Advancing our community
LAS influence
The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is filled with accomplished, thoughtful, and dedicated faculty, staff, students, and alumni whose work influences many advancements throughout our community. LAS strives to address the world’s fundamental problems and grand challenges through indispensable research, innovative courses, and an ingrained focus on diversity.
Read on to learn how the College of LAS is advancing our community in Urbana-Champaign and beyond.
Travel the medieval world in your own backyard
Kalani Craig's Virtual Medieval Pilgrimages project
What if you could go on a medieval pilgrimage without ever leaving campus? That’s the idea behind professor Kalani Craig’s Virtual Medieval Pilgrimages (VMP) project, which was recently awarded the College of LAS Cohen Innovation Award.
Craig is a medievalist and digital historian who designs digital tools and platforms that can be used in research, classrooms, and communities. She wanted to create an opportunity for people to not just read about medieval pilgrimages but experience one for themselves.
Inspired by geocaching (a game where people find treasures at various GPS coordinates), Craig created a web-based app that maps pilgrimage sites from across the world onto physical locations on campus.
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"I started thinking about what it would be like to find a treasure that's not physical. Pilgrimage is exactly that experience. When you go as a medieval person, you're going to find spiritual treasure or intellectual gains," said Craig. “There's all sorts of ways to get at these experiences people in the Middle Ages would have had by making people walk. Then they also get the contemplative nature of physical movement. They’re not just sitting and fiddling with their phones.”
940 Feet series
Join LAS professors and students for a stroll on the Quad, and learn more about the influential people advancing our community.
Antarctic expedition shapes ESEC PhD student Rose Malanga’s research
Rose Malanga researches the different processes that cause sea ice to form and grow, and whether those processes are changing as the climate changes.
Ying Diao discusses research on chirality and energy efficiency
Diao studies how chirality — asymmetry in molecules and physical structures — might be able to make electronics more energy-efficient.
How does the film ‘The Odyssey’ compare with Homer’s epic poem?
Classics professor Eduardo García-Molina discusses how “The Odyssey” film compares with Homer’s epic poem and the story’s relevance today.
Faculty research
The College of LAS has more than 600 faculty experts working on the world’s fundamental problems and grand challenges. Learn about their work.
