In an event Tuesday, May 22 at the I Hotel and Conference Center, UI Chancellor Robert Jones explained the benefits of the university’s proposed Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago. The program is an expansion on the university’s already rich public-private partnerships. The new location will root the entire “innovation network,” which the chancellor predicts will help Chicago’s growing talent and capital “assets to flow back here” into the Champaign-Urbana community.
He assured the approximately 100 community leaders present that the UI Research Park will continue to have a major role in future public-private research partnerships. Promising to expand the UI Research Park, he called the park already “wildly successful.” Director of the Research Park, Laura Frerichs, attended the event and live-tweeted the Chancellor’s speech: “Our Research Park is the most important and visible innovation hub in IL, it’s the most transformative university research park model in the US.”
The talent pool from Chicago is not the only ingredient the Champaign-Urbana innovation community can look forward to. Chancellor Jones highlighted that the UI incoming freshman class may break the record number of 7,592 enrolled in 2016. Additionally, 32 students have been enrolled in the soon-to-be-opened Carle Illinois College of Medicine which he expects will “revolutionize health care, how medicine is taught and how medicine is practiced.”
When discussing the impending implementation of a future business and community advisory council to the UI, the chancellor stated that “A great university must start on the shoulders of a great community.” He confirmed the motivation behind the council by acknowledging “We’re investing in the community, but we need to do more.”
“We must work together. The university must make a difference in the world, and that difference has to start here in Urbana-Champaign.”
Read more about the meeting in the News-Gazette.