The campus holds over 286 buildings on 1,468 acres (6 km²) in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, and has an annual budget of nearly $1.5 billion. As of 30 June 2007, the University of Illinois Foundation—a systemwide endowment—totals at $2.197 billion. The undergraduate program was ranked 40th among national universities and 10th among public universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2009. According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ranked 26th out of the 503 international institutions recognized. It is home to some of the highest-ranked Engineering and Accounting programs in the United States.
Enrollment in the fall of 2007 was 42,326, which included students from all 50 states and more than 127 nations. Of these, 30,895 were undergraduates and 11,431 were graduate students. As of Fall 2007, Illinois was the tenth largest university by undergraduate enrollment 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 as the site for the new "Illinois Industrial University." in 1867. 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." Yet only five years later, in 1885, the Illinois Industrial University officially changed its name to the University of Illinois, reflecting its holistic agricultural, mechanical, and liberal arts curricula. 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 name of the university was changed to The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1982. This established a separate identity for the campus within the University of Illinois system.
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.
The 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 and Northwest Airlines.
The campus is based on the quadrangle design popular at many universities. Four main quads compose the center of the university and are arranged from north to south. The Beckman Quadrangle and the John Bardeen Quadrangle occupy the center of the Engineering Campus. Boneyard Creek flows through the John Bardeen Quadrangle, paralleling Green Street. The Beckman Quadrangle is primarily composed of research units and laboratories, and features a large solar calendar consisting of an obelisk and several copper fountains. The Main Quadrangle and South Quadrangle follow immediately after the John Bardeen Quad. The former makes up a large part of the Liberal Arts and Sciences portion of the campus, while the latter comprises many of the buildings of the College of ACES spread across the campus map.
Research
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 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. 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 313,000 square feet (29,100 m2). 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 any other university in the country.
Library
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' libraries main library and the 40 other departmental libraries and divisions hold more than 22 million items, including 10 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 daily. 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.
Academic Reputation
In its 2009 listings, US News and World Report ranked the undergraduate program 40th overall out of nationally accredited universities and 10th out of nationally accredited public universities. The graduate program has 60 disciplines ranked in the top 30 nationwide, including 23 in the top 5 overall. US News and World Report ranked the Undergraduate and Graduate Accounting programs #2 and #4 respectively in the United States in their 2008 rankings; both programs had been ranked #1 at the same time in previous years.
The College of Business as a whole was ranked 12th best nationally. The College of Engineering was ranked 4th, with 14 graduate disciplines ranked in the top 10. The College of Education has six programs ranked in the top 10. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science is top 1, with five programs ranked in the top 10. Chemistry and Physics are also in top 10. Of note is many arts programs are in the first quartile, such as Architecture and Fine Arts. However, Computer Science, Actuarial Science and Psychology are the university's most visibly distinguished departments among others. The School of Labor and Employment Relations is recognized consistently as top 2 or 3 in the nation, only behind Cornell University.
It is also considered a "Public Ivy" and is comprehensively measured as one of the Top 20 major research universities in America by a Graham-Diamond Report.
International rankings by The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University suggest that Illinois is the 20th best university in North America, and 26th best university in the world. The Academic Ranking of World Universities by Broad Subject Fields from the same research center in 2008 positions Illinois as the 3rd best in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences in the world, only after MIT and Stanford. It is 19th in Life and Agriculture Sciences, 20th in Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and 51st (tied) in Social Sciences. Notably, the ranking is recognized for its ruthless objectiveness and emphasis on research productivity/scholastic achievement.
Illinois was ranked as the 77th best in the world, by The Times Higher Education Supplement’s list of the top 200 universities in the world in the latest release. However, Illinois had ranked in the top 30s for a few years past. This ranking is often criticized due to its volatility: It stresses international popularity and ranks may change tens of places from one year to the next. The WSJ ranking of business schools also has this inherited anomaly, attributed to its survey method.
The Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations has been recognized consistently as one of the top three programs for HR and Labor Relations studies in the United States. The Gourman Reports has ranked the program as #2 and #3 in various years.
In the 2008 release of Webometrics Ranking of World Universities by Cybermetrics Lab, which is a research unit of 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 in the top 8. Gourman Report also ranks Illinois as 17th best university in the nation.
As of 2007, Washington Monthly ranks Illinois as the 11th best university in the nation, and ranks 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 Urbana-Champaign campus as 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." Yet The Review's ranking itself is attacked with its category lists which are claimed to be lacking accountability, mainly from student random sampling.
Colleges and Schools
College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences
College of Applied Health Sciences
Institute of Aviation
College of Business
College of Education
College of Engineering
College of Fine and Applied Arts
Graduate College
School of Labor and Employment Relations
College of Law
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
College of Media
College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign
School of Social Work
College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was ranked 71st in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking
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