Illinois will officially welcome the newest class of students at New Student Convocation at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 23 at State Farm Center.
Lynne M. Thomas, head of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will be the New Student Convocation speaker.
Thomas was the first in her family to go away to college and graduated from Illinois in 1999 with an MS in library and information science from the School of Information Sciences.
A huge fan of science fiction, she is the winner of eight Hugo Awards, the longest-running prize for science fiction/fantasy.
Today, she manages nearly 600,000 volumes and over 5,000 cubic feet of manuscripts at the Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library—the largest publicly accessible university rare book and manuscript collection in the nation.
New Student Convocation will also include a welcome from Chancellor Robert J. Jones and Provost Andreas Cangellaris.
At the event, new Illini will meet future professors, get an idea of what it means to be an Illinois student, and receive a warm welcome from the Marching Illini.
For more details on events for new students, view the full Welcome Days schedule.
