Twin Cities Illini Club Committees
Learn more about what the TC Illini Club has to offer
We hold several types of events throughout the year. We also offer an annual scholarship.
Select a topic below to learn more. Refer to the calendar for actual dates, times, and locations.
Professional Development Series
This series will feature local Illinois alumni as speakers and provide opportunities for networking. Check the club calendar for a list of upcoming events.
Community Service Projects
The Twin Cities Illini Club performs volunteer service so that we can positively
impact the lives of others as well as our own lives. Our service projects are
opportunities to use our skills and energy to respond to the needs of our
community. At the same time, we are able to interact with our fellow Illini,
families, and friends with a sense of teamwork and fulfillment.
Our club's service projects generally have taken place
on a quarterly basis; the fall project is in conjunction with the University's
"iHelp" initiative (see below). We have been helping several Twin Cities-based agencies
with a variety of activities. Here are just a few examples of what we have done in the past.
- Painted rooms in the group homes that
Wingspan Life Resources manages for the developmentally disabled
- Worked
in the warehouse for Bridging, to help them provide furniture and other
household goods for families in transition
- Packed family meal boxes
for the Emergency Foodshelf Network
We look forward to future projects with as
much Illini participation as possible, and we welcome ideas for those
projects.
iHelp, You Help, We all Help
iHelp is
a volunteer initiative organized by the Student
Alumni Ambassadors that unites current University of Illinois
students with the Champaign-Urbana Community as well as participating Alumni
around the world. Visit ihelpillinois.org for more
info.
In the
weeks and weekends leading up to Homecoming, UIUC students organize community
service projects serving the Champaign-Urbana agency. Over 50 agencies in the
C-U community were served in 2011 via iHelp. To unite the global Illini
community in service, the iHelp organizers also have encouraged alumni groups to
conduct service projects in their respective communities and report the events
to iHelp.
We in
the Twin Cities Illini Club contributed to iHelp in the fall of 2011 with our
service project at the Emergency Foodshelf Network. We look forward to a project in the fall of 2012 for the next iHelp
initiative.
Please contact Paul Lubinski (317-224-7950, lubinski3nm@yahoo.com) if you have
project ideas or you want to iHelp out!
Alumni Family Picnic and Student Send-off
We hold an annual picnic where we bring incoming and current students as well as alumni and their families for a picnic, networking, and games at a local park. This is a great opportunity for students and alumni alike.
We also hold a raffle and silent auction to raise money for our annual scholarship. Additionally, we have several student-only prizes, such as a $100 Illini Union bookstore gift card. We also take this opportunity to meet and congratuate our current year's scholarship winner.
The event is generally held in early August prior to the students heading off to Champaign-Urbana. Check the events calendar for the specific date, time, and location of our event this year.
For each men's basketball and football game, we reserve tables at Champps in Richfield to watch the games together as fellow alumni. We are the only Big 10 alumni group who holds these for all games. If a particular sport advances to a championship round (such as women's volleyball), we will add special gamewatches for those events. Champps is easily
accessible just south of the intersection of I-35W and Hwy 62. Check the club calendar for a list of upcoming game dates.
For games that are played here in Minnesota, we do not hold a game watch, but rather purchase a block of tickets to see the live action and generally have a pre or post-game party depending on the time of the game.
We typically have 10-25 people come to our gamewatches,
depending whether the game is on a weeknight or weekend, weather, who they are playing, and how the team
is doing. We also have co-gamewatches
with other local Big Ten alumni clubs such as Michigan
State, Northwestern, Michigan and Purdue. For these co-game watches, when the game is being played in Champaign we host at
Champps, and when the Illini are the road team our group typically travels to
their gamewatch site.
Gamewatch updates are e-mailed
to members generally once a week. The distribution list for these weekly e-mails is
kept separate from the main TC Illini Club distribution list in order to send this information only to those who are interested. If you are interested in
receiving these e-mails, please send an e-mail to Suresh Sreenivasan at sureshks1@msn.com.
Local Sporting Events
As mentioned in the Game watch section of this page, if the Illini come to town, we purchase a block of tickets to attend the game in-person. We always do this for men's basketball and football and women's volleyball. Depending on how other sports are doing, we may arrange for additional in-person events. Most events are accompanied by a pre or post game party. Check the calendar of events for details and ticket purchase options. By purchasing a block of tickets, we generally get a discounted ticket price without any fees and are able to donate that discount to our annual scholarship fund.
We also occassionally arrange for a block of tickets to other local sports teams, such as the Timberwolves or the St. Paul Saints. Watch the calendar for specific events.
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