University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign history

James Newton Matthews became the university's first student, enrolling in March 1868.

The original University Hall (1871) was the fourth building built; it stood where the Illini Union stands today.

In 1885, the Illinois Industrial University officially changed its name to the "University of Illinois", reflecting its agricultural, mechanical, and liberal arts curriculum.

Beginning in 1889, enrollment, courses and departments began a rapid increase that has continued to the present.

In 1891, the Board of Trustees forced him out of office.

A successful disciplinarian and legislative lobbyist, Draper continued a building program begun in 1892, hired an able faculty and broadened the University's offerings by adding schools of law, library science and medicine.

With the development of colleges, the deans allied themselves against Draper, who returned to New York in 1904.

After 1909, a similar increase in library resources made the University Library one of the largest in the nation.

Subsequently, President Edmund J. James, in a speech to the board of trustees in 1912, proposed to create a research library.

Alma Mater, a prominent statue on campus created by alumnus Lorado Taft, was unveiled on June 11, 1929.

When the old University Hall began to collapse in 1938, the University replaced it with Gregory Hall and the Illini Union.

The third major building project in this period were the first modern Men's Dormitories, which were built in 1941.

An undergraduate division of the university opened in Chicago in 1946.

A series of crises eventually resulted in Stoddard's dismissal by the Board of Trustees in 1953.

Named the University of Illinois Chicago Circle (UICC), the new campus opened in February 1965.

By 1967 the University of Illinois system consisted of a main campus in Champaign-Urbana and two Chicago campuses, Chicago Circle (UICC) and Medical Center (UIMC), and people began using "Urbana-Champaign" or the reverse to refer to the main campus specifically.

The university name officially changed to the "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign" by 1977.

In 1982 Chicago Circle merged with the University of Illinois at the Medical Center to form the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In 2000, UIC expanded with the development of south campus, providing increased residential student living space and research facilities.

Over the last twenty years state funding for the university has fallen from 44.5% to 16.4%. Private philanthropy increasingly supplements revenue from tuition and state funding, providing about 19% of the annual budget in 2012.

On March 12, 2015, the Board of Trustees approved the creation of a medical school, the first college created at Urbana-Champaign in 60 years.

Larry Gies and his wife donated $150 million to the school's college of business in 2017.