As college students arrive for the varsity day in Mackenzie Straub’s third-grade classroom in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, they test in on a big, interactive display that features a picture of their instructor and one other notable: Bucky Badger.
It’s a nod to Straub’s fond emotions towards her alma mater, the College of Wisconsin–Madison.
Straub earned a bachelor’s diploma in early childhood training from the UW–Madison Faculty of Schooling in 2021. She now teaches in the identical faculty district — and in the identical faculty constructing — the place she as soon as attended third grade.
It’s a full-circle second for Straub, one among many for the second-generation Door County resident. Her every day life abounds with the sorts of deep connections cast in small cities throughout the state.
Group members swooped in to help Straub when, at age 13, she misplaced her father, Gary, the proprietor of a neighborhood clothes retailer. His loss of life, from esophageal most cancers, upended the household’s monetary scenario. Affording faculty grew to become questionable for Straub, however as she approached the tip of her senior 12 months of highschool, UW–Madison unveiled an initiative meant to assist college students identical to her.
When introduced in 2018, Bucky’s Tuition Promise pledged to cowl 4 years of tuition and segregated charges for any incoming freshman from Wisconsin whose household’s annual family adjusted gross earnings was $56,000 or much less. The determine has since been raised to $65,000 — roughly the state’s median household earnings, that means half of all Wisconsin households qualify.
Switch college students who’re Wisconsin residents and who meet the identical earnings standards obtain two years of free tuition and segregated charges.
“When my husband died, our future modified dramatically,” says Carol Straub, Mackenzie’s mom, including that they needed to shut the household enterprise when he grew to become too sick to work. “We not had his earnings. Bucky’s Tuition Promise was an enormous stress reduction. We’ll perpetually be thankful for it.”
