University of Waterloo (commonly referred as Waterloo or UW) is a public research university whose main campus is located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on 400 hectares (990 acres) of land adjacent to Waterloo Park. The university offers a wide variety of academic programs, which are administered by six faculties, and four affiliated university colleges. Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The university traces its origins to 1 July 1957 as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, a semi-autonomous entity of Waterloo College (which later evolved into the present-day Wilfrid Laurier University). The entity had formally separated from Waterloo College in 1959, and was incorporated as a university. The university was established in order to fill the need of a program to train engineers and technicians for Canada’s growing postwar economy. Since then, the university had greatly expanded, adding a faculty of arts in 1960, and the College of Optometry of Ontario moving from Toronto in 1967.
The university is co-educational, and has nearly 26,000 undergraduate and over 4,000 post-graduate students. It also provides a co-operative educational opportunity for grade twelve students in the Waterloo Catholic District School Board through its partnership with the University Co-operative Education Program (UCEP). These high school students originate from home schools in the WCDSB including Resurrection, St. Mary's, St. David's, and St. Benedict's. Students spend first semester of their final year of high school at the University of Waterloo, during which they complete one university course and two high school courses, and work with a professor at the university as a research assistant. Alumni and former students of the university can be found all across Canada and in 141 countries around the world. Waterloo's varsity teams, known as the Waterloo Warriors compete in the Ontario University Athletics conference of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
Read more about University Of Waterloo: History, Campus, Faculties, Academics, Ties With Industry, Plans, Mascots, Coat of Arms, Housing and Residence, Notable Alumni and Faculty
Famous quotes containing the words university of and/or university:
“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)