Moments in time: photos from 2022

In 2022, we started to put some momentum behind the resiliency we earned in 2020 and 2021. The virus was still with us, but so too were the vaccines, and across the university, we discovered new ways — and returned to some cherished old ones — of living and working and learning together. We celebrated NCAA champions and held vigil for Ukraine. We bade farewell to Chancellor Rebecca Blank and welcomed our new Chancellor, Jennifer Mnookin. An Indigenous canoe resurfaced ancient history on Lake Mendota, and the Public History Project’s exhibition challenged us to reckon with the full history of UW–Madison. We made discoveries in science and art and left it all on the field (and the volleyball court).

We haven’t tried to recapture all of 2022. Instead, we set about sifting and winnowing down the thousands of photos taken this year to bring you this time capsule of 49 images. We chose some for their stories and surprises, some for the rush or the hush of a singular moment and others that made us want to know more about what exactly was happening at that moment in time.

A view from above of students crowded around a table in a competition to pick up a peanut from a bowl and move it to a yellow card on the table.

Students battle to capture a peanut in their chopsticks during a Lunar New Year celebration hosted by the Malaysian Student Association. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Students stand around a bonfire at night on Lake Mendota. One student crouches down and holds roasting sticks stacked with marshmallows over the open flame.

Undergraduate Sarah LaBorde looks for that perfect degree of marshmallow toastification. She’s making s’mores on frozen Lake Mendota ice during Winter Carnival. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Gauzy banners of pastel lace in green and peach hang from the Chazen Museum of Art’s ceiling. Amidst the tapestries, a worker unspools a lace panel during the exhibit’s installation.

Cascades of gauzy tapestry pour down an open stairwell during the installation of fiber artist Amanda McCavour’s “Suspended Landscapes” at the Chazen Museum of Art. Photo by: Bryce Richter

In a chemistry lab class, two students wearing face shields lean in to watch the liquid in a beaker change from blue to yellow.

Students in a lab for the second semester of General Chemistry watch carefully for a chemical reaction in their flask. The Chemistry Building’s nine-story addition opened in spring with new classrooms, lecture halls, collaborative spaces and labs. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

The skeletal remains of a big cat lie on the gurney of a CT scanner.

If it fits, it sits. The bones of a puma sit neatly in the gurney of a computed tomography scanner at the Wisconsin Institute for Medical Research. Researchers from the Wisconsin Geology Museum are using the scans to compare the fossilized remains of the extinct North American cheetah, thought to be six feet long and 150 pounds, to modern-day cheetahs and pumas. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Students gather at night for a candle vigil on Library Mall.

Students and other members of the UW–Madison community stand in solidarity with those affected by the Ukraine crisis at a March 31 vigil on Library Mall. Photo by: Bryce Richter

A dancer in silhouette raises his hands and arches his back in a full-body wave motion. He is backlit with blue and yellow light.

First Wave scholars perform “summer, somewhere” by First Wave alum Danez Smith as part of the inaugural 2022 Arts Crawl, a series of demonstrations, workshops, open classes, performances and exhibitions. Photo by: Bryce Richter

A toddler wearing a UW cheer uniform stands in a near empty Kohl Center. She holds a stuffed Bucky Badger in one hand and reaches up with her other to touch the bell of a marching band member’s sousaphone.

Badger Band superfan Ila Hellgren wonders if her stuffed toy Bucky would fit in Josh Richlen’s sousaphone bell. The special moment was made possible by Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, which learned of Ila’s enthusiasm for the UW Marching Band and reached out to director Corey Pompey, who eagerly made it happen. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

An aerial view of the new Divine Nine Garden Plaza with a crowd of visitors walking among a ring of nine historical markers.

Hundreds of current and alumni members of the fraternities and sororities of the National Pan-Hellenic Council, also known as the Divine Nine, gathered on May 9 for the unveiling of the Divine Nine Garden Plaza. The nine historical markers on East Campus Mall honor and acknowledge the groups’ achievements, contributions, presence and history on campus. Photo by: Bryce Richter

A view of the Carillon Tower, a vertical sandstone bell tower, through blooming tulip poplars on a sunny day.

Sunlight filters through the spring blossoms of a magnolia tree near the Carillon Tower. Photo by: Bryce Richter

Members of the UW women’s volleyball and hockey teams hold their trophies and smile toward the camera while wearing caps and gowns at spring commencement.

