Endowments
The Department of Physics, through the University of Illinois Foundation, offers its alumni and friends an number of current and deferred gift options to help maintain the excellence that is the tradition of Physics Illinois. Another option is to donate to existing named endowments that provide recognition for our outstanding students.
These options include the following types of gifts, which are typically established through permanent endowment funds:
Endowed Chairs and Professorships
Your gift can help us create an intellectual environment in which the finest scholars can flourish. By providing full or supplementary compensation, as well as discretionary funds for equipment, communications, conference travel, research assistants, and other scholarly essentials, endowments are more and more making the difference between good departments and great ones. Our goal is to provide an endowed chair for every member of the National Academy of Sciences in our Department, a fitting tribute to those at the pinnacle of the world's elite.
Named Fellowships
Your vision can ensure that we continue to attract the best and the brightest students to our graduate programs. A top-ranked physics department is judged as much by the quality of its alumni as it is by the quality of its faculty, and we are currently at a recruiting disadvantage vis à vis the private universities who are able to offer prospective students a wide range of privately endowed fellowships.
Undergraduate Scholarships
You can make it possible for the most highly qualified students to attend the University of Illinois, while continuing students are provided with the incentive and financial security to focus their best efforts on their academic pursuits. With dramatically increased education costs and fewer state scholarships than ever before, supplemental student assistance funds provide valuable resources for a large number of our students.
Undergraduate Research Support
For less than the cost of a new car, you can make it possible for talented undergraduate students in perpetuity to do hands-on experiments at the cutting edge of physics research. Such opportunities give students invaluable skills for their future careers. Research experience has also been shown to be the most effective way of keeping women and minority students in science and engineering, and increasing the diversity of physics is one of our fundamental goals.
Equipment and Technology
State-of-the-art facilities and equipment are crucial to maintaining instructional and research programs of the highest quality. Support for equipment and technology provides faculty and students with the infrastructure necessary to promote quality physics education and address the critical research questions of the 21st Century.
For more information about these and other giving opportunities or to discuss your private giving plans, please contact Celia Elliott, Director of External Affairs and Special Projects, Department of Physics, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801-3080, or telephone (1) 217-244-7725.
We look forward to hearing from you!