Tell your UI story by emailing Jeff D'Alessio at jdalessio@news-gazette.com
One-hundred and fifty years ago next month, in the soggy fields between the train station in Champaign and the courthouse in Urbana, a Big Ten university was born — Illinois Industrial U, which opened with an all-male enrollment of 50 and operated out of a single structure.
One name change, 646 new buildings and countless controversies later, the campus is gearing up for a sesquicentennial birthday bash for the ages.
To set the mood, we reached out to a couple hundred of the UI's 450,000-plus living alumni — including those who've won Nobels, Oscars, Pulitzers, even Super Bowls — in search of the spot on campus that left the most indelible impression on them.