We are the champions, my friends. Graduating members of the UW women’s hockey and volleyball teams celebrate with their trophies during spring commencement. Photo by: Bryce Richter

A student uses her phone to take a photo of Ben Keeler posing with Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a commencement luncheon.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, American representative to the United Nations and spring commencement speaker, poses for a photo with Ben Keeler at a luncheon following the ceremony. Keeler had just graduated with degrees in political science and history and left for the Army one hour later. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Bucky Badger embraces Chancellor Rebecca Blank in a hug at the Memorial Union Terrace.

There’s no crying in academia. Well, except when you hug your favorite mascot goodbye after serving nine years as chancellor. In addition to burnishing UW–Madison’s academic reputation and growing the institution’s research funding, Chancellor Rebecca Blank cheered alongside Bucky at numerous Badger sporting events, including two men’s Final Fours, two women’s hockey championships, a women’s volleyball championship and a Rose Bowl. They shared a hug at a farewell event at the Memorial Union Terrace in May. Photo by: Bryce Richter

Don Chisholm gestures with both hands as he tells a story to someone off camera.

Don Chisholm, a retired UW electrician (1968-retired 2007), shares stories about his years of work in the Service Building. For more than a century, much of the operations that make UW hum were run out of the Service Building and Annex, which have been torn down to make way for new construction. Its operations, including the sheet metal shop, the lock shop and the carpentry workshop, are moving to locations around campus. The Wisconsin Historical Society will preserve architectural pieces of the buildings. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

From behind, Ruthanne Chun and Jennifer Mnookin look into a bustling room in the small animal clinic at UW Veterinary Care.

You’ve just been named UW Chancellor. What are you gonna do next? For Chancellor-designate Jennifer L. Mnookin, the answer was: tour campus! Here, Ruthanne Chun, clinical professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, shows Mnookin the small animal clinic operations at UW Veterinary Care on June 17, a couple months before Mnookin officially started her term. Photo by: Jeff Miller

On a sunny day, a glass orb sitting on pavement reflects a row of rainbow Union Terrace chairs.

A rainbow of chairs painted in the colors of the Pride flag reflect through a lens ball on the Memorial Union Terrace. The Union introduced a special set of chairs to celebrate Pride in June. Photo by: Colton Mansavage

A young girl holds a preserved human brain in her gloved hands as a small crowd gathers to look.

At far right, UW–Madison PhD student Ying Cao, with the Neuroscience Training Program, helps a group of extended family members handle a human brain specimen at one of nearly a dozen UW Science Alliance outreach stations set up at a Juneteenth celebration in Penn Park. Photo by: Jeff Miller

A group of girls, about age 5, sit and stand near a soccer goal on an outdoor pitch. They are cheering and waving their arms in response to action not pictured.

We’ve got spirit, yes we do! At soccer day camp, part of UW’s summertime activities for young learners, some of the smallest players made it known that they’ve got no shortage of enthusiasm. Photo by: Taylor Wolfram

Amidst a flotilla of kayaks, a Bernedoodle in an orange life vest stands on a paddle board and shakes water out of his coat while a swimmer rests at the end of the board.

Shake it off! Penny the dog recovers from an accidental dip in Lake Mendota. She and her person, Physician Assistant Ed Le Blanc, joined a flotilla of kayaks, boats and paddle boards to listen to the indie pop band Sleeping Jesus play an evening concert with a twist: The band faced the lake, giving the audience on the water the best seats in the house. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and College of engineering faculty sit in conversation in a circle of red armchairs.

On Aug. 4, her first day as UW Chancellor, Jennifer Mnookin meets with College of Engineering leadership to tour the UW Makerspace, learn about the facility and meet with engineering faculty. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Seated at a round dining table, a group of second- and third-shift staff, including Santa Ibarra (standing) talk with Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.

Chancellor Mnookin (second from left) stands for a photo with Santa Ibarra (standing in blue), custodian with Facilities Planning and Management, and other attendees during an introduction and acknowledgment event for second- and third-shift employees held in Varsity Hall. Photo by: Bryce Richter

A wide shot of Eagle Heights Community Gardens at harvest time. A crowd is gathered halfway up the hill for a picnic celebration among the garden plots.

Students, faculty and staff gather to learn about organic food and farming during a garden social at the Eagle Heights Community Garden. Founded in 1962, Eagle Heights is one of the oldest and largest community gardens in the U.S. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Taylor Schaefer wears her Alice in Dairyland tiara and sash and a blue sleeveless dress as she talks with Jennifer Mnookin (in a red Wisconsin T-shirt) in a livestock pavilion at State Fair.

