Illinois Institute of Technology

In 1890, when advanced education was often reserved for society's elite, Chicago minister Frank Wakely Gunsaulus delivered what came to be known as the "Million Dollar Sermon." From the pulpit of his South Side church, near the site Illinois Institute of Technology now occupies, Gunsaulus said that with a million dollars he could build a school where students can learn to think in practical not theoretical terms; where they could be taught to "learn by doing."

Inspired by Gunsaulus' vision, Philip Danforth Armour, Sr. (1832–1901) gave $1 million to found the Armour Institute—and Armour, his wife, Malvina Belle Ogden Armour (1842–1927) and their son J. (Jonathan) Ogden Armour (1863–1927) continued to support the university in its early years. Armour claimed it was his best paying investment.[7] When Armour Institute opened in 1893, it offered professional courses in engineering, chemistry, architecture and library science.[8]

Illinois Tech was created in 1940 by the merger of Armour Institute and Lewis Institute. Located on the west side of Chicago, Lewis Institute, established in 1895 by the estate of hardware merchant and investor Allen C. Lewis, offered liberal arts as well as science and engineering courses for both men and women.[9] At separate meetings held by their respective boards on October 26, 1939, the trustees of Armour and Lewis voted to merge the two colleges. A Cook County circuit court decision on April 23, 1940, solidified the merger.[10]

The Institute of Design (ID), founded in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy in 1937, merged with Illinois Tech in 1949.[11]

Chicago-Kent College of Law, founded in 1887, became part of the university in 1969, making Illinois Institute of Technology one of the few technology-based universities with a law school.

Also in 1969, the Stuart School of Management and Finance—now known as the Stuart School of Business – was established thanks to a gift from the estate of Lewis Institute alumnus and Chicago financier Harold Leonard Stuart. The program became the Stuart School of Business in 1999.[12]

The Midwest College of Engineering,[13] founded in 1967, joined the university in 1986, giving Illinois Tech a presence in west suburban Wheaton with what is today known as the Rice Campus.[14]

In December 2006, the University Technology Park at Illinois Institute of Technology, an incubator and life sciences/tech start-up facility, was started in existing research buildings located on the south end of Mies Campus.[15] As of April 2014, University Tech Park at Illinois Institute of Technology is home to many companies.

Today, Illinois Tech is a private, PhD-granting university with programs in engineering, science, human sciences, applied technology, architecture, business, design, and law. It is one of 23 institutions that comprise the Association of Independent Technological Universities (AITU).[16]

S. R. Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1956, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001.[17]

Illinois Tech continued to expand after the merger. As one of the first American universities to host a Navy V-12 program during World War II[18] the school saw a large increase in students and expanded the Armour campus beyond its original 7 acres (2.83 ha). Two years before the merger, German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe joined the then Armour Institute of Technology to head both Armour's and the Art Institute of Chicago's architecture program. The Art Institute would later separate and form its own program. Mies was given the task of designing a completely new campus, and the result was a spacious, open, 120-acre (48.6 ha) campus set in contrast to the busy, crowded urban neighborhood around it. The first Mies-designed buildings were completed in the mid-1940s, and construction on what is considered the "Mies Campus" continued until the early 1970s.

Engineering and research also saw great growth and expansion from the post-war period until the early 1970s. Illinois Tech experienced its greatest period of growth from 1952 to 1973 under President John T. Rettaliata, a fluid dynamicist whose research accomplishments included work on early development of the jet engine and a seat on the National Aeronautics and Space Council. This period saw Illinois Tech as the largest engineering school in the United States, as stated in a feature in the September 1953 issue of Popular Science magazine. Illinois Tech housed many research organizations: IIT Research Institute (formerly Armour Research Foundation and birthplace of magnetic recording wire and tape as well as audio and video cassettes), the Institute of Gas Technology, and the American Association of Railroads, among others.

State Street Village IIT dormitories

Three colleges merged with Illinois Tech after the 1940 Armor/Lewis merger: Institute of Design in 1949, Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1969, and Midwest College of Engineering in 1986.[19] Illinois Tech's Stuart School of Business was founded by a gift from Lewis Institute alumnus Harold Leonard Stuart in 1969, and joined Chicago-Kent at Illinois Tech's Downtown Campus in 1992; it phased out its undergraduate program (becoming graduate-only) after spring 1995. (An undergraduate business program focusing on technology and entrepreneurship was launched in fall 2004 and was for a while administratively separate from the Stuart School. It is now part of the school, but remains on Main Campus.) The Institute of Design, once housed on the Mies Campus in S.R. Crown Hall, also phased out its undergraduate programs and moved downtown in the early 1990s.

