Summer 2007 | Illinois Tech Magazine

Summer 2007

Inside this Issue

President’s Message

Letter from the President

A Farewell from President Lew Collens Many colleagues and friends have shared their memories in this issue of IIT Magazine as well as in many celebratory events during these concluding days of my presidency. As I look back, it is clear to me that it takes a whole village to...

Features

The Interprofessional Projects Program

It was an idea that was ahead of its time. In the mid-’90s, many universities began to respond to what industry leaders were telling them about college graduates: that they needed a more holistic education and the ability to communicate and be broad thinkers. President Lew Collens was listening. Then...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

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...

Features

The IIT Challenge Campaign

When I joined IIT in 1994, it was in the midst of a long-range planning effort, the National Commission for IIT. Led by President Lew Collens and Bob Galvin, and staffed by David Baker, the charge of the commission was to envision a future that would successfully set the university...

Features

Why Robert Pritzker and I made our large gifts to the university in 1996

There were two main reasons why Robert Pritzker and I made our large gifts to the university in 1996. It started with our spirit of confidence that in President Lew Collens, IIT had the prospect of real leadership. This leadership proved to be the reality, for which we felt there...

Features

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...

IIT Magazine Cover Summer 2007

Chief Communications Officer

Rose Milkowski

Managing Editor

Chelsea Kalberloh Jackson

Writer

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein

Art Director/Graphic Design

Nancy Niequist Schoon
Patrick Rau

Photography

Courtesy of Richard Barnes, Bonnie Robinson, IIT Archives, Michael Goss, Dan Rest, Mindy Sherman, Chris Kirzeder, and Karen Kring

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