The university of illinois, college of engineering (uicoe) proposes a renewed cooperative agreement that will continue a long-standing USGS presence on their campus

This presence affords the USGS the opportunity to expand the collaborative scientific relationship with university, provide better access to a high quality and diverse student employee population, and provide enhanced staff access to university facilities, including research laboratories, libraries, classes, as well as research equipment, including a multi-beam echo sounder and experimental flumes for study of riverine morphology and hydraulics. The USGS and uicoe share common interest and expertise in the areas of water resources, with specific expertise in stream and groundwater hydrology and water quality. The hydrologic field methods course, jointly taught by USGS and uicoe staff for more than 10 years , 1) exposes undergraduate and graduate students of the nationally ranked engineering college (as well as newer USGS technical staff) to the facilities, researchers, and world-standard field collection, quality assurance, and data archiving practices of USGS, 2) provides an avenue for recruitment of top quality service-ready employees, and 3) ensures an ever-expanding equipped study site on UI property for cutting edge hydrologic and biologic science research in collaboration between the USGS, uicoe and others. Collaboration between the USGS and uicoe focused on the chicago sanitary ship canal employs prohibitively expensive research equipment of the uicoe, data-collection capabilities and equipment of the USGS, and mutual expertise in fluvial modeling and ratings development. The ongoing research of more than 20 years ensures conformance to multi-state water-use agreements ensuring sustainable great lakes water resources and prevention of invasion of the ecologically disruptive asian carp into the great lakes.