Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
Name	University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Motto	Learning and Labor
Endowment	US$ 1.29 billion
President	Michael Hogan
Chancellor	Robert Easter (interim)
Provost	Robert Easter (interim)
Former names	Illinois Industrial University (1867–1885) University of Illinois (1885–1982)
Established	1867
Type	Flagship, land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant, public university
Calendar	Semester
Faculty	2,971
Staff	8,085
Students	41,495
Undergrad	31,173
Postgrad	10,322
Nickname	Fighting Illini
Symbol	NonePreviously Chief Illiniwek (1926–2007)
Colors	Illinois Blue Illinois Orange
City	Urbana and Champaign
State	Illinois
Country	United States
Campus	Micro-urban
Free label	Athletics
Free	NCAA Division I-FBS, 21 varsity teams (10 men's, 11 women's)
Affiliations	Big Ten ConferenceCommittee on Institutional Cooperation
Website	http://illinois.edu/
Logo	}}

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (U of I, UIUC, or simply Illinois) is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious campus in the University of Illinois system. The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is the second oldest public university in the state, second to Illinois State University. It is considered a Public Ivy, and is a long-standing member of the Big Ten Conference and Association of American Universities. The university is designated as a RU/VH Research University (very high research activities). The campus library system is one of the largest public academic collections in the world. It possesses the third-largest university library in the United States (only the collections of Harvard and Yale are larger), and the sixth-largest in the country overall.

The university comprises 17 colleges that offer more than 150 programs of study. Additionally, the university operates an extension that serves 2.7 million registrants per year around the state of Illinois and beyond. The campus holds 286 buildings on in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana; its annual operating budget in 2011 was over $1.7 billion.

The undergraduate program was ranked 47th among national universities and 15th among public universities by ''U.S. News & World Report'' in their 2011 rankings, a drop from the 40th and 9th rankings in the previous year's rankings, apparently due to recent admission scandals. According to the 2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign ranked 25th out of the more than 1,000 international institutions recognized. U of I is also home to many top-flight graduate programs; the graduate programs in College of Engineering, Accounting, Library Science, and Computer Science are all ranked by US News in the top five programs in the United States.

History

The Morrill Act of 1862 granted each state in the United States a portion of land on which to establish a major public state university, one which could teach agriculture, mechanic arts, and military training, "without excluding other scientific and classical studies." This phrase would engender controversy over the University's initial academic philosophies, polarizing the relationship between the people of Illinois and the University's first president, John Milton Gregory.

After a fierce bidding war between a number of Illinois cities, Urbana was selected in 1867 as the site for the new school. From the beginning, Gregory's desire to establish an institution firmly grounded in the liberal arts tradition was at odds with many State residents and lawmakers who wanted the university to offer classes based solely around "industrial education" The University finally opened for classes on March 2, 1868, with only two faculty members and a small group of students. The debate between the liberal arts curriculum and industrial education continued in the University's inaugural address, as Dr. Newton Bateman outlined the various interpretations of the Morrill Act in his speech. Gregory's thirteen year tenure would be marred by this debate. Clashes between Gregory and legislators and lawmakers forced his resignation from his post as president in 1880, saying "[I am] staggering under too heavy a load of cares, and irritated by what has sometimes seemed as needless opposition." Today, Gregory is largely credited with establishing the University and forming it into the major interdisciplinary university it is today. Gregory's grave is still located on the Urbana campus, situated between Altgeld Hall and the Henry Administration Building. His marker (mimicking the epitaph of British architect Christopher Wren) reads, "If you seek his monument, look about you."

The university experienced rapid growth following World War II under president David Henry, under whom the university doubled enrollment and significantly improved its academic standing. This period was also marked by large growth in the Graduate College and increased federal support of scientific and technological research. The state of Illinois supplied roughly two-thirds of the university's budget while the federal government funded 90% of research. In recent years, state support has declined from 4.5% of the state's tax appropriations in 1980 to 2.28% in 2011, a nearly 50% decline. As a result, the university's budget has strongly shifted away from relying on state support with nearly 84% of the budget now coming from other sources.

Evolution of name

The original proposed name in 1867 was "Illinois Industrial University." In 1885, the Illinois Industrial University officially changed its name to the University of Illinois, reflecting its holistic agricultural, mechanical, and liberal arts curricula. This remained the official name for nearly 100 years, until it was changed to The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1982, ostensibly to establish a separate identity for the campus within the University of Illinois system. However, after a century's use, UIUC continues to be known and referred to as "The University of Illinois", or just "Illinois"; this is true in both the media, and on many of UIUC's web pages. Starting in 2008, the university began strongly rebranding itself as "Illinois" rather than UIUC, changing the website URL from uiuc.edu to Illinois.edu as well as all email addresses.

Colleges and schools

UIUC offers study through 16 colleges. Advanced undergraduate students may participate in a rigorous course of study through the ''James Scholar Honors Program'' and earn highest distinctions with University Honors.

Campus

The campus is known for its landscape and architecture, as well as distinctive landmarks. It was identified as one of 50 college or university 'works of art' by T.A. Gaines in his book ''The Campus as a Work of Art''. The 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.

U of I is one of the few educational institutions to own an airport. Willard Airport, named for former University of Illinois president Arthur Cutts Willard, is located in Savoy. It was completed in 1945 and began service in 1954. Willard Airport is home to University research projects and the University's Institute of Aviation, along with flights from American 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.

Sustainability

In October, 2010, the Sustainable Endowments Institute gave the campus a grade of B for sustainability in its 2011 College Sustainability Report Card. Strengths noted in the report included the campus's adoption of LEED gold standards for all new construction and major renovations and its public accessibility to endowment investment information. The university makes a list of endowment holdings and its shareholder voting record available to the public. The weaknesses comprise of areas such as student involvement and investment priorities. The student sustainability committee is empowered to allocate funding from a clean energy technology fee and a sustainable campus environment fee, while the university aims to optimize investment return but has not made any public statements about investigating or investing in renewable energy funds or community development loan funds. However the biggest weakness of the university's sustainability is its shareholder engagement, as the university has not made any public statements about active ownership or a proxy voting policy.

In his remarks on the creation of the Office of Sustainability in September, 2008, Chancellor Richard Herman stated, "I want this institution to be the leader in sustainability." In February, 2008, he signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, committing the University of Illinois to take steps "in pursuit of climate neutrality."

Research

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is often regarded as a world-leading magnet for engineering and sciences (both applied and basic). Having been classified into the category comprehensive doctoral with medical/veterinary and very high research activity, by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Illinois offers a wide range of disciplines in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. It is also listed as one of the Top 25 American Research Universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance. Beside annual influx of grants and sponsored projects, the university manages an extensive modern research infrastructure. The university has been a leader in computer based education and hosted the PLATO project, which was a precursor to the internet and resulted in the development of the plasma display.

The university hosts the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which created Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, the foundation upon which Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer are based, the Apache HTTP server, and NCSA Telnet. The Parallel@Illinois program hosts several programs in parallel computing, including the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center. The university is currently collaborating with IBM and the National Science Foundation to build the world's fastest supercomputer. This supercomputer, named "Blue Waters," aims to be capable of performing one quadrillion calculations per second. If completed, this would make Blue Waters three times faster than today's fastest supercomputer. The university whimsically celebrated January 12, 1997 as the "birthday" of HAL 9000, the fictional supercomputer from the novel and film ''2001: A Space Odyssey''; in both works, HAL credits "Urbana, Illinois" as his place of operational origin.

In 1952, the university built the ILLIAC (Illinois Automatic Computer), the first computer built and owned entirely by an educational institution. U of I 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. It performs materials science and condensed matter physics research, and is home to Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory as well as the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. Two complexes for research and teaching recently opened, Siebel Center for Computer Science in 2004 and the Institute for Genomic Biology in 2006. The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, however, is still the largest interdisciplinary facility on campus with . Both the Illinois Natural History Survey and Illinois State Geological Survey are located on campus and affiliated with the university. The university also conducts agricultural and horticultural research.

Since 1957 the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program (ITARP) has conducted archaeological and historical compliance work for the Illinois Department of Transportation. ITARP serves as a repository for a large collection of Illinois archaeological artifacts now numbering over 17,000 boxes. One of the major collections is from the Cahokia Mounds, for which ITARP has over 550 boxes. An on-line database will soon be mounted for the Cahokia collection, funded by a 2008–2010 National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

In the 24 February 2004 talk as part of his Five Campus Tour (Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon and Illinois), titled "Software Breakthroughs: Solving the Toughest Problems in Computer Science," Bill Gates has mentioned that Microsoft hires more graduates from the University of Illinois than from any other university in the world. Alumnus William M. Holt, a Senior Vice-President of Intel, also mentioned in a campus talk in 27 September 2007 entitled "R&D; to Deliver Practical Results: Extending Moore's Law" that Intel hires more PhD graduates from the University of Illinois than from any other university in the country.

In 2007, the university-hosted research Institute for Condensed Matter Theory (ICMT) was launched, with the director Paul Goldbart and the chief scientist Anthony Leggett. ICMT is currently located at the Engineering Science Building on campus.

Student life

Competition

According to the statistics of the 2008 admitted freshmen, 77% of incoming students had ACT score of 27 or higher, 31% had an SAT combined Math & Critical Reading score above 1,400 (excludes Writing), and 59% of the incoming students were top 10% of their high school class. Some of the university's colleges admit students at an even more competitive level. For incoming freshmen in 2008, the College of Engineering reported an ACT score interquartile range of 30–33, the College of Business reported an ACT score IQR of 28–32, and the College of Media, in 2008, the first year it accepted freshmen, reported an ACT IQR of 27–32, higher than the overall campus median (though still lower than that of the college of engineering). Of graduates, Illinois ended up as one of the top 12 (percentage) and top 6 (numerical) feeder state colleges to elite professional schools.

Residences

Like many universities, University of Illinois 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. Students with disabilities 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.

Most 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 Greek system in the world by membership. There are currently sixty-eight fraternities and thirty-six sororities on the campus. Of the approximately 31,180 undergraduates, about 3,330 are members of sororities and about 3,370 are members of fraternities. The Greek system at the University of Illinois has a system of self-government. While there are staff advisors and directors in charge of managing certain aspects of the Greek community, most of the day to day operations of the Greek community are governed by the Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council. Many of the fraternity and sorority houses on campus are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Business Fraternities

There are four business fraternities at the university. The largest and oldest, Alpha Kappa Psi, was installed at the university in 1913. The Epsilon chapter of Alpha Kappa Psi was the fifth chapter chartered in the United States after its first incorporation at New York University in 1904. As of 2011, the Epsilon chapter is only one of eight chapters internationally to receive membership awards. Notable alumni from the Epsilon chapter include former Illinois Senator Paul Douglas, Governor Otto Kerner, U.S. Steel President Leslie Worthington. Other business fraternities at the university include Delta Sigma Pi (Upsilon), Phi Chi Theta (Zeta Gamma) and Phi Gamma Nu (Beta Pi chapter).

