Who Knew?

Wisconsin Week’s Josh Orton finds answers to questions of campus interest posed by faculty and staff. We can’t promise to answer all questions submitted, but we’ll try to pick those most likely to be of interest to the largest number of readers. Send queries to wisweek@news.wisc.edu.

Q: Was the new UW logo taken directly from the Field House? Where else have I seen it before?
A: Back in 1985, graphic designer Earl Madden was asked to create a more distinguished logo for the Medical School. Standing near Camp Randall, he looked up and found the ideal design right where it had been sitting for nearly 75 years: on the Field House.

Madden went through the process of transforming the three-dimensional crest into a 2-D image, then added color.

And while there are guesses as to who created the original Field House crest, Madden isn’t sure of the designer himself. He says that the Field House architect probably commissioned someone to do the brickwork detail, but records don’t specifically cite who that was.

Whoever it was certainly designed something popular. Now that the crest has been adapted as part of the new campuswide logo, it has been trademarked, and non-university users must pay a fee.

Want to know more? Visit: http://www.news.wisc.edu/logo/

Q: What campus laboratory was the first lab in Wisconsin to provide Pap smear screening for cervical cancer?
A: The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene. In 1947, lab director William Stovall sent medical technologist Norma Arvold to the Cornell University Medical School to study a new public health test called “exfoliative cytology.” Arvold returned and started the Cytology laboratory at the State Laboratory of Hygiene.

The lab later helped study cervical cancer screening by the Pap smear technique. After that, demand for trained cytotechnologists to perform the screening jumped, and in 1957, the lab started the School of Cytotechnology. The school is now one of the largest in the country.