40 Fun Facts About University of Illinois Chicago

A UIC computer lab produced the animated attack plan shown in a pilots' briefing in which 1970s science fiction film?

Star Wars needed a display of the Death Star trench, so artist Larry Cuba animated it at UIC with the lab's GRASS graphics language.

Adrian Smith, a 1969 UIC architecture graduate, designed which record-breaking skyscraper that opened in 2010?

Burj Khalifa has a petal-shaped plan inspired by the spider lily flower, one of Smith's major contributions to the design.

The University of Illinois's 1946 Chicago campus, nicknamed 'Harvard on the Rocks', sat on which lakefront landmark?

Navy Pier housed the two-year campus along a single corridor half a mile long, shared with a police traffic division and military units.

In which horror film is the heroine a UIC graduate student researching an urban legend at Cabrini-Green?

Candyman moved Clive Barker's short story from Liverpool to Chicago, and the crew spent three days filming at the real Cabrini-Green homes.

Which birds of prey have nested on a ledge near the top of UIC's University Hall since the late 1990s?

Peregrine falcons nest on the tower's 28th-floor ledge, where the female, Rosie, became popular enough to get her own webcam and newspaper coverage.

UIC's 1965 campus was called 'Chicago Circle' after which kind of structure that sits beside it?

A freeway interchange where the Kennedy, Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways meet lent its name, making the school the only university known to be named after one.

Which social reformer's settlement house, mostly demolished to build UIC, survives as a museum on the campus?

Jane Addams co-founded Hull House in 1889 and became the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Only the mansion and a dining hall remain.

Justin Hartley, who studied history and theater at UIC, played actor Kevin Pearson in which television drama?

This Is Us ran from 2016 to 2022 and earned him three Critics' Choice nominations, after years in daytime soaps and as Oliver Queen in Smallville.

Which 1969 UIC political science graduate became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate?

Carol Moseley Braun won her Illinois seat in 1992 and later served as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. She had dropped out of the Urbana campus after four months.

UIC's Electronic Visualization Laboratory unveiled the CAVE in 1992, a room-sized cube built for which technology?

Virtual reality in the CAVE is projected onto the walls around the viewer, and the name also nods to the cave allegory in Plato's Republic.

UIC students voted in 1982 to name their teams after which chapter of Chicago history?

The 1871 fire made them the Flames, a name chosen by student votes at both merging campuses after a season with no nickname at all.

Which Chicago mayor picked the Harrison and Halsted site for UIC and has its main library named after him?

Richard J. Daley had pushed the idea since 1936, when his first act as a new state representative was a resolution calling for a Chicago campus.

Building UIC's campus in the 1960s displaced about 5,000 residents of which Chicago neighborhood?

Little Italy lost about 800 homes and 200 businesses to demolition, while resident Florence Scala led marches and took the fight to court.

Which outdoor bazaar, in an area called the birthplace of Chicago blues, was moved in 1994 for UIC's expansion?

Maxwell Street Market also gave the city the Maxwell Street Polish sausage sandwich, and its stalls have a scene in The Blues Brothers.

Which UIC baseball alumnus hit more than 40 home runs in back-to-back seasons for the New York Yankees?

Curtis Granderson helped pay for UIC's rebuilt ballpark, which carries his name, and won the Roberto Clemente Award in 2016 for his community work.

Which UIC alumnus anchored CNN from its 1980 launch and reported live from Baghdad during the Gulf War?

Bernard Shaw took shelter under a hotel desk as cruise missiles passed his window. He had attended UIC from 1963 to 1968.

Which professional team played its first four seasons, 2006 to 2009, at the UIC Pavilion?

Chicago Sky games drew WNBA crowds to the arena until 2010, when the team moved to Allstate Arena in suburban Rosemont.

Which architectural style did Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill use for UIC's 1965 campus?

Brutalist buildings were arrayed in concentric rings, like a droplet of water, to fit a planned 32,000 students onto a small city site.

Walter Netsch, who planned UIC's original campus, also designed the famous Cadet Chapel for which military branch?

The Air Force Academy job in Colorado Springs came first; he then led the Circle Campus team, and married Illinois politician Dawn Clark Netsch in 1963.

Three-quarters of the first students at the University of Illinois's 1946 Chicago branch belonged to which group?

Returning veterans arrived on the G.I. Bill, and the two-year branch let them take half a degree in the city before finishing at Urbana.

