University of Wisconsin
In a message at the beginning of the 2025 fall semester, the University of Wisconsin urged students to review their class schedule and “note with your instructors any need for academic flexibility due to religious or cultural observances.” The note added that relief from an exam or assignment should be requested within the first two weeks of classes. The university and other state schools have a religious observance policy as mandated by state statute. The UW policy states: “A student’s claim of a religious conflict, which may include travel time, should be accepted at face value. A great variety of…
The 74th Annual Tour of Madison for New International Students was one of the largest tours in recent memory. An announced total of 358 student signed up for the tour, arriving at Engineering Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus on a sunny Labor Day afternoon to be introduced to their new home city. In a second auditorium in Engineering Hall almost 200 volunteers from several dozen Madison area churches gathered to be briefed on the logistics of this annual all-volunteer effort. Students and volunteers alike had to navigate a disruptive construction zone on the engineering campus, due to the…
Over the past 10 years the University of Wisconsin-Madison student body has grown from 43,000 to 52,000. And over that period of time, a Christian institution has become an established presence in the middle of campus, at 365 East Campus Mall. Last month, Upper House had several events to celebrate it’s first decade, culminating in a final program Thursday evening, January 30, 2025. “Our mission is to lead Christian thought and formation for the UW-Madison community and beyond,” said executive director John Terrill. “We bear fruit as long as we abide in Christ.” Upper House has grown from three staff…
By Dean Robbins – Photo by Bryce Richter – ON WISCONSIN magazine – UW–Madison launched the Center for Interfaith Dialogue last year — and not a minute too soon, given the onset of the Israel–Hamas war. Though it had been in the works for a while, the center opened just as the university urgently needed a place where students from different religious backgrounds could get to know one another and engage in civil dialogue. Interim director Ulrich Rosenhagen envisioned a program in which undergraduates serve as “interfaith fellows,” educating themselves about religious traditions while fostering a spirit of understanding in…
David Wahlberg – Wisconsin State Journal – The Israel-Hamas war. Polarizing politics in Madison and Washington, D.C. Mass shootings. Nasty social media posts. It’s not hard to find situations in which forgiveness might make the world better. For Robert Enright, a professor of educational psychology at UW-Madison and pioneer of the scientific study of forgiveness, the first step starts at home. Only by forgiving those close to us who have harmed us can we become strong enough to think about forgiving more distant enemies, Enright said. Read more of this story.
Dan Hummel, the Director of University Engagement at Upper House, is a University of Wisconsin-trained historian. After publishing his research on the relationship between evangelicals and Israel in 2019, he has a new book, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation, published by Eerdmans. A release party was held at Upper House earlier this spring, where Hummel talked about the book and answered questions. Now, a review of Hummel’s book by the distinguished historian George Marsden has just been published on the UW History department’s web page. The review, and of course…
PORTLAND, Oregon/CBN NEWS – Tucked away in a quiet Portland neighborhood is an animation studio that is opening the Bible to millions in a new and fresh way. An idea of some college buddies has become one of the most successful ways for people to understand the Bible. During their college days, long-time friends Tim Mackie and Jon Collins would kick around ideas on how to get more people to read the Bible and understand it better. After attending Bible college together, Jon served as a pastor before beginning a career making explainer videos for large companies. Tim got his…
By Daniel Silliman – Christianity Today – Paul Eshleman, an evangelism strategist who organized one of the largest outreach efforts of the 20th century so that everyone in the world could hear at least once that God loved them, died on May 24 at age 80. Eshleman was the director of the Jesus Film Project, producing the 1979 feature for Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) in partnership with Warner Bros. and overseeing its translation into more than 2,000 languages. Eshleman arranged for the film to be shown across the world, from places in rural Asia and Africa where people…
We are sad to read of the passing of Rebecca Blank, who was chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2013 to 2022. She died of cancer on Friday, February 17, 2023. She was 67. The report of her death included acknowledgement of her skillful service as a gifted administrator and economist. It also noted that “Blank’s Protestant faith influenced other books she wrote, such as ‘Do Justic’ and ‘Is the Market Moral?’, which examined intersections between economics and religious belief systems.” Her father, also an economist, was a founder of Habitat for Humanity in Columbia, Missouri. “The desire to…
By Jim Polzin – Wisconsin State Journal – They are separated by only 14 yards rushing in the University of Wisconsin football record books. There’s Brent Moss at No. 9 in program history with 3,428 career yards and Terrell Fletcher one spot below him at 3,414 yards. There’s an entire generation of UW fans who either were not yet born or too young to appreciate the greatness of that special tandem. They may not know this: There was a time the Badgers had seven individual 1,000-yard rushing seasons; that number is now 35, a surge that began with Moss and…