My oldest daughter is headed to her freshman year at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) in the late summer. Like most major universities they have a ham radio organization: the Synton Amateur Radio Club (W9YH).
Their website had been unused since January 2016 until a recent post in April 2024. It looks like the club is trying to revive itself.
In digging around for more information I found Sean Kutzko, KX9X, who got his radio amateur start at the Synton Amateur Radio Club… not as a student, but as the the child of a staff member. He captured his generally fond memories of gaining experience with the university hams in a post on the DX Engineering blog: On All Bands.
The club’s origins back to 1925. There must be quite a bit of history concerning the club but none to find on their website.
Champaign Urbana has a Groups.io. There is also the Twin City Amateur Radio Club that hosts a 2m repeater (K9CU, 146.760, – offset, tone 162.2) and a D-Star repeater (W9YR, 443.48125). It would appear that the 2m repeater hosts an Echolink connection: node 8231, although I am not sure if it is functional.
The 2m repeater has Broadcastify.
We will see if my daughter ends up participating in the club, I hope it provides some opportunities to explore the hobby.