Mayor pushes students to stay after graduation

by Becky Vevea

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 01:38

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz described his career path to University of Wisconsin students over dinner Tuesday night.

The Wisconsin Alumni Student Board hosted the dinner at The Angelic Brew Pub as one of many Dinners On Wisconsin, a UW alumni-student networking event held each semester.

At dinner, students  asked Cieslewicz about everything from Halloween to city transportation.

Cieslewicz turned the tables on the students, asking them a number of questions about Madison.

“It was very interesting to ask how many students wanted to stay in Madison,” Cieslewicz said. “We’ve got to do some work there because not enough hands went up.”

He talked about several current city initiatives including redeveloping Allied Drive and improving the bike trails to achieve a platinum rather than gold rating from the League of American Bicyclists.

Cieslewicz also asked students what they liked about Madison and what the city could do to improve.

“Getting people who are well-educated and bright to stay or at least to come back is really important to the city, so I wanted to know what it was about the city they liked,” he added.

Hosts of other dinners included, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, former Governor Tony Earl and Kelly Meuer, the owner of State Street Brats.

According to Josh Cummins, WASB alumni connections director, WASB sends a mass e-mail to UW students directing them toward the website to sign up for the various dinners.

“We have had, in the last two semesters, more demand from students than we’ve been able to accommodate spots at the dinners,” Cummins said.

Over two nights WASB facilitated 32 dinners with over 350 student participants, and 15 of them attended dinner with Cieslewicz.

UW senior Meg Reinbold attended the dinner with Meuer because she wants to start a business in space tourism one day, and said she wanted to get some advice about owning a business.

“I guess one of the things I’m trying to learn from him is where he screwed up, because that’s always a more valuable lesson than where he was successful,” Reinbold said.

Students can choose from a wide array of dinner topics, such as nursing, entrepreneurship and teaching.

“Most of these dinners do take place at [alumni’s] homes,” Cummins added. “Some of them do happen at restaurants if they can’t accommodate.”

To get alumni to host dinners, Cummins said they contacted the Dane County alumni via a mass e-mail and personally invited some of the more prominent hosts like Cieslewicz.