Although not used in official communication, the nickname "Illinois Tech" has long been a favorite of students, inspiring the name of the student newspaper; (renamed in 1928 from Armour Tech News to TechNews), and the former mascot of the university's collegiate sports teams, the Techawks. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nickname was actually more prevalent than "IIT." This was reflected by the Chicago Transit Authority's Green Line rapid transit station at 35th and State being named "Tech-35th", but has since been changed to "35th-Bronzeville-IIT." In the 2010s, school administrators began a move to reintroduce the "Illinois Tech" nickname, to decrease confusion with the Indian Institutes of Technology that share the IIT abbreviation and with ITT Technical Institute whose abbreviation is similar.[20]

In June 2020 Illinois Tech launched the College of Computing and the revamped Lewis College of Science and Letters.[21] The College of Computing houses the computer science, applied mathematics, and information technology and management departments, as well as the industrial technology and management program. The revamped Lewis College added the biology, chemistry, food science and nutrition, and physics departments to the remaining humanities, psychology, and social science departments. With the launch of the College of Computing and revamped Lewis College of Science and Letters, the School of Applied Technology and College of Science were dissolved.

Main Building of the Armour Institute of Technology

In 1994 the National Commission on IIT considered leaving Mies Campus and moving to the Chicago suburbs. Construction of a veritable wall of Chicago Housing Authority high-rises replaced virtually all of Illinois Tech's neighbors in the 1950s and 1960s, a well-meaning but flawed attempt to improve conditions in an economically declining portion of the city. The closest high-rise, Stateway Gardens, was located just south of the Illinois Tech campus boundary, the last building of which was demolished in 2006. But the Dearborn Homes to the immediate north of campus still remain. The past decade has seen a redevelopment of Stateway Gardens into a new, mixed-income neighborhood dubbed Park Boulevard; the completion of the new central station of the Chicago Police Department a block east of the campus; and major commercial development at Roosevelt Road, just north of the campus, and residential development as close as Michigan Avenue on the east boundary of the school.

Bolstered by a $120 million gift in the mid-1990s from Illinois Tech alumnus Robert Pritzker, former chairman of IIT's board of trustees, and Robert Galvin, former chairman of the board and former Motorola executive, the university has benefited from a revitalization. The first new buildings on Mies Campus since the "completion" of the Mies Campus in the early 1970s were finished in 2003—Rem Koolhaas's McCormick Tribune Campus Center and Helmut Jahn's State Street Village. S. R. Crown Hall, a National Historic Landmark, saw renovation in 2005 and the renovation of Wishnick Hall was completed in 2007. Undergraduate enrollment has breached 3,000.[22] To further boost their focus on biotechnology and the melding of business and technology, University Technology Park at Illinois Tech, an expansive research park, has been developed by remodeling former Institute of Gas Technology and research buildings on the south end of Mies Campus.

Illinois Tech is divided into five colleges (College of Computing, Armour College of Engineering, Lewis College of Science and Letters, College of Architecture, Chicago-Kent College of Law), an institute (Institute of Design), one school (Stuart School of Business), and a number of research centers, some of which provide academic programs independent of the other academic units. While many maintain undergraduate programs, some only offer graduate or certificate programs.

In 2003 Illinois Tech administrators split the former Armour College of Engineering and Science into two colleges known as the Armour College of Engineering and the College of Science and Letters.[23] The Armour College of Engineering is composed of five departments: the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, and the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering.[24]

In 2013, Illinois Tech administrators reorganized the College of Science and Letters and Institute of Psychology, forming the College of Science (Department of Applied Mathematics, the Department of Biology, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Physics, the Department of Computer Science, and the Department of Mathematics and Science Education),[25] and the Lewis College of Human Sciences (the Department of Humanities, the Department of Psychology, and the Department of Social Sciences).[26]

The Institute of Design was founded in 1937 as the New Bauhaus: Chicago School of Design by László Moholy-Nagy. It became known as the Institute of Design in 1944 and later joined Illinois Institute of Technology in 1949.[27]

Illinois Tech also contains the College of Architecture. This college began in 1895 when trustees of Armour Institute and Art Institute merged the architectural programs of both schools to form the Chicago School of Architecture of Armour Institute.[28]

The School of Applied Technology was founded as the Center for Professional Development in 2001 to provide technology oriented education for working professionals.[29][30] In December 2009 Illinois Tech announced the formation of the School of Applied Technology, composed of undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Industrial Technology and Management (INTM) and Information Technology and Management (ITM), as well as non-credit Professional Learning Programs (PLP).[31] These programs were all formerly part of the Center for Professional Development. Professional Learning Programs offers noncredit continuing education courses and certificates, corporate training, a Professional Engineering Exam Review program, international programs including English as a Second Language instruction, short courses and seminars ranging from a few hours to several days in length.[32][33] In 2014 the Department of Food Science and Nutrition was formally launched within the School of Applied Technology, formed from degree programs originating within Illinois Tech's Institute for Food Safety and Health (IFSH).[34] The School of Applied Technology was dissolved in June 2020; its departments and programs remained, split between the new College of Computing and Lewis College of Science and Letters.

Chicago-Kent College of Law began in 1886 with law clerks receiving tutorials from Appellate Judge Joseph M. Bailey to prepare for the newly instated Illinois Bar Examination. By 1888 these evening sessions developed into formal classes and the Chicago College of Law was established.[35] It was not until 1969 that the school was incorporated into Illinois Institute of Technology.[27]

With a bequest from Illinois Tech alumnus and financier Harold Leonard Stuart the Stuart School of Business was established in 1969.[36] In addition to the M.B.A. and PhD, Stuart offers specialized programs in Finance, Mathematical Finance (provided in conjunction with the Illinois Tech Department of Applied Mathematics), Environmental Management and Sustainability (provided in conjunction with the Chicago-Kent College of Law and Department of Civic, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering), Marketing Analytics, and Public Administration. The PhD program in Management Science offers specializations in Finance and Analytics.

Illinois Tech also offers many dual admission programs including programs in medicine, optometry, pharmacy, law, and business.[37]

• Illinois Tech was featured on Princeton Review's 2014 list of 378 best colleges in the United States and on its list of Best Midwest Colleges.[45]
• Illinois Tech was ranked as a tier 1 university being the 122nd best university nationally (climbing seven places up from the previous year), and the third best university in the Chicago metropolitan area (after the University of Chicago and Northwestern University), based on U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges 2019."[22][46]
• Illinois Tech was featured as No. 24 on Newsweek's College Rankings 2012: Most Rigorous Schools list.[47]
• Illinois Tech was ranked the 72nd best graduate school for engineering in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Graduate Schools 2014."[48]
• Chicago-Kent was ranked as a tier 1 law school being the 68th best law school nationally (5th in Trial Advocacy, 11th in Intellectual Property Law, and 21st in Part-time Law) based on U.S. News & World Report."[22]
• According to the U.S. News & World Report, Illinois Tech's Aerospace Engineering was ranked 21, Materials Engineering was ranked 59, Chemical Engineering was ranked 60 and Biomedical Engineering was ranked 61.[48]
• Illinois Tech was designated in 2015 as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, acknowledging the substantial focus on cybersecurity and digital forensics in formal degrees, certificates, and specializations in programs offered by the College of Computing.[49][50]

Perlstein Hall: one of the campus buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center. Icons of male figures in action are placed throughout the building; several are visible at the lower left.[65]

The campus, roughly bounded between 31st and 35th streets, Michigan Avenue, and the Dan Ryan Expressway, was designed by modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, "one of the great figures of 20th-century architecture,"[66] who chaired the IIT School of Architecture from 1938 to 1958.[67] Van der Rohe's master plan for the Illinois Tech campus was one of the most ambitious projects he ever conceived and the campus, with 20 of his works, is the greatest concentration of his buildings in the world.[68] The layout of the campus departs radically from "traditional college quadrangles and limestone buildings".[68] The materials are inspired by the factories and warehouses of Chicago's South Side[68] and "embod[y] 20th century methods and materials: steel and concrete frames with curtain walls of brick and glass."[69] The campus was landscaped by van der Rohe's close colleague at Illinois Tech, Alfred Caldwell,[70] "the last representative of the Prairie School of landscape architects."[71] Known as "the nature poet",[72] Caldwell's plan reinforced van der Rohe's design with "landscaping planted in a free-flowing manner, which in its interaction with the pristine qualities of the architecture, introduce[d] a poetic aspect."[73]