Student Government

The current university student government, created in 2005, is the Illinois Student Senate, a combined undergraduate and graduate student senate with 54 voting members. The student senators are elected by college and represent the students on a variety of faculty and administrative committees, and are led by an internally elected executive board consisting of a President, External Vice-President, Internal Vice-President, and a treasurer.

Libraries

The campus library system is one of the largest public academic collections in the world. Among universities in North America, only the collections of Harvard and Yale are larger. Currently, the University of Illinois' main library and 40 other departmental libraries and divisions hold more than 22 million items, including more than 12 million volumes. As of 2006, it had also the largest "browsable" university library in the United States, with 7.5 million volumes directly accessible in stacks in a single location. UIUC also has the largest public engineering library (Grainger Engineering Library) in the country.

The online catalog is used by over one million people monthly. In addition to the main library building, which houses nearly 20 subject-oriented libraries, the Isaac Funk Family Library on the South Quad serves the College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences and the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center serves the College of Engineering on the John Bardeen Quad.

The University of Illinois Residence Hall Library System is one of three in the nation. The Residence Hall Libraries were created in 1948 to serve the educational, recreational, and cultural information needs of first and second year undergraduate students residing in the residence halls, and the living-learning communities within the residence halls. The collection also serves University Housing staff as well as the larger campus community, including undergraduate and graduate students, and university faculty and staff.

All together there are more than 40 departmental or school libraries on campus.

Recreation

The Urbana–Champaign campus has a modern recreation infrastructure. Recently, the two main recreation facilities, CRCE and the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC, formerly known as IMPE), were upgraded. The campus also has more than a thousand clubs and organizations, ranging from cultural and athletic to subject area to philanthropic. Students can create their own Registered Student Organization if the pursuing interest/concern is not addressed by the current entities.

Transportation

The bus system that operates throughout the campus and community is operated by the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District. The MTD receives a student-approved transportation fee from the university, which provides unlimited access for university students. In addition, the university pays for universal access for all its faculty and staff. As part of this arrangement, the MTD also runs a bus line between Willard Airport and Illinois Terminal, a multi-modal transportation facility which includes Amtrak and Greyhound – making it the focal point of Champaign-Urbana's public transportation systems.

The university maintains an extensive system of off-street bike paths and on-street bike lanes on campus. All students are expected to register their bicycles with the campus public safety department.

Athletics and sports

U of I'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. The university's athletic teams are known as the Fighting Illini. The university operates a number of 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.

Illinois is also a member of the Big Ten Conference. The Big Ten is the only Division I conference to have all of its member institutions affiliated with the prestigious Association of American Universities, a consortium of 62 major research institutions, and leads all conferences in the total amount of research expenditures.

On October 15, 1910, the Illinois football team defeated the University of Chicago Maroons with a score of 3–0 in a game that Illinois claims was the first homecoming game, though several other schools claim to have held the first homecoming as well.

On November 10, 2007, the unranked Illinois football team defeated the #1 ranked Ohio State football team in Ohio Stadium, the first time that the Illini beat a #1 ranked team on the road.

The University of Illinois Ice Arena is home to the university's club college ice hockey team competing at the ACHA Division I level and is also available for recreational use through the Division of Campus Recreation. It was built in 1931 and designed by Chicago architecture firm Holabird and Root, the same firm that designed the University of Illinois Memorial Stadium and Chicago's Soldier Field. It is located on Armory Drive across from the Armory. The structure features 4 rows of bleacher seating in an elevated balcony that runs the length of the ice rink on either side. These bleachers provide seating for roughly 1,200 fans, with standing room and bench seating available underneath. Because of this set-up the team benches are actually directly underneath the stands.

Chief Illiniwek, or 'The Chief', was the university's official athletic symbol from 1926 until February 21, 2007. Use of the Chief garnered criticism for the university starting in the mid-1970s from Native Americans and others as a misappropriation and inaccurate portrayal of indigenous culture. The university officials announced the end of the Chief Illiniwek era on February 16, 2007.

Notable among a number of songs commonly played and sung at various events such as commencement and convocation, and athletic games are: Illinois Loyalty, the school song, Oskee Wow Wow, the fight song, and Hail to the Orange, the alma mater.

Academic awards and recognition

University Honors

University Honors is an academic distinction awarded to high achieving students at UIUC. It is comparable to the Latin honors of summa cum laude. Graduating students awarded ''University Honors '' must have a cumulative grade point average of a 3.5/4.0 within the academic year of their graduation and rank within the top 3% of their graduating class.

James Scholars

"James Scholars" are undergraduate students invited to pursue a specialized course of study for no less than two years of their undergraduate course work. Each student must have a minimum grade point average of 3.3/4.0 (3.5 for ECE majors) to become a James Scholar. James Scholars who graduate with "University Honors" are also awarded the Latin honors of In cursu honorum.

Chancellor's Scholars

"Chancellor's Scholars" is a campus scholarship program which focuses on both academic excellence and leadership. Unlike the James Scholars Program, the Campus Honors Program may only have about 125 members at any given time. Chancellor's scholars must have a grade point average of 3.3/4.0, successfully complete a total of five CHP sponsored courses, and participate in a specified number of CHP co-curricular events and activities.

Senior 100 Honorary

"Senior 100 Honorary" is an award from the Student Alumni Ambassadors and the University of Illinois Alumni Association that recognizes outstanding seniors. Recipients of this award are honored for their outstanding achievements in leadership, academics and campus involvement throughout their undergraduate education.

Notable faculty and alumni

As of 2007, 21 alumni and faculty members are Nobel laureates and 20 have won a Pulitzer Prize. In particular, John Bardeen is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in physics, having done so in 1956 and 1972 while on faculty at the University of Illinois. In 2003, two faculty members won Nobel prizes in different disciplines: Paul C. Lauterbur for physiology or medicine, and Anthony Leggett for physics. Most recently, in 2007, Don Wuebbles, Atul Jain, John Walsh and Michael Schlesinger, professors in the Department of Atmospheric Science, were awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for their contributions and collaboration with the IPCC.

Fazlur Rahman Khan, considered to be the ''Einstein of structural engineering'' and the ''Greatest Structural Engineer of the of the 20th Century''

Alumni have created companies and products such as Netscape Communications, AMD, PayPal, Playboy, National Football League, Siebel Systems, Mortal Kombat, CDW, YouTube, THX, Oracle, Lotus, Mosaic, Safari, Firefox, W. W. Grainger, Delta Air Lines, BET, and Tesla Motors.

Alumni and faculty have invented the LED, JavaScript, the integrated circuit, the quantum well laser, the transistor, MRI, and the plasma screen, and are responsible for the structural design of such buildings as the Willis Tower, the John Hancock Center, and the Burj Khalifa.

Alumni founded the Catholic Worker Movement, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Project Gutenberg, and have served in a wide variety of government and public interest roles.

Rafael Correa, re-elected President of The Republic of Ecuador in April 2009 secured his M.S. and Ph.D degrees from the University's Economics Department in 1999 and 2001 respectively.

Nathan C. Ricker attended U of I and in 1873 was the first person to graduate in the United States with a degree in Architecture. Mary L. Page, the first woman to obtain a degree in architecture, also graduated from U of I.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy is playing an increasingly significant role in supporting the Land Grant mission of the University of Illinois. The portion of the university's annual $1.5 billion budget which is state funds has diminished drastically over the past two decades. Currently the university receives only 16.4% of its budget from state tax dollars compared to 20 years ago when it received 44.5% of its budget from state tax dollars. Gifts, grants, and contracts to the university comprise 19% of the annual budget.

Philanthropic giving to the university comes in the form of annual giving, major gifts, and estate planning. Annual giving is generally unrestricted by the donor and can be spent by the campus to meet immediate needs to maintain basic operations. Major gifts are typically put into an endowment at the donor's wishes, where the principal of the gift is invested while the interest is distributed to the campus department in which the donor designated their gift to be used. This practice of investing the principal in an endowment and only spending the interest, is done to secure the gift in perpetuity. In some cases, major gifts are used immediately for building campaigns such as the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, The Beckman Institute, or The Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science. Estate planning is another type of giving whereby a donor makes provisions in their will or estate documents which identifies the University of Illinois as a beneficiary.

Alumni play the largest role in philanthropic giving to the university. The most notable donors are Thomas M. Siebel and his wife Stacey who recently gave a $100 million estate gift to the university after they had given $36 million to build the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science, $10 million to endow the Siebel Scholars program, $2 million to endow the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in Computer Science and $2 million to endow the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science. Other notable donors include Sohaib Abbasi and his wife, Sara, who established the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professorship to enable the CS department to maintain its stature as one of the nation's premiere departments and give students the opportunity to learn from a world-renowned computer scientist and educator. They have also endowed the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Fellowship to allow up to 5 graduate students each year, the opportunity to study computer science at one of the nation's top ranked computer science departments.

Stanley O. and Judith L. Ikenberry were the 14th President and First Lady of the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois from 1979–1995. The Ikenberrys established the Stanley O. and Judith L. Ikenberry Endowment for Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. This gift supports the presentation of guest artists at the Center as part of the Marquee Endowment.

Rankings

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In its 2011 listings, ''U.S. News & World Report'' ranked the undergraduate program 47th among nationally accredited universities and 15th among nationally accredited public universities. The graduate program had 60 disciplines ranked within the top 30 nationwide, including 23 within the top five. U.S. News & World Report ranked the undergraduate and graduate Accounting programs 2nd and 4th respectively in the United States in their 2011 rankings; both programs had been ranked 1st at the same time in previous years. The College of Business as a whole was ranked 12th nationally. The College of Engineering was ranked 5th at the graduate level, with 14 disciplines ranked within the top ten. Chemistry and Physics were also ranked within the top ten at the graduate level. The College of Education had six programs ranked within the top ten. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science was ranked 1st, with five programs ranked within the top ten. Many arts programs were ranked within the first quartile, such as Architecture and Fine Arts. However, Computer Science, Material Science, Agricultural Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Accounting, Finance, and Psychology are the university's most visibly distinguished departments among others. The School of Labor and Employment Relations is ranked consistently within the top two in the nation, behind only Cornell University.

The University of Illinois is considered a "Public Ivy" and is measured comprehensively as one of the top 20 major research universities in the United States by a Graham-Diamond Report.

International rankings by The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University suggest that Illinois is the 19th best university in North America, and 25th best university in the world. The Academic Ranking of World Universities by Broad Subject Fields from the same research center in 2008 positions Illinois in 3rd for Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences in the world. It is ranked 19th for Life and Agriculture Sciences, 20th for Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and 51st for Social Sciences.

In 2010, Illinois was ranked 63rd in the world by QS World University Rankings, maintaining its position in the 2009 THE-QS World University Rankings (in 2010, Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings parted ways to produce separate rankings). However, Illinois had been ranked within the top 40 in the past. The THE-QS rankings have been criticized due to their volatility: it stresses international popularity and ranks may fluctuate tens of places from one year to the next. The WSJ ranking of business schools also has this inherited anomaly, attributable to its survey method.

The Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations has been recognized consistently as one of the top three programs for Human Resources and Labor Relations studies in the United States.

In the 2008 release of Webometrics Ranking of World Universities by Cybermetrics Lab, which is a research unit of the National Research Council of Spain, the University was ranked 9th. In 2006, G-Factor, another academic list trying to measure social network efficacy of universities, has ranked Illinois within the top eight. A human competitiveness index and analysis by the Human Resources & Labor Review, and published in Chasecareer Network, ranked the university 25th internationally in 2010. As of 2007, Washington Monthly ranks Illinois as the 11th best university in the nation, and 9th among public universities. The methodology of the ranking includes "how well it performs as an engine of social mobility," "how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research," and "how well it promotes an ethic of service to country."

Newsweek International listed Illinois as one of Top 100 Global Universities, which "takes into account openness and diversity, as well as distinction in research." Kiplinger's Personal Finance also listed Illinois in its 100 Best Values in Public Colleges, which "measures academic quality, cost and financial aid."

The Princeton Review has elected Illinois one of the 366 best colleges out of nearly 5,000 degree-granting institutions of higher education in the United States. Nonetheless, the university has come under criticism for its use of graduate teaching assistants in teaching undergraduate courses, including upper-level undergraduate courses. For two consecutive years, the Urbana–Champaign campus topped this review's category of "teaching assistants teach too many upper level courses." However, the Princeton Review's ranking has been scrutinized for its lack of accountability as the Review's ranking categorical data rely mainly upon student random sampling.

Controversies

2005-2009 century admissions scandal

A series of investigative reports by the ''Chicago Tribune'' noted that between 2005 and 2009 university trustees, president, chancellor, and other administrators pressured admissions officials into admitting under-qualified but politically well-connected applicants into the university. Although University officials initially denied, then downplayed the existence of a "clout list", the university later announced it would form a panel of internal and external representatives to review the past admissions process and determine possible changes.

Howell firing

In July 2010 The News-Gazette reported that Dr. Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor teaching Introduction to Catholic Thought, was fired for teaching the Roman Catholic positions on homosexuality. The Alliance Defense Fund has taken up Dr. Howell's case, stating that his dismissal is a violation of academic freedom and the First Amendment. The University's position, as stated by Ann Mester, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, is that Dr. Howell's comments "violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us."

Dr. Howell was reinstated by the University of Illinois as an adjunct instructor for the fall 2010 term to teach "Introduction to Catholicism", resolving the situation for the time being. The university announced on July 28 that it would follow the recommendation of the Academic Senate's General University Policy Committee to begin paying the salary of instructors teaching Catholic studies courses. St. John's Catholic Newman Center previously paid instructor salaries. The matter is currently under review by the Academic Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

Points of interest

Alma Mater Allerton Park Arboretum Activities and Recreation Center The Beckman Institute Boneyard Creek Conservatory and Plant Collection Engineering Quads Grainger Engineering Library

Illini Union Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Main Quad Morrow Plots- National Historic Landmark National Center for Supercomputing Applications Spurlock Museum Krannert Art Museum University of Illinois Observatory- National Historic Landmark

Images: Perspective views

See also

Daily Illini – independent student newspaper

WPGU – student-run commercial radio station

Illinois Loyalty – school song

Fighting Illini – University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign sports

Marching Illini – marching band of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

References

External links

Official website

Official Athletics website

Daily Illini Online

UIHistories Project: History of the University / UITours Project: Virtual Tour of UIUC Campus / UIPhotos Project: Photo Galleries of Campus

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Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
fullname	State of Illinois
electoralvotes	21
flag	Flag of Illinois.svg
flaglink	Flag
seal	Seal of Illinois.svg
name	Illinois
nickname	Land of Lincoln; The Prairie State
motto	State sovereignty, national union
former	Illinois Territory
demonym	Illinoisan
officiallang	English
languages	English (80.8%)Spanish (10.9%)Polish (1.6%)Other (6.7%)
map	Map_of_USA_IL.svg
capital	Springfield
largestcity	Chicago
largestmetro	Chicago metropolitan area
governor	Pat Quinn (D)
lieutenant governor	Sheila Simon (D)
legislature	General Assembly
upperhouse	Senate
lowerhouse	House of Representatives
senators	Dick Durbin (D)Mark Kirk (R)
Representative	11 Republicans, 8 Democrats
postalabbreviation	IL, Ill.,
borderingstates	Indiana, Iowa, KentuckyMissouri, Wisconsin
arearank	25th
totalareaus	57,914
totalarea	149,998
landareaus	55,593
landarea	143,968
waterareaus	2,320
waterarea	5,981
pcwater	4.0/ Negligible
poprank	5th
2000pop (old)	12,831,970
| 2000pop	12,830,632 (2010)
densityrank	12th
2000densityus	223.4
2000density	86.27
medianhouseholdincome	$54,124
incomerank	17
admittanceorder	21st
admittancedate	December 3, 1818
timezone	Central: UTC-6/-5
latitude	36° 58′ N to 42° 30′ N
longitude	87° 30′ W to 91° 31′ W
widthus	210
width	340
lengthus	395
length	629
highestpoint	Charles Mound
highestelevus	1,235
highestelev	377
meanelevus	600
meanelev	182
lowestpoint	Mississippi River
lowestelevus	279
lowestelev	85
isocode	US-IL
website	www.illinois.gov }}

name	Illinois
Flag	Flag of Illinois.svg
Flagsize	100px
Seal	Seal of Illinois.svg
Sealsize	100px
amphibian	Eastern Tiger Salamander
bird	Northern Cardinal
butterfly	Monarch Butterfly
fish	Bluegill
flower	Violet
grass	Big Bluestem
insect
mammal	White-tailed deer
reptile	Painted Turtle
tree	White oak
dance	Square dance
food	Gold Rush Apple Popcorn
fossil	Tully Monster
mineral	Fluorite
poem	The Death Poem
slogan	"Land of Lincoln"
soil	Drummer silty clay loam
song	"Illinois"
route marker	Illinois 19.svg|300px
quarter	2003 IL Proof.png|100px|Illinois quarter
quarterreleasedate	2003 }}

Illinois ( ) is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the state to other global ports from the Great Lakes, via the St. Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean; as well as the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River. For decades, O'Hare International Airport has ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. As the "most average state", Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics.

In the 1810s, settlers began arriving from Kentucky. In 1818 Illinois achieved statehood. The state's population originally grew from south to north. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan. Railroads and John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars. The Great Migration established a large community of African Americans in Chicago that created the city's famous jazz and blues cultures.

Three U.S. Presidents have been elected while living in IllinoisAbraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama. Additionally, President Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was actually the only US President born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan, ''Land of Lincoln'', which has been displayed on its license plates since 1954.

Name

"Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois people, a name that was spelled in many different ways in the early records.

The name "Illinois" has traditionally been said to mean "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original ''iliniwek'' transformed via French into Illinois. However, this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language itself, in which the word for 'man' is ''ireniwa'' and plural 'men' is ''ireniwaki''. The name ''Illiniwek'' has also been said to mean "tribe of superior men", though this is nothing more than a false etymology. In fact the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb ''irenwe·wa'' "he speaks the regular way". This was then taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ''ilinwe·'' (pluralized as ''ilinwe·k''). These forms were then borrowed into French, where the /we/ ending acquired the spelling ''-ois''. The current form, ''Illinois'', began to appear in the early 1670s. The Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was ''Inoka'', of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms.

History

Pre-European

Native Americans lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. The Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrated 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. They built more than 100 mounds and a woodhenge in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology. The civilization vanished in the 15th century for unknown reasons, but historians and archeologists have speculated that the people depleted the area of resources. Many indigenous tribes engaged in constant warfare. According to Suzanne Austin Alchon, "At one site in the central Illinois River valley, one-third of all adults died as a result of violent injuries."

The next major power in the region was the Illinois Confederation or Illini, a political alliance among several tribes. There were about 25,000 Illinois Indians in 1700, but systematic attacks and warfare by the Iroquois reduced their numbers by 90%. Gradually, members of the Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk, and other tribes came in from the east and north. In the American Revolution, the Illinois and Potawatomi supported the American colonists' cause.

European exploration

French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet explored the Illinois River in 1673. In 1680, other French explorers constructed a fort at the site of present day Peoria, and in 1682, a fort atop Starved Rock in today's Starved Rock State Park. As a result of this French exploration, Illinois was part of the French empire until 1763, when it passed to the British with their conquest of New France. The small French settlements continued; a few British soldiers were posted in Illinois, but there were no British or American settlers. In 1778, George Rogers Clark claimed the Illinois Country for Virginia. The area was ceded by Virginia to the new United States in 1783 and became part of the Northwest Territory.

19th century

The Illinois-Wabash Company was an early claimant to much of Illinois. The Illinois Territory was created on February 3, 1809, with its capital at Kaskaskia.

During the discussions leading up to Illinois' admission to the Union, the proposed northern boundary of the state was moved twice. The original provisions of the Northwest Ordinance had specified a boundary that would have been tangent to the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Such a boundary would have actually left Illinois with no shoreline on Lake Michigan at all. However, as Indiana had successfully been granted a 10-mile northern extension of its boundary to provide it with a usable lakefront, the original bill for Illinois statehood, submitted to Congress on January 23, 1818, stipulated a northern border at the same latitude as Indiana's which is defined as north of the southernmost extremity of Lake Michigan. But the Illinois delegate, Nathaniel Pope, wanted more. Pope lobbied to have the boundary moved further north, and the final bill passed by Congress did just such; it included an amendment to shift the border to 42° 30' north, which is approximately north of the Indiana northern border. This shift added to the state, including the lead mining region near Galena. More importantly, it added nearly 50 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and the Chicago River. Pope and others envisioned a canal which would connect the Chicago and Illinois rivers, and thusly, connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi.

In 1818, Illinois became the 21st U.S. state. The capital remained at Kaskaskia, headquartered in a small building rented by the state. In 1819, Vandalia became the capital, and over the next 18 years, three separate buildings were built to serve successively as the capitol building. In 1837, the state legislators representing Sangamon County, under the leadership of state representative Abraham Lincoln, succeeded in having the capital moved to Springfield, where a fifth capitol building was constructed. A sixth capitol building was erected in 1867, which continues to serve as the Illinois capitol today.

Though ostensibly a "free state", Illinois had slavery. The French owned black slaves as late as the 1820s. Slavery was nominally banned by the Northwest Ordnance, but that was not enforced. When Illinois became a sovereign state in 1818, the Ordnance no longer applied, and there were about 900 slaves there. As the southern part of the state, known as "Egypt", was largely settled by migrants from the South, the section was hostile to free blacks and allowed settlers to bring slaves with them for labor. Most citizens were opposed to allowing blacks as permanent residents, and efforts to make slavery official failed in 1822. Nevertheless, some slaves were brought in seasonally or as house servants. The Illinois Constitution of 1848 was written with a provision for exclusionary laws to be passed. In 1853, John A. Logan helped pass a law to prohibit all African Americans, including freedmen, from settling in the state.

In 1832, the Black Hawk War was fought in Illinois and current day Wisconsin between the United States and the Sauk, Fox (Meskwaki) and Kickapoo Indian tribes. The Indians withdrew to Iowa; when they attempted to return, they were defeated by U.S. militia and forced back to Iowa.

