Program Locations

SEAYLP takes participants on a wonderful tour of American locations (thought feel free to share about locations of participant origins), including Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Sycamore, Leaf River, and Chicago within Illinois, and Washington, DC. Check here for more information and media about these locations. Program Location Illinois is the fifth-most populous state in the USA and the most populous state in the Midwest region. Sixty-five percent of its residents are concentrated in “Chicagoland,” so most of the state has either a rural or a small town character. Illinois has industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River. Growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Railroads and John Deere's self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars. In the early 1900’s, many African Americans from the South migrated to Chicago for work, established a large community that created the city's famous jazz and blues scene. Illinois is a leading producer of soybeans, corn, and swine. It also produces cattle, wheat, oats, sorghum, hay, sheep, poultry, fruits and vegetables, buckwheat, horseradish, ostriches, fish, and Christmas trees. Illinois' 76,000 farms cover more than 28 million acres, almost 80 percent of the state's total land area. The average size of an Illinois farm, including hobby farms, is 368 acres with most acreage devoted to grain, mainly corn and soybeans. Nearly 10 percent of Illinois farms have swine, 23 percent have beef cows, and about 3 percent have dairy cows. Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public state university with over 22,000 students and nearly 1,200 faculty members. The main campus is located in DeKalb, Illinois, approximately 65 miles west of Chicago. It also has campuses in Rockford, Hoffman Estates, and Naperville to provide distance education to those areas. NIU was founded as a normal school or teaching college, but now includes colleges of Business, Engineering and Engineering Technology, Health and Human Science, Liberal Arts and Science, and Visual and Performing Arts as well as Education. There are 57 undergraduate majors and 80 graduate programs, including 20 Ph.D. programs. Undergraduate enrollment is approximately 16,000 and enrollment in graduate or law school stands at about 6,000. NIU has moral commitments to supporting diversity and service. Such programs like University in Diversity and multicultural clubs on campus, are “designed to acknowledge, educate, and celebrate the diversity of the Northern Illinois University campus community relative to race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, religion, and physical ability.” The student population comes from various ethnic backgrounds, with approximately 40% of the student body being made up by ethnic minorities. Additionally, there are almost 800 international students from 122 different nations also attending NIU. The university also believes in enriching learning through experience and through service, through activities such as internships, study abroad, and community learning. NIU is represented in crimson and black and by the huskies mascot, Victor E. Huskie. It is a NCAA Division 1 University in the Mid-American Conference for their sports. This means that there is a great deal of team spirit on campus related to various sports, such as baseball, basketball, football (the major Fall sport), golf, gymnastics, running, soccer, tennis, volleyball, and wrestling. DeKalb, Illinois is only a little over an hour from downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport. Despite this, DeKalb maintains its own unique character as a university community with both urban and rural roots. DeKalb has much to explore and enjoy with historical buildings, national and local entertainment, in addition to shopping, dining and recreation. DeKalb is known as the “Barb City,” because Joseph F. Glidden invented barbed wire here. The City of DeKalb was earlier a manufacturing and agricultural town – famous for their corn. Now it is a community of 45,749, in addition to students attending NIU. Some of the highlights of DeKalb are its classic downtown, running a short distance along Lincoln Highway, the Barb Wire Museum, the Ellwood house, and the Kishwaukee River. In the downtown there are local businesses, cafes, bars, and restaurants, including thrift stores, sporting goods, hip gift shops, sports bars, and two Thai restaurants. There is additional shopping and restaurants along Sycamore Road. Just north of DeKalb, is the city of Sycamore with around 17,000 residents. Sycamore is also a picturesque American town, with a courthouse, a central business district, and historic homes. While distinct towns, DeKalb and Sycamore blur into each other, with the business corridor and the Kishwaukee healthcare area running along Sycamore Road and DeKalb Road between. Many of NIU students, staff and faculty live in Sycamore. Chicago has numerous nicknames, including: "Chi-town," "Windy City," "Second City," and the "City of Big Shoulders." Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois and the third largest city in the USA, behind New York and Los Angeles. It has nearly 2.7 million residents and the metropolitan area, often called "Chicagoland," which has around 9.5 million people includes parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of around 200, and within seven years it grew to over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837. It is located between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. Chicago was a hub between the eastern and western US, with its first railway and the Illinois and Michigan Canal each opening in 1848, and a major manufacturing and retail center, especially meatpacking. The canals allowed access from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and beyond to the Gulf of Mexico. Chicago is a hub for industry, telecommunications and infrastructure, with O'Hare International Airport being the second busiest airport in the world. It is a center for business and finance and is one of the world's top ten Global Financial Centers. Chicago can also proudly call itself the home of the current President of the United States, Barack Obama. Around 1900, Chicago experienced difficult as its water supplies became contaminated with sewage and industrial waste from the Chicago River, which flowed into Lake Michigan, polluting the primary source of fresh water for the city. In 1900, the city undertook a major engineering feat that reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that water flowed from Lake Michigan into the river. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois and http://www2.illinois.gov/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicagohttp://www.cityofdekalb.com/