere. Front-door waste is consumer-driven and occurs when individuals throw away excess food or food products after purchasing them.

In university dining halls, this might look like a student taking excess food from the cafeteria and throwing it away when they get full, as opposed to packaging it for later or taking smaller portions to begin with.

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UW’s Ticket to Take Out program is one way the school is trying to curb front-door waste, but ultimately, it comes down to the consumer.

The university has shifted its dining halls to operate on an all-you-can-eat system over the last two academic years, which initially increased front-door food waste, according to Garbe. But, she remains hopeful that there is potential for the system to promote sustainability if used correctly.

“I look at it as a really great sustainability opportunity,” Garbe said. “Students can experiment more with vegan or vegetarian options when they have the creative freedom to pick and choose from different stations to try different diets that they might not have tried beforehand.”

The all-you-can-eat system and its sustainability ultimately come down to how the students choose to use it. This is why consumers hold power when it comes to sustainability — they are the market. As Stevens said, the reason organic food is becoming increasingly available across grocery stores is that consumers are asking for those types of products.

The food industry has sustainability problems at every stage of the process. But where issues fester, potential persists.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

In August 2022, UW brought back its composting program in a limited, back-door capacity. The initiative takes excess food from UW kitchens that would otherwise go to the landfill and converts it into compost that can be utilized in other ways, such as crop fertilizer or mulch, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Gordon’s, Four Lakes, Memorial Union and Union South, which cumulatively produce over 50% of the school’s total food waste, are the first dining locations to get the go-ahead for this experiment, as Dining and Culinary Services work to prove UW’s capacity to collect compostables without contamination.

UW also has a Food Recovery Network in place for food that is still acceptable to eat but did not get sold on the sales floor. The FRN takes unpurchased meals from dining halls and offers them to the Madison community twice a week for free in an attempt to both limit food waste and combat food insecurity.

These programs are important mechanisms to reuse or recycle excess food, but they are reactionary in nature. Half of the battle is reducing food waste.

“You know the common phrase, reduce, reuse and recycle — reducing food waste is the first step,” Garbe said.

UW’s recent partnership with LeanPath is part of this proactive approach to eliminating food waste from the source. LeanPath uses scales and cameras to weigh and photograph prepared food before and after it is served in university dining halls.

LeanPath’s technology prevents food waste from happening to begin with — something that could benefit the environment while also reducing food purchasing costs for kitchens.

LeanPath reports generate an overview of how much money and environmental resources would be wasted if daily food waste levels were repeated for a year. The photographs of wasted food help kitchens see what exactly went to waste and why, so they can change menus accordingly.

“The fall 2022 semester was all about collecting data of [what] normal services looks like… in the spring 2023 semester, now that we have our baseline from an entire semester, we were able to pinpoint some specific interventions,” Garbe said.

As Garbe noted, by isolating specific ingredients that were being overproduced throughout the fall — in particular, pasta and vegetable dishes — this new data helps UW’s dining halls hone in their production habits and quantities.

Food sustainability efforts at UW go beyond the university. Student organizations like F.H. King are taking steps to bring free, healthy and sustainably-grown produce to Madison residents on and off campus.

“Our goal is to connect the community with food and the land,” education director for F.H. King Rachel French said.

The organization combines sustainable gardening with education to teach community members how to engage in sustainability in their own homes. According to French, one of F.H. King’s current goals is to expand its outreach beyond environmental science majors and engage students from every field of study with food sustainability.

“Getting more involved in policy, government, advocacy, education… are all critical moving forward to expand that vision,” French said.

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According to Garbe, students also played a big role in the creation of Electric Eats, the university’s first 100% electric food truck on campus. As one of the first of its kind across the country, Electric Eats is only a single example of the kind of innovative solutions consumers can help create to generate food sustainability.

As UW steps up to the challenge, local farmers have the chance to change as well. As Mayerfeld noted, it’s rare to find a Wisconsin farmer that is not open to the idea of sustainable agriculture.

“There’s a range of practices, and they’re not easy,” Mayerfeld said.

Practices like reducing tillage, planting cover crops and agroforestry work toward the same end goal — increasing soil quality and biodiversity. The way Mayerfeld sees it, the road to a 100% sustainable farm can be traversed in steps.

According to organizations like FarmProgress, the potential sustainable solutions are endless — and Wisconsin has the opportunity to take action toward sustainability across the production, supply chain and consumer levels. Mayerfeld believes that from farmers to food consumers, we all play a part in the fight for sustainability.

“Madison is a wonderful place to live if you’re looking for food sustainability,” she said. “There are opportunities everywhere for everyone to shop and live consciously.”

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It’s also no secret that most students attend college to earn a degree to increase their employability, if not to hopefully land a lucrative job upon graduation.

But, college tuition has continuously grown over the last two decades. As the University of Wisconsin plans to increase tuition next year, post-graduate plans serve not just as a significant marker of a student’s career-preparedness, but also justify a hefty price tag. 

Whether a student graduates and goes on to earn six figures or gains admission into a top graduate program, post-graduate achievement is a source of intense financial and social pressure. It’s also a young adult’s first real step to a full-time career.

According to UW, Badgers fare quite well in the job market following graduation. The annual First Destination Survey, which has been tracking graduates’ outcomes since 2016, shows that 71% of last year’s graduates seeking jobs received an offer by the time they graduated. 

Still, positive survey results do not necessarily reflect students’ individual experiences of finding post-graduate employment. Students across schools and departments with varied career interests shared significantly different accounts of career-preparedness curricula and support across their undergraduate experience, all of which impacted their current and planned post-graduate outcomes.

Major vs. Career Plans

Eleanor Moore, a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in political science and international studies, felt she found her true career interests “too late” in her academic career. 

“I wanted to go for the digital media production certificate,” Moore said. “But I just realized too late in my education that I wanted to pursue film as a career, so I did take the introductory level class over the summer, but I couldn’t fit all the other subsequent classes into my schedule in order to actually get the certificate in time.”

Though Moore utilized personal connections to gain exposure to internships related to political science, namely the opportunity to work in political campaigning, she quickly determined she did not want to work in politics and subsequently recognized her interest in media production.

Specifically, Moore recalled reaching out to a family friend working on a political campaign to gain more insight into her intended career path before realizing it was not at all what she wanted to do.

“I kind of realized when she was telling me what the actual lifestyle of working on campaigns is that I don’t want anything to do with that,” Moore said. “Going from place to place and having months at a time where you have no income working for campaigns, [it] just sounded so horrible.”

Whether it was a course load filled with political theory classes, which do not offer much insight into what professional outcomes look like, or the personal fulfillment Moore felt from her film courses, she knew she had found her niche — unfortunately outside of her long-determined majors.

“It was probably sometime in junior year when I had taken a few other film classes that weren’t part of the certificate that I wanted to get, like international cinema and comedy, ethics and film — those were always my favorite classes,” Moore said. 

Now that her interests have changed, Moore realizes her “ideal career path has nothing to do with what [she] studied” and finds it difficult to navigate changing her path to one that starkly contrasts her coursework. Though, she recognizes the onus is on students to seek out career support and help. 

The disconnect between major, intended career path and actual post-graduate outcome highlights what successful surveys and statistics ultimately miss — students may land jobs at sought-after companies upon graduation, but whether these are personally fulfilling roles is up for debate.

Considering the most common jobs among UW graduates are in engineering, healthcare and consulting fields, it’s clear that graduates across majors are entering roles not related to their field of study. For international studies and political science in particular, UW, the state of Wisconsin and Epic were the top three employers of graduates, meaning students are working in varied fields related and unrelated to their majors.

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Beyond the Classroom

In majors and certificates with perhaps more straightforward career paths, students still struggle to find post-graduate employment and share vastly different experiences supporting their career goals and job search.

