The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, founded in 1867, is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois. 

It is the second oldest public university in the state of Illinois, after Illinois State University, and is made up of 17 colleges offering about 150 different study programmes.  The institution is spread out over some 647 building set on a 4,500 acre campus. 

The university is one of the original 37 public land-grant institutions that were founded when Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862. 

The libraries at the university hold one of the biggest collections of any public library in the US, with some 13 million volumes across nearly 40 library sites. 

Some 11 graduates of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, with 18 winning Pulitzer Prizes. 

The university’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts  has four theatres, which seat 4,000 people and host about 350 performances by both students and professional acts every year. Its Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion contain nearly 10,000 works of art, while the Spurlock Museum has 46,00 artefacts from around the world. 

The largest collection of John Philip Sousa music manuscripts is housed at the university’s Sousa Archives Center for American Music. 

There are 23 halls of residence at the university – enough to accommodate more than 8,500 students. 

The university takes its name from the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, which have a combined population of 207,000 and are located about 180 miles north of St Louis and 140 miles south of Chicago.