Welcome to a new semester of possibility

A message to the campus community from interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots as UW-Madison kicks off the 2026-27 academic year.

Dear campus community,

I absolutely love this time of year. The hint of fall on the breeze across the Terrace, the sound of the Marching Band's first practices, the new students looking for their classrooms - all of these bring a wave of energy that animates every corner of our campus.

Whether you are new to UW-Madison or returning to the people, places and traditions that make it feel like home, it's my pleasure to say "welcome!" and "welcome back!"

I want to give a special welcome and warm congratulations to the newest members of our community - the outstanding undergraduate and graduate students joining us from across Wisconsin and around the world, and the more than 100 new faculty members who have joined, or soon will join, our campus.

When I think about why this university is such an extraordinary place, I come back again and again to our breadth. Just six other universities in the country have our broad mix of disciplines on one campus. Here, you will find a herd of dairy cows down the street from the nation's first School of Medicine and Public Health, and a particle accelerator down the hill from the No. 1 School of Education, and world-renowned authors and engineers sharing the same campus.

That breadth translates into extraordinary impact, unrivaled opportunities, and an awesome responsibility to tackle the most complex challenges in the world.

No matter your role here, you will find that we work and learn alongside people of different backgrounds and perspectives, and different knowledge and expertise, fearlessly sifting and winnowing to answer a vast number of questions. And we build partnerships across the university and the world to spark discovery, creativity, and innovation to change lives. Embracing complexity in all its forms allows us to fulfill our Wisconsin Idea mission to deeply engage communities, citizens, industry and policymakers in our work.

There are many reasons this is an exciting time to be at UW-Madison. We're thrilled to open Irving and Dorothy Levy Hall, our beautiful new home for the humanities, and equally thrilled to inaugurate the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, our first new college in more than 40 years, which will help make UW-Madison a premier global center for excellence in AI. We are poised to lead the way in advancing AI to drive discovery and innovation while simultaneously advancing disciplines central to human expression and creativity.

And, of course, we're proud to have been named the No. 4 public university in the U.S. by Time magazine. Our strength runs remarkably deep, with dozens of departments ranked among U.S. News & World Report's top 20.

New facilities and rankings matter, but for me, the most exciting thing about the start of a new academic year is seeing thousands of people come together with a shared sense of possibility.

Whether this fall brings you back to familiar places or welcomes you into new ones, I wish you a semester filled with learning, discovery, creativity, connection, and opportunities to embrace complexity in all its many forms.

Welcome, welcome back, and On, Wisconsin!

Eric M. Wilcots
Interim Chancellor