Avast, ye mates! The Great Cardboard Boat Regatta
draws spectators and participants from around the world.

Engineering and Art and Design students compete (along with everybody else who wants to try their hands) in the Great Cardboard Boat Regatta, an April tradition on SIU's Campus Lake since 1973. The SIU race is the inspiration for other cardboard boat races held all across the globe, and it has captured the attention of MTV and network television. Competitors are allowed to use little more than corrugated cardboard and glue. Races take place in several divisions, and there are awards for artistic value- boats are often fashioned as tanks, Volkswagon Beetles, and other strange but wonderful creations. Most of the boats sink, and watching the crews abandon ship is half the fun. The other half is seeing how far a little ingenuity can go, and you can join in and test your skills.

Engineering and Automotive Technology students learn practical skills. The student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, for example, enters the annual Society of Automotive Engineers Formula One race- building a car from scratch and competing in categories like speed and fuel economy. There's a lot of fun to be had in learning, too-- in 2001, Team SIU Robots, consisting of SIU engineering students, created Nibbler and entered it in the former Comedy Central program Battlebots (hosted by SIU Radio/TV alumnus Bill Dwyer).

Former Battlebots host and SIU
Radio/TV alum Bill Dwyer with
Team SIU Robots' Battlebot, Nibbler.

Writers and journalists can work for, or submit material to, a number of locally based publications. Carbondale is home to two weekly newspapers (the Carbondale Times and Nightlife) and two dailies (the Southern Illinoisan and the student paper, the Daily Egyptian). Numerous arts and literature journals, from the internationally distributed Crab Orchard Review to the English Department's student publication, Grassroots, accept submissions.

The SIU Debate Team is one of the best in the nation. In 1999, the National Debate Tournament ranked SIU number nine, and in 1998, the Salukis had the number three varsity team and were number four overall. Varsity debate held the number thirty-five position in the nation in 2004 By SIU's Debate Team regularly trounces Ivy League schools, as well as such elite institutions as Stanford, Northwestern, and Notre Dame.

SIU students are helping new owner
Bill Perk restore the old old
geodesic dome at 407 South Forest Street in Carbondale where
Professor Buckminster Fuller lived.

Psychology, Social Work, and Rehabilitation majors volunteer, intern, or even find pre-degree professional employment in numerous agencies and businesses throughout the region. SIU is twenty minutes from a state psychiatric hospital, the Clyde L. Choate Mental Health and Development Center in Anna. Students, under the supervision of professionals, help to staff SIU's Clinical Center, which provides help to students and community members. Carbondale is home to the Center for Comprehensive Services, one of the preeminent head-injury treatment facilities in the nation.

Law students get practical experience by providing free assistance at the Self-Help Legal Center. Archeology, Forestry, Botany, Biology, Zoology, and Fisheries majors map, hike, and study the geography, flora and fauna of the surrounding Shawnee National Forest. SIU is the home of the Center fer Dewey Studies, the chief repository for information on America's great philosopher, John Dewey...

We could go on.... but you get the picture.