TL;DR: The staff found at this institution (that I...

TL;DR: The staff found at this institution (that I've interacted with) are knowledgeable, helpful, and willing to go the extra mile.

I'll start off by saying that I didn't attend this school. I did, however, run into a very nasty spider problem in my apartment a month ago. Distressed, I turned to the tool I knew best and Googled ways to identify spiders. Realizing that I was not an expert at spider identification, I wanted to find someone that was. I proceeded to Google "best entomology department" which led me to the entomology department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Excited with my finding, I emailed their department head and explained my situation. I wasn't expecting much, but it was worth a shot.

To my surprise, she responded not even an hour later putting me in touch with their resident arthropod expert! Fast-forward a couple weeks and I had some evidence for them to examine (I caught three spiders in an hour, no big deal). Their expert responded to my email first thing in the morning with some bad news (they were brown recluse spiders, lucky me). But the bad news is beside the point. These people took time out of their lives to lend their expertise to a layman in his time of need. Is that not the epitome of academia? Universities everywhere have something to learn from the staff found at this institution. Flashy websites and notable alumni are important, but providing help through human-to-human interaction is the foundation of a good educator. If I'm not eaten alive by a brown recluse beforehand, I will strongly consider this university for my children.