Content area
Full text
John Anderson wants Chicago to host the 2016 Olympic Games so bad he can taste it.
"I'm salivating," says Mr. Anderson, president of the Illinois Institute of Technology - the South Side university whose campus would be smack in the middle of the Olympics action.
The games would bring more than a million visitors to the South Side, raising the university's profile and, Mr. Anderson hopes, continuing the transformation of the still-edgy Bronzeville neighborhood that IIT calls home. That could turbocharge his effort to raise the school's profile and enrollment.
He has expressed interest in acquiring part of the proposed athletes village for graduate-student housing and has offered the university's soccer field and some of its other facilities for transportation and non-athlete housing.
Not that Mr. Anderson is waiting for the Olympics to shake up IIT. This month he'll unveil a new five-year plan, including a goal of adding 1,000 students to IIT's enrollment of 7,500, which would provide more technology talent to local companies. And his plan to boost IIT's research prowess could attract more federal funding, which would spawn more companies and jobs.
There's evidence that the Olympics, which will be awarded by the International Olympic Committee on Oct. 2, would benefit IIT. Georgia State University was transformed by the 1996 Atlanta games, says Jeff...