HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON

Here is a music video of Camp Randall Stadium. This website was produced by Al Young, a graduate of UW-Madison School of Business (class of 1971). Donations are accepted at: gofundme.com/f/uwmadisonhistory

Introduction

The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison is the official state university of Wisconsin and the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It was the first public university established in Wisconsin and remains the oldest and largest public university in the state. 

UW–Madison became a land-grant institution in 1866. The 933-acre main campus, located on the shores of Lake Mendota, includes four National Historic Landmarks. The university also owns and operates the 1,200-acre University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum, located 4 miles south of the main campus, which is also a National Historic Landmark.

UW–Madison is organized into 13 schools and colleges, which enrolled 35,184 undergraduate, 9,993 graduate, 2,046 special, and 2,663 professional students in 2022. Its academic programs include 136 undergraduate majors, 148 master's degree programs, and 120 doctoral programs.

Wisconsin is one of the twelve founding members of the Association of American Universities, a selective group of major research universities in North America.It is considered a Public Ivy, and is classified as an R1 University. UW–Madison was also the home of both the prominent "Wisconsin School" of economics and diplomatic history. The National Science Foundation ranked UW–Madison 8th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2022 with $1.52 billion. As of March 2023, 20 Nobel laureates, 41 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 Fields medalists, and 1 Turing Award recipient have been affiliated with UW–Madison as alumni, faculty, or researchers. It is also a leading producer of Fulbright Scholars and MacArthur Fellows. As of November 2018, 14 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies attended UW–Madison, the most of any university in the nation.

The Wisconsin Badgers compete in 25 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference and have won 31 national championships. Wisconsin students and alumni have won 50 Olympic medals (including 13 gold medals).

History

Beginnings and formative years

The university had its official beginnings when the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in its 1838 session passed a law incorporating a "University of the Territory of Wisconsin", and a high-ranking Board of Visitors was appointed. However, this body (the predecessor of the U.W. board of regents) never actually accomplished anything before Wisconsin was incorporated as a state in 1848.

The Wisconsin Constitution provided for "the establishment of a state university, at or near the seat of state government..." and directed by the state legislature to be governed by a board of regents and administered by a Chancellor. On July 26, 1848, Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin's first governor, signed the act that formally created the University of Wisconsin.[24] John H. Lathrop became the university's first chancellor, in the fall of 1849. With John W. Sterling as the university's first professor (mathematics), the first class of 17 students met at Madison Female Academy on February 5, 1849.

A permanent campus site was soon selected: an area of 50 acres "bounded north by Fourth lake, east by a street to be opened at right angles with King street (later State Street) "south by Mineral Point Road (University Avenue), and west by a carriage-way from said road to the lake." The regents' building plans called for a "main edifice fronting towards the Capitol, three stories high, surmounted by an observatory for astronomical observations." This building, University Hall, now known as Bascom Hall, was finally completed in 1859. On October 10, 1916, a fire destroyed the building's dome, which was never replaced. North Hall, constructed in 1851, was actually the first building on campus. In 1854, Levi Booth and Charles T. Wakeley became the first graduates of the university, and in 1892 the university awarded its first PhD to future university president Charles R. Van Hise.

The Wisconsin Idea

Research, teaching, and service at the UW is influenced by a tradition known as "the Wisconsin Idea", first articulated by UW–Madison President Charles Van Hise in 1904, when he declared "I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every home in the state." The Wisconsin Idea holds that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state, and that the research conducted at UW–Madison should be applied to solve problems and improve health, quality of life, the environment, and agriculture for all citizens of the state. The Wisconsin Idea permeates the university's work and helps forge close working relationships among university faculty and students, and the state's industries and government. Based in Wisconsin's populist history, the Wisconsin Idea continues to inspire the work of the faculty, staff, and students who aim to solve real-world problems by working together across disciplines and demographics.

World War II

During World War II, University of Wisconsin was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.

Expansion

Main article: University of Wisconsin System

Over time, additional campuses were added to the university. The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee was created in 1956, and UW–Green Bay and UW–Parkside in 1968. Ten freshman-sophomore centers were also added to this system. In 1971, Wisconsin legislators passed a law merging the University of Wisconsin with the nine universities and four freshman-sophomore branch campuses of the Wisconsin State Universities System, creating the University of Wisconsin System and bringing the two higher education systems under a single board of regents.

