Mike Larson, interim director of F&S Utilities & Energy Services (UES), was awarded and recognized for strategic campus contingency planning by Brian Brauer from the U. of I. Division of Public Safety (DPS). Larson saw how strong communication between the City of Champaign and Urbana Fire Departments, DPS, and crafts, trades, and utilities at F&S, […]
Author: Travis Tate
For Football: Putting Butkus Where He Belongs
Dick Butkus, one of college football’s greatest and most famous players is honored with a statue outside of Gies Memorial Stadium and the Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Center. The Fighting Illini linebacker and college and pro football hall-of-fame member came back to campus in 2019 for the unveiling of the statue, depicting him […]
Shop Spotlight: Stopping for the Summer
… Summer arrives, one red blink at a time … Vince Lara-Cinisomo This U. of I. truth goes out to the year-round faculty and staff, and students who stay for the summer: you just love getting around campus when there’s way fewer drivers, pedestrians, and bikers to demand your life safety-attention, and blinking red stop […]
Protected: Shop Spotlight: Machining for the Road
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Shop Spotlight: Milling A Mighty Pine Podium
A small row of four trees outside the west-facing entrance of Siebel Center for Design (SCD) tell a little-known story from long ago. Now, visitors to SCD will have a new way to recognize the history and purpose of the trees, planted there by the third President of the University of Illinois, Thomas Jonathan Burrill.
Shop Spotlight: Steam and Gas
Steam distribution operators maintain the utility connections that connect the university district on centralized systems. For an example of that, you may think of Abbott Power Plant, the campus cogeneration facility that makes both steam and electricity with massive boilers that power gigantic turbines – see for yourself! From Abbott, steam and electricity go through […]
Ice Cold Players
Refrigeration mechanics had to call an audible. With the clock ticking down before Illini football recruiting visits, someone had to “figure it out” at the Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Center. The need was a real puzzler: how do you build and install two 8-foot-tall cryo freeze chambers, outfitted with neon striping glowing lights […]
Touring and Histories with Dennis Craig
Another way F&S is enmeshed into the university, like stars in the sky: history. F&S is home to the university’s historic preservation officer, Dennis Craig. He’s a walking, talking history book when it comes to what has happened on campus since it was called Illinois Industrial University, dating to the late 1800s and can bring […]
IBReaL: BJ Glasa at Work
The Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory (IBRL) is getting a lot of attention lately. If you’ve seen Illini athletics on television, you may have seen this: At IBRL, basically, companies and researchers use the facility to ferment things under different conditions to find new products that can be made of local crops like corn and soybeans. […]
Shop Spotlight: Pipefitters and Refrigeration Mechanics
Hot or cold: pipefitters and refrigeration mechanics find solutions. And shifting from hot to cold was exactly the strategy, too, in a project at CERL, the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory. This collection of facilities is where the US Army Corps of Engineers conduct operations for the Department of Defense (DoD). CERL is described as the […]