News Bureau

There are outstanding universities in every state where a student can get an education. We want to ensure that at Illinois, students don’t just get an education – they have experiences that really prepare them for the challenges they’ll have when they leave this campus. 

postscripts

To new Urbana Chancellor and UI Vice President Phyllis M. Wise, education and family are inextricable elements.

postscripts

By the time this fall issue of Postmarks is in your hands, we’ll be well into the fall semester at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nearly 7,000 freshmen and more than 1,300 new transfer students joined the Illinois family in August, setting new records for academic achievement. Together with our returning students, they represent every state in the nation and nearly half the nations in the world. The campus is once again full of the energy, excitement and anticipation of what this year will bring us all.

The start date for the smoke-free campus initiative has been postponed from this fall to Jan. 1.

By the time you are reading this issue of Postmarks, we’ll be moving into the final months of our academic year. It’s hard to believe that another academic year is coming to a close so quickly. And just as those of us on campus find ourselves in a whirlwind of exams, final projects and preparation for graduation, many of you are considering whether Illinois is the right choice for your child next year. 

On Oct.1 during Homecoming I assumed my new responsibilities as vice president of the University of Illinois and as chancellor of the Urbana campus. I want to share with you how excited and humbled I am to have the privilege to lead one of the greatest modern research universities in the world. 

Much to my delight, in my first few months as chancellor I have discovered two common threads at this great university: Learning never rests and helping others is a way of life.

When there’s a serious crime within the campus district, the U. of I. police department sends an email to inform the campus community of the situation. Public Safety officials are planning to use the system to share good news as well.

postscripts

The U. of I. student body has spoken, and it says it doesn’t want to inhale secondhand smoke anymore.

A group of Illinois students joined the Green Team this past summer, volunteering with Major League Baseball and the Natural Resources Defense Council to promote environmental sustainability during MLB’s annual All-Star Week, held July 11-15 in Minneapolis.

Imagine spending a summer in a place where the summer sun lights the sky for 24 hours, where you can take a long hike on a grand glacier, and where nature’s brilliance greets you at every turn.

Dear Parents

Charles Tucker III, the newly installed vice provost for undergraduate education and innovation, is well aware of the challenges of producing a high-quality undergraduate experience.

A farmer in Burkina Faso learns how to safely store his crops. An entrepreneur in India learns how to truck her harvested grain to market. Thanks to student animators at the U. of I., these people and countless others around the world can also see and hear about the symptoms, transmission and treatment of tuberculosis, or how and when to wash their hands to avoid disease.

Dining Services cooked up some excitement at the annual New Student Convocation and the Guinness Book of World Records certified their efforts. The world’ largest smoothie – a 330-gallon pink delight – was created from 960 pounds of yogurt, 600 pounds of strawberries and 105 gallons of pineapple juice.

The year 2015 will mark a milestone for sustainability at Illinois. This fall, a 5.87-megawatt, 20.8-acre solar farm – now under construction on university farmland – will supply about two percent of the campus’s total electricity needs. This project is the result of a dream and a lot of hard work by many stakeholders – not least among them the Illinois students.

As you read this issue of Postmarks, we will be near the mid-point of the fall semester. Whether this is your first semester with a son or daughter at Illinois or it is a year of return for your child, we are proud to count them among our students.

As Illinois students took their seats last fall in lecture halls across campus, half a world and several time zones away in New Delhi, Kunwar Apoorva Singh booted up his computer and logged into the Illinois portion of Coursera, the consortium of more than 80 global universities offering free online courses to anyone in the world with access to the Internet.

postscripts

World War I began in 1914 n the age of biplanes and the Model T – before even radio, much less the Internet. Yet its effects were massive and are still being felt today.

postscripts

What began 40 years ago as a civil engineering class project at the U. of I. has grown into an organized annual tradition for engineering students worldwide. 

Students majoring in graphic design took their skills out of the classroom and into the real world during the spring 2013 semester, when they offered their services to Prosperity Gardens – a community garden in Champaign.

postscripts

It’s been just a year since the Office of the Provost created the Office of Undergraduate Research and students this fall are already seeing tangible results.