Student activism

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, UW–Madison was shaken by a series of student protests, and by the use of force by authorities in response, comprehensively documented in the film The War at Home. The first major demonstrations protested the presence on campus of recruiters for the Dow Chemical Company, which supplied the napalm used in the Vietnam War. Authorities used force to quell the disturbance. The struggle was documented in the book, They Marched into Sunlight, as well as the PBS documentary Two Days in October. Among the students injured in the protest was former Madison mayor Paul Soglin.

Another target of protest was the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) in Sterling Hall, which was also home of the physics department. The student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, published a series of investigative articles stating that AMRC was pursuing research directly pursuant to US Department of Defense requests, and supportive of military operations in Vietnam. AMRC became a magnet for demonstrations, in which protesters chanted "U.S. out of Vietnam! Smash Army Math!"

On August 24, 1970, near 3:40 am, a bomb exploded next to Sterling Hall, aimed at destroying the Army Math Research Center. Despite the late hour, a post doctoral physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, was in the lab and was killed in the explosion. The physics department was severely damaged, while the intended target, the AMRC, was scarcely affected. Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, and David Fine were found responsible for the blast. Leo Burt was identified as a suspect, but was never apprehended or tried.

Timeline of notable events

Notable moments in the history of the University of Wisconsin–Madison include:

1848 on July 26, act creating the university signed by the governor

1849 on February 5, the first class meets

1863 Female students first admitted to University of Wisconsin during the American Civil War

1866 State legislature designated the university as the Wisconsin land-grant institution

1875 William Smith Noland is the first known African-American to graduate from the university.

1888 Science Hall is constructed, one of the world's first buildings to use I-beams

1892 on April 4, the first edition of the student-run The Daily Cardinal was published

1894 State Board of Regents rejected an effort to purge Professor Richard T. Ely for supporting striking printers, issuing the famous "sifting and winnowing" manifesto in defense of academic freedom, later described as "part of Wisconsin's Magna Carta"

1904–1905 UW Graduate School established

1905 the university awards the first PhD in chemical engineering ever granted, to Oliver Patterson Watts.

1907 Wisconsin Union was founded

1909 William Purdy and Paul Beck wrote On, Wisconsin the UW–Madison athletic fight song

1907–1911 The "Single-grain experiment" was conducted by Stephen Moulton Babcock and Edwin B. Hart, paving the way for modern nutrition as a science

1913 Vitamin A discovered by Elmer V. McCollum and Marguerite Davis

1916 Vitamin B discovered by McCollum and Davis

1919 Radio station 9XM founded on campus (now WHA (970 AM), it is the oldest continually operating radio station in the United States)

1923 Harry Steenbock invented process for adding vitamin D to milk

1925 Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation chartered to control patenting and patent income on UW–Madison inventions

1934 The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum, whose mission was to restore lost landscapes, such as prairies, was opened

1936 UW–Madison began an artist-in-residence program, the first ever at a university, with John Steuart Curry

1940–1951 Warfarin (Coumadin) developed at UW. Named after Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

1969 Two sticks of dynamite were detonated outside the Administration Building, shattering over 700 windows and creating a crater in the reinforced concrete floor of the entranceway. There were no casualties, and no one claimed responsibility for the explosion.

1969 The Badger Herald was founded as a conservative student paper

1969 UW–Madison's Howard Temin (Virologist) co-discovers the enzyme reverse transcriptase

1970 Sterling Hall bombing

1984 University Research Park founded to encourage technology transfer between university and businesses

1998 UW–Madison's James Thomson first isolated and cultured human embryonic stem cells

2020 In response to an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 and amidst a statewide public health emergency declaration, UW–Madison suspends in-person instruction from March 23 until at least the end of the summer term, shifting courses online and drastically reducing campus operations.

Campus

Located in Madison, about a mile from the state capitol, the main campus of the university is situated partially on the isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. The main campus comprises 933 acres (378 ha) of land, while the entire campus, including research stations throughout the state, is over 10,600 acres in area. The central campus is on an urban layout mostly coinciding with the city of Madison's street grid, exceptions being the suburban University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, and the Department of Psychiatry & Clinics in the West Side research park. The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum, a demonstration area for native ecosystems, is located on the west side of Madison. The main campus includes many buildings designed or supervised by architects J.T.W. Jennings and Arthur Peabody. The hub of campus life is the Memorial Union. UW–Madison's campus has been ranked as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States by Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler. One unusual feature of the campus is the Babcock Hall dairy plant and store, a fully functional dairy well known for its ice cream.

