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Athletics
Athletics Recap

Athletics Recap

“If you look at some of the best small schools in the country—MIT, Caltech, the University of Chicago—they are NCAA Division III, so we’re in pretty good company,” says Joe Hakes, Illinois Tech’s director of athletics, from his desk at Keating Sports Center. Beginning this fall term, the university is officially a full member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association at the Division III level. Hakes began working on the membership process shortly after arriving on campus in 2014. Coupled with Illinois Tech’s acceptance into the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference, Scarlet Hawks student-athletes will have ample opportunity to engage in postgraduate education, leadership development—and new sports challenges.
Features
Built by Barcode

Built by Barcode

It’s 90 degrees on a late June day as Edward L. “Ed” Kaplan (ME ’65) bounds into IIT Tower dressed in navy walking shorts, a navy plaid polo shirt, and fluorescent yellow athletic shoes. While his chronological age may be 75, his spirit and enthusiasm appear to be no less diminished than when he was a 26-year-old entrepreneur who, along with the late Gerhard “Gary” Cless, began to fabricate the machines and processes that would eventually form Zebra Technologies Corporation, a pioneering asset-identification company that earned $3.72 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2017.
Features
Apoorva Shenoy

The I’s Have It

Through her design of a custom-fit athletic shoe, Apoorva Shenoy (M.Des. ’18) says that she is “bringing back a more human way of running.” That Shenoy chooses to emphasize the human aspect of her startup idea is no surprise considering her educational pedigree: Illinois Tech’s Institute of Design (ID). Now housed in the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, ID—founded as the New Bauhaus in 1937 under visionary László Moholy-Nagy—is recognized as a leading institution for its methods-based, human-centered approach to global challenges, inspiring students to place people first, and sometimes even feet first, as in the example of Shenoy.
Features
Howard Tullman

All In

The phrase “rock-star hire” seems tailor-made for Howard Tullman’s arrival at Illinois Tech, where he serves as executive director of the university’s new Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship. Tullman, 73, has the credentials: he’s a veteran entrepreneur, investor, and academic administrator who spent the last five years leading Chicago tech hub 1871, which in February was named the world’s top business incubator. He also brings plenty of rock-star vibe, gliding around campus in a black Mercedes with a “Howie T” vanity plate and casting a bold vision for the Kaplan Institute’s future. We asked him what drew him to Illinois Tech and about his plans for the Kaplan Institute.
Features
What Makes an Angel Investor’s Wings Flap?

In Their Words:

An ongoing explosion in entrepreneurial activity has been taking place on college campuses, especially related to tech startups. The recent study How Technology-Based Start-Ups Support U.S. Economic Growth (J. John Wu and Robert D. Atkinson, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, 2017) calculates that the number of technology-based startups in the United States grew 47 percent in the last decade, and that these new firms have been making an outsized contribution to economic growth.
Rewind
A Distinguished Past

A Distinguished Past

Under Henry T. Heald’s presidency, Alumni Memorial Hall—a product of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s “almost nothing” philosophy—served as both an armory and a hub for the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps from its opening in 1946 until 1972. Originally dubbed the Navy Building, it now houses the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, yet honors all Illinois Tech alumni who gave their lives in active military service. It is also a testament to the more than 40,000 individuals who completed defense-related training courses at the university during 1941 to 1943 as well as to those in the V-12 Navy College Training Program—a nationwide effort that gave aspiring officers the opportunity to earn bachelor’s degrees at civilian institutions of higher learning.
Online Exclusives
Chapin Wehde

Enabling Scarlet Hawks to Soar Again

This fall Chapin Wehde joined Illinois Tech as head athletic trainer, a role she has prepared for since she first discovered athletic training was a “perfect fit” as a high school student who sustained some significant injuries from playing soccer. As head AT, Wehde is part of a select group. In the most recent (2014) national longitudinal study that tracked women's participation in intercollegiate sports, only 32.4 percent of women held head AT positions across all three divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Fall 2018 Magazine
Vice President for External Affairs

Jess Goode

Managing Editor

Marcia Faye

Director of Editorial Services

Chelsea Kalberloh Jackson

Contributors

Emily Ayshford
Olivia Dimmer
Laura Fletcher
Steve Hendershot
Robin Hunt
Rebecca Scherer

Art Director and Design

Scott Benbrook

Web Edition

Brian Bailey
Peter Beltemacchi
Adrian Cabrera
Abbey Vargas

Illinois Tech Magazine is published two times a year by the Office of Marketing and Communications
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