Jamie Randall is a fourth-year undergraduate in the School of Journalism and pursuing a certificate in business. Randall received hands-on experience with the inner workings of public relations and advertising through her degree coursework and outside internships. 

Still, the advertising world’s full-time recruitment cycle is far later in the year than she expected compared to others — leaving Randall with an uncertain future as she remains in the application process.

“I’ve had companies tell me to apply back in April […] so I would assume that the earliest I would get my job is probably end of May, beginning of June,” Randall said.

Well before full-time applications, Randall was fortunate to have found a local internship in public relations through the school’s jobs board, which complemented her coursework and reaffirmed her career goals, effectively learning which skills are applicable beyond the classroom.

As a result of her classes in the School of Business, Randall learned how important it was to contextualize her journalism courses with basic digital skills. Through her internships, Randall realized how often Excel is used in creating media budgets and organizing administrative work — which she felt would have been a shock if not for her business certificate.

Internship experiences in strategic communications and PR were especially vital for cementing her career field interests, as Randall was able to gain firsthand knowledge of what these workplaces were like. 

“I think there’s just so much pressure that your first job out of college has to be the job that you’re gonna work in for the rest of your life. I know it’s not true, but most people will probably spend two years at a company and most people will hate it by the end of their two years, maybe even earlier,” Randall said, emphasizing the importance of having multiple experiences in your chosen field as early as possible.

Internships also provide insight into what post-graduate employment may look like, which seems to be increasingly hybrid following the COVID-19 pandemic and transition to remote work.

A 2022 Gallup research study surveyed 140,000 U.S. employees, the majority of whom do not work in-person full time. As for the future, 53% of respondents expected a hybrid arrangement to continue, while 24% expected they would continue to work remotely.

This was a trend Randall herself noticed.

“Definitely when I was working this summer, a lot of the office was hybrid … My boss only came in once or twice a week. And I was like, well, that kind of blows but I’m going to go in every day,” Randall said. “Just because I think it’s so important to get office experience and just gain that proper, ‘it’s like the office,’ rules and manners and […] culture,” Randall said.

She further emphasized the importance of gaining in-person experience to better understand work and office culture, which is ultimately key to confirming if a job is truly right for you.

An Uneven Playing Field

While Moore and Randall hailed from Minnesota and New York respectively, international students face different challenges when it comes to finding full-time employment after graduation, regardless of their majors.

For Ivan Khurudzhi, an international student majoring in computer science and mathematics, attending career fairs at UW and completing internships to help secure post-grad employment can be difficult given the challenge of finding opportunities that sponsor work visas.

According to Khurudzhi, some companies at the All Majors Career and Internship Fair, a biannual fair hosted by SuccessWorks, would outright say they don’t hire international students or simply don’t know about company policies related to hiring international students.

In an email to The Badger Herald, SuccessWorks shared that across both days of the Fall 2022 fair, 198 companies were in attendance — 40 of which were either accepting Optional Practical Training/Curricular Practical Training or willing to sponsor a visa. 

Similarly, the Spring 2023 fair hosted 141 companies total, with 24 companies accepting OPT/CPT or willing to sponsor a visa.

Though career fairs may pose difficulties for networking or landing positions given the added hurdle of navigating work requirements, SuccessWorks emphasized the wealth of career services support for international students. 

From career fair prep nights specifically for international students to feedback on resumes and cover letters, SuccessWorks partners with International Student Services to support international students in their job search. 

For nearly 6,000 international students — many of whom would like to stay in the U.S. and work post-graduation — finding a job before graduation is especially important to ensure they are within their visa and duration of stay requirements.

This past year, Khurudzhi was fortunate to land an internship at Tesla, which had employed many international student interns before and thus offered a well-established system in terms of support for students working on different visas.

But, for an internship at a crypto startup, Khurudzhi was an unpaid intern for six out of the 15 months he worked there.

“They were taking their time trying to evaluate me and making sure I was a valuable enough employee to potentially sponsor me for a work visa later,” Khurudzhi said.

Khurudzhi further explained that it was ultimately reasonable of the company to have him work under a trial period since he would only be able to work for them in the future if he was sponsored — a difficult and costly process. 

In other words, his internship experience came at the cost of regular pay due to his work status, highlighting the tradeoff between valuable work experience and financial security. 

For international students who may struggle to land an internship, or even other students who cannot afford to work essentially for free, expanded career-preparedness coursework or initiatives embedded into curricula can ease reliance on internships as a means of gaining work experience — and ultimately allow all students to have a base level of career awareness and experience.

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Classrooms, Counselors, Careers

Often, despite having the ideal major for a successful career path and awareness of career services on campus, students often do not reach out for help — instead relying on personal networks or LinkedIn to inform them of future opportunities and what their intended careers look like.

Sophia Radis, a native New Yorker, does not plan to stay in Madison nor Wisconsin following her graduation. A fourth-year economics student, Radis has found it difficult to connect with employers at career fairs, most of which recruit for Midwest-based positions. Instead, she has mainly relied on previous employers from past internships for career guidance and opportunities.

Echoing Randall’s sentiments about learning essential skills early on, Radis explained that finding a non-academic or research job with an economics degree can be especially limiting for students who lack certain hard skills not taught in the classroom.

For Radis, who hopes to land a job in sustainable finance, skills in Python and data management were not necessarily interwoven in the economics curriculum, but rather something students needed to seek out on their own.

Radis said career services and courses centered on learning these skills should be embedded in the undergraduate curriculum, which she believes would ultimately lead to higher employment success rates.

Having required-skills workshops or even a designated time to meet with a career advisor would thus expose students to realities in the workplace they might not be otherwise prepared for without a strong internship experience. 

Additionally, early exposure to career services — which are often a chance for students to reflect on their career and personal goals and what they want to do beyond college — is essential in forming a realistic view of the job search and post-graduate employment.

Radis shared that among her peers, in terms of finding work, “a lot of them don’t really […] know what to look for — and they’re also very anxious about the job search. I think everyone’s anxious about it.” 

In a recent opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed, Founding Director of the UW Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions Matthew Hora expressed concern that career-preparedness during college was too concentrated on internship and out-of-classroom experiences. 

Instead, students, who are “100 percent” likely to attend class but only 40 percent likely to visit their campus’ career services center, would greatly benefit from career-readiness initiatives interwoven in pre-existing curricula.

“The classroom is the one venue where it is easiest to equitably reach almost all [of] an institution’s student body and where quality control and curricular coherence are easier to achieve than in an off-campus business or organization,” Hora wrote.

The impact of embedded career support and guidance is especially reflected in Randall’s own undergraduate experience and job search.

Randall specifically recalled a dedicated class in strategic communications, in which her professor — who had been on the hiring end for jobs in Randall’s desired field — set aside extra office hours to go over resumes and cover letters.

“I think when we’re looking to apply for jobs and just get footing in these big companies and fields that are just so competitive now, I think to have someone really backing you up and really just being constructive and wanting to help — I really enjoyed just having him be a resource,” Randall said. “All the professors want to see you succeed.”

The post Past the Tassel: Student experiences finding post-graduate employment vary, reflect uneven career-preparedness appeared first on The Badger Herald.

The thrill of the game draws people from across the country to the University of Wisconsin, the home of Badger Athletics and the epitome of the Wisconsin Idea.

But, behind the scenes is a conglomeration of special people dedicating their lives to Bucky’s success.

School of Education professor Peter Miller has dedicated his career to the nuances of sportsmanship, wearing several hats within the athletics realm at UW. Miller understands the implications of athletics beyond the game itself.

“Athletics are a point of durable connections for kids and durable connections for families — even as maybe some other things are not always going as we want them,” Miller said.

Miller has served on the UW Athletics Board for almost 10 years and is currently the faculty director of the sports leadership masters program. Miller is also involved in a newer initiative at UW aimed at merging the worlds of sports and science entitled Badger Inquiry on Sport.

BIOS follows “the three C’s” — connect, catalyze and communicate. BIOS aims to connect with researchers on campus, conduct their own research and communicate UW research throughout Wisconsin, associate director of BIOS Maria Dehnert said.

BIOS associates researchers in areas such as nutrition, psychology, social sciences and medicine with the UW Athletics Department. The fruitful intersection of academics and athletics provides a rich body of data for research that allows for a better-informed athletic department.

“Our goal really is to bring together campus and athletics in meaningful and purposeful ways. So this has been a really great experience to tie in both my passion for higher education and athletics and being the connector between the two,” Dehnert said.

The unique status of world class academics and top-tier athletics empowers UW to be at the forefront of research in sports science. Researchers in kinesiology, sports psychology and various other scientific fields all collaborate with UW Athletics, serving the goal of improving physical and mental health for all.

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The Physical Game

From day one on the football team, sophomore Grover Bortolotti noticed the athletic staff’s emphasis on physical fitness. The football team works five days a week with strength trainers who tailor exercise routines for the athletes.

“Ever since I stepped foot on campus, the staff kind of ingrained [fitness] in your head,” Bortolottii said. “You need to get a routine and take care of your body so that you can perform at your highest level day in and day out.”

Concurrently, researchers at UW dedicate their time to understanding the science of the human body to serve the goal of universal physical activity. 

Director of Research in the UW Badger Athletic Performance Lab Bryan Heiderscheit uses his background in physical therapy and sports medicine to research how athletic performance is connected to injury.

BAP runs a battery of tests on athletes in the preseason. Heiderscheit said athletes sprint, jump and balance to measure running mechanics, joint motion, force outputs and body control. These tests provide both data for research and a benchmark for returning from injury.

Injury is a common occurrence in sports. In fact, 3.2 million Americans had sports related injuries treated in the emergency room in 2021 and more than 3.5 million injuries occur each year in youth sports. 

When a student-athlete gets injured, Heiderscheit said the lab will conduct tests more frequently to measure the pace of their recovery to their preseason status. In doing this, the lab supplies important data on the recovery process for a plethora of injuries and best practices for avoiding reinjury.

Some of this data gives researchers much-needed information regarding risk factors for injuries. One study found less steps per minute in cross country runners increased risk of bone stress injury, and other studies found that factors in the preseason such as lower aerobic capacity — the bodies capacity for oxygen — or decreased sleep can lead to a greater risk of in-season injury. 

Other studies look at progression of injury recovery, so researchers can determine the ideal time for an athlete to return to action — one study analyzed athletes running on a treadmill at four, six, eight and 12 months after ACL reconstruction surgeries to determine that running mechanics do not return to pre-injury levels within the first year.

“If you help somebody recover, that benchmark for recovering is dependent on what sport they play and what level they need to get back to,” Heiderscheit said. “So it makes a real interesting question and puzzle about how you go back to [preinjury status].”

Jennifer Sanfilippo is an athletic trainer and has worked in UW Athletics for 11 years. She works in BAP, where she aims to improve athletic health and welfare, both long- and short-term.

Sanfilippo said she has collaborated with Wisconsin Sleep, the Osteoporosis Research Center and many other research areas not traditionally linked to sports. These collaborations allow researchers to study more specific factors which might affect athletic performance or injury.

In this spirit, Heiderscheit continues to be amazed at how eager people at UW are to collaborate, even after spending over 20 years at the university.

“We do have an amazing sports program here with our student athletes, but on the other side of the road, we have an incredible group of academic minds, scientific minds, who can really take on just about any questions we put to them and come up with some unique solutions to it,” Heiderscheit said.

BAP and UW Athletics collect their data from Division I athletes at peak performance, but the data can be used for anyone engaging in physical activity.

Heiderscheit said other programs like BAP translate sports research to high school athletics programs, community athletes and just about anyone in the general public so they can minimize risk of injury across all sports and maximize recovery from injuries.

“By making sure that we can help individuals at [the D-I level] return to that high-end sport performance, we can definitely do better for the general population in their daily lives,” Heiderscheit said. “So it’s almost like we’re trying to study the best of the best with a goal of applying that information to everyone.”

Similarly, master’s students in the Athletic Training program are able to obtain field experience at all levels, from D-I athletes to youth sports and medical clinics, according to associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology David Bell. Bell teaches in the Athletic Training program and is the director of the Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory.

A key point of interest in the Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory is the link between injury and sports specialization, or selecting one sport to play year-round.

Bell said the current landscape of youth sports is different than it was 20 to 30 years ago. Today, more athletes are being forced to specialize in one sport at younger ages, leading to greater risk of injury and burnout. And injury at a young age could affect them down the line.

“We see injuries that occurred when kids were younger and in older populations and [we see] how that affects their long-term health and well-being,” Bell said. “They just want to lay on the ground and play with their grandkids, and they can’t do that because they have this injury.”

Bell said more athletes are arriving at college programs “broken” because of their injury history — a cause of concern for college coaches.

To address this, Wisconsin Injury in Sport provides guidelines to support the health and wellbeing of children in youth sports. They recommend delaying specializing in a sport as long as possible, dedicating no more hours per week than one’s age in years and spending no more than eight months per year in one sport among others.

Both Wisconsin Injury in Sport and BAP apply various fields of sciences to conduct sports research, and it’s all rooted in the same goal — protecting healthy physical activity for everybody.

“I personally like to see people be active throughout their life,” Sanfilippo said. “But, inevitably, things do still happen in sport, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to prevent everything. So I also like to help make sure that their long term health outcomes go well for them.”

Athletes of all sorts know the importance of training the body. But when the stress of competition settles in, even the best athletes struggle to remain focused and resilient.

The Mental Game

Junior soccer player Rachel Dallet reminds herself of the mental game every day in practice, focusing on the game and not letting mistakes phase her.

“I think a lot of people need to think about the physical aspect, but a lot of it is mental,” Dallet said. “If you make a mistake, you’ve got to be able to just get over it quickly. Otherwise, the next play will go on and you’ll be far behind.”

UW has dedicated staff to research and training in sports psychology — a field that trains athletes’ minds to improve performance and ensure mental wellbeing. 

Dr. David Lacoque has served as the director of Mental Health & Sport Psychology in UW Athletics for six years.

“I am somebody who truly finds his job meaningful… I look forward to it,” Lacoque said. “These are individuals who are trying to be excellent, and they’re trying very hard in a difficult context. And so to be a part of helping them along that journey is an opportunity that I feel grateful for.” 

Because of the unique challenges, stressors and opportunities in the life of a student-athlete, Lacoque is using his role to destigmatize mental health conversations and make mental health resources more accessible and understandable for student athletes.

Lacoque runs a team of six mental health professionals serving as team liaisons who attend training and meetings and interact with student-athletes daily. 

Sports psychology plays a huge role in athletic performance by training athletes with mental skills like self-talk — one’s inner voice — or controlling mental imagery, which is mental perceptions not triggered by sensory input, Lacoque said. These skills are valuable in all facets of life but can be particularly useful to an athlete in competitive settings.

Lacoque said a basketball player at the free throw line must not focus on their thoughts as it can be distracting to their routine. But, a tennis player in between points might want to focus on their thoughts and give themself positive self-talk.

Lacoque relies on decades of psychology research to ensure the best outcomes.

“You could call [working with an individual] an art in terms of the application, but it’s also very much a science because a conversation with a mental health professional should be guided by things that have been shown to work,” Lacoque said.

Another facet of sports psychology is meditation, an emerging field in athletics. Chad McGehee is the director of meditation training at UW Athletics, a unique position UW spearheaded about three years ago. UW is the first major collegiate sports program to dedicate a position to applying meditation to athletics.

The position includes leading meditation training with teams, coaches and individuals as well as conducting research on successful meditation practices from existing datasets collected by the Athletics Department.

Meditation training is similar to strength conditioning for the mind, McGehee said. Rather than waiting for problems to arise, he equips athletes with mental skills through the practice of meditation. If an athlete does not engage in meditation training, they are leaving gains on the table, McGehee said.

“No athlete would ever take the field of competition without training their bodies, yet they do it all the time without training their mind,” McGehee said. “They talk about the importance of the mental game, but they don’t set aside time to train for high quality mental games.”

As someone who has experience leading meditation with FBI SWAT teams, Tier 1 tactical teams and C suite executives, McGehee brings a vibrant background of practical experience to his training sessions.

Amishi Jha from the University of Miami conducted a study that showed military personnel who engaged in a four-week training improved their attention and working memory over time compared to those who didn’t partake in any training.

When training the athletes, McGehee first discusses with them what skills they would like to develop. Once he shares the science behind his meditation techniques, he leads meditation sessions to help develop those skills and creates at-home training plans.

Bortolotti had weekly training sessions with McGehee last year. He learned about the importance of mindfulness and how he can implement it in his life and football career. In his sessions with McGehee, Bortolotti started practicing Qigong — a martial art consisting of coordinated movements and breathing — which he found very useful in his performance.

In his first-ever game at Camp Randall, Bortolotti recalled being overwhelmed by the immense crowd. He employed a breathing technique he learned from McGehee to focus his mind and get through the play.

“I was standing right in the middle of the field and kind of just looked around [and] was like ‘woah, there’s a lot of people watching,’” Bortolotti said.

Besides training athletes, McGehee’s position aims to see how measurable outcomes such as performance and injuries are affected by meditation training. McGehee said he can apply his research findings to the athletes he trains within minutes.

“It’s not just science in the ivory tower,” McGehee said. “It’s science in the training room, on the practice field.”

Still in its early years, McGehee hopes the position will lead to discovery in how meditation contributes to and complements the field of sports psychology as well as pave the way for other universities to implement meditation training into their athletics programs.

Just as weightlifting became embedded in athletics over the last 50 to 60 years, meditation and mindfulness training could become an imperative part to a successful athlete’s training regimen in the future, McGehee said.

“I do feel with a lot of confidence that this work is just at the very beginning stages, and we’re going to see tremendous growth in the coming years,” McGehee said. “We have an opportunity here at the UW to really impact the way sport is trained for future generations.”

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The Good of the Game

The abundance of sports-science initiatives come from the unique connection between UW’s athletics and academics. Whether it be fitness or mental health, research projects support the broader goal of improving sport and physical activity for people everywhere, not just Badger athletes.

BIOS emerged from a recognition of this special collaboration and its potential impacts.

“In concert with the Wisconsin Idea, we take what we’ve learned about sport research and innovation, and we share it out with everybody,” Dehnert said. “People should know about it.”

BIOS has spent a lot of time over the past year focusing on youth sports. According to Dehnert, over 43 million young people participate in organized athletics in America. As a result, researchers want to use their data to ensure positive experiences at a young age which can lead to a brighter future — Project Play is one initiative aimed at furthering this goal. 

Project Play hopes to ensure physical literacy for every child in America by age 12. Whether they go on to play college sports or recreational sports, young athletes will be equipped with good life skills for staying physically active and healthy.

Project Play details that participation in youth sports like baseball, basketball, football and softball are all trending down and, as a result, children are less physically active. The playbook advises families to encourage children to sample other sports, allow children to play on their own terms and encourage fun in their physical activity.

Hundreds of organizations across the country have used the project to structure their youth sports programs. Information from the program is available to coaches, children and parents alike.

BIOS translates sports science data, publishes commentary and provides resources, such as Project Play, for coaches, parents and everyone to access. These communication efforts are imperative to making the research at groups such as WIS, BAP and BIOS strive toward a brighter, healthier future.

Planting the seeds of healthy physical activity through youth sports is important for ensuring long-term health outcomes, but the positive impacts of sports, young or old, extends far beyond the game.

“The lessons that [sports] give kids and adults alike haven’t changed,” Dehnert said. “What it means to be a part of a team, what it means to be competitive, to exhibit skills of grit and resilience … [Sports] do good. It’s not only a health thing, but what it does for you mentally and physically, I think is unmatched.”

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Evi Radcliffe

Evi Radcliffe embodies next-level diligence by participating in three different organizations and working a job, all while maintaining a high level of performance as a student. Participating in various extracurriculars, such as A Moment of Magic and Women in Finance and Accounting, has propelled her to no longer wait for change, but instead help create the change she seeks.

Tell us about yourself.

I am currently a sophomore in the School of Business, double majoring in real estate and finance. I am involved in the club’s Women in Finance and Accounting, Badger Volunteer and am in an executive position on A Moment Of Magic. Also, I have a job at our local grocery store, Madison Fresh.

I am pursuing finance because I want to help people and it lets me talk to people, which I enjoy and excel at. Also, I am in finance and real estate because I want to change the current narrative of business and help people in a genuine way, rather than just for economic gain. In the future, I hope to be a CEO or CFO of a company, especially since I like to live by the saying, “go big or go home.” With such an important position, I would focus the company’s efforts on volunteering and bettering the community to have a positive and productive impact on others and the surrounding area.

What are the organizations you’re involved in?

I am involved in Women in Finance, which is a group that helps women get exposed to the finance world, learn skills needed for success and provides networking opportunities. Career-wise, it’s a super helpful and beneficial club to be involved in. For Badger Volunteers, I work with a team of students and an organization called the Empowered Caregiver Community where we are working to support and give back to family caregivers. We put on podcasts and take part in workshops with the intention of uplifting caregivers in our community. Lastly, I am involved in a group named A Moment of Magic (AMOM), where we work with organizations like Make-A-Wish to help support and improve the quality of life of hospitalized kids. It’s an unbelievably rewarding club to be a part of, I get to be hands-on and meet people and, most importantly, I get to see the “magic” actually happen. We do walks to raise awareness and help aid our cause, and we have superhero parties and video calls with the kids we are supporting.

How have these experiences altered your perception of leadership and what it means to help people?

The organizations have exposed me to new connections I wouldn’t normally connect with, exposed me to different perspectives and gotten me out of my comfort zone, which I think are all things that are necessary to experience before becoming a leader. I honestly threw myself into getting involved in the organizations, and although I have had to work hard to get to where I am now, I am so thankful I did. I love being so involved, the orgs have helped me become more inclusive and compassionate for others and opened my eyes to various forms of empathy.

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 How do you balance everything you are involved in?

It is definitely a challenge. What personally helps me to balance everything is writing down everything in my planner and staying consistently on top of what I have going on, on a daily basis. Also, going to the gym and maintaining an optimistic mindset motivates me to work hard and hold myself accountable.

Who inspires you?

My mom, Tammy. She has been through so much and yet always finds a way to be giving and caring to everyone. Also, my roommate Faith, who is my best friend. She is super confident and consistently pushes me to be better because she wants to see me succeed.

Why do you think organizations like the ones you are involved in are essential to college campuses?

To start, WIFA is so career-oriented, which I think is super beneficial in a lot of ways. Personally, I came from a small town so I lacked a platform to be exposed to different opportunities, but because of WIFA, I now have that platform and exposure which have furthered my career immensely. For example, through WIFA I’ve gone to Chicago twice, where we toured different businesses and offices and just got to see into a potential future for ourselves, which is unbelievably valuable. There are countless beneficial aspects to the organizations I’m involved in; the exposure, the resources, the networking, they all offer me the tools I need for success.

Because of the abundance of organizations and opportunities, you can get involved in here, I have found that I feel, and now know, that I can make a change if I want to. With how big our university is, I’ve found that you don’t have to compromise what you stand for or what you want to do for others, you are allowed to be true to yourself and can act on it too! I can’t emphasize enough how important and essential the types of organizations I’m involved in are for colleges to have them, and I hope students take the utmost advantage of the resources their school offers them.

