University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, also known as UIUC and the U of I (the officially preferred abbreviation), is the flagship campus in the University of Illinois system. The university is composed of 18 Colleges and Institutes that offer more than 150 programs of study and has been referred to as a Public Ivy. The university has awarded over 500,000 degrees in its history.

The campus was originally established as the Illinois Industrial University in Urbana in 1867 under the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which provided western lands to each state to establish a university for agriculture and engineering. It now includes 272 major buildings on 1,458 acres (5.90 km²) in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, and has annual budget of more than $1 billion. As of Fall 2005, 40,670 students were enrolled, of which 30,453 were undergraduate students and 9188 were graduate,Fall 2005 Enrollment stats, UIUC and, until 1998, it was one of the 10 largest universities in the United States in terms of student enrollment. The student population includes students from all 50 states and 100 nations. Eleven alumni and nine professors (two of whom are also alumni) from the U of I have won the Nobel Prize.

Organization

Campus

The campus's main research and academic facilities are divided almost exactly between the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign. The College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences' research fields stretch south from Urbana and Champaign into Savoy and Champaign County. The university maintains formal gardens and a conference center in nearby Monticello at Allerton Park.

UIUC is one of the few educational institutions to own an airport. The university owns and operates the Willard Airport, named for former University of Illinois president Arthur Joffrey Willard and located in Savoy. The airport was completed in 1945 and began service in 1954. Willard Airport is home to many University research projects and the University's Institute of Aviation, along with flights from American, Delta, and Northwest Airlines.

The campus is based on the quadrangle design popular at many universities. Four main quads compose the center of the university and are arranged from north to south. The Beckman Quadrangle and the John Bardeen Quadrangle occupy the center of the Engineering Campus. Boneyard Creek flows through the John Bardeen Quadrangle, paralleling Green Street. The Beckman Quadrangle is primarily composed of research units and laboratories, and features a large solar calendar consisting of an obelisk and several copper fountains. The Main Quadrangle and South Quadrangle follow immediately after the John Bardeen Quad. The former makes up a large part of the Liberal Arts and Sciences portion of the campus, while the latter comprises many of the buildings of the College of ACES spread across the campus map.

Research

UIUC is the site of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which created Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, the foundation upon which Microsoft Internet Explorer is based, the Apache HTTP server, and Telnet. UIUC also has the third largest academic library and the largest public engineering library (Grainger Engineering Library) in the country. In 1952, the university built the ILLIAC (Illinois Automatic Computer), the first computer built and owned entirely by an educational institution. UIUC is also the site of the Department of Energy's Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets, an institute which has employed graduate and faculty researchers in the physical sciences and mathematics. The Siebel Center for Computer Science recently opened, and the Institute for Genomic Biology will open in 2006. Both the Illinois Natual History Survey and Illinois State Geological Survey are located on campus and affiliated with the university. The university is also recognized as a world-class center for agricultural and horticultural research.

Student life

Residences

The university requires all first-year undergraduate students (who do not commute) to stay in either the University Residence Halls or in University Private-Certified Housing. Both programs are administered by the university's housing division. University housing for undergraduates is provided through twenty-two residence halls in both Urbana and Champaign. All undergraduates within the university housing system are required to purchase some level of meal plan, although they are free to eat elsewhere if they choose. Graduate housing is usually offered through two graduate dormitories, restricted to those over twenty years of age, and through two university-owned apartment complexes. However, the recent record-sized freshman class has forced the housing division to convert one of the graduate dormitories into undergraduate housing. Disabled students are provided special housing options to accommodate their needs.

There are a number of private dormitories around campus, as well as a few houses that are outside of the Greek system and offer a more communal living experience. The private dorms tend to be more expensive to live in compared to other housing options. Private-certified residences maintain reciprocity agreements with the university, allowing students to move between the public and private housing systems if they are dissatisfied with their living conditions.

Some undergraduates choose to move into apartments or the Greek houses after their first or second year. The University Tenant Union offers advice on choosing apartments and the process of signing a lease.

