[15] The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also operates a research park home to innovation centers for over 90 start-up companies and multinational corporations.

[22][23] From the beginning, President John Milton 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".

[29] The University of Illinois' Undergraduate Library (UGL) was constructed underground to preserve open space on campus and to prevent casting shadows on the adjacent Morrow Plots, the oldest continually used experimental agricultural fields in the United States.

[30] This unique design inspired The Other Guys, a student a cappella group, to create the "Morrow Plots Song," humorously explaining that the library was built underground "'Cause you can't throw shade on the corn".

[46] The main research and academic facilities are divided almost evenly between the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign, which form part of the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area.

The iCAP is a strategic framework for meeting the university's Climate Leadership Commitments to be carbon-neutral by 2050 or sooner and build resilience with its local community.

In addition, iSEE has engaged students, faculty, staff, and campus leadership in the iCAP process — especially in the areas of zero waste and conservation of energy, food, water, land, and natural resources — as well as sustainability outreach and immersive educational programs.

[61] Computer Science + X admit rate: 18.1% In 2009, an investigation by The Chicago Tribune reported that some applicants "received special consideration" for acceptance between 2005 and 2009, despite having sub-par qualifications.

[92] Kiplinger's Personal Finance rated Illinois 12th in its 2019 list of 174 Best Values in Public Colleges,[93] which "measures academic quality, cost and financial aid."

[102] The university has been a leader in computer-based education and hosted the PLATO project, which was a precursor to the internet and resulted in the development of the plasma display.

[109] The Technology Entrepreneur Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign offers resources for students to develop their entrepreneurial ideas, including classes, competitions, and workshops.

[110] It hosts events including the Cozad New Venture Challenge, Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship Workshop, Illinois I-Corps, and SocialFuse.

[112] Illinois I-Corps helps National Science Foundation grantees identify valuable product opportunities from academic research through customer discovery and entrepreneurship training.

[115] The Center for Plasma-Material Interactions was established in 2004 by Professor David N. Ruzic to research the complex behavior between ions, electrons, and energetic atoms generated in plasmas and the surfaces of materials.

[116][117][118] In 2007, the university-hosted research Institute for Condensed Matter Theory (ICMT) was launched, with the director Paul Goldbart and the chief scientist Anthony Leggett.

[119] In 2011, Urbana, Illinois was named number 11 on Popular Mechanics' "14 Best Startup Cities in America" list, in a large part due to the contributions of Research Park's programs.

[124][125] The development of LLVM, initially started by Vikram Adve and Chris Lattner, is now recognized as a major project in compiler infrastructure.

[131][132][133] In the realm of audio-visual technology, Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner publicly demonstrated for the first time a motion picture with a soundtrack optically recorded directly onto the film in 1922.

The Office's mission is to "enhance ... classroom education," "meet the needs and desires of the campus community," and "prepare students to be contributing and humane citizens.

The paper is published by Illini Media Company, a not-for-profit which also prints other publications, and operates WPGU 107.1 FM, a student-run commercial radio station.

[26] As of 2012[update], it had also the largest "browsable" university library in the United States, with 5 million volumes directly accessible in stacks in a single location.

On June 9, 2017, Yingying Zhang, a Chinese international student, was abducted and murdered in a case that made national headlines at the time.

As part of the jurisdictional reforms, the city agreed to pay a substantial portion of the cost to hire seven new officers to patrol the new coverage area.

In 2003, two faculty members won Nobel prizes in different disciplines: Paul C. Lauterbur for physiology or medicine, and Anthony Leggett for physics.

George Halas, who founded the Chicago Bears (1920) and co-founded the NFL, and Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code (2012), also made significant contributions.

Other prominent companies like Yelp (2004) and YouTube (2005) were co-founded by Jeremy Stoppelman, Russel Simmons, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim.

[195] Alumni have founded many organizations, including the Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Project Gutenberg, and have served in a wide variety of government and public interest roles.

[204] Disability rights activist and co-organizer of the 504 Sit-in, Kitty Cone, attended during the 1960s, but left six hours short of her degree to continue her activism in New York.

Eta Kappa Nu (ΗΚΝ) was founded at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as the national honor society for electrical engineering in 1904.

He was a member of the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Team that won the state competition for the university, contributing by taking first place in physics and second in math.