Any advice you’d like to give to other students?

Madison sets you up for success. If you want something, you just need to put in the effort and work, and you can make whatever you want to happen. From my personal experience, the clubs I’ve been in are one of those things that you don’t know you need to experience until you experience it. So with that, act rather than react! Talk to people and research online things you are interested in, and then find a club and join it. Get out of your comfort zone and experience things that open your eyes. Getting involved makes you more well-rounded and compassionate, two things that are so important and necessary at this time in our lives. And most importantly, be genuine and kind, and people will remember you and do the same!

The post People of UW: Evi Radcliffe shares how her trifecta of extracurriculars encourages sincerity, compassion appeared first on The Badger Herald.

The days are long, the hours are demanding and the pain is palpable. But Msuya persists beyond the difficulty because underneath the pain is the knowledge she is doing it all for her daughter. 

Maria wishes to become an accountant, and Msuya hopes to give her everything she needs to achieve those goals and aspirations. 

With this dream at the forefront of Msuya’s life, she can’t quite remember the last time she took a vacation or simply time off work to spend time with her daughter. Though she loves her job, the days are long and the salary is not large.

But, Msuya’s story possesses one additional layer that complicates things — she is a single mother. 

Msuya is one of millions of single mothers around the world. Being a single parent is undoubtedly an uphill battle, but the hill doesn’t look the same for both single mothers and single fathers. For single mothers, the hill is covered in glass shards and falling rocks. 

Statistically, single mothers are much more likely to be poor compared to single fathers. Single mothers face additional challenges from maintaining a work-life balance due to needing to work extra hours to the lack of financial support and associated guilt of not providing enough, all the way to the burdening pressure of making decisions without the support of a partner.

These statistics are not merely a number, but rather evidence of a persistent, systemic problem of gender inequality all around the world.

Msuya’s biggest harness in her uphill battle is her education. She was born in a village known as Mwanga in the Kilimanjaro district of Tanzania and was raised in a family with seven other siblings. Despite being raised in a village, she was fortunate enough to receive education up to the university level.

Her education allowed her to start working as a receptionist at a hotel and tourism company and eventually work her way to becoming a sales executive. Today, she is the head of the marketing department at that same company, but the journey has not been easy.

From Australia to Mexico, women all around the world face an unfair uphill battle rooted in deep, systemic gender inequities. But the hills come in all different shapes and sizes as the way the inequities unfold is multifaceted and unique to each and every individual woman. With the patriarchy deeply embedded in the system on a global scale, the fight for gender equity is far from over.

Here, There And Everywhere

Feminism and feminist movements around the world date back several decades. In the U.S., 1848 marked a pivotal moment in the rise of the feminist movement and women’s history with the Declaration of Sentiments — a public petition outlining civil, social, political and religious rights for women — being signed by women’s rights activists at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York.

In 1893, women in New Zealand were granted the right to vote, sending a message to the world that equal voting rights were an attainable prospect. Moving into the 20th century, women around the world mobilized and advocated for gender equality, with feminist movements rapidly gaining momentum.

This momentum reached a pinnacle in 1995 when the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a global agenda for women’s empowerment and rights, was adopted at the UN Fourth World Conference in Beijing, China.

March 8, 2023, marked the 111th International Women’s Day, yet the fight for gender equality is far from over.

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Twenty-four-year-old Kirstin Roos was born and raised in Germany. Kristin currently studies graphic design in Cologne, Germany, and also works for a PR and advertising agency.

Kirstin has experienced sexism in the workplace from both her boss and her clients, making her fatigued and frustrated. She recalled a sexist encounter during a meeting with the company’s client.

In the meeting, after Kirstin’s boss made a charming statement, the client made a sexual innuendo insinuating an inappropriate relationship between her and her boss. The client also touched Kristin without her permission when he wanted her to notice something.

Knowing that her boss would side with the client and feeling unsafe, Kristin refrained from speaking up about the encounter to her boss at the time. Kristin has switched jobs since this encounter, and now feels more comfortable in her new workplace. She has also started to speak about the sexism she faces in the workplace, but admits that it’s not easy.

“I was really emotional in general, and it was just because I’m so frustrated that if you start noticing it once, then you start noticing it all the time,” Kristin said. “I was actually working on a similar project [about cognitive labor] for my bachelor’s degree . . . and if you start reading up about stuff like that, or start to open your eyes to the problems, you see them everywhere and that’s kind of really exhausting.”

Sexism in the workplace is prevalent in several different workplace settings — from food service to the mining industry — all around the world. In the U.S, 42% of women report having experienced gender discrimination at their workplace, according to Pew Research Center.

Kavitha Ramesh is an obstetrician-gynecologist who started her own medical practice 15 years ago in Karaikudi, India. Today, Ramesh is the owner of one of the leading fertility centers in Karaikudi, with a facility that can house up to 100 patients. She runs the business with her husband who is a laparoscopic surgeon.

Despite owning her own practice and being a sought-after physician, Ramesh faces subtle discrimination from her patients. Certain patients speak to Ramesh differently when she is alone compared to when her husband is present in the room. She finds herself seeking her husband’s help in dealing with certain difficult patients as her voice is not heard, whereas her husband’s male voice is heard in those situations.

“It’s really frustrating because when we do good things, and you’re not getting rewarded, not rewarded but when you get backfired, it’s the worst thing,” Ramesh said. “In those situations I really feel bad, and still the situation is not being completely alright . . . Even though you have some talent, your part of this thing will be shared only.”

Not feeling heard or taken seriously isn’t an isolated incident that occurs only in certain parts of the world, and American women are certainly not foreign to the concept. Studies in the U.S. show that women are almost four times as likely to report that they have been treated as incompetent as a result of their gender and about three times as likely to have experienced small slights in the workplace as a result of their gender.

Jazmynn Appleton has experienced this statistic first hand. Appleton is currently the manager of entrepreneurial opportunities for the Progress Center for Black Women in Madison, Wisconsin.

The Progress Center for Black Women was founded by Sabrina Madison in 2018. After recognizing the inequities prevalent for Black women, Madison decided to create a space for Black women to feel comfortable and receive resources for professional and personal development, particularly aimed at rejecting the devaluation of Black women.

Prior to working at the Progress Center, Appleton has held leadership positions at which she was not taken seriously, and even had clients refuse her service because she was a Black woman. Appleton recounted an instance when an older white man would not come up to the counter while she was behind it, even though she was the person who could help him. But, when Appleton’s manager, a white male came behind the counter, the customer accepted his service.

“It feels very degrading at the end of the day,” Appleton said.

Though the larger umbrella of sexism and gender inequities exists everywhere, the specific difficulties and the way they unfold underneath that umbrella can be drastically different.

Difference in Between 

Sunmi Famule grew up in Nigeria in a traditional household. Growing up, Famule and her sister realized traditional gender roles did not help them in realizing their dreams or in striving for a better life than the ones of their ancestors.

Famule said the expectation for young women in Nigeria is to stay with their family, where the father provides for the daughters until they get married. But, Famule’s dad eventually had to adapt to his daughter not adhering to the traditional gender roles of being married and having children at her age. 

Famule admits it is easier in the U.S. to separate herself from traditional gender stereotypes than it would be if she was living in Nigeria. Famule said considering oneself as a feminist in the U.S. and considering oneself as a feminist in Nigeria is not equivalent. 

Famule and her sister knew from a young age that they were feminists, especially after witnessing the life their mother lived adhering to traditional gender stereotypes. But, they never had the language to vocalize that or to recognize what feminism meant or what that looks like. 

Famule feels there is more access to the literature and discourse surrounding feminism in the U.S. In Nigeria, even when Famule saw people with feminist ideologies, they never called themselves feminists because feminism is often associated with Westernization. 

