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Illinois Institute of Technology — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Growth and expansion

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 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 Armour Institute of Technology to head both Armour's and the Art Institute of Chicago's architecture programs. The Art Institute later separated and formed its own program. Mies was tasked with 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 postwar 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. During this period, Illinois Tech was the largest engineering school in the United States. It housed many research organizations, including 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.

Three colleges merged with Illinois Tech after the 1940 Armour/Lewis merger: Institute of Design in 1949, Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1969, and Midwest College of Engineering in 1986. 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 1995. (An undergraduate business program focusing on technology and entrepreneurship was launched in 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 more prevalent than "IIT." The Chicago Transit Authority's Green Line rapid transit station at 35th and State was named "Tech-35th" but has since been renamed "35th-Bronzeville-IIT." In the 2010s, school administrators began to reintroduce "Illinois Tech", to avoid confusion with the Indian Institutes of Technology, which is also abbreviated "IIT", and with ITT Technical Institute, whose abbreviation is similar.

In 2020, Illinois Tech launched the College of Computing and the revamped Lewis College of Science and Letters. 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 humanities, psychology, and social science departments. The School of Applied Technology and College of Science were then dissolved.

Main campus

Illinois Tech's 120-acre (48.6 ha) main campus, known as Mies Campus, is centered around 33rd and State Streets, about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the Chicago Loop in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. It covers 22 blocks, roughly bounded by 30th Street to the north, Michigan Avenue to the east, 35th Street to the south, and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (now Metra's Rock Island District) tracks to the west. Illinois Tech supports the Historic Bronzeville area by sponsoring non-for-profits such as The Renaissance Collaborative. VanderCook College of Music shares Illinois Tech's main campus and offers cross-registration for Illinois Tech students.

Mies'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, has the world's greatest concentration of his buildings. The campus layout departs radically from "traditional college quadrangles and limestone buildings". The materials are inspired by the factories and warehouses of Chicago's South Side and "embod[y] 20th century methods and materials: steel and concrete frames with curtain walls of brick and glass." The campus was landscaped by Mies's close colleague at Illinois Tech, Alfred Caldwell, whose plan reinforced Mies'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."

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, Mies began his 20-year tenure as director of IIT's School of Architecture. 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 1958, as many as 22 Mies buildings rose across campus.

Mies retired in 1958, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and Schmidt, Garden and Erikson took over as the campus architects. SOM architect Walter Netsch designed two buildings, including the new library Mies had wished to create, while SOM's Myron Goldsmith designed four buildings. Schmidt, Garden & Erikson designed four buildings for the IIT Research Institute during the 1960s. 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 2018, when it dedicated the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship.

S. R. Crown Hall, erected in 1956, has been cited as one of Mies's greatest architectural achievements. To provide for a flexible, columnless interior, he suspended the roof from four steel girders supported by eight exterior columns spaced 60 feet apart. A $15 million renovation, completed in 2005, modernized the structure while preserving its design. Additional improvements were completed in 2013.

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 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 comprises 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 2003. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, 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 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.

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. Ronan's building, the first new academic building in more than 40 years, was completed in 2018. In 2019, the Kaplan Center won the American Institute of Architects Chicago Chapter's highest architectural design award.

Academics

Illinois Tech is divided into three colleges (Tech Futures, Design Futures, Professional Futures), 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. 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.

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), and the Lewis College of Human Sciences (the Department of Humanities, the Department of Psychology, and the Department of Social Sciences).

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.

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.

The School of Applied Technology was founded as the Center for Professional Development in 2001 to provide technology oriented education for working professionals. 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). 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. 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). 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.

In August 2026, Illinois Tech administrators consolidated the five colleges into three (Tech Futures, Design Futures, Professional Futures). Tech Futures is composed of the School of Computing, and the School of Engineering, Applied Science, and Health. Design Futures is composed of the School of Design and Society, and the School of Architecture. Professional Futures is composed of Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Stuart School of Business.

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. It was not until 1969 that the school was incorporated into Illinois Institute of Technology.

With a bequest from Illinois Tech alumnus and financier Harold Leonard Stuart the Stuart School of Business was established in 1969. 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.

For the 2024–2025 academic year, the middle 50% of enrolled students scored between 1190 and 1390 on the SAT (with a 50th percentile of 1300), between 590 and 720 on the SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section (50th percentile: 640), and between 590 and 720 on the SAT Math section (50th percentile: 660).

Student life

There are numerous student organizations available on campus, including religious groups, academic groups, and student activity groups.

Three of Illinois Tech's major student organizations serve the entire student body: the Student Government Association (SGA), the Student Union Board (UB), and TechNews. SGA is the governing student body and acts as a liaison between university administration and the student body, serves as a forum to express student opinion, and provides certain services to student organizations such as official recognition and distribution of funds. Union Board serves as the main event programming group and plans more than 180 on- and off-campus events for students annually. Founded in 1938 UB is responsible for the emergence of the school spirit and booster group Scarlet Fever. TechNews is the campus paper and serves as a news outlet for campus interests and as another outlet for student opinion in both a weekly paper edition and online format; it has existed since at least the 1930s.

Illinois Tech hosts a campus radio station, WIIT, with a radio studio in The McCormick Tribune Campus Center. WIIT was originally an AM radio station through the 1960s, using the name WIIT Radio 64. It was simulcast on AM 640 and stereo FM 88.9 by the end of January 1972. The station was forced to change its callsign to WOUI in 1972 because WIIT was similar to WAIT (AM). After the WAIT callsign was dropped, the IIT station eventually returned to its original call letters, WIIT, on February 23, 2001.

In September 2007 the university opened a nine-hole disc golf course that weaves around the academic buildings on Mies Campus and is the first disc golf course to appear within the Chicago city limits.

In anticipation of the opening of The McCormick Tribune Campus Center, the on-campus pub and bowling alley known as "The Bog" ceased operations in 2003. However, in response to students, faculty, and staff who missed the former campus hangout, The Bog reopened in February 2007 and offers bowling, billiards, table tennis, and video games. The Bog is also home to the campus bar, which serves beer and wine, and hosts weekly events such as comedians, live bands, or karaoke nights on its stage.

In fall 2007, the third generation of a cappella groups was formed, The TechTonics, a coed group of students. Within a year the organization expanded and now includes an all-male group, the Crown Joules, and an all-female group, the X-Chromotones. IIT A Cappella performs a variety of shows on campus as well as off campus and in the midwest. They also perform shows at the end of each semester.

Illinois Institute of Technology Mies (Main) Campus has seven Illinois Tech fraternities (and one VanderCook College of Music fraternity) and three sororities. Fraternities Pi Kappa Phi, Delta Tau Delta, Alpha Sigma Phi, Phi Kappa Sigma, Sigma Phi Epsilon and Triangle Fraternity and sororities Kappa Phi Delta, and Alpha Sigma Alpha have chapter houses on The Quad. The Omega Delta fraternity does not.

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