Good morning! I hope everyone was able to spend time with family and friends over the Labor Day weekend as we all celebrated and paid tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers. For our important work at UIS, we are now into our fall semester, looking forward with great optimism and hope.

New Information 

Chancellor’s Employee Forum 

By the numbers, University of Illinois Springfield has room for improvement.

The first ten days of class are in the books, and enrollment is down about two hundred – to 3,944. Interim chancellor Karen Whitney says UIS needs to continue to find ways to make itself an option for people considering college.

Fall enrollment numbers at the University of Illinois Springfield took a 5% plunge, school officials said Wednesday.

The total number of undergraduate and graduate school students enrolled in classes stands at 3,944 compared to 4,146 students in fall 2020.

Karen Whitney, UIS interim chancellor, said the COVID-19 pandemic was problematic in how the university's recruitment and admissions teams got out to high schools and community colleges.

The three campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Springfield, and Chicago all have different vaccine exemption policies. In Springfield, UIS says get vaccinated or prove you should be exempt, otherwise don't come to campus.

"I think it's really good that everyone here has to get vaccinated to be on campus, but I know a lot of people who think otherwise because they're scared of it,” UIS freshman Mina Edmondson said.

Stair climbers commemorated 9/11 in a literal way Saturday. 

The climbers, among them those too young to remember first-hand the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, made their way up flights of stairs at the Crowne Plaza hotel to mark the revered day and to honor the first responders who climbed the steps of the World Trade Center that morning to rescue the injured.