On the west side of Mies Campus are three red brick buildings that were original to Armour Institute, built between 1891 and 1901. In 1938 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began his 20-year tenure as director of IIT's School of Architecture (1938–1959). The university was on the verge of building a brand new campus, to be one of the nation's first federally funded urban renewal projects. Mies was given carte blanche in the large commission, and the university grew fast enough during and after World War II to allow much of the new plan to be realized. From 1943 to 1957, several new Mies buildings rose across campus, including the S.R. Crown Hall, which houses the architecture school, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001.[17]

Although Mies had emphasized his wish to complete the campus he had begun, commissions from the late 50s onward were given to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), prompting Mies to never return to the campus that had changed architecture the world over. SOM architect Walter Netsch designed a few buildings, including the new library that Mies had wished to create, all of them similar to Mies's style. By the late 1960s, campus addition projects were given to SOM's Myron Goldsmith, who had worked with Mies during his education at Illinois Tech and thus was able to design several new buildings to harmonize well with the original campus. In 1976, the American Institute of Architects recognized the campus as one of the 200 most significant works of architecture in the United States. The new campus center, designed by Rem Koolhaas, and a new state-of-the-art residence hall designed by Helmut Jahn, State Street Village, opened in 2003. These were the first new buildings built on the Main Campus in 32 years. Illinois Tech opened its first new academic building in nearly 40 years in October 2018, when it dedicated the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship.[74]

In 1976, American Institute of Architects named the Illinois Tech campus one of the 200 most significant works of architecture in the United States.[75] Mies Campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.[76]

In 2010 Illinois Tech received the Princeton Review's highest sustainability rating among universities in Illinois, tied with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[77]

S. R. Crown Hall, erected in 1955, was considered by Mies to be one of his greatest architectural achievements. To provide for a flexible, columnless interior, he suspended the roof from four steel girders supported by eight external columns spaced 60 feet apart. S. R. Crown Hall, home to Illinois Tech's College of Architecture, has been described as an "immortal contribution to the architecture of Chicago and the world." S. R. Crown Hall was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2001. A $15 million renovation, completed in August 2005, modernized the structure with energy-saving mechanicals and windows, along with needed technology upgrades for computers and the Internet—all while carefully preserving the architectural integrity of the building, inside and out. Additional improvements were completed in 2013.[78]

State Street Village (SSV), a student residence hall designed by Murphy/Jahn architects on the southeast corner of 33rd and State Streets just south of the campus center, was completed in August 2003. Helmut Jahn, who studied architecture at Illinois Tech under Mies van der Rohe in the late 1960s, is responsible for the innovative design of the residence hall. The structure is composed of three separate five-story buildings, joined by exterior glass walls that muffle noise from passing trains on the adjacent "L" tracks. SSV houses 367 students in apartment-style and suite-style units.

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) at 33rd and State Streets opened in September 2003. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, considered one of the "10 most influential living architects by the American Institute of Architects," the campus center arranges various areas around diagonal pathways, resembling interior streets, that are extensions of the paths students use to cross the campus. The design includes a concrete and stainless steel tube that encloses a 530-foot stretch of the Green Line elevated commuter rail ("L") tracks, passing directly over the one-story campus center building. The tube dampens the sound of trains overhead as students enjoy food courts, student organization offices, retail shops, a recreational facility and campus events.

Main entrance of the Kaplan Institute

The newest addition to the Mies Campus came from Chicago architect, and College of Architecture professor John Ronan, who was selected to design the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship.[79] Ronan's building, the first new academic building in more than 40 years, was completed in 2018.[80] In 2019, the Kaplan Center won the American Institute of Architects Chicago Chapter' s highest architectural design award.[81]

Illinois Tech discontinued its men's and women's basketball programs after the 2008–09 season,[100] but re-instated them beginning with the 2012–13 season. The men's basketball team played in its first USCAA Division I Championship in March 2017. Although the team lost to Concordia Alabama, the Scarlet Hawks finished the season at 22–6. Illinois Tech also has a cricket team as a part of non-varsity sports level that competes in Division II of the Midwest Cricket Conference.