A Hub for the Humanities
The future home of the humanities at UW–Madison took a massive step forward in May with the official groundbreaking for Irving & Dorothy Levy Hall. The College of Letters & Science’s new 136,000-square-foot academic building is set to open in the summer of 2026.
Supported by a generous $20 million gift by brothers and L&S alums Marv (’68, JD’71) and Jeff (’72) Levy in honor of their parents, the new space will house eight L&S departments, including African American Studies, American Indian & Indigenous Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano/a & Latina/o Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, History, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies. It will feature five floors, 13 classrooms, seating for 1,100 students and public spaces. The building’s design also includes a rooftop garden, a self-sufficient irrigation system that reuses rainfall and plenty of space for parking bicycles.
“In a time when many campuses are devaluing the liberal arts, our university is standing tall and renewing our commitment to telling the human story,” says Eric M. Wilcots, dean of the College of Letters & Science and Mary C. Jacoby Professor of Astronomy. “If we are to tackle the great challenges facing us, we need to understand who we are as humans, our stories and how we engage with each other.”
Even though Levy Hall lives within L&S, it’s estimated that every UW–Madison student will take a class there at some point during their academic journey. Levy Hall replaces the ’60s-era Humanities Building, which is expected to be torn down sometime in the future.
Learn more: ls.wisc.edu/irving-and-dorothy-levy-hall
We as humans are very social creatures. So, when bad things happen to us, we want to be together and connected to others.
From Fire to Flowers
For eight-plus decades, managers of the UW Arboretum and the Lakeshore Nature Preserve have conducted prescribed burns to help restore the native prairie landscape on campus. Each year, students who are part of Biocore — the Honors Program in Biology — learn to safely use the equipment for controlled burns and help seed native plants and prairie grasses to ensure proper biodiversity. Jeb Barzen, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, has been teaching prescribed burning techniques to students.
See him in action: news.wisc.edu/burning-and-learning
Certifiable
More and more UW–Madison students are pursuing certificates to augment their majors, giving themselves additional real-world career skills. In the 2022-23 academic year, 4,210 undergraduate certificates were conferred — nearly three times as many as a decade earlier. The College of Letters & Science has two of the fastest-growing certificates on campus, including the certificate in data science (which added 522 students in the past four years) and the certificate in sports communication (which added 251 students in the past four years). You can learn more about the latter by reading Good Sports.
The number of red L&S T-shirts that were distributed to new students in September as part of this year’s convocation exercises. Game idea: Next time you’re on campus, see how quickly you can spot one.
