Porter Falls Magazine

What the magazine is

Porter Falls Magazine is published twice a year, in late September and early April, by University Marketing & Communications. Each issue runs 56 to 64 pages and goes by mail to roughly 41,000 alumni households, plus about 3,500 copies to faculty, staff, retirees, donors and families of current students. A full digital edition is posted here the week the print copies land.

The magazine began in 1958 as The Porter Alumnus, a four-page newsletter typed in Millwright Hall. It took its current name in 1995, one year after the athletics teams became the Ironclads, on the stated theory that the campus could only absorb one rebrand at a time.

It is a university publication, not an independent one. We try to tell the truth about Porter, including the parts that are still being fixed, but for journalism the administration does not edit, read The Porter Current.

Current and past issues

Current issue: Fall 2026 (Vol. 32, No. 2), mailed September 22. The cover story is an oral history of the 1994 vote that turned the Millwrights into the Ironclads, timed to the 1994 ballot boxes turning up in a Founders Hall storage room this summer.

Every issue since 1958, including the typewritten ones, is kept in University Archives on Level 4 of Halvorsen Library. Archives staff will email a PDF of any issue from 1995 on; earlier issues can be read in the Special Collections room.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or go digital-only

Alumni receive the magazine automatically and free; there is nothing to sign up for. Everything else takes one email to magazine@uwporterfalls.edu or a call to (715) 555–0252.

• Go digital-only. We will stop the print copy and email you a link the week each issue posts. About 6,200 readers have switched, which saves the university roughly $1.41 per copy in printing and postage, or about $17,500 a year.
• Stop it entirely. We will take you off both lists. This does not affect your alumni benefits, your forwarding alias, or anything else.
• Change your address. Send the old and new address. The update also reaches your regional chapter and the Foundation, so you only have to tell us once.
• Not an alum? Parents, retirees, community members and former employees can request a free subscription. We will ask for a mailing address and nothing else.
• A copy for someone who has died. Tell us their name and class year. We will correct the record quietly, and if you would like, we will include them in In Memoriam.

We do not sell or rent the mailing list. How the university handles alumni contact data is covered in the privacy notice.

Send us a story, a letter or a class note

Most of the best stories in the magazine started as an email from a reader. We want to hear about:

• Story ideas — an alum doing something specific and interesting, a faculty member who has quietly taught the same course for three decades, a building or tradition with a story behind it. Two or three sentences is plenty.
• Class notes — jobs, retirements, weddings, births, books, awards, reunions. See Class Notes for the format and deadlines.
• Letters — responses to anything in the magazine, 250 words or fewer. We print a selection each issue, edited for length but not for opinion, and we do print letters that disagree with us.
• Photos and memorabilia — old programs, pennants, Millrace Week buttons. We will scan and return them, or, with your permission, pass them to University Archives.

Deadlines: June 15 for the fall issue and January 15 for the spring issue. Mail goes to Porter Falls Magazine, Millwright Hall 210, 1 Founders Drive, Porter Falls, Wesconsin 54999.

Editorial staff

Ingrid Fossum

Editor. Joined the magazine in 2014 after eleven years at a daily newspaper in Lake City; reports to Sylvie Dahl, director of University Marketing & Communications.

Marcus Bye

Associate editor and class notes editor. Reads every note that comes in, including the ones about grandchildren’s hockey statistics.

Joel Hagberg

Senior writer. Covers history, athletics and the Founders Hall renovation.

Teresa Lindgren

Art director. Designs the print and digital editions and is responsible for the gold.

Paul Oyelaran

University photographer.

Rachel Thorsgaard ’09 and Nadia Rahimi

Contributing writers.

The magazine is printed in Lake City on paper with 30 percent recycled content. Production and postage for both issues cost about $212,000 a year, paid from the University Marketing & Communications budget and an annual gift from the UW–Porter Falls Foundation.