Hi my name is Mummypraise and I'm going to take you on a virtual tour of the University of Illinois at Chicago, or as we like to call it UIC. (You'll find that we love acronyms here.) I'm excited to show you one of the most diverse campuses in the country and Chicago's only public research university. Let's get started! The first stop is our campus union also known as Student Center East or SCE. Student Center East is one of the main activity hubs outside of classes. Here you can grab a bite to eat at one of its many restaurants, meet up with friends and relax, and you can even head for a quick bowling game at the SCE bowling alley. It also houses the east campus dining halls, the UIC bookstore and is the center for meetings and conferences and student organizations on campus so you can always attend a talk or event here too. If we head east across Halsted Street we'll see the Student Recreation Facility or SRF which is one of the several places to work out on campus. By the way, you can always tell which way is east by looking for the Willis Tower. SRF is a three-story building home to UIC's intramural and club sports teams like volleyball and boxing and offers group fitness classes, instructional programs, and has an entire floor dedicated to cardio and weightlifting. There's a rock climbing wall, swimming pool, sauna and a hot tub too. One of my personal favorites is the tropical smoothie bar so you can always enjoy a fresh fruit smoothie after a workout. If we head west out of Student Center East, we'll arrive at the Lecture Center Plaza more commonly known as the quad. The quad is surrounded by some of UIC's biggest classroom buildings and is the heart of east campus. Here, you'll find students relaxing catching up on homework, skateboarding, chalk drawing, rallying — you name it. The quad is also most active during the annual student involvement fair where over 200 of UIC's student organizations gather to provide food and great music and free goodies in hopes of recruiting new members. Now let's take a quick look at some of our classrooms, labs, and studios. From big lecture centers to small discussion and seminar rooms you'll find lots of different classroom types supporting many different learning styles. Back at the quad we saw the original campus lecture halls but our newest classrooms are located here at the Academic and Residential Complex, or the ARC. Completed in 2019 the ARC includes three large lecture halls featuring turn-to-team design elements and four smaller classrooms equipped with the latest technology to enhance team-based learning. Typical classes for these lecture halls include introductory or survey courses. All new UIC buildings are designed to meet some of the highest environmental standards. The classroom side of the ARC has recycling stations that allow for future waste streams like composting. It even has a native plant rain garden that reduces storm water and attracts pollinators, helping both our net zero water and biodiverse campus goals. The building's residential tower is also home to over 500 students. It includes a fitness center and its own student-managed Starbucks. Now not all of your classes will be in lecture halls, let's head over to some of UIC's smaller classroom buildings like Lincoln, Douglas, and Grant Halls. Douglas Hall is home to the College of Business Administration and its career center. Grant Hall houses the university's writing center and language laboratories. Lincoln Hall has a large campus oasis, or informal learning space, but all three buildings support all kinds of classes from many different departments. This group of buildings is another example of how UIC takes sustainability seriously. Lincoln, Douglas and Grant Hall were all renovated to meet LEED environmental standards. The temperature is regulated by geothermal wells that were dug 100 feet underground in the fields to the west and by a daylight shading management system where glazed windows detect the amount of sunlight and blinds automatically adjust. Recycled materials were used in construction and solar panels provide a percentage of the electricity for the cluster of buildings. Here we're at the Architecture and Design Studios (ADS). As the name suggests, you'll find studio spaces here that support the architecture, industrial and graphic design programs. Fun fact —a planned expansion of this building was never finished so there are a few stairways that lead to nowhere. On the other side of campus we have the Science and Engineering Labs (SEL) which house laboratories for all fields of science such as biology, chemistry, and anatomy. An Electronic Visualization Lab, an interdisciplinary and interactive research laboratory managed by the College of Engineering and the College of Architecture, Design and the Arts that focuses on visualization and virtual reality. It's even where the blueprints for the original death star from the star wars movies were created. The UIC Theatre is next on our tour. It is a black box theater seating up to 200 guests. The space is flexible and can support a variety of shows. The UIC Theater department produces four shows a year in addition to student-led projects. The theater community puts a lot of Chicago's local talent to use. Our students often have guest directors from nationally renowned and local theater companies like Steppenwolf and the Looking Glass Theater. Across from the theatre is the UIC Music Department which hosts vocal and instrumental ensembles that are open to majors and non-majors alike. Looking for a quiet place to study? Let's head over to the library. With over 3 million visitors last year the Richard J Daley Library serves both UIC students and the broader academic community. The library provides access to both physical and digital resources, housing rare books, printed materials and the university archives, which specialize in the history of Chicago. The library is divided into different quiet zones that help match your study style. These zones include The Collaborative for group work, and quiet and silent zones for individual work. The first floor of the library features the Idea Commons which is a large study space that includes computers available for student use, both mac and pc, charging station, tables, and seminar rooms, which can be rented for up to two hours, and white board walls, which help students with group projects. There are countless other study spaces on and around campus such as coffee shops and outdoor spaces. Whether you decide to live on campus or commute from home, UIC offers plenty of options to find community. Specifically for commuters, UIC has the Commuter Student Resource Center (CSRC), located in SCE, where lockers, a refrigerator, and a lounge study area are available to all commuters. For those living on campus, living spaces range from traditional to apartment style dorming in the residence halls like courtyard on east campus, to Thomas Beckham Hall on south campus. During this period UIC has mostly transitioned to online learning the classes are either asynchronous which allows a student to work through the course on their own time, or synchronous which means the course has live lectures using resources like Grade Scope, Blackboard and Zoom. UIC has made the effort to still provide suitable learning spaces. UIC is one of the nation's most diverse campuses and is known for its commitment to social good, through its research and community initiatives. For example, the Latino Cultural Center is one of seven centers for diversity and cultural understanding on campus. Others include the African American Cultural Center, the Disability Cultural Center, the Gender and Sexuality Center and the very first Arab American Cultural Center on a college campus in the United States, just to name a few. Each of these centers offer numerous study spaces and tutoring opportunities. Also on UIC's campus is the Jane Addams Hull House in honor of Jane Addams. It was formerly a settlement home for poor immigrant women in the 19th and 20th century. Jane Addams one of the founders is considered the founder of social work, thus our Colllege of Social Work is named after her. (And is also rumored that the house is haunted). Your teachers are one of the best resources here at UIC, you'll find a lot of them at the University Hall or UH. Also known as the beacon of UIC, at 28 stories tall, this iconic building dominates the campus landscape. One of its quirks is that it's wider at the top than at the base, a nod by the architect to the city of broad shoulders. You'll notice that the windows form an "I" shape that represent the University of Illinois. University Hall provides office space for campus administration and faculty, so you'll probably head over here if you take advantage of office hours or academic advising. UH also houses the office of external fellowships where you can meet with a counselor to discuss scholarship opportunities, and the Office of Study Abroad, where you can get the chance to study anywhere on all seven continents. Another major building if you're looking for help is at the corner of Racine and Harrison, the Student Services Building, SSB. SSB is where you'll find most of your on-campus resources such as the student employment office, TRIO slash upward bound, counseling services, financial aid and admissions. The African American Academic Network or AAAN, and the Latin American Recruitment Education Services, LARES, are also located in this building to provide tutoring academic advising and professional development. Fun fact, this building used to house a Jewel-Osco, Burger King and was formerly a mall. That concludes our virtual tour! There is so much more to UIC, like the fact that it's in the center of one of the largest and most culturally diverse cities in America. Or the fact that UIC students get great opportunities due to our proximity to downtown Chicago. But I'll leave it up to you to find out, as you discover yourself as a student here. If you want to learn more about UIC, make sure to click the link in the description box. Bye!