Faculty and staff explore state’s rivers, culture and more in Wisconsin Idea Seminar

Editor’s observe: Assistant Vice Provost Catherine Reiland is director of the Wisconsin Thought Seminar.

After studying methods to create a warp with cattails, the Wisconsin Thought Seminar members started to weave, methodically crossing cattail fibers to create a small mat, speaking and meditating on the which means of their undertaking.

“Defending the water is to take care of the cattails and the bulrushes,” Melanie Tallmadge Sainz, an artist and enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, had instructed them at first of the workshop. It was an invite to contemplate the interconnectedness of land, individuals and water.

Molli Pauliot, a UW–Madison PhD Candidate in Anthropology and Ho-Chunk pure fibers artist, offers a fast primer to Fran Vavrus, vice provost and dean of UW–Madison’s Worldwide Division, as she learns to weave cattail on the Little Eagle Arts Basis. Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

The workshop was held on the Little Eagle Arts Basis’s studio within the coronary heart of Maa Wákąčąk — sacred land for Ho-Chunk individuals— about ten miles south of Baraboo.

The Wisconsin Thought Seminar members had simply visited the Ho-Chunk Nation’s Home of Wellness to study community-driven healthcare, and shortly after had walked alongside a spring-fed stream on the foot of the Baraboo Vary to expertise the land restoration efforts that the Ho-Chunk Nation is main on the parcel of land that was as soon as the positioning of the Badger Military Ammunition Plant.

Weaving with an aquatic plant was a becoming approach to start a 500-mile journey the place 41 College of Wisconsin–Madison school and employees spent every week as college students of Wisconsin life to ponder cooperation, belonging, water, and place. Their academics have been greater than fifty collaborators and hosts throughout the state, representing a variety of fields.

The Wisconsin Thought Seminar is an annual five-day journey by Wisconsin that provides school and employees the chance to study firsthand concerning the social and cultural contexts that form the lives of a lot of our Wisconsin college students, and to see what the Wisconsin Thought seems like when it’s rooted in native communities and formed by native priorities. The 2024 expertise engaged quite a lot of themes together with well being, therapeutic, artistic placemaking, Okay-12 training, incarceration, dairy, and the way rivers and folks have formed one another.

The state’s rivers, together with the Mississippi, the Wisconsin, the Kickapoo, the Trempealeau, and the Kinnickinnic, structured the group’s exploration of Wisconsin life.

Within the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, situated within the non-glaciated and historical landscapes of Wisconsin’s southwest, members walked throughout the Kickapoo River on the historic Bridge 13, one among Wisconsin’s few remaining metallic truss bridges that was refurbished in 2017 in collaboration with the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Invoice Quackenbush, tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation, leads the 2024 Wisconsin Thought Seminar throughout Bridge 13 within the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.c’m Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

They met with well being practitioners who’re supporting the subsequent technology of well being professionals by collaborations with UW–Madison’s Native American Heart for Well being Professions.

They conversed with colleagues at UW–La Crosse to learn the way they tightly weave neighborhood engagement into the undergraduate analysis expertise. Well being practitioners, together with medical doctors from La Farge Medical Clinic, spoke concerning the significance of cultural humility and trust-building with surrounding Amish communities and their appreciation for UW–Madison’s collaborative function in bringing world-class healthcare and experience to Vernon County.

Wisconsin Thought Seminar members stroll throughout the UW-La Crosse campus with Omar Granados, who spoke on a panel earlier that morning on community-engaged scholarship. Omar Granados is an affiliate professor of world languages and cultures at UW-La Crosse, and his present work features a public historical past undertaking on the tales of Cuban refugees at Fort McCoy within the Nineteen Eighties. Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

In Arcadia, they met with Okay-12 educators who worth their robust partnerships with space faculties and universities to assist their college students and households.

On the banks of the Wisconsin River, Stevens Level-area meals producers gathered at Bukolt Lodge to share their small-batch merchandise, together with hydroponic lettuce, pickled greens, and maple syrup, and to speak about how they collaborate with one another and native nonprofits to assist neighborhood improvement and meals economies in central Wisconsin.

At Mitchell Road Arts in Milwaukee’s south facet, members discovered concerning the energy of storytelling for previously incarcerated individuals and their households who’re working to make communities stronger. The morning solar was brilliant at Alice’s Backyard, a 2-acre city farm in Milwaukee’s north facet, when the Wisconsin Thought Seminar members have been invited to decelerate and pause to understand the abundance after which harvest from the backyard’s swaths of mint, sage, okra, hyssop, lovage, and collard greens.

McKenzie Zdrale of the Wisconsin Basis & Alumni Affiliation holds open a bag as Chell Parkins, dance division, harvests aromatic fennel fronds throughout a guided exercise at Alice’s Backyard, a 2-acre city farm close to Milwaukee’s Fond du Lac Avenue. Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

And so they ended our journey like they started, amongst grandmothers who’re deeply dedicated to the well being and wellbeing of their communities, who carry forth ancestral data to encourage the current and future, and who basically imagine that to take care of the waters of Wisconsin is to take care of us all.

And at practically each cease, they met with UW–Madison alumni who’re happy with their alma mater and who carry a Badger spirit to the work they do of their dwelling communities.

The Wisconsin Thought Seminar is a program of the Provost’s Workplace and is made attainable with the assist of many UW–Madison faculties and faculties and the Evjue Basis, the charitable arm of the Capital Instances and long-time underwriter of the Seminar since 1985.

