The University of Wisconsin–River Falls (UW–River Falls or UWRF) is a

public university A public university or public college is a university or college that is in owned by the state or receives significant public funds through a national or subnational government, as opposed to a private university. Whether a national universit ...

River Falls, Wisconsin River Falls is a city in Pierce County, Wisconsin, Pierce and St. Croix County, Wisconsin, St. Croix counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is adjacent to the River Falls (town), Wisconsin, Town of River Falls in Pierce County and the Kinnic ...

. It is part of the University of Wisconsin System. The campus is situated on the

Kinnickinnic River Kinnickinnic River may refer to one of two rivers in the U.S. state of Wisconsin: * Kinnickinnic River (Milwaukee River tributary) in southeastern Wisconsin * Kinnickinnic River (St. Croix River tributary) The Kinnickinnic River, called the K ...

in the St. Croix River Valley. The university has 32 major buildings and two laboratory farms, with a total of of land. In 2013–2014, UWRF had an enrollment of 6,061 students in more than 40 undergraduate and graduate programs. UWRF is a member of the

American Council of Education The American Council on Education (ACE) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) U.S. higher education association established in 1918. ACE's members are the leaders of approximately 1,700 accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities and higher educatio ...

Internationalization Laboratory and provides several global studies and study abroad programs. The university also hosts the St. Croix Institute for Sustainable Community Development.

History

The University of Wisconsin–River Falls was founded in 1874 as River Falls State Normal School, one of the state normal schools created to prepare students for teaching careers and to provide better education to the state's frontier regions.University of Wisconsin-River Falls
UWRF History
In 1927, the school was renamed River Falls State Teachers College, as the state normal schools became "State Teachers Colleges" that incorporated a significant increase in general education offerings and four-year courses of study leading to a Bachelor of Education degree. After World War II, thousands of returning veterans in Wisconsin under the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

needed more college choices for their studies and educational advancement. Because of popular demand, the Regents of the State Teachers College system allowed the teacher training institutions to offer bachelor's degrees in liberal arts and fine arts. In 1951, when the state teachers colleges were organized as "Wisconsin State Colleges",University of Wisconsin System
What is the UW System
the school name was changed to Wisconsin State College–River Falls, and the school offered a full four-year liberal-arts curriculum. In 1964, it was renamed Wisconsin State University-River Falls when state colleges were all granted university status. The school became a member of the University of Wisconsin System in 1971 when the former University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin State University system merged. It then became the University of Wisconsin–River Falls.

Academics

UWRF offers over 70 areas of academic study, including majors, minors, and certificates. Some of these programs are accredited by specialized accreditors, including the

Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, also known as AACSB International, is an American professional organization. It was founded as the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business in 1916 to provide accreditation to ...

National Association of Schools of Music The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) is an association of post-secondary music schools in the United States and the principal U.S. accreditor for higher education in music. It was founded on October 20, 1924, and is based in Reston ...

, the

Council on Social Work Education The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is a nonprofit national association in the United States representing more than 2,500 individual members, as well as graduate and undergraduate programs of professional social work education. Founded in 19 ...

, the

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is a major international membership organization for academics in the field, offering regional and national conferences and refereed publications. It has numerous membershi ...

, the

National Association of School Psychologists The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is the major national professional organization for school psychologists in the United States. Mission and purpose Its stated mission is to "represent and support school psychology thr ...

, the

, the Council for Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology (CAA), the

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Founded in 1920, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is a professional organization for schoolteachers of mathematics in the United States. One of its goals is to improve the standards of mathematics in education. NCTM holds an ...

, the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

, and the American Society of Agricultural and

Biosystems Engineering Biological systems engineering or Biosystems engineering is a broad-based engineering discipline with particular emphasis on non-medical biology. It can be thought of as a subset of the broader notion of biological engineering or bio-technology ...

Admissions

The average new freshman in Fall 2019 had a 3.43 high school GPA and was ranked in the top 37% of their high school class.

Rankings

In 2018, University of Wisconsin–River Falls was ranked 93rd in Regional Universities in Midwest, 23rd in Top Public Universities and 381st in Business Programs in United States of America. The University of Wisconsin–River Falls is one of four University of Wisconsin System institutions included in ''The Princeton Reviews 2014 list of the "Best in the Midwest." For 2014, '' U.S. News & World Report'' ranked UWRF in the top tier for Regional Universities in the Midwest United States.

Sustainability

UWRF has a STARS rating of Gold. UWRF made Princeton Review's 2021 Guide to Green Colleges. UWRF received an A− grade on the 2011 College Sustainability Report Card. The university has created the St. Croix Institute for Sustainable Community Development, whose mission is "to support and facilitate the

University of Wisconsin-River Falls A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

in becoming one of the premier venues for deliberation and demonstration of sustainable community development principles."

Athletics

UW-River Falls' athletic teams, known by their nickname, the Falcons, compete in 18 varsity sports in of the

Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference The Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) is a college athletic conference that competes in the NCAA's Division III. In women's gymnastics, it competes alongside Division I and II members, as the NCAA sponsors a single championsh ...

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

. Men's sports include

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

, cross country,

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

, swimming and diving, and

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

. Women's sports are basketball, cross country,

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

, swimming and diving,

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

, track and field, and

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

. Men's and women's

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

teams compete in the

Northern Collegiate Hockey Association The Northern Collegiate Hockey Association (NCHA) is a college athletic conference which operates in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the midwestern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division III as a hockey-onl ...

. The university also offers club sports for students, including men's volleyball, badminton, paintball,

Jiu Jitsu Jujutsu ( ; ja, link=no, 柔術 , ), also known as jiu-jitsu and ju-jitsu, is a family of Japanese martial arts and a system of close combat (unarmed or with a minor weapon) that can be used in a defensive or offensive manner to kill or subdu ...

, and rock climbing. From 1991 to 2009, the

Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The tea ...

used the university's athletic facilities during their annual summer training camp. The Chiefs moved their training camp to

Missouri Western State University Missouri Western State University is a public university in Saint Joseph, Missouri. As of 2019, it enrolled 5,413 students. History Missouri Western State University was founded in 1915 as a two-year institution called St. Joseph Junior College ...

St. Joseph, Missouri St. Joseph is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Missouri. Small parts of St. Joseph extend into Andrew County. Located on the Missouri River, it is the principal city of the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includ ...

in 2010.
In 2007, the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

sports documentary, '' Hard Knocks'', followed the Chiefs throughout their summer training camp at UWRF. The series featured a number of university buildings, including the new student union, Rodli Commons, McMillan Hall, Ramer Field Complex, Hunt Ice Hockey Arena and Laboratory Farm #1.

Notable faculty

Osborne Cowles Osborne Bryan "Ozzie" Cowles (August 25, 1899 – August 29, 1997) was an American basketball player and coach. He was the head men's basketball coach at Carleton College (1924–1930), River Falls State Teachers College (now University of Wisco ...

, basketball coach * John Q. Emery, early university president * Michael Norman, author * Edward N. Peterson, historian *

Greta Gaard Greta Gaard is an ecofeminist writer, scholar, activist, and documentary filmmaker. Gaard's academic work in the realms of ecocriticism and ecocomposition is widely cited by scholars in the disciplines of composition and literary criticism. Her th ...

, ecofeminist scholar

Notable alumni

References

External links

*
Wisconsin–River Falls Athletics website
{{DEFAULTSORT:University of Wisconsin-River Falls

River Falls Educational institutions established in 1874 Education in Pierce County, Wisconsin Buildings and structures in Pierce County, Wisconsin 1874 establishments in Wisconsin