Letters

Spring 2022

Letter from the President

With my first academic year at Illinois Tech drawing to a close, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on where we as a university are and where we are going. I am incredibly excited about the future of our university, fully recognizing that there will be some alterations in how we move forward as we begin to emerge out of a once-in-a-century pandemic that has left an indelible mark on every aspect of our lives, including higher education.

Fall 2021

Letter from the President

As my first semester as president winds down, I remain struck by the magnitude of what Illinois Institute of Technology represents. The accomplishments of our alumni are numerous and immeasurable, from the technological innovations of Armour College of Engineering graduates, to the impact that College of Architecture alumni have had on the skylines of Chicago and cities around the world, to Chicago-Kent College of Law counting among its alumni the first African-American woman admitted to the Illinois bar. This publication, Illinois Tech Magazine, has highlighted many stories of excellence exhibited by our alumni, and I am pleased to introduce this issue, which continues that tradition.

Spring 2021

Letter from the President

I want to tell you that dreams really do come true. When I first entered into academic administration at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1980s, I told my wife, Anna, that I aspired to one day become a university president. Even with that goal in mind, I could never have imagined that I would succeed one of my great mentors, John L. Anderson, whom I met at Carnegie Mellon, when he and I would serve as president and provost, respectively, at Illinois Institute of Technology. When President Anderson retired as Illinois Tech’s eighth president in 2015, the members of the university’s Board of Trustees placed their confidence in me by naming me as the ninth president of this great institution.

Fall 2020

Letter from the President

The challenges of mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic on a thriving urban campus are immense, and the Illinois Institute of Technology community has responded with a level of commitment and grace befitting a world-class university. On September 8 we welcomed students for the fall 2020 semester, nearly six months after the pandemic shifted our courses online.

Spring 2020

Letter from the President

This past January, when the coronavirus began to change our world as we know it, Illinois Institute of Technology found ourselves doing what have done best since 1890—providing our students with a world-class education—only this time with the added challenge of ensuring a heightened level of safety for our community during a global pandemic.

Spring 2019

Letter from the Vice Provost for Research

When I entered Pomona College, I was surprised that there were questions my professors could not answer. During my elementary and high school education, all questions posed had answers, and we learned to express those answers clearly on our exams. But in college I was exposed to the frontier of knowledge, where some questions did not yet have answers. As an undergraduate student, I spent two summers working alongside faculty and other students discovering answers to questions at the frontier. It so excited me that I pursued a doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I learned to pose my own questions as well as answer some of them. This is why I have relished an academic career, and especially my past 14 years at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Fall 2018

Letter from the President

While each fall academic term brings with it an element of excitement and new opportunities, this year the feeling has reached a crescendo. By the time that you are reading this, our Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship will have opened its doors on Mies Campus.

Spring 2018

Letter from the Vice Provost for Research and Academic Affairs

Returning from a sabbatical in 2007, I vividly remember driving down 31st Street after having been away for many months. As I passed under the Metra tracks, I glanced to my right to see Mies Campus and suddenly realized that I was home. Illinois Tech was my home. I’ve never...

Spring 2018

Margaret Bonkowski and Richard Bonkowski

Letters

Margaret Bonkowski, wife of Richard Bonkowski (EE ’67), sent a thank you letter this past January to Illinois Tech President Alan W. Cramb. He had responded positively to her inquiry about obtaining a replacement of her husband’s 50th anniversary Class of 1967 commemorative medallion, which was destroyed in the 2017...

Fall 2017

Letter from the President

At the start of this school year, Mies Campus students were able to see the future literally taking shape before their eyes as they observed the progress being made on the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship. With a large number of rain-free days this past summer,...

Spring 2017

Letter from the Provost

At a recent Student Government Association forum I attended with President Alan Cramb, a student asked what we are doing to bring more female students to campus. While there are many facets to this, I responded in terms of the role modeling, compelling curricula, and creative problem solving that take...

Fall 2016

Letters

Autopia? Nawtopia. I read the article [“Autopian Algorithms,” summer 2016] about Professor Lili Du’s vision of the very near future, in which most of us will be in driverless cars, with some concern. I find it fascinating and appalling in equal measure, and it raises a lot of questions for...