Welcome to a new academic year
This message was sent to all students, faculty and staff on Sept. 3, 2025, from Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.
Dear campus community:
Welcome (and welcome back)!
Whether you’re new to UW–Madison or returning to campus, from across town or across the world, I am so happy to welcome you to this new academic year.
There is nothing quite like the first day of school, so full of possibility and fresh energy. The start of each academic year is something like a shared promise we make to learn and discover together, united by a commitment to be curious, courageous and open to new connections and fresh perspectives.
This fall, we are joined by close to 10,000 new students (8,500 freshmen and 1,300 transfer students) and 144 outstanding new faculty who will bring new contributions to our campus community. A very warm welcome to all those just arriving, and all those returning to Madison!
A few recent updates:
- We opened the doors to our dazzling Morgridge Hall, a new hub for innovation and collaborative learning that will serve the entire campus by bringing computer science, data science, information science and statistics under one roof for the first time.
- Not far from there, our new home for the humanities, Irving and Dorothy Levy Hall, is coming together and on track to open next summer, and that big empty space next to Union South is where the state-of-the-art Philip A. Levy Engineering Center will start reaching skyward this year.
- We’ve just won a STARS gold ranking for leveling up campus sustainability – an achievement we’ve worked toward for many years.
- And we were recently named a ‘Best Value’ college by The Princeton Review and Money Magazine, and the Center for World University Rankings now places us #30 in the world, out of more than 21,000 universities.
As always, our excellence is rooted in our people – the faculty, staff, and students who are making real-world impacts every day, from testing ways for organ transplant recipients to avoid lifelong immunosuppressant drugs, to studying the origins of life on earth and – perhaps – elsewhere in the galaxy, to building new pathways for student entrepreneurs, to partnering with farmers to grow healthier, more sustainable crops, to preparing teachers and health professionals to serve communities across Wisconsin, and so, so much more.
Alongside this work, UW–Madison, like other top universities around the country, is facing growing scrutiny around the very values that have long defined us. While this is an uncertain time — for our campus and higher education overall — we will continue to innovate, engage, and lead. Because that’s what Badgers do.
The Wisconsin Idea reminds us that knowledge is most powerful when it’s shared. Every time we collaborate, every time we work together to turn knowledge into impact, we honor that foundational idea by building something together that none of us could have built alone.
So, whether this is your first week as a Badger or your 40th year working here, I hope you’ll take the time to look around our beautiful campus, take it all in, and think about your hopes for the fall semester. And I hope you’ll offer a kind word or a hello to someone you haven’t yet met and help us create a connected community – one small gesture at a time.
I am so excited to see how we’ll build on our 177-year tradition of excellence this year – in the questions yet to be asked, the discoveries waiting to be sparked, the conversations that will both challenge and connect us (like UW–Madison’s Discussion Project or Deliberation Dinners – join me!), and the mark we’ll make — on this campus, throughout Wisconsin, and well beyond. Together.
On, Wisconsin!
— Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin