Resource Fair

Welcome to the spring 2021 New Graduate Student Welcome Resource Fair!

Use this page to explore campus and community organizations that support graduate student success at UW–Madison. You can read about each of the services below, watch short videos that each organization prepared especially for graduate students, and click on the organization’s name to visit its website and learn more.

If you have trouble viewing the videos on this page, you can access them in a playlist on Kaltura MediaSpace here.

Campus and Community Organizations

Campus and Visitor Relations - Campus Area Housing

The Campus Area Housing (CAH) office, a service of Campus and Visitor Relations, has been UW–Madison’s official source for available privately-owned housing and consumer rental information for over 40 years. Campus Area Housing is here to assist with locating off-campus housing options and answering off-campus housing related questions.

What Is Campus Area Housing?
Campus Area Housing maintains an informative website (campusareahousing.wisc.edu) that aids all campus community members in navigating off-campus living. Our mobile-friendly site provides an easily searchable database of campus area rental vacancies, roommate openings and sublets in apartment buildings, houses, co-operatives, and rooming houses. The website also includes renter education information and the Campus Area Housing Rental Resource Guide that provides an overview of resources available while living off-campus.

When searching the website for housing options, users may select their criteria to generate a list of available rentals, complete with rental details and contact information.

Criteria may include:
• type of housing
• date needed/rental season
• number of bedrooms
• price range
• location
• pet policy
• and more!

Center for High Throughput Computing

The Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) serves as UW–Madison's core research computing center, with access to large-scale computing systems and dedicated staff who proactively work with researchers to help them scale their work beyond-the-desktop. In 2019 CHTC supported more than 300 research groups across campus that used nearly 400 million compute hours, including off-campus capacity automatically available via CHTC submission points. Compute systems operated by CHTC are suitable for tasks from analyzing numerous pieces of data, to performing large/long simulations (including MPI-enabled applications), to machine learning and GPU-dependent work. Whether your computational work takes too long, crashes your computer, or requires more data than you can work with on your current system, CHTC’s Research Computing Facilitators can help you to find and most efficiently use the ‘right’ services and support, whether offered by CHTC or by connecting you with another resource provider.

Center for Leadership & Involvement

The Center for Leadership & Involvement (CfLI) assists students in intentionally connecting with the far-ranging opportunities that exist throughout campus, including graduate and undergraduate student organizations, student leadership programs, and many others. As a Center, we offer leadership programming that supports students in making meaning of these experiences and in developing leadership capacity – the ability to affect positive change.

Center for the Humanities

The Center for the Humanities promotes the cross-disciplinary, collaborative, and public humanities across and beyond the University of Wisconsin–Madison. We support traditional and new forms of inquiry in the humanities and engage the public through partnerships that broaden the ways that knowledge circulates.

City of Madison Clerk's Office

The City Clerk's Office is responsible for administering voting for residents of the city of Madison. United States citizens in the city of Madison may register with our office, and we do operate some in-person absentee voting sites on campus prior to elections as well as some polling places on campus on Election Day. We are always looking for poll workers (election officials), so any interested persons can find our electronic form on our website to sign up.

Data Science Hub

The Data Science Hub executes a mission for community engagement and learning opportunities for campus researchers through a variety of services, including:
• consultations with Data Science Facilitators who can recommend learning pathways and project strategies, and liaise contacts with collaborators and data science experts
• community events and co-sponsored seminars that bring together researchers and other partners around relevant data science topics
• regular trainings (including Carpentries workshops) around fundamental data science and computational skills

Dean of Students Office

Graduate Student Support & Assistance

The Dean of Students Office is a primary resource for connecting students who are navigating personal, academic, or health issues, to supportive campus and community resources. We consult with and serve as a resource for faculty, instructors, staff, parents, families, and friends, working together to serve students. We also serves as a central location for reporting issues of hate and bias, sexual assault, and hazing.

Delta Program for Research, Teaching, and Learning

Do your career goals include teaching? Join the Delta community of graduate students and postdocs preparing to be effective and inclusive educators. We provide professional development in teaching, mentoring, and outreach — from quick stop opportunities to a full Delta Certificate program. Check out our workshops, courses, and learning communities on our website, and stay in the loop by joining the Delta newsletter mailing list here.

DesignLab

DesignLab offers free one-on-one design tutoring for UW–Madison students, faculty, and staff!

Get help with all of your digital projects, including presentations, posters, videos, audio, websites/blogs, infographics, and more! DesignLab consultants can help with everything from conceptualizing the first steps to polishing a nearly finished project.

Teaching a class? DesignLab can also work with you to help design, develop, and implement a digital assignment for your course!

Discovery to Product

• Discovery to Product (D2P) fosters the Wisconsin Idea by helping transform groundbreaking innovations originating at UW–Madison into products and services that change the world.
• Developing innovative ideas into products or services is often perceived to be outside typical academic research activities. However, innovation can be applied to a wide range of contexts, including social enterprise, education, health, non-profits, and mainstream public organizations like universities and governments.
• D2P’s entrepreneurship programs provide another pathway for graduate students to apply their work, research, creativity, and passion to impact lives locally and globally.

DoIT Help Desk

The DoIT Help Desk provides free tech support and troubleshooting help for students, staff, and faculty through phone, email, chat, or in-person assistance. The various level-one services we provide range from getting help with your NetID, resetting your password, software repair, malware detection/removal, and general troubleshooting and diagnostics.

Gender and Sexuality Campus Center

Welcome to the GSCC! Graduate students are welcome at all of our programming and we’d love to have you providing different perspectives in our discussion groups, forming connections in our mentor program, or spending time in the office with us as staff. Our professional staff and graduate interns represent a variety of fields and home institutions – we’re always happy to chat with you about the challenges and joys of grad school. We are here for you, and we hope to see you soon.

Graduate School Office of Professional Development

When you participate in professional development, you build skills needed to succeed academically and thrive in your career. Each semester the Graduate School, together with campus partners, hosts nearly 400 professional development events, which can be found through DiscoverPD and our events calendar. The Individual Development Plan (IDP) helps you reflect, plan, and discuss in order to achieve your academic and professional goals.

International Student Services

International Student Services (ISS) serves UW–Madison graduate students on F and J visas by providing holistic support through advising on immigration, personal, and cultural matters, and by organizing events and activities to support students’ engagement and development within the campus community. The ISS mission is to contribute to the successful experience of all students, with an emphasis on international students, studying at the University of Wisconsin–Madison by providing vital services and programs and to advance the internationalization of campus and community by providing dynamic leadership and resources. ISS utilizes Terra Dotta, a student immigration portal accessible through MyUW, to help students schedule ISS appointments, submit online immigration update requests, and use the in-app messenger to ask questions.

McBurney Disability Resource Center

The McBurney Disability Resource Center is the entity on campus that determines eligibility for academic accommodations. We work with students who have a variety of disabilities such as mental health diagnoses, chronic health conditions, learning disabilities, AD/HD, autism spectrum disorder, and more. We strive to lead the campus community forward in access for students with disabilities.

Morgridge Center for Public Service

Our goal at the Morgridge Center for Public Service is to support any graduate student who wants to engage in community-based learning, teaching, or research. We’ll connect you with the community and provide you with classes and resources to help your community-engaged scholarship flourish. We also have funding opportunities available for community-engaged courses and research projects.

Multicultural Student Center

The primary mission of the Multicultural Student Center is to collaboratively strengthen and sustain an inclusive campus where all students, particularly students of color and other historically underserved students, can realize an authentic Wisconsin Experience. The MSC hosts programs, events, trainings, and spaces to connect, grow, and celebrate with cultural organizations and more. The MSC also hosts the Black Cultural Center, Latinx Cultural Center, and the APIDA (Asian/Pacific Islander/Desi American) Student Center. All students including graduate students are invited and encouraged to get involved.

Office of Child Care and Family Resources

The Office of Child Care and Family Resources promotes the academic and professional goals of the University of Wisconsin community through the administration of early education and family support programs.

We provide outreach, teaching, and research to support the greater goals of the University of Wisconsin.

We strengthen family relationships by providing support and educational services that are based on research and best-practice methodology.

Our services create flexibility whenever possible to adjust and respond to the changing needs of campus families, the workforce, and our environment.

Office of Human Resources Madison Benefits Services

Greetings from UW–Madison’s Office of Human Resources! We want to introduce you to our Benefits Services unit.

Our Benefits Specialists work with employees of the university who qualify for employee benefits. Graduate Students who may qualify include certain Fellows, Scholars, TAs and PAs who hold appointments of at least 33% time for at least a full semester or longer.

Benefits Specialists present new employee insurance overviews in what we call our Graduate New Employee Benefits Sessions aka “Grad NEBS.”

And every fall, during the Annual Benefits Enrollment period, we offer Benefits Changes presentations so you can learn what benefits changes may affect you next calendar year.

Visit our website hr.wisc.edu/benefits/grad for information on grad employee insurance coverage and how much insurance plans would cost if you were to enroll.

Welcome to the UW–Madison! We look forward to working with you.

Office of Student Financial Aid

The Office of Student Financial Aid helps graduate students navigate the financial aid process. Specifically, graduate students may interact with our office in the following ways (limited list):
• Complete the FAFSA for graduate/professional school
• Review cost of attendance and borrowing options
• Discuss how federal aid can impact fellowship and assistantship

We have five advisors serving as liaisons to our graduate/professional student populations.
• Emma Crawford (emma.crawford@wisc.edu) - School of Medicine and Public Health
• Brianne Camacho (brianne.camacho@wisc.edu) - School of Medicine and Public Health
• Heidi Johnson (heidi.johnson@wisc.edu) - Law School
• Clyde Gaines (clyde.gaines@wisc.edu) - Graduate School
• Pahoua Xiong (pahoua.xiong@wisc.edu) - School of Nursing, School of Pharmacy, and School of Veterinary Medicine

Use Starfish to schedule a 1-on-1, 30-minute appointment to meet with an advisor about your questions/concerns.

Office of Sustainability

The Office of Sustainability serves as a campus-wide resource for sustainability-related education, research, outreach, and operations. By partnering with a wide variety of campus units, the Office represents the realization of a shared vision for a sustainable campus. Graduate students can participate in sustainability efforts at UW–Madison by developing projects for the Green Fund, leading offices, labs, and/or team events through one of our Green Certification programs, or joining one of our community events.

Ombuds Office

The Ombuds Office is a safe place where UW–Madison employees, including graduate students, can seek guidance regarding workplace concerns at any time, without fear of reprisal, and at no cost to them. Ombuds provide a confidential place to collaboratively explore complaints, clarify issues, and consider options and resources to address work related concerns. Ombuds are impartial and non-aligned, working to promote fairness in the workplace.

Recreation & Wellbeing

At Recreation & Wellbeing, we move Badgers to play hard, get fit, and live well. Your membership is included in your tuition and includes access to our convenient facilities and programs, including: group fitness classes, personal training, intramural sports, lessons, massage therapy, and more. We believe wellbeing is yours to own, and we're here to help you find your "fit" on campus.

Research Data Services

Research Data Services provides free research data management support to anyone in the UW–Madison campus community. We offer consultations, education and training, online resources, and referrals to campus services that support researchers' efforts to store, manage, and share their data. We can help with:
• Data management plans for grant proposals
• Data sharing & archiving
• Establishing best practices
• Reproducibility & workflows

Social Science Computing Cooperative

The Social Science Computing Cooperative provides support for statistical analysis for research to the UW–Madison community. Our training classes in popular statistics packages, including Stata, R, and Python and a comprehensive statistical Knowledge Base are available to all graduate students. Graduate students in the Social Sciences or Arts and Humanities divisions of L&S are members of the Coop and have access to our powerful servers (Windows and Linux), secure data storage and analysis platform, and expert statistical consultants who can assist with software and methodology questions.

Software Training for Students

Our trainers can help students and instructors achieve success by teaching the technology skills needed in the classroom and beyond. We offer free technology training and project support to registered UW–Madison students and instructors. With Ask a Trainer Appointments, you can get a one-on-one consultation with one of our experts who will help you solve difficult problems or learn specific skills in a software program. We also work with instructors and registered student organizations to tailor our workshops to meet your needs and schedule. If you prefer to learn on your own time, you can also access our full library of self-study software tutorials through LinkedIn Learning.

Student Health Insurance Plan

The Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) provides comprehensive health coverage for UW–Madison students and scholars. SHIP coverage is effective from January 15, 2021.
The deadline for spring/summer enrollments is February 14, 2021.

University Book Store

The University Book Store is your one-stop campus shop for textbooks, tech, school supplies, Badgers clothing and gift items, and more! Since 1894 the University Book Store has proudly served the students, faculty, and staff of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the greater community. We are a non-stockholding corporation that receives no aid or funding from the University or the State of Wisconsin. Our proceeds stay local to benefit UW students and our community.

University Health Services

University Health Services is here to support you so that you may thrive both academically and personally. The transition to graduate school can be challenging. Medical and mental health care at UHS is available to you. We have trained providers who specialize in the health and well-being of graduate students.

University Religious Workers

University Religious Workers of the University of Wisconsin Madison (URW) is a professional association for staff and leaders of religious groups, campus ministries and faith communities at UW–Madison. URW exists to support our members and their work with UW students, faculty and staff.

University Veteran Services

University Veteran Services (UVS) provides support to military connected students, including GI Bill certification. We recommend you take the "Veteran Benefit Survey" found on our website if you're unsure of which benefits you might be able to use at UW. Instructions for students continuing GI Bill from another school can be found under our "Education Benefits" section of the website.

UW Police Department

The UW–Madison Police Department is the police agency which serves the UW campus and surrounding community. UWPD emphasizes crime prevention, community partnership, and social support in our policing strategy to ensure positive outcomes for individuals we come into contact with. We pride ourselves on our extensive mental health training, and our ability to always move toward a more equitable future. UWPD is available 24/7 to ensure you feel safe, and supported while you are on campus. Don't hesitate to reach out to us for any questions or concerns!

UW Transportation Services

UW Transportation Services is a department within Facilities Planning and Management (FP&M) on the UW–Madison campus. Primary functions include the sale/management of parking permits, special event coordination, maintenance and enforcement of parking facilities, construction coordination, lot and booth operations, citation payments and appeals, information technology, financial, transportation planning, and development of multimodal options. We can help graduate students with navigating transportation choices for getting to and around campus.

UW–Madison Libraries

The UW–Madison Libraries support graduate students through every phase of the research process, from planning your research; to finding and evaluating information; to collecting, organizing, and analyzing; to publishing and sharing your research; to curating and preserving your research outputs; and finally to measuring and maximizing your impact. The Libraries provide access to more than 1,400 article databases, 1.3 million+ eBooks, 10 million+ print books in 425 languages, 7 million+ materials in other physical and digital formats, as well as physical equipment and digital tools to help you save time, be productive, and get organized. The Libraries’ diverse spaces, including the Graduate Study Room, provide the environment you need to get stuff done, and our expertise, interactive workshops, and options for one-on-one assistance ensure you have the support you need, when you need it.

Note: Please check the Library’s website for service updates in response to COVID-19: library.wisc.edu

WISCIENCE

WISCIENCE, the Wisconsin Institute for Science Education and Community Engagement, collaborates across and beyond campus to empower educators, advance science education and outreach, and broaden engagement in STEM for all. WISCIENCE offers opportunities for STEM graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to enhance their STEM training through professional development programs and courses related to teaching, service, and research mentoring. Explore opportunities on our website, including Scientific Teaching for TAs, the Scientific Teaching Fellows Program, the Public Service Fellows Program, Research Mentor Training, and more.

Wisconsin DMV

The Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) welcomes you and provides services including:
• Obtain a Wisconsin driver license or identification (ID) card
• Register a motor vehicle in Wisconsin
• Get Wisconsin license plates for a motor vehicle

Information and online services: wisconsindmv.gov
Telephone: (608) 264-7447

Writing Center

The Writing Center welcomes advanced students in all disciplines to take advantage of our services! We work with hundreds of graduate and professional students every semester, from all of the University’s schools and colleges. The Writing Center will support you at any stage of the writing process, for any writing project. In addition to our one-to-one appointments (currently available through both Virtual Meetings and Written Feedback), we provide a wide array of workshops covering a variety of topics relevant to graduate writers, host writing retreats and graduate writing groups each semester, and offer a writing mentorship program that may be especially useful to those working on longer projects.

Student Organizations

UW–Madison has more than 1,000 student organizations, which you can explore through the registered student organization directory called the Wisconsin Involvement Network. To read more about student organizations in general, check out the Being a Badger page of the Graduate Student Life guide.