University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo, also known as "UW" or "U-Waterloo", is a medium-sized research-intensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The enrollment for 2005 was 23,043 undergraduate and 2,838 graduate students, with 895 full-time faculty members and 2,090 staff. The university was founded in 1957.

The University of Waterloo is famous for being the groundbreaking proponent of co-operative education in Canada and currently maintains the largest such program in the world.

History

The University of Waterloo was originally conceived in 1955 as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties (WCAF), a semi-autonomous entity within Waterloo College (now Wilfrid Laurier University).

The university's first president, Gerry Hagey, gathered teachers of engineering and basic sciences, and also obtained an initial grant of $625,000 from the government. The first classes began in 1957. In January 1958, Hagey and colleagues purchased 237 acres (96 ha) of farmland in the area. Soon, construction began of the first academic building on the new site, which would be soon known as Engineering 1.

Through a series of delicate negotiations which turned into bitter hostilities, the "Faculty of Science and Engineering" broke free from Waterloo College. In early 1959, the government established three universities: Waterloo Lutheran University, University of St. Jerome's College, and the University of Waterloo. Initially, St. Jerome's and Waterloo Lutheran were both expected to federate with the new UW, but in the end Waterloo Lutheran chose to remain independent. UW then quickly created a faculty of arts in order to gain respect as a university. In the same year, arts students joined the science and engineering students in the new campus.

Three more church colleges ended up joining the university: Renison, Conrad Grebel, and St. Paul's. Waterloo created the first Faculty of Mathematics in North America, and the first co-op programs outside of engineering soon followed. The co-op system then was revised in involving four-month terms rather than the initial three-month terms. In 1967, the College of Optometry of Ontario, at the moment an independent institution in Toronto, moved to Waterloo and became affiliated with the university. Then, a physical education program was created, which later became the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. The Faculty of Environmental Studies was created soon after.

More recently, in 2004, the School of Architecture was relocated to downtown Cambridge in an effort to enhance the school's facilities and strenghthen its community ties. The School, located in a former industrial building on the Grand River, is an important part of plans to bolster the economy of Cambridge's downtown area.

In 2001, the University of Waterloo announced its intentions to develop a Research and Technology Park on the university's north campus. The park intends to house many of the high-tech industries in the area and maintain the partnership between university and private-sector innovation. Sybase/iAnywhere Solutions and Open Text Corporation were the first two tenants, and the multi-tenant Accelerator Centre building opened in April 2006.

Campus

The main campus is located along University Avenue in Waterloo, Ontario on what was until the 1960s farmland. Since its creation, a considerable level of commercial and residential development has built up around the Waterloo campus, notably with many offices of high-tech firms.

The geographical coordinates of the UW campus are .

Reputation

The University of Waterloo attracts students from across Canada and is particularly well-known for its mathematics and computer science programs. It is also known for its longstanding undergraduate distance education programs.

Due to Waterloo's extensive co-operative education program, the university has established strong ties with many major corporations. During his visit to Waterloo in October 2005, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated, "Most years, we hire more students out of Waterloo than any university in the world, typically 50 or even more."

Waterloo prides itself on its high performance in Maclean's Magazine's Canadian university rankings. The university routinely places in the top three in the numerical Comprehensive ranking, and in the reputational survey it placed first as best overall 13 out of 15 times that the ranking was published.

In its article in November 2005, Maclean's noted that "Waterloo is internationally recognized for the unparalleled success of its more than 100 undergraduate and graduate co-op programs."

The prowess of its students in academic competitions such as the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition and the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest has also greatly contributed to the university's reputation in the last few decades.

