Illinois, University of

Illinois, University of, main campus at Urbana-Champaign; land-grant with state and federal support; coeducational; chartered 1867, opened 1868 as Illinois Industrial Univ., renamed 1885. It pioneered in vocational education. In 1946 the university began a two-year undergraduate program at Chicago, which in 1965 became the Chicago Circle Campus and in 1982 consolidated with the Medical Center Campus to become the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago. There is also a campus at Springfield, as well as colleges of medicine at Peoria and Rockford and a college of nursing at Moline. The university is a member institution of the Quad-Cities Graduate Study Center at Rock Island.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.