Welcome to Northern Illinois University just outside Chicago land. I'm your host Sheana Jeanne and the tour kicks off right here on Castle Drive which is home to the oldest building on campus. Northern Illinois University is located in Dekalb, Illinois. Most of the entertainment and shopping amenities with any large suburb can also be found here. The main NIU campus covers 755 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds including creeks, lagoons, and a mix of modern and classic buildings.
For the east lagoon, it's a nice place to come hang out. It's one of the more scenic areas on campus. You can do fishing, play Frisbee, different things like that, good place to hang out.
Think ice cream but with a thick creamy twist. Northern Illinois students are big fans of frozen custard. This peanut butter cone is only a short walk from campus. There are more than 25,000 students at NIU, 46 percent are men, 54 percent women. And 26 percent are ethnic minorities. More than 800 students are international coming from 88 different nations and the average class size is 28.
Our average profile for entering freshman class for example would be about a 23 on the ACT and ranking the top third of their class so they perform well at their schools and will perform well with us here.
The average annual tuition cost for a newly admitted undergrad who is an Illinois resident is around 9,000 dollars and about 14,000 for out of staters. Room and board is roughly an additional 8,500 dollars. Northern Illinois offers 55 undergraduate majors, 75 graduate programs including 10 PhDs and a law school. Some student favorites are teacher education, communication studies, and psychology.
Our engineering college is actually adding a lot more emphasis to get involved with some of the more nanotechnology to speak. The biomedics as far as engineering is concerned. Northern has also been a part of a new proton cancer lab that's gonna built in the western suburbs. So we have a lot of things, a lot of things revolving around the science areas that Northern is a big part of. And our science programs are meteorology, chemistry, biochem, really just top drawer. In fact our physics program here at NIU, we have such strong ties with Fermilab in Argonne National Laboratory that some of our faculty are the actual project managers for programs over there. And our students can actually be a part of that.
US News and World Report has ranked NIU's College of Business among the best business colleges in the country, and even made the listing of America's Best Colleges and Program. Can you see yourself on the stage? Well then make sure you check out NIU School of Theater and Theater Dance. This school got connections around the world. Students can spend a month's training at the Moscow Art Theater School. NIU has over 1,000 faculties, 75 percent are fulltime. About 500 professors are tenured with another 200 on the tenure track and virtually all faculties have a PhD or terminal degree.
In my course, I have a fairly unique way of introducing some fairly complicated material. I had students actually playing video games that I'd created. A lot of the engineering content is embedded in the video game and they have to program the cars that drive around virtual worlds and in the same time they're learning computational methods and a lot of engineering content that we try to teach them.
The NIU Huskies competed at the NCAA Division 1 Mid American Conference. NIU has five residence hall complexes and a separate apartment style facility for graduate, nontraditional, or students with families.
We also have some extra residential offices for our students as well. So for example, we have a business house that is all made up of young men and women who are studying business here at Northern. But that's also run by our college of business so that we have our business faculty participate with this people living over in that particular house. And we have CEOs from other companies come in and talk to them about what they're looking for new employees coming to the school, businesses as well. So some real advantages for living in Northern--here at NIU.
You can choose from more than 200 student clubs and organizations including fraternities and sororities. Feeling athletic? NIU also boasts a full slate of intramural sports. Nothing, says Homer Simpson, like a pink frosted doughnut. NIU alum Dan Castellaneta is the voice of the Springfield TV star. Hmm, doughnuts. Huh, doh! Plus Jimmy Chamberlin, the drummer of the Smashing Pumpkins is also a Northern Illinois alum. Ready to get down to business or put on your dancing shoes? Huskies are waiting for you at Northern Illinois University. Thanks for joining me here, hope you guys had a great time.
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