
The Wisconsin Idea. It’s the time-tested notion that the boundaries of the University stretch beyond campus and directly impact the lives of others. But what does it look like in practice? For the College of Letters & Science, it means that research and outreach from faculty, students, alumni and staff make a real difference to the citizens of Wisconsin and beyond. Those impacts can be environmental, economic and cultural, forming important connections between our own academic community and members of countless communities across the state. Below, we zoom in on faculty research projects, alumni-led programs and student efforts that have impacted each county across the state of Wisconsin.
Adams County
Adams County is known for summer fun thanks to the area’s outdoor recreational opportunities, but keeping those numbers up during the winter is more challenging. To help address this, students in a School of Journalism and Mass Communication class on creative campaign messages pulled together a detailed multimedia strategy to boost winter tourism and support the local economy during a historically slower part of the year. This report is public on the UniverCity Alliance website and free for county leaders to draw from when planning tourism marketing campaigns.
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Ashland County
Earth Partnership is a program housed within the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture that focuses on education through ecological restoration. The program, which does outreach in 11 counties throughout the state, champions native habitat restoration through collaborative, community-driven efforts and working with the Indigenous people of that area, such as the Bad River Tribe in Ashland County. A current Earth Partnership effort in the area is to build up Tribal, school and University relationships that support STEM teaching and learning. The effort involves co-designing an Indigenized science curriculum, providing teaching support strategies for classrooms and community-based education settings, and utilizing these efforts to deepen Native student engagement with STEM fields.
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Barron County
At first blush, the cultures of Scandinavia and Somalia may not appear to have much in common. This summer, residents of Barron County got a chance to experience both as part of a joint event held at the Pioneer Village Museum in Cameron. Marcus Cederström, the community curator of Nordic American folklore, and Anna Rue, the Director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, worked with the Sons of Norway and Barron’s Somali community to highlight and celebrate the histories, crafts and music of Scandinavia and Somalia.

Bayfield County
The Wisconsin State Cartographer’s Office and other UW–Madison partners worked with the Red Cliff Water Resources Program in Bayfield County to help prepare for possible future climate disasters. The project focused on augmenting the hydrologic Geographic Information System (GIS) database and applying GIS-based models to derive new data and evaluate surface water concerns. They also built hydro-enforced digital elevation datasets, identified priority GIS data layers and explored surface water flow. They then trained program staff to use the new data and tools. All of this supports the Red Cliff Water Resources Program and the county’s readiness for climate change impacts.
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Brown County
Brown County is the fourth most populous county in Wisconsin and boasts a tourism industry that’s dependent on its many outdoor offerings and water activities. In partnership with UniverCity Alliance, 82 undergraduate students from the La Follette School of Public Affairs worked to analyze how various projects would affect residents, the economy and the environment. These projects included removing blue-green algae from the waterways — so residents can continue to enjoy all the water activities Brown County offers — and ensuring road maintenance options are cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable.
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Buffalo County
What do rural Wisconsinites think about the state’s water resources? That’s the question the University of Wisconsin Survey Center is looking to answer in a project led by Michael Cardiff, a professor and chair for the Department of Geoscience. The goal is to better understand what the people of rural Wisconsin think now and what challenges they anticipate for the future. To get answers, they are surveying 15 Wisconsin counties, including Buffalo County, so that they can hear directly from the people. They then hope to share results with the Wisconsin state legislature and news sources to provide insight and hopefully inform future priorities. Early analysis suggests that nutrients, pesticides and PFAS are among the biggest concerns in these communities.
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Burnett County
Groundwater — it’s the water that’s stored underground and is a vital resource for drinking water, irrigation and other uses. Back in the early 1990s, the Burnett County Board contracted UW–Madison researchers to conduct an inventory of their groundwater resources. About 30 years later, it’s time for an update and a team from the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey and the Water and Environmental Analysis Lab. J. Elmo Rawling is one of the project leaders as well as a researcher in the Department of Geoscience. The data they are collecting and sharing provides crucial information about water quality, groundwater maps, locations of wells, depth of water and more.
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Calumet County
The Department of Chemistry has a distinguished master glassblower in their ranks. Tracy Drier is a scientific glassblower, which means he creates glassware to be used for the cutting-edge science that happens in the chemistry department. When researchers need a piece of glassware, they go to Drier with a drawing — occasionally sketched in pencil or other times designed on a computer. Because chemistry studies the reactions between molecules when they meet, it’s often necessary for chemists to conduct their experiments in an air-free environment. To showcase this craft, Drier built a portable glassblowing podium for community outreach that has been on the road in Calumet, Dane and Milwaukee counties. Called the Wisconsin Firewagon Project, this podium introduces students to educational and career opportunities in scientific glassblowing and glass sciences.