Bascom Hill

As one of the icons on campus, Bascom Hall, at the top of Bascom Hill, is often considered the "heart of the campus." Built in 1857, a decorative dome that once sat atop the structure was destroyed by fire in 1916. The structure has been added to several times over the years. The building currently houses the office of the chancellor and vice chancellors. Bascom Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing building within the Bascom Hill Historic District.

Flanking both sides of Bascom Hall are the two oldest surviving buildings on campus. Designed by John F. Rague in a Federal style, the oldest structure in the university, North Hall (built in 1851), was planned to be similar to the dormitories in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is still in use as the home of the Department of Political Science. Its opposite twin, South Hall (built in 1855), originally served as the women's dormitory prior to the establishment of the Female College Building in 1871 (today the location of Chadbourne Hall). The administrative offices of the College of Letters and Science now occupy the building.

The Carillon Tower, erected in 1936, was designed by Warren Laird and Paul Philippe Cret so that the balustrade echoes that on Bascom Hall. The carillon has 56 bronze bells, with the largest weighing 6,800 pounds. An automated system rings bells on the hour, playing songs such as "Varsity" and "On, Wisconsin!". East of the tower, lies a monument to the Sauk leader Black Hawk, whose flight through the Madison area represented the last armed conflict between the United States Army and native peoples in southern Wisconsin.

Several other notable architectural styles are represented in the historic core of the university. Following the 1884 fire that destroyed the original, Milwaukee architect Henry C. Koch designed the new Science Hall (built in 1888) in a Romanesque Revival style. The Education Building, originally designed to house the College of Engineering, features a Beaux-Arts style. Structures built in a Neoclassical style include Birge Hall and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Located at the foot of the hill, Music Hall was designed in 1878 by Madison architect David R. Jones in a Gothic Revival style.

Van Hise Hall is home to most of the languages departments of the university and the upper floors house the offices of the University of Wisconsin System's president and its Board of Regents. At 241 feet and 19 stories, Van Hise is the second-tallest building in Madison and one of the tallest educational buildings in the world. Because of its placement atop Bascom Hill it towers over the State Capitol as the building with the highest elevation in the city. Van Hise Hall was constructed in 1967 and its destruction is slated for sometime around 2025 as part of the university's campus master plan.

The George L. Mosse Humanities Building, located on Library Mall, was built in the late 1960s in the Brutalist style. Although debunked, the campus myth is that the building (with its poor ventilation, narrow windows, inclined base, and cantilevered upper floors) was designed to be "riot-proof". Its seven floors house the history, art, and music departments. The most recent campus master plan calls for it to be demolished and replaced with two other buildings, in part because of water damage.

Wisconsin Union

The University of Wisconsin–Madison has two student unions. The older, Memorial Union, was built in 1928 to honor American World War I veterans. Also known as the Union or the Terrace, it has gained a reputation as one of the most beautiful student centers on a university campus. Located on the shore of Lake Mendota, it is a popular spot for socializing among both students and the public, who enjoy gazing at the lake and its sailboats. The union is known for the Rathskeller, a German pub adjacent to the lake terrace. Political debates and backgammon and sheepshead games over a beer on the terrace are common among students. The Rathskeller serves "Rathskeller Ale", a beer brewed expressly for the Terrace. Memorial Union was the first union at a public university to serve beer.

Memorial Union is home to many arts venues, including several art galleries, the Wisconsin Union Theater, and Wheelhouse Studios-a craft shop that provides courses and facilities for arts and crafts activities. Students and Madison community members alike congregate at the Memorial Union for the films and concerts each week. An advisory referendum to renovate and expand Memorial Union was approved by the student body in 2006, and the university completed the renovation in 2017.

Union South, the newer campus union, was built in 1971 to better accommodate a growing student enrollment and was demolished in 2008. A new "green" Union South, located on the site of the old union, opened April 15, 2011. It is a certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold building. The building contains several dining options, an art gallery, a movie theater, a climbing wall, a bowling alley, event spaces, and a hotel.

The Wisconsin Union also provides a home for the Wisconsin Union Directorate Student Programming Board (WUD), which provides regular programs for both students and community members. One of the most well-known members of WUD is the Wisconsin Hoofers, a club that organizes outdoor recreational activities.

