UW joins Wisconsin Campus Compact

UW–Madison and 25 other Wisconsin post-secondary institutions will join together on Tuesday, Oct. 22, to affirm support of community service, campus-community partnerships and community engagement.

Together, the colleges, universities and technical schools will form the Wisconsin Campus Compact, part of a national network to strengthen citizenship skills and values by promoting service and service-learning, the integration of classroom work and hands-on work in the community. Wisconsin will become the 28th state to form a compact. More than 750 schools nationwide are participating.

The formal announcement and signing ceremony will be held at 2:30 p.m. in Anderson Auditorium at Edgewood College in Madison. The keynote speaker will be Rick Battistoni, a professor of political science at Providence College and “engaged scholar” of the national Campus Compact office. Battistoni will also attend two days of classes and meetings with students, faculty, staff and community members at UW–Madison. His visit is sponsored by the Morgridge Center for Public Service.

He will hold a public lecture on “Service-Learning and Democratic Civic Engagement: Are They Connected?” from 4-5:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 21, at the Red Gym. The focus of the discussion will be research and theory showing that students who participate in service-learning classes tend to be more active, productive members of their communities later in life.

“The Wisconsin Campus Compact is a milestone in higher education for our state,” says Mary Rouse, director of the Morgridge Center and head of UW–Madison’s efforts in community service and service-learning. “I think we’re all hopeful this will guide and inspire our efforts to strengthen our communities and graduate better citizens.”

UW–Madison first became affiliated with the Campus Compact movement back in 1988, but Rouse says the signing of state compact is even more significant because it puts colleges and universities in a better position to get substantial grants from the federal government and private foundations.

Today, students are active in thousands of causes, ranging from literacy to the Special Olympics to improvements in South Madison neighborhoods. In a 2000 study, 37 percent of UW–Madison seniors reported having volunteered at least once during their four years at the university.

“Of course, we wish we could get it to be 75 percent,” Rouse says.