Chippewa County
A book club for Certified Peer Specialists (CPSs) — people who offer peer support to people receiving services related to mental health and/or substance-use challenges — is making a difference in prisons across the state, including in Chippewa County. The monthly conversations focus on a new book each month with the goal to receive and provide personal and professional support in a CPS community, empowering them to provide the best possible support to their incarcerated peers. This program from the Center for Healthy Minds is meeting in eight different prisons across the state and supporting around 30 CPSs, which ripples out to provide benefits for the hundreds of peers who receive support from them.
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Clark County
As children, many of us were given free resources in our public schools to test hearing. But many Amish and Mennonite families in rural Wisconsin cities do not have access to these types of healthcare resources due to various barriers, including transportation, language and finances. To counter this ongoing issue, faculty and students in the audiology program in the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders created Out of Hospital audiology clinic visits to offer free hearing detection for families in Clark as well as three other Wisconsin counties. These are typically held at the Center for Special Children in La Farge and the Augusta Senior Clinic.
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Columbia County
In a collaborative partnership, Columbia County and UniverCity Alliance partnered from 2021-2024 to address economic development initiatives and topics such as childcare, workforce development, and attraction and retention initiatives in the county. The project, led by the Department of Sociology and supported by the Alliant Energy Foundation, resulted in the completion of seven major projects, including designing a new website for the Columbia County Economic Development Corporation, evaluating the Rio Fire Department, developing a dog park design and more.
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Crawford County
The late Helene Stratman-Thomas, a beloved former faculty member in the Mead Witter School of Music, is one of the main contributors to the Wisconsin Folksong Collection. In the summers of 1940, 1941 and 1946, she traveled Wisconsin to places including Crawford County where she recorded folk songs to preserve the traditional histories and stories of Wisconsin and its people. The materials were digitized by the UW–Madison Digital Collections Center and are now part of a searchable database that includes information about each piece and sound files of the original performances.
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Dane County
Stefanie Primm (’05, MS’08), a long-term field instructor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work, has been unifying families with children who have developmental disabilities since 2008, and she continues to bolster the community through her nonprofit LOV Inc. Free social and educational events give families a chance to learn from experts and connect with each other, fostering important relationships that will last a lifetime. Additionally, workshops provide participants with resources to address possible barriers and practice self-advocacy.
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Dodge County
“How German is American?” That’s the name of a poster and interpretive brochure project from the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies. The goal is to educate Wisconsinites on the history of German-speaking immigrants’ history. Since Wisconsin boasts one of the nation’s largest German populations, the project shared these informational resources in places such as Dodge, Jefferson and Sheboygan counties. The goal of the project is to inspire viewers and readers to understand that multiculturalism in America involves more than just tangible things like food and music.
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Door County
Wildlife poaching is a problem in several Wisconsin counties, including Door County, which supports year-round traffic from both tourists and hunters. It’s often difficult for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine if poaching has occurred in the absence of individuals who witnessed the poaching taking place. Brian Beard, a distinguished scientist and associate research professor emeritus in the Department of Geoscience, used forensic science — specifically, a method of using strontium isotopes to analyze the locations of bone and plant material — to allow USFW officers to determine whether an animal was killed where it resided or was poached and moved to a different location. His work has benefited hunting, trapping and commercial fishing on the Great Lakes.
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Douglas County
For the past seven years, The Wisconsin Dugout Canoe Survey Project has been documenting and creating 3D virtual models of dugout canoes used by members of Wisconsin’s Indigenous tribes. Sissel Schroeder, professor of anthropology and archaeology certificate advisor, has worked with history alum Ryan Smazal (’19) to gather data on a total of 95 dugouts across the state, including a red pine dugout found in the Bois Brule River and now housed with the Douglas County Historical Society. The project offers an invaluable look at the material culture of Wisconsin’s Indigenous societies.

Dunn County
A Swiss cheese kettle, Butch Vig’s drum set and the Manitowoc Breakwater Lighthouse are just a small sampling of the histories told on the Wisconsin 101 website. The idea of the database is to share the state’s “history in objects” to create a community among Wisconsin residents by involving students, museum personnel and amateur historians from around the state. Together, they research and write the histories of objects important to them and their communities. Take, for example, the Wilson Place Door in Dunn County, which is profiled on the website. It was crafted at the turn of the 20th century, likely by a well-known American Arts and Crafts movement blacksmith Thomas F. Googerty. Locals believe the door was fashioned to honor James Huff Stout, a local lumber baron and longtime state senator and philanthropist. The project is led by Sarah Thal, the David Kuenzi and Mary Wyman Professor of History.
