Sweet Lovers Love the Spring

The weather has been a little uncooperative lately, but this week Spring has finally sprung on the UIS campus and, as you can see from the attached photo, it's beautiful! If you are on campus, I hope you can take a few minutes to notice all the flowers and trees in full bloom. It's all due to the creativity and hard work of our campus horticulturalist, Joan Buckles, and her dedicated crew.  I've been here almost two years and I still haven't made the time to take a walk around the pond. I'm determined to do that today! I wish I had put my fishing rod in the car this morning – but that will be something for another day – maybe after commencement! (By the way,  English majors may recognize the title of this post from Shakespeare's poem, "It Was a Lover and His Lass." I'm pretty sure that he loved Spring as much as I do.)

New student union vision is taking shape

As surely every UIS student knows,  we're going to build a new Student Union at UIS and this week, with the architects on campus,  the excitement has been visible everywhere.  There were 28 architectural firms that submitted proposals in response to the announcement of the UIS Student Union project and we are thrilled to have selected the partnership of Dewberry Architects (from Peoria, Illinois) and Workshop Architects (from Milwaukee, Wisconsin).   Jan van den Kieboom is the design principal for our project and he and his team are bringing a wealth of creativity, talent and experience to what will be the social heart of our campus and an architectural landmark for the Springfield community.  This week,  Jan and other team members spent many hours interviewing individual students and leading various groups of students, faculty and staff through an exciting series of planning exercises.  During the next several weeks,  they'll meld all of our ideas and needs into a coherent plan for the student union and then bring it back to campus for further refinement.  We're expecting to have architectural drawings by early Fall.  Thanks to all the members of our campus community who have participated in the Student Union planning process this week!