Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Joint agreement reached to end sit-in at administration building

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Nancy Cantor, the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the leaders of a multicultural coalition of students, faculty, alumni, Native leaders and community members against Chief Illiniwek reached an agreement today to bring an end to the coalition’s sit-in at the Swanlund Administration Building on the Urbana campus. The agreement was reached in extended discussions between Cantor and coalition representatives.

As a result of the agreement, representatives of the coalition will be meeting with state Rep. Edward J. Acevedo and state Sen. Miguel del Valle and the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus and Illinois Senate President Emil Jones and the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus in Springfield on April 27. In addition, eight to 10 representatives of the coalition will have an opportunity to meet with the consultants from the North Central Association during its “focused visit” to the campus on April 26.

The chancellor and coalition leaders worked hard to come to a set of agreements under which the group could leave the building. Members of the coalition will be leaving the building in the good condition in which they found it, and the campus administration has assured the group that there will be no disciplinary action. The chancellor is posting her commitments on the main campus Web site.

Read Next

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010