Quad Day
Quad Day. When you read those words, what comes to mind? A sea of people stretched from Altgeld to the Auditorium, browsing tables and booths? A rock band on an outdoor stage, the Quad’s buildings...
Gene and the honey bee
For anyone trying to tease out how the brain makes sense of the world, the honey bee is a perfect study organism. It’s a social animal, living in a complex society where the jobs...
Student aid
Dyslexia can have devastating consequences for young children learning how to read, yet many teachers are overwhelmed by other demands in their classrooms and can’t give such children the individual instruction they need. Enter...
Co-Education
In her later years, Frances Potter Reynolds, Class of 1874, recalled the day in 1870 when the Illinois Industrial University’s Board of Trustees voted to admit women as students. Unlike the 14 other “young...
In Class: Fluid Mechanic
I focus on how air moves at high speed. Imagine a commercial aircraft with a gas turbine engine flying through the air. I teach my students how the air moves around the wing, how the...
Ingenious: The magician of BCL
When Heinz von Foerster was a child in Vienna, his grandmother hosted artists, philosophers and politicians, and von Foerster soaked it all in. He brought that same multidisciplinary spirit to Illinois in 1949 as...
Memory Lane: Not Your Dad’s Rec Room
It was an underground scene like no other. Young people, by the dozens—over time, by the hundreds and the thousands—stopping by between classes, skipping classes entirely to be there. Flowing in at all times...
Rapid Responders
THE COVID-19 ERA, Part 3 of 3 As the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread globally, scientists at Illinois leapt into action, collaborating across disciplines and continents and forging ahead at warp speed. Here’s a look at...
Better Days Ahead
THE COVID-19 ERA, Part 2 of 3 Where were you on Thursday, March 12, 2020? Rick Hazlewood, EDM ’85, was hunkered down in back of a tour bus outside of Sedona, Ariz., oblivious to...
The first of many celebrations
Commencement 2020 was like no other.For starters, the ceremony ran just seven seconds shy of 16 minutes—surely a speed record for a University that has, over 149 years, developed multiple Commencement celebrations and traditions....