The winter of 1830–1831 is called the "Winter of the Deep Snow"; a sudden, deep snowfall blanketed the state, making travel impossible for the rest of the winter, and many travelers perished. Several severe winters followed, including the "Winter of the Sudden Freeze". On December 20, 1836, a fast-moving cold front passed through, freezing puddles in minutes and killing many travelers who could not reach shelter. The adverse weather resulted in crop failures in the northern part of the state. The southern part of the state shipped food north and this may have contributed to its name: "Little Egypt", after the Biblical story of Joseph in Egypt supplying grain to his brothers.

By 1839, the Mormons had founded a utopian city called Nauvoo. Located in Hancock County, along the Mississippi River, Nauvoo flourished and soon rivaled Chicago for the position of the state's largest city. But in 1844, the Mormon leader Joseph Smith was murdered in the Carthage Jail, about 30 miles away from Nauvoo. Soon afterward, after close to six years of rapid development, Nauvoo saw a rapid decline after the Mormons' new leadership led them out of Illinois in a mass exodus to present-day Utah.

Chicago gained prominence as a Great Lakes port and then as an Illinois and Michigan Canal port after 1848, and as a rail hub soon afterward. By 1857, Chicago was Illinois' largest city. With the tremendous growth of mines and factories in the state in the 19th century, Illinois played an important role in the formation of labor unions in the United States. The Pullman Strike and Haymarket Riot in particular greatly influenced the development of the American labor movement. From Sunday, October 8, 1871, until Tuesday, October 10, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire burned in downtown Chicago, destroying .

In 1847, after lobbying by Dorothea L. Dix, Illinois became one of the first states to establish a system of state-supported treatment of mental illness and disabilities, replacing local almshouses.

Civil War

thumb|right|Embarkation of [[Union (American Civil War)|Union troops from Cairo on January 10, 1862]]. During the American Civil War, over 250,000 Illinois men served in the Union Army, a figure surpassed by only New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Beginning with President Abraham Lincoln's first call for troops and continuing throughout the war, Illinois mustered 150 infantry regiments, which were numbered from the 7th to the 156th regiments. Seventeen cavalry regiments were also gathered, as well as two light artillery regiments. The town of Cairo at the southern tip of the state served as a strategically important supply base and training center for the Union army. For several months, both General Grant and Admiral Foote had headquarters in Cairo.

Twentieth century

At the turn of the 20th century, Illinois had a population of nearly 5 million. Bolstered by continued immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and by African-Americans from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, Illinois grew and emerged as one of the most important states in the union. By the end of the century, the population had reached 12.4 million.

The Century of Progress World's Fair was held at Chicago in 1933. Oil strikes in Marion County and Crawford County lead to a boom in 1937, and, by 1939, Illinois ranked fourth in U.S. oil production. Chicago became an ocean port with the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959. The seaway and the Illinois Waterway connected Chicago to both the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1960, Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines (which still exists today as a museum, with a working McDonald's across the street).

No state has had a more prominent role than Illinois in the emergence of the nuclear age. As part of the Manhattan Project, the first sustained nuclear chain reaction took place at the University of Chicago in 1942. In 1957, Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago, activated the first experimental nuclear power generating system in the United States. By 1960, the first privately financed nuclear plant in United States, Dresden 1, was dedicated near Morris. In 1967, Fermilab, a national nuclear research facility near Batavia, opened a particle accelerator which was the world largest for over forty years. And, with eleven plants currently operating, Illinois leads all states in the amount of electricity generated from nuclear power.

The state's fourth constitution was adopted in 1970, replacing the 1870 document. The first Farm Aid concert was held in Champaign to benefit American farmers, in 1985. The worst upper Mississippi River flood of the century, the Great Flood of 1993, inundated many towns and thousands of acres of farmland.

Geography

Boundaries

Illinois' eastern border with Indiana consists of a north-south line at west longitude, from Lake Michigan to the Wabash River, above Post Vincennes. The Wabash River continues as the eastern/southeastern border with Indiana, until the Wabash enters the Ohio River. This marks the beginning of Illinois' southern border with Kentucky, which runs along the northern shoreline of the Ohio River. Its western border with Missouri and Iowa is the Mississippi River. Its northern border with Wisconsin is fixed at north latitude. The northeastern border of Illinois actually lies within Lake Michigan, within which Illinois shares a water boundary with the state of Michigan.

Topography

Though Illinois lies entirely in the Interior Plains, it does have some minor variation in its elevation. In extreme northwestern Illinois, the Driftless Area, a region of unglaciated and therefore higher and more rugged topography, occupies a small part of the state. Charles Mound, located in this region, has the state's highest elevation above sea level at 1,235 feet (376 m). The floodplain on the Mississippi River from Alton to the Kaskaskia River is known as the American Bottom.

Divisions

Illinois has three major geographical divisions. Northern Illinois is dominated by the Chicago metropolitan area; the city of Chicago, its suburbs, and the adjoining exurban area into which the metropolis is expanding. As defined by the federal government, the Chicago metro area includes several counties in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Chicago is a cosmopolitan city, densely populated, industrialized, the transportation hub of the nation, and settled by a wide variety of ethnic groups with a population of 9.8 million people. The city of Rockford, the fourth largest metropolitan area, and the state's third largest city, sits along Interstates 39 and 90 some northwest of Chicago. The Quad Cities region, located along the Mississippi River in northern Illinois, had a population of 379,066 in 2009.

Southward and westward, the second major division is Central Illinois, an area of mostly prairie. Known as the Heart of Illinois, it is characterized by small towns and mid-sized cities. The western section (west of the Illinois River) was originally part of the Military Tract of 1812 and forms the conspicuous western bulge of the state. Agriculture, particularly corn and soybeans, as well as educational institutions and manufacturing centers, figure prominently. Cities include Peoria, the third largest metropolitan area in Illinois at 370,000; Springfield, the state capital; Quincy; Decatur; Bloomington-Normal; and Champaign-Urbana.

The third division is Southern Illinois, comprising the area south of U.S. Route 50, including Little Egypt, near the juncture of the Mississippi River and Ohio River. Southern Illinois is the site of the ancient city of Cahokia, as well as the site of the first state capital at Kaskaskia, which today is separated from the rest of the state by the Mississippi River. This region can be distinguished from the other two by its warmer climate, different variety of crops (including some cotton farming in the past), more rugged topography (due to the area remaining unglaciated during the Illinoian Stage, unlike most of the rest of the state), as well as small-scale oil deposits and coal mining. The Illinois suburbs of St. Louis comprise the second most populous metropolitan area in Illinois with over 700,000 inhabitants, and are known collectively as the Metro-East. The other significant concentration of population in Southern Illinois is the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin, Illinois Combined Statistical Area centered on Carbondale and Marion, a two-county area that is home to 123,272 residents. A portion of southeastern Illinois is part of the extended Evansville, Indiana Metro Area, locally referred to as the Tri-State with Indiana and Kentucky. Seven Illinois counties are in the area.

In addition to these three, largely latitudinally defined divisions, all of the region outside of the Chicago Metropolitan area is often called "downstate" Illinois. This term is flexible, but is generally meant to mean everything outside the Chicago-area. Thus, some cities in ''Northern'' Illinois, such as DeKalb, which is west of Chicago, and Rockford—which is actually ''north'' of Chicago—are considered to be "downstate".

Climate

Because of its nearly 400 mile distance from its northernmost and southernmost extremes, as well as its mid-continental situation, Illinois has a widely varying climate. Most of Illinois has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification ''Dfa''), with hot, humid summers and cold winters. The southernmost part of the state, from about Carbondale southward, borders on a humid subtropical climate (Koppen ''Cfa''), with more moderate winters. Average yearly precipitation for Illinois varies from just over at the southern tip to around in the northern portion of the state. Normal annual snowfall exceeds in the Chicago area, while the southern portion of the state normally receives less than . The all time high temperature was , recorded on July 14, 1954, at East St. Louis, Illinois, while the all time low temperature was , recorded on January 5, 1999, at Congerville, Illinois.

Illinois averages around 51 days of thunderstorm activity a year, which ranks somewhat above average in the number of thunderstorm days for the United States. Illinois is vulnerable to tornadoes with an average of 35 occurring annually, which puts much of the state at around five tornadoes per annually. The deadliest tornadoes on record in the nation have occurred largely in Illinois, not because the tornadoes are more common or frequent in Illinois, but rather, because Illinois is simply the most populous state in Tornado Alley. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 killed 695 people in three states; 613 of the victims died in Illinois. Modern developments in storm tracking have caused death tolls from tornadoes to dramatically decline since the 1960s, with no major losses of life in the state since the 1967 tornado storm in northern Illinois.

Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures For Various Illinois Cities>

City

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Cairo

Chicago

Edwardsville

Moline

Peoria

Rockford

Springfield

Demographics

In the 2010 Census, Illinois was found to have a population of 12,830,632, representing a slightly lower increase than had been anticipated in estimates from two years earlier. Illinois is the most populous state in the Midwest region. The Chicago metropolitan area, the third most populous city in the United States, comprises only 8% of the land area of the state, but contains 65% of the state's residents.

Specific demographic data from the 2010 Census is not subject to release until March 2011, but as of the 2007 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 1,768,518 foreign-born inhabitants of the state or 13.8% of the population, with 48.4% from Latin America, 24.6% from Asia, 22.8% from Europe, 2.9% from Africa, 1.2% from Northern America and 0.2% from Oceania. Of the foreign-born population, 43.7% were naturalized U.S. citizens and 56.3% were not U.S. citizens. Additionally, the racial distributions were as follows: 65.0% White American, 15.0% African American, 14.9% Latino American, 4.3% Asian American, 0.3% American Indian and Alaska Natives, and 0.1% Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander American. In 2007, 6.9% of Illinois' population was reported as being under age 5, 24.9% under age 18 and 12.1% were age 65 and over. Females made up approximately 50.7% of the population.

According to the 2007 estimates, 21.1% of the population had German ancestry, 13.3% had Irish ancestry, 7.9% had Polish ancestry, 6.7% had English ancestry, 6.4% had Italian ancestry, 4.6% listed themselves as American, 2.4% had Swedish ancestry, 2.2% had French ancestry, other than Basque, 1.6% had Dutch ancestry, 1.4% had Norwegian ancestry and 1.3% had Scottish ancestry. Also, 21.8% of the population age 5 years and over reported speaking a language other than English, with 12.8% of the population speaking Spanish, 5.6% speaking other Indo-European languages, 2.5% speaking Asian and Austronesian languages, and 0.8% speaking other languages.

Chicago, along the shores of Lake Michigan, is the nation's third largest city. In 2000, 23.3% of Illinois' population lived in the city of Chicago, 43.3% in Cook County and 65.6% in the counties of the Chicago metropolitan area: Will, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties, as well as Cook County. The remaining population lives in the smaller cities and rural areas that dot the state's plains. As of 2000, the state's center of population was at , located in Grundy County, northeast of the village of Mazon.

Urban areas

Chicago is the largest city in the state and the third most populous city in the United States, with its 2010 population of 2,695,598. The U.S. Census Bureau currently lists seven other cities with populations of over 100,000 within Illinois. Based upon the Census Bureau's official 2010 population,: Aurora, a Chicago satellite town which eclipsed Rockford for the title of "Second City" of Illinois in 2006; its 2010 population was 197,899. Rockford, at 152,871, is the third largest city in the state, and is also the largest city in the state not located within the Chicago metropolitan area. Joliet, located southwest of Chicago, is the fourth largest city in the state, with a population of 147,433. Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, is fifth with 141,853; Naperville and Aurora (the 2nd largest city) share a boundary along Illinois Route 59. Springfield, the state capital of Illinois, comes in sixth with 117,352. Peoria, which decades ago was the second largest city in the state, comes in seventh with 115,007. The eighth largest and final city in the 100,000 club is Elgin, a northwest suburb of Chicago with a 2010 population of 108,188.

The most populated city in the state south of Springfield is Belleville, with 44,478 people at the 2010 census. It is located in the Illinois portion of Greater St. Louis (often called the Metro-East area), which has a rapidly growing population of over 700,000 people.

Other major urban areas include the Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area, which has a combined population of almost 230,000 people, the Illinois portion of the Quad Cities area with about 215,000 people, and the Bloomington-Normal area with a combined population of over 165,000.

Religion

Roman Catholics constitute the single largest religious denomination in Illinois; they are heavily concentrated in and around Chicago, and account for nearly 30% of the state's population. However, taken together ''as a group'', the various Protestant denominations comprise a greater percentage of the state's population than do Catholics. In 2000 Catholics in Illinois numbered 3,874,933, the largest Protestant denominations were the United Methodist Church, with 365,182 members, and the Southern Baptist Convention, with 305,838. The largest non-Christian group were Jews with 270,000. Chicago and its suburbs are also home to a large and growing population of Hindus, Muslims, Baha'is and Sikhs.

Illinois played an important role in the early Latter Day Saint movement, with Nauvoo, Illinois, becoming a gathering place for Mormons in the early 1840s. Nauvoo was the location of the succession crisis, which led to the separation of the Mormon movement into several Latter Day Saint sects. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest of the sects to emerge from the Mormon schism, claims 55,460 in Illinois today.

Economy

The dollar gross state product for Illinois was estimated to be billion in 2008. The state's 2008 per capita gross state product was estimated to be , and the state's per capita personal income was estimated to be in 2009.

, the state's unemployment rate was 11.5%, and two months later, the rate dropped to 10.8% in May.

Taxes

Illinois' state income tax is calculated by multiplying net income by a flat rate. In 1990, that rate was set at 3%, but in 2010, the General Assembly voted in a temporary increase in the rate to 5%; the new rate went into effect on January 1, 2011, and is scheduled to return to 3% after four years. There are two rates for state sales tax: 6.25% for general merchandise and 1% for qualifying food, drugs and medical appliances. The property tax is the largest single tax in Illinois, and is the major source of tax revenue for local government taxing districts. The property tax is a local not state tax, imposed by local government taxing districts, which include counties, townships, municipalities, school districts and special taxation districts. The property tax in Illinois is imposed only on real property.

Agriculture

Illinois' major agricultural outputs are corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, dairy products, and wheat. In most years, Illinois is either the first or second state for the highest production of soybeans, with a harvest of 427.7 million bushels (11.64 million metric tons) in 2008, after Iowa's production of 444.82 million bushels (12.11 million metric tons). Illinois ranks second in U.S. corn production with more than 1.5 billion bushels produced annually. Illinois also produces wine, and the state is home to two American viticultural areas. Illinois' universities are actively researching alternative agricultural products as alternative crops.

Manufacturing

Illinois is one of the nation's manufacturing leaders, boasting annual value added productivity by manufacturing of over $107 billion in 2006. About three-quarters of the state's manufacturers are located in the Northeastern Opportunity Return Region, with 38 percent of Illinois' approximately 18,900 manufacturing plants located in Cook County. As of 2006, the leading manufacturing industries in Illinois, based upon value-added, were chemical manufacturing ($18.3 billion), machinery manufacturing ($13.4 billion), food manufacturing ($12.9 billion), fabricated metal products ($11.5 billion), transportation equipment ($7.4 billion), plastics and rubber products ($7.0 billion), and computer and electronic products ($6.1 billion).

Services

By the early 2000s, Illinois' economy had moved toward a dependence on high-value-added services, such as financial trading, higher education, law, logistics, and medicine. In some cases, these services clustered around institutions that hearkened back to Illinois' earlier economies. For example, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a trading exchange for global derivatives, had begun its life as an agricultural futures market. Other important non-manufacturing industries include publishing, tourism, and energy production and distribution.

Energy

Illinois is a net importer of fuels for energy, despite large coal resources and some minor oil production. Illinois exports electricity, ranking fifth among states in electricity production and seventh in electricity consumption.

Coal

The coal industry of Illinois has its origins in the middle 19th century, when entrepreneurs such as Jacob Loose discovered coal in locations such as Sangamon County. Jacob Bunn contributed to the development of the Illinois coal industry, and was a founder and owner of the Western Coal & Mining Company of Illinois. About 68% of Illinois has coal-bearing strata of the Pennsylvanian geologic period. According to the Illinois State Geological Survey, 211 billion tons of bituminous coal are estimated to lie under the surface, having a total heating value greater than the estimated oil deposits in the Arabian Peninsula. However, this coal has a high sulfur content, which causes acid rain unless special equipment is used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. Many Illinois power plants are not equipped to burn high-sulfur coal. In 1999, Illinois produced 40.4 million tons of coal, but only 17 million tons (42%) of Illinois coal was consumed in Illinois. Most of the coal produced in Illinois is exported to other states, while much of the coal burned for power in Illinois (21 million tons in 1998) is mined in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.

Mattoon was recently chosen as the site for the Department of Energy's FutureGen project, a 275 megawatt experimental zero emission coal-burning power plant which just received a second round of funding from the DOE.

Petroleum

Illinois is a leading refiner of petroleum in the American Midwest, with a combined crude oil distillation capacity of nearly . However, Illinois has very limited crude oil proved reserves that account for less than 1% of U.S. crude oil proved reserves. Residential heating is 81% natural gas compared to less than 1% heating oil. Illinois is ranked 14th in oil production among states, with a daily output of approximately in 2005.

Nuclear power

Nuclear power arguably began in Illinois with the Chicago Pile-1, the world's first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the world's first nuclear reactor, built on the University of Chicago campus. There are six operating nuclear power plants in Illinois: Braidwood; Byron; Clinton; Dresden; LaSalle; and Quad Cities. With the exception of the single-unit Clinton plant, each of these facilities has two reactors. Three reactors have been permanently shut down and are in various stages of decommissioning: Dresden-1 and Zion-1 and 2. , Illinois was ranked first among the 50 states both in nuclear capacity and nuclear generation. In 2007, 48% of Illinois' electricity was generated using nuclear power.

Wind power

Illinois has seen growing interest in the use of wind power for electrical generation. Most of Illinois was rated in 2009 as "marginal or fair" for wind energy production by the U.S. Department of Energy, with some western sections rated "good" and parts of the south rated "poor". These ratings are for wind turbines with hub heights; newer wind turbines are taller, enabling them to reach stronger winds farther from the ground. As a result, more areas of Illinois have become prospective wind farm sites. As of September 2009, Illinois had 1116.06 MW of installed wind power nameplate capacity with another 741.9 MW under construction. Illinois ranked ninth among U.S. states in installed wind power capacity, and sixteenth by potential capacity. Large wind farms in Illinois include Twin Groves, Rail Splitter, EcoGrove, and Mendota Hills.

As of 2007, wind energy represented only 1.7% of Illinois' energy production, and it was estimated that wind power could provide 5-10% of the state's energy needs. Also, the Illinois General Assembly mandated in 2007 that by 2025, 25% of all electricity generated in Illinois is to come from renewable resources.

Biofuels

Illinois is ranked second in corn production among U.S. states, and Illinois corn is used to produce 40% of the ethanol consumed in the United States. The Archer Daniels Midland corporation in Decatur, Illinois is the world's leading producer of ethanol from corn.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the partners in the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a $500 million biofuels research project funded by petroleum giant BP.

Arts and culture

Museums

Illinois has numerous museums. The state of the art Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield is the largest presidential library in the country; numerous museums in the city of Chicago are considered some of the best in the world. These include the John G. Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Adler Planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Polish Museum of America. Illinois is also home to several landmark historic house museums such as Magnolia Manor in Cairo or the Elihu Benjamin Washburne and Ulysses S. Grant Homes in Galena.

Music

Illinois is a leader in music education having hosted the Midwest Clinic: An International Band and Orchestra Conference since 1946, as well being home to the Illinois Music Educators Association (IMEA), one of the largest professional music educator's organizations in the country. Each summer since 2004, Southern Illinois University Carbondale has played host to the Southern Illinois Music Festival, which presents dozens of performances throughout the region. Past featured artists include the Eroica Trio and violinist David Kim.

Sports

Major league teams

As one of the United States' major metropolises, all major sports leagues have teams headquartered in Chicago. Two Major League Baseball teams are located in the state. The Chicago Cubs of the National League play in the second-oldest major league stadium (Wrigley Field) and are widely known for having the longest championship drought in all of major American sport: not winning the World Series since 1908. The Chicago White Sox of the American League won the World Series in 2005, their first since 1917.

The Chicago Bears football team has won nine total NFL Championships, the last occurring in Super Bowl XX in 1986. The NFL's Arizona Cardinals were the ''Chicago'' Cardinals until they left the city in 1961.

The Chicago Bulls of the NBA is one of the most recognized basketball teams in the world, due largely to the efforts of Michael Jordan, who led the team to six NBA championships in eight seasons in the 1990s.

The Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL began playing in 1926, as a member of the Original Six and have won four Stanley Cups, most recently in 2010 (after one of the longest Stanley Cup droughts of any NHL team, not having won since 1961).

The Chicago Fire soccer club is a member of MLS and is one of the league's most successful and best-supported, since its founding in 1997, winning one league and four Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cups in that timespan.

Minor league teams

Many minor league teams also call Chicago their home. These include

The Chicago Rush of the Arena Football League, who won ArenaBowl XX in 2006.

The Chicago Wolves is an AHL team.

The Chicago Sky of the WNBA

The Chicago Bandits of the NPF, a female softball league; the Bandits won their first title in 2008

The Chicago Red Stars of the WPS, a female soccer league

Folded sports franchises

The city was formerly home to several other teams that either failed to survive, or that belonged to leagues that folded.

The Chicago Blitz, United States Football League

The Chicago Sting, Major Indoor Soccer League

The Chicago Cougars, World Hockey Association

The Chicago Rockers, Continental Basketball Association

The Chicago Skyliners, American Basketball Association

The Chicago Bruisers, Arena Football League

The Chicago Power, National Professional Soccer League

The Chicago Blaze, National Women's Basketball League.

