Established in 1958, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) is the academic consortium of twelve major research and teaching universities. Its programs and activities extend to all aspects of university activity except intercollegiate athletics. Collectively, the CIC institutions annually engage in more than $6 billion of funded research, employ over 33,000 faculty members, and enroll some four hundred thousand undergraduate, graduate, and professional students on their campuses. CIC universities confer more than 15 percent of all of all Ph.D. degrees awarded nationally, nearly 20% of all PhDs in engineering, chemistry and computer science, and nearly 25% of all PhDs in agriculture.

Our member universities collaborate to increase minority student access to graduate education, and our keystone program in this area is the CIC Summer Research Opportunities Program. SROP provides faculty-mentored summer research experiences and enrichment activities to help prepare students for graduate study. This summer we are celebrating our 21st annual SROP research conference where we will convene more than 500 undergraduate researchers. In addition, the conference will bring together program alumni, faculty and staff from our member campuses and other supporters. The theme for the conference this year is "Building Your Future One Brick at a Time".

To learn more about the programs of the CIC, including SROP, please visit www.cic.uiuc.edu .