First Regional Education Center Opens in Hoffman Estates

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As far back as the 1930s, NIU offered classes off-campus. In high schools and church basements throughout the region, teachers and other professionals seeking advancement furthered their education.

Eventually, it became inefficient to offer programs in so many different locations, many of which lacked needed technology.  Some 3,000 students were taking 187 NIU courses in 34 different locations in the northwest suburbs when, in 1989, a study concluded that an ideal location for consolidating all of those classes would be somewhere along Route 59 between I-90 and I-88.

The Village of Hoffman Estates and Sears gave NIU the land on which HEEC is located. From left to right, Senior Vice President Eddie Williams, Hoffman Estates Mayor Michael O’Malley, President La Tourette, and Steven Horvath, president of the NIU Foundation, talk at the facility’s dedication in 1992.

At the same time, Sears, Roebuck and Co. was looking to relocate its vast Merchandise Group central headquarters from the Sears Tower in Chicago to a suburban location. In 1990, the Village of Hoffman Estates gave Sears land for a development called Prairie Stone Town Center, and with urging from NIU alumni in Sears leadership, as well as Village Mayor Michael O’Malley, Sears gave a portion of that land to NIU, already outfitted with parking space and utility lines.

For its part, NIU said new state funding would not be needed, as the $6 million building would be financed by a student “service delivery fee” for off-campus courses, as well as a lease-purchase agreement through First Chicago Corporation.

Arguments against the plan came from a number of private institutions operating in the area—most notably Roosevelt University. They feared competition from a public university able to offer courses at a significantly lower cost, but that very advantage eventually won the day. The Board of Regents approved the project in September 1990, followed by the IBHE in December.

The Hoffman Estates Education Center (HEEC) is a 46,000 square foot facility with 23 classrooms, an auditorium, a library, two computer labs, and staff and faculty offices.  It opened in the fall of 1992.

The Hoffman Estates Education Center was the first of three such centers established by NIU to consolidate off-campus class locations.

 

Rockford

State Senator and NIU alumnae Joyce Holmberg ’52 pushed for state money to establish NIU – Rockford.

For NIU’s entire history, its close relationship with Rockford has been complicated. DeKalb beat out Rockford in the 1895 competition to site the new state normal school. Northern offered courses in Rockford since the 1930s, but over the years, City leadership urged the university to establish a physical presence in the City of Rockford.

Actually, the proposal for an NIU Rockford Education Center originated not with NIU but with the Rockford state legislative delegation and the City of Rockford. Democratic state senators Joyce Holmberg, an NIU alumna, and E.J. “Zeke” Giorgi and Republican state representative John Hallock joined forces to gain approval and state funding for an NIU facility in Rockford.

Some controversy arose over the location of the Rockford center, with some favoring a downtown location and others a location near the Northwest Tollway (I-90). In the end, a ten-acre tract of land just off the tollway was donated to the University, and construction funds were released by Gov. Jim Edgar in January 1994.

The center was completed and opened in August 1995, with initial course offerings including graduate classes in business, engineering technology and education; a bachelor’s degree completion program in nursing, and courses leading to the bachelor’s in general studies.

NIU’s Rockford Education Center is the only one of the three regional centers built with state dollars.

 

Naperville

The final NIU regional education center to be built was the largest of the three. The population growth in DuPage County in the 1980s and 1990s far surpassed other areas in northern Illinois and included a much larger concentration of college-educated, working adults than any other part of the state.

Several other institutions had already moved into DuPage County, and President John La Tourette spent a great deal of time convincing those competitors (as well as the IBHE) that there were plenty of customers to go around.

While some pushed the idea of a single, multi-university center in DuPage County, LaTourette and his administrative staff created a business plan for an NIU facility that would include income from tenants and revenue-generating programs – no state money requested.

Among the first tenants who helped pay the bills were NIU’s Business and Industry Services (BIS); North Central Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL) and the East-West Corporate Corridor Association (EWCCA).

NIU-Naperville was constructed on 11.2 acres of land at 1100 E. Diehl Road at a cost of $20 million. It was a two-story building nearly three times the size of Hoffman Estates or Rockford at 114,000 square feet.

The last and largest of NIU’s regional centers opened in 2000 in Naperville.

 

In addition to the many modern, sunlit classrooms and computer labs, NIU-Naperville was built with revenue-generation in mind:  It featured a large auditorium and 4,500-square foot multi-purpose area for conferences, and a beautifully landscaped commons area, highly desired for weddings. It opened in fall of 2000.

Initial program offerings included master’s degrees in business administration, finance, computer science, public administration, and education.

By 2010, all three centers were playing a critical role in strengthening NIU’s identity as a public institution engaged with its region. In 2013, the impact of these regional centers helped NIU win the inaugural Innovation and Economic Prosperity award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU).