Building Strong Marketing Strategy for WCER’s Fee-for-Service Option
January 7, 2026 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
As federal research funding constricts, WCER projects are exploring alternative revenue streams to sustain their work, including development of fee-for-service offerings — work that leverages researcher expertise but depends on clients choosing to purchase it in a competitive marketplace. To help researchers explore this path, Jen Savino, owner and CEO of KW2 Marketing in Madison, recently delivered a presentation on how to build a strong, research-informed marketing strategy.
Wisconsin’s Rural Schools Confront Teacher Shortages: UW–Madison Study Explores Challenges, Solutions
December 11, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
A recent working paper from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), part of UW–Madison’s School of Education, highlights the persistent challenges rural schools face in attracting and retaining teachers — while also examining how educator preparation programs across the state are working to strengthen the pipeline of future educators.
Full-Day 4K Students in Madison Public Schools See Better Learning Outcomes Than Peers in Half-Day 4K Program
November 21, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
For the first time since full-day, four-year-old kindergarten (4K) began in the Madison Metropolitan School District, a new evaluation by researchers from UW–Madison and the district shows “strong evidence” suggesting students in the full-day 4K program learn more over the school year than their peers attending half-day 4K.
Cookies with Courtney: Gratitude, Change and New Opportunities
November 11, 2025 | By Office of Research & Scholarship Communications
WCER Director Courtney Bell recently met with staff from WCER and the School of Education to reflect on key issues facing WCER, acknowledging challenges faced and looking ahead with clarity and optimism.
Field Day Blends Art and Science for Video Games That Teach, Engage
November 11, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
At a recent event, Field Day announced the concept for the coming game, to be made with a $250,000 grant, and launched its latest finished game — an astrophysics primer known as Project Hercules. Both games are products of the Wisconsin GameWorks Incubator, a new game-creation initiative that partners with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. This work prioritizes UW–Madison research around an annual theme and gives Wisconsin K–12 educators a central role in developing ideas for new games.
Benbow Receives NSF Grant to Study College Success for Rural STEM Students
November 10, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
The study will be longitudinal, following rural students over time who attend college across Universities of Wisconsin campuses, where rural university access has been a high-profile issue. Benbow’s work will specifically focus on students pursuing degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, in keeping with NSF’s core interest in developing a skilled STEM workforce.
UW–Madison Leaders in Research Education Call for Stronger Mentor-Student Relationships to Boost Undergraduate Research, Student Outcomes
November 6, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research and Scholarship
In a new commentary published in the Council on Undergraduate Research’s journal Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, UW–Madison Interim Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor of Kinesiology Janet Branchaw and Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) Deputy Director Christine Pfund make an evidence-based case for strengthening mentorship ecosystems to improve undergraduate research experiences and student outcomes.
Building Equity-Focused School Leadership: Wisconsin’s Role in a National Partnership
October 16, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
How can universities and school districts work together to prepare school leaders who champion equity in education?
A recent study published in the Journal of Professional Capital and Community explores this question through the lens of the Equity-Centered Pipeline Initiative—a six-year, $102 million nationwide effort funded by The Wallace Foundation.
WCER’s Field Day Collaborates with Wisconsin Sea Grant to Develop Shipwrecks Game
October 16, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
To kick off creative thinking for the game, Field Day sponsored a brainstorming event at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc that brought together Field Day game designers with maritime archeologists from the Wisconsin Historical Society, Sea Grant staff, and Wisconsin teachers who would eventually use the game in their classrooms.
WCER Team Creates National Platform for More and Better Jobs for People with Disabilities
October 14, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
A nationwide UW–Madison research project to increase the number and quality of jobs for individuals with disabilities has achieved an extraordinary record of reach and engagement with essential state workers tasked with helping this underserved population.
As the five-year, federally funded project known as the Vocational Rehabilitation Technical Assistance Center for Quality Employment (VRTAC-QE) begins wrapping up, electronic records leave little doubt the $16.7 million initiative hosted by the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) is reaching its intended target.
UW–Madison Team Honored for Course in Multi-Institution Project Advancing Inclusive Teaching for Nation’s STEM Faculty
September 16, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
Benefiting an estimated one million undergraduates, including many from marginalized backgrounds, annually since 2021 through improved teaching practices, the free class consists of six linked modules targeting mainly early-career STEM instructors.
New UW–Madison Report Finds Wisconsin School Districts Rejecting Teacher Performance Pay
September 4, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
The report found that in practice, using teacher performance as a major pay factor fell out of favor for four main reasons cited by the districts:
- staff discontent,
- principals’ inability or unwillingness to make performance distinctions,
- the effort and complexity of the required administrative process, and
- perceptions that flexibility led to inequities.
New Research Examines How Hands-on Arts Training Improves Teaching
September 3, 2025 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
This study advances a growing body of literature on the intersection of arts education and social-emotional learning by offering a replicable model for integrating arts-based methods into teachers’ professional learning. It also shows how such experiences can shift educators’ perceptions of their role and relationships with students.
New UW–Madison Study Reveals Keys to Graduate Student Wellness, Belonging, Persistence
August 25, 2025 | By WCER Communications
A new study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison sheds light on the unique challenges Black men face when adjusting to graduate engineering programs—and offers actionable insights for improving program persistence and support for underrepresented students.
Published in the journal Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the research highlights the importance of sociocultural adjustment in achieving success in graduate school, even more so than academic preparation. The study also draws lessons from Black men’s experiences and offers recommendations on how these lessons can be applied to a broader audience of graduate students.
Improving College Access: UW–Madison’s Odle Helps Launch One of the Largest Education Research Studies of the Century
July 31, 2025
In a groundbreaking project that could reshape the national college admissions landscape, the state of Tennessee launched TN Direct Admissions last week, a pilot program offering automatic college admission and personalized financial aid estimates to approximately 41,000 high school seniors. At the heart of this ambitious effort is Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of educational policy studies and principal investigator at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, as well as a faculty affiliate of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER).