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Eau Claire County
Like a lot of waterways in Wisconsin, the Eau Claire River was clogged with sediment, impacting water quality, recreational opportunities and aquatic habitats in Lake Altoona and Lake Eau Claire. Last year, Elisabeth Bykowski (’20, MS’23), a Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture alumna, undertook an independent study that used scientific data, historical records and citizen interviews to examine the financial and environmental costs and benefits of addressing the issue. Bykowski’s study found that the most cost-effective method for dealing with excess sediment was to manage it further upstream while continuing the current levels of annual dredging. Her findings also raised the possibility of removing one or both of the main dams on the Eau Claire River, an option that carries higher short-term costs but significant long-term benefits.
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Florence County
Ever wonder what the State of Wisconsin looks like from a bird’s eye view? Enter the UW Historic Aerial Photography of Wisconsin Project from the Department of Geography. The UW Map Library owns an extensive collection of historic aerial photography of Wisconsin dating back to the 1930s. The project will provide online access for Wisconsin residents looking for these photos, while at the same time digitally preserving the collection of deteriorating 70 year-old contact prints. For example, if you search for Florence County in the database, you’ll find photos ranging from 1938 to 2022. The hope is that this novel project will serve as a template for other libraries and states that face similar problems of aging materials and limited access.

Fond du Lac County
Research by Alfonso Morales, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, and then-graduate student Lauren Suerth (PhD’19), created Metrics + Indicators for Impact, a set of online tools that allowed managers of the Downtown Fond du Lac Farmers Market — as well as farmers markets in other regions across the country — to collect data on their customers and use the information to make informed decisions that can improve the market’s reach and operation. In Fond du Lac, representatives with the Downtown Fond du Lac Partnership were able to use the toolkit to identify potential new audiences and fold the data into grant applications that allowed for further development and expansion. The initial project has evolved into the website farm2facts.org, which serves more than 100 markets across the country.

Forest County
The College of Letters & Science Certificate in Criminal Justice offers students a collaborative, engaging way to learn more about Wisconsin communities through an intensive field internship. One of the project sites, Forest County Potawatomi Behavioral Health, provides students with a chance to understand, research and navigate disparities in the criminal justice system — such as systemic problems surrounding mental health. Through this experience, students passionately invest in the community using their education and creative problem solving. In turn, the community supports students by providing mentorship and collaboration.
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Grant County
Grant County has one of the largest populations in the state of people 65+ with Alzheimer’s Disease. Lyn Turkstra, an emeritus professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, led a project, funded by the U.S. Administration on Aging, to train volunteers on language-enriching and socialization exercises for early-stage Alzheimer’s patients. The project yielded positive results: Participants enjoyed the program and cognitive decline rates were low.
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Green County
Near Muralt Bluff in Mt. Pleasant Township sits a 21.5-acre complex of woods, savanna and dry prairie named in honor of Hugh H. Iltis, a legendary professor of botany who taught at UW–Madison for decades until his death in 2016. The Prairie Enthusiasts bought the land in 1999 to protect it and gave it the name Iltis Savanna. They are working to promote the emergence of young oaks and native plant species there. Iltis, who also served as the director of the University of Wisconsin Herbarium (now the Wisconsin State Herbarium), is credited with starting the Wisconsin chapter of the Nature Conservancy and helping to make the state the first to ban the use of the pesticide DDT in 1968.
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Green Lake County
In 15 counties, including Green Lake, Wisconsinites have received speech, language and audiology services through UW–Madison’s Speech and Hearing Clinic, which is part of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. The clinic serves residents ranging from infants to octogenarians with evaluation and treatments. The clinics are run by graduate students under the direction of clinical professors from the department. The clinic strives to improve the quality of life for individuals, their families and significant others.
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Iowa County
The rich history of Mineral Point, a community in the heart of Wisconsin’s Lead Region, is captured and preserved in part through the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, a collaborative partnership that includes UW–Madison. That program includes faculty from the Departments of Art History, Anthropology and Planning and Landscape Architecture, who helped contribute several thousand digital images to the database, including historic household items, articles of clothing, furniture and tools.