A particular because of Rachel Niles, government assistant within the Workplace of the Provost, and Kelly Copolo, educational program specialist within the Division of Instructing and Studying, who supplied wonderful help that contributed to the success of the 2024 Wisconsin Thought Seminar.

The Wisconsin Thought Seminar group gathers for a photograph on the meals of a maple marker tree within the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. Invoice Quackenbush, tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation, shares that marker timber have lengthy been used as navigational aids by Ho-Chunk individuals. Many generations in the past, when the tree was only a sapling, the trunk was formed so every of its 4 fundamental branches would level within the route of great websites, with one being a freshwater spring. Quackenbush additionally calls the group’s consideration to a maple sapling close by to be formed right into a marker tree for future generations. Picture by Catherine Reiland

Wisconsin Thought Seminar members take pleasure in refreshments as they stroll by a solar crammed gallery at Mitchell Road Arts on the south facet of Milwaukee. Mitchell Road Arts, seeded in 2021 by conversations with native residents, artists, and neighborhood leaders was one among a number of community-driven enterprises that was included within the Wisconsin Thought Seminar. Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

A renaturalized portion of the Kinnickinnic River in Milwaukee’s Pulaski Park beckoned Chell Parkins, the Arnhold director of dance training at UW, to interact the waterway with motion and poise. Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

Inside view of the Kinnickinnic River at Pulaski Park in Milwaukee, Esperanza Gutierrez, a member of Kinnickinnic Neighbors In Motion, speaks concerning the significance of collective motion and collaboration to take care of water for future generations. Picture by Catherine Reiland/UW-Madison

Some members supplied their views on the journey:

Daniela Drummond-Barbosa

Daniela Drummond-Barbosa
Professor, genetics, CALS

“The Wisconsin Thought Seminar journey was an incredible expertise! It was very inspiring to study varied communities that make up Wisconsin and to fulfill so many selfless people that put their minds, hearts and souls into bettering their communities. Sharing the bus with fellow UW school and employees, studying about their roles at UW, and making new human connections was a really particular a part of the expertise.”

Samara Body

Samara Body
Development Supervisor, Division of the Arts

“Being new to UW–Madison, I didn’t have a way of what the Wisconsin Thought seems like in motion. The numerous methods during which Extension and alumni throughout the state are affecting constructive change and creating partnerships is so obvious now. I see it now, and am totally invested within the Wisconsin Thought!”

Meenu Verma

Meenu Verma

Affiliate Director, UW Veterinary Care, Faculty of Veterinary Drugs

“The Wisconsin Thought Seminar is an immersive expertise and goes method past any work convention you’d ever attend. We acquired to listen to many impactful tales and meet unbelievable individuals throughout our journey, and it touched each sense of being — from the meals we ate, to the tales we heard, to the individuals we met and the locations we visited. I’ve a better appreciation for individuals in Wisconsin who’ve been caring for the land for 1000’s of years and for many who have moved to Wisconsin lately.”

Fran Vavrus
Vice Provost and Dean, Worldwide Division

“The Wisconsin Thought Seminar deepened my understanding of the various contributions that immigrant communities are making to training and trade in rural and concrete communities throughout Wisconsin. I’ll weave these observations into my work to advertise the worldwide dimensions of the Wisconsin thought in our state and around the globe.”

Jeanette Comstock

Jeanette Comstock MD
Assistant Professor, dermatology, Faculty of Drugs & Public Well being

“The Wisconsin Thought Seminar was an opportunity to be a scholar once more. To say it enhanced the way in which I take into consideration my profession is an understatement. The extraordinarily nicely deliberate and detailed week is designed to supply perception into the historical past, tradition and presence of the totally different teams all through the state. I discovered of the precise challenges confronted by sure teams and I’ll take these classes again to my observe as a doctor. It was actually an honor to work together with our hosts all through the state!”

Morgan Jerald
Assistant Professor, psychology

“The Wisconsin Thought Seminar instilled in me a profound sense of connectedness to the college neighborhood and the communities we serve throughout the state. Among the many seminar’s many impactful experiences, our day with Ms. Venice Williams at Alice’s Backyard and The Desk stands out as significantly significant, each personally and professionally. Ms. Williams’ work to foster the well being and therapeutic of each the individuals and the land of Milwaukee reignited a way of goal and dedication to my very own analysis on Black ladies’s well-being and to thoughtfully partaking in community-based scholarship.”

Jing Wang

Jing Wang 

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Journalism & Mass Communication

“Deep listening is just not a given; it’s a valuable reward to be discovered, practiced, and cultivated in a supportive, communal area. The Wisconsin Thought Seminar gave me the possibility to witness the magic of deep listening. We, as a gaggle, discovered to pay attention to one another and to individuals throughout totally different communities in Wisconsin with care. I’d like to additional weave this ability into my ethnographic analysis in addition to instructing and mentoring sooner or later.”

Erla Heyns

Dean and Vice Provost of Libraries

“I’m new to Wisconsin and to UW–Madison. I labored at different land grant universities however have by no means skilled something like this and I really feel very lucky to be launched to the wealthy legacy of the engagement of the college within the state. Neighborhood engagement was richly highlighted through the Wisconsin Thought tour and was actually inspirational. Seeking to the longer term, I’m dedicated to creating pathways for the UW–Madison Libraries to contribute in very tangible methods to the Wisconsin Thought. This has been my objective since I arrived in January 2024 and began my new function as Dean and Vice Provost of Libraries, and now this objective is much more significant.”