>16,000 Specimens
A Teaching Herbarium of ca. 16,000 specimens is maintained by the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. WIS assists with the regular curation of this collection, although the specimens are not part of the main herbarium. They are located on the second floor of Birge Hall within the systematics lab.
The instructors for at least nine different UW-Madison courses make regular use of the UW-Madison herbaria each year. At a minimum, classes are given a tour of the collection. In other cases, students are engaged in a hands-on exercise or they are required to complete an independent research project that makes use of the collections. Among others, these courses include: Art History430 (Art of the Natural World), Botany305 (Plant Morphology), Bot400 (Plant Systematics), Bot401(Vascular Flora of WI), Bot402 (Dendrology), Bot422 (Plant Geography), Bot455 (Vegetation of WI), History of Science333 (History of Modern Biology), and Zoology 405 (Museums Studies).
It is estimated that at least 100 UW undergraduate students pass through the doors of the Herbarium each year.