UIC graduate Sheryl Underwood spent more than a decade as a co-host of which CBS daytime show?

The Talk hired her in 2011 to replace Leah Remini, and she stayed until December 2024 as the longest-running co-host the series ever had.

Which Chicago 'L' route runs in the Eisenhower Expressway median and stops at the UIC-Halsted station?

Blue Line riders use a stop that opened as plain Halsted, became U of I-Halsted in 1965, and took the name UIC-Halsted after the 1982 merger.

UIC's law school, the first public one in Chicago, dropped which chief justice's name in 2021?

John Marshall had been on the door since 1899; trustees removed the name over his record as a slave owner and trader, two years after the 2019 merger.

Bill Ayers, a retired UIC education professor, co-founded which militant antiwar group in 1969?

Weather Underground members bombed public buildings in protest at the Vietnam War; the charges against him were dropped because of illegal FBI tactics.

Which author of a 1974 philosophical bestseller about a motorcycle trip taught at the University of Illinois in Chicago?

Robert Pirsig gave his narrator the same job: the hero of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance taught freshman English at the lakefront campus.

In Stranger than Fiction, a UIC lecture hall is the office of a literature professor played by which actor?

Dustin Hoffman plays Jules Hilbert, whose 23 questions for Will Ferrell's character are a playful reference to the mathematician David Hilbert's 23 problems.

Which Chicago congressman with a UIC master's degree handed Barack Obama his only election defeat, in 2000?

Bobby Rush kept his House seat by more than two to one in that year's Democratic primary. He had co-founded the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968.

Which former UIC soccer player rose from England's ninth tier to play for the USA at the 2010 World Cup?

Jay DeMerit won a Watford contract after impressing in a pre-season friendly, then scored in the play-off final that took the club into the Premier League.

Which Division I sport did UIC drop in 1996 after administrators judged basketball a better investment?

Ice hockey Flames spent most of their fifteen Division I years in the CCHA, but had gone seven years without a winning season when the end came.

Al Jourgensen, a UIC student before his music career, founded which industrial metal band in 1981?

Ministry was his creation and he is its only constant member; he had briefly enrolled at two Colorado universities before UIC.

UIC professor Ananda Chakrabarty gave his name to a landmark 1980 Supreme Court ruling that allowed patents on what?

Engineered bacteria able to digest crude oil were his creation as a GE researcher, and the 1980 decision held that a live, human-made organism could be patented.

Which future governor, the longest-serving in Illinois history, studied political science at UIC's first campus?

Jim Thompson served four straight terms from 1977 to 1991 and later sat on the 9/11 Commission that investigated the September 11 attacks.

UIC left the Horizon League in 2022 after nearly three decades to join which conference as its twelfth member?

Missouri Valley membership nearly cost the Flames their last Horizon tournaments: the old league banned UIC's athletes, then reversed itself eleven days later.

UIC's men won back-to-back NCAA Division II team championships in 1978 and 1979 in which sport?

Gymnastics success pulled the whole department upward: the men moved to Division I after 1979, and the other UIC teams followed after the 1980 season.

What is unusual about the shape of University Hall, UIC's 338-foot administration tower?

It widens toward the top in two stages rather than stepping back, so the highest floor is twenty feet broader than the base.

UIC's oldest college opened in 1859, before the Civil War, to train students for which profession?

Pharmacy came first: the Chicago College of Pharmacy was chartered in 1859, and its first graduating class, two years later, had just two students.

UIC's College of Dentistry was the first American dental school to be fully equipped with which tool?

Electric drills throughout were a first for a school that began as the Columbian dental college in Chicago and joined the University of Illinois fully in 1913.

Warren McCulloch, a UIC psychiatry professor in the 1940s, co-wrote a seminal 1943 paper on which subject?

Neural networks trace back to the model he built with Walter Pitts, which treated the neuron as the brain's basic logic unit.

Which signature feature of Walter Netsch's UIC campus was torn down in the early 1990s to make it more welcoming?

Elevated walkways at second-story level once connected every building; they came down in phases as planners chased the feel of a traditional college campus.

Jimmy Collins, who coached UIC to its first NCAA tournaments, was a 1970 first-round draft pick of which NBA team?

Chicago Bulls draftee Collins later spent six years as a Cook County probation officer before joining Lou Henson's staff at Illinois in 1983.