Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Welcome to the University (1945) [PAGE 2]

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The University of Illinois

The University of Illinois is 77 years old. I t is the land grant college of the state where the land grant college movement began in 1851, and of the home state of President Abraham Lincoln who signed the Land Grant College Act in 1862. W h e n it opened March 2,1868, there were 50 students and a faculty consisting of the regent and two others. Pre-war resident enrollment exceeded 14,000, and the faculty numbered 2,500. On the basis of full-time resident enrollment, Illinois ranked third in size among American universities. During its 77 years, 152,000 young men and women have followed the footsteps of the first 50. Today more than 17,970 former Illini are in the armed services, some 4,500 of them as officers. More than 700 faculty members have left the campus for war service. In a normal year, some 3,700 degrees are conferred. As many as 2,000 courses are offered each semester. Well over a million persons are served directly by the University each year through classes, extension activities, meetings, conferences, publications, radio, etc. Arthur Cutts Willard has been President of the University since 1934. He is an internationally-known engineer and a former dean of the College of Engineering. Eleven persons compose the University's Board of Trustees. Nine are elected directly by the people of the State, while two others, the Governor and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, are ex officio trustees. The University's main campus is at Urbana-Champaign, 128 miles south of Chicago, 94 miles east of Springfield, 170 miles northeast of St. Louis, and 125 miles west of Indianapolis. It is served by the Illinois Central, Illinois Terminal, New York Central, and W a bash railroads. Federal highways 45 and 150 and state highway 10 pass the campus. The University's Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy are at Chicago. Urbana and Champaign lie respectively to the east and west of Wright street, which runs north from the University Library. The cities have a combined population of 37,500, exclusive of students and of Army and Navy personnel.

Bridge Test

Pioneering at Illinois

First architectural instruction west of Alleghanies, 1868. First student botany laboratory in America, 1869. First shop for engineering education in U. S., 1870. First soil experiment plots in America and oldest corn experiment plots in the world, the Morrow Plots, in continuous use since 1876. First evidence of bacteria causing plant disease, by T. J. Burrill, 1881. First Library School west of Alleghanies, 1893. First dean of men, Thomas Arkle Clark, 1901. First Engineering Experiment Station, 1903. First church expressly for college students, McKinley Presbyterian, 1906. First full-time research worker in home economics, Nellie E. Goldthwaite, 1908. First collegiate Homecoming celebration, 1910. First church foundation at any campus, Wesley Foundation (Methodist), 1913. First sensitive photoelectric cell, by Jakob Kunz, 1913. First summer courses for athletic coaches, 1914. First four-year athletic coaching course, 1919. First antitoxin for botulinus (ptomaine) poisoning in man, by Robert Graham, 1919. First alkali-vapor radio tubes, by C. T. Knipp and H. A. Brown, 1920. First collegiate Dad's Day celebration, 1920. First sound-on-film movies, by J. T. Tykociner, 1921. First collegiate Mother's Day celebration, 1921. First short course for firemen, 1925. First band clinic, 1930. First to reveal growth rings in teeth, by Isaac Schour, 1938. First betatron, by D. W . Kerst, 1940. First occupational therapy training under medical college supervision, 1943. Pioneering work in reinforced concrete, "fatigue" of metals, I-beams, railway problems, bridge design, materials testing, air conditioning and home heating, and electronics. Pioneer work in dairy cattle improvement, soybeans, crop breeding, improved feeding, control of animal diseases, farm accounting, home economics.

A $44,900,000 Plant

The University of Illinois plant and equipment are valued at more than $44,900,000. The main campus at Urbana-Champaign includes 403 acres, with 1,296 acres of experimental farms adjoining. Other farms are located in 24 counties of the State. The campus for the Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy, and associated units is in Chicago, a part of the Illinois Medical Center, considered by authorities one of the great medical areas of the world. On the downstate campus there are 74 major buildings, 50 minor structures, and 26 houses, and on the Chicago campus four buildings. The University is divided into 15 colleges and schools for administrative and instructional purposes. In addition there are various research units of the University, cooperating and affiliated agencies, and state agencies located on the two campuses, all working closely with the University for the benefit of the public. The University's income in 1943-44 was $15,703,273, of which $7,651,681 was from state tax funds. This was less than $1 from each citizen—less than 7 cents per week for an average Illinois family of four. The University also received funds from the federal government for specific work, and from student fees, gifts, endowments, operation of residence halls, Union buildings, and farm properties, and sale of surpluses. The University's Library is the largest of all state university libraries, and fifth among all American educational institutions. It contains more than 2,296,517 volumes, pamphlets, maps, and pieces of music. In a normal year, students and faculty make more than 1,000,000 calls for books. The greatest immediate expansion in University physical facilities is the new University of Illinois Airport, four miles southwest of the Urbana-Champaign campus, which will be the center of a great program of instruction and research touching almost all parts of the institution. The airport covers 762 acres, and has three concrete runways each 5,300 feet long and 150 feet wide, adequate to handle the largest aircraft.

The Colleges and Schools at Urbana-Champaign are Agriculture, Commerce and Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Fine and Applied Arts, Law, Graduate School, Journalism, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Library, Music, and Physical Education. The research units include the Agricultural Experiment Station, Engineering Experiment Station, Bureau of Community Planning, Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Bureau of Educational Research, Bureau of Institutional Research, and Small Homes Council. Also located on the campus are the State Geological, State Natural History, and State W a t e r Surveys.

The Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy in Chicago are located near the Cook County Hospital in the great medical center on the near west side. The campus is about three miles from the "loop," conveniently reached by elevated train, street car or automobile. The laboratories building occupies the south side of Polk street from W o o d to Wolcott streets. South of it are the University's Research and Educational hospitals and Illinois Surgical Institute for Children. The Department of Public Welfare of the State of Illinois has constructed an extensive group of hospitals adjoining and connected with the buildings of the University and by cooperative agreement available for teaching and investigation. The units include the Neuropsychiatric Institute and the Institute for Juvenile Research. Presbyterian hospital, affiliated with the University, is two blocks away at 1753 West Congress street. The Chicago Illini Union building is between these two groups, at 715 South W o o d street.