<p>I found this thread while doing some research and had to chime in. I’m from Illinois and earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). I always specify because saying “University of Illinois” is generally perceived as University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Whenever I see or hear “University of Illinois,” I ask which campus. My problem with this whole situation is that companies often do not specify campus in executive’s biographies, news releases, etc. (at least with UI). This irks me because the reputation of a school is built on the success of its alumni, and by having “University of Illinois” in biographies, most (if not all) people automatically assume Urbana. I’ve even reached out to large companies and have gotten nowhere. Richard S. Hill (UIC alum) was Chairman and CEO of Novellus Systems for many years, which was recently sold for $3.3 billion. Hill was appointed to the Board of Directors of Cabot Microelectronics in June and his biography stated he earned his degree in bio-engineering from “University of Illinois.” He is a large annual donor to UIC’s College of Engineering so I decided to write into the company and here is the dialog: </p>
<p>to: <a href="mailto:investor_relations@cabotcmp.com">investor_relations@cabotcmp.com</a>
date: Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 8:46 AM
subject: Director Richard Hill</p>
<p>Ms. Tuntland:</p>
<p>I recently came across the appointment of Mr. Richard Hill as a member of the Board of Directors, which is excellent. I did want to request that you correctly identify his undergraduate institution as “University of Illinois at Chicago.” Listing it simply as “University of Illinois” gives a false impression that his degree is from “University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign” which is a disservice to UIC, and gives undue credit to UIUC.</p>
<p>Kind regards,</p>
<p>Nick</p>
<p>from: <a href="mailto:Trisha_Tuntland@cabotcmp.com">Trisha_Tuntland@cabotcmp.com</a>
to: Nicholas <>
date: Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 11:36 AM
subject: Re: Director Richard Hill
mailed-by: cabotcmp.com</p>
<p>Hello Nick, </p>
<p>Thank you for your interest in Cabot Microelectronics Corporation. Mr. Hill received a B.S. in bioengineering from the University of Illinois and therefore, the data stands accurate.</p>
<p>Regards,
Trisha</p>
<p>Take from this what you will… Another person I found quickly was Louis Gries who is the CEO of James Hardie (annual sales in excess of $1 billion). His biography states that he has a B.S. in Mathematics from “University of Illinois,” while it was UIC. Just another high ranking person at a large publicly traded company with this classification. </p>
<p>I guess I’m having the opposite problem because I’m trying to put credit where it is due. I say that if you’re going into this with the intent to mislead, then you’re doing a disservice. Be proud of who you are and where you went to school. While I technically did graduate from “University of Illinois,” and have every right to say it that way, I believe that campus detail should be given. People like Pizzagirl and Bill73 can keep puffing their Urbana-Champaign chests out while bashing UIC on these forums, but I hope they realize that classifications like the aforementioned are only helping the reputation of UIUC, and not putting UIC where it should be. Based on my limited look into this, I can only assume this is the tip of the iceberg. I think that with UI, the grads post 1980ish specify campus affiliation much more frequently (as evidenced by the CEO of US Cellular, Mary Dillon, having the specification in her bio). More issues with UI are that there are only a “University of Illinois Foundation” and a “University of Illinois Alumni Association,” so no campus designation is even more proof that University of Illinois is “one university with three distinct campuses,” as outlined at uillinois.edu.</p>
<p>Just my $0.02</p>