Education and Outreach
The Applied Population Laboratory has a long history of providing direct education and outreach on population data and trends, census programs, and the issues and concepts of applied demography.
Drawing on the broad base of content area expertise of APL staff, we also do education and outreach that highlights our research on important issues in demography and sociology such as: population redistribution; racial/ethnic minority population trends; school enrollment trends; community development and informational resource capacity; spatial analysis; and using geographic information systems to examine emerging population-related issues.
The APL’s approach to education and outreach has its roots in the Wisconsin Idea (the mission of the University of Wisconsin to bring knowledge and resources to all of the people of the state of the Wisconsin) and in its longstanding relationship and interconnection with UW Cooperative Extension. For us, a primary goal is to teach Wisconsin communities, local governments, university students and researchers, community based organizations, and regular citizens how to get and use information to better understand the demographic, social and economic changes taking place around them.
As a State Data Center for the U.S. Census Bureau, we do outreach and education about census data, new census programs and products such as the American Community Survey, geographic programs, and the importance of community participation in getting a complete census count. In our role with UW- Cooperative Extension, we work with county-based educators providing information, designing research, and leading classes and discussions related to demographic data. More generally, we teach classes, lead workshops, and give presentations to help people better understand population trends, census data, demographic data and how to use it more generally, and how to integrate demographic data into geographic information systems for mapping and spatial analysis. We interact with university students, faculty, and staff in both classroom and more informal, one-on-one settings to access and use data sources, software, and to do data analysis. We publish brief reports on population-related topics; publish a quarterly newsletter highlighting population-related issues, data sources, and upcoming events; create and maintain websites for accessing data and maps; and engage with the press to provide information for newspaper articles. We frequently attend local government and school district association conferences, where we connect with people and give informational presentations when appropriate. Finally, we all engage in “teachable moments” – opportunities to teach individuals extemporaneously by phone, email, or in person.
APL staff give invited presentations to audiences of all sizes including community groups, campus and state agency groups, statewide professional or governmental associations, university classrooms, and UW Extension educators. The APL can also design and teach classes and workshops on a wide range of topics (for instance, how to access and use demographic data or how to use data from the American Community Survey) to suit the educational needs and goals of any audience. We generally charge a small speaker’s fee and ask for reimbursement of travel and other incidental costs.
Please contact James Beaudoin, Dan Veroff, or Katherine Curtis with questions or for more information.
APL staff can offer content area education and outreach in demography, GIS, planning and community development, sociology, geography, and education policy. In addition, all APL staff have extensive experience with communicating and teaching in public settings and have developed materials for workshops, conference panels, short courses in classrooms or computer laboratories, webinars, or teleconferences (and a range of other distance teaching technologies). While all staff members engage in outreach and education, the following members of the APL have appointments in Extension or are actively involved in education activities:
James Beaudoin, Jennifer Huck, Dan Veroff, Katherine Curtis, and Richelle Winkler.
This website offers interactive mapping of Census data at various geographies as well as a tool for downloading data and geographic files.
This brief report examines recent trends in school enrollment in the state of Wisconsin and projections of future enrollment by race/ethnicity and urban/rural/suburban populations.