Henry Mall

Henry Mall is a 50-foot wide and 575-foot long landscaped quadrangle that was designed by architects Warren Laird and Paul Cret and constructed between 1903 and 1961. The mall contains buildings that represent Neoclassical, Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance Revival, and Modern Movement styles of architecture.[135] Laird and Cret were hired to draw up a master plan for future construction at the campus, with the idea of creating a more unified and aesthetically pleasing area. The departments around the Henry Mall area were conceived to be "technical" and geographically close to the science departments and the university farm.

The Mall features several notable buildings, including Agriculture Hall, the Agronomy Building, the Agricultural Engineering Building, and the Agricultural Chemistry Building. The Mall is also home to several artworks, including the Hoard statue by Gutzon Borglum, which honors William Dempster Hoard, the publisher of Hoard's Dairyman magazine. The Henry Boulder, a chunk of gneiss on the mall with a plaque, is dedicated to Dean William Arnon Henry, the mall's namesake, who helped establish the College of Agriculture. Other buildings in the area include the Stovall Lab of Hygiene and the Genetics Building. The Henry Mall Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

Libraries

The University of Wisconsin–Madison has the 12th largest research library collection in North America. More than 30 professional and special-purpose libraries serve the campus. The campus library collections include more than 11 million volumes representing human inquiry through all of history. In addition, the collections comprised more than 103,844 serial titles, 6.4 million microform items, and over 8.2 million items in other formats, such as government documents, maps, musical scores, and audiovisual materials. Over 1 million volumes are circulated to library users every year. Memorial Library serves as the principal research facility on campus for the humanities and social sciences. It is the largest library in the state, with over 3.5 million volumes. It also houses a periodical collection, domestic and foreign newspapers, Special Collections, the Mills Music Library, and the UW Digital Collections Center. The UW–Madison Libraries are members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

Steenbock Memorial Library is the primary science library and supports the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Engineering, the School of Veterinary Medicine, UW–Extension and Cooperative Extension, and the College of Liberal Arts and Science Departments of Botany, Chemistry, Computer Science, Statistics, and Zoology.[148] The University of Wisconsin–Madison Archives and Records Management Department and Oral History Program are also located in Steenbock Library. The library is named for UW professor Harry Steenbock (1886–1967), who developed an inexpensive method of enriching foods with Vitamin D in the 1920s. This library is open to the public. After the closure of the Wendt Library for Engineering,Steenbock Library was designated a Patent and Trademark Depository Library, and it maintains all U.S. utility, design, and plant patents, and provides reference tools and assistance for both the general public and the UW–Madison community.

Undergraduates can find many of the resources they need at College Library in Helen C. White Hall.[150] Special collections there include Ethnic Studies, Career, Women's, and Gaus (Poetry). The Open Book collection, created to support the extra-academic interests of undergraduates, contains DVDs, audio books, and video games, and paperback books. The library also has a coffee shop, the Open Book Café. College Library houses a media center with over 200 computer workstations, DV editing stations, scanners, poster printing, and equipment checkout (including laptops, digital cameras, projectors, and more).

Ebling Library for the Health Sciences is located in the Health Sciences Learning Center. It opened in 2004 after the Middleton Library, Weston Library, and Power Pharmaceutical Library merged collections and staff.

The Kohler Art Library is located in the Conrad A. Elvehjem Building across from the Chazen Museum of Art and serves as the main campus resource for art and architecture. The library supports the Departments of Art and Art History as well as the Chazen Museum. Its collections number over 185,000 volumes covering global art movements of all periods. A feature of the library is the Artists' Book Collection, which contains over 1,000 artists' books from 175 presses and artists. The collection, created as a teaching resource in 1970 by founding Kohler Art Library Director William C. Bunce, was digitized in 2007 by the UW Digital Collections Center. The Kohler Art Library is open to the public.

UW–Madison Libraries is maintain their own online catalog. It includes bibliographic records for books, periodicals, audiovisual materials, maps, music scores, microforms, and computer databases owned by over 30 campus libraries, as well as records for items part of the University of Wisconsin System Libraries. The UW–Madison Libraries website provides access to resources licensed for use by those affiliated with UW–Madison, in addition to those openly available on the World Wide Web.

Museums

The Geology Museum features rocks, minerals, and fossils from around the world. Highlights include a blacklight room, a walk-through cave, and a fragment of the Barringer meteorite. Some noteworthy fossils include the first dinosaur skeleton assembled in Wisconsin (an Edmontosaurus), a shark (Squalicorax) and a floating colony of sea lilies (Uintacrinus), both from the Cretaceous chalk of Kansas, and the Boaz Mastodon, a found on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin in 1897.