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Iron County
Researchers with the Center for Limnology have been tracking the ups and downs of Wisconsin’s walleye population for more than a decade, charting the various threats (water quality, warming water temperatures, overfishing, etc.) to one of the state’s most critical fish. Student research teams studied fish populations in McDermott Lake, trying to determine if changes in the balance between predator and/or panfish like largemouth bass and sunfish might give walleye a better chance to rebound.
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Jackson County
While Jackson County employs residents in major industries such as transportation, trade, education, health and public administration, the Ho-Chunk Nation remains the county’s largest employer. The College of Letters & Science has spent time and resources strengthening the connections between the University and the Ho-Chunk Nation through projects led by Earth Partnership, an educational and ecological restoration program tied to the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture. For example, a project led by Earth Partnership Director Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong focuses on Indigenous arts and sciences by strengthening the land and preparing for environmental and climatic challenges.
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Jefferson County
Aztalan State Park, outside of Lake Mills, was previously inhabited by two Indigenous groups — the Middle Mississippians and the Late Woodland people. However, many people are unaware of the groups’ impacts. Decades worth of research by professor of anthropology Sissel Schroeder generated educational materials surrounding Aztalan and the tribes that once inhabited it, specifically for K-12 students and middle school teachers. The process of creating these materials was engaging and interactive for students, while workshops prepared teachers to integrate these new materials into their classrooms. The evidence accumulated helps educate students in Jefferson County on the history and significance of where they live.

Juneau County
Recently, the town of Germantown has faced a rapid increase of residential development, driven in part by an increase of part-time and seasonal residents. In an effort to successfully manage the growth, the Department of Sociology and UniverCity Alliance have partnered with the town to develop recommendations and plans for conservation, economic development and fiscal management. In a related project, students at UW–Milwaukee also partnered with the College of Letters & Science and UniverCity Alliance to recommend conservation guidelines and revise zoning codes to prevent over-development in woodlands and natural areas.
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Kenosha County
Located just south of Kenosha on the southwestern shoreline of Lake Michigan, the Village of Pleasant Prairie is home to more than 21,000 people, as well as many corporate and manufacturing companies, including Jelly Belly. Geography and Landscape Architecture alum Tom Shircel (’87, MS’92) works to help the community as the assistant village administrator and as a member of the Friends of Pleasant Prairie Parks Board. He hopes his work helps improve the quality of village parks for residents and visitors.
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Kewaunee County
James Leary, an emeritus professor of folklore and Scandinavian studies, accomplished many things in his lengthy academic career, including founding the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. One of his lesser-known accomplishments was facilitating the addition of the Wisconsin Folksong Collection into the Library of Congress’s National Recoding Registry. Included in that collection is music produced by musicians from Dyckesville in Kewaunee County, whose compositions will now forever be accessible to anyone online.
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La Crosse County
Like most states, Wisconsin struggles with the issue of childcare, including its cost and availability. From 2019 to 2022, students from the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work and the Department of Political Science worked with UniverCity Alliance to independently assess potential local government-based solutions to increase the availability of affordable childcare. One of the more recent reports recommended exploring the idea of creating childcare cooperatives, as well as suggesting several ways in which the county might invest in improving childcare options. In the project’s final year, students in a class taught by David Weimer, the Edwin E. Witte Professor of Political Economy with the La Follette School of Public Affairs, performed a cost-benefit analysis of several options to expand care access.
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Lafayette County
Ever stood in Yellowstone Lake State Park in Blanchardville during the summer months and stared up at the stars? It’s a lot more interesting when you do it with astronomy professors, who routinely hold Universe in the Park sessions there each year. Locals and park visitors get a chance to catch up on the latest astronomical news and, if the weather’s clear, view constellations through powerful telescopes.
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Langlade County
George Shinners (’61, MS ’64), the retired owner of an Antigo-based concrete breaking company and longtime member of the College of Letters & Science’s Board of Visitors, has been impacting his home county for most of his life. Shinners is a lifelong entrepreneur, and until recently, he also operated a 3,000-cow dairy farm. He and his family have generously donated to support scholarships for 256 students who are part of the College of Letters & Science’s Center for Academic Excellence, some from the rural counties near where he lives. Shinners is a tireless advocate of the Wisconsin Idea and strives to ensure that as many students as possible can enjoy the same advantages his experience at UW–Madison afforded him.
