Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a public research university with a campus of about 1,100 acres south of the downtown. The campus is attractive for a Midwest state university — mature trees, open quads, and the Thompson Woods nature area at the southern edge where trails wind through old-growth forest. The Shryock Auditorium, an ornate 1920s building modelled on Thomas Jefferson's architecture, is the most striking structure.

The university's Touch of Nature Environmental Center provides outdoor recreation facilities and programmes for students and visitors, including canoe rentals and overnight camping at Little Grassy Lake. The campus also contains the University Museum with collections spanning art, natural history, and archaeology.

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A story
SIU Carbondale was founded in 1869 as a normal school for teacher training. By the 1960s, under president Delyte Morris, it had transformed into a research university attracting some remarkable figures — Buckminster Fuller taught here, as did John Gardner, the artist-trickster who wrote Grendel and The Sunlight Dialogues. The university's enrolment peaked at over 24,000 students in the late 1960s and the campus was a centre of anti-Vietnam War activism; a student strike in May 1970 closed the university for weeks.