Last summer, as most undergraduates spent their vacation traveling to exotic locales or lounging by the pool, one group of students spent their time on campus in an Institute for Genomic Biology lab, reading papers and creating a probiotic pill that could help prevent heart disease."

Life – and career – lessons can take many forms. For seven UI undergraduates, a hands-on engineering collaboration with peers in South Africa – with weekend excursions to some of the most exotic locales on the planet – offered just about all of them.

When Morgan Tarter was an undergraduate in the bachelor of social work program, she wanted to work in the addiction and recovery field. But her career aspirations changed after she gained some “real world” experience through service learning.

Administrative Posts

At the July 21 meeting of the UI Board of Trustees on the UIC campus, university trustees voted 6-2 to close the Institute of Aviation and end the undergraduate degree program. The institute, which opened in 1945, will likely close its doors at the end of the 2013-14 school year, after all current students have completed the program.

The refurbished Lincoln's bust has been returned, ready for students to start rubbing his nose for luck once again.

Administrative Posts

Whether people are crunched for time or for cash, or they’re overwhelmed by having to grocery shop and cook for themselves for the first time, eating healthy can be a challenge for college students. However, a team of aspiring registered dietitians at Illinois is sharing its expertise to help everyone get passing grades in good nutrition and healthful living.

They left for Turkey last May as a group of student reporters. They returned two weeks later as novice foreign correspondents.

A generation ago, all an entrepreneur needed was an idea and a garage. Now, entrepreneurs need little more than an Internet connection – and, for UI students, the help of a unit on campus that can guide them as they turn their ideas into full-fledged businesses.

Students participating in the U. of I.’s Study Abroad program say they were thankful for the comprehensive safety training they received on campus before traveling – and more thankful still they never had to employ it in an emergency situation.

In the summer of 2012, two undergraduate students tackled a problem that plant ecology experts had overlooked for 30 years. The students demonstrated that different plant species vary in how they take in carbon dioxide and emit water through stomata, the pores in their leaves. The data boosted the accuracy of mathematical models of carbon and water fluxes through plant leaves by 30 to 60 percent.

As this issue of Postmarks reaches your home, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign we are moving into the final months of the academic year.

You don’t have to look to the runways of New York City to find the hallmarks of high culture and style. Inside IMPULSE magazine, an independent quarterly publication created by U. of I. students, it’s easy to find glamour and glitz in the heart of Champaign-Urbana.

If that’s not the math you remember from school, that’s no surprise. But that’s the math they practice and preach through the Illinois Geometry Lab, a new math department initiative now in its fourth semester.

One of U. of I. senior Stuti Mehta’s most memorable experiences at Illinois may have been dinner with Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.

With the reopening of Lincoln Hall more than two years behind us, an initiative tied to the renovation grows more significant every day. The Lincoln Scholars program has so far provided financial assistance to 50 Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) students to help complete their studies.

A student-centered research course at the UI in the spring semester proved it is possible for the concepts of academic exploration and commercial practicality to peacefully co-exist – and that Earth’s environment can benefit from the union.

It was the final game of the Urbana Park District basketball season, and Jordan Morris’ motley crew of third- and fourth-grade boys (at right) was winning. He watched them dribble, pass and deploy the pump fake and the jab step – moves he and his friends had taught them at practice – to almost double their opponent’s score.

Welcome to the virtual lab, a digital re-creation of the nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering (NPRE) undergraduate laboratory. The virtual lab is a detailed first-person video game developed to guide freshmen through basic lab setup and procedure, though it soon could provide a training environment for advanced classes in nuclear engineering and beyond.

All students have their favorite places to escape the stress of finals week. But during a study break last December, senior Shelby Wills found herself in a place she had never imagined: in a swimming pool with a classmate who has a severe physical disability.

The weeklong camp is geared toward high school students with interests in science and engineering. GAMES includes seven camps, each focusing on a particular engineering discipline: aerospace engineering, bioengineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, environmental engineering, materials science and robotics.