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Lincoln County
The Wisconsin state map is wrong. It’s dotted with hundreds of cartographic phantoms, according to Wisconsin State Cartographer Howard Veregin and GIS Research Analyst Mike Hasinoff (’22). They work for the Wisconsin State Cartographer’s Office, which is housed within the College of Letters & Science as part of the Department of Geography. One of their main research projects focuses on correcting the map by tracking cartographic phantoms, which are communities that are listed on a map but don’t exist on the ground. Lincoln County is one place where they’ve conducted this research. There they found three cartographic phantoms and six unverified spots that could be suspected phantoms. To see a map of potential cartographic phantoms and see if there are any in your area, go to go.wisc.edu/ug13z7. The ultimate goal is to build a more accurate version of the Wisconsin state map.
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Manitowoc County
Wisconsin has a large German population — more than 40% of the state’s residents claim German ancestry. Through the work of Mark Louden, the Alfred L. Shoemaker, J. William Frey, and Don Yoder Professor of Germanic Linguistics, Manitowoc residents can hear conversations between their German ancestors. The Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, which Louden directs, has been leading a project to digitize hours of oral history and interviews with German and English dialect speakers. These interviews, available to the public, are one of several ways that Louden and the Max Kade Institute are working to connect Wisconsin residents in counties like Manitowoc with their ancestors, teaching them more about their history and families.
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Marathon County
UW–Madison’s UniverCity Alliance has helped transform Wausau, Marathon County’s largest city, in multiple ways. The group connects UW–Madison with local government units across the state on research and education projects — many of which involve L&S students and departments. Between 2020 and 2023, 152 students contributed to 35 different projects in the county, including conducting a study on road salt use, de-icing techniques and helping Wausau plan an environmentally sound reconstruction of one of its busiest intersections.
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Marinette County
For his senior capstone proposal, Josh Redfearn (’24), then a student in the Department of Landscape and Planning Architecture, investigated how a citywide pedestrian trail network can help connect the city of Marinette. Redfearn developed a plan that connects rural and urban communities to their neighboring parks, lakefronts and harbor. The plan also brings people together through a system of pedestrian-oriented infrastructure, including bike paths and trails.
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Marquette County
Who will grow the biggest and highest quality crystal in the state of Wisconsin? That’s the question that gets answered each year in the Wisconsin Crystal Growing Competition run by the Department of Chemistry. Students from throughout Wisconsin compete to grow the best crystals, as judged by scientists who are experts in crystallography. Budding young scientists from across the state, including Marquette County, participate in the fun competition. The competition is free to enter and serves as a hands-on introduction to a unique branch of science. All participants get invited to an award ceremony held on campus each year.
Menominee County
The Menominee language, spoken for thousands of years, is now considered an endangered language. Efforts to preserve endangered Algonquian languages including Menominee are taking root through collaborations between Indigenous communities and the Wisconsin Indigenous Languages Lab. As growing research on the Menominee has helped reconstruct it over the years, Indigenous communities such as Menomini yoU in Keshena have opened language-immersion programs with attendants from all over the country to revitalize the language.
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Milwaukee County
Political science alumnus Cavalier “Chevy” Johnson (’09) is the city of Milwaukee’s first millennial mayor — at age 35 — and the first Black mayor in the city’s 178-year history. He’s also an L&S graduate. His focus as mayor is on economic development and public safety, including reducing reckless driving and gun violence. Johnson says being a first-generation college student at UW–Madison is a big part of his story and that his time on campus inspired him to get to work and serve the community where he grew up.
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Monroe County
In the 1930s, a large-scale conservation effort took root in the Coon Creek Watershed between UW–Madison, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Conservation Service to stop the widespread flooding and soil erosion that threatened homes and farms across the watershed. Today, as the communities face continuous floods threatening dams, homes and ecosystems, the Learning to Make Running Water Walk Oral Narrative Project, led by English Professor Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, seeks to unearth and record oral narratives with watershed residents about the Coon Creek Watershed’s past. In an effort to preserve the history of the watershed’s conservation, the stories serve as guides for local communities in Monroe County facing environmental destruction in the present.
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Oconto County
Areas like Oconto County are situated along the Great Lakes, which inspired the Sea Grant Institute’s Wisconsin Coastal Guide. It’s an interactive map that encourages exploration of coastal heritage tourism attractions along the Great Lakes Circle Tour. The map, which was put together by Department of Geography experts who work in the UW Cartography Lab, creates a virtual tour along the coast with more than 300 panorama photos. For in-person visitors, it maps out locations of parks, beaches, lighthouses, shipwrecks, historic sites, nature centers, state natural areas, marinas and boat access. For example, in Oconto County, places like the Green Bay West Shores Wildlife Area, Oconto County Forestry and Beyer Home Museum are listed. Overall, the project supports cultural tourism attractions along the Great Lakes Coast.