Taylor Schaefer, Wisconsin’s 75th Alice in Dairyland and a 2022 UW–Madison alumna, talks with UW Chancellor Mnookin as judging for Junior Grand Champion beef and sheep selection took place at the Wisconsin State Fair. Photo by: Jeff Miller

A new student dives headfirst into the back of a pickup truck on move-in day as his parents hold golf clubs and other gear to take into the dorms.

First-year student Charlie Campbell shows off his varsity-level move-in skills while his parents look on. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Among a crowd of fellow students, two new UW students both throw scissors in a game of rock-paper-scissors. A third student watches in amused disbelief.

Mind: blown. The rock-paper-scissors games got exciting at the Playfair icebreaker event on Library Mall. At least 150 new students attended the event, part of a welcome event series sponsored by Student Affairs. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

A wide shot of the football pitch and full stands at Camp Randall from the new south end zone section.

Roomy with a view. Fans watch the Badgers’ season opener against the Illinois State Redbirds from the spacious new south end zone at Camp Randall. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

A group of students and Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin make W signs with their thumbs and forefingers while smiling toward the camera.

On their first day of school, Chancellor Mnookin and first-year students show their Badger spirit at that most quintessential of UW–Madison functions, the ice cream social. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Two students smile toward the camera while perching on Balanced Rock at Devil’s Lake State Park on a misty fall day.

Transfer students explore southern Wisconsin with a trip to Devil’s Lake State Park and a hike up the notoriously steep South Bluff. The outing was part of the Transfer Transition Program, which helps students through the transfer process and helps them integrate into campus life. Photo by: Colton Mansavage

A woman runs down a broad, tree-lined path in the morning light.

First-year student Ana Gutierrez starts her first day of fall semester classes with a sunrise run along the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path. Photo by: Jeff Miller

Two women look with skepticism at a display case holding a long smoking pipe with colorful ribbons tied along its stem.

Mary Bottari (left), chief of staff in the Madison mayor’s office, and Linda Vakunta (right), Madison deputy mayor, look askance at a “Pipe of Peace” used by UW students in past decades to parody Native American culture. More than 20,000 people have visited the exhibition, “Sifting and Reckoning: UW–Madison’s History of Exclusion and Resistance,” sprung from UW’s Public History Project, a multiple-year effort to research archival records, conduct oral history interviews, and gather primary materials and artifacts to better understand the university’s history of bigotry and exclusion, including inequities based on race, gender, religious beliefs and more. Photo by: Bryce Richter

Casey Brown and Bill Quackenbush bend down to look at the remains of a canoe brought to the shore of Lake Mendota. A man with a video camera stands in the water filming them.

An ancient canoe brought up from the bottom of Lake Mendota deepened our understanding of campus, Madison and this place called Teejop by the Ho-Chunk people. Here, Casey Brown (left) ’04, spokesperson for the Ho-Chunk Nation and member of the Bear clan, and Bill Quackenbush, tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation and member of the Deer clan, take a closer look during the recovery by members of the Wisconsin Historical Society of a 3,000-year-old dugout canoe from Lake Mendota. Photo by: Bryce Richter

Sagen Quale and Aaron Bird Bear hold the ends of the flag of the Ho-Chunk Nation as they raise it up a flagpole at Bascom Hall on a warm and sunny fall day.

This fall, the flag of the Ho-Chunk Nation flew in front of Bascom Hall for six weeks, including for Indigenous Peoples Day in October and the entirety of National Native American Heritage Month in November. Here, Sagen Quale, the environmental chair of the Native American student organization Wunk Sheek, a UW senior, and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians assists Aaron Bird Bear, tribal relations director in the Office of University Relations, in raising the Ho-Chunk Nation flag on Oct. 10. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Latif Nasser and Soren Wheeler sit on stage and engage in conversation at a journalist in residence event.

Latif Nasser, host of Radiolab and UW–Madison science journalist in residence talks with Radiolab Senior Editor Soren Wheeler about all the terrific, interesting, very good story ideas Wheeler has nixed over the years. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

A woman kneels on the ground and digs in the soil and fallen leaves with gloved hands. Classmates behind her engage in similar work.

Students dig deep in a FIG 106 Indigenous Arts and Sciences course. On a field trip to the UW Arboretum, they rooted out invasive plants in an effort to restore the forest growing near an Indigenous burial mound. Photo by: Bryce Richter

Three people wearing inflatable pink flamingo costumes stand amid plastic pink flamingos on Bascom hill.

Volunteers flamingle on Bascom Hill as the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association accepted donations to “fill the hill” with a flamboyance of plastic pink flamingos as part of its annual fundraiser. Photo by: Jeff Miller

A wide shot at night of a homecoming float coming down State Street from the Capitol. Throngs of spectators surround the float carrying Bucky Badger and the UW Spirit Squad.

