2009 The Wisconsin Idea

Steven B. Zwickel

October, 2009

I was taught about (more like indoctrinated in) the Wisconsin Idea shortly after I arrived as a grad student in the School of Social Work. My teacher was Merle Evelyn Schwei, from whom I learned two extremely important lessons: a) in Wisconsin, the boundaries of the University are the boundaries of the state, and b) you can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. The idea that those of us who studied and learned at the UW had a responsibility to reach out, to share our skills and our knowledge, with or without pay, was drilled into us. 

I am sure there are places where this idea would just be a slogan, but I took this to heart and I came to value volunteering. For three-and-a-half years I was a volunteer at a youth runaway center. Then I volunteered to teach adult ed classes on parenting, stress management, and coping with separation and divorce. 

When I began working at the UW, I was asked to do presentations on a wide range of topics and I agreed to do so. Over the years I think I have done more than 200 hours of workshops and lectures for my employer for free. My name can be found on the University’s Experts Guide <http://experts.news.wisc.edu> as someone who is willing to give talks and interviews on the topics I know about.

In 2009, I was teaching a UW course in Hangzhou, China, when I had an opportunity to teach conversational English for a few weeks to high school students in a poor Chinese village. When I asked our liaison at the International College of Zhejiang University for help making travel arrangements, he was puzzled. He couldn’t understand why a jiàoshòu (professor) would want to go to such an impoverished, out-of-the way place to teach. The idea of a prominent person volunteering to do something like this made no sense to him. 

So, I took a deep breath and spent the next 20 minutes trying to explain what the Wisconsin Idea is and how it works. I described the philosophy that our university’s mission isn’t just to do research and teach students, but to serve our state, our country, and the world. 

I don’t know if he understood what I was talking about because the ideas I was trying to explain are not at all common in that part of the world. But I would like to think that I opened his mind to the idea of serving a wider audience. 

It felt good to be sharing something I value so highly with him.<http://badgersabroad.wisc.edu/blog/index.php/archives/1878>