When people claim to be feminist in Nigeria, it is seen as succumbing to Western ideals, according to Famule, with the perspective that feminists are abandoning the culture and tradition, adding another layer of ostracization. 

“I think the difference here is there’s a lot more freedom in one, your ability to access the [feminist literature], but also your ability to define yourself without as much like societal backlash, like in your own community, not just like on the internet, but like the people you live next to, your family members, things like that,” Famule said. 

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University of Wisconsin political science professor Aili Tripp said feminist thinking varies drastically around the world, even within the U.S. While there are influences and overlaps, feminism is unique everywhere because of differences in feminist movements, trajectories, struggles for independence and cultural experiences. 

Tripp emphasized that when talking about women outside of the U.S., it is important to realize that the United States is not the gold standard. 

“When we talk about women in other parts of the world, we have to be aware of our own limitations and where we are coming from,” Tripp said. “ . . . We don’t always compare very favorably.

Tripp referred to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, in which an index is assigned to each country based on the current state and progress of gender equality across education, health, political and economic empowerment. 

According to the report, Rwanda, Nicaragua and Namibia are ranked in sixth, seventh, and eighth place, respectively, out of 145 countries as the world’s most gender equal countries — with the United States ranking 27th. 

In fact, Rwanda has the highest level of female representation in the Parliament, according to Tripp, at 61.3%, whereas in the U.S., only 29% of the members in the House of Representatives are women. 

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Barbara Tijerina is a civil engineer who was born and raised in Mexico. Currently, Tijerina lives in Luxembourg with her husband and son, and she notices stark differences in feminism and the female experience between the two countries. 

In Mexico, Tijerina said women are concentrating on fighting for more welfare benefits and acquiring more basic rights and justice. For example, in Latin America femicide — the intentional killing of women because of their gender —  is a very prevalent issue on the daily, but rarely do women get justice regarding this issue, Tijerina said 

But in Germany, Tijerina sometimes feels that feminism can be focused on more minor issues, such as the masculinity and femininity of words such as “engineer” in German, and the inclusion of both words in job applications and such. Tijerina feels that these debates are a luxury because the basic needs of women are fulfilled. 

“They are talking about all of these things that to me coming from a place where we still have the issues, it seems a little bit irrelevant or in its rhetoric even a little bit even unempathetic to real women having real issues all over the world,” Tijerina said. 

Tijerina acknowledged that there are still issues regarding gender inequalities in European countries, like Germany and Luxembourg, but also recognized the privileges being awarded to her. For example, in Luxembourg, Tijerina is offered two months of maternity leave before birth and three months after birth, as well as parental leave.

“You’re not in a precarious situation,” Tijerina said. “You don’t depend 100% economically on men or on your partner. There’s a lot of benefits that you have and that we have acquired in this region that allows for women to concentrate on other things.”

Tijerina said in Germany, women are able to become independent earlier, whereas in Mexico, women are often dependent on their family for much longer until they achieve the same level of independence. Women may have to live at home for longer periods of time to save money before becoming truly independent in Mexico, especially because a large population of Mexico lives below the poverty line.  

“I think it [stems from us] objectively understanding what the needs of women [are], or what really advances their betterment in society and how [we could] maybe equalize it in a more universal way and not conveniently change depending on where you’re at,” Tijerina said. “Like, oh but these women here are deserving of that and those women there, they might not care for this type of thing, like no.”

While the female experience and feminism looks different everywhere around the world, regardless of location, feminism and gender equality cannot be discussed without discussing another key part of the equation  — the men. 

Pushing Past the Patriarchy

Quality manager Anna Roos is 29 years old and currently lives in Germany. When living with her ex-boyfriend, Anna felt she bore most of the mental load of managing household tasks and had to tell her partner how or when to do specific household tasks. Though her partner participated in some household tasks, it was not balanced by any means. And because he believed he was already doing his part, though it was the bare minimum, he was not willing to discuss the issue at hand. 

Anna said despite men being able to be independent when they live by themselves, the expectation changes when they move in with a woman in a heterosexual relationship. 

“It’s because . . . they still have very much grown up in a household where the mother did both — went to work [and] did all the chores,” Anna said. “So sometimes if they end up in a heterosexual relationship living together, they might sometimes not equal the workload at home.”

Anna’s experiences mirror those of women all around the world. Women all around the world spend more time on tasks such as cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and taking care of relatives compared to men. Even in countries often presented as the prototype for equitable standards, such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the gap in the amount of unpaid labor between men and women exists. 

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, women in the U.S. spend four hours per day on unpaid labor while men spend 2.5 hours. This disparity amounts to 10.5 more hours per week and 546 more hours per year for women. 

 According to the New York Times, if American women earned a minimum wage for their unpaid labor surrounding the household and the family, they would have made $1.5 trillion dollars in 2019. 

The underlying inequity behind unpaid labor is that more hours spent on unpaid labor equates to fewer hours spent on paid labor — the type of work that leads to political and financial advancement. Less time allocated toward paid work means fewer opportunities for promotions and other substantial assignments. This leads to women remaining in lower-paying, less-senior roles despite their abilities to take on more responsibility. 

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Alice Priddis is an occupational therapist that works with organizations doing strategic people and performance consulting in Sydney, Australia. 

Priddis grew up in a household that adhered to the traditional gender roles, rooted in stereotypes. She remembers her father not being very involved in childcare or household chores, with her mother taking on most of these duties. 

Priddis said these ideals from her childhood linger even today. She sees that with her female clients. Even if they are in a good socioeconomic situation, the females are the ones responsible for taking time off work to care for their children. 

“It’s her [the woman’s] responsibility to take the time off to look after the kids, to kind of be responsible for the household and the family more than the [male] partner because her work isn’t valued as much, even just financially,” Priddis said. 

Appleton and Madison are attempting to break these patriarchal ideals in the way they raise their sons. For example, Madison is raising her son with the expectation that he needs to work around the house. 

“I raised [my son] under the mindset that we are a team and that I need you to work around the house, so I could be able to go to work and take care of you,” Madison said “I can’t come and clean up your dirty drawers, your dirty underwear, when you can do the same thing.”

Appleton said household activities such as cooking and cleaning are basic survival skills that everyone should know and aren’t something that should be gendered or associated with gender stereotypes. 

Appleton teaches her own son many of these skills. In fact, she and her son have cooked together in the kitchen since he was 5 years old. 

“I would prefer my son to know how to cook and clean after himself. I don’t want him thinking that a woman is supposed to do everything,” Appleton said. 

But the reach of patriarchal ideals extend far beyond the household. 

Arja Roos heads two software companies based out of Germany with her husband. Despite Arja and her husband holding the same position, she isn’t viewed with the same respect as her husband. 

Arja pointed out instances in which during meetings, she was the one asked to make or bring coffee by her male employees. In other instances, Arja is referred to as the one helping her husband, rather than as the boss herself, even by her own friends.

“They say to me I’m helping my husband because we work together, but it’s my company. I founded it . . . I’m still CEO, but they don’t trust that because I’m a woman,” Arja said. 

The perception of women as less suitable leaders remains a widespread patriarchal ideal. According to the Reykjavík Index for Leadership, which measures society’s perceptions on whether men and women are equally suitable to lead, the average index score for women was 73, considerably below the target score of 100, indicating that women are still perceived as less suitable to lead compared to men. In fact, only 4.8% of Fortune Global 500 CEOS are women as of 2022, despite women making up 39.7% of the global labor workforce. 

While the system is stacked against women, there are tools that can be used to advance their position in society — one in particular that catalyzes progress towards equity.

The Ladder of Education

Maria Rendon was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador. Rendon studied environmental sciences and currently works at the Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation as a coordinator for education and conservation programs. 

Growing up in a big city, Rendon said she has been fortunate to not have experienced sexism in the workplace or school settings. Rendon also grew up in a family where gender stereotypes were not strictly followed, with both parents partaking in household activities and childcare. 