Professional sports teams outside of Chicago

Chicago is not the only place in Illinois where professional sports are played. The Rockford Lightning is one of the oldest CBA teams in the league. The Peoria Chiefs and Kane County Cougars are minor league baseball teams affiliated with MLB. The Schaumburg Flyers and Lake County Fielders are members of the North American League, and the Southern Illinois Miners, Gateway Grizzlies, Joliet Slammers, Windy City ThunderBolts and Normal CornBelters belong to the Frontier League.

In addition to the Chicago Wolves, the AHL also has two teams in Illinois outside of Chicago: the Rockford IceHogs serves as the AHL affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Peoria Rivermen is the AHL affiliate of the St. Louis Blues.

Motor racing

Illinois has a long tradition of motor racing. Oval tracks at the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, the Chicago Motor Speedway in Cicero and the Gateway International Raceway in Madison, near St. Louis, have hosted NASCAR, CART and IRL races, whereas the Sports Car Club of America, among other national and regional road racing clubs, have visited the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, the Blackhawk Farms Raceway in South Beloit and the former Meadowdale International Raceway in Carpentersville. Illinois also has several short tracks and dragstrips. The dragstrip at Gateway International Raceway and the Route 66 Raceway, which sits on the same property as the Chicagoland Speedway, both host NHRA drag races.

Parks and recreation

The Illinois state parks' system began in 1908 with what is now Fort Massac State Park, becoming the first park in a system encompassing over 60 parks and about the same number of recreational and wildlife areas.

Areas under the protection and control of the National Park Service include: the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor near Lockport; the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail; the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield; the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail; the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail; and the American Discovery Trail.

In March 2011, Illinois ranked as a bottom-seven "Worst" state (tied with Georgia and Oklahoma) in the American State Litter Scorecard. The Land of Lincoln suffers from overall poor effectiveness and quality of its statewide public space cleanliness—due to state and related eradication standards and performance indicators.

Governance

While the organization of the central government of Illinois is largely the same as every other state (having three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial), below this top level, the substructure of Illinois' government is extremely complex, arguably the most complex of all fifty states.

State government structure

Legislative functions are granted to the Illinois General Assembly, composed of the 118-member Illinois House of Representatives and the 59-member Illinois Senate. The executive branch is led by the Governor of Illinois, but four other executive officials are separately elected by the people. The judiciary is composed of the Supreme Court of Illinois and the lower appellate and circuit courts.

Local government structure

Illinois has more units of local government than any other state—over 8,000 in all.. The basic subdivision of Illinois is like almost every other state, the county, and Illinois has 102 of these. About half of these counties, in turn, are divided into townships, which is much the same as many other Midwestern states. And finally, Illinois has a number of cities, villages, and towns commensurate with a state of its size. But the counties, townships, and municipal governments in Illinois make up only about 1/4 of all of the governmental units in the state. The reason Illinois has so many units of government is because so many single-purpose governmental entities have been created.

Not uniquely, Illinois has school districts which do not share boundaries with either counties nor townships. What would observers from many other states as odd is that there are many places where a given piece of land sits within ''two'' school districts, one high school district, and another elementary district, each of which has its own school board and its own taxing authority.

Another common political unit is the "library district". Library districts are run by library boards elected at the same elections as are governors, senators, and presidents. The boundaries of these library districts occasionally coincide with those of another governmental entity, such as a township, but more often, they are set independently. Another unit of government with taxation authority is the "sanitary district", a euphemism for "sewage district". Many Illinoisians first learned of the existence of these entities when, in 1978, a sanitary district board member named Alex Seith captured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate against the veteran senator Charles Percy and nearly upset him in the general election. There are additional units of government that oversee watersheds, land use, and many other functions that in another state would be handled by the county or city governments.

The Constitution of 1970 created, for the first time in Illinois, a type of "home rule", which allows cities of certain sizes to opt out of certain types of state laws.

Law enforcement

The complexity and overlapping jurisdictions of Illinois' law enforcement agencies is not unlike that of the overlapping taxing authorities noted above. At the state level, there are at least eleven law enforcement agencies. At the county level, there are sheriffs, forest preserve police and other specialized police forces. At the local level, most cities and many villages have municipal police forces, park district police forces, and even local specialized police forces. Many colleges also have their own campus police that are often sworn police officers.

In 2000, Illinois was ranked 4th in the U.S. in the number of full-time sworn officers with 321 per 100,000 persons, behind Louisiana (415), New York (384), and New Jersey (345). In this ranking, only New York had a higher total population than Illinois. Illinois is also near the top of most law enforcement numbers lists, such as number of agencies per state, number of agencies with special jurisdictions, and number of local police agencies. Even taking into account that Illinois is the fifth most populous state, many of the ratios are higher than more populated states. There is much overlap in jurisdiction amongst the different law enforcement agencies.

Politics

Party balance

Historically, Illinois was long a major swing state, with near-parity existing between the Republican and the Democratic parties. However, in recent elections, the Democratic Party has slowly gained ground, and Illinois has come to be seen as more of a "blue" state. Chicago and most of Cook County votes have long been strongly Democratic. In addition, Democratic voters have moved to the traditionally Republican "collar counties" (the suburbs surrounding Chicago's Cook County, Illinois), which are becoming increasingly diverse.

Republicans continue to prevail in rural northern and central Illinois; Republican support is strong in southern Illinois outside of the East St. Louis metropolitan area. Illinois has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the last five elections. State resident Barack Obama easily won the state's 21 electoral votes in 2008, by a margin of 25 percentage points with 61.9% of the vote. And though the Republicans' electoral performance in the 2010 mid-year elections marked some improvement, the trend in Illinois politics for the long term appears to be more blue than red.

History of corruption

Politics in the state, particularly those of the Chicago machine, have been famous for highly visible corruption cases, as well as for crusading reformers, such as governors Adlai Stevenson (D) and James R. Thompson (R). In 2006, former Governor George Ryan (R) was convicted of racketeering and bribery. In 2008, then-Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) was served with a criminal complaint on corruption charges, stemming from allegations that he conspired to sell the vacated Senate seat left by President Barack Obama (D) to the highest bidder. In the late 20th century, Congressman Dan Rostenkowski (D) was imprisoned for mail fraud; former governor and federal judge Otto Kerner, Jr. (D) was imprisoned for bribery; and State Auditor of Public Accounts (Comptroller) Orville Hodge (R) was imprisoned for embezzlement. In 1912, William Lorimer, the GOP boss of Chicago, was expelled from the U.S. Senate for bribery and in 1921, Governor Len Small (R) was found to have defrauded the state of a million dollars.

US Presidents from Illinois

Three presidents have claimed Illinois as their political base: Lincoln, Grant, and Obama. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but moved to Illinois at the age of 21; he served in the General Assembly and represented the 7th congressional district in the US House of Representatives before his election as President. Ulysses S. Grant was born in Ohio and had a military career that precluded settling down, but on the eve of the Civil War, and approaching middle age, Grant moved to Illinois and thus claimed it as his home when running for President. Barack Obama was born and raised in Hawaii (other than a four year period of his childhood spent in Indonesia) and made Illinois his home and base after completing law school.

Only one person elected President of the United States was actually born in Illinois. Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, raised in Dixon and educated at Eureka College. Reagan moved to Los Angeles as a young adult and later became Governor of California before being elected President.

Though never elected president, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, who was born and raised in central Illinois, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956.

Black senators

Since the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789, only six African-Americans have served as members of the United States Senate, and ''half'' of them represented Illinois: Carol Moseley-Braun, Barack Obama, and Roland Burris, who was appointed to replace Obama after his election to the presidency.

Education

Illinois State Board of Education

The Illinois State Board of Education or ISBE, is autonomous of the governor and the state legislature, and administers public education in the state. Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public schools but the ISBE audits performance of public schools with the Illinois School Report Card. The ISBE also makes recommendations to state leaders concerning education spending and policies.

Primary and secondary schools

Education is compulsory from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in Illinois, commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. District territories are often complex in structure. Many areas in the state are actually located in ''two'' school districts—one for high school, the other for elementary and middle schools. And such districts do not necessarily share boundaries. A given high school may have several elementary districts that feed into it, yet some of those feeder districts may themselves feed into multiple high school districts.

Colleges and universities

Using the criterion established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, there are eleven "National Universities" in the state. , five of these rank in the "first tier" (that is, the top quartile) among the top 500 National Universities in the United States, as determined by the ''U.S. News & World Report'' rankings: the University of Chicago (8), Northwestern University (12), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (39), Illinois Institute of Technology (106), and Loyola University Chicago (119).

Illinois also has more than 20 additional accredited four-year universities, both public and private, and dozens of small liberal arts colleges across the state. Additionally, Illinois supports 49 public community colleges in the Illinois Community College System.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Because of its central location and its proximity to the Rust Belt and Grain Belt, Illinois is a national crossroads for air, auto, rail and truck traffic.

Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD) is one of the busiest airports in the world, with 59.3 million domestic passengers annually, along with 11.4 million international passengers in 2008. It is a major hub for United Airlines and American Airlines, and a major airport expansion project is currently underway. Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) is the secondary airport in the Chicago metropolitan area, and is a major hub for Southwest Airlines. It served 17.3 million domestic and international passengers in 2008.

Illinois has an extensive passenger and freight rail transportation network. Chicago is a national Amtrak hub and in-state passengers are served by Amtrak's Illinois Service, featuring the Chicago to Carbondale ''Illini'' and ''Saluki'', the Chicago to Quincy ''Carl Sandburg'' and ''Illinois Zephyr'', and the Chicago to St. Louis ''Lincoln Service''. Currently there is trackwork on the Chicago-St. Louis line to bring the maximum speed up to which would reduce the trip time by an hour and a half. Nearly every North American railway meets at Chicago, making it the largest and most active rail hub in the country. Extensive commuter rail is provided in the city proper and some immediate suburbs by the Chicago Transit Authority's 'L' system. The largest suburban commuter rail system in the United States, operated by Metra, uses existing rail lines to provide direct commuter rail access for hundreds of suburbs to the city and beyond.

In March 2011, Illinois ranked as a bottom-seven "Worst" state (tied with Georgia and Oklahoma) in the American State Litter Scorecard. The Land of Lincoln suffers from overall poor effectiveness and quality of its statewide public space cleanliness (primarily from roadway and adjacent litter/debris abatement)--due to state and related eradication standards and performance indicators.

Major U.S. Interstate highways crossing the state include: I-24, I-39, I-55, I-57, I-64, I-70, I-72, I-74, I-80, I-88, I-90, and I-94. Its central location is the reason that Illinois carries the distinction of having the most primary (2-digit) Interstates pass through it among the 50 states.