Oneida County
Ankur Desai, professor and chair for the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, uses Wisconsin’s Northwoods as a research hub for his Ecometeorology Lab. The lab investigates the relationship between Earth and its atmosphere, exploring the impact of different types of land cover on carbon cycling. In several Northern Wisconsin counties (including Oneida), the Chequamegon Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (ChEAS) is using flux towers to chart emissions and sequestration of carbon and water in forested and wetland ecosystems. Being able to quantify emissions and carbon-water relationships — and their reaction to the impacts of climate change — gives state land managers a clear guide on how to adapt the level of forests and wetlands to best manage carbon emissions.
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Outagamie County
Since partnering with UW–Madison’s UniverCity Alliance and the La Follette School of Public Affairs in 2022, Outagamie County has awarded $2.75 million in grants for childcare and education development organizations, funding a family resource center and a shared services program. These efforts arise from collaborations between the county and La Follette students to expand childcare services in a time when many counties do not have enough resources to support them.
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Ozaukee County
As Lake Michigan’s water level rose to its highest point in 25 years, UW–Madison geologists J. Elmo Rawling and Lucas Zoet, the Dean L. Morgridge Associate Professor of Geoscience, sought to investigate how the waves were eroding the bottoms of lakeshore bluffs and how they were beginning to collapse at the tops of the cliffs. In a project sponsored by the Wisconsin Sea Grant, Rawling and Zoet were able to foster a collaboration between the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey and UW–Madison to compute detailed mathematical models of years of erosion, thanks to the vast storehouses of technology and data pooled together in their collaboration. These models will help better predict when landslides will occur.
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Pepin County
Pepin County may be one of the smallest counties in the state, but leaders there have a grand vision to improve resident health and quality of life, protect their natural resources and bolster the rural economy. They worked with UniverCity Alliance on projects for economic, educational and environmental sustainability efforts. Projects ranged from a computer sciences class developing an app with a historic walking tour of the Village of Pepin to an urban and regional planning class creating a downtown revitalization and development plan for the city of Durand.
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Pierce County
As part of a workshop project in a public affairs course, four La Follette School of Public Affairs students researched whether regionalizing River Falls’ shared-ride taxi (SRT) services with those of neighboring cities Hudson and New Richmond would be more administratively efficient than operating them independently. The students found that doing so would increase access to jobs, healthcare and grocery stores while also being more financially feasible.
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Polk County
Polk County is a largely agricultural area of the state experiencing increased suburbanization and the economic and demographic challenges that often accompany it. The county received a boost from students in a journalism class on creative campaign messages, taught by Douglas McLeod, the Evjue Centennial Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication. As part of a three-year collaboration with UniverCity Alliance, the students immersed themselves in the county’s culture, collecting information to develop campaigns that might help attract young workers and their families to growing cities like Amery. The students’ work expanded on projects and tools developed in two other L&S classes, including another journalism class and a course in planning and landscape architecture.
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Portage County
Why would a river run dry? That’s what researchers like Ken Bradbury had to find out when parts of the Little Plover River in the Central Sands region of the state stopped flowing several times starting in 2005. The stream, which is classified as a Class 1 trout stream, begins near Plover and flows into the Wisconsin River. To evaluate the effects of different stresses on the Little Plover River, researchers developed a groundwater flow model. This state-of-the-art tool demonstrates the scientific relationships between groundwater, lakes and streams, and high-capacity wells. The model allows users to test different ways of managing groundwater in the Central Sands area. Bradbury, a state geologist and affiliate faculty member in the Department of Geoscience, discovered that the problem in Little Plover River was tied to an increase in high-capacity wells.
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Price County
The North Temperate Lakes Long-Term Ecological Research Program, hosted by the Center for Limnology, studies long-term changes in Wisconsin’s lakes and watersheds. Researchers have developed state-of-the-art models used to estimate risk of harmful species invasion for northern Wisconsin lakes — like the many in Price County — and pioneered methods for managing invasive species. Scientists on the project give presentations each year to citizen groups and hold meetings around the state organized by the Wisconsin Association of Lakes.
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Racine County
Nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan, the Racine Zoo attracts tens of thousands of visitors annually to see its collection of animals. This includes the lions, tigers and bears (oh my!). Those carnivores are under the care of L&S zoology alumna Amy Petersen (’07), who has served as the primary carnivore keeper at the zoo since 2012. Petersen says the networking skills she built as a student at UW–Madison have helped her work with colleagues at other zoos who assist with problem solving.
