We closed out the UW Madison school year with a wonderful lunch, catered by Casetta near campus (a delicious new thing for us as well) and keynoted by the incredible Erik Iverson, CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. WARF is one of the gems of the UW’s partnerships – most campus staff have heard of it, of course, but many of us don’t understand what it does or how it works. Erik’s slide deck and engaging presentation style was informative and excellent.
It’s been a great year for MASN with more tours and events than ever before. The MASN year doesn’t follow the academic year, it continues through the summer. We are in the process of scheduling a tour of the Babcock Dairy Plant for this summer – members, watch your emails for that invite!
Speaking of emails from us, we’d like to encourage all members to consider running for one of the two open Board positions. There’s the 3-year “President” position: you’d start as President Elect for the first year, then be President the second year, and finally be Past-President the third year. And also the Treasurer position, which is a two year term. Details about the board position duties are here. We estimate the average amount of time either position takes each month, at about 2 hours: an hour of video meetings with the rest of the board members, and about an hour to write emails or make phone calls to help organize the events that MASN members enjoy. It’s a great way to become more involved with the university and make sure that MASN stays the fulfilling and enjoyable social group that we’ve been since 1975: that’s right, MASN is 50 years old this year!
There will be another email from the Board coming out soon, encouraging all members to run for either of those two Board positions and accepting nominations before an electronic vote. Please consider it, and if you have any questions or thoughts at all about the positions, email us at wisconsinmasn@mailplus.wisc.edu – we would love to talk to you!
For that matter – we encourage any MASN member or prospective member to email us at any time about anything, particularly matters that affect academic staff on campus – the Board is filled with knowledgeable folks who can probably help you out, or know who can help you. Also, if you have suggestions or ideas about events on campus, or future keynote speakers – we love to hear those too!
Lastly – mark your calendars for May 19, 2026 at noon! That will be the day of the next Spring Luncheon. We’ve reserved room 8417 in the Sewell Social Sciences building, that overlooks Lake Mendota with some beautiful panoramic views. Now we just need to figure out who to invite to be our keynote speaker, and who to have cater the lunch (again: email us if you have ideas; we want to hear ’em!)
Madison Academic Staff Network 