The
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is the Chicago campus of the
University of Illinois.With 36,000 students, UIC is the largest university in the Chicago area. According to statistics from the UIC web site, 1 in
57 adult Chicagoans, 1 in 10 college graduates in Chicago, and 1 in 6 Illinois physicians are graduates of UIC.UIC has been named as one of the most affordable universities in the United States by the magazine U.S. News & World Report, and it is listed as a college "best buy" in
Barron's Best Buys in Education.The University of Illinois at Chicago began in 1947 as a two-year college, mainly to
serve GI Bill students returning from World War II. It was located then on Navy Pier. In 1965, it moved to its current location which was then called the Circle Campus and became a
four-year college. Most of the campus was designed by architect Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The extensive use of concrete earned it the nickname the "Concrete Campus". The current UIC was created in 1982 through the consolidation of two University
of Illinois campuses; the Medical Center campus, which was established in the 19th century and the "Circle Campus".UIC has expanded, and is now part of Chicago's Near West Side. The campus now has more than 100 buildings that cover 300 acres
(1.2 km²). Its approportioned annual budget is just over $1 billion dollars.In the early 2000s, UIC has tried to help improve the quality of life in Chicago through the Great Cities Program. It combines
efforts such as teaching, research, and other services. The medical center also contributes by providing health care to more than
400,000 people per year. It is ranked amongst the best health care providers in the country by U.S. News and World Report.In 1999, UIC hired Stanley Fish away from Duke University to be its Dean of Arts and Sciences. The intention was to
improve the quality of its programs, particularly for graduate students. After four years of mixed results, Fish stepped down
from his position at the end of the 2003-04 school year, under heavy criticism from state legislators that he was simply trying
to hire "rock star faculty" that never saw the inside of a classroom and demanded excessively high salaries. Fish stayed on as a
Professor of English at UIC.In 2001 the UIC CBA program was awarded the NASDAQ Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence Award.