In addition to the state's rail lines, the Mississippi River and Illinois River provide major transportation routes for the state's agricultural interests. Lake Michigan gives Illinois access to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

See also

Chicago

List of National Register of Historic Places in Illinois

List of people from Illinois

U.S. state

References

Further reading

External links

State of Illinois ''official government website''

The Official Website for International Visitors to Chicago

State of Illinois research information guide from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Illinois Bureau of Tourism

Illinois: Science In Your Backyard USGS Illinois State Agency Databases compiled by the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) of the American Library Association Illinois State Energy Profile DOE, Energy Information Administration Illinois: State Fact Sheets USDA, Economic Research Service Illinois State Guide LOC, Virtual Programs & Services Biographies Of Governors of Illinois: 1818 to 1885 compiled by OnlineBiographies.info Illinois Highways Page by Richard Carlson

Category:States of the United States Category:States and territories established in 1818

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Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
{{infobox university | name	| image mottoForward, Together Forward|| typePublic | endowment$57.1 million(Jan 31, 2010)| established1895| staff| presidentJohn G. Peters | provostRaymond W. Alden III | cityDeKalb | stateIllinois | countryUnited States | students25,313 | undergrad18,816 | postgrad6,497 | free_labelNickname | freeHuskies | colors Red and Black            | websitehttp://www.niu.edu/| logo }}

Northern Illinois University (NIU), is a comprehensive teaching and research institution located in DeKalb, west of Chicago. NIU was founded on May 22, 1895 by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as ''Northern Illinois State Normal School''—part of an expansion of the state's system for training college-educated teachers. However, over the past century, the university's mission has grown much wider; NIU is today composed of seven degree-granting colleges, and has a student body of over 24,000. The university also has satellite centers in Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Rockford, and Oregon.

NIU is a member of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. NIU is also a member of the prominent Universities Research Association that manages several federal physics laboratories including Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

NIU is placed by ''U.S. News & World Report'' in the "National Universities" category, and while within that category NIU has been consistently ranked in the fourth quartile, many of its programs are rated as amongst the best in the country. The same publication ranks NIU’s program in City Management & Urban Policy as the third-best in the nation and the Public Finance & Budgeting program at No. 13, which typify the consistent ranking of the NIU College of Business among the top ten business colleges in the country for many years. And Washington Monthly ranks NIU as one of the top 100 research universities in the United States.

NIU's athletic teams are known as the ''Huskies'', and compete in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). NIU, which has over 225,000 alumni, is one of only two public universities in Illinois that compete in the NCAA at the highest levels of all sports, Division 1-A.

History

Northern Illinois University was founded through the creation of a Board of Trustees for the governance of the Northern Illinois State Normal School, as part of the expansion of the normal school program established in 1857 in Normal, Illinois. In July, 1917, the Illinois Senate consolidated the boards of trustees for the five state normal schools into one state Normal School Board (Eastern Illinois State Normal School, Illinois State Normal School, Northern Illinois State Normal School, Southern Illinois State Normal University, and Western Illinois State Normal School)

Over the next fifty-eight years both the school and the governing board changed their names several times. In 1931, the legislature gave the institution the name Northern Illinois State Teachers College and empowered it to award the four-year Bachelor of Education degree. In 1941 the Normal School Board changed its name to the Teachers College Board. In 1951 the Teachers College Board authorized the college to grant the degree Master of Science in Education, and the institution’s Graduate School was established. On July 1, 1955, the state legislature renamed the college Northern Illinois State College and authorized the college to broaden its educational services by offering academic work in areas other than teacher education. The Teachers College Board granted permission for the college to add curricula leading to the degrees Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. On July 1, 1957 the Seventieth General Assembly renamed Northern Illinois State College as Northern Illinois University in recognition of its expanded status as a liberal arts university.

In 1965, the Illinois State Teachers College Board became the Board of Governors of State Colleges and Universities and was reorganized to include Northeastern University, Governor's State, and Chicago State Universities. In 1967 authority for Northern Illinois University, Illinois State University, and Sangamon State University were passed on to a newly-formed Board of Regents. This Board of Regents governed the three Regency universities until it was disbanded at the end of 1995. On January 1, 1996 authority for Northern Illinois University was transferred to an independent Board of Trustees concerned solely with NIU.

A shooting took place on campus at Cole Hall on February 14, 2008. Six people died in the shooting, including the perpetrator, making it the fourth-deadliest university shooting in United States history.

Academics

NIU has seven degree-granting colleges that together offer more than 60 undergraduate majors, 70 minors, nine pre-professional programs, and 79 graduate programs, including a College of Law, and over 20 areas of study leading to doctoral degrees. Many of NIU's academic programs are nationally accredited for meeting the highest standards of academic quality and rigor, including business, engineering, nursing, visual and performing arts, and all teacher certification programs.

Business & administration

Since the mid-1990s, U.S. News & World Report has ranked the Northern Illinois University College of Business as among the best business colleges in the country. In 2006, the NIU College of Business continued to be ranked as among the nation's best by making the listing of "America's Best Colleges and Programs" (2007). As of the 2010 rankings, its undergraduate business program ranked in the top 100 (94th) by Businessweek. Its graduate program business school was not rated by Businessweek or the U.S. News & World Report. NIU's Accountancy program is nationally prominent. In 2005, ''Public Accounting Report'' ranked NIU's graduate program 10th in the nation; the undergraduate program ranked 11th. According to ''Public Accounting Report'', NIU has remained in the top twenty programs for 18 consecutive years. In the 2006 edition, ''U.S. News & World Report'' ranked the Accountancy program in the top 25, out of 450 programs nationwide. Northern Illinois University's graduate program in Public Administration (MPA) was ranked 40th in the nation by US News & World Report in 2008, with its City/Urban Management specialization ranking 3rd best in the United States.

Science & research

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognizes Northern Illinois University as high-level research institution of higher education, based on breadth of research and academic programs. Carnegie categorizes Northern as: "RU/H: Research Universities (high research activity)." The Northern Illinois University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was listed in the American Chemical Society's trade journal Chemical & Engineering News on September 26, 2005 as one of the top 25 producers of ACS-certified Bachelor of Science degrees in chemistry in the United States.

Other programs

The NIU School of Theatre and Dance has a unique relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre School. Graduate students spend a month training in Moscow, while the undergraduates participate in a semester-long program.

The NIU Terminal Masters Program in Philosophy is recognized nationally as having a strong faculty and a good PhD placement record.

Degrees offered

;Undergraduate degrees

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.)

Bachelor of General Studies (B.G.S.)

Bachelor of Music (B.M.)

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

Bachelor of Science in Education (B.S.Ed.)

;Masters' degrees

Master of Accounting Science (M.A.S.)

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.)

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

Master of Music (M.M.)

Master of Physical Therapy (M.P.T.)

Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.)

Master of Public Health (M.P.H.)

Master of Science (M.S.)

Master of Science in Education (M.S.Ed.)

Master of Science in Taxation (M.S.T.)

;Doctorate degrees

Juris Doctor (J.D.)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Currently, the Ph.D. is offered by 10 academic departments and the Ed.D. in six academic majors.

;Other degrees

Educational Specialist (Ed.S.)

Doctor of Audiology (Au.D.)

Performer’s Certificate

Student life

Programs

NIU’s Division of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management hosts numerous programs to enhance students’ learning and living experience on campus.

First-Year Connections hosts UNIV 101 (University Experience) and UNIV 201 (The Transfer Experience), which provide an invaluable introduction to college. These elective 1-credit, 12-­week courses are designed to help new students adjust to NIU and develop the skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond. During the fall 2009, more than 62 percent of the freshman class enrolled in a UNIV 101 course. These courses have an average class size of 20 students and are designed to foster close interaction.

A new Academic Advising Center works with “undecided” students from the time they arrive on campus during orientation until they’ve selected a major . The student-centered staff advises students as they develop specialized academic plans compatible with student educational and life goals.

Resource centers serve African-American, Asian-American and Latino students as well as off-campus and non-traditional students, military veterans, lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender students and women.

Among the many services of the office of Student Involvement & Leadership Development are opportunities for local and far-reaching volunteerism, including NIU Cares Day, Rake Across DeKalb and alternative spring break programs.

The Counseling & Student Development Center supports the academic, emotional, social and cultural development of students through counseling, assessment, crisis response, outreach, consultation, training and educational services. Counselors help students to address personal challenges and acquire the attitudes, abilities and knowledge that will enable them to take full advantage of their college experience.

Health Enhancement strives to provide student-centered, relevant health promotion information, materials and interventions to assist students as they pursue their academic goals. The staff includes four health educators and a health consultant.

Residence halls

NIU’s five residence halls (including two complexes with four 13-story towers each) provide several living options to on-campus students.

The university’s DeKalb campus is in the process of a residential renaissance to ensure future students are able to obtain the best living and learning environment possible – from state-of-the-art new, technologically sophisticated residence halls built around a neighborhood theme with full amenities, to comfortable, functional public spaces. A brand new, 1,000-bed residence hall complex will open to all students in the fall of 2012. This new community will feature two residential buildings where students can live in small group clusters of 12.

Gilbert Hall, which has not been used as a residence hall since 1995, will undergo complete remodeling and renovation and reopen to students in the fall of 2013. After an extensive renovation, Grant C Tower will reopen in fall 2011 with completely new accommodations and furnishings for NIU students.

Living-learning floors include the Health Professions House; Business Careers House; Teacher Education and Certification House (TEACH); Honors House; International House; Science, Engineering & Technology House; Fine Arts House.

Other floor options include all-men, all-women, transfers, quiet lifestyle and alcohol-free.

The Northern View Community, opened in 2008, offers an apartment living experience to undergraduate students who are at least two years post high school, graduate students, law students or any student who has a dependent and/or a partner or spouse.

The Huskie Bus Line, the largest student-run university bus system in Illinois, operates seven days a week while school is in session during the fall and spring semesters.

Facilities

NIU’s Campus Child Care Center offers high quality care to children ages 2 months to 5 years, along with a summer school program for children ages 6 to 8. Enrollment is secured on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given first to currently enrolled families, followed by NIU students; NIU faculty and staff and the community. The center is licensed through the State of Illinois and accredited through the Academy of Early Childhood Program Accreditation.

The Campus Life Building is home to the Campus Activities Board, Career Services, the Counseling and Student Development Center, the Honors Program, the Northern Star student newspaper, the Student Association and Student Involvement and Leadership Development.

Opened in 2002, the NIU Convocation Center is a 10,000-seat multipurpose facility that hosts more than 200 events each year, including concerts, family shows, theatrical productions, job fairs, trade shows, Huskie athletics and commencement ceremonies.

The Holmes Student Center provides places to study, computer labs, restaurants, the University Bookstore, a branch of TCF Bank are more. It also is home to the Huskies Den, which features bowling, billiards, a video arcade and Xbox and Xbox 360 gaming.

The Student Recreation Center is the main facility for Recreation Services. The building, serving approximately 2,000 patrons daily, features of space, abundant state-of-the-art exercise and sports equipment, and numerous services to meet students' recreation, fitness and wellness needs.

Other recreation facilities include Chick Evans Field House, home to two large activity rooms with mirrors often used by dance clubs, a three-lane, 1/7-mile jogging and walking track, four multipurpose courts for basketball, volleyball, indoor soccer and floor hockey and a cardio- and strength-training room. Swimming pools are located in Anderson and Gabel Halls.

Organizations

NIU is home to more than 300 student organizations, including a host of recreational sports clubs including lacrosse, volleyball, rugby, swimming, and hockey. Groups embrace interests from academics, advocacy, athletics and the arts to community service, ethnicity, politics and religion.

