The Impact of Gifts

The Raimey-Noland Campaign, named for the UW’s first known female and male Black graduates, Mabel Watson Raimey 1918 and Wiliam Smith Noland 1875, inspired a new era of philanthropic giving to honor the past. 

Blake Suhre MS’92 — passionate engineering alumnus and lifelong car enthusiast — made his way to UW–Madison through a serendipitous string of events. Raised in Edwardsville, Illinois, Blake earned his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the General Motors Institute (now, Kettering University). Like many college students, he thought he knew where his career path… Read more »

The Renk Agribusiness Institute — housed in the UW College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) — was established in 1996 through a generously endowed gift from the Walter 1924 and Martha ’30 Renk and Richard ’62, MBA’64 and Sharon Renk families of the Renk Seed Company in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. For nearly 30 years, the… Read more »

The University of Wisconsin–Madison continues to be a leading choice for local, out-of-state, and international students alike. In September, the university welcomed nearly 9,900 new freshmen and transfer students, more than 1,200 of whom are attending the UW with scholarships and grants provided through UW–Madison. This fortunate cohort is receiving monetary support from impactful initiatives… Read more »

A transformational lead gift from Marv ’68, JD’71 and Jeff ’72 Levy — the largest single contribution in college history — will benefit future generations of Badgers while honoring the memory of their brother, Phil ’64, who passed away in 2021.

In 2023, the UW School of Pharmacy introduced a new program — the PharmD Early Assurance program — to expand access to pharmacy school and train more future pharmacists to help meet Wisconsin’s health care needs. The program offers conditional admission to high school seniors who want to become pharmacists and have been accepted to a four-year Universities of Wisconsin university.

In 2022, alumnus Paul Wolff ’63 and his wife, Rhea Schwartz, generously created an exciting fellowship — the first of its kind at UW–Madison — for the College of Letters & Science (L&S). The Wolff Fellowship grants $45,000 each year to a graduating senior from L&S.

Raymond C. Lauver — modestly raised in rural Pennsylvania in the 1930s — attended a one-room schoolhouse in a county without any public libraries. Had it not been for the generous support of scholarships, his dream of earning a degree at Susquehanna University would not have been possible.