Thousands of visitors made Saturday’s UWM Doors Open Milwaukee event a resounding success to mark UWM’s first year as presenting sponsor for the 16th annual citywide event.
Unofficial attendance at UWM’s 40-plus participating sites eclipsed 10,000, and the flow of visitors was steady throughout the day. Returning alumni and newcomers alike got firsthand looks at the students, faculty, research and experiences that make UWM such an integral part of Milwaukee’s community.
“As Chancellor Thomas Gibson so often says, Milwaukee is UWM’s classroom, and we were honored to open our doors to so many people,” said Amy Lensing Tate, executive director of the UWM Alumni Association. “We shared behind-the-scenes looks at the many reasons why UWM has such strong ties to Milwaukee. It was a powerful reminder of how our students learn here, our alumni lead here and our faculty and researchers make an impact here.”
Perhaps the busiest place on UWM’s campus was Spaights Plaza, where more than 50 alumni, student and community members turned the Makers Market into a festive atmosphere. Food trucks did a brisk business while patrons shopped many the crafts, artisanal foods and unique offerings.
Elsewhere on campus, visitors shot basketballs at the Orthopaedic Hospital of Wisconsin Center on the same court used by the Panthers men’s and women’s basketball teams. They sampled liquid nitrogen ice cream created on-site inside the Chemistry Building or, at the EMS Building, took a seat inside a Baja car built by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Inside the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex, children heard physicists explain the wonders of the universe and took black hole selfies. They wondered at the thousands of fossils and geological specimens at the Greene Museum and the hundreds of rare plants on display inside the rooftop Biological Sciences Greenhouse atop the Northwest Quad.
They also traveled the world through the maps and globes in the American Geographical Society Library and saw the working manufacturing lab at the Connected Systems Institute. Many played video games, including the latest hits inside the Union Rec Center’s modern Esports Lounge and timeless classics on machines dating as far back as the 1970s inside the History Department’s Retrocomputing Lab. And the experiences went on and on, enough to spend the whole day on campus, which many visitors did.
Although many campus sites have participated in previous Doors Open events, this year marked UWM’s largest and most cohesive involvement. It helped boost the citywide site total to nearly 200, up from the 80 locations and 10,000 visitors of the first Doors Open Milwaukee event in 2011.
