We entered the fall 2024 semester with positive news about our undergraduate enrollment. At orientation and registration this summer, our academic affairs staff advised 733 students, a 23% increase from the previous year’s 594. This continues a rising trend that began in 2021, but it’s the largest year-to-year increase in that time. We also welcomed more transfer students, first-generation college students, and Wisconsin resident students.

I’m not surprised by these positive numbers. CALS has always offered a high-quality education with unique, meaningful experiences — within our classrooms and labs, at our field sites, and abroad. And we have always worked hard to stay relevant and accessible for students. This was demonstrated recently by the launch of several new majors and certificates (see Major Changes, Grow, summer 2024), each program designed to improve how CALS prepares undergrads to go out into the world and address modern challenges. In fact, one of our newer offerings, animal and veterinary biosciences, saw the greatest growth among our majors in the last year.

However, word about this exceptional CALS experience has not always reached as many potential students as we would like. To help address this issue, we recently added positions to engage in recruiting students and enhancing the student experience. Clearly, these new team members have made a difference. The positive uptick in enrollment can be attributed, at least in part, to their hard work and the college’s investment in bringing them on board.

Along with an expanded incoming class comes more space for students to call their own. Agricultural Hall now boasts a Student Center — a place for undergrads to “plug in, power up, study, and chill,” as the tagline on the new signage reads. The center, filled with comfortable seating, big bright windows, and plenty of room for stretching out, resides in repurposed historical space in the lower level of the building. (It formerly housed the university’s Agricultural Library and was most recently occupied by the Department of Landscape Architecture.) It’s a step toward an even better gathering place — a hub, a headquarters, a home — for the whole CALS community, and we’ll be working hard to raise funds for this endeavor.

That’s just some of the student-centered action happening at CALS. And this issue of Grow is a chance to learn about more, from rural student scholarships to undergraduate-led aquaponics research to grad students getting their hands dirty with soggy soil and plastic scraps. Enjoy!