Now, Rendon works in Manabi, a province located in the coastal region of Ecuador, where there are several rural communities. After moving, Rendon quickly realized that the situation for women in these communities were not the same as her own life experiences. 

Where Rendon works, women did not have the same access to education, jobs and other resources that Rendon herself did. Rendon said in the rural areas, much more machismo — or exaggerated masculinity — is very prevalent. The men are the primary decision makers and the ones responsible for handling the money, leaving women to be dependent on men and lack access to the same opportunities men do. 

According to Rendon, it’s common for women and girls to become mothers at a young age,  preventing them from finishing school in rural areas, but the same standard does not present itself for young males. Even if men become fathers at a young age, males are able to continue going to school and work. 

“Education [is] the door that opens these new opportunities and that kind of brings down stereotypes because they’re here,” Rendon said. “ . . . Women are still responsible for being home, and guys are still responsible for going out fishing or working or stuff like that and not necessarily fully responsible [for] the kids that they have.”

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The inequities in access to education is a key factor that contributes to the gender inequities females face. Research shows that in the U.S., women’s education has been an integral step of progressing gender equality in several facets of life, including domestic and work. For example, women who are educated are more likely to have greater decision-making power within the household, according to UN Women. 

According to Brookings, education for girls “contributes later to their increased formal economic opportunity and wages, decreases in pregnancy and early marriage, reduction in child and maternal mortality, better educated children when they do bear children, increased participation in politics, and decreased climate risk vulnerability.” 

But grave disparities still exist between girls and boys in receiving education, particularly in rural versus urban settings. Only 39% of rural girls attend secondary school, which is significantly less than rural boys at 45%, urban girls at 59% and urban boys at 60%. 

The Philemon Ndesamburo family is one example of a family that overcame this statistic. The family — consisting of nine sisters and three brothers — runs and operates Keys Tours and Hotels, a travel and tourism agency in Moshi, Tanzania. Their mother and father started the business 30 years ago, and it has remained a family business ever since. 

Luisesia Philemon Ndesamburo, one of the nine sisters, also emphasized the importance of education in female empowerment. In a time when chauvinistic ideologies were very prevalent — such that women shouldn’t be involved in the business or allowed to be leaders, Ndesamburo’s father refused these ideals and educated all of his children equally. Today, Luisesia is a member of the Tanzanian parliament and is also involved in running the family business. 

Today, the lowest level of education among the nine sisters is a bachelor’s degree, with some of the daughters even holding a Ph.D. Some of the daughters focus on the family business while one of the daughters is a judge and one of them was the former executive director of UNICEF.

“Our father really gave us an opportunity which we are really grateful [for]. He gave us the opportunity to work in his business, and we are the directors of the business and the business is doing well,” Ndehorio Philemon Ndesamburo said. “We are really proud of ourselves.”

 Dear Future Generations

Despite the progress the women’s rights movement has made throughout history, there is undeniably more to be done for future generations. 

For women to progress, men need to be more involved in the fight for gender equality — not just in the U.S. but all around the world, according to Tripp. Men are an integral part of the discourse of the women’s rights movement, and progress cannot be achieved without men being on board. 

African women have been making strides in furthering this goal and the global women’s movement for several years. 

In 2014, former Deputy President of South Africa and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka launched a campaign entitled HeforShe. The solidarity movement invites men and people of all genders to stand with women and be actively involved in the campaign’s efforts — building businesses and raising families, among others — aimed at achieving gender equality.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, Tripp said advancing the women’s movement should start with increasing the number of female leaders across sectors — from education to business to politics.

“I mean, there’s just tons of very capable women everywhere, and I think that we need to recognize that women can do these jobs just as well as men, and they bring different kinds of sensibilities to the table and different voices and different perspectives,” Tripp said. 

Tripp pointed out that more women are becoming involved in politics in the U.S., with an increasing number of women and women of color being elected in every election. While these are encouraging signs that the women’s movement is progressing in the right direction, the U.S. is not keeping up with global trends. 

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Change doesn’t only have to happen on a large scale. To Anna, change starts at home with the parents, as young children are largely influenced by and often imitate the behavior seen at home. Parents can make a large difference in attitudes about gender and gender equality based on how they behave at home, and how they educate their children on these issues. 

“I think it could already make a difference if you just live by example as a family,” Anna said. 

But beyond the home, teachers and educators can have a large influence on young minds as well. Anna said many of the traditional gender stereotypes and attitudes surrounding females, such that science fields are only for men, was taught to her in school. 

In a world made by men, made for men, more systemic change is also necessary for gender equality to become more than a mere concept, but a true reality. Tijerina believes the future of feminism lies in focusing on real policy making and analyzing the real issues women face. She said society needs to start focusing on implementing economic policy and education that can actually improve the livelihoods of women. 

“Feminism means for me pretty much equality for everyone,” Anna said. “I’m a feminist because it was the first way I think to express that I think that you should fight for those who are unaware they are not treated the same way . . . I wish there would be equality where it wouldn’t matter where you came from or what you look like or what your interests are, but that will be probably a long way to go.”

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Wisconsin Women Making History, a partnership between the University of Wisconsin Gender and Women’s Studies Department, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Wisconsin Humanities Council and PBS Wisconsin, aims to educate Wisconsinites about important women in the state’s history.

Many women listed on the digital resource are alumni of UW who were influential leaders and activists in the state. Here are just 40 of UW’s influential women graduates.

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Carol Bartz served as the CEO of Yahoo for two years after graduating from UW’s Department of Computer Science. According to UW, Bartz also served as the CEO of Autodesk, where she increased its worth from $285 million to almost $1 billion in 12 years. According to Women in Wisconsin, Bartz reinforced anti-discrimination policies at Yahoo. 

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Barbara Lawton earned a master’s degree in Spanish from UW. According to the Millennial Action Project, she was the first woman elected to the position of Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. During her time as a member of the National Lieutenant Governors Association, she worked to drive forward an Energy Independence and Global Climate Change Resolution.

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Ann D Gordon graduated from UW with a graduate degree in American history, according to Women in Wisconsin. She served as an editor for the Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B Anthony papers project and is well-known for her groundbreaking research on women’s history, according to Rutgers.

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Gene Cohen Boyer graduated from UW in 1946, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. In 1966, Boyer was one of 28 women who founded the National Organization for Women. According to NOW, she was a large reason for the establishment of International Women’s Year. Throughout her life, Boyer was a feminist and activist, also founding the Jewish Women’s Coalition.

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Clara Bewick Colby was part of the first class of women at UW to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. She was valedictorian and went on to work as a journalist and suffrage activist, according to UW. During her time as president of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, Colby established The Woman’s Tribune, according to UW. The paper was the second-longest woman suffrage paper to run in the U.S.

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Danae D Davis earned her bachelor’s and J.D. from UW, according to StriveTogether. After graduating, Davis served as the diversity affairs director at Miller Brewing Company, the director of diversity management and work/life programs at Kraft Foods and legal counsel for the Wisconsin governor. She has served on the UW System Board of Regents, University School of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Charter School Advocates.

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Frances Hamerstrom earned her master’s from UW as the only woman to earn a graduate degree from Aldo Leopold. According to UW Housing, Hamerstrom was the second woman wildlife professional in the state and worked to highlight the needs of wildlife and population control.

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Belle Case La Follette graduated from UW and was the first woman to graduate from the UW Law School in 1885. According to UW Housing, La Follette was a part-founder of The Progressive, where she wrote columns advocating for women’s suffrage.

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Debora Gil Casado graduated from UW before becoming a teacher at Madison East High School. According to Women in Wisconsin, Gil Casado was a co-founder of Madison’s first Spanish-language immersion school after experiencing discrimination as an immigrant from Spain.

