Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIU) is a research centred institution that took its first class of students in 1869.

SIU strives to match a large and diverse student body with a wide range of available study options, with ten academic colleges including Engineering, Liberal Arts, and Science. Within the School of Architecture, SIU is the only public university in the state to offer specialisations in fashion design and merchandising.

SIU is based in an area of Illinois known as ‘Little Egypt’ , and the student newspaper is known as the Daily Egyptian. The newspaper is entirely self funded and circulates around 7800 copies of each edition at nearly 200 locations on campus. The Centre for Undergraduate Research provides academic opportunities in science and arts, from innovations in reducing food waste and Grassroots, an annual literary and arts magazine.

Sports teams are known as the Salukis, a breed of greyhound dog. There are eight men’s and eight women’s sports programmes at SIU, and American football teams play at the 15,000 capacity Saluki stadium. In keeping with an Egyptian theme, the original saluki mascot King Tut is memorialised by his own pyramid tombstone at the stadium entrance.

There is a long history of student activism at SIU. The Vietnam conflict saw massive anti-war demonstrations across the city of Carbondale, and in 2011 the Occupy Movement staged a protracted sit in at Quigley Hall on campus.

Esteemed alumni include basketball great Walt Frazier, astronaut Joan Higginbotham, actor Bob Odenkirk, and governor of Washington, Albert Mead. 

In August 2017 Carbondale served as the pinpoint at which two solar eclipses intersected, the only location where this unique phenomenon occurred worldwide.