Bucky and the Spirit Squad rally the crowd as floats and performers travel down State Street during the Oct. 21 Homecoming Parade. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Dressed as a panda, Angelina Huang performs an ice skating lunge.

Have you ever seen a panda do a pirouette? A strawberry tightening her skates? Both were part of the scene at the ‘Spooky Songs’ skate night at the Shell on Saturday, Oct. 29, as Badgers exhibited their Halloween spirit. Photo by: Colton Mansavage

Three young children in Halloween costumes kneel on the ground and pose with Bucky Badger outside Olin House.

Young trick-or-treaters pose with Bucky Badger (or is that Albert Einstein?) at Olin House on Halloween. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Three students float on inner tubes in the Nick swimming pool. The student in the middle concentrates as he throws a water polo ball past his opponent.

A student dodges his opponents to pass the ball to a teammate during an intramural water polo match. Badgers took to intramural sports in record numbers during fall semester. They came out for basketball, teqball, soccer, e-sports and, of course, inner tube water polo. Photo by: Taylor Wolfram

Jennifer Mnookin applauds Clint Smith as they stand on stage for his Go Big Read talk in Shannon Hall at Memorial Union.

Chancellor Mnookin joins with the applause of a full house at Shannon Hall for Clint Smith, who authored the book “How the Word is Passed,” a tour of slavery’s lasting geography and this year’s Go Big Read book. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

A voter leans into a polling booth to cast a ballot in the 2022 midterm elections.

Badgers came out to vote in the 2022 midterm elections at 10 UW–Madison polling places. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

A basketball court set up in the infield at American Family Field is filled with people displaying a nearly court-sized American flag, surrounded by bleachers filled with spectators.

A flag ceremony — held ahead of the doubleheader basketball games known as the Brew City Battle — honored UW student veterans on Veterans Day. This was the first time American Family Field, home of the Milwaukee Brewers, transformed from baseball diamond into a unique basketball venue inside the stadium. Photo by: Taylor Wolfram

Two students sit at computers while holding circuit breakboards in their hands.

UW students Emma Ong (right) and Seth Thao (left) work with circuit breadboards during an electronics workshop in the UW Makerspace. Largely student run, the Makerspace empowers students to build a community immersed in emerging technologies and focused on innovative creativity. Photo by: Bryce Richter

New head football coach Luke Fickell speaks during a welcome event introducing him to the Badger community on Nov. 28. “There is a tremendous foundation here that I can’t wait to build upon,” said Fickell. “This world-class university, athletic department and passionately loyal fan base all have a strong commitment to success and I can’t wait to be a part of it.” Photo by: Bryce Richter

Devyn Robinson spikes a ball over the net in a volleyball match against Pittsburgh.

Devyn Robinson (#10) spikes the ball as the Wisconsin Badgers play against Pittsburgh. The returning NCAA volleyball champions made a hard run at a second title, but the season ended in the Elite Eight with a hard-fought loss to Pitt. Photo by: Taylor Wolfram

Kirstan Gimse holds up a microscope slide containing thin slices of sample tissue.

Postdoctoral fellow and 2022 winter commencement student speaker Kirstan Gimse followed an unconventional path — from high-school dropout to PhD — to achieve her dream of becoming a biomedical researcher. “We have all come from different places, taken different paths and have different perspectives,” she said to the class of 2022. “It is the culmination of our differences that makes UW–Madison so great.” Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Students fill tables in the Huibregtse Family Commons, working on laptops and with calculators as they study for finals.

Olivia Janson, and Joshua Birke, next to her, study for an aerodynamics final. The two picked this spot in Engineering Hall because they like the outlets in the table. “It’s always a good thing to be here. It’s always warmer here than anywhere else.” Photo by: Althea Dotzour

Five students in a circle pelt each other with snowballs as heavy snow falls at night on Bascom Hill.

An impromptu snowball battle heats up on Bascom Hill as freshmen take a break from studying to let off some steam. Photo by: Taylor Wolfram

Wearing cap and gown and flip flops, Bella Persino holds her high heels in one hand as she walks up a very cold and snowy path to the Kohl Center. The a cutout of the year 2022 is on display in the background.

Soon-be-to be graduate Bella Persino — possibly with very cold toes — walks in slides through the snow on the way to the Kohl Center for the winter commencement ceremony on Dec. 18. Photo by: Althea Dotzour

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Photo gallery Moments in time: photos from 2022