ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Chicago, Ill., U.S. It comprises the Armour College of Engineering and Science, the Lewis College of Liberal Arts, the Institute of Design, the Stuart School of Business, the Chicago-Kent College of Law, the Graduate School, and the College of Architecture. In addition to undergraduate studies, the institute offers graduate degree programs in the sciences and design, and the law school awards a doctorate in jurisprudence. The main campus is located on the south side of Chicago; there are also a campus in downtown Chicago and two suburban campuses in Wheaton and Bedford Park. Research facilities associated with the institute include the National Center for Food Safety and Technology, the Academy of Railroads, and the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute. Total enrollment is approximately 7,000. The history of the institute began in 1890 with the founding of the Armour Institute of Technology. In 1940 the Armour Institute merged with the Lewis Institute (founded in 1896) to form the Illinois Institute of Technology. Leading figures from the German Bauhaus school, notably architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, became important to the institute's development. Mies, longtime head of the institute's architecture department, designed many of the buildings on the main campus. The Institute of Design was founded as the New Bauhaus in 1937 by Moholy-Nagy; it joined the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1949.