Greek life

The university has the largest intrafraternity system in the world. There are currently forty-five fraternities and twenty sororities on the campus. Of the approximately 30,000 undergraduates, about 2900 are members of sororities and about 3100 are memebers of fraternities . Many of the fraternity and sorority houses on campus are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Libraries

The University has the largest public university library in the world with more than 10 million volumes, which help comprise 22 million items in the main library and the 40 other departmental libraries and divisions.

As of 2006, it is also the largest "browsable" university library in the United States, with 7.5 million volumes directly accessible in stacks in a single location (rather than in offsite storage). ( (After currently planned expansion, the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library will be slightly larger).^*

The online catalog is utilized by over one million people around the world every day. In addition to the main library, the College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences maintains the ACES Library on the South Quad, the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center serves the College of Engineering on the John Bardeen Quad, and over 40 departments and schools maintain their own libraries elsewhere on campus.

Transportation

The University bus system is part of the local Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District. The university, through an MTD fee garnered on top of students' tuition, provides a substantial amount of funding for the MTD, that in turn provides campus bus service and unlimited access to the entire system for university students, faculty, and staff. As part of this arrangement, the MTD also runs a bus line between Illinois Terminal and the university's University of Illinois Willard Airport. In addition, the Illinois Terminal provides connection services to Amtrak and Greyhound, making it the focal point of Chambana's public transportation systems.

The university maintains an extensive system of bike paths on campus. All students are expected to register their bicycles with the campus public safety department, and to keep their bicycles in a safe operating condition.

Athletics

UIUC's Division of Intercollegiate Athletics fields teams for ten men's and eleven women's varsity sports. The university participates in the NCAA's Division 1-A and is a member of the Big Ten Conference. The university's athletic teams are known as the Fighting Illini. The university operates a number of top athletic facilities, including Memorial Stadium for football, the Assembly Hall for men's and women's basketball, and the Atkins Tennis Center for men's and women's tennis. The men's NCAA basketball team had a dream run in the 2005 season, with Bruce Weber's Fighting Illini tying the record for most victories in a season. Their run ended 37-2 with a loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels in the national championship game.

On October 15, 1910, the Illinois football team defeated the University of Chicago Maroons with a score of 3-0. The game is notable in that it was the focal point of the first ever organized homecoming weekend.

Chief Illiniwek, the university's symbol, has garnered controversy for many years.

Notable faculty and alumni

As of 2005, nineteen alumni are Nobel laureates and sixteen have won a Pulitzer Prize. Alumni have created companies and products such as Oracle Corporation, Netscape Communications, AMD, PayPal, Playboy, Siebel Systems, Mortal Kombat, and YouTube. Notable people have invented the LED, integrated circuit, transistor, MRI, and Plasma screen.

The University of Illinois has also produced many outstanding athletes. Many have gone on to enjoy distinguished professional athletic careers.

Nathan Ricker attended U of I and was the first person to graduate in the United States with a degree in Architecture in 1873. The first female to obtain a degree in architecture also graduated from U of I.

Rankings

In 2006, US News and World Report ranked the undergraduate program 42nd overall out of nationally accredited universities and 11th out of nationally accredited public universities, with various other programs ranked highly as well. The graduate program has 60 disciplines ranked in the top 30 nationwide, including 23 in the top 5 overall. The US News ranked both the Undergraduate and Graduate Accounting programs #1 in the United States in their 2006 rankings. Of note is the College of Engineering, ranked 4th nationwide, with 14 graduate disciplines ranked in the top 10.

Internationally, Illinois is ranked as the 22nd best university in the country, and 58th best in the world, by The Times Higher Education Supplement’s list of the top 200 universities in the world;Education news & resources at the Times Higher Education Supplement, retrieved July 7, 2006 and 19th best university in the nation, and 25th best university in the world, by The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University..Top 500 World Universities, retrieved July 7, 2006

Points of interest

Notes

External links

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