The University is also a leader in environmental education and research with the first Faculty of Environmental Studies in the country. Environmental research takes place in all 6 faculties, with undergraduate and graduate programs concentrated in the Faculties of Engineering, Environmental Studies, and Science. The Green with Innovation website highlights the many environmental programs, student groups, and research at UW. The WATgreen initative and committee began in 1990 and included a Waste Management Coordinator position for the university. The position is currently un-filled, prompting a widespread move from students, professors, staff and community members to initatie a UW Office of Sustainability, to improve campus sustainability and regain a leadership position in campus greening. The UW Environment Network which formed in 2005 has a website with links to all environmental events on campus: http://uwenet.blogspot.com

Ties with industry

Through its large co-op program and many spin-off companies, the university maintains very close ties with the high-tech industry. UW has a long-standing intellectual property policy that leaves ownership rights with the inventor, rather than the university. This has helped create many spin-off companies that maintain a good relationship with UW. In particular, it has a strong connection with Research In Motion that goes beyond its close physical proximity. Co-founder and CEO Mike Lazaridis was a UW student before he started RIM, and is currently the chancellor of the university. RIM hires hundreds of UW co-op students each term and a large proportion of its employees are UW alumni.

Some students and faculty have been critical of the level of corporate involvement in UW's academics. The university came under harsh criticism in August 2002 when the Faculty of Engineering accepted funding from Microsoft to develop courses using Microsoft's .NET Framework.

Spin-offs

Several companies have roots in, or have been spun off from the university. Some of the most notable include:

Certicom - founded by two Waterloo professors, Scott Vanstone and Gordon Agnew
Dalsa - founded by Waterloo electrical engineering professor Savvas Chamberlain
Maplesoft - founded by two Waterloo professors, Keith Geddes and Gaston Gonnet
Intelligent Mechatronic Systems - founded by a Waterloo professor, Otman Basir
Open Text Corporation - originated from the university's Oxford English Dictionary project
SlipStream Data - founded by two Waterloo professors, En-hui Yang and Ajit Singh
Watcom - originated from the university's Computer Systems Group

Future plans

The university and the City of Kitchener are constructing a health sciences campus, including a School of Pharmacy, in the central Kitchener warehouse district. The project will cost $34 million for the first phase. Preliminary operations, including staffed medical and optometry clinics, are based out of the former Victoria Public School in Kitchener's downtown.

The Kitchener site will also host a satellite campus of McMaster University's medical school, bringing 15 first-year medical students to Waterloo Region each year to study. They will remain until the end of the three-year McMaster program, and have the option of continuing as a resident in the area.

UW's Department of Systems Design Engineering has announced its intention to have a new building exclusively for the department and its students by 2007. With support from the program's alumni, fundraising began in 2004. The building is envisioned to change the way engineering design is taught. For example, it is planned to provide students with reconfigurable design workspaces and other features.

With donations by alumni and matching contributions from government, the university announced in April 2004 the founding of the Institute for Quantum Computing.

Construction will soon begin on a $70 million Quantum-Nano Centre to house the Institute for Quantum Computing as well as the new Nanotechnology Engineering program.

The university has just completed construction of a $3.5 million addition to the physics building to house 2,000 networked computers, for use in the SHARCNET (Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network) supercluster. The building also links the physics building and the engineering complex, and as extra office space and computing facilities for the physics and engineering faculties.

The university is also planning a new building to house the School of Accountancy, expected to be ready for occupancy by March 2008. The School of Accountancy's expanded space will be constructed between the Arts Lecture Hall, Tatham Centre, and Hagey Hall.

Facts and figures

The Faculty of Mathematics is the world's largest faculty in the mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences.
Based on student enrollment, the Faculty of Arts is UW's biggest faculty.
The School of Accountancy enrolls students from three faculties: Arts, Mathematics, and Science. It is considered to be an undergraduate accounting school in Canada.
UW accounts for more than $1.6 billion of economic activity (1999) in Ontario.
Annually, UW attracts about 400,000 visitors from outside the region.
The university is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the Waterloo Warriors.
On September 16, 2004, the University of Waterloo's solar car team broke the Guinness World Record for the longest journey by a solar powered car. The solar car, called the Midnight Sun VII, broke both the official record of 7,043 km (held by Queen's University) and the unofficial record of 13,054 km (held by Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia) after undertaking a 40-day tour of Canada and the United States, travelling a total of 15,079 km. The tour took the solar car through 7 provinces and 15 states.
GLOW - Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo, one of the student services is recognized as the longest running LGBTQ campus organization in Canada. GLOW provides several areas of inclusive programming and services open to all students and the greater community regardless of sexual orientation.
On November 30, 2005, UW received a gneiss rock which is displayed at the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology. It measures 9.14 meters tall.