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Richland County
Between the years of 1832 and 1866, the federal General Land Office conducted a land survey across the state of Wisconsin. The resulting field notes and plat maps are a valuable resource for original land survey information, as well as for understanding Wisconsin’s landscape history. To preserve the original survey and make them more accessible to the public, the UW Digital Collections Center, with help from the Wisconsin State Cartographer’s Office, scanned and digitized the resources for a Wisconsin Public Land Survey Records database. For example, you could search Richland County and find original records of the area from the historic survey. Ultimately, more than 74,000 pages of original notebooks and 2,524 original plat maps have been made available and will be preserved for future generations.
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Rock County
In a collaboration with UniverCity Alliance, UW–Madison students in the Sociology 320 Research Practicum researched the history of Milton to survey how the city’s youth think about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. The students worked with the mayor of Milton to distribute a city-wide questionnaire in order to develop practices and policies that would promote inclusion and belonging for residents.
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Rusk County
One of Rusk County’s slogans is “four rivers for everyone.” That’s because the Chippewa, Flambeau, Jump and Thornapple rivers wind their way through the picturesque Northwoods and are some of the state’s most beautiful waterways. Unfortunately, invasive species pose a threat to Wisconsin water quality, tourism and fisheries, which can add up to significant economic costs. The Improving Aquatic Invasive Species Prevention Programs in Wisconsin through the Department of Limnology created a resource for lake associations and resource managers to evaluate invasive species vulnerability information using an online smart mapping tool. This resource better equips scientists to make effective decisions that can help prevent the spread of invasive species in Wisconsin.
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Sauk County
In 2022, a devastating flood destroyed much of the small community of La Valle, a village along the banks of the Baraboo River. Dan Schmitt (’09, MS’12) and Luke Geiger (’19), a pair of landscape architects who graduated from the Department of Landscape and Planning Architecture, were part of the committee that created a plan to reimagine, rebuild and relocate several of the village landmarks.
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Sawyer County
The Chippewa Flowage in Sawyer County is home to soaring eagles, hundreds of treetop-covered islands and giant muskie. It’s also the site of tragedy and loss for the Lac Courte Oreilles people. A trip to the Chippewa Flowage for a planning and landscape architecture class was coordinated through the Earth Partnership and Indigenous Arts and Sciences programs along with the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University and the College of Menominee Nation. The class is a unique collaboration involving Wisconsin’s three land-grant institutions that focuses on culturally relevant environmental education.

Shawano County
Great World Texts in Wisconsin is a project through the Center for Humanities that connects UW–Madison scholars with thousands of high school students and teachers in school districts across the state, including Shawano County. Each year the program highlights a work of literature and partners with UW–Madison faculty members to provide resources for interpreting and understanding the text. They then provide an extensive supporting curriculum with materials for teachers participating in the annual read. The highlight is a student conference each year that brings together students and teachers from across the state. This project has increased readership and awareness of great literature since 2005.

Sheboygan County
As executive director for the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation (SCEDC), economics alumnus Brian Doudna (’90) has helped to make a sizable impression on the county’s biggest city. He’s been at the helm for four years, working with generational Wisconsin businesses like Kohler, Sargento and Johnsonville. Like a lot of communities, Sheboygan has been struggling with a housing crisis. Working in partnership with local businesses, SCEDC’s nonprofit is building subdivisions of entry-level homes with the goal of completing and selling four homes per month. So far, 21 homes have been sold, including 16 to first-time homeowners.
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St. Croix County
In a partnership between UniverCity Alliance and St. Croix County, students in a psychology course about issues in prisoner re-entry developed a plan that would help women re-enter society from prison. They identified sober living housing as a more positive outcome than other care options for recovering substance users, with the goal of providing rent-free shelter, food and clothing to support their emotional readjustment and to reduce harmful stigmas associated with substance use recovery.
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Taylor County
The origins of Taylor County are part of a sweeping, interdisciplinary effort to create educational modules that detail the expropriation of Indigenous lands. Professors from the Departments of English, Geography, Gender & Women’s Studies and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program are working together to tell the story of how 1,337,895 acres of land across Wisconsin were taken through treaties with the Menominee, Ojibwe, Dakota, and Ho-Chunk and redistributed or sold.
