Future college students can now apply to all Illinois’ public universities with just one application.

A simple check of a box will send applications to 900 schools throughout the state.

The University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) joined the Common App in September before Governor Pritzker’s announced all public universities in Illinois would join the program.

Making the switch has already increased the number of freshmen applications the school has received, and more are expected.

Dr. Marcel Yoder is the Faculty Athletics Representative at the University of Illinois Springfield. He spoke with Community Voices about sports psychology and how people can use mental training to stay grounded during athletic activities as well as other activities such as music performance.

This story appeared on WUIS on Oct. 26, 2021.

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The University of Illinois Springfield is giving students a chance to speed up their academic progress over the holidays.

UIS will offer 18 different “accelerated” courses for academic credit. The classes run for a five-week period from December 13^th through January 15^th. Classes will be offered in multiple subjects, including communications, computer science, economics, history, public administration, and more.

This story was published on WMAY on Oct. 25, 2021.

About a year before Christine Mallinson gave birth to her first child, she and her husband agreed that all of their children would take her last name. The decision came down to family cohesion: The couple wanted their children—they eventually had two—to share a last name with the only cousin near their kids in age, who was Mallinson’s niece.

In a fiscal year marked by a return to campus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Illinois’ fundraising totals hummed right along.

The University of Illinois System and the UI Foundation pulled in their fourth-largest fundraising total on record in the fiscal year that ended June 30, with $446.1 million in new gifts, grants, pledges and deferred commitments.

The UI system’s three campus fundraising initiatives have exceeded the initial $3.1 billion combined goal, raising $3.26 billion since the campaigns began in 2017.

The flags on the University of Illinois Springfield quad tell the story: almost three thousand of them, each representing a wrongful conviction. They’re black, except for the 359 blue ones, representing those in Illinois.

Christine Ferree, program director of case evaluation of the Illinois Innocence Project, says she is not trying to help criminals get off the hook.

New data offers a glimpse as to how Sangamon County residents are feeling during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

University of Illinois Springfield published its biennial citizen survey on Tuesday. Similar to its 2019 findings, there was an even split among the 726 survey respondents on whether Sangamon County is headed in the right direction.

Administrators with the University of Illinois system paid a visit to Southern Illinois this week.

They said they want to be more involved in Southern Illinois — and that they would like for the region to be more involved with the system’s campuses, programs, outreach and economic development efforts.

Working toward that goal, a group of U of I leaders spent Monday in the region as part of a statewide tour, meeting with legislators, business leaders and representatives of Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The University of Illinois Springfield, UIS, announced on Tuesday it has created three new schools to better serve students and meet the needs of our Capital Region community, including the addition of new degrees and minors that are now open for enrollment.

The U.S. economy is getting better, but at a slow rate.

A local economist said there is still a way to go before we’re back to pre-pandemic levels.

Kenneth Kriz, an economist professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, said smaller cities and towns tend to have lower unemployment rates

“In terms of where we are at in the economic cycle, we’ve recovered quite a bit of the way from the bottom of the cycle but we’re not all the way back.”