The Chazen Museum of Art, formerly the Elvehjem Museum of Art, maintains a collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints and photographs spanning over 700 years of art.

The university's Zoological Museum maintains a collection of approximately 500,000 zoological specimens, which can be used for research and instruction. A special collection contains skeletons, artifacts, and research papers associated with the Galápagos Islands. Since 1978, the UW–Madison Zoological Museum has been one of only three museums granted permission by the Ecuadoran Government to collect anatomical specimens from the Galápagos Islands.

The L. R. Ingersoll Physics Museum contains a range of exhibits demonstrating classical and modern physics. Many of the exhibits allow for hands-on interaction by visitors. The museum also has a number of historical instruments and pictures on display.

Athletics

The University of Wisconsin–Madison sports teams participate in the NCAA's Division I-A. With the exception of lightweight Wisconsin Badgers Crew, the university's athletic programs compete in the Big Ten Conference. The women's hockey program competes in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), while the men's and women's crew programs compete in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges and Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges, respectively. The school's fight song is On, Wisconsin!. The school's mascot is Buckingham U. Badger, commonly referred to as "Bucky Badger". The athletic director is Chris McIntosh.

2005–2006 marked the first time in school history that four Badger teams won national championships in the same academic year. In the fall, the men's cross country team won its fourth national championship. The winter season was highlighted by the men's and women's ice hockey teams both winning national titles. The year was capped off in the spring with the women's lightweight crew taking its third straight Intercollegiate Rowing Association national crown. In 2008, both men's and women's crew teams claimed national titles.

Football

The Badgers play college football at Camp Randall Stadium. The head coach is Luke Fickell. Before the fourth quarter of every game at Camp Randall, the crowd jumps around to House of Pain's song "Jump Around". After every game, the University of Wisconsin Marching Band plays popular songs during the Fifth Quarter. The Badgers won three Rose Bowl Championships under Barry Alvarez in 1994, 1999, and 2000. In 2006, Bret Bielema led the Badgers to a school record (at that time) 11-win regular season and to 12 overall wins, defeating Arkansas in the Capital One Bowl. Coach Paul Chryst would later break that record as he led the Badgers to 12 regular season wins in the 2017-2018 campaign, as well as a 34–24 victory over Miami in the Orange Bowl, for a season total of 13 wins. Chryst also won a Cotton Bowl the year before the Orange Bowl win. The Badgers lost to TCU in the 2011 Rose Bowl Championship on January 1, 2011. In the 2011 season, the Badgers defended the B1G championship title to go to the 2012 Rose Bowl Championship. The Badgers lost to Oregon 45–38 in the highest-scoring Rose Bowl of all time. The Badgers made it to the 2013 Rose Bowl for their third consecutive Rose Bowl appearance. Bret Bielema took the Arkansas football head coaching position before the game and Barry Alvarez took over as a one-game interim coach. The Badgers lost to Stanford 14-20 for Barry Alvarez's first Rose Bowl loss, he had previously won it three times.

Basketball

Men's basketball

The Badgers have made 19 consecutive appearances (1999–2017) in the NCAA Tournament, having played in the National Championship game in 2015, making Final Four visits in 2000 and 2014, an Elite Eight appearance in 2005, and Sweet Sixteen appearances in 2003, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2016, and 2017.[176] Bo Ryan was the head coach from 2001 to 2015. Greg Gard is the current head coach. The Badgers play at the Kohl Center, where the student fans are known as Area RED. In the 2006–2007 season, the Badgers attained their highest AP ranking in school history (#1 Feb. 19–25), garnering 35 first-place votes. The Badgers earned their only NCAA National Championship in 1941.

Women's basketball

The Wisconsin Badgers women's basketball team is an NCAA Division I college basketball team competing in the Big Ten Conference. Home games are played at the Kohl Center, located on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus in Madison, Wisconsin. Previous to the Kohl Center, the home games were played at the Wisconsin Field House.

Ice hockey

Men's Ice Hockey

Badger ice hockey first became a men's varsity sport in 1922. Although dropped after the 1934–35 season, it again became a varsity sport in the 1963–64 season. The men's team played in the Dane County Coliseum until moving to the Kohl Center (capacity 15,359) in the fall of 1998. The first ice hockey game played at the Kohl was the Hall of Fame game against the University of Notre Dame. From 1999 to 2012 the men's team led the nation in college hockey attendance, setting an NCAA attendance record (averaging 15,048) during the 2009–10 season, which surpassed their previous record set in 2006–07.

