Neil Rackers

The University of Illlinois at Urbana-Champaign is a coeducational research university in the state of Illinois in the United States. It is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Illinois System. The university comprises 18 Colleges that offer more than 150 programs of study.... Additionally, the university operates an extension that serves 2.7 million registrants per year around the state of Illinois and beyond. The campus holds over 286 buildings on 1,468 acres in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, and boasts an annual budget of nearly $1.5 billion. As of 30 June 2007, the University of Illinois Foundation—a systemwide endowment—totals at $2.197 billion.U.S. News & World Report ranked Illinois as the eighth-best public university in the United States in 2008. Enrollment in the fall of 2007 was 42,326, which included students from all 50 states and more than 123 nations. Of these, 30,895 were undergraduates and 11,431 were graduate students. Until 1998, Illinois was one of the 10 largest universities in the United States in terms of student enrollment.
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Florissant is a second-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in northern St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. The city has a total population of 52,158 in 2010 census. The exact date the first settlers went to the Valley of Florissant is unknown, but it is one of the oldest settlements in the... state of Missouri. Some historians believe it was settled about the same time as St. Louis. The first civil government was formed in 1786 by Francois Dunegant dit Borosier who served as the civil and military commandant. Spanish archives in Havana reveal there were 40 people and seven plantations in Florissant at the time of the 1787 census. The village, called "Fleurissant," or "Blooming" in English, by its French settlers and "St. Ferdinand" by its Spanish rulers, was a typical French village with its commons and common fields. Originally a separate town, and now an inner suburb of St. Louis, the community was centered on the parish of St. Ferdinand. As late as 1889, the town was predominantly French-speaking .
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