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Carie Graves graduated from UW with a degree in English. According to the UW Athletics Hall of Fame, Graves was a three-time Olympian, winning a bronze and gold medal. She was the first woman inducted into the Wisconsin Women’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

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Gerda Lerner founded UW’s Ph.D. program in women’s history, according to UW Housing. Born in Austria, Lerner was jailed by Nazis before fleeing to the U.S. and becoming an activist for multiple political movements. Lerner was a founder of NOW and Women’s History Month.

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Ada Deer was the first Menominee person to graduate from UW and earned her bachelor’s degree there. According to UW, Deer was the first Native American woman to run for Congress in Wisconsin. She directed the American Indian Studies Program at UW for seven years. She also served as a social worker in public schools across the country and worked with the Peace Corps.

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Anne Nicol Gaylor graduated from UW with a bachelor’s in English. She founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation and fought for the separation of church and state, especially when considering legislation on abortion rights, according to the New York Times.

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Maud Neprud Otjen attended UW, where she helped lead the Wisconsin Student Workers Union, according to Women in Wisconsin. She continued to run for superintendent in Vernon County and was the first woman in Wisconsin to hold such a position.

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Angie Brooks graduated from the UW Law School before becoming the first African woman president of the United Nations General Assembly. According to UW, Brooks was the first woman to be a lawyer in Liberia, where she also served as Assistant Attorney General.

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Peg Lautenschlager earned her degree in law from UW before serving as Wisconsin’s first woman attorney general. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Lautenschlager was the first commissioner of the Ethics Commission and called herself an “activist attorney general.”

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Margaret H’Doubler received a bachelor’s degree from UW, according to Minds @ UW. She later returned to the university to create the Wisconsin Dance Idea and to teach UW’s first dance class. According to UW Libraries, H’Doubler worked to improve people’s understanding of their bodies by using a skeleton to demonstrate dances.

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Kathryn Morrison attended UW to study business administration. According to Kenosha News, Morrison was the first woman to serve in the state Senate, where she passed a “no-fault” divorce law and fought for gender equality bills.

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Marci Bowers graduated from UW before attending medical school, according to Women in Wisconsin. Dr. Bowers was the first woman with a transgender history as well as the first woman to perform gender-affirming genital surgeries. She established programs for transgender surgical education at six institutions across the country, according to the Duke Sexual and Gender Minority Health Program. According to Women in Wisconsin, Bowers was the first American to learn the process of clitoral restoration for survivors of female genital mutilation.

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Estella Leopold graduated from UW with her master’s degree, according to Women in Wisconsin. According to the Leopold Foundation, Leopold earned the Cosmos Prize for her contributions to conservation and chairs Farming and the Environment in Washington state.

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Lynne Cheney earned her Ph.D. in 19th century British Literature from UW. Cheney was chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and wrote many articles about women’s suffrage, according to the White House Archives. Before her time in the White House, Cheney authored or co-authored 12 books, discussing history, politics and the humanities.

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Mildred Fish-Harnack graduated from UW with bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She was the only American to be executed by Hitler’s direct order. According to UW News, Fish-Harnack was a spy for the U.S. and Soviet embassies during her time in Berlin. 

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Kathryn Clarenbach attended UW to earn degrees in political science before becoming a professor. According to UW, she worked for women’s rights for the entirety of her career. As the chair of the Wisconsin Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women, she helped improve legislation on sexual assault, pay equity and divorce, according to UW. Clarenbach was also the first president of the National Association of Commissions on the Status of Women, where she helped lobby for women’s rights and helped found NOW.

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Katharine Lyall served as the first woman president of the University of Wisconsin System. According to the La Follette School of Public Affairs, Lyall increased funding through grants and donations and provided new opportunities for students in the form of internships and assistantships.

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Mabel Watson Raimey attended UW to study English and is believed to be the first Black woman to graduate from UW. According to UW News, Watson Raimey was fired from her first job after three days when they found out she was Black. Watson Raimey went on to be the first Black woman to practice law in Wisconsin and fought for equality during her entire career.

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Patricia Loew earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in communications from UW. According to Women in Wisconsin, Loew is a member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Ojibwe and works as a UW professor, authoring books and documentaries.

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Laurel Clark received a bachelor’s degree and a medical degree from UW before pursuing a career as an astronaut. She died tragically in the Columbia disaster in 2003, according to UW. During her time in space, Clark studied the effects of gravity on humans as well as gene transfer in plants.

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Bell Hooks, or Gloria Jean Watkins, attended UW for her master’s in English literature. According to UW Alumni, Watkins wrote “Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism” when she was 19 years old. The book explored the intersection of women’s rights and civil rights movements.

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Ramona Villarreal was a student at UW, where she helped found La Raza Unida. According to Women in Wisconsin, Villarreal sued the Madison school district for discrimination in her hiring process. Her lawsuit paved the way for other Latinx teachers in the district.

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Hannah Rosenthal graduated from UW with a degree in religion before serving as a U.S. special envoy against antisemitism under the Obama Administration. According to WiscNews, she is the CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and was the founding director of the Wisconsin Women’s Council.

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Francesca Hong attended UW to study Spanish and journalism before leaving to become a chef, according to Women in Wisconsin. Hong’s time as a small business owner led her to her position as a representative in the Wisconsin State Assembly, where she fights for affordable healthcare and transportation, according to her website.

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Dorothy Walker graduated from UW Law School as the only woman in her class. According to UW Law, Walker is believed to be the first district attorney in the country and was the first woman to earn a Distinguished Alumni Faculty Award.

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Suzy Favor Hamilton graduated from UW and went on to be an Olympic athlete. According to UW Alumni, Hamilton is now a running coach and motivational speaker. According to the UW Athletics Hall of Fame, Hamilton made the U.S. Olympic track team for three consecutive competitions. Before her start as an Olympian, Hamilton earned nine NCAA individual track titles, won 53 of her 56 finals in college and was an All-American in cross country and track 14 times.

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Lorraine Hansberry was a student at UW for nearly two years before becoming a writer and activist. According to UW News, she wrote “A Raisin in the Sun,” and was very involved with the progressive party during her time at UW. She faced great discrimination while in attendance.

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Ruth Gruber earned a master’s degree in German from UW. She saved 1,000 Jewish refugees in WWII while also serving as a journalist and author, according to UW’s College of Letters and Science.

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Shirley Abrahamson received her doctorate of law from the UW Law School and was the only woman to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1976, serving as chief justice in 2015, according to the Wisconsin Court System. According to her website, Abrahamson helped write Madison’s first fair-housing ordinance. During her time as a justice, she visited all 72 counties multiple times to hear the concerns of citizens.

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Vel Phillips was the first Black woman to graduate from UW Law School, as well as the first to sit on Milwaukee’’s City Council. She also was the first Black woman to become a judge and to become Wisconsin’s Secretary of State, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. She participated in protests for her Fair Housing Law, which was approved after six years of Phillips’ advocacy.

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Ineva Reilly Baldwin earned her undergraduate and master’s educations from UW, serving as the Assistant Dean of Women and the Associate Dean of the College of Letters and Science. According to UW, Baldwin also enlisted in the Coast Guard during World War II, earning the highest rank of a woman as lieutenant commander. Along with her husband, Ira, Baldwin created the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment — one of UW’s largest endowments.

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Tammy Baldwin attended the UW Law School before running for the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the first woman from Wisconsin to serve in the House and in the Senate, as well as the first openly gay Senator, according to her website. During her time in politics, Baldwin has worked to be a bipartisan force and has worked to pass legislation such as the Affordable Care Act and actions to address the opioid epidemic.

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Zona Gale graduated from UW before becoming a journalist and fiction writer. According to the Women’s Civic League of Portage, Gale supported the La Follettes, was a member of the National Women’s Party and lobbied for the Wisconsin Equal Rights law.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to accurately reflect that Barbara Lawton was the first woman to be elected to the position of lieutenant governor in Wisconsin and was not the first woman to hold the position.

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