President's message - Education, instruction, and motivation

Two of my side interests are history and language, and so it is not surprising that the history and origin of words are also passions of mine. The Latin word campus, meaning field, is of particular significance to me. Before spending virtually my entire professional career on college campuses, I grew up in the small town of Champion, Ohio, whose name derives from the word campus. In medieval times, a knight would go out into the field to fight for a cause, thereby becoming a “champion” of that cause. Since presumably the only way to remain in the field for long was to be victorious, the word came to be associated with the winner. I now live in Champaign, Illinois, whose name is also derived from the Latin word campus and means a flat open landscape. Anyone who has been to central Illinois can confirm that its flatness is “as obvious as daylight in an open field” or, as Shakespeare would say, “daylight and champaign discovers not more.”