Bob Johnson, nicknamed "Badger Bob" by fans, took over the reins in 1966. Johnson coached the Badger men to three national championships in 1973, 1977 and 1981. Jeff Sauer coached the Badger men to two more titles in 1983 and 1990. Mike Eaves, member of the 1977 NCAA title team, coached the Badger men's team to its sixth national championship in 2006. The six Badger titles rank fourth in NCAA men's ice hockey history.[179] Eaves' 2010 squad advanced to the national championship game during the Badgers' 11th appearance in the men's Frozen Four before bowing to Boston College.

Women’s Ice Hockey

The school's strong ice hockey tradition gained another dimension with the addition of a women's team that began play in the 1999–2000 season. Coached by Mark Johnson, son of "Badger Bob" and another member of the men's 1977 title team, the Badger women won their first NCAA championship on March 26, 2006. The dual 2006 titles marked the first time that both the men's and women's Division I NCAA hockey titles were won by the same school in the same year.[180] The women's team repeated as national champions in 2007 with a victory over the University of Minnesota-Duluth and in 2009 with a victory over Mercyhurst. The team set the NCAA women's hockey attendance record on February 15, 2014, in a game against Minnesota.

In 2006, the Wisconsin Badgers became the first team outside the state of Minnesota to win the Women's Frozen Four championship. The Badgers defeated the defending champions, the Minnesota Golden Gophers, by a score of 3–0 at Mariucci Arena in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On January 28, 2012, the Wisconsin Badgers broke the NCAA women's hockey attendance record for the third consecutive year[4] with 12,402 fans in attendance.[5] The game was part of a two-game sweep of the Bemidji State Beavers. The previous record for most fans to watch a women's college hockey game at the Kohl Center was 10,668. That record was set on January 29, 2011.

On March 19, 2023 the Badgers became the lowest seed to win a NCAA women's hockey tournament as Wisconsin knocked off top-seeded Ohio State, 1-0, to claim the program's record-breaking seventh NCAA title at AMSOIL Arena in Duluth, Minn. Kirsten Simms scored the lone goal of the game and Cami Kronish stopped all 31 shots she faced en route to being named the Most Outstanding Performer of the Tournament. UW also defeated the No. 2 seed, Minnesota, and the No. 3 seed, Colgate, on the way to its third NCAA title in five years.

Rivalries

The Wisconsin Badgers' most notable rivalry within the Big Ten is with the University of Minnesota, which is the most-played rivalry in Division I-A football. In their annual college football game, the teams compete for Paul Bunyan's Axe. The two universities also compete in the Border Battle, a year-long athletic competition in which each team's wins earn points for their university.

Men's basketball rivalries include Michigan State, Illinois and non-conference, in-state Marquette.

The Wisconsin–Madison men's and women's hockey teams' most recognized rivals are the Golden Gophers of the University of Minnesota and the Fighting Hawks of the University of North Dakota. Other rivals include the University of Denver, Colorado College, Michigan Tech, University of Minnesota Duluth, and St. Cloud State.

Mascot

The school mascot is an anthropomorphized badger named Bucky who dons a sweater affixed with the UW–Madison athletic logo (currently the red "Motion W"). Beginning in 1890, the university's first Bucky Badger was a live, temperamental and unruly badger who was quickly retired. Although the nickname of the Wisconsin teams remained the "Badgers", it was not until Art Evans drew the early caricature version of Bucky in 1940 that today's recognizable image of Bucky was adopted. In 1949, a contest was held to name the mascot, but no consensus was reached after only a few entries were received. In reaction, the contest committee chose the name Buckingham U. Badger, or "Bucky", for short.

At Wisconsin football games in the 1920s live mascots were used to inspire fans. The animals used included a black bear, a bonnet monkey, and live badgers. 1949 was the first year a student sporting a papier-mâché badger head appeared; this subsequently replaced the use of live badgers.

The team's nickname originates from the state nickname. In the 1820s, many lead miners and their families lived in the mines in which they worked until adequate above-ground shelters were built, and thus were compared to badgers.

In 2009, Fulton Market Films produced the documentary Being Bucky which followed the lives of seven Wisconsin students who take on the role of Bucky Badger. Being Bucky won "Best Documentary Film" at the Wisconsin Film Festival an 

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