Features

Summer 2007

New Program: Department of Biomedical Engineering

When I first met with President Lew Collens about starting a Biomedical Engineering department, there was not much broad interdisciplinary activity in that field at IIT. The department, which we started from scratch in 2002, now has 10 faculty members, about 150 undergraduates, and a graduate population of nearly 30...

Summer 2007

New Focus: Institute of Psychology

Prior to President Lew Collens’ arrival in 1990, some people thought of the Psychology department as primarily supporting undergraduate course requirements, not knowing that it had a history of graduating more Ph.D.s than any other department in the university. That changed after the National Commission for IIT. The university community...

Summer 2007

Expanding Overseas: IIT India

President Lew Collens has always been supportive of the university’s international expansion, which was a recommendation of the National Commission for IIT. So when Motorola contacted me in 1996 to see if IIT could offer master’s degree programs to its employees in Bangalore, India’s “Silicon Valley,” I was confident Lew...

Summer 2007

The Leadership Academy

Hand-in-hand with providing a robust academic experience, IIT has exhibited a growing commitment to developing the leadership strengths of its students. Through the Leadership Academy, which opened in 1998, our students are better equipped to advance to positions of leadership while as students and in their professional careers. IIT has...

Summer 2007

Teaching Better Teachers: Forming the Mathematics and Science Education Department

An early vision of IIT was to give back to the local community by preparing teachers to teach science and math in the surrounding Bronzeville area. During my initial discussions with IIT prior to joining the university, I stressed that IIT needed to have comprehensive master’s and Ph.D. programs in...

Summer 2007

The Camras Scholars Program

Ten years ago as a high school senior in Anchorage, Alaska, with good grades and test scores, I was deeply involved in my search to find the “perfect” college—one that would educate as well as inspire me. One of my teachers gave me a brochure for the Camras program, which...

Summer 2007

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center

In the early 1990s, IIT Main Campus was hardly the image of a respected landmark. The landscape was uninspiring, and a sea of surface parking under the El created a barren, unfriendly zone between the academic and residential parts of campus. Keeping in step with the National Commission for IIT...

Summer 2007

Designing and Implementing the Main Campus Master Plan

There was a growing sentiment in the early 1990s that IIT’s Main Campus was struggling amidst the surrounding public housing projects. Some people on the Board of Trustees were saying that we should shut down the campus and move to the suburbs. Inspired by President Lew Collens, who has always...

Summer 2007

Financing and Building State Street Village

The State Street Village (SSV) student residence emerged as part of IIT’s effort to provide state-of-the-art housing for students while improving the appearance of Main Campus along the State Street corridor. Before SSV was built, undergraduates only had one option for living arrangements in McCormick Student Village, where two students...

Summer 2007

Smash Bash and the Renovation of S. R. Crown Hall

In 1997, Krueck and Sexton Architects first became professionally involved with President Lew Collens and IIT by doing a feasibility study for the renovation of S. R. Crown Hall. I can say that Lew has been literally a mover and a shaker who has taken as his own Daniel Burnham’s...

Summer 2007

Building Downtown Campus

My first significant experience with Lew Collens was during the construction of the new Downtown Campus for Chicago-Kent College of Law, which he initiated when he was dean of Chicago-Kent. The strategy was simple. Moving the school to a larger, state-of-the-art, computer-friendly building in the West Loop would allow Chicago-Kent...

Summer 2007

Building University Technology Park At IIT

IIT’s 1996 Main Campus Master Plan called for a “commercial zone” on the south end of campus. In 2000, as the City of Chicago decided to move its new police headquarters to near Main Campus and to take down public housing around IIT, President Lew Collens said, “Let’s do a...