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University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on 404 hectares (998 acres) of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates three satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges.[10][11] The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and thirteen faculty-based schools. Waterloo operates the largest post-secondary co-operative education program in the world, with over 20,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the university's co-op program.[12] Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.[13]

Former names

Waterloo College Associate Faculties (1956–1959)[1]

Concordia cum veritate (Latin)

In harmony with truth

1959 (1959)[2][a]

CA$492 million (2023)[3]

James Rush

1,355[4]

2,691[4]

Urban, 450 hectares (1,112 acres)[6][7]

[8]

King Warrior[9]

The institution originates from the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, established on 4 April 1956; a semi-autonomous entity of Waterloo College, which was an affiliate of the University of Western Ontario.[14] This entity formally separated from Waterloo College and was incorporated as a university with the passage of the University of Waterloo Act by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1959.[2] It was established to fill the need to train engineers and technicians for Canada's growing postwar economy. It grew substantially over the next decade, adding a faculty of arts in 1960, and the College of Optometry of Ontario (now the School of Optometry and Vision Science), which moved from Toronto in 1967.[2]


The university is a co-educational institution, with approximately 36,000 undergraduate and 6,200 postgraduate students enrolled there in 2020.[4] Alumni and former students of the university can be found across Canada and in over 150 countries; with a number of award winners, government officials, and business leaders having been associated with Waterloo.[11] Waterloo's varsity teams, known as the Waterloo Warriors, compete in the Ontario University Athletics conference of the U Sports.

History[edit]

Twentieth century[edit]

The University of Waterloo traces its origins to Waterloo College (present-day Wilfrid Laurier University), the academic outgrowth of Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, which was affiliated with the University of Western Ontario since 1925.[15] When Gerald Hagey assumed the presidency of Waterloo College in 1953, he made it his priority to procure the funds necessary to expand the institution. While the main source of income for higher education in Ontario at the time was the provincial government, the Ontario government made it clear it would not contribute to denominational colleges and universities.[16]


Hagey soon became aware of the steps undertaken by McMaster University to make itself eligible for some provincial funding by establishing Hamilton College as a separate, non-denominational college affiliated with the university.[16] Following that method, Waterloo College established the Waterloo College Associate Faculties on 4 April 1956, as a non-denominational board affiliated with the college.[1] The academic structure of the Associated Faculties was originally focused on co-operative education in the applied sciences—largely built around the proposals of Ira Needles. Needles proposed a different approach towards education, including both studies in the classroom and training in industry that would eventually become the basis of the university's co-operative education program.[17] While the plan was initially opposed by the Engineering Institute of Canada and other Canadian universities, notably the University of Western Ontario, the Associated Faculties admitted its first students in July 1957.[18]


On 25 January 1958, the Associated Faculties announced the purchase of over 74 hectares (180 acres) of land west of Waterloo College. By the end of the same year, the Associated Faculties opened its first building on the site, the Chemical Engineering Building.[19]

University rankings

151–200

115

24

158

190

6–7

5

7

3

2

Donna Strickland, Nobel laureate in physics

Donna Strickland, Nobel laureate in physics

Chris Hadfield, retired Canadian astronaut.

Chris Hadfield, retired Canadian astronaut.

Kevin O'Leary, Canadian businessman, author, politician, and television personality.

Kevin O'Leary, Canadian businessman, author, politician, and television personality.

Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital and minority owner of the Golden State Warriors.

Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital and minority owner of the Golden State Warriors.

Rupi Kaur, popular Canadian poet and author of Milk and Honey.

Rupi Kaur, popular Canadian poet and author of Milk and Honey.

Over 221,000 people have graduated from the university, and now reside in over 150 countries.[232] Waterloo graduates have accumulated a number of awards, such as George Elliott Clarke, recipient of the Governor General's Award; William Reeves, recipient of an Academy Award, and a number of Rhodes Scholarships.[233][234][235] Two members of the university have received the Nobel Prize. In 1999, Robert Mundell was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in monetary dynamics and optimum currency areas.[236] In 2018, university faculty member Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work in laser physics.[237] Other notable awards and positions bestowed on people affiliated with the university includes two Canada Excellence Research Chair laureates, five Killam Prize winners, 74 Canada Research Chairs, and 83 Fellows to the Royal Society of Canada.[238]


A number of business leaders have worked or studied at Waterloo. Examples include David I. McKay, president and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada,[239] Kevin O’Leary, founder of SoftKey,[240] John Baker, founder of Desire2Learn,[241] David Cheriton, co-founder and chief scientist of Arista Networks,[242] Mike Lazaridis, co-founder and former co-CEO of Research in Motion (now BlackBerry Ltd),[243] Prem Watsa, chairman of Fairfax Financial and a former chancellor of the university,[244] Steven Woods, co-founder of NeoEdge Networks and Quack.com[245] and co-founders of Waterloo Maple, Keith Geddes and Gaston Gonnet.[246] Gonnet was also the co-founder of OpenText Corporation.[247] Several faculty members and students have also gained local and national prominence in government. David Johnston, the former president of Waterloo, served as the 28th Governor General of Canada from 2010 to 2017.[248]


A number of the university's faculty and students have also gained prominence in the field of computing sciences. Examples include QNX operating systems co-creators Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge,[249] Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the PHP scripting language,[250] Matei Zaharia, the creator of Apache Spark, Gordon Cormack, the co-creator of the Dynamic Markov compression algorithm,[251] Ric Holt, co-creator of several programming languages, most notably Turing,[252] Jack Edmonds, a computer scientist, and developer of the Blossom algorithm, and the Edmonds' algorithm,[253] Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and William Thomas Tutte, a World War II codebreaker who cracked the Nazi high command's Lorenz Cypher.


Graduates from the university have also risen to prominence in other fields. Heather Moyse, a graduate from the kinesiology program, is a prominent Canadian athlete and two-time Olympic bobsleigh gold medalist.[254] Moyse has represented Canada in international bobsleigh, rugby and track cycling competitions.[255] Graduate of the Rhetoric and Professional Writing program, Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, writer, illustrator.[256] Her book of poetry, Milk and Honey, has spent over a year on The New York Times' bestsellers list, reaching No. 1 in January 2017.[257] George Elliott Clarke, who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, graduated with an English degree.


On 2 October 2018, Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the Physics and Astronomy Department, was awarded the Nobel prize in physics. Strickland is the third woman to have ever been awarded the prize in physics.[258] This was the first Nobel prize for a member of the university's faculty.[259] Strickland was honoured for being half of the team to discover chirped pulse amplification, a technique that underpins today's short-pulse, high-intensity lasers.[260][261] Scientific American explained the practical aspects of the invention as it applies in the most noteworthy application: it allows for "ultrabrief, ultrasharp beams can be used to make extremely precise cuts, so their technique is now used in laser machining and enables doctors to perform millions of corrective" laser eye surgeries.[262]

Higher education in Ontario

J. W. Graham Medal

List of Canadian universities by endowment

List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation

List of universities in Ontario

Midnight Sun Solar Race Team

University of Waterloo Nano Robotics Group

Waterloo Global Science Initiative

Official website

Official athletics website

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