Panhellenic Council sororities include Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Phi, Alpha Sigma Alpha, Delta Gamma, Delta Zeta, Sigma Kappa, Sigma Lambda Sigma and Sigma Sigma Sigma.

National Pan-Hellenic sororities include Alpha Kappa Alpha, Alpha Phi Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Iota Phi Theta, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma, Sigma Gamma Rho and Zeta Phi Beta.

Interfraternity Council fraternities include Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Kappa Lambda, Delta Chi, Delta Upsilon, Omega Delta, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Sigma, Phi Kappa Theta, Phi Sigma Kappa, Pi Kappa Alpha, Pi Kappa Phi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Nu, Sigma Pi and Tau Kappa Epsilon.

Multicultural Greek Council fraternities and sororities include Alpha Phi Gamma, Alpha Psi Lambda, Alpha Sigma Omega, Chi Sigma Tau, Gamma Phi Omega, Kappa Phi Lambda, Kappa Pi Beta, Lambda Upsilon Lambda, Phi Rho Eta, Sigma Lambda Beta, Sigma Lambda Gamma and Tau Phi Sigma.

Arts and Culture

Students and faculty in NIU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts host dozens of art exhibitions, musical concerts and theatrical and dance productions throughout the year. Many are free.

NIU’s School of Music also is home to the internationally renowned NIU Jazz Ensemble and NIU Steelband as well the Avalon String Quartet, described by the Chicago Tribune as “an ensemble that invites you – ears, mind and spirit – into its music.”

The NIU Art Museum, which has several galleries in Altgeld Hall, hosts several shows of professional works. The campus also houses an anthropology museum (scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2011), the Blackwell History of Education Museum, the Burma Art Collection and the theater-based Historic Scenic Collection.

The Department of Communication sponsors the annual Reality Bytes Film Festival, created in 2002 by media studies professor Laura Vazquez to give NIU students the ability to competitively screen their work. The 2011 festival received more than 40 entries from across the country and as far away as Cuba, South Africa and Australia.

Athletics

Affliation

NIU was a member of the Illinois Intercollegiate Athletic Conference from 1920-1967. Currently, the NIU Huskies compete in the Mid-American Conference.

NIU's athletic department experienced large growth in reputation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Almost completely unknown to observers from outside of Illinois before the mid-1990s, the Huskies were ranked as high as 10th in the 2003 AP College Football poll after victories against BCS opponents #23 Maryland (who finished that season at #17), Alabama and Iowa State. In 2010, NIU football had its first undeafeated MAC regular season (8-0), and cracked the top 25 in Associated Press and Coaches Polls.

Athletic facilities

On the west side of campus is Brigham Field at Huskie Stadium, the home of NIU football games, which also often hosts other significant outdoor events. Huskie Stadium, which has a seating capacity over 30,000, is surrounded by large open grassy areas which provide recreation, and also serve as the tailgating lots for football games. There is also a baseball field, Ralph McKinzie Field, a softball field, Mary M. Bell Field, a soccer field, Huskie Soccer Complex, and tennis courts, Gullikson Tennis Courts, which flank Huskie Stadium. At the Stadium's north end zone is the $14-million Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon Academic and Athletic Performance Center whose namesakes donated $2.5 million in the fall of 2006 to help with the construction. The facility opened in August 2007.

On the far west side of campus is the Convocation Center, a state-of-the-art 10,000 seat arena which hosts NIU Men's and Women's Basketball, Gymnastics, Wrestling, and Volleyball, Victor E. Court, games, the opening Convocation Ceremony for incoming freshmen, music concerts, and a variety of events throughout the year including Job Fairs, Internship Fairs, and other expositions.

The residence halls, located in the same area as the above athletic facilities, are also flanked by numerous sand volleyball areas, a large quad between the dorms, basketball courts, skating courts, Eco Lake, and open fields for recreation.

At the corner of Annie Glidden Road and Lucinda Avenue is the Chick Evans Field House, a building which consists of a series of gymnasiums, which has since been under-used since the basketball team moved to the Convocation Center. The fieldhouse continues to host expositions and sporting events of a smaller scale, and is the headquarters for the campus ROTC program.

Titles and highlights

In 1982 the women's badminton team won the AIAW national collegiate championship.

In 1983, the Huskies grabbed their first-ever bowl win, defeating, defeating Cal State Fullerton in the California Bowl.

2004 Silicon Valley Classic, NIU defeats Troy State.

In 2010, the NI Men's Rugby Club were champions of CARFU, the Chicago Area Rugby Football Union.

From 2008-2010, the NIU Huskies football team made three straight bowl appearances.

Notable alumni

University presidents

John Williston Cook (1899-1919)

J. Stanley Brown (1919-1927)

Joseph Clifton Brown (1927-1929)

Karl L. Adams (1929-1948)

Leslie A. Holmes (1949-1967)

Rhoten A. Smith (1967-1971)

Richard J. Nelson (1971-1978)

William R. Monat (1978-1984)

Clyde Wingfield (1985-1986)

John E. La Tourette (1986-2000)

John G. Peters (2000-present)

References

External links

NIU Today

NIU Student Association

Official Athletic website

Official Alumni Association website

''Northern Star'' student newspaper

Campus map

NIU HUSKIE FANSITE

NIU Huskie Stadium Hotels

NIUFans.com

NIU College of Education

NIU School of Theatre and Dance

NIU Libraries

The NIU Foundation

NIU College of Law

Category:Educational institutions established in 1895 Category:North Central Association of Colleges and Schools Category:American Association of State Colleges and Universities Category:State universities in Illinois Category:Universities and colleges in Illinois Category:Mid-American Conference Category:Engineering universities and colleges in Illinois Category:Universities and colleges in DuPage County, Illinois Category:Education in Rockford, Illinois Category:Oregon, Illinois Category:Hoffman Estates, Illinois Category:Universities and colleges in Cook County, Illinois Category:Education in Winnebago County, Illinois Category:Education in Ogle County, Illinois Category:Education in DeKalb County, Illinois Category:DeKalb, Illinois Category:Naperville, Illinois Category:Visitor attractions in DeKalb County, Illinois Category:Buildings and structures in DeKalb County, Illinois

de:Northern Illinois University es:Universidad del Norte de Illinois fa:دانشگاه ایلینوی شمالی fr:Northern Illinois University ko:노던일리노이 대학교 no:Northern Illinois University pl:Northern Illinois University simple:Northern Illinois University th:มหาวิทยาลัยนอร์ทเทิร์นอิลลินอยส์ zh:北伊利诺伊大学

Northern Illinois is a region generally covering the northern third of the U.S. state of Illinois.

Economics

Northern Illinois is dominated by the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Rockford, and the Quad Cities, which contain a majority (over 75%) of Illinois' population and economic activity, including numerous Fortune 500 companies and a heavy manufacturing, commercial, retail, service, and office based economy. Much of the economic activity of the region is centered in the Chicago Loop, the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor, and the Golden Corridor. However, rural sections of this region are highly productive agriculturally, and are part of the Corn Belt. The headquarters for John Deere farming equipment are located in Moline. Additional smaller cities in this area include Kankakee, LaSalle-Peru, Ottawa, Freeport, Dixon, and Sterling-Rock Falls, which still have predominantly manufacturing and agricultural economies. Northern Illinois is also one of the world's busiest freight railroad and truck traffic corridors.

Interstate 80 southern boundary

Interstate 80 is sometimes referenced as the informal southern boundary of Northern Illinois, and is often used in weather reports as a reference point, as in "south of Interstate 80 will see sleet and rain, but north of Interstate 80 can expect mostly snow."

Generally, areas south of I-80 are considered "downstate" by Chicagoans.

Interstate 88 cross section

Additionally, Interstate 88 (the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway) seems to connect the region, east-west, stretching from the Quad Cities, eastward through Sterling-Rock Falls, Dixon, DeKalb, Aurora, Naperville, and into Chicago. Northern Illinois is also the only region of the state in which there are tollways, which are run by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, another trait separating this region from Central and Southern Illinois.

Education

Northern Illinois University, located in DeKalb is located in the heart of Northern Illinois and is the state's second largest institute of higher education in terms of enrollment, after University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Additionally, several major colleges can be found in the Chicago area, including the Big Ten Conference's Northwestern University, Illinois' third largest state school University of Illinois at Chicago, and other notable schools including the Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University, DePaul University, Columbia College, University of Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University and Roosevelt University.

Several liberal arts schools such as Aurora University, Lewis University, North Central College, Elmhurst College, Wheaton College, Concordia University, and North Park University dot the Metropolitan Chicago landscape. Such schools can also be found in Rockford (Rockford College) and the Quad Cities (Augustana College).

These schools, along with several others, help to make Northern Illinois a vibrant research area. Such significant developments in science including the creation of the Atomic Bomb and the Fujita Scale were rooted in Northern Illinois institutions.

Politics

Politically, the region is quite diverse, with Cook County and Rock Island County being long-time strongholds for Democrats and suburban counties such as DuPage, Kane, Kendall and McHenry Counties being reliable for Republicans. However, several counties such as Winnebago and Lake are quite evenly divided. Famous politicians native to the area include Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald Reagan, J. Dennis Hastert, Donald Rumsfeld, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Mayors Richard J. Daley and Richard M. Daley.

Culture

Culturally, the area is tied heavily to Chicago, and most residents of Northern Illinois tend to root for Chicago teams, lean towards the Chicago media market, and visit the Chicago Loop often. In college football, most fans in Northern Illinois root for the Northern Illinois Huskies and/or the Illinois Fighting Illini. Other teams present are the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Iowa Hawkeyes. In Central and Southern Illinois, residents are tied primarily to St. Louis. Additionally, regional dialects in Northern Illinois vary from those in other parts of Illinois. Surprisingly, different areas in Northern Illinois have their own independent cultures. Typically, areas west of Interstate 39 have more ties to Iowa and the Quad Cities area, as that is roughly the location of the westernmost terminus of the Chicago media area. Even dialects within Northern Illinois are different, emphasizing the above. Depending on location and ethnicity, a resident of the Chicago Metropolitan Area may have the stereotypical Chicago dialect, whereas those in more affluent areas, such as DuPage County, may have a more crisp, "sophisticated" manner of speaking. Those west of Chicago have more stereotypical Midwestern dialects, and might not be able to be distinguished from people in Iowa or Nebraska.

Depending on how close to a specific metropolitan area a county is, their culture and media reflect that of the metro area. There are exceptions, however. McHenry County may sometimes be considered Chicago-influenced, and, at times, Rockford-influenced. Areas such as the Ottawa-Streator Micropolitan Statistical Area have a comfortable mix of culture from the Chicago area, Quad Cities area, and Peoria, perhaps being due to its location in the center of the region.

Subregions

The Illinois portion of the Chicago metropolitan area

Fox Valley

Northwestern Illinois

Quad Cities

Counties

Boone

Bureau

Carroll

Cook

DeKalb

Dupage

Grundy

Henry

Jo Daviess

Kane

Kendall

Lake

LaSalle

Lee

McHenry

Mercer

Ogle

Putnam

Rock Island

Stephenson

Whiteside

Winnebago

Category:Regions of Illinois Category:Chicago metropolitan area