Features | Illinois Tech Magazine

Summer 2007

My Interview with Lew Collens

In 1990, I was chairman of the Board of Trustees and also headed the search committee to hire IIT’s new president. When I interviewed Lew Collens, an internal candidate for the job, I wanted to quiz him in the same way that I would an outsider, so that there would...

Fall 2006

Bringing It Home

The outsourcing of millions of manufacturing jobs across borders and overseas is a largely American recipe. A look at the causes, effects, and how IIT is helping to counter this trend. America is a land of things. Multiplying by the hour, a blizzard of manufactured goods has become an inescapable...

Fall 2006

Students Rally for the Bog

First it was built on Ogden Bog, then it was “The Bog,” then it became storage space for emergency water (which, when the water spilled out of its boxes and flooded the floor of Hermann Hall—the HUB—made it a bit of a bog again). Not surprisingly, it’s The Bog—the former student and faculty hangout in the basement of HUB, closed for the past three years—that a group of current IIT students has successfully campaigned to reinstall, this time for good. The Bog, which featured a bowling alley, bar, and recreation center, was open for four decades. Thousands of alumni and faculty enjoyed the facility and have passed down their many fond memories and stories through the years. These stories helped to fuel the students’ desire to bring back The Bog.

Fall 2006

Jazzman

Alumnus Dan Love is Spreading the Rhythm of Engineering and Jazz ’Round midnight, the band begins to find its pace, warming to the room’s acoustics. A trumpeter steps toward the edge of the stage and delivers an impassioned solo, the notes now intimately entangled, now isolated in staccato flashes. Drinking...

Spring 2006

A Matter of Scale

Much like genetics, nanotechnology poses difficult questions that extend beyond the laboratory and into our daily lives. The first academic organization in the United States leading the nano ethics debate, IIT’s new Center on Nanotechnology and Society is an interdisciplinary collective of faculty, researchers, and thinkers who are weighing the...

Spring 2006

A Small World

From fuel cells to nanotechnology, Professor Dimitri Gidaspow has built a distinguished career through innovative work at the particle level. Professor Dimitri Gidaspow next to a fluidized bed in his lab in Perlstein Hall Professor Dimitri Gidaspow is an IIT institution. His work as both a researcher and a lifelong...

Spring 2006

New Horizon on the South Side

The corner of 35th and State streets at the southeast tip of IIT’s Main Campus is the locus for observing the future of Chicago’s Mid-South Side. With a 360-degree view of new construction and further development approved, activity at this intersection is signaling a neighborhood on the brink of a new era.

Spring 2006

We Just Worked Hard

He led IIT for more than 20 years, oversaw the construction of a new campus center, and helped bring IIT to national prominence through an innovative approach to education. Many laud his administration as one of the high points for the university, and his fundraising efforts solidified a school otherwise struggling under its own financial weight. Today, the study in his home looks just as one might expect: numerous achievements and degrees decorate the wall, with mementos of students, faculty, trustees, and friends placed throughout, and files storing annual reports and newspaper clippings chronicle his time in office.

Spring 2006

Snapshots: The Off-the-Court Lives of IIT Student Athletes

While keeping a love of sports in their hearts, IIT student-athletes are leading multifaceted lives and representing the best of IIT. For many IIT student-athletes, also known to fans as Scarlet Hawks, commitments extend well beyond academia and sports. They juggle work, community service, IPROs, Camras scholarship responsibilities, and life...

Fall 2005

The Crowded Sky

Channels and packets and pausing, oh my! If it’s been a while since your last physics class, it helps to think of wireless messages as airborne planes, crisscrossing along narrowly delineated courses. The first step of air traffic control is to know where the planes are every minute at every...

Fall 2005

In Search of a Cure

At IIT, dozens of students and faculty are pursuing cutting-edge research in cancer prevention and care. While they may be conducting their work quietly, they are being noticed. From a new $22 million grant to assess the relationship between cell phones and cancer to funding that supports innovations in x-ray...

Fall 2005

IIT 2010: An Interview with President Lew Collens

Outside, it’s an idyllic summer day in Chicago. Inside the office of IIT President Lew Collens, more than good weather is providing the energy. Tonight, a gala will signal the much-anticipated unveiling of the newly restored S. R. Crown Hall. It’s also the first day of classes, which has Collens particularly excited.