Blake Jones, Taryn Christy and Wyatt McIntyre have qualified for Nationals this week in Tampa. Channel1450 spoke with the three UIS Prairie Stars about their accomplishment, their goals and even got to know them a little bit better with some fun questions.

This interview happened on Nov. 14, 2021.

Listen to it on Channel 1450.

Six weeks after Lincoln’s death, Frederick Douglass described him as “emphatically the black man’s president, the first chief executive “to show any respect for the rights of a black man, or to acknowledge that he had any rights the white man ought to respect,” the first one to rise “above the prejudices of his times and country.” Lincoln treated each African American “not as a patron, but as an equal.

Springfield firefighters were dispatched to a residential hall at the University of Illinois Springfield at around 3:45 p.m. Monday in response to a reported fire.

When firefighters arrived at the location, they found an extinguished fire in a bathroom, with thick smoke throughout the second floor. They said the fire was extinguished by a university police officer with a dry-chemical extinguisher.

This story appeared on WCIA.com on Nov. 16, 2021.

Illinois lawmakers are pushing once again for fewer tests to become a teacher.

Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, filed a new bill aimed at increasing the number of teachers by decreasing their testing requirements.

It would get rid of the teacher performance assessments, or "edTPAs."

Dr. Meghan Kessler teaches future teachers at the University of Illinois Springfield.

She says eliminating this test wouldn’t make it easier to become a teacher, but it would make it more accessible.

As a freshman, Joseph McGee set a goal of becoming president of the Student Government Association at the University of Illinois Springfield by his senior year. Thanks to his hard work and the opportunities available to him at UIS, he achieved his goal in 2014.