Traditions and peculiarities

Student life converges upon the popular Student Life Centre, which has food, lounge, study and activities spaces and other services for students. The Turnkey Desk, located in the Student Life Centre's Great Hall, has been operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year almost continuously since the opening of the Student Life Centre (then the Campus Centre) in 1968. Turnkeys are so-named because they are the keepers of the keys for the many rooms in the Student Life Centre, and share their name with ancient jailers.
A unique species of tree is donated by each graduating class and planted on Alumni Lane.
According to urban legend, the Davis Centre is designed to look like a microchip in an aerial view of the building.
Similarly, the Math & Computer building is designed to look like a giant slide rule when viewed from the side. An alternative viewpoint is that it was designed as an homage to Le Corbusier's La Tourette Monastery.
A relatively common urban legend surrounding libraries has been attached to the Dana Porter library: namely, that the building is subsiding, as its structural engineering had supposedly not accounted for the weight of the books it contains. This, like similar legends pertaining other educational institutions' libraries, is false. [http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoipa/history/legends

Orientation week

Students in the Faculty of Science receive safety goggles during orientation week.
Students in the Faculty of Engineering receive a yellow hard hat during orientation week.
Students in the Faculty of Mathematics receive a pink tie during orientation week, which is recognized as the unofficial symbol for mathies (math students). The story of the pink tie can be found at the Legend of the Pink Tie UW page.
Students in the Software Engineering program, run jointly by the Faculties of Engineering and Mathematics, receive both a yellow hard hat and pink tie.
Students in the Faculty of Environmental Studies enjoy an afternoon of outdoor fun at a nearby conservation area.
Students in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences participate in their version of the Olympics which test body and mind.

Mascots

The University's athletics mascot is a lion named King Warrior. The Warriors are the University's sports team and King Warrior's initials, K-W, reflect a common nickname for the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo.
The mascot for the undergraduate students' Mathematics Society (MathSoc) is the Natural Log (see natural log), which is a wooden log about two feet (60 cm) long, often mistaken as the Faculty's mascot
The mascot for the Faculty of Mathematics is a 40 feet (12.2 m) long and 11 feet (3.4 m) wide pink tie, often mistaken as MathSoc's mascot
The mascot for the Faculty of Engineering is a 60" (1.5 m) pipe wrench called The TOOL, formerly The RIDGID Tool, as it was donated by the Ridge Tool Company in 1968.
The mascot for the Faculty of Arts is a statue of a boar which was donated to the University of Waterloo Math Faculty in 1978, and in turn donated to the Arts Faculty. It is one of several copies of Italian sculptor Pietro Tacca's (1577-1640) "Il Porcellino" statue. Students believe that rubbing the Boar's nose brings luck. ^*
The mascot for the Faculty of Environmental Studies is The Big Banana, which is actually a designated orientation leader dressed in a banana costume.
The mascot for the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences is a Kangaroo. They get this for students are called AHSSIES (pronounced Aussies, like their Australian counterparts)
The mascot for the Science Society (SciSoc) is Arriba the Amoeba, a giant life-sized amoeba dressed in a lab coat.

Coat of Arms

The Coat of Arms of the University of Waterloo was granted in 1987.

The shield's blazon is as follows:

Or, on a chevron Sable between three lions rampant Gules a chevronel Argent.

The full blazon of the arms (rarely used) continues:

Above the Shield is placed an Helm suitable to an Incorporation (a Salade proper lined Gules) with a Mantling Sable doubled Or, and on a Wreath of the Liveries is set for Crest between two maple branches in saltire a trillium displayed and leaved all Proper, and in an Escrol over the same this Motto "CONCORDIA CUM VERITATE".

Representing Waterloo's location in the twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo, the double-chevron is taken from the coat of arms of Earl Kitchener, and the red lions are taken from the symbol of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, the victor at the Battle of Waterloo.

References and notes

External links

University of Waterloo | Universities in Ontario | Waterloo, Ontario | Educational institutions established in 1957

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