University of Calgary

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University of Calgary
U of Calgary Coat of Arms

Motto Mo Shùile Togam Suas
(Gaelic: I will lift up my eyes)
Established 1966
Type Public
Endowment $345M[1]
Chancellor William J Warren
President Harvey Philip Weingarten
Students 28,228 total
Location Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Campus Urban, 2.13 km²
Mascot Rex
Website www.ucalgary.ca

The University of Calgary is a public university located in the north-western quadrant of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University is composed of approximately 23,500 undergraduate and 4,500 graduate students, totalling 28,000 students and was founded in 1966.

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[edit] Academics

The University of Calgary offers over 100 programmes in post-secondary education awarding bachelors, masters, and doctorate (Ph.D.) degrees. The University campus has an area of 2.13 km² and hosts, in total, 16 faculties, 53 departments and more than 30 research institutes and centres. Several of the university's more recognized faculties are the Haskayne School of Business, the Schulich School of Engineering, a medical school (MD), a law school (LLB), and in 2008 a veterinary school. The full-time teaching staff at the University is made up of 1,917 people.

The university has 16 faculties (17 after the opening of the veterinary school in 2008):

[edit] Rankings and Reputation

The University of Calgary is ranked in the 151-200 area in the Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is given a regional rank (encompassing the Americas) of 76-98. It's national rank is in the area of 6-8.

Webometrics University Rankings[2] ranks the University of Calgary 59th in the USA and Canada category and 71st in the world. It is ranked 5th in Canada.

Research Infosource[3] ranks the top 50 research universities in Canada each year. Calgary is currently ranked 7th.

The University of Calgary's Haskayne's School of Business is internationally renowned for it's strengths in many areas of undergraduate business. In 2006, at the prestigious Inter-Collegiate Business Competition, hosted annually by Queen's University, Calgary continued to outperform and rank at the top in each area of the competition. Twenty-eight Canadian Undegraduate Business schools, along with three from outside Canada competed to solve complex business problems, and complete business cases. Calgary topped the rankings in the areas of Business Policy, Debating, Finance, Labour Arbitration, Marketing and Management Information Systems. It ranked third in Accounting, missing out on the top 3 in just one category. Calgary by far came out as the most successful school at the competition, being one of only four schools to be ranked in the top 3 in more than one category (seven out of eight in Calgary's case). [4]

For years, the University of Calgary has consistently ranked low in Maclean's rankings. In 2005, it was ranked 14th out of 15th in the medical-doctoral category; improving slightly in the 2006 issue of the rankings to 13th.[5] The University of Calgary and a number of other universities have argued that the methodology Maclean's Magazine uses takes data out of context and is innacurate for a true reflection of the performance of a school. After numerous requests for change and no action being taken on part of Maclean's, in 2006, 21 prominent universities along with the University of Calgary, many of those being part of the leading group of research universities known as the G13, decided to opt out of the rankings.[6]

[edit] Facilities

The university is home to the MacEwan Hall Ballroom, which is a live concert venue designed to hold about 1000 people. The Ballroom has been used for numerous concerts throughout the years, but has also been used for conferences, dinners, and even political debates, most recently the 2006 Alberta PC leadership debate.

Aside from the ballroom, the University also has the Roza Centre, a theater and concert hall located on the south west side of campus, just off of 24th Ave. NW. The Centre hosts wind ensembles, choirs, and many other fine arts performances. Many musical competitions are held at the Centre every year. The Rosza Centre can host 384 people. The University Theater is also on campus and is designed for plays and other acting oriented performances and has seating for 504 people. The Theater is located directly beside the Rosza Centre.[7]

The campus is also home to the Black Lounge. For several years, The Black Lounge was the only room at the university where smoking cigarettes was allowed and it thus inherited the nickname The Black Lung. Throughout most of the 1990s, the room was used as a live music venue by promoters involved in Calgary's all ages punk scene. Its capacity for live music was about 350 people.

[edit] Athletics

The university is represented in CanadaWest a division of Canadian Interuniversity Sport and in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference by the Calgary Dinos. The campus is the home of the Olympic Oval, a multi-purpose ice arena, site of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games acclaimed as the fastest ice in the world. It holds a 400m long track oval as well as a short track ice surface and a hockey rink. The campus also holds the Jack Simpson Gymnasium, father David Bauer Arena (2 ice hockey rinks) and McMahon Stadium home of the Dinos and the Calgary Stampeders. The dinos compete in 12 sports, Basketball, Cross-Country, Field Hockey, Football, Golf, Hockey, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Volleyball, Wrestling.

[edit] Residence

Kananaskis Hall
Enlarge
Kananaskis Hall

The residence buildings on campus can house up to 1500 students, situated in eight buildings, all named after mountains in the Canadian Rockies. The two "traditional" buildings on campus are called Rundle Hall and Kananaskis Hall and were built in the early 1960s when the university relocted to its present campus. Five newer buildings named Glacier, Olympus, Norquay, Brewster, and Castle Halls were built just prior to the 1988 Winter Olympics to act as the athletes’ Olympic Village during the games. However, each of these buildings are considerably smaller than the traditional buildings, being only two or three stories tall, and housing between 10 to 30 students on each floor. The newest building, Cascade Hall, is considerably different from the previous five buildings in design, being five stories, making it the third largest residence building, and the size of its floors being able to house many more students than the preceding five buildings. Aside from this difference, the newest six buildings are all designed in the style of apartments whereby there is one hallway on each floor with sets of rooms that can accommodate up to a maximum of four people each. This is in contrast to the two traditional buildings which are designed with three separate hallways on each floor, with each hallway having rooms only capable of accommodating two people each, along with a common area at the centre of the building on each floor.

A new building, called International House is currently being designed to house an additional 200 international students, instructors and conference attendees. This building is being constructed as part of the University's $1.5 billion dollar capital program, and anticipates welcoming its first residents in September 2008.

[edit] Media

  • Campus Newspaper - "OnCampus"
  • Student Newspaper - "The Gauntlet"
  • Campus Radio Station - CJSW
  • Campus Television - "NUTV"

[edit] Alumni

[edit] Campus gallery

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ University of Calgary: Report to the Community: "We are in the Top 10 in endowments and annual fundraising. Our endowment has grown from $256M in 2001 to $330M."
  2. ^ Webometrics University Rankings
  3. ^ Research Infosource
  4. ^ Inter-Collegiate Business Competition 2006 Rankings
  5. ^ Maclean's - University ranking
  6. ^ U of C Gauntlet - Opting out of Maclean's ranking
  7. ^ About the University

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


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