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Trempealeau County
The Department of Anthropology played a large role in the Trempealeau Archeology Project, which traced Trempealeau’s past by excavating archeological evidence from the Mississippian people’s migration from Cahokia to present-day Trempealeau 1,000 years ago. The Trempealeau Interpretive Path tells those stories through the Little Bluff Trail and two exhibits in the Shirley M. Wright Memorial Library and at Perrot State Park.
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Vernon County
The Driftless Writing Center in Viroqua created the Stories from the Flood project in 2019 to record the stories of residents impacted by devastating flooding along the Kickapoo River and the Coon Creek Watershed in 2018. Since the project began, UW–Madison and UW–La Crosse students have gathered dozens of stories from area residents to preserve oral histories about community resilience in flood recovery.
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Vilas County
Last year, the Center for Limnology’s Trout Lake Station celebrated a major milestone: 100 years of research on Vilas County’s lake-rich landscape. Originally built so that the founders of limnology could have access to hundreds of lakes, Trout Lake Station has played a crucial role in the history of the aquatic sciences and continues to support worldclass research today. The station is also a valuable asset for training future limnologists on how to conduct research in the field.

Walworth County
Economics alum Michael Reader (’86) has a company in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, that is putting Wisconsinites to work. Precision Plus manufactures precision parts, including pins, screws, shafts, valve components, spools, gears and gear blanks. For his work as CEO and owner, Reader was honored with an award from the Precision Machined Products Association last year.
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Washburn County
Home of some of Wisconsin’s Northwoods, Washburn County is one area that will benefit from a groundbreaking study that is mapping hotspots and coldspots for tick-borne diseases like Lyme Disease. John Orrock, the Wayland E. Noland Distinguished Chair in Integrative Biology, is leading a research project to identify how climate affects the activities of animals that feed and infect ticks. The hope is that knowing these patterns will help better predict when infection rates are especially high.
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Washington County
With increasing technology use and a fast-paced news media cycle, the Information School, part of the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences in the College, is working to support adults with children in their care to be more present. The goal of the project is to provide parents and childcare providers with guidance (through workshop presentations) and resources (through a toolkit) on how to practice being more present when engaging with young children. The resources provide evidence-based strategies and expert guidance on being present while parenting and teaching.
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Waukesha County
Orange Hat Publishing, a renowned independent book publisher in Waukesha, has a new owner and editor-in-chief: three-time L&S alumnus Michael T. Braun (’06, MA’11, PhD’13), who earned a BA in English before returning to UW–Madison to complete an MA and PhD in communication science with the Department of Communication Arts. Orange Hat Publishing has its roots in children’s literature but has also become a local powerhouse that produces books of all genres. Among Braun’s goals for ushering the organization into a new era, he hopes to provide developmental writing and editing coaching services, increased marketing assistance and a focus on hybrid contracts that provide authors greater autonomy over their projects.
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Waupaca County
A group of scholars and community researchers across Wisconsin are documenting Latinx history in our state through the Wisconsin Latinx History Collective (WLHC). The group includes faculty, staff and students from UW–Madison, Madison College, UW–Whitewater, UW–Milwaukee, Viterbo University and UW–Parkside, as well as community researchers from Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Waupaca. The WLHC is driven to highlight the historical and current contributions of Latinx communities in the state and weave them into the fabric of Wisconsin’s history.
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Waushara County
Since the Wonders of Physics program was established by Professor Emeritus Julien Clinton Sprott Sprott in 1984, more than 300,000 people across the state have seen their shows. The show features fast-paced, engaging and educational physics programming that helps audiences better understand the physics in the world around them and have fun at the same time. The showcase has touched every county in Wisconsin, including Waushara.
Winnebago County
Lara Gerassi, an associate professor in the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work, researches best practices, policies and programs to support survivors of sex trafficking. In 16 Wisconsin counties, including Winnebago County, she has provided comprehensive trainings to social workers who work with children and youths who are referred to social services for care. The programming includes recommendations on relevant evidence-based practice strategies. She also conducted community-based research to understand the needs and challenges communities face in providing this support.
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Wood County
Situated along the Wisconsin River, Wisconsin Rapids is a city with amazing outdoor recreational activities along with shops, restaurants and a vibrant community arts scene. For three years, the city partnered with UniverCity Alliance to focus on branding, marketing, economic development, and arts and humanities projects. A few of the projects were developed in classes by School of Journalism and Mass Communication students, including an effort to develop a public relations and social media plan for Wisconsin Rapids Parks & Recreation department. Read the full report on the UniverCity Alliance website.
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