University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Sifting and Winnowing" statement

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an important public research university with an enrollment of over forty thousand students and a budget of over two billion dollars.

It has one of the smallest minority enrollments among major schools, with only 11.5% of its student population being African American (2.7%), Asian American (5.2%), Native American (0.6%) or Hispanic (3%).

It has a pleasant lakeside campus, and is academically ranked among the top fifty U. S. universities

Aldo Leopold wrote his classic 1949 work, A Sand County Almanac, while a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin.

The University of Wisconsin was a pioneer in the patenting and commercial licensing of university research. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) was founded in 1925 to licence professor Harry Steenbock's process for fortifying milk with vitamin D. The blood-thinning drug dicoumadin was developed at WARF during an investigation of cattle disease; as of 1999 it was the eleventh-most-prescribed drug in the United States, and is also used, under the name Warfarin, as a rat poison.

A plaque on Bascom Hall quotes a statement from an 1894 Board of Regents report:

Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin shall ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.

E. A. Birge and Chancey Juday, UW limnology pioneers, operating a plankton trap

In North America, limnology (the scientific study of lakes) was founded by E. A. Birge and Chancey Juday at the University of Wisconsin, which remains prominent in the field.

Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental College, inaugurated in 1927, was a short-lived but very influential educational experiment at the University of Wisconsin. It was one of a number of attempts to present the liberal arts as a unified whole, with emphasis on the direct reading of original sources. It can be broadly consider as part of the "Great Books" movement, which lives on in its purest state today at St. John's College in Annapolis, and in an attenuated form at WIsconsin as the Integrated Liberal Studies program.

The university's radio station, WHA, was an important pioneer in broadcast radio, and makes the (questioned) claim to be "the oldest station in the nation" The physics department began experimental transmissions in 1900, received experimental license 9XM in 1915, began voice transmissions in 1920, and received its current call letters, WHA, in 1922.

It has long been one of the most liberal institutions in the United States.^{[Citation Needed]} It has a relatively low representation of minorities in its enrollment—11.5%—compared to over 20% nationwide and 12.7% for the state of Wisconsin.

It is the birthplace of both the political correctness and the Critical legal studies movements. It is the reason that Wisconsin, which has a conservative population, has a pro-gun control governor and two liberal U.S. Senators. John Kerry carried Wisconsin in 2004 on the strength of the vote in Madison, where the large University is located.

It is one of only 15 U.S. Universities found to require a course in Shakespeare in order to receive a degree in English.

Liberal Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, who received her law